FIC: Remembrance Day (AU, SFW)
Title: Remembrance Day
Authors: anatsuno and almostnever
Pairing: John/Rodney
Ratings/Warnings: SFW
Word count: 3200 words
Summary: Set in the AU of A Place on the Corner, in which John runs a bakery that Rodney favors in Colorado Springs.
*
In the two months since Labor Day, Rodney has only managed to see John twice. Just brief, unsatisfying stops over the following week, then it all came down at once: swept up in a hurricane of pressing work, flown to Nevada for urgent consultation, buried there under the sad consequences of other people's incompetence.
Fortunately, now that he makes his own price, he can eventually hike his day rate up into the stratosphere until such point where the Air Force balks and puts him on a plane back home.
"You're shirking," Sam tells him, wagging a finger, but she can't hide the beginning of a sly smile. "It's a mean low-down trick, flying in to work on the interesting stuff and then bailing on the cleanup."
He feels mean, a little pang, seeing the grey under her eyes and knowing he's taking the easy way out while she's committed to the long haul. And yet.
"You know I'll be back. Simpson's on call when I'm unavailable, don't hesitate to pull that string. Her brain needs the extra workout, anyway," Rodney says loftily, "she's been resting on her laurels a little too much since her last paper."
"I'll come get you myself if you aren't calling my people to insult them again in a week or so." Sam is pushing him backwards out the door by now, lifting his briefcase up to his chest to bundle him up and shove him lightly. "Go on, then. See you in Colorado next month for the big briefing."
"I'm going, I'm going. Not a minute longer in this dusty hellhole."
Rodney doesn't tell her to take care, grab some sleep, get a snack; he doesn't say either that he has to go, in no small part because the thought of John with his quiet half-smile and weird pastries itches under his skin like unfulfilled addiction. He and Sam don't have that sort of friendship.
A flight, a restless night and a shower later, Remembrance Day (though for John of course it'll be Veterans Day) finds a poppyless Rodney climbing the stairs to John's studio, hesitant but determined.
John opens the door mid-yawn, and he scrubs his hand across his unshaved face before his eyes find Rodney's. He has on a pair of flip-flops, ratty cutoff sweatpants and a matching t-shirt, and Rodney immediately feels his face heat, both from consternation at interrupting John's sleep and from a powerful wave of unexpected feeling.
"Oh my god, I woke you up! I woke you up, didn't I? And you never sleep in, with the bakery and everything - I was so sure you'd already be up, I just -"
"Whoa, whoa! Slow down. I've been awake for hours, I just kinda dozed off watching football." John looks down at himself ruefully. "And it's laundry day. But hey, I didn't know you were back in town. That's great."
His smile brightens, and it looks genuine. Rodney takes a proper breath and grins back. "Yes! Since last night."
"Cool. So - yeah, come on in."
Rodney snaps out of a slight daze, zoning out on John's unexpected bare knees and his toes in the flip-flops. "Oh, oh, okay. I was; I thought we'd," go out, he stops himself from saying, cutting in on his own train of thought with, "Ah, but you need to get dressed, right."
John waves him in, then turns and starts sweeping things out of sight. Rodney can't help but look, eyes darting to follow the quick gestures: pictures of helicopters, mountains and dust shuffle into John's hands. Newspaper clippings, too, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that a single image of a man in uniform followed by one sober column of text can only be one thing.
It all disappears with a thud as John firmly shuts the drawer. "You thought we'd, what?"
"Hmm? I thought we... could... go for a walk?"
"Okay, yeah, that'd be good."
He's staring again, toes, knees, John's shins, bony and sleek, darkly furred. Tearing his eyes away, Rodney pretends to survey the studio loft with keen interest, though really, it just looks like a room to him, same as any place where one guy lives alone.
Luckily, John's missed the shin-ogling and only notices Rodney's scrutiny of the decor. He gives that wry little twist of his eyebrow and says, "You expected it to be all bare and scary up here, didn't you."
Rodney nods, feeling an unfamiliar smile hung on his face. "I wondered if you slept on a bed of nails, too. After seeing the monstrous chairs you used to keep in your bakery. But I see you're familiar with the wonders of cushions!"
John snorts. "Yeah, believe it or not, I own throw pillows. And look, no Deer Hunter poster. So that's gotta be a relief."
"Definitely. Though Johnny Cash..." Rodney eyes the stark figure in the poster John does have hanging up and pinches his mouth shut, reminding himself not to blow this already with some ill-timed remark.
John's now clearly trying not to laugh, and something in Rodney eases, pleased to know he hasn't majorly miscalculated by choosing to show up today.
"Better if it was Barbra Streisand?" John asks. "Celine Dion?"
"Yes. I also would have liked to see a sparkly white waistcoat hanging on your coat rack. Extremely disappointing."
"The curtains are kinda sparkly, that's gotta count for something."
Rodney can't help his grin; in fact, his only possible choice is either grinning like a fool or stepping forward to act on a sudden, nigh-irresistible urge to kiss John full on the mouth. "Oh, it does," he says inanely. "It counts for a lot."
John rubs a hand over his jaw and pulls a face. "If we're going out I'm gonna need to clean up a little. Fifteen minutes. You can keep yourself entertained with cable? Remote's on the coffee table. Or," he shrugs one shoulder. "Whatever."
"Sure, sure, I can wait. I know this is unexpected -" Rodney waves a hand around vaguely. "I'll... manage."
John disappears into the bathroom, and Rodney looks around the studio again, this time with genuine curiosity. The curtains really are a little sparkly. The couch is leather and looks old in a comfortable lived-in way, perhaps second-hand. Against the far wall, there's a kitchenette with a wheeled island. Built into the back wall are large wardrobe cabinets and above them, accessible by means of a ladder, sits the loft bed.
Opposite the couch, a really big TV, not a flat screen but a luxury item nonetheless, sits on a unit with low doors that Rodney itches to slide open. Maybe a peek would reveal John's preferences in pornography? Probably not, though. He's more discreet than that, and more secretive. Rodney's porn would lie there forgotten, but John seems as neat at home as he is in his bakery.
The DVD collection is much geekier than Rodney would have expected. A lot of candyass so-called science fiction like the Back to the Future, Alien and Terminator films and camp crap like Soylent Green, but also Solaris, Gattaca, Blade Runner, Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still. The bookshelves are packed with the kind of popular science books that tend to make Rodney foam at the mouth, but there are a few primary texts in there. Rodney's pleasantly surprised to see the Principia Mathematica with actual spine wear, and there's some Feynman in the mix along with the inevitable fluff like Godel, Escher, Bach.
Thank god for the DVDs and books, though, because the other artifacts are foreign to Rodney: a surfboard and a skateboard rest next to one another against the far wall; golf clubs poke up from their bag near the front door; a matching golf magazine sits on the table next to John's folded shades.
He realizes again the gulf that separates his and John's basic personalities, and begins to wonder for the nth time what exactly he thinks he's doing here. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to come by, impromptu no less, hoping to sweep the tall dark and handsome athletic brooding heroic ex-pilot away and/or off his feet. And on Veteran's Day, of all times. What was he thinking? Maybe he should just fake a phone call and get out of here...
Except, no. No, of course that's stupid; John seemed pleased enough to see him; John's always seemed unduly pleased to see him. And then there was that night when they kind of held hands, though admittedly, Rodney's not quite sure whether that was manly supportive hand-holding or - or manly supportive oh-and-also-we-could-have-sex-sometime hand-holding.
Then John emerges from what must be the bathroom, clean-shaven in a white Oxford shirt with jeans, scrubbing a towel over his hair, dark and gleaming damply. And. Well. Perhaps a tiny amount of insecurity is called for. Sometimes John just looks like a guy to him, easy on the eyes in a dorky, unimposing way, prone to slouching around like a scarecrow and making ridiculous faces. But sometimes it hits Rodney that John's kind of absurdly good-looking; and other times, like now, Rodney just doesn't have the words.
Still. Rodney refuses to be intimidated. He's an attractive man in the prime of life, on top of the more potent fact that he's indisputably one of the greatest minds on the planet, which in itself really ought to be more than enough for anyone.
"What's it like out there?" John asks. "Do I need a jacket?"
There, that's a little better already. He might look like a GQ cover, but that slightly flat and nasal voice, that's not some glossy, deliberately-mussed fantasy. It's just John.
"It's November, of course you need a jacket. It's sunny so far, but that's not saying much for the temperature. I'll eat my hat if we're a hair above 13. Celsius."
Rodney tries to look tough, intimating that he will staunchly refuse to stoop low enough as to gauge the weather in Fahrenheit. One has one's Canadian pride.
"Well, you know," John says in a way that Rodney suspects is calculated to provoke him, "global warming." He shrugs into a windbreaker, smirking, and Rodney takes a moment to mourn the disappearance of the flattering white shirt under the black nylon shell.
John looks at him expectantly, and Rodney realizes with a start that John hasn't even asked where they're going or why. If Rodney really needed a positive sign that he took the right initiative, this is it.
"Okay then, en route!" Rodney claps his hands and steps to the door, opening it wide and gesturing a sweep to prompt John over the threshold.
Outside it's clear and chill, weak sunlight pouring down, just enough to gild everything with a touch of warmth. Good picnic weather, in Rodney's view. Much better than coming out during the warmer months to risk sunburn, bug bites, and the scourge of other people infesting public spaces.
John asks, "So how was wherever you were?"
"Busy. We didn't get enough sleep. Depressing. An anthill covered in morons, really, except for Sam and one or two others, but what can you do. I set them straight as best I could and grabbed the most interesting bits of research to look over independently. I'm glad to be back."
"They let you just make off with intel like that? I thought most of the stuff you did for them was classified." John pockets his hands, brow furrowed cutely. Cute, god, Rodney thinks he's cute - Radek had better be right that John's interested, which is a terrifying thing to rely on, considering how wrong, wrong, wrong Radek often tends to be. Less wrong than most of their peers, granted, but still. So wrong.
"I have to sign a stack of forms coming up to my armpit, but yes. They know I do a better job when I don't have to explain what I'm doing to a dozen other people breathing down my neck, so it's all in their own best interest really. Anyway, if we're gonna do the shop talk, I want to know about yours! Anything new and exciting at the bakery?"
John cocks his head and gives him a curious look, then unexpectedly presses the backs of his fingers against Rodney's forehead for all of half a second. "You feeling all right? That didn't sound anywhere near sarcastic enough."
His hand's already disappeared back into his pocket; Rodney feels the warm imprint of his knuckles with strange clarity. The air feels that much cooler to him now, fresh with the promise of rain.
He regroups and angles up his chin, insistent. "I'm serious! You would not believe the crappy breakfasts I've had to make do with in Nevada. They'd need to invent a whole new branch of French to come up with properly descriptive insults for the appalling cardboard they call pastry."
John's mouth is curling up, amused or perhaps slightly doubtful, so Rodney tries to look his utmost sincere to elaborate, "I swear! I missed your baking so much I nearly overnighted some of your ginger cupcakes. And some fudge. I was stuck on base for days with nothing but vending machines full of Hershey's."
"I'm not really looking to branch out into mail order," John says dryly, but he's still smiling a little. "Nothing much new's been going on. Ronon's trying to wrap up his thesis this semester, so he and Radek have been driving each other nuts. I tried making peanut butter fudge but it didn't set up right, so I've been having some really syrupy peanut butter sandwiches lately. Couple of Cheyenne guys came around, they were looking over your wireless setup when they thought I wasn't paying attention."
"Mmm, I bet they're good," Rodney says, imagining very picturesque sandwiches with sweet savory peanut goodness oozing down the edge of the bread; John's bread, golden and thick, crunchy with weird hippie grains and nuts. Oh yeah.
"What?" John's looking at him with his head tilted, inquisitive, "the sandwiches?" and Rodney snaps out of it.
"Certainly not the Cheyenne guys - what kind of guys anyway? What are they trying to snoop - Oh, I'll tell them, I won't let that slide. Spying on the bakery? Seriously?"
"I dunno if you'd call it spying," John shrugs. "One of them answered his phone as Dr. Jackson, and he called the other guy Evan. Anyone you know?"
"Oh, Jackson! I doubt he cares one way or the other about wifi encryption. Maybe this Evan character was setting Jackson's laptop wifi capability on?" Rodney sniffs. "Genius my ass; the guy's useless without his dusty books. Still, I might ask Sam if she knows what he's up to."
They've reached the border of the park, a wide open space, still green here and there, blissfully devoid of other people. John edges against a low concrete wall, turning to face him, and boosts himself up to sit there, swinging his feet like a kid. "So Sam has the answers, huh?" he smirks.
Rodney blinks. Is that a flirtatiously jealous question? He can never tell with this kind of thing; it doesn't pay to assume too much. "Well, occasionally, she can be helpful, though don't tell her I told you that. She's very close to Jackson. And she's very good with people where I am... possibly not."
"No!" John pantomimes shock. The neat O of his mock-surprised mouth does terrible things to Rodney's concentration.
Understandably, it takes him a second to shoot back a suitable answer. Or any answer at all. "Ha ha ha," he frowns, buttoning the top button of his coat. The air feels a little colder now they've stopped moving. Oh so innocently stepping closer to John, Rodney jostles him with his elbow. "Do you want to get some lunch?"
"I could eat," John says. His smile is just as disruptive to rational thought as the O-mouth was. "Anything but peanut butter."
His face is really incredibly close, now, surely closer than normal for them, closer than normal for anyone who isn't sharing secrets or readying to kiss one another. And now that Rodney's thinking about kissing, his mind's spinning out of control, leaving him stupid, tilting forward involuntarily on his feet towards the perfectly angled, perfectly level perfect perfection of John's mouth, and he asks quietly, "Oh, really?" without knowing what it is they're discussing anymore.
"Really." John licks his lower lip and nods almost imperceptibly, which is all the consent and confirmation Rodney needs before he snaps and tilts his head.
John's mouth is full and warm; he's freshly shaved and there's no stubble, just pliant softness everywhere, even when Rodney ranges afield to taste the corners of his mouth and gently bite his lower lip. John tips his head and presses into the kiss firmly, but it's all strangely polite somehow. Rodney kept imagining he'd lose it and try to swallow John's face if he ever got this far, but he finds patience he didn't know he had, sipping at John's mouth, crazily thrilled at the faintest heated brush of tongue.
Just being close to John is exciting, after so long watching him amble and ooze around the bakery, seemingly slack but never aimless, always measured and purposeful even when he angles himself long and lazy against the counter. He smells of some familiar drugstore counter aftershave, its faint reek turned irresistible by contact with his skin. Just the sensation of his clothes brushing against Rodney's is weird and special and new; Rodney's head feels cotton-hollow, high on endorphins and someone else's fabric softener after too long alone.
When he starts to ease back, John leans after him and into another kiss, setting his hand on Rodney's shoulder for balance. Rodney feels entirely justified to move even closer, rotating a little on his feet to place himself with a pleased shiver into the V of John's parted thighs. He lifts a hand to cup John's warm smooth cheek as he kisses him back, tongue edging out to lick his mouth when it opens a little more, then more still, deeper kisses strung like lanterns in the night lighting the way, blazing one after the other.
Soon Rodney's out of breath, puffing in what's likely an unbecoming way, but John doesn't seem to mind; in fact, John makes a little growly sound of disapproval when Rodney inches backwards.
John's dangling leg rests against Rodney's, and his heel strokes along the back of Rodney's knee. His smile's a lot of things, goofy, smug, unbelievably gorgeous. When he says, "Still hungry?" it's irrefutably sexy.
Hence, hard to refuse. Rodney starts nodding before he's actually processed the words, and once he's agreed, he suddenly wonders if - "Wait, this isn't a, a clever double-entendre, is it? It's okay if it is, I mean, obviously my answer's the same either way, but -" Rodney's brought up short by the incredible widening of John's already impossibly big smile, and his profound desire to devour it whole. "Yeah, yes, yes," he babbles, "hungry."
He's clearly leaking intelligence all over the sidewalk, and the worst of it is, at the moment, he doesn't even mind.
Authors: anatsuno and almostnever
Pairing: John/Rodney
Ratings/Warnings: SFW
Word count: 3200 words
Summary: Set in the AU of A Place on the Corner, in which John runs a bakery that Rodney favors in Colorado Springs.
*
In the two months since Labor Day, Rodney has only managed to see John twice. Just brief, unsatisfying stops over the following week, then it all came down at once: swept up in a hurricane of pressing work, flown to Nevada for urgent consultation, buried there under the sad consequences of other people's incompetence.
Fortunately, now that he makes his own price, he can eventually hike his day rate up into the stratosphere until such point where the Air Force balks and puts him on a plane back home.
"You're shirking," Sam tells him, wagging a finger, but she can't hide the beginning of a sly smile. "It's a mean low-down trick, flying in to work on the interesting stuff and then bailing on the cleanup."
He feels mean, a little pang, seeing the grey under her eyes and knowing he's taking the easy way out while she's committed to the long haul. And yet.
"You know I'll be back. Simpson's on call when I'm unavailable, don't hesitate to pull that string. Her brain needs the extra workout, anyway," Rodney says loftily, "she's been resting on her laurels a little too much since her last paper."
"I'll come get you myself if you aren't calling my people to insult them again in a week or so." Sam is pushing him backwards out the door by now, lifting his briefcase up to his chest to bundle him up and shove him lightly. "Go on, then. See you in Colorado next month for the big briefing."
"I'm going, I'm going. Not a minute longer in this dusty hellhole."
Rodney doesn't tell her to take care, grab some sleep, get a snack; he doesn't say either that he has to go, in no small part because the thought of John with his quiet half-smile and weird pastries itches under his skin like unfulfilled addiction. He and Sam don't have that sort of friendship.
A flight, a restless night and a shower later, Remembrance Day (though for John of course it'll be Veterans Day) finds a poppyless Rodney climbing the stairs to John's studio, hesitant but determined.
John opens the door mid-yawn, and he scrubs his hand across his unshaved face before his eyes find Rodney's. He has on a pair of flip-flops, ratty cutoff sweatpants and a matching t-shirt, and Rodney immediately feels his face heat, both from consternation at interrupting John's sleep and from a powerful wave of unexpected feeling.
"Oh my god, I woke you up! I woke you up, didn't I? And you never sleep in, with the bakery and everything - I was so sure you'd already be up, I just -"
"Whoa, whoa! Slow down. I've been awake for hours, I just kinda dozed off watching football." John looks down at himself ruefully. "And it's laundry day. But hey, I didn't know you were back in town. That's great."
His smile brightens, and it looks genuine. Rodney takes a proper breath and grins back. "Yes! Since last night."
"Cool. So - yeah, come on in."
Rodney snaps out of a slight daze, zoning out on John's unexpected bare knees and his toes in the flip-flops. "Oh, oh, okay. I was; I thought we'd," go out, he stops himself from saying, cutting in on his own train of thought with, "Ah, but you need to get dressed, right."
John waves him in, then turns and starts sweeping things out of sight. Rodney can't help but look, eyes darting to follow the quick gestures: pictures of helicopters, mountains and dust shuffle into John's hands. Newspaper clippings, too, and it doesn't take a genius to realize that a single image of a man in uniform followed by one sober column of text can only be one thing.
It all disappears with a thud as John firmly shuts the drawer. "You thought we'd, what?"
"Hmm? I thought we... could... go for a walk?"
"Okay, yeah, that'd be good."
He's staring again, toes, knees, John's shins, bony and sleek, darkly furred. Tearing his eyes away, Rodney pretends to survey the studio loft with keen interest, though really, it just looks like a room to him, same as any place where one guy lives alone.
Luckily, John's missed the shin-ogling and only notices Rodney's scrutiny of the decor. He gives that wry little twist of his eyebrow and says, "You expected it to be all bare and scary up here, didn't you."
Rodney nods, feeling an unfamiliar smile hung on his face. "I wondered if you slept on a bed of nails, too. After seeing the monstrous chairs you used to keep in your bakery. But I see you're familiar with the wonders of cushions!"
John snorts. "Yeah, believe it or not, I own throw pillows. And look, no Deer Hunter poster. So that's gotta be a relief."
"Definitely. Though Johnny Cash..." Rodney eyes the stark figure in the poster John does have hanging up and pinches his mouth shut, reminding himself not to blow this already with some ill-timed remark.
John's now clearly trying not to laugh, and something in Rodney eases, pleased to know he hasn't majorly miscalculated by choosing to show up today.
"Better if it was Barbra Streisand?" John asks. "Celine Dion?"
"Yes. I also would have liked to see a sparkly white waistcoat hanging on your coat rack. Extremely disappointing."
"The curtains are kinda sparkly, that's gotta count for something."
Rodney can't help his grin; in fact, his only possible choice is either grinning like a fool or stepping forward to act on a sudden, nigh-irresistible urge to kiss John full on the mouth. "Oh, it does," he says inanely. "It counts for a lot."
John rubs a hand over his jaw and pulls a face. "If we're going out I'm gonna need to clean up a little. Fifteen minutes. You can keep yourself entertained with cable? Remote's on the coffee table. Or," he shrugs one shoulder. "Whatever."
"Sure, sure, I can wait. I know this is unexpected -" Rodney waves a hand around vaguely. "I'll... manage."
John disappears into the bathroom, and Rodney looks around the studio again, this time with genuine curiosity. The curtains really are a little sparkly. The couch is leather and looks old in a comfortable lived-in way, perhaps second-hand. Against the far wall, there's a kitchenette with a wheeled island. Built into the back wall are large wardrobe cabinets and above them, accessible by means of a ladder, sits the loft bed.
Opposite the couch, a really big TV, not a flat screen but a luxury item nonetheless, sits on a unit with low doors that Rodney itches to slide open. Maybe a peek would reveal John's preferences in pornography? Probably not, though. He's more discreet than that, and more secretive. Rodney's porn would lie there forgotten, but John seems as neat at home as he is in his bakery.
The DVD collection is much geekier than Rodney would have expected. A lot of candyass so-called science fiction like the Back to the Future, Alien and Terminator films and camp crap like Soylent Green, but also Solaris, Gattaca, Blade Runner, Forbidden Planet, The Day the Earth Stood Still. The bookshelves are packed with the kind of popular science books that tend to make Rodney foam at the mouth, but there are a few primary texts in there. Rodney's pleasantly surprised to see the Principia Mathematica with actual spine wear, and there's some Feynman in the mix along with the inevitable fluff like Godel, Escher, Bach.
Thank god for the DVDs and books, though, because the other artifacts are foreign to Rodney: a surfboard and a skateboard rest next to one another against the far wall; golf clubs poke up from their bag near the front door; a matching golf magazine sits on the table next to John's folded shades.
He realizes again the gulf that separates his and John's basic personalities, and begins to wonder for the nth time what exactly he thinks he's doing here. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to come by, impromptu no less, hoping to sweep the tall dark and handsome athletic brooding heroic ex-pilot away and/or off his feet. And on Veteran's Day, of all times. What was he thinking? Maybe he should just fake a phone call and get out of here...
Except, no. No, of course that's stupid; John seemed pleased enough to see him; John's always seemed unduly pleased to see him. And then there was that night when they kind of held hands, though admittedly, Rodney's not quite sure whether that was manly supportive hand-holding or - or manly supportive oh-and-also-we-could-have-sex-sometime hand-holding.
Then John emerges from what must be the bathroom, clean-shaven in a white Oxford shirt with jeans, scrubbing a towel over his hair, dark and gleaming damply. And. Well. Perhaps a tiny amount of insecurity is called for. Sometimes John just looks like a guy to him, easy on the eyes in a dorky, unimposing way, prone to slouching around like a scarecrow and making ridiculous faces. But sometimes it hits Rodney that John's kind of absurdly good-looking; and other times, like now, Rodney just doesn't have the words.
Still. Rodney refuses to be intimidated. He's an attractive man in the prime of life, on top of the more potent fact that he's indisputably one of the greatest minds on the planet, which in itself really ought to be more than enough for anyone.
"What's it like out there?" John asks. "Do I need a jacket?"
There, that's a little better already. He might look like a GQ cover, but that slightly flat and nasal voice, that's not some glossy, deliberately-mussed fantasy. It's just John.
"It's November, of course you need a jacket. It's sunny so far, but that's not saying much for the temperature. I'll eat my hat if we're a hair above 13. Celsius."
Rodney tries to look tough, intimating that he will staunchly refuse to stoop low enough as to gauge the weather in Fahrenheit. One has one's Canadian pride.
"Well, you know," John says in a way that Rodney suspects is calculated to provoke him, "global warming." He shrugs into a windbreaker, smirking, and Rodney takes a moment to mourn the disappearance of the flattering white shirt under the black nylon shell.
John looks at him expectantly, and Rodney realizes with a start that John hasn't even asked where they're going or why. If Rodney really needed a positive sign that he took the right initiative, this is it.
"Okay then, en route!" Rodney claps his hands and steps to the door, opening it wide and gesturing a sweep to prompt John over the threshold.
Outside it's clear and chill, weak sunlight pouring down, just enough to gild everything with a touch of warmth. Good picnic weather, in Rodney's view. Much better than coming out during the warmer months to risk sunburn, bug bites, and the scourge of other people infesting public spaces.
John asks, "So how was wherever you were?"
"Busy. We didn't get enough sleep. Depressing. An anthill covered in morons, really, except for Sam and one or two others, but what can you do. I set them straight as best I could and grabbed the most interesting bits of research to look over independently. I'm glad to be back."
"They let you just make off with intel like that? I thought most of the stuff you did for them was classified." John pockets his hands, brow furrowed cutely. Cute, god, Rodney thinks he's cute - Radek had better be right that John's interested, which is a terrifying thing to rely on, considering how wrong, wrong, wrong Radek often tends to be. Less wrong than most of their peers, granted, but still. So wrong.
"I have to sign a stack of forms coming up to my armpit, but yes. They know I do a better job when I don't have to explain what I'm doing to a dozen other people breathing down my neck, so it's all in their own best interest really. Anyway, if we're gonna do the shop talk, I want to know about yours! Anything new and exciting at the bakery?"
John cocks his head and gives him a curious look, then unexpectedly presses the backs of his fingers against Rodney's forehead for all of half a second. "You feeling all right? That didn't sound anywhere near sarcastic enough."
His hand's already disappeared back into his pocket; Rodney feels the warm imprint of his knuckles with strange clarity. The air feels that much cooler to him now, fresh with the promise of rain.
He regroups and angles up his chin, insistent. "I'm serious! You would not believe the crappy breakfasts I've had to make do with in Nevada. They'd need to invent a whole new branch of French to come up with properly descriptive insults for the appalling cardboard they call pastry."
John's mouth is curling up, amused or perhaps slightly doubtful, so Rodney tries to look his utmost sincere to elaborate, "I swear! I missed your baking so much I nearly overnighted some of your ginger cupcakes. And some fudge. I was stuck on base for days with nothing but vending machines full of Hershey's."
"I'm not really looking to branch out into mail order," John says dryly, but he's still smiling a little. "Nothing much new's been going on. Ronon's trying to wrap up his thesis this semester, so he and Radek have been driving each other nuts. I tried making peanut butter fudge but it didn't set up right, so I've been having some really syrupy peanut butter sandwiches lately. Couple of Cheyenne guys came around, they were looking over your wireless setup when they thought I wasn't paying attention."
"Mmm, I bet they're good," Rodney says, imagining very picturesque sandwiches with sweet savory peanut goodness oozing down the edge of the bread; John's bread, golden and thick, crunchy with weird hippie grains and nuts. Oh yeah.
"What?" John's looking at him with his head tilted, inquisitive, "the sandwiches?" and Rodney snaps out of it.
"Certainly not the Cheyenne guys - what kind of guys anyway? What are they trying to snoop - Oh, I'll tell them, I won't let that slide. Spying on the bakery? Seriously?"
"I dunno if you'd call it spying," John shrugs. "One of them answered his phone as Dr. Jackson, and he called the other guy Evan. Anyone you know?"
"Oh, Jackson! I doubt he cares one way or the other about wifi encryption. Maybe this Evan character was setting Jackson's laptop wifi capability on?" Rodney sniffs. "Genius my ass; the guy's useless without his dusty books. Still, I might ask Sam if she knows what he's up to."
They've reached the border of the park, a wide open space, still green here and there, blissfully devoid of other people. John edges against a low concrete wall, turning to face him, and boosts himself up to sit there, swinging his feet like a kid. "So Sam has the answers, huh?" he smirks.
Rodney blinks. Is that a flirtatiously jealous question? He can never tell with this kind of thing; it doesn't pay to assume too much. "Well, occasionally, she can be helpful, though don't tell her I told you that. She's very close to Jackson. And she's very good with people where I am... possibly not."
"No!" John pantomimes shock. The neat O of his mock-surprised mouth does terrible things to Rodney's concentration.
Understandably, it takes him a second to shoot back a suitable answer. Or any answer at all. "Ha ha ha," he frowns, buttoning the top button of his coat. The air feels a little colder now they've stopped moving. Oh so innocently stepping closer to John, Rodney jostles him with his elbow. "Do you want to get some lunch?"
"I could eat," John says. His smile is just as disruptive to rational thought as the O-mouth was. "Anything but peanut butter."
His face is really incredibly close, now, surely closer than normal for them, closer than normal for anyone who isn't sharing secrets or readying to kiss one another. And now that Rodney's thinking about kissing, his mind's spinning out of control, leaving him stupid, tilting forward involuntarily on his feet towards the perfectly angled, perfectly level perfect perfection of John's mouth, and he asks quietly, "Oh, really?" without knowing what it is they're discussing anymore.
"Really." John licks his lower lip and nods almost imperceptibly, which is all the consent and confirmation Rodney needs before he snaps and tilts his head.
John's mouth is full and warm; he's freshly shaved and there's no stubble, just pliant softness everywhere, even when Rodney ranges afield to taste the corners of his mouth and gently bite his lower lip. John tips his head and presses into the kiss firmly, but it's all strangely polite somehow. Rodney kept imagining he'd lose it and try to swallow John's face if he ever got this far, but he finds patience he didn't know he had, sipping at John's mouth, crazily thrilled at the faintest heated brush of tongue.
Just being close to John is exciting, after so long watching him amble and ooze around the bakery, seemingly slack but never aimless, always measured and purposeful even when he angles himself long and lazy against the counter. He smells of some familiar drugstore counter aftershave, its faint reek turned irresistible by contact with his skin. Just the sensation of his clothes brushing against Rodney's is weird and special and new; Rodney's head feels cotton-hollow, high on endorphins and someone else's fabric softener after too long alone.
When he starts to ease back, John leans after him and into another kiss, setting his hand on Rodney's shoulder for balance. Rodney feels entirely justified to move even closer, rotating a little on his feet to place himself with a pleased shiver into the V of John's parted thighs. He lifts a hand to cup John's warm smooth cheek as he kisses him back, tongue edging out to lick his mouth when it opens a little more, then more still, deeper kisses strung like lanterns in the night lighting the way, blazing one after the other.
Soon Rodney's out of breath, puffing in what's likely an unbecoming way, but John doesn't seem to mind; in fact, John makes a little growly sound of disapproval when Rodney inches backwards.
John's dangling leg rests against Rodney's, and his heel strokes along the back of Rodney's knee. His smile's a lot of things, goofy, smug, unbelievably gorgeous. When he says, "Still hungry?" it's irrefutably sexy.
Hence, hard to refuse. Rodney starts nodding before he's actually processed the words, and once he's agreed, he suddenly wonders if - "Wait, this isn't a, a clever double-entendre, is it? It's okay if it is, I mean, obviously my answer's the same either way, but -" Rodney's brought up short by the incredible widening of John's already impossibly big smile, and his profound desire to devour it whole. "Yeah, yes, yes," he babbles, "hungry."
He's clearly leaking intelligence all over the sidewalk, and the worst of it is, at the moment, he doesn't even mind.