Roo'verse: Fathers and Sons (2/2)
Part 1
John was exhausted by the time they made it back to the hotel room. They were supposed to have left for dinner from Cesan’s house, but it obviously hadn’t been in the cards. Jeannie had vetoed John’s bid for Burger King and Rodney’s begging for Tim Horton’s because John needed to not contaminate his milk with junk food for the sake of the baby. She’d stewed in angry silence while John wolfed down a steak and the salad Jeannie insisted on at the hotel restaurant. Rodney also binge ate while Jeannie moved her salad around the plate nervously before finally shooting out of the room to Skype with Kaleb.
John eyed his lover warily. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Rodney silent for this long when he wasn’t engrossed in his research or hiding from the Wraith. John knew he should be supportive, but he honestly had no idea how to accomplish it. When something went wrong on a mission or with Rodney’s love life (before he’d gotten involved with John) all he normally needed was reassurance that he had done the best job he could or that he was desirable. Such things were empirically true. It wasn’t hard for John to convince him.
But with everything with his father, John could assure Rodney that he’d done his best and that he wasn’t at fault for the situation and that he was desirable as a son, but John doubted any of those things, while reassuring, could repair the hurt that Rodney’s father had caused him.
John was at a loss.
Luckily, Rodney seemed to have a plan: “I know you don’t like to talk about emotions,” Rodney began the second they were alone in the room together. In John’s experience, conversations that began that way never ended well.
He shrugged.
“My point exactly. So, you don’t have to talk. Just,” Rodney’s eyes shone with emotion. “Just listen.”
John nodded. He’d never been one to benefit from venting his emotions. The pain of exposing himself like that in front of others would always overshadow any benefit he got out of processing his emotions with the help of others. Really, the only person John had ever felt comfortable being that vulnerable with was Cam, but John wondered if maybe that was because he didn’t fear Cam’s reaction. Maybe he didn’t respect Cam enough to guard his pride in front of him.
“You wouldn’t rather talk to Jeannie?” John asked, realizing too late how much a statement like that would hurt Rodney.
“I . . .” Rodney began, his eyes darting back and forth, exposing his panicked uncertainty.
“No, Rodney. Of course I’ll listen. It’s just that Jeannie learned the same news. You might both benefit from dealing with it together.”
Rodney’s face hardened in anger, but it was clear that it was directed at Jeannie not John. “No. We may have received the same news, but I guarantee you that the way we experience it is completely different. Jeannie has always had class and career ambitions, ever since we were young. She never wanted to play house or do the science experiments out father set up for us. All she ever wanted to do was play at guild society. As soon as she learned how to read she made me act out scenes from Pride and Prejudice with her. Jeannie isn’t sad that we missed the chance to grow up with our donor or that our donor is a grade-A prick who jerked our father around. She isn’t worried about our father and she doesn’t care about how fucked up our family is. She’s just angry that because of our father’s idiocy, she wasn’t registered and she didn’t get the networking power of being Andrew Hirsch’s daughter. She had to marry an English teacher in order to get Guild status whereas we would have been of high pedigree within a prestigious guild and the world would have been at her feet even if our donor is a pleb.”
John didn’t have a lot of emotional intelligence, but he was still pretty sure that Rodney was wrong on this one. “I don’t know, Rodney. Jeannie seemed pretty upset and she gave a lot of reasons why.”
Rodney paused, considering. “Maybe you’re right. I guess I have a lot of reasons too.”
“Of course you do.”
Rodney sat down on the couch in their suite, staring at his hands as though they might spontaneously reveal the secret to Unified Theory. John took the padded rocking chair that the hotel’s Guild concierge had put there when he saw that John was incubating. Dane wasn’t big enough yet to need to be rocked to sleep when he got restless, but John found the rocking motion to be a comfort to himself as well.
“I have a lot of reasons to be angry at him. I should be angry at him for lying to me, but I’m not. I’m angry at him for not standing up for himself. I know it’s not exactly my thing to be so self-reflective, but I almost hate him for just going along with Hirsch’s plans - having his kids, begging him to give him Jeannie when he’d already decided not to be there for Dad and for me.”
John gulped. He also wasn’t one to be self-reflective, but even he could see the parallels. From Rodney’s point of view it must have looked like John had just given in to Cam, when really John did eventually come to the decision to have the baby with Cam on his own. “Do you hate me?”
“You?” Rodney scoffed. “Why would I hate you? You’re an emotionally stunted pain in the ass flyboy who can’t recognize the Back to the Future is a horrible movie, but I don’t hate you. I . . . you know I love you. No, I hate me. I’m the one who's just going along with things that I know will make me unhappy because I’m too in love with you to say no and too afraid that you’ll leave me to demand what I have a right to demand.”
“Um, Rodney, it kind of sounds like you should hate me, buddy.”
Rodney stands, pacing. “I can’t hate you for a situation you didn’t ask for. You didn’t mean to let Mr. American Pie knock you up and I certainly can’t be mad at you for not wanting to kill your own baby. I can’t even blame you for wanting Mitchell. It’s his kid and his picture is probably in the encyclopedia under ‘perfect parent’ and objectively-speaking, he is a very attractive man. I can’t imagine he’d be bad in bed. And you come from high Guild society, so polyandry is perfectly normal to you. To be honest, I’m surprised you didn’t suggest it earlier. So I can’t hate you for being who you are. I love who you are.”
“Okay, so you don’t hate me. So hate the situation. I don’t want you to hate yourself, especially not because of me.”
“Well,” Rodney’s crooked smile was sad, resigned. “There is a solution for that. I can do what my dad didn’t. I can demand more, even if I might lose you.”
John waited for Rodney to make his demands, but Rodney just stared at him, looking nervous. Maybe he needed John to help him work up to it. “I can tell you right now, Rodney, that if your demand is that I never see Cam again or that Cam isn’t a part of Dane’s life, then the answer is no.”
But if the demand were that John give up a relationship with Cam (polyandrous or not), John could live with that, even if it wasn’t what he wanted.
“Oh, nothing like that. Like you said before, I’m not actually a bad person, thank you very much. And, as much as I dislike Mitchell, I could see how your group marriage thing could be advantageous. Better to have a surplus of parents when your parents are space explorers.”
“Do you have a problem with being the secundus? It would be harder to manage because in the potentia Guild a child must be conceived before marriage, but I’ll ask Dave if there are any loopholes that will let me make you the Dominus. I’m sure he knows, or at least knows a good lineage lawyer who can make the case for us. Hey, maybe now that we know who your father is, we can get your registered and get married under your Guild’s rules.”
If anything, this only seemed to make Rodney more nervous. He stopped his pacing to sit down, but was practically squirming.
“It’s not that exactly.” He winced, letting John know he was on the right track. “It’s my problem, really. Objectively, I know that the pedigree of your child has nothing to do with your feelings for me. And it’s not jealousy. I admit that I can be petty and jealous and possessive, but it’s not that. I know that you love me. I would never doubt that you do. But if you love Mitchell too and you have his child and the baby has two loving, caring parents, what do you need me for?”
John opened his mouth to answer, but Rodney and his extraordinary lung capacity just steamrolled over him. Half the time Rodney didn’t need John to talk anyway; he’d fill in John’s half of the conversation for him. “I realize that there is probably a whole library full of relationship advice books that say that relationships are only about needing things when they’re co-dependent, but it’s not about actually being needed and more about feeling needed.”
“I do need you.”
“No, John. You want me. You love me. You need me in your life (because, let’s face it, you’d literally be dead without me). But you don’t need to be in a relationship with me. You were never going to start a relationship with me, even though you loved me.”
“Well, then I don’t need a relationship with Cam either. I need him to be Dane’s donor, but I don’t need to be in a relationship with him.”
“But you two have that. Don’t you get it, John? I want a child with you. And if you and Mitchell have that and you and I don’t, it’ll eat away at me. I’m not a secure enough man to just let it go. I will get petty and jealous and I will hate myself. If the choices are playing third wheel to you and Mitchell and not having you, then I know it’s better for me to not have you.”
John slumped in his chair (as much as he could as a carrying man in a rocking chair). Many people would have curled up into a ball as utterly crushed as John felt, but he’d learned to respond to stressful situations with a studied nonchalance.
John had never been a typical imperial. He wasn’t like Dave, who paraded himself around like a pageant queen when he was with child and made it look easy to work and carry at the same time - as though it were a natural marriage. John, on the other hand, preferred to stay in a war zone than take the golden parachute to fatherhood and a civilian life. He was only having Dane because of a moment of drunken madness and, above all, he’d made it to forty without an heir for a reason. Imperials had been great warriors, scholars, rulers, and athletes since the time of the Ancients, but John just felt like a brood mare. His whole life he’d been taught that as an imperial his most important contribution to society and his family was to procreate and he’d resisted that. He’d proved that he was more and now Rodney was making him feel as though he were ten years old again, suffering through a lecture in Manners, Tradition, and Breeding at his Guild prep school and feeling about five inches tall.
John knew that Rodney loved him for more than just his Guild status, but John felt trapped. John was an imperial. He couldn’t give Rodney a child. Rodney could incubate it, but John would have to gestate it. And then afterwards he’d have to be a parent to two children and be the anchor husband in their little triangle. Rodney was asking too much.
John missed Leo. Before the crash in the desert, it had all been so easy. John hadn’t thought twice about wanting a child and being trapped by his imperial status. He hadn’t worried about his career or even what he and Leo would do if one or both of them got deployed. His love for Leo and the desire to have a child with him were one in the same.
John forced himself to take a deep breath and really think about this. He loved Rodney. He wanted to be with Rodney as well as Cam but he could see insecurity eating away at both of them. Rodney needed confirmation that John wouldn't just run off with the father of his child and Cam needed John to be more than just a one-night stand. But John couldn't be with Cam if it would hurt Rodney, no matter how much he desperately wanted to.
John was already carrying one child. Would another really hurt? He'd heard from Dave that pouchmates were easier to care for than a single child because they could entertain each other. And Rodney wanted to incubate so once he was ready to wean Dane he could let Rodney take over the incubation of their child. It wasn’t really more physically costly to John and it would make Rodney so happy.
And Dane would have a brother. With three of them to take care of the children, two wasn’t much harder than one. And if Rodney didn’t feel threatened he might actually stop seeing Cam as a dumb flyboy and understand all the reasons that John loved him. And raising both children would draw Cam closer to Rodney. Dave had always told John that whenever he worried about how unbalanced his marriage was that he remembered that both his husbands loved all their children. Even when he thought that Darren might leap across the dinner table and stab Alexi with a dessert fork, all he had to do was bring up something one of the kids did and they’d forget all their differences. Dave would probably laugh at John if he ever proposed to have a
triumvirate marriage without having a child with each party.
Rodney was right. If John wanted to have both Rodney and Cam, there was no other way.
John's heart pounded and his hands shook, but if he didn't do this now, he'd never get up the courage to do it.
"Okay," he whispered.
"What?" John wanted to reach over and shut Rodney’s gaping jaw. It’s like he gave John the ultimatum without ever considering that John might agree with him. John didn’t know what it said about his personality that Rodney couldn’t believe that he’d compromise for something so important to him.
"Okay, let's do it. I'm already carrying one. Why not add another to the mix?"
Rodney still looked defeated however. He seemed doubtful. "So you'll just add another life to this world because it doesn't inconvenience you too much? Great."
Shit. Rodney just didn't understand sometimes and John hated having to explain and expose all his feelings. The whole experience with Rodney's father had John feeling raw enough. "No, Rodney, how many times do I have to tell you that I love you? I want a child with you. With Dane I was scared. I didn't plan on a child or a family after what happened with Leo, but now my plans have changed and I want that family to include you. You're right, I could be content with just one, but you want it really badly and I love you too much not to give it to you. I want this thing to work with the three of us and if it means having a child with you . . . to tell you the truth, I do want a child with you because I want to see a kid that’s half me and half you. I was so used to thinking like a man who’d never have kids that I kept thinking that way even after I started carrying, but now that I’m forcing myself to think as a man who is going to be a family man no matter what, I realize that the best family that I could have is you, me, Cam, and two of our kids.”
Rodney nodded, a slow smile creeping onto this face, swiftly transforming into Rodney's rare look of awe that John couldn't help but cherish. "You really mean that? You want a child with me even though I'm still not Registered?"
"Rodney, the last two people I conceived with were plebs. Do you really think I care? I want you." John practically growled, "Make love to me."
“Wait, you mean now? You don’t want to sleep on it?”
Truth be told, John wasn’t sure he could go through with it if they didn’t do it right away. He wasn’t going to change his mind about what he wanted, but John tended to procrastinate when it came to major life decisions (to the point where he’d flipped a coin to decide to go to Atlantis) and he found that the only way to avoid this was to just pick something and go with it before he had a chance to think (it seemed to work for him on missions).
“No time like the present. Beside, if we want them to be pouchmates, it’s best to get the process started as soon as possible.
Rodney nodded, reverently, but seemed almost paralysed by the weight of the idea. John laughed a little, pulling Rodney to him for a spirited kiss.
"I missed this," John confessed, once they were both out of breath. "You have no idea how
horny I've been, wanting you."
He let Rodney pull him out of the rocking chair and then lead him to the bed. The concierge from Jeannie’s Guild had put them in the honeymoon suite, so the bed was king sized and soft as sin, covered in black silk sheets and across from floor to ceiling windows that provided a lovely view of the harbor.
John collapsed back down on the bed, pulling Rodney on top of him and kissing him as though this really were their honeymoon. Rodney reciprocated, yanking off John’s shirt and rubbing a reverent hand down the slight swell of John’s belly. “Hey little guy,” he whispered. “we’re going to give you a brother.”
John smiled. If he’d know that he could put such a look of awe and happiness on Rodney’s face he probably would have suggested this on his own.
Rodney kissed up from John’s belly, licking the sensitive scar where his pouch slit had recently sealed again. John moaned and arched off the bed, grabbing frantically for Rodney’s shirt to pull it off. He yanked at Rodney until he collapsed on top of John, wrapping his legs around Rodney’s waist.
“Fuck me, Rodney,” he moaned. “I want to come like a noble when you put a neonate inside me.”
Rodney shuddered, but didn’t stop his ministrations. His hands ran up and down John’s still-clothed thighs as he bit down hard on John’s neck, sure to give him a monstrous hickey.
John pulled at Rodney’s belt until Rodney relented and leaned back so they could both get completely naked. John was so wet that he felt almost disgusting, dripping all over the silk sheets. But when Rodney’s fingers found his slickness, he groaned, biting down on John’s neck again, only to soothe it with a gentle kiss.
John’s body felt electric, powerful, like he could do anything and be anyone if only Rodney would keep doing this to him. Sometimes sex made John feel like he’d come apart at the seams, but tonight John felt like a god, like the inherent rightness of this moment could make up for any wrong he’d ever done or ever would do. John shouted, feeling a rush of wetness escape him to coat Rodney’s questing fingers.
When John couldn’t imagine it being any more perfect, that was when Rodney found John's nipples, of course. The vestigial ones outside the pouch slit had sympathetically swollen from the time Dane had started suckling onwards. The first week John had barely been able to wear a shirt they were so sensitive. Luckily he was still on bedrest for most of that, so only Cam had made fun of his shirtlessness.
Rodney rubbed a nipple with the palm of his hand while leaning down to kiss the other. John didn't know which felt better, the steady movements of Rodney's hand or the slick swirl of his tongue, but either way he was left gasping and crying out for Rodney to give him more.
Rodney obliged, thrusting into John with one slick stroke and absolutely no warning. John gasped, his whole body clenching and curling around Rodney involuntarily. He sobbed with the rightness of it.
Rodney, the bastard, pulled out so achingly slowly that John whimpered and thrashed until Rodney slammed in again hard. No matter how much John begged or cried out, Rodney didn’t speed up. He just kept driving into John like a piston - slow, controlled, perfect.
But John didn’t want a piston. He wanted Rodney as a savage. He wanted him grunting and moaning and mounting John like a beast following the same base drive that they now followed - make the species more. He scratched his fingers down Rodney’s back. John’s nails were short, but he dug his fingers into Rodney’s flesh. He pinched Rodney’s ass. He leaned up and bit down on Rodney’s neck until Rodney growled in frustration and sped up his thrusts.
“C’mon, c’mon,” John chanted. His prostate felt bruised and battered, but it hurt so good.
Rodney mumbled something. John assumed he meant that he was going to come. Rodney’s whole body was shaking, readying itself for orgasm. John cried out; his own cock stayed soft even as he twitched and clenched around Rodney, shouting, maybe screaming as he came like a noble.
Seconds later, Rodney whimpered, his face going tense and vulnerable as he gave one last shout and spilled into John.
Rodney stayed inside as John’s muscles cradled him through the aftershocks. He whimpered a little, laying his head down on John’s chest. “Thank you,” he whispered over and over again, pressing little kiss against any area of John’s body he could reach.
He stayed inside for a long time, until he was hard again and could take John once more.
We’re making a neonate, John thought to himself as they dozed. They’d get up in the morning and do this again and then they’d go to meet Rodney donor and then they’d keep doing it until John carried two children instead of one.
John thought about Dane, then, about a kid with John’s dark hair and Cam’s wide shoulders who would have perfect vision and love the sky. He thought about what how smart his child with Rodney would be - with Rodney’s blue eyes and ski jump nose and John’s lanky frame and hopefully his hand eye coordination and how the doublets would play together in the halls of Atlantis and learn to hunt with their Aunt Teyla and how to track with their Uncle Ronon and how John would finally have a family of his own.
He couldn’t wait to tell Cam the good news.
Next: Ever After
John was exhausted by the time they made it back to the hotel room. They were supposed to have left for dinner from Cesan’s house, but it obviously hadn’t been in the cards. Jeannie had vetoed John’s bid for Burger King and Rodney’s begging for Tim Horton’s because John needed to not contaminate his milk with junk food for the sake of the baby. She’d stewed in angry silence while John wolfed down a steak and the salad Jeannie insisted on at the hotel restaurant. Rodney also binge ate while Jeannie moved her salad around the plate nervously before finally shooting out of the room to Skype with Kaleb.
John eyed his lover warily. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Rodney silent for this long when he wasn’t engrossed in his research or hiding from the Wraith. John knew he should be supportive, but he honestly had no idea how to accomplish it. When something went wrong on a mission or with Rodney’s love life (before he’d gotten involved with John) all he normally needed was reassurance that he had done the best job he could or that he was desirable. Such things were empirically true. It wasn’t hard for John to convince him.
But with everything with his father, John could assure Rodney that he’d done his best and that he wasn’t at fault for the situation and that he was desirable as a son, but John doubted any of those things, while reassuring, could repair the hurt that Rodney’s father had caused him.
John was at a loss.
Luckily, Rodney seemed to have a plan: “I know you don’t like to talk about emotions,” Rodney began the second they were alone in the room together. In John’s experience, conversations that began that way never ended well.
He shrugged.
“My point exactly. So, you don’t have to talk. Just,” Rodney’s eyes shone with emotion. “Just listen.”
John nodded. He’d never been one to benefit from venting his emotions. The pain of exposing himself like that in front of others would always overshadow any benefit he got out of processing his emotions with the help of others. Really, the only person John had ever felt comfortable being that vulnerable with was Cam, but John wondered if maybe that was because he didn’t fear Cam’s reaction. Maybe he didn’t respect Cam enough to guard his pride in front of him.
“You wouldn’t rather talk to Jeannie?” John asked, realizing too late how much a statement like that would hurt Rodney.
“I . . .” Rodney began, his eyes darting back and forth, exposing his panicked uncertainty.
“No, Rodney. Of course I’ll listen. It’s just that Jeannie learned the same news. You might both benefit from dealing with it together.”
Rodney’s face hardened in anger, but it was clear that it was directed at Jeannie not John. “No. We may have received the same news, but I guarantee you that the way we experience it is completely different. Jeannie has always had class and career ambitions, ever since we were young. She never wanted to play house or do the science experiments out father set up for us. All she ever wanted to do was play at guild society. As soon as she learned how to read she made me act out scenes from Pride and Prejudice with her. Jeannie isn’t sad that we missed the chance to grow up with our donor or that our donor is a grade-A prick who jerked our father around. She isn’t worried about our father and she doesn’t care about how fucked up our family is. She’s just angry that because of our father’s idiocy, she wasn’t registered and she didn’t get the networking power of being Andrew Hirsch’s daughter. She had to marry an English teacher in order to get Guild status whereas we would have been of high pedigree within a prestigious guild and the world would have been at her feet even if our donor is a pleb.”
John didn’t have a lot of emotional intelligence, but he was still pretty sure that Rodney was wrong on this one. “I don’t know, Rodney. Jeannie seemed pretty upset and she gave a lot of reasons why.”
Rodney paused, considering. “Maybe you’re right. I guess I have a lot of reasons too.”
“Of course you do.”
Rodney sat down on the couch in their suite, staring at his hands as though they might spontaneously reveal the secret to Unified Theory. John took the padded rocking chair that the hotel’s Guild concierge had put there when he saw that John was incubating. Dane wasn’t big enough yet to need to be rocked to sleep when he got restless, but John found the rocking motion to be a comfort to himself as well.
“I have a lot of reasons to be angry at him. I should be angry at him for lying to me, but I’m not. I’m angry at him for not standing up for himself. I know it’s not exactly my thing to be so self-reflective, but I almost hate him for just going along with Hirsch’s plans - having his kids, begging him to give him Jeannie when he’d already decided not to be there for Dad and for me.”
John gulped. He also wasn’t one to be self-reflective, but even he could see the parallels. From Rodney’s point of view it must have looked like John had just given in to Cam, when really John did eventually come to the decision to have the baby with Cam on his own. “Do you hate me?”
“You?” Rodney scoffed. “Why would I hate you? You’re an emotionally stunted pain in the ass flyboy who can’t recognize the Back to the Future is a horrible movie, but I don’t hate you. I . . . you know I love you. No, I hate me. I’m the one who's just going along with things that I know will make me unhappy because I’m too in love with you to say no and too afraid that you’ll leave me to demand what I have a right to demand.”
“Um, Rodney, it kind of sounds like you should hate me, buddy.”
Rodney stands, pacing. “I can’t hate you for a situation you didn’t ask for. You didn’t mean to let Mr. American Pie knock you up and I certainly can’t be mad at you for not wanting to kill your own baby. I can’t even blame you for wanting Mitchell. It’s his kid and his picture is probably in the encyclopedia under ‘perfect parent’ and objectively-speaking, he is a very attractive man. I can’t imagine he’d be bad in bed. And you come from high Guild society, so polyandry is perfectly normal to you. To be honest, I’m surprised you didn’t suggest it earlier. So I can’t hate you for being who you are. I love who you are.”
“Okay, so you don’t hate me. So hate the situation. I don’t want you to hate yourself, especially not because of me.”
“Well,” Rodney’s crooked smile was sad, resigned. “There is a solution for that. I can do what my dad didn’t. I can demand more, even if I might lose you.”
John waited for Rodney to make his demands, but Rodney just stared at him, looking nervous. Maybe he needed John to help him work up to it. “I can tell you right now, Rodney, that if your demand is that I never see Cam again or that Cam isn’t a part of Dane’s life, then the answer is no.”
But if the demand were that John give up a relationship with Cam (polyandrous or not), John could live with that, even if it wasn’t what he wanted.
“Oh, nothing like that. Like you said before, I’m not actually a bad person, thank you very much. And, as much as I dislike Mitchell, I could see how your group marriage thing could be advantageous. Better to have a surplus of parents when your parents are space explorers.”
“Do you have a problem with being the secundus? It would be harder to manage because in the potentia Guild a child must be conceived before marriage, but I’ll ask Dave if there are any loopholes that will let me make you the Dominus. I’m sure he knows, or at least knows a good lineage lawyer who can make the case for us. Hey, maybe now that we know who your father is, we can get your registered and get married under your Guild’s rules.”
If anything, this only seemed to make Rodney more nervous. He stopped his pacing to sit down, but was practically squirming.
“It’s not that exactly.” He winced, letting John know he was on the right track. “It’s my problem, really. Objectively, I know that the pedigree of your child has nothing to do with your feelings for me. And it’s not jealousy. I admit that I can be petty and jealous and possessive, but it’s not that. I know that you love me. I would never doubt that you do. But if you love Mitchell too and you have his child and the baby has two loving, caring parents, what do you need me for?”
John opened his mouth to answer, but Rodney and his extraordinary lung capacity just steamrolled over him. Half the time Rodney didn’t need John to talk anyway; he’d fill in John’s half of the conversation for him. “I realize that there is probably a whole library full of relationship advice books that say that relationships are only about needing things when they’re co-dependent, but it’s not about actually being needed and more about feeling needed.”
“I do need you.”
“No, John. You want me. You love me. You need me in your life (because, let’s face it, you’d literally be dead without me). But you don’t need to be in a relationship with me. You were never going to start a relationship with me, even though you loved me.”
“Well, then I don’t need a relationship with Cam either. I need him to be Dane’s donor, but I don’t need to be in a relationship with him.”
“But you two have that. Don’t you get it, John? I want a child with you. And if you and Mitchell have that and you and I don’t, it’ll eat away at me. I’m not a secure enough man to just let it go. I will get petty and jealous and I will hate myself. If the choices are playing third wheel to you and Mitchell and not having you, then I know it’s better for me to not have you.”
John slumped in his chair (as much as he could as a carrying man in a rocking chair). Many people would have curled up into a ball as utterly crushed as John felt, but he’d learned to respond to stressful situations with a studied nonchalance.
John had never been a typical imperial. He wasn’t like Dave, who paraded himself around like a pageant queen when he was with child and made it look easy to work and carry at the same time - as though it were a natural marriage. John, on the other hand, preferred to stay in a war zone than take the golden parachute to fatherhood and a civilian life. He was only having Dane because of a moment of drunken madness and, above all, he’d made it to forty without an heir for a reason. Imperials had been great warriors, scholars, rulers, and athletes since the time of the Ancients, but John just felt like a brood mare. His whole life he’d been taught that as an imperial his most important contribution to society and his family was to procreate and he’d resisted that. He’d proved that he was more and now Rodney was making him feel as though he were ten years old again, suffering through a lecture in Manners, Tradition, and Breeding at his Guild prep school and feeling about five inches tall.
John knew that Rodney loved him for more than just his Guild status, but John felt trapped. John was an imperial. He couldn’t give Rodney a child. Rodney could incubate it, but John would have to gestate it. And then afterwards he’d have to be a parent to two children and be the anchor husband in their little triangle. Rodney was asking too much.
John missed Leo. Before the crash in the desert, it had all been so easy. John hadn’t thought twice about wanting a child and being trapped by his imperial status. He hadn’t worried about his career or even what he and Leo would do if one or both of them got deployed. His love for Leo and the desire to have a child with him were one in the same.
John forced himself to take a deep breath and really think about this. He loved Rodney. He wanted to be with Rodney as well as Cam but he could see insecurity eating away at both of them. Rodney needed confirmation that John wouldn't just run off with the father of his child and Cam needed John to be more than just a one-night stand. But John couldn't be with Cam if it would hurt Rodney, no matter how much he desperately wanted to.
John was already carrying one child. Would another really hurt? He'd heard from Dave that pouchmates were easier to care for than a single child because they could entertain each other. And Rodney wanted to incubate so once he was ready to wean Dane he could let Rodney take over the incubation of their child. It wasn’t really more physically costly to John and it would make Rodney so happy.
And Dane would have a brother. With three of them to take care of the children, two wasn’t much harder than one. And if Rodney didn’t feel threatened he might actually stop seeing Cam as a dumb flyboy and understand all the reasons that John loved him. And raising both children would draw Cam closer to Rodney. Dave had always told John that whenever he worried about how unbalanced his marriage was that he remembered that both his husbands loved all their children. Even when he thought that Darren might leap across the dinner table and stab Alexi with a dessert fork, all he had to do was bring up something one of the kids did and they’d forget all their differences. Dave would probably laugh at John if he ever proposed to have a
triumvirate marriage without having a child with each party.
Rodney was right. If John wanted to have both Rodney and Cam, there was no other way.
John's heart pounded and his hands shook, but if he didn't do this now, he'd never get up the courage to do it.
"Okay," he whispered.
"What?" John wanted to reach over and shut Rodney’s gaping jaw. It’s like he gave John the ultimatum without ever considering that John might agree with him. John didn’t know what it said about his personality that Rodney couldn’t believe that he’d compromise for something so important to him.
"Okay, let's do it. I'm already carrying one. Why not add another to the mix?"
Rodney still looked defeated however. He seemed doubtful. "So you'll just add another life to this world because it doesn't inconvenience you too much? Great."
Shit. Rodney just didn't understand sometimes and John hated having to explain and expose all his feelings. The whole experience with Rodney's father had John feeling raw enough. "No, Rodney, how many times do I have to tell you that I love you? I want a child with you. With Dane I was scared. I didn't plan on a child or a family after what happened with Leo, but now my plans have changed and I want that family to include you. You're right, I could be content with just one, but you want it really badly and I love you too much not to give it to you. I want this thing to work with the three of us and if it means having a child with you . . . to tell you the truth, I do want a child with you because I want to see a kid that’s half me and half you. I was so used to thinking like a man who’d never have kids that I kept thinking that way even after I started carrying, but now that I’m forcing myself to think as a man who is going to be a family man no matter what, I realize that the best family that I could have is you, me, Cam, and two of our kids.”
Rodney nodded, a slow smile creeping onto this face, swiftly transforming into Rodney's rare look of awe that John couldn't help but cherish. "You really mean that? You want a child with me even though I'm still not Registered?"
"Rodney, the last two people I conceived with were plebs. Do you really think I care? I want you." John practically growled, "Make love to me."
“Wait, you mean now? You don’t want to sleep on it?”
Truth be told, John wasn’t sure he could go through with it if they didn’t do it right away. He wasn’t going to change his mind about what he wanted, but John tended to procrastinate when it came to major life decisions (to the point where he’d flipped a coin to decide to go to Atlantis) and he found that the only way to avoid this was to just pick something and go with it before he had a chance to think (it seemed to work for him on missions).
“No time like the present. Beside, if we want them to be pouchmates, it’s best to get the process started as soon as possible.
Rodney nodded, reverently, but seemed almost paralysed by the weight of the idea. John laughed a little, pulling Rodney to him for a spirited kiss.
"I missed this," John confessed, once they were both out of breath. "You have no idea how
horny I've been, wanting you."
He let Rodney pull him out of the rocking chair and then lead him to the bed. The concierge from Jeannie’s Guild had put them in the honeymoon suite, so the bed was king sized and soft as sin, covered in black silk sheets and across from floor to ceiling windows that provided a lovely view of the harbor.
John collapsed back down on the bed, pulling Rodney on top of him and kissing him as though this really were their honeymoon. Rodney reciprocated, yanking off John’s shirt and rubbing a reverent hand down the slight swell of John’s belly. “Hey little guy,” he whispered. “we’re going to give you a brother.”
John smiled. If he’d know that he could put such a look of awe and happiness on Rodney’s face he probably would have suggested this on his own.
Rodney kissed up from John’s belly, licking the sensitive scar where his pouch slit had recently sealed again. John moaned and arched off the bed, grabbing frantically for Rodney’s shirt to pull it off. He yanked at Rodney until he collapsed on top of John, wrapping his legs around Rodney’s waist.
“Fuck me, Rodney,” he moaned. “I want to come like a noble when you put a neonate inside me.”
Rodney shuddered, but didn’t stop his ministrations. His hands ran up and down John’s still-clothed thighs as he bit down hard on John’s neck, sure to give him a monstrous hickey.
John pulled at Rodney’s belt until Rodney relented and leaned back so they could both get completely naked. John was so wet that he felt almost disgusting, dripping all over the silk sheets. But when Rodney’s fingers found his slickness, he groaned, biting down on John’s neck again, only to soothe it with a gentle kiss.
John’s body felt electric, powerful, like he could do anything and be anyone if only Rodney would keep doing this to him. Sometimes sex made John feel like he’d come apart at the seams, but tonight John felt like a god, like the inherent rightness of this moment could make up for any wrong he’d ever done or ever would do. John shouted, feeling a rush of wetness escape him to coat Rodney’s questing fingers.
When John couldn’t imagine it being any more perfect, that was when Rodney found John's nipples, of course. The vestigial ones outside the pouch slit had sympathetically swollen from the time Dane had started suckling onwards. The first week John had barely been able to wear a shirt they were so sensitive. Luckily he was still on bedrest for most of that, so only Cam had made fun of his shirtlessness.
Rodney rubbed a nipple with the palm of his hand while leaning down to kiss the other. John didn't know which felt better, the steady movements of Rodney's hand or the slick swirl of his tongue, but either way he was left gasping and crying out for Rodney to give him more.
Rodney obliged, thrusting into John with one slick stroke and absolutely no warning. John gasped, his whole body clenching and curling around Rodney involuntarily. He sobbed with the rightness of it.
Rodney, the bastard, pulled out so achingly slowly that John whimpered and thrashed until Rodney slammed in again hard. No matter how much John begged or cried out, Rodney didn’t speed up. He just kept driving into John like a piston - slow, controlled, perfect.
But John didn’t want a piston. He wanted Rodney as a savage. He wanted him grunting and moaning and mounting John like a beast following the same base drive that they now followed - make the species more. He scratched his fingers down Rodney’s back. John’s nails were short, but he dug his fingers into Rodney’s flesh. He pinched Rodney’s ass. He leaned up and bit down on Rodney’s neck until Rodney growled in frustration and sped up his thrusts.
“C’mon, c’mon,” John chanted. His prostate felt bruised and battered, but it hurt so good.
Rodney mumbled something. John assumed he meant that he was going to come. Rodney’s whole body was shaking, readying itself for orgasm. John cried out; his own cock stayed soft even as he twitched and clenched around Rodney, shouting, maybe screaming as he came like a noble.
Seconds later, Rodney whimpered, his face going tense and vulnerable as he gave one last shout and spilled into John.
Rodney stayed inside as John’s muscles cradled him through the aftershocks. He whimpered a little, laying his head down on John’s chest. “Thank you,” he whispered over and over again, pressing little kiss against any area of John’s body he could reach.
He stayed inside for a long time, until he was hard again and could take John once more.
We’re making a neonate, John thought to himself as they dozed. They’d get up in the morning and do this again and then they’d go to meet Rodney donor and then they’d keep doing it until John carried two children instead of one.
John thought about Dane, then, about a kid with John’s dark hair and Cam’s wide shoulders who would have perfect vision and love the sky. He thought about what how smart his child with Rodney would be - with Rodney’s blue eyes and ski jump nose and John’s lanky frame and hopefully his hand eye coordination and how the doublets would play together in the halls of Atlantis and learn to hunt with their Aunt Teyla and how to track with their Uncle Ronon and how John would finally have a family of his own.
He couldn’t wait to tell Cam the good news.
Next: Ever After