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Rodney had left John a voicemail once. They had been back on Earth for a couple months, had made plans to grab dinner and catch up, but Jennifer had gotten sick, and Rodney had called while John was in the shower, leaving a message about needing to reschedule.
They hadn’t managed to find another time.
John still had that voicemail. When he was alone, resolve like a sunken stone at the bottom of a very cold ocean, he replayed it.
‘Hey, Jennifer needs me to stay home and take care of her. Beer and burgers another night, yeah?’ was all he said before the line went dead, but it was the last time that John could recall him sounding normal.
Calls were infrequent, and John barely got to say two words to Rodney at the goddamn wedding, and then there was the honeymoon, then the months slipped away and John wasn’t sure he knew Rodney anymore.
John had to stop drinking after a while. When he drank, he wanted to call Rodney so badly that it hurt. He didn’t even know what’d he’d say, really, and he knew that Rodney wouldn’t sound like his Rodney—and God it fucking hurt to think that he wasn’t his Rodney, and maybe he never had been—but John was starting to forget what Rodney sounded like at all, and he wanted a reminder. He wanted to believe that he existed to Rodney. He wanted to stop lying to his friends, telling them that he and Rodney were fine, that Rodney was just busy, definitely not telling them that Rodney had started ignoring his texts for days and weeks at a time so John had just stopped texting.
There had been a meeting, six months after the wedding, at the SGC, and Rodney had walked in with Jennifer clinging to his arm, and John felt so stupid and damaged as he had dropped his eyes to the ground, placing Ronon’s hulking mass between him and the happy couple. He could feel Rodney’s gravity, and he wanted to give in, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t start over, weaning himself off of the best friendship he’d ever known all over again because his friend had dropped him the moment they fell to Earth, the moment he got married. He couldn’t take the ache, the hurt.
John couldn’t even joke about his abandonment issues anymore. Perfectly good coping mechanism off the table. And he certainly couldn’t be as brave as he’d once been, traipsing off to anther galaxy and accepting new friends—new friends were pain waiting to manifest—left, right, and center.
He was ready to go back to Pegasus. Jennifer wanted to stay on Earth, and John figured Rodney would stay with his wife. Maybe with the vast, yawning emptiness of space between them, John would feel less like he was hanging around in Rodney’s gravitational pull like so much space garbage, like a tool clipped to his belt.
Slowly, John settled. He surfed with Ronon, hiked with Teyla, went on missions for the SGC, kept his body in tip top shape and willed his mind to follow. He talked to someone—and he liked Heightmeyer better, but she was gone, and he told his new therapist about that loss too—and slowly he began to feel like maybe he’d be okay. Or something close.
He even went on dates. They were awful though, a string of blue-eyed brunettes who told him he was pretty then rode him hard and put him away wet, men and women who never called the next day, and he decided to delete all the stupid fucking dating apps and stop haunting the clubs. It wasn’t helping. He was too old for that shit, and too ruined by someone he’d never even really had.
It was a gorgeous day with perfect waves when John came to shore and picked up his phone to find eight missed calls from Rodney. No voicemails. No texts.
The phone rang again.
John’s stomach betrayed him, tumbled stupidly. He answered the phone. “Hey, Rodney, what’s up?”
Rodney was silent for a few breaths. “I’m in town. Want to grab dinner?”
John thought about being cruel for a moment, thought about saying no, thought about staying out of Rodney’s orbit.
“Yeah. Burgers and beer? Six?”
“Sounds good.”
“I’ll text you the address.”
John sat on the beach for a while, staring at the ocean.
John hated how awkward he felt, seated across from Rodney. He wanted to walk out into the street and scream. They exchanged stilted pleasantries until the waiter appeared. John ordered, and Rodney ordered too, but John stopped the waiter before he could breeze away.
“He can’t have that dressing. He’s allergic to citrus.” He turned to Rodney, and for a heartbeat it felt natural. “Ranch?”
Rodney smiled, nodded, and the waiter disappeared.
“Thanks,” Rodney said softly, and John shrugged, and they both went quiet.
The waiter dropped off their drinks. They took tiny sips. They avoided each other’s eyes.
“I got divorced.”
John froze. John’s blood froze. John’s brain froze.
“Sheppard?”
John pinned Rodney with a glare, didn’t bother to hide the heat in it. “You finally called me because you got divorced? What, it didn’t work out with the wife, so now you have time to bother with me?”
Rodney, to his credit, dropped his gaze to his glass. “It’s not that simple.”
“Then what?”
Rodney frowned. “You’re already mad, and this isn’t going to help.”
John huffed, mouth twisted into a silent snarl. “Spill.”
Rodney met John’s gaze. “She was worried. I think we could both sense how tenuous, how fragile our relationship was, and she seemed to think that, well, that you were a danger to our marriage. She asked me to see less of you.”
John was trembling. He wanted to stand, to bolt. It was hard to resist the urge. “And you said yes to that?”
“I have a million excuses. None of them are good enough. None of them are enough to justify how I’ve treated you. You’re my best friend, or you were. I assume I’ve ruined that now. But I wanted to at least apologize in person, to explain. This wasn’t fair to you. I can only imagine how it made you feel—”
“What, because I’m so pathetic, I’m only worth something in proximity to you?”
“No! I just know—”
“—that every person I’ve cared about has left me, one way or another, and you did the same.” John swallowed hard around the stupid fucking lump in his throat. “You knew that, because you were my best friend, and you let her insecurities control you, and you left too.” John’s traitorous eyes burned. “You could’ve stayed gone,” John rasped quietly. “I was fine.”
Rodney looked like John had hit him. “I—”
The waiter set their food down, chirped something bubbly, and disappeared. John glared at Rodney, and Rodney gazed down at their food, horrified.
“I didn’t want to stay gone,” Rodney finally murmured, eyes still on the table.
John buckled, resolution in tatters. He let the silence stretch for a moment before he spoke. “I don’t know if I can be okay overnight, but—”
Rodney’s eyes found John’s. There was a ghost of a smile on his lips, a sliver of hope in his eyes. “Yeah?”
John shrugged, picked a fry off his plate and popped it in his mouth. “Yeah.” As if he could deny Rodney.
After a month, they were talking regularly. After three months, they were playing again, racing cars and plugging in John’s dusty PlayStation and fighting over a chessboard with glee. After six months, the SGC proposed a plan to get Atlantis back to Pegasus within a year, and John was electrified.
“Champagne,” John insisted as they drove to his apartment.
Rodney raised an eyebrow at him. “Not beer?”
John grinned. The window was down, rushing through his hair and across his sunglasses. The sun was bright. They were going home. They were going home. “Nah, sometimes I miss really good champagne, and this occasion calls for it for sure.”
They stopped at a liquor store, and John picked out a bottle that he wouldn’t let Rodney see the price tag on, and they stopped next door and picked up gyros and fries, and they sank into John’s couch with good food and old movies and top dollar champagne in mugs John had stolen from a diner. It was the happiest that John could remember being in a long while.
John sighed happily, rolled his head on the back of the couch to gaze at Rodney, who was munching happily on French fries. The bubbles had gone to John’s head, just a little. “I thought I’d lost this forever.”
Rodney sighed wistfully. “I thought we’d lost Pegasus, too.”
“Not Pegasus.” John reached out, thumbed at Rodney’s knee. “You. Us.”
Rodney turned, peered at John with an almost frown. They studied each other for a long while. “This is why,” Rodney finally murmured.
John blinked. What kind of goddamn non sequitur—Was he tipsier than he thought? Surely not. “What?”
“You look at me, and you say things like that, and I just buckle. I know you don’t—that we aren’t—well, you know. But Jennifer knew how I felt about you, and she—”
Rodney was cut off by John’s lips on his.
“I do,” John mumbled against Rodney’s lips when he managed to stop kissing him for a moment.
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Like, you actually—”
“Rodney.”
Rodney smiled and kissed John, scooting closer to toss a leg over John’s lap, running his fingers up into the wind-tousled mess of John’s hair. John wrapped his arms around Rodney’s middle, softness and strength, and pulled him even closer. It was so easy, the tumble to pull Rodney on top of him as he laid back. Rodney went so willingly, mouths joined the entire time. Rodney slotted their cocks together effortlessly, ground against him as their hands roamed. John was dizzy, blood flow and oxygen compromised, and he didn’t care. This was everything he’d never let himself want. He was stupid and Rodney was a disaster and they were everything the other needed and John bucked against Rodney, aching, aching, aching and finally alive. Rodney tensed, stilled, then slid his body over enough to reach down, unbutton John’s pants, and stroke him, murmuring against the corner of John’s mouth.
“Rodney,” John breathed when he finally came down from his high.
“John,” Rodney replied softly, sweetly, and John’s blood heated all over again, though his body wasn’t ready to comply.
John’s mind wandered. On the horizon, there was a life in Pegasus with Rodney, joined at the hip, joined at the mouth. John smiled. In the nearer future, there was a shower with Rodney, hopefully. Even with Rodney’s weight on top of him, John felt lighter than he had in a long time.