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It’s dark, and it’s over. The quiet settles over them like a blanket of ash after doused flames, John’s face pressed into the ditch of Rodney’s neck, stubble rough and breath soft. He’s always sleepy after sex, limbs heavy before he twitches to sleep, starfished across the bed or else clinging to Rodney’s back like a mollusk on a ship hull.
Conversely, Rodney gets drawn tighter and tighter as the high of orgasm wears off and leaves him chemical-barren. Worry sets in, hooks low in his gut, and tugs him off to stupid, improbable places. Sex—sex is good. Sex shuts off his brain, at least for a little while. But once it’s over, the real world always comes back for him and goes for the throat.
Usually, John passes out before Rodney disentangles himself and steals off to the lab to panic, or else drown the panic in equations. But tonight, the onset is rapid, and John can sense the thrum under his skin. “Hey,” he mumbles, frowning into the frantic thud of Rodney’s pulse. “What are you thinking about? I can feel you thinking a million miles a minute.”
“What a luxury,” Rodney counters in a too-shrill voice, “to choose not to think. To revert to one’s lizard brain.” It does not come out as sarcastic as it could, but still, he hates himself the second it leaves his mouth. He always does this, acts like some venomous fish or cornered porcupine shooting quills in self-defense, lashing out the second someone tries to pry inside him. Always, but especially if that someone is John, even though John loves him, apparently, if the stuff he groans when Rodney fucks him is any indication. And maybe it isn’t—lizard brain and all of that. Though it doesn’t matter what John feels, really: some reflexive, self-destructive, impossible-to-control part of Rodney will always push him away.
“You’re freaking out on me again,” John says matter-of-factly, brushing his knuckles down Rodney’s side before making a tentative fist in his boxers, like he can hold him fast by the fabric if he bolts. “About the gay thing.”
And it’s actually not that, not this time, though that is a fair assumption, given Rodney’s extensive and varied history of freakouts. “No,” he says squirming in the cage of John’s arms, feeling trapped. “There’s plenty of things to freak out about, actually. A whole long, many-bulleted laundry list.”
“Okay, what bullet are we focusing on today?” John asks, annoyingly patient, because he is perfect.
Rodney sighs sharply. “Oh, nothing important, really, just, wondering why I let myself do this with you when I know what the most statistically probable outcome is and also know I likely won’t survive that outcome.”
That makes John peel away and prop himself up on an elbow to study Rodney with dark eyes and a half-smile. His hair is messy, his cheeks are still sex-flushed, and he’s so unfairly and stupidly gorgeous that it makes Rodney want to break something. Maybe if John didn’t look like a goddamned Chippendales dancer, this would all be easier, make more goddamned sense. “Okay, Mr. Astrophysicist,” John says through a grin. “What do you think is the most statistically probable outcome?”
Rodney sucks in an impatient breath before blurting, “I simply do not think you're aware of how messed up I am, is the thing. And eventually you’ll figure it out and go running for the hills, and consequently my heart will be broken, and I’ll die alone because there’s likely no one in the universe besides you who will put up with my shit.”
John raises his eyebrows. “I know exactly how messed up you are,” he says after a long, tense moment of silence. “Better than anyone else, probably. M’still here.”
“You say that now, but—”
“Hey. You know what I think the most statistically probable outcome is?” John interrupts, digging a finger in between Rodney’s ribs.
“Enlighten me.”
John settles down onto his back, gaze sweeping up to the ceiling before he closes his eyes in a thoughtful, resigned fashion. “You push me so far away I can’t find my way back because you believe, on some level, that you are so fundamentally unlovable that you don’t let me love you.”
It’s so shockingly insightful and candid and spot on that Rodney is actually angry. He feels exposed, ripped open like the skin under a bandaid, raw and bleeding as he sputters. “Jesus, where did that come from? Where did you get your degree in armchair psychology?”
“Told you,” John offers, cracking an eye open, corner of his mouth tugging down as he studies Rodney. “I know you better than anyone else. If someone leaves, Rodney, it’s not gonna be me.” Then he shuts his eyes again and shifts another few terrible inches away across the bed, which feels like a death sentence.
Rodney lies beside him, paralyzed. He wants so badly to reach out and touch, to assure John that he’s wrong, but he can’t even make himself do that. Instead he stares at him, the valleys of shadow he casts in the sheets, the dark thatch of hair on his chest, the way his face is as slack as it ever gets, but there’s still tension near his brows, drawing them tight so that he looks concerned, carved from marble, some fucking perfect statue too pretty for Rodney’s bed. And all he was trying to say was that one day, John is gonna realize that. That he could have anyone he wants, he doesn't have to settle for this. For Rodney, who can’t even tell him, trust me, I don’t want to leave, I am trying my fucking hardest not to run.
“You’re just. Worlds out of my league,” he eventually mumbles. “You wouldn’t understand, looking like you do, but when you’re like me…something so unbalanced doesn’t seem sustainable.”
John snorts. “Out of Rodney McKay’s league? I thought you were the smartest guy in the universe,” he says, offering a smile that is more sad than anything else.
Rodney chews the inside of his cheek. John knows Rodney’s pride-bordering-on-arrogance concerning his intelligence is at least, in part, born from the crippling insecurity he harbors regarding other things. He knows because Rodney has told him as much, and he resents that he’s being forced to repeat it. “You know what I mean,” he snaps. “Physically, you’re—”
“Yeah, well. Maybe to some people, but you’re hot to me. I’m attracted to you. I don’t know why, I just am, I guess it’s some pheromone thing or something, whatever. It doesn’t matter. You think there’s an imbalance, but there’s not. Not to me,” John interjects with a shrug.
He says it like it’s easy, so dismissive, so nonchalant. It makes Rodney grind his teeth. “That’s very nice of you, Sheppard, thanks, I feel better,” he grits out.
“It’s not nice, it’s just. It’s the truth.”
Rodney fidgets, sweating so much that he kicks off the sheets, wishing there was a cross-breeze in his room, or else a whole pitcher of water he could dunk his head in to cool off. The space between their bodies is starting to ache, making his skin sting nettle-sharp. God, why does he always have to ruin everything? He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want to talk about how this thing is eventually going to end. He doesn’t want to sneak out of his own bed to crunch numbers in the lab when he’d rather be sleeping under the weight of John’s arm. He just wants to enjoy the one good thing that’s ever happened to him, and yet, here he fucking is. Picking it apart, fraying the tapestry until there’s nothing left but string.
“Can I ask you something?” John murmurs as the silence stretches on, startling Rodney from the molasses-thick trap of his thoughts.
“If I say no, you’re going to do it anyway, so. Go ahead,” Rodney snaps, bracing for the worst.
“Do you actually even like me?” is what John asks, and well—that is not what he was expecting, so Rodney is subsequently struck dumb. “Or are you sleeping with me because I’m the only person you know who tolerates you? Like, I sometimes think the thing you like most about me is that I like you so much. And that this—it’s just some ego boost, to you.”
Rodney’s heart tightens, his blood icing over with how inconceivably wrong John is. “No! I—that’s—you—I can’t believe you even think I’m capable of something—”
“So, you’re allowed to voice your stupid unfounded insecurities for me to talk you down from, but if I do the same thing, you get mad?” John ventures, rolling over to look at Rodney. He expects his eyes to be hard, to flash in the dark beneath a mask of anger, but when he meets them, they’re only hurt.
And there he is again, fucking up again, doing the same old thing, serving the Rodney McKay special. He curses, and John turns away with a long, weary sigh. ‘Look, if that's what you’re doing, that’s fine. M’still not going anywhere,” he says. “I just want to know.”
“It’s not what I’m doing, Jesus Christ, John,” Rodney manages through his tight throat, making a fist in the sheets and digging his nails into his palm through the fabric barrier. “Just. Shut up for a second, okay? Let me. Let me find the words.”
“You? You’re at a loss for words? Damn, wish I had a camera to memorialize this.”
“John.”
“Right. Okay. Shutting up.”
Rodney lies there in the dark for a minute, trying to catch his breath, heart racing so violently that he feels dizzy with it. There’s too much he could say, and most of it is too vulnerable, too terrifying. Because fuck—he wants John so bad, has always wanted him, far before he ever knew John wanted him back. Hell, he wanted him before he knew how he wanted him, what it even entailed, how far that want went. Rodney wanted to spend all his time with him, wanted to be included in his off-world mission team, wanted John to notice him, to be impressed by him. He was even obsessed with John's sexual exploits, like that was a normal thing. There is no moment in their history together when he has not fixated on John in some observably distracting way. It's absurd to think there’s any reason beyond genuine want keeping him here—making him risk his carefully constructed prison of cruelty and condescension to let someone in. “Listen very carefully,” he says then. “Because this is tremendously, indescribably difficult for me to say and so I can only guarantee it will come out properly once.”
“Listening,” John promises. “Very carefully.”
“Alright. Okay. Alright. So, Fuck,” Rodney begins, taking a deep, shuddering breath, ignoring the warning pang in his chest telling him that authenticity is actually a very, very bad idea. He stares resolutely at the ceiling, and then he takes a plunge: “John Sheppard, I am so terribly and stupidly in love with you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me and easily the handsomest man I’ve ever seen in real life but more importantly, also the bravest and the kindest and the most humble, even though you are irritatingly good at very nearly everything, even the things you shouldn’t be,” he forces out in a single breath, body feeling like it’s humming, vibrating like a fucking florescent light about to pop. “I am white-knuckling this thing every day. Constantly thinking about how insufferable I am and how shitty I am to everyone around me, you included, wishing I knew how to stop. But it's comforting, almost, to be that way because I think deep down I've rationalized that it’s easier to be left because I am objectively intolerable to be around than it is to be left because I am simply not good enough, even at my best? Because trust me, I am well aware that you are everything I’m not and better than me in every fucking way that counts, and that horrible awareness makes it so that I cannot even enjoy lying in bed with you after we fuck because I am so terrified you will come to your senses any moment and leave. Okay? So, to sum it up, yes, I like you. Too much.”
Rodney actually has more to say, but he stops there. One, because he has forced this out all so quickly he’s light-headed, and two, because John is touching him. Reaching across the divide to lay a hand on his arm and squeeze, scooting across the sheets to press warm and demanding to his side.
“Hey, hey. Look at me,” he says gently, thumbing into the ditch of Rodney’s elbow.
“I’d rather not,” Rodney tells him.
“Fine, I'll look at you,” John says, rolling over and climbing on top of Rodney, sitting on his hips and cupping his face between his palms firmly. “You are messed up,” he says.
“I told you,” Rodney reminds him.
And he is opening his mouth to spill more blood when John bends down and kisses him rough, wet, promise-long before he pulls away and presses their brows together. “As I said,” he mumbles, almost smiling but not quite. “M’not gonna be the one who leaves.”