FIC: Junk Cheap (SGA) Sheppard/McKay (R) 1/2

[devildoll]

Happy birthday to meeeeeeeee! Okay, I started this long before my birthday, and it isn't actually for a few more days anyway, but I say close enough.

Title: Junk Cheap
Summary: If you were thinking you'd love to read an AU where Rodney is a college professor and John owns a junk shop, this is the story for you.
Author: Devil Doll
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Rating: R
Spoilers: There's a small one for "Sunday" in here, but since this story is an AU, if you don't know what the spoiler is, you might not even realize it's a spoiler.
Website: Fan Fiction I Wrote Yay!
Disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis and its characters do not belong to me.
Notes: Thanks to hwmitzy and musesfool for the beta duties.
Words: ~13,000
Posted: May 15th, 2007
Podfic: The awesome zoetrope recorded this story, and you can get it here. And countess7 made a lovely cover for the podbook version, which you can get here!



The apartment wasn't great--it was barely passable--and Rodney kicked himself again for not asking more questions upfront. "It was the best we could do on such short notice, so close to the start of the semester," Landry had said as he'd handed Rodney the key, looking a little apologetic.

Now Rodney could see why. Fourth floor, no elevator. A tiny bathroom, an old-fashioned kitchen. No garbage disposal. Radiator heat. Oh, God. He was going to freeze. If he didn't die of a heart attack on the stairs.

It wasn't shabby, by any means. It was freshly painted, and the hardwood floors had been refinished sometime recently, and the windows looked new, but it was far from the spacious living quarters he'd been hoping for. There wasn't even a spare room for an office, which seemed completely ridiculous when choosing an apartment for a professor.

This was all Carter's fault, Rodney fumed as he huffed up the stairs with yet another box of books (he'd limited himself to only two hundred, seeing as how he was only going to be here for a few months). He was her first choice for a replacement, Landry had said, and Rodney had been so flattered--and so eager to have Samantha Carter owe him one--that he'd agreed without hesitation. It was an easy gig, only two classes, only one semester. Just long enough for Carter to recover from what was rumored to be a very gruesome accident that proved your mother was right when she told you to look both ways before crossing the street.

There wasn't much he could do about the situation, though. She was laid up and Rodney was teaching her classes, and he'd have to live here while he did it.

One really inconvenient thing about the college area of any town was that it was always, unfailingly, near the dangerous part of town, and the two tended to bleed over into one another. Rodney's apartment seemed to be near the border of the two, which was another reason to hate it.

The one plus about the neighborhood was the coffee shop across the street, wittily named Fuel, which was open both early and late, and served real food, like sandwiches and chili and soups, plus some other things Rodney would never touch, like vegetarian meatloaf (WHY?!?). There was a Vietnamese place down the street, a pizza place one block over, and a grocery store with a killer deli about a mile away. He wasn't going to starve, and for that he was grateful.

He tried to remember that the next morning as he clomped down the stairs, laptop banging against one leg, overloaded briefcase tenderizing the other.

When he got to the entryway, the door stuck, so he gave it a mighty shove and burst from the building, nearly careening right across the sidewalk and into the street. And wouldn't that be hilarious, considering why he was here in the first place.

When he came home that evening, the storefront that occupied a large portion of the first floor was lit up, the door standing open, and Rodney actually gave it a close look for the first time. He'd seen it closed and dark, and assumed it was unused, but now he noticed there was a faded, hand painted sign above the door that said "Junk Cheap."

As he passed by, he saw a jumble of old toys in the window, next to several dozen sets of salt shakers. Great. A resale shop. Probably carted in loads of stuff from the houses of dead senior citizens, infested with fleas and lavender sachet. It made him itch just thinking about it.

The store was dark again in the morning when he left for work. The sign on the door proclaimed the hours to be "open sometimes, closed sometimes."

Exactly the level of motivation that led one to a career in a junk shop, Rodney thought, and carefully crossed the street to get some coffee and a muffin.

Rodney had no intention of getting to know his neighbors. His neighbors, sadly, had different ideas. At the end of his first week in the apartment, a mob of them--average age about seventy-five, he estimated--appeared at his door bearing a smelly candle (lemon, of all things), a plate of brownies, and a welcome card. They overstayed their welcome and drank the last of his coffee, and he wasn't sad to see them go.

The brownies were excellent, though. If he could find the time, he thought it might be worth it to befriend Phyllis and see if he could get more.

As it turned out, finding the time to see the old people wasn't going to be a problem. They were home all the time and seemed to lie in wait for him. Try as he might, it was impossible to make it to his apartment door, no matter how quietly he tiptoed, no matter how late or early he came home, without being spotted and corralled into helping someone with something.

He took Gloria's mail down to the post office, cleaned the spyware off Ernst's computer, emptied Phyllis's trash, and carried about six hundred bags of groceries up the stairs, all over the course of only one week.

The guy who lived in the only apartment on the first floor seemed to be the only other person in the building who wasn't collecting Social Security. Rodney had only caught a glimpse of him one morning, a red sweatshirt and hairy legs vanishing out the front door. He always chained his bike to the banister in the foyer, which made the stair climbing even more annoying, and Rodney hated him and his bike and his hairy legs.

Early in the third week, Rodney's bathroom faucet started leaking. It started as a barely noticeable plop, but picked up tempo and volume rapidly until it reached Chinese Water Torture levels of annoyance. Pretty soon it was keeping him up all night, being conveniently located directly on the other side of the wall from his bed.

That was when he realized he had no idea who his landlord was. He didn't have a copy of the lease, and the rent got dropped into an ancient post box mounted on the wall on the first floor, checks made out to the building name.

He tried to call Landry, but he was out of town at some conference, and not expected back for several days. Rodney detailed his problem for the bored receptionist, but could tell from the tone of her voice that she wasn't going to go out of her way to get his faucet fixed.

Ernst helpfully supplied the name and number of "the fella who used to come and check on the place," which led to a painfully awkward phone call with said fella's widow. Her husband had been the caretaker, she told him, but that had been more than ten years ago, and she didn't remember anything about the owner of the building.

When he came home that night, Junk Cheap's door was propped open, so he stepped inside. It was pretty much what he'd expected: piles of old crap nobody wanted or needed. The walls were lined with shelves, each one heavily packed with tattered books, hideous knickknacks, and dented cookware. Sagging wooden bins held records, and there was a pile of what looked like bicycle parts on a crooked folding table.

A huge, battered wooden desk stood sentry by the door, holding up the feet of the guy sitting behind it.

"Hey," the guy said. His hair was messy and his clothes were wrinkled, but he was younger than Rodney had expected a junk shop guy to be, and surprisingly attractive. He was reading a men's fitness magazine from the 1950s, and one of his red Converse tennis shoes had a rip in the side. There was a half-eaten sandwich, what looked like a BLT, on a paper towel next to his feet, which explained why the place smelled a little like bacon.

"Yes, hi," Rodney said. "I live on the fourth floor, and I'm having a problem with my faucet--leaking horribly, keeping me up all night--and I was wondering, since I didn't rent the place myself and have no idea who to call, if you might know who the landlord is, or a maintenance person?"

The guy blinked at him. "You try replacing the washer?"

Rodney blinked back. "Why would I do that? That's not my responsibility. And I'm a professor, not a plumber."

The guy shrugged. "Yeah, but if it keeps you awake. Seems like it might be easier to just take care of it."

"Thanks for your help," Rodney said snidely, turning to leave.

"No problem," the guy chirped, waving happily as Rodney's sarcasm obviously sailed right over his tousled head.

The next evening, Rodney stopped at the hardware store on his way home and bought a new washer, carefully tucking the receipt in his wallet so he could submit it to the landlord next month, along with his appropriately adjusted rent check.

It wasn't until he was standing at the sink, rolling up his sleeves, that he realized he had no tools.

Annoyed, he stomped back down the stairs to the junk shop. The tousled guy was in his usual place behind the desk, reading a vintage children's book called I Want To Be a Homemaker. A Johnny Cash record with an obvious warp in it crackled on a decrepit record player in the corner; the tousled guy was tunelessly humming along.

"I need a wrench," Rodney said.

The guy slowly, oh so slowly, picked up an old Niagara Falls postcard and marked his place--in a book that had about fifteen pages--and looked up at Rodney. "Can I help you?"

"I need a wrench," Rodney repeated through gritted teeth. "To replace the washer in my leaky faucet."

A few more valuable minutes of Rodney's life ticked by while the guy got up, lazily scratched his belly through his shirt, wandered over to an old dresser, and started digging noisily through the drawers. His tattered cargo pants were a little too big, and they slipped down when he squatted in front of the lowest drawer. His boxer shorts had little pictures of Homer Simpson on them.

"Here you go," he said, after an eternity. The wrench he handed Rodney was coated with rust and cobwebs.

"Wow, thanks," Rodney said, dangling it between thumb and finger. "How much for this beauty?"

"Go ahead and use it. Just bring it back when you're done," the guy said.

"Really? Are you sure you wouldn't like a deposit?" he asked, but once again the guy was immune to sarcasm.

"No, that's fine," he said earnestly. "Happy to help. My name's John." He took a second to swipe one dirty hand on his pants before holding it out for Rodney to shake.

"Dr. Rodney McKay." He shook John's hand in a way he hoped conveyed how very little he cared to make his acquaintance. "I'll be sure to bring this back as soon as possible."

"Take your time," John said, which didn't surprise Rodney at all. He probably had no clue the rest of the world didn't operate on the same frozen molasses schedule he did.

Wrench--or what passed for one--obtained, Rodney went back upstairs, fixed the faucet, got rust all over his hands and his clothes and the bathroom, and came back down to find Junk Cheap closed for the night.

Tossing the stupid wrench through the window really wasn't the best way to repay John's generosity, but that didn't mean Rodney didn't think about it.

He tried to return the wrench three times that week, carting it to and from work, sealed safely in a Ziploc bag to contain the rust flakes. Each time he passed by, Junk Cheap was closed.

On Friday, he was bumping his way down the stairs when the door to the first floor apartment opened, and there was John, eyes half open, hair even more fractious than usual, clutching a coffee mug. He was wearing a T-shirt that said "I Know What Boys Like."

Startled, Rodney stumbled as he reached the last stair. His briefcase banged into the front wheel of that blasted bike, ricocheting into his shin.

"Ow!" said Rodney.

"Hey, that's my bike!" said John.

He should have known, Rodney thought. He really should have known John was the annoying, hairy-legged bike guy.

"Your bike is in the way," he snapped. "And no doubt a safety hazard. I'm surprised the landlord hasn't told you to move it, though I imagine he's probably too busy acquiring skin cancer on some tropical island to worry about us, and speaking of which." He dug around in his briefcase. "Here's your wrench."

John stepped out into the hallway and took it, raising an eyebrow at the Ziploc bag. Through the open door, Rodney could see a tattered orange sofa and a lamp that should have been tossed in a landfill in 1970. His apartment looked just like Junk Cheap, really, right down to the crooked shelves of ratty books.

John saluted Rodney with his coffee mug and went back inside, taking his cruddy wrench with him.

Rodney rubbed his sore shin and went to work and taught his classes, and the day was just like any other, except for the amount of time he spent thinking about the fact that John knew what boys liked.

On Monday evening Rodney was on the third floor landing--climbing the stairs was getting easier every day, he had to admit--when he heard the echo of a familiar voice in the stairwell. He paused and peeked around the corner, looking down the hall just in time to see John coming out of Phyllis's apartment.

Carrying a toolbox and a plate of cookies.

"Thank you so much, dear," Phyllis said, chucking him under the chin. "That leaky pipe was keeping me up all night."

John grinned like the idiot he no doubt was and mumbled, "You're welcome." He hefted the plate. "And thanks for the cookies. Chocolate chip's my favorite."

Rodney ducked behind the wall as John turned toward the stairwell, hustling up to the next landing before he stopped to look again. He leaned over the railing just in time to see John headed back down the stairs, whistling a happy tune as he carted away his booty, the rat bastard.

Over the next two weeks, Rodney saw John and his toolbox come out of no less than four different apartments, one time clutching what appeared to be an entire angel food cake. If he wasn't the official maintenance guy, he was obviously the de facto one, and he was doing a brisk trade in baked goods.

Rodney hadn't seen so much as a crumb of Phyllis's brownies since that first week, even though he'd helped her carry her groceries--cantaloupes and gallons of milk!--up the stairs on several different occasions. And John hadn't even offered to fix Rodney's leaky faucet. Sure, it was probably pretty obvious from the steady stream of delivery guys beating a path to Rodney's door that he wasn't much of a cook, but John could have at least mentioned he knew his way around a tool box and was willing to work for bakery. Rodney knew how to buy bakery.

Twice he saw John in the hallway in the morning, propped in the doorway of his cluttered apartment, sipping at his coffee.

"Morning!" John said cheerfully, each time.

Rodney muttered back at him, and once banged his briefcase into John's precious bike on purpose.

Rodney was right in the middle of giving the pink-haired girl his order when he had a revelation. He'd been working on a very lucrative consulting job for a week or so, and something about the schematics had bugged him from the beginning, something he couldn't put his finger on at first. But right there in the middle of Fuel, he suddenly realized what it was, and just as suddenly figured out the solution.

He was normally a to-go guy, but he didn't want to wait another second (sadly, brilliant ideas could sometimes be fleeting), so he paid for his food and settled in at one of the tiny, wobbly tables. It was still early in the evening, and the clove-smoking poetry writers hadn't showed up yet, so all in all it wasn't too bad, though the music was too loud, as usual.

He was deep in concentration, and marveling at his own brilliance, when someone suddenly pulled the other chair out and sat down at his table.

He looked up, indignant, ready to tell the interloper to scram. "Oh, it's you," he said.

"Hey, Rodney," John said.

"What are you doing here?" Rodney asked, going back to his brilliant idea. He should charge extra for it, he thought. It was that good.

"Eating."

"At my table?"

John slouched down and hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. He tipped his head toward the room at large and said, "Looks like."

Rodney looked around. The place had gotten busy while he'd been working. The other tables were all full.

"Hmm. Well. You can sit here if you don't bother me," Rodney said, as the pink-haired girl walked up with his muffaletta and root beer. She had John's food, too, and Rodney was appalled to see he had ordered what appeared to be a vegetarian burger, complete with fake bacon and vegan cheese.

"I thought you ate animals," Rodney said.

"I do."

"Then why are you eating that?"

"It's good," John said, picking it up with both hands.

"I highly doubt that," Rodney said, suppressing a shudder as some type of fluid dripped out of the burger and onto the plate.

"Wanna bite?" John jabbed it at Rodney's face, as if he were serious. "C'mon. It's good."

Rodney recoiled. "God, no. What's that made from? Weeds? Grass clippings?"

"Soybeans, I think." He took a huge bite, following it with a handful of potato chips.

"Three kinds of meat," Rodney said proudly, holding up his own sandwich. "With real cheese."

John, undeterred, took another huge bite.

Once they dug in to their food, Rodney tried to focus on his work and his sandwich, but no matter how much he tried to concentrate on his notes, his eyes kept wandering upward to look at John instead. John, busy eating, didn't seem to notice the attention.

He wasn't as young as Rodney had initially thought; there were fine lines around his eyes that crinkled when he smiled, and flecks of gray at his temples. They were maybe about the same age, Rodney guessed, though who knew, really, considering how much damage John had undoubtedly done to his skin by spending too much time in the sun. He was definitely tanned--Rodney could see the white skin under his shirt sleeve when he reached for his drink.

His ears were oddly pointy, and his eyes were an interesting hazel color, but it was his lower lip was the most distracting of all, and he kept drawing attention to it by licking it after each bite. He really was ridiculously good-looking.

And getting harder to ignore.

Especially when he kept pressing his knee against Rodney's under the table.

Given his ongoing fixation on repairs, it was perhaps inevitable that one Saturday morning the hot water handle in the shower came right off in Rodney's hand.

He grabbed a towel and went straight to John's apartment, pounding on the door until his towel almost came off. He tucked it a little tighter and kept pounding.

John answered the door in only his boxer shorts, and it immediately dawned on Rodney that they didn't have one decent set of clothes between them. John looked awfully good in his underwear, rubbing his sleepy face. Good enough that just the sight of him was giving Rodney certain urges, and that was bad news. Very bad news. He was the junk shop guy, for God's sake.

John actually looked pleased to see him, eyes widening a little as they slid up and down Rodney's mostly-naked body. "Hey, Rodney." He stepped back and opened the door a little more, an invitation that made Rodney's stomach flip.

Rodney's stomach was a traitor.

He had never had a taste for rough trade, never seen the appeal. And John was so far below him--intellectually, financially, professionally--that it was doomed to be a short affair, with the annoying consequence of having to see him in the building constantly after it ended. He wasn't going there, literally or figuratively.

He stood his ground, clutching his towel like a life preserver, and held up the hot water handle. "My shower broke. I need you to fix it."

John gave him a look of bewildered innocence. "Me?"

"Drop the charade, Brando. I know you've been fixing everyone else's stuff the whole time."

Surprisingly, John gave up the pretense immediately. "Okay. I'm not gonna do it for free, though," he said, grinning.

"Oh, of course not," Rodney said. "A man who's content to sit around in a junk shop all day for a net profit of fifty-four cents obviously knows the value of his time."

John nodded. "Exactly."

"Exactly." When John just stood there, Rodney shifted back and forth on his feet and said, "I meant…can you fix it right now?"

John smiled and shook his head, obviously enjoying himself. "We didn't agree on a price."

"I can't bake, but I can buy you breakfast," Rodney offered.

"Deal," John said.

He appeared at Rodney's door a few minutes later, wearing more clothing but still looking adorably mussed. Rodney got out an extra coffee mug and ran across the street for two orders of huevos rancheros while John fixed the shower.

They ate at the kitchen table, and this time there was no computer between them, so small talk--never Rodney's specialty--was unavoidable. He was mildly surprised to find the conversation wasn't painfully stilted or completely asinine. John even expressed interest in Rodney's field of expertise, and seemed to know a little bit about astrophysics himself, no doubt from reading old issues of Popular Science in the junk shop.

The most interesting thing he let slip, though, was that he'd been in the military. That probably explained the heavy-duty slacker lifestyle, Rodney thought. Making up for lost time, all that following orders and shining boots.

All those repressed homosexual desires.

When they were done eating, John helped him clean up. They stood at the sink, Rodney washing and John drying, bumping shoulders, fingers brushing as the dishes were handed off. Once that was finished, John hung around, wiping the table and rinsing every last soap bubble out of the sink, obviously stalling. Rodney busied himself with shoving the carryout containers in the trash, but once that was done, there wasn't anything else he could pretend to concentrate on, and they both knew it.

John leaned against the kitchen counter, hands in his pockets, hips tilted forward just enough to be distracting, and didn't say a word. As they stared at each other, Rodney was acutely aware that if he wanted to have sex with John right now, he could.

He was also acutely aware he hadn't bathed in over twenty-four hours, and that he'd already sworn he wasn't going to go down this road.

"I should shower," he said, gesturing over his shoulder, toward the bathroom.

"Yeah, you should," John said through a slow and lazy smile.

"I'll guess I'll see you around, then," Rodney said, voice suddenly gone a little reedy. "Since we live in the same building and all."

If John was disappointed, it didn't show. He grabbed his toolbox off the counter. "Oh, I'm sure you will," he said, and Rodney could have sworn he smirked at him on his way out the door.

"John insisted we invite you," Gladys said, practically man-handling Rodney out of his coat. "He said you would appreciate a home-cooked meal."

"Oh, he did, did he?" Rodney said, shooting a black look at John, who grinned and waved at him. He was lounging in the recliner with Gladys's fluffy white cat in his lap. "I'll have to remember to thank him."

They were old people, frail and befuddled, and yet they constantly got the best of Rodney. So here he was, on his one afternoon a week when he got home early, railroaded into having dinner with the old folks. And he'd been so close to safety when Phyllis had waylaid him in the hallway. His key had been in the deadbolt and everything.

Gladys shooed him into the living room, where Rodney accidentally brushed against a table, messing up one of the eight hundred crocheted doilies covering every flat surface in the apartment. When he tried to straighten it, he yanked it too hard and knocked over a terrifying Precious Moments figurine, which thankfully didn't shatter.

Once he'd fumbled everything back to rightness, he turned to glare at John and the cat, who were both watching him with an air of bemused superiority. "Shut up," he said, even though John hadn't said a word. The cat yawned.

"How's your shower?" John asked. "Still working okay?"

"Fine, fine, thank you," Rodney said, watching the cat roll on its back for a belly rub, purr running at full throttle. He really missed having a cat. "Give me that," he said, walking over and scooping the cat out of John's lap. As he gathered it up, his fingers grazed John's legs, and even with that glancing contact, Rodney could feel that the muscles in John's thighs were like iron. Rodney thought of the bicycle, and how he probably had a lot of strength and stamina and...

And he was not going there, Rodney reminded himself.

"His name's Roger," John said, nodding at the cat as he brushed a pound of cat hair off his pants. "He sheds a little."

"Was there something wrong with your shower?" Phyllis asked as she tottered over to a chair near the over-stuffed curio cabinet. "I had a pipe that leaked, until John fixed it for me."

"This whole building is probably one big plumbing nightmare," Rodney said as he hunted out a path through the jungle of fragile tables, tiny footstools, and rag rugs that littered the living room. Roger hung from his hands like an over-cooked noodle the whole time, still purring.

There was a reason the other two had chosen the chairs, Rodney realized, and that was because Gladys had the softest, squishiest couch Rodney had ever had the misfortune to sit on. He felt like he was bent in half, knees nearly hitting his chin, and his ass couldn't have been more than two or three inches above the floor. He was never going to be able to get up.

There was a commotion in the kitchen as Ernst arrived, with a twelve pack of what he called "beer" and what Rodney called "that godawful Miller Lite." He headed straight for Rodney, who was trapped in the couch and couldn't flee.

Ernst never could remember that Rodney was not a medical doctor, and Rodney was in no mood for another stomach-turning description of his latest skin lesion. By some stroke of luck, there was no mysterious growth this time, only a letter from Medicare that he swore wasn't really in English, because it didn't make any goddamn sense, and maybe Rodney could look at it for him after dinner and tell him what it meant.

Once Rodney agreed, Ernst passed around the beer, insisting both John and Rodney take one. Rodney opened his and took a sip--terrible--and then set it down on a doily, hopefully to be forgotten until he was long gone. John was either drinking his or doing a really good job of faking it.

Ernst and Phyllis got caught up on the neighborhood gossip, which required no input from Rodney, so he sat back with Roger draped languidly across his legs and let his mind wander. John was completely zoned out, watching Rodney's hand stroke the cat's back, seemingly hypnotized by the repetitious motion.

Dinner was served at 4:30pm on the dot, and getting out of the couch was just as hellish as Rodney had predicted. His spine made a grinding noise, and Roger got pinched between Rodney's stomach and legs, bolting with a pained meow. John finally came to the rescue, yanking him to his feet.

"Don't forget your beer," he said helpfully, as he turned and went into the kitchen.

"Oh, you need another?" Ernst asked. "They go down pretty easy this time of day, don't they?"

"They sure do," Rodney agreed. "Just like…water."

If the beer was a waste, at least dinner made up for it: tuna casserole, one of Rodney's favorites. Gladys made hers with lots of peas in it, and French fried onions on top. He had three helpings. John, who couldn't seem to sit up straight in a chair to save his life, sat next to him, and poked Rodney with his elbow every time he lifted his fork. Roger sat primly on the floor at Rodney's feet, silently willing him to drop a piece of tuna, and occasionally batting him with a paw.

Rodney fully expected the dinner conversation to revolve around backaches and world wars, and he wasn't far off the mark. The upside was that he had nothing to contribute to the conversation, and could eat uninterrupted. The downside was trying to choke down tuna casserole while three retirees talked about their bunions.

Dessert was date bars, and everyone enjoyed them with coffee while Rodney was hunched over Ernst's Medicare paperwork, thanking every available deity that he could escape back to Canada when he was old and gray, rather than navigating the American health care system. Given a choice, though, he wouldn't have traded places with John, who was nodding his way through a monologue about the Great Depression.

Before he knew it, it was all over and he was back out in the hallway, covered in cat hair and holding a plate of leftovers. It was only six o'clock, and normally Rodney would just be starting to think about what to have for dinner. It seemed odd to have a full belly and the whole evening ahead of him.

John came out behind him, carrying his own plate of leftovers, shoving one last date bar in his face. "That was good," he said. "I bet you're glad I told them to invite you."

"Believe me, I won't forget it," Rodney said, in an appropriately menacing tone.

They paused on the landing, mostly because John stopped walking and blocked Rodney's way. He had a splotch of tuna casserole on the front of his T-shirt. Rodney reached over and flicked it off.

John looked down at the spot. "Thanks."

"I'd advise you to treat that before you wash it, but on that shirt, I’m not sure anyone will notice."

"Hey, this shirt is new," John protested, plucking at it.

"New for you, you mean." There was no way the thing hadn't come from the junk shop. It had a picture of Pac-Man on it, for God's sake.

"That counts as new," John insisted. "I've only worn it twice."

"Right. Well, as much as I'd like to stand here in the stairwell and debate the point all night…" He waved a hand toward the stairs.

"It's still early," John said, pointedly.

Rodney looked at his watch, even though he knew exactly what time it was. "Yes, still plenty of time to get some work done," he said, even more pointedly, and brushed past John, intent on getting back to his apartment alone.

John was eating one of the date bars the next morning when Rodney saw him in the hallway.

"Hey, hold the door for me," he said, or at least that was what Rodney thought he said. It was hard to tell through all the dates.

"It's raining," Rodney pointed out, because John was headed out the door with his bike, and that just seemed foolish. "And you aren't wearing a helmet."

"I'm just going down to the post office," John said, flipping the hood of his sweatshirt up. He trotted down the stairs, bike bouncing beside him, and pedaled away before Rodney could chastise him again.

Rodney tried to shrug it off, but it wouldn't be shrugged, and he was more aware than ever of exactly how he'd come to have John for a neighbor in the first place. Cars were big and heavy and deadly, and people were soft and easily broken. Samantha Carter could vouch for that fact.

He had some time to kill while his 10am class sweated through a surprise quiz (yes, he was exactly that kind of professor), so he checked his email, and then somehow found himself researching bicycle accident statistics, which led immediately to checking prices on helmets. Like anything else, they had a pretty big price range, but even a cheap one would be better than nothing, he assumed. John probably didn't make much money off the junk shop, but surely he could afford to spend thirty bucks on some protection for his brain. There was even a model with a skull and crossbones pattern on it.

He finally decided he was obsessing, and made himself focus on other things, but he felt the smallest bit of relief when he got home and saw John's bike was back in its usual place, unscathed.

A couple of days later, Rodney was coming into the building when John's door banged opened and he burst out into the hallway, nearly giving Rodney a heart attack, though he supposed he should have been used to it by now, as often as John seemed to appear there when Rodney was coming and going.

"Hey," John said, "Can you help me with something?"

Since John lived on the first floor and did not appear to be in possession of any grocery bags full of cantaloupes, Rodney said, "Maybe. What?"

"My stupid computer--"

"You have a computer?" Rodney was shocked.

"Why wouldn't I have a computer?" John asked, frowning in confusion.

"I'm just sort of surprised to learn you own anything made after 1980, that's all."

John rolled his eyes. "Can you just look at my computer? Ernst said you helped him clean 'the spy robots' off his."

"You think you have spy robots?"

"I think I do, yeah."

"Well," Rodney said. "I don't work for free."

"I'm making dinner right now."

"Really? No one from the Denture Brigade feeding you tonight? No stockpile of delicious desserts in your apartment?"

"Nope. Making it all myself."

"I'm allergic to citrus and I don't eat anything pretending to be meat," Rodney felt compelled to specify.

"No problem."

"Okay, first of all," Rodney yelled, "you're using Internet Explorer? As far as I'm concerned, you deserve a crappy browsing experience."

In the kitchen, John hummed noncommittally in reply and turned on the faucet. He seemed to be running the water a lot, especially when Rodney started shouting things at him from the spare bedroom.

It took a while for John to finish making dinner, so after he got rid of the spyware, Rodney spent some time installing Firefox and cleaning up the desktop. Then he wandered around, looking at all the weird stuff in John's apartment. His love of kitsch was extreme, even for a gay man, and he had an insane number of candles. While John was setting the table, Rodney checked to make sure the little red light on the smoke detector was blinking, just in case.

Dinner turned out to be excellent. Lasagna--made with real meat--and a huge, greasy, dripping loaf of garlic bread, and Rodney wasn't forced to waste one millimeter of stomach space on salad. Contrary to what his unfortunate menu choices at Fuel suggested, John knew how to make a good meal.

Talk over dinner was about movies, mostly. Which franchise had the best overall quality, which one had taken the biggest nosedive, and which James Bond was the best.

They stumbled to the orange couch afterwards, Rodney still clutching his napkin, and--inspired by the dinner conversation--watched Goldeneye. John started out sitting on the opposite end of the couch, but seemed to sort of melt over into Rodney's personal space as the movie progressed. Rodney tried to ignore him, and think about how hairy his legs were, instead of how pretty his mouth was.

John got up after the movie and banged around in the kitchen some more, and pretty soon the sweet, sweet smell of coffee drifted into the living room. A few minutes later, Rodney had a cup of coffee in one hand and a chocolate cupcake in the other.

"Ohmahgah," Rodney said through a mouthful of cupcakey heaven. "So good."

"Mmmm," John said, closing his eyes and dragging his tongue through the frosting on his cupcake. Rodney had paid for porn only half that good. "You want another one?"

Rodney thought about it as John finished his cupcake and licked his fingers. He wasn't really that interested in another cupcake, but the other thing he wanted was far more complicated. Despite his best intentions, his willpower was finite, and John had been steadily chipping away at it.

What the hell. The semester was up in a few weeks. He'd be moving out soon. "No," he said, then, "Come over here."

John was noisy. It was a good thing they lived in a building full of old people.

Rodney wasn't really sure why he was surprised to get a phone call from Landry the next day. It was exactly the sort of thing that would happen to him.

Carter needed another semester off. Rodney was staying. The arrangements had been made with both the university and the landlord, if he chose to accept the offer. Which he did, because he was not inclined to make dumb decisions regarding his career (except that one time).

The only sticking point--the one he did not discuss with Landry, obviously--was John. Instead of a short fling with a nice, clean ending, they were back to potential disaster and ongoing awkwardness.

On the other hand, Rodney had certainly left John's apartment that morning wanting more, and if John felt the same way, it could be a pleasant couple of months.

"I guess I'm not moving out until June," he told John the next night over barbecued ribs.

John licked the corner of his mouth and nodded. "Okay," he said, and that was that.

Part Two