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So, Rodney's just standing there - and not standing in any special way, just nothing-to-see-here, business-as-usual standing - and then John's kissing him.
*
Although, that's not exactly how it happens.
Rodney's just saved the galaxy. Or, okay, Atlantis, but probably the galaxy too. He thinks it should feel better than this; maybe he's become desensitized. People are punching the air around him and shouting, but every cell, every atom in his body is hurting. Rodney wonders how he got here.
*
When Rodney was eight, he wanted to be a short-wave radio operator. He had a radio that he'd built himself. He listened to it at night, the tinny voices with him under the tent of his bedclothes when everyone else was asleep, the hushing static of far-awayness when planes flew over. One night, the radio asked him, did you know that seventy percent of the atoms in your body were created at the same time as the universe? Rodney didn't. Suddenly, seventy percent of his body seemed more important. He stopped playing hockey, and joined the astronomy club.
It's an almost embarrassingly cute story, and it's got him through a couple of otherwise disastrous first dates, but actually, the two clubs met on two different nights. Rodney joined the astronomy club several months after that night because of April Bingham, and because he liked school better than home; he left the hockey club because of Joe Stavros. Cause and effect, in Rodney's experience, are never really that straightforward.
*
Here's the way Rodney saves the galaxy (again): the square on the hypoteneuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. They'll laugh about that later, him and Zelenka, probably while drunk, that they could have saved all that time in graduate school watching daytime TV and eventually qualified as elementary school teachers, and still defeated the army of vampire aliens.
But that isn't how it happens, of course. It happens like this: "Rodney?"
"Yes, yes, five more seconds, wait -"
"Rodney, I need to know now."
"Just - just five more seconds -"
"Goddammit, Rodney, I have to -"
"Okay, there! Try it now!"
"Affirmative. Firing on target."
The static from the explosion makes radio contact impossible. As they watch the last two hive ships crumble and burn in slow-motion to the sound of white noise, Rodney vividly remembers switching on the television to watch the echo of the stars expanding, staring at the black and white non-shapes until his eyes filled with tears. It was a good excuse.
*
John appears in a beam of light. He shakes the hands he needs to shake, then makes his way around the console and says, "Rodney."
And instead of saying, "You're not dead," or, "Oh, thank god, you asshole, don't ever do that again," or, "John - John, I - Jesus Christ" - because that's so the last four years - Rodney just looks at him and says, "Yeah?"
John opens his mouth, then shuts it again; jerks his hand, like he's going to reach for his gun, then stops; looks quickly over his shoulder at the celebrating scientists and Sam leaning on the console, their backs to them.
"Fuck," John says, and kisses him, just presses his dry lips to Rodney's for about point seven of a second, with no warning at all.
But that's not how it happens, either.
*
On MX-348, Rodney and John were married in one of those hilarious cultural misunderstandings which make life in Atlantis bearable, Rodney's told. At the time, John held Rodney's hand far more tightly than was warranted, just because Rodney kept looking at the food they weren't allowed to eat, and at the end of the ceremony - or so Rodney assumed, he wasn't really listening - John tugged at his hand a little to get his attention, then kept tugging, pulling Rodney's arms around him, muttering, "Come on, Rodney, get with the program." They hugged awkwardly in front of the priest and the smiling council, their gear digging into each other's chests, and when Rodney shifted to try and get into a less uncomfortable position, John sighed into his neck. His breath was warm and damp and soft. He didn't sound impatient, or pissed, or hungry, or tired, which Rodney knew because, he realized suddenly, he knew what John's sighs sounded like when he was all of those things. Rodney rubbed a circle around the centre of John's back, to see what would happen, and John pressed a tiny fraction more of himself into Rodney's arms. Rodney, abruptly and to such a degree that he wasn't sure he could stand it, wanted to sleep with him. Then John pulled back, and Rodney pulled himself together.
*
The radio program was hopelessly dumbed down to the point of fabrication, obviously, but for years Rodney really did stay up at night wondering which seventy percent, and how one would know. For a long time, he thought that that was what people meant when they said that they were as old as their tongue and a little older than their teeth.
They joked about the wedding later, and after that Rodney thought of a million things he could have said, flirting things, that might have expressed interest, opened avenues of communication without calling too much attention to it, sounded John out. It makes him feel simultaneously sixteen and thirteen point seven three billion years old.
*
Now, John's lips are dry and cracked, and they're barely there before they're gone again.
"Fuck," John croaks again - or maybe the weight of the universe has tipped the balance and time has started shrinking, running backwards, and in a few minutes John will be doing his Schrödinger's Cat impression again - and this time Rodney opens his mouth, closes his eyes and kisses him back, there at the back of the gateroom with nobody looking, and feels a scattered seventy percent of him thrumming with the reverberations of that first explosion.