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Considering John's the one who plants and tends the garden, who figures out what to do with a billion zucchini every July, who stores carrots and parsnips in blanket-packed boxes through the winter, it's pretty surprising that it's Rodney who finally hits the wall over processed food, especially since he's maintained for four-and-a-half years that spinach wants to kill him.
The skies fall on a May afternoon, when John comes home to a ransacked kitchen, Cheetos and cereal and breadsticks on the floor, cans of soup stacked on the table, a contraband bag of tootsie rolls skulking beneath a chair. There's sufficient rustling coming from the pantry to suggest that a legion of barn cats is settling in for the night. "What the . . ."
"Oh," Rodney says, wandering out of the pantry and blinking into the afternoon light. He's clutching a box of crackers, one finger pressed to the ingredients list. "Hi?"
John raises an eyebrow.
"Did you know that there is high fructose corn syrup in everything?" Rodney asks.
John squints and considers whether he knew that or not. "No?"
"Everything!" Rodney says, shaking the crackers. "And it is evil."
John sets down his lunch bag, his travel mug, and his keys. "Don't you have to believe in, you know, universal good before you start portioning out the evil?" he asks.
Rodney's expression turns incredulous. "What, now you turn multi-syllabic?"
"Keeping you on your toes," John offers as wades through the snack heap and reaches into the fridge for a beer.
"I refuse," Rodney says, barely registering the reply, "to ingest this toxic toxicity any longer!"
John nods supportively, flipping off his beer cap.
"Unnatural colors! Additives! Preservatives that come from beetle innards."
"You're making that up," John says, and swigs his beer.
"I am not!"
John waits.
"Okay, so, perhaps a little – "
"You want to tell me what brought this on?" John asks.
Rodney glares at him. "No."
John drinks.
"No," Rodney repeats.
"C'mon," John wheedles.
Rodney lifts his chin and sniffs. "Doesn't matter."
John rubs a hand over his face and thinks back over his day – to the early morning call that dragged him over to the Sibleys and their cracked toilet and burst main pipe. He ponders his breakfast at Denise's Five-Bit and Shine, the chunk of his day spent digging down to the foundations at Matt Smithey's barn, the trip into town for new spark plugs before he came home. "Just tell me," he asks, when nothing pings.
Rodney huffs, pulls a cracker from the box he's still holding, and chews on it morosely. "Bad dream," he mumbles, ears turning pink.
"When?"
"This morning."
"About?"
"Oh, nothing," Rodney says, suddenly waspish. "Just me dying of a frightening large tumor entirely comprised of Cheetos and pixie sticks and every ounce of MSG I have ever ingested in my life, all of which resulted in me not seeing . . . not . . ." He swallows the remainder of his cracker. "Seeing anyone. Again."
John sets down his beer, plucks the crackers out of Rodney's hands, hauls him in close and rubs his nose into his hair. "You're not gonna die."
"Of Cheeto tumors," Rodney says.
"Right. MSG overload," John agrees.
Rodney sags against him and slips his hands into the back pockets of John's worn jeans. "It's ridiculous, I know, but it was real, very real, and I just knew if I'd stopped eating junk food and, and, it was all very stupid and still dark when I woke up and you were gone. So. It's all your fault."
John nods as if that makes complete sense. "Should've called me."
"You were wading in shit."
"Good reason to give me a break," John points out.
"Asshole," Rodney says, and huffs against his throat.
"Feeling better, yet?" John asks.
"No," Rodney says, although it sounds like a lie. "Your ass does not have magic trauma-healing properties that bleed through your jeans and into my hands via god only knows what mechanism you believe exists – Sheppardsynthesis?" He grumbles low in his throat. "And we are never ingesting high-fructose corn syrup again."
"That," John says, "I can live with," and he pulls back to kiss Rodney dirtily before he lets him go. "Besides, I hear corn syrup totally depresses orgasm."
Rodney squawks. "You mean I could be coming more? Better?"
John somehow manages to keep a straight face. "I dunno. We should probably check."
Rodney's expression undergoes a dozen contortions before it settles into something that looks an awful lot like lust. "Fine," he says, striding past John. "But I'm going to need to gather data every day for a week."
John checks the clock – almost an hour before they need to pick up Finn. "You're the scientist," he observes with all the misplaced innocence he can muster, and happily ogles Rodney's ass as he follows him up the stairs.