John was beginning to think that things weren’t going as well on the homefront as Rodney kept telling him. Rodney was really jumpy (more so than usual) and was always staring off into space with his worried look on his face. John was pretty sure it wasn’t something he did, and Felger swore up and down that everything was going smoothly in the lab. That only left one thing.

The question was: was he going to bring it up or not? Rodney was his best friend, but then again, they were guys. Guys didn’t pry into other guys’ personal business.

Of course, when Rodney almost dropped one of the new gun turrets for the Kheiron on his foot, John decided this had to stop.

John carefully sidestepped the fallen part, raising his eyebrows at Rodney.

“Look, Rodney, whatever’s going on with you . . . you know you can talk to me, right? Ask for help?”

“Okay.”

John squinted in confusion. “’Okay’ to what, exactly?”

“Okay, I need your help.”

That was far easier than he expected. He’d expected at least one really horrible attempt to lie. “And you want me to help, how?”

Rodney dragged him inside the Puddle Jumper. God, it reminded him of Atlantis, of the time Rodney’d fucked him hard and fast right there in the pilot’s seat. Except this time, Rodney flopped into the copilot’ seat, seeming to sag.

John was getting more and more worried by the moment and maybe even a little hopeful. Maybe Rodney and Sam were going to call it off. Wouldn’t that be kind of nice? For John, obviously not so great for Sam.

“What is it?”

“Look, I um . . . was going for my tri-annual full body CAT scan and something . . . there’s a shadow on my kidney.” Rodney gulped.

John wanted to embrace him, but the cockpit window was still see-through. “But, you’re going to be okay, right?”

“I don’t know. Best-case scenario: it’s nothing. Worst-case scenario: I’m a dead man.”

“And do they know?”

“Reyes sent me to a specialist. They want to do exploratory surgery. They say it’s no big deal, but you know doctors, voodoo and all. I’ll probably be out for a week at least . . . but then again, if I’m dying, what’s the point?”

“You’re not going to die, Rodney. They have treatments. Hell, with all our allies, I’m sure we could arrange something. Didn’t a Tok’ra symbiote cure Sam’s dad?”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. A snake in my head? I’m sorry, but with all the mental power my genius takes up, I’m not sure there’s room. Besides it’s, you know, mine.”

“I’m just saying . . . . What is it you want me to do anyway?”

“Take me to the hospital.”

“Isn’t Sam going with you?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“What do you mean, she doesn’t know? She’s your wife.”

“And I don’t want to worry her.”

“But you want to worry me?”

“Well, if you’re going to make this so difficult . . . .” Rodney crossed his arms across his chest defiantly.

“No, Rodney. Of course I’ll go with you. You know you don’t even have to ask. I’m just thinking that maybe it would be better if you talked to Sam about it.”

“I’ll talk to Sam if it turns out there’s something I have to talk about, hm? Right now, I just need someone to take me.”

John sighed, but knew he couldn’t really refuse Rodney anything. “Okay.”

Hiding it from Sam was ridiculously easy. All he had to do was to get Jay to put in an excited technobabbly call to O’Neill about his work, asking for an appointment, and sure enough, Sam was going to go in his stead (O’Neill, regardless of whether he actually possessed this hidden intelligence Sam always spoke of, definitely was not one to sit through a full meeting of tech talk if he could have someone better explain it).

John felt devious and dangerous like he hadn’t since the last time in the field and guilty like he hadn’t since the last time one of his men didn’t make it. Sam trusted them. She trusted them enough not to expect that there was something going on, which there wasn’t really, but still . . . there could’ve been.

John said goodbye to Felger and Combs and left the mountain early. They were in an important phase of testing, but they’d find a way to entertain themselves without him, he was sure.

John didn’t even remember the drive home, the windy roads and the way back to Rodney’s house scorched into his memory the way that endless teal sea and too-pastel sky had once been.

Rodney was pacing when he got there, several opened but not eaten bags of chips strewn around him. “It’s about time. God, we have only like . . . an hour and a half to get there.”

John rolled his eyes, but not maliciously. “It’s fifteen minutes away.”

“I know . . . I just . . . I need some time to prepare myself, that’s all.” Like Rodney had been preparing himself all morning.

“Well, you could always pace more.” Considering how well Rodney’s one and only attempt at meditation with Lin had gone.

Rodney glared. “Well, I need to be prepared. This could be my last conscious moment you know. Surgery is never safe. Thousands of people die during routine procedures every year and I have very sensitive . . .”

“I know.” John smiled, crossing the room to pat Rodney on the shoulder. He was tense, so tense that John was surprised Rodney hadn’t burned off every ounce of fat on him just through simple stress. “Turn around.”

“What?”

“Turn around.”

“Why?”

“Because. Didn’t you used to take orders from me?”

“Not without knowing why.”

“Because you’re tense.”

“So? I’m about to have life-changing surgery today; of course I’m tense.”

John grabbed Rodney’s shoulders and forced him around, kneading the tension out of the muscles.

“Ow . . . ow . . . watch it . . . I’ve got delicate . . .” and then he laughed. Rodney actually giggled.

“What?”

“I’m just a little . . . you know, ticklish.”

“Manly giggling, then?”

“Shut up. Oh . . . right there . . . yeah.” It was almost obscene. John’s cock twitched disgustingly. Well, this was hardly the time or place, though it would relax the man . . .

After a half-hour massage and a half hour of Rodney collecting all the things John was sure he’d be too out of it to want after surgery, they were on their way.

It wasn’t a long drive to the hospital, but it seemed like it. Rodney was sweating buckets and not eating hadn’t helped him any. He looked pale and drawn and old in a way that John’d never seen him before.

The doctor was tall and slightly unkempt in a way that reminded John of Carson, though his attitude towards surgery reminded him a little too much of his own attitude towards flying. He supposed it took an adrenaline junkie to know one. Rodney seemed okay with it (as okay as Rodney ever was concerning his health).

John walked with him as far as he was allowed, watched them put the IV in, squeezed his hand until they wheeled him around the corner and into the OR. John didn’t go back to work. Instead, he sat in the waiting room reading about how Britney Spears had run off with her secret lesbian lover and wondering why he ever came back to this ridiculous little planet.

John knew he shouldn’t be nervous. Rodney was never right about how he was dying a horrible painful death, but still, he couldn’t help but worry. Maybe after all they’d been through together – Wraith and alien diseases and Genii coups and intergalactic travel . . . well, there’d be a certain tragic irony if Rodney finally succumbed due to a routine exploratory procedure.

But then there he was, lying so peacefully in the recovery room, long eyelashes not even fluttering. Rodney didn’t look younger in sleep. He looked youngest when excited about some new discovery or another. But there was something about his sleeping form nonetheless . . . maybe it was that when Rodney stopped talking and John finally had the chance to really look at him, he had to think. He had to think about all the things he should never think about – had never thought about, even before when he’d flipped that damned coin. He had to think about ‘what if.’ And of all the things he’d seen and done, looking at Rodney was perhaps the most dangerous ‘what if.’

Then Rodney’s eyelashes began to flutter, stirring him to familiar motion. He frowned and yawned and finally John saw a slit of blue peaking out from beneath the tired eyelids.

“Hey,” John said.

“Hey,” Rodney replied distractedly, already feeling across his belly as though looking for extra holes.

“The doc said everything went well. They’ll have your tests back by tomorrow.” John stepped forward and somewhat compulsively stroked his hand through Rodney’s hair.

“So tomorrow they’ll tell me I’m going to die,” he coughed. “Water?”

John nodded and grabbed the glass for him. Not that he wished this on Rodney or anything, but it felt kind of good to be the one helping Rodney out again. John didn’t like feeling like he had to depend on people, even Rodney. He didn’t like being the needy one. John Sheppard was never needy.

“Sam?” Rodney asked.

“Do you want me to get her?”

“No, no. I was just wondering . . . you know, where she was. That’s all.”

“Still in Washington.”

“Ah . . .”

“I can call her if you want.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Just . . . um . . . just stay for a while.”

John nodded, reaching down to grip Rodney’s hand and then scooting his chair forward so he could sleep with his head pillowed in front of him on Rodney’s mattress.

When he woke next, Rodney was playing with his hair.

They were at Rodney’s house when the call came in. Rodney had just eaten and puked up three MREs and John was trying to dissuade him from a fourth, then there it was.

Rodney just stared at John dumbly until he picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Dr. Sander’s office, may I please speak to Rodney McKay?” The woman seemed overly cheerful - had to be a good sign. Or she was trying to cushion the bad news.

John gulped. “Hold on a second.”

Rodney’s hands shook as he grabbed the receiver. John took his other hand and held on tight. He could do this. He could be the guy that stood by you when you fell apart, instead of the one always fleeing the wreckage.

“Yes . . . yes . . . I understand . . . thank you,” Rodney said. Then he hung up – very slowly.

“So?” John’s voice cracked for the first time in years.

Rodney turned to him, his face trembling and open like a wound. “It was benign.”

John pulled him into a hug, clung like he’d never let go, like anything was possible. Rodney sighed, boneless against him, and John could feel his relief, feel his joy, like always, to be alive.

“Thank you,” Rodney said, hot breath against John’s neck, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” It sounded like a prayer, except Rodney didn’t believe in God.

John’s hand cupped Rodney’s back, cradled his head, stroked with the reverence Rodney deserved. He was here, alive, wanted.

Then Rodney pulled back, eyes wide and still just as honest, and then they were kissing, and it didn’t matter that it was wrong, because they were both here to experience it.

John would probably count the next day as his most awkward morning after – with Rodney, at least (there’d been that time with one too many beers and his best friend’s mom, after all).

He remembered this, the familiar sprawl, the warm heat of Rodney pulling him to his chest, the way Rodney’s hands always found his hair, even in sleep.

But it was unfamiliar too. His hair was starting to thin, and Rodney’s was going grey at the edges. They were both softer too, and didn’t fit together in exactly the same way. The sun streaming through the window was neither too bright nor too pastel and when it bounced off the rich teak of the floor and the bright blue of the bedroom wall, everything glowed instead of shimmered like the bronze of Atlantis.

It was warmer, more comfortable, lazy even. Atlantis had been stark and so real it’d come out more as a dream. Atlantis was almost an illusion, but here, John felt cocooned by reality, like it could bend and stretch and wrap itself around him like the quilt his grandma knitted for him a lifetime ago. He felt more at home than he had since he was a kid.

But he knew what he had to do. He had to shove his heart back into the box that’d been keeping it locked up for all these years and pretend that it didn’t mean the world to him. He had to let Rodney decide what he wanted to do. He couldn’t make it hard for him. Because whatever they decided to do would be hard enough.

John rolled over onto his side and tried to extract himself from Rodney’s arms, but the more he tried, the tighter Rodney pulled him in, until he was practically choking.

John tried a different tactic. Rodney’s morning hard-on was familiar against his thigh and he reached down to give it a few strokes. But unlike all the times John’d had to sneak out for an early training session, or just sneak out in the middle of the night to avoid being seen, Rodney’s eyes fluttered open and he asked, “Mmmmmm . . . John, where’re you going?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” John lied, not meeting Rodney’s sleep-filled eyes.

“Yeah, and I’m Dolly Parton.”

John sighed. “I’m sorry, Rodney. I just . . . I didn’t want to pressure you into anything - that’s all.”

“But there’s something you’re tempted to pressure me into?” Rodney sounded strangely hopeful.

John sat up, resigned, but wanted to put some distance between them. The morning air here was cold on his naked flesh, and Rodney pulled the comforter up around his shoulders, laying back down and stroking John’s knee, rhythmically, methodically, like the waves flattening even the most stalwart mountain with nothing more than the steady force of eons.

“I want to get back together,” John said, marveling that this was the first time they’d ever really even admitted to being together out loud.

“Oh, thank god,” Rodney replied, pressing his forehead to John’s knee.

“Why thank god?” John already had a pretty good idea, but he wanted to hear it anyway.

“Because I don’t think that . . . I don’t think that after last night, I could keep my hands off you.”

So he was just the boytoy he’d always been - another beautiful conquest to quell Rodney’s five thousand self-esteem issues. He knew it was a lie even as he thought it, but he was tired of hearing people praise his body, the deteriorating husk that it was.

“And Sam?”

Rodney bit his lip, looking for all the world like this was the first time he’d even thought of Sam up until now. “I don’t know.”

But, as determined and strong and decisive as Rodney was when it came to intellectual decisions, John knew he wouldn’t just be able to choose. And maybe he didn’t have to. Rodney could have his cake and eat it too, because John wasn’t going to tell. He wasn’t going to say ‘no.’

There was a time when he might’ve, but his days of righteous moralism were over. He still cared about people, but for the first time in his life, he was starting to feel as though he didn’t need to justify his actions with some delusion of ethics. He was allowed to be selfish sometimes. He deserved it. After all he’d been through in the name of protecting others, John deserved something. And what he wanted was Rodney, even if it meant hurting someone else that he loved.

Then again . . . “She doesn’t have to know, does she?” Rodney asked.

“She asked about the scar,” Rodney said quietly, settling down further on John’s couch (actually his, but who was counting?), readjusting them so John was lying between his legs.

“It doesn’t take a genius, Rodney.”

“I know, I know. I just . . . I don’t know, I thought I could keep it from her.”

“What’d she say?”

“You’ve got some of my clothes, right?”

“She kicked you out?” Maybe this was just the break they needed, just to push to be together instead of in this odd limbo, sneaking around the base, ‘football’ and ‘chess’ nights when they definitely weren’t concentrating on the game, time lived in-between surreal moments when they were back together again, their familiar friendship just a comedy routine they did between acts.

“Not really, no. She just wanted to be alone for a couple of days.”

“Oh.” John tried not to sound as disappointed as he felt.

“It’ll blow over. But in the meantime . . .” Rodney pulled John into a kiss, grabbing his ass and rocking it up to meet his straining hardness.

John was stiff and sore, but not from a hard day's work out – he couldn’t really do one of those anymore – but from secrecy and wanting and not being brave enough, for once, to just tell Rodney what it was he really wanted.

But then Rodney’s hand was between them, stroking playfully, long and slow and teasing as he let his tongue fuck John’s mouth.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. John believed him. He was beautiful even if that beauty just hid all the jealousy and selfishness beneath.

John rolled them off the couch and onto the floor, smothering Rodney’s complaints of being used as a landing cushion with a passionate kiss.

He forced Rodney’s legs open wide, pinned his hands above his head, feeling the power that he’d once had to dominate people like this all come back in a rush. Rodney could probably push him off if he wanted to, but that was even more of a submission in a way.

John slicked his fingers with saliva and precum. Rodney wasn’t really a bottom, but he used to do it every once in a while. It’d been years, but still, John wasn’t going to give up his upper hand to run and get the lube and judging by the way Rodney was pushing back against him, he wasn’t either.

John devoured Rodney’s mouth in a rough kiss, opening him just a little wider, then teasing. Nipping, biting, tweaking, making his way down Rodney’s body until he could taste Rodney’s entrance, feel that heat push back against his tongue, sweet and disgusting and degrading as all this secrecy felt. He’d never felt this way under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Maybe this is how Rodney felt all those times he’d fucked John right up against the Jumper wall. Maybe he felt as powerless and claustrophobic as John did now, the walls narrowing even as he came, panting and gasping, with Rodney’s hands in his hair and Rodney’s warmth surrounding him.

“What was that all, about?” Rodney asked, when they’d finally calmed themselves.

“I don’t know,” John lied.

Rodney looked for a second like he was going to pursue it. Then he just shrugged. “You know I love you, right?”

Maybe Rodney did, but he didn’t love John enough.

“I can’t keep doing this.”

Oh well, he knew it was too good to be true. He knew it couldn’t last. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t regret it or that it wouldn’t hurt. But he had to do what was best for Rodney and that was to not make a fuss. “That’s okay. I understand.”

But Rodney barreled on without really listening to him, like on one of his usual intellectual brainstorms. “I just don’t know how I’m going to break up with her. It’s not like I don’t love her, it’s just . . .”

Huh? Her? “Wait, you’re going to break up with Sam?”

“Yeah, duh. Anyway, I just . . . God, John, I’m so bad at this.”

“You’re going to break up with Sam?”

“That’s what I said. Jesus, John, do you need your hearing checked? You’re a little young for that to be going, don’t you think?”

“But . . .”

“Look, it’s you I want to be with. Sam and I were great. I love Sam. But, you . . . John, it’s never been anybody but you. Can’t you see that?”

John just stared at him dumbly. All this time that he’d thought he’d been helping Rodney get the girl of his dreams when all Rodney’d ever wanted was for John to get over himself and be with him. How stupid was he?

And, it was true for him, too. It was only Rodney. How long had he taken to figure that out? Way too long.

“We’re so stupid.”

But Rodney wasn’t listening anymore. “I’ll just wait for the right time . . . not that there’s ever a perfect time to tell your wife you’re leaving her for a man, but I’m sure there are times that are less not-perfect than others . . . she should find out on a full stomach - I know I’d want to. Maybe I should cook . . .”

“Yeah, bad idea. Unless you think she’ll be too busy throwing up to get mad at you.”

“Oh, and you’re one to talk. Seriously, John, how can you ruin an MRE?”

“I like my food rare.”

“I’d prefer not to die of salmonella, thank you very much. Maybe I should take her to a restaurant . . . she won’t make a scene if there are other people there, right?”

“That or you’ll have to suffer through it in public.”

“Maybe I should just buy her a tub of ice cream.”

“You know, Rodney, I don’t think ice cream is really going to fix it.”

“But it’ll make it better. It makes everything better. I just . . . I’ll do it tomorrow . . .”

But Rodney didn’t do it tomorrow. He bought a freezer full of ice cream at Costco, but he didn’t do it. He didn’t do it the day after either, granted that was due to a gate malfunction that left SG-5 stranded in a hailstorm. And he definitely didn’t do it on Sunday because he was too busy not-watching football at John’s apartment. On Monday, Rodney had to buy more ice cream (though he claimed that Sam ate most of it) and John began to wonder if he was ever going to do it at all.