zinnith | SGA fic: Entangled Particles 4/4 (NC-17)

That night, John let Rodney fuck him for the first time. He had thought about it endlessly. The sensation of Rodney's fingers inside him never failed to drive him wild, but he had never been quite ready to go all the way before.

Rodney had already made him come once and he was now sucking on Rodney’s nipples, listening to the various needy sounds Rodney made. Good sex always made Rodney babble incoherently and his nipples were especially sensitive, reacting to the slightest touch. This time, it was a low litany of, “Oh god, that’s so good, don’t stop doing that, god, John, you’re so hot, I want to, please… I want to fuck you…”

John sat back, looking at Rodney spread out on the bed, face flushed, eyes half-lidded, with his hard cock resting on his belly. “Okay,” he said, surprised to hear his own voice come out in a throaty whisper.

Rodney’s eyes were suddenly wide open. “What? Are you sure? I mean…”

“I’m sure,” John said, and he was. “I want you to.”

It was almost comical to see how fast Rodney went for the lube. “I… turn around, it’ll be easier this way,” he said, and then, when John was on all fours on the bed with his ass in the air, “Do you have any idea how amazing you look like this?”

John moaned as Rodney’s slick fingers slowly worked him open. He was already getting hard again, not bad for a guy approaching forty. Rodney hit his prostrate with every stroke, John was so turned on that his arms were shaking with need. “Come on, Rodney,” he moaned. “I’m ready, do it now.”

“Yes, yes, I…” Rodney almost sounded nervous as he slicked himself up and pressed the head of his cock against John’s hole. “God, John, you’re so… I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t hurt me, just….” John was ready to scream with frustration, “…just do it, Rodney, please!”

“Right,” Rodney said, hands roaming over John’s sides, “Let’s… let’s do it like this…” and pulled John towards him. John leaned back, felt Rodney’s cock slowly press inside, so big and hard and full. Rodney’s arms wrapped around his torso, pulling John back so he was sitting on Rodney’s lap, Rodney’s chest against his back.

“You feel so good,” Rodney murmured in his ear, wrapping John even more tightly in his arms. “Is this… is it good for you too?”

“It’s good,” John said, clenching around Rodney’s cock, and then relaxing again, feeling it sink even deeper until it was all the way in, pressing against all the right places. “It’s really, really good.”

“I have to…can I move? Please, John?”

John nodded shakily and Rodney began to thrust, his breath hitching in that way that meant he was close. John wrapped his hand around his cock and began to jerk himself off in time to Rodney’s thrusts. “Yes, touch yourself,” Rodney moaned.

He came spurting all over his hand, and had barely finished before Rodney froze behind him, groaning deeply as he released his own load. They collapsed together on the bed, Rodney softening and slipping out.

“Wow, that was good,” Rodney panted. “That was really good.”

“Mhmm,” John hummed, smiling contentedly. His ass burned, but in a pleasant way. He rolled over and wrapped an arm around Rodney’s chest.

“Should clean up,” Rodney murmured sleepily, burying his face in John’s shoulder. “Gonna be gross later.”

“Yeah,” John said. He didn’t feel like moving though, and they soon fell asleep, wrapped in each other’s embrace.

* * *

By the end of April, both John and Carla were forced to admit that John's leg was probably as good as it was going to get. It had healed considerably, but he still limped a bit when he was tired, and he avoided climbing stairs when he could.

John was a little depressed for a while. He still hadn't found a job, and it made him feel like a failure. Every day was the same. He ate breakfast, took a long walk, and then went over to Rodney's in the hope that Rodney could spare him some time. However, the deadline was getting closer, and Rodney had started spending every waking moment working on his book. He made John read not just one, but two drafts, and it was beautiful, brilliant, and pure Rodney.

"I need to find something to do," John told Carson one Sunday as the two of them had lunch together. Rodney had kicked John out of the apartment after breakfast, and locked himself in with Laura to work on the book. "I’m starting to go crazy."

Things didn't improve. One evening, John and Rodney were in the middle of a serious make-out session when Rodney stopped mid-kiss and said, "Wait a minute, I just have to write something down." He disappeared and was gone for over three hours. John sighed, reached for a newspaper, and waited for his hard-on to subside. When Rodney finally came back to bed, John was already asleep.

For the first time since John had come to Sacramento, he was beginning to wonder if he might have made a mistake after all.

* * *

Rodney's mood got steadily worse as his deadline approached. John did his best to try to lure him away from the computer, but not even his best seduction techniques could keep Rodney distracted for any length of time. One day, John came from the grocery store to find Laura in tears in the hallway outside Rodney's apartment. He set his bags down on the floor and put an arm around her shoulders. "What happened?" he asked.

Laura sniffed and wiped her tears on her sleeve. "It's nothing. He's just being a jerk again."

“I’ll talk to him,” John promised, picking up his bags.

Laura shook her head. “Don’t bother. He’s always like this when he’s stressed over a deadline. It’ll get better as soon as he sends the manuscript away.”

“That’s no reason to treat you like this,” John protested, and opened the door to Rodney’s apartment. It looked as if a small tornado had hit the place. There were clothes thrown everywhere, dirty plates in piles on the floor, and the smell of burnt coffee coming from the kitchen.

Rodney sat in the midst of the chaos, cross-legged on the sofa, hunched over one of his laptops. John approached him as if he were a bomb about to go off. “You made Laura cry," he said accusingly.

“She just wouldn’t stop nagging,” Rodney answered.

John put his shopping down on the kitchen counter, afraid that he might lose his temper and start throwing apples at Rodney if he wasn’t careful. "Laura never cries," he said, a little louder than he had planned. "She works her ass off for you, and you never say a word of thanks."

"I don't have time for this!" Rodney shouted.

"The book is fine, Rodney!" John shouted back. "You made me read it twice, and it's good! It's the best thing you've ever written, so give it a rest!"

"I know it's good! Good isn't enough, it has to be perfect!"

John took a deep breath and then said with as much calm as he could muster, "I'm going to leave now. Give me a call when you're sane again."

He left the shopping bags in the kitchen and walked out of the apartment, fuming with barely suppressed anger. Laura pleaded with him to wait as he started down the stairs, but he ignored her. What the hell was he doing here anyway? He had thrown everything away for a self-obsessed writer with no people-skills.

John went home to his own apartment. The first thing he did when he came inside the door was check the answer machine, but there was no call from Rodney. No surprise there, John thought angrily as he paced up and down. Rodney’s book was clearly more important to him than John was.

The walls seemed to be closing in on him and he found himself almost hyperventilating. What was he going to do now? He didn’t know anyone in Sacramento who wasn’t related to Rodney in some way. The only person he could think of to call was Carla, but she only reminded him of his damn useless leg. Why hadn’t he stayed in Antarctica? It might have been lonely, but it had been safe. He could keep people at arm’s length there; there was no one who could get under his skin.

John lay down on his bed, staring up into the ceiling, and tried to decide where to go from here.

* * *

It was coincidence, really. Three days after the fight, John got a phone call from a youth centre where he had applied for a job. Their maintenance man had been laid off for drinking on the job, and John was the only one who could start immediately. It was only part-time, and the pay wasn’t great, but maybe he was still interested?

John was still very interested.

The youth centre was run mostly by volunteers and was managed by a middle-aged ex-football player by the name of Hal Lindberg. Hal was a barrel-shaped giant of a man who wore his greying hair in a pony-tail, and had a love for Johnny Cash that rivalled John’s. He invited John home for dinner one evening, told him all about his football career and how he had returned to his childhood home to give the kids here and now the same chance he once had been given.

John told Hal about his time in the Air Force, and the helicopter crash. When Hal asked him how he had ended up in Sacramento, John muttered something about the climate being good for his leg.

He hadn't heard from Rodney in two weeks.

* * *

John came home from the youth centre one afternoon in June to find a small brown package outside his door. It looked like someone had just left it there, as it had no stamps on it and he couldn’t find any sender information

He opened the package to find it contained bound copy of Gravitation, the latest novel by M. R. McKay.

John left the book unopened on his kitchen table. He didn’t feel like reading it. If Rodney wanted to talk to him, he could pick up the damn phone. John wasn’t going to come crawling back. He had started to build his own life, make his own friends.

He did miss Rodney terribly though. Missed talking to him, teasing him, holding him. He had been such a major part of John’s life for so long, even before he had moved to Sacramento, that John didn’t feel quite complete without him by his side. Gravitation lay where he had left it, unopened on the kitchen table. He found himself looking at it sometimes, occasionally sliding his finger over the cover. Finally, his curiosity overcame his pride and he opened it to the first page. His breath caught as he read the dedication.

John,

This is for you.

* * *

Some forty years later, after the Nobel Prize dinner, when John walked with a silver-handled cane and Rodney had lost almost all of his hair, a journalist came up to John and asked him what he thought of Rodney’s books. He grinned at her and said, “I’m still waiting for the movies.”

The kiss Rodney gave him was on the front page of half the world’s newspapers the next day.

-fin-