zinnith | SGA-fic: Fundamental Force (PG)

zinnith

Title: Fundamental Force

Author: Zinnith

Rating/Category: PG/slash/AU

Pairing: John/Rodney

Disclaimer: If only they were mine...

Wordcount: ~ 1600

Notes: For

mcsmooch. This is set in the Entangled Particles 'verse. Thank you

the_cephalopod for the lightning-fast beta and for setting me right on the subject of physics. *hugs*

Summary: The elevator in John's apartment building is broken again and it's not until Rodney's trudging up the four flights of stairs that he realises exactly how tired he is.

The elevator in John’s apartment building is broken again and it’s not until Rodney’s trudging up the four flights of stairs that he realises exactly how tired he is. He’s pretty sure it’s Tuesday, which means he’s survived the past three days on nothing more than twenty-minute catnaps and industrial strength coffee.

Rodney hates Attraction with a vengeance. He’s rewritten the damn thing three times and he still can’t make the pieces fit together the way they’re supposed to; the smooth seamless transitions between scenes that he’s been searching for still eludes him. The science is flat and lifeless and the characters won’t do what he tells them. He never wants to write another book in his life. This is it. He’s done as a writer. Kavanagh is going to wet himself with glee.

The events of the past week are mostly a blur, overlaid by the incandescent glare of words on a screen and the gnawing feeling of endless frustration. He’s pretty sure he must’ve eaten, because he’s still on his feet and not in the hospital with an IV stuck in his arm (which has been known to happen in the past – it was after that little mishap he hired Laura.) When Rodney left the apartment, Newton was sulking behind the books in the bookcase and refusing to come out. There was no trace of John – Rodney has a vague recollection of him packing his duffle bag a couple of days ago and leaving with his usual, ‘I’ll come back when you’re sane again, McKay’.

That was when he still had some hope of being able to salvage his hopeless wreck of a novel. That hope is long gone now. He’s written himself into a corner and he has no idea how he’s going to get himself out.

This will probably make John happy, he reflects. He won’t have to share Rodney with literature any more. Maybe they could get a cabin in the Canadian wilderness; no internet connection, no phone – just him and John and no books. Not even a newspaper. He’s also going to ban everything that’s even remotely similar to a pencil from the house. If John wants to keep doing his sudoku puzzles, he’ll have to draw them with a stick in the dirt outside. And they’re going to have sex all the time.

Yes, that sounds good. He’ll tell John immediately.

Rodney knocks on the door and waits. First there’s silence, then muffled noises from inside and then John opens the door, bare chested, with a towel slung low about his hips. Rodney blinks a couple of times, trying to remember the last time they saw each other, the last time they touched. It was far too long ago. His fingers are itching for John’s skin.

“Hi,” he says, studying John’s mouth and John’s lips. They seem to be moving.

“Hey Rodney.” John steps aside to let him into the apartment. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Um.” Rodney checks his wristwatch. There are numbers on it but they don’t seem to make any sense. “Morning?” Then something significantly more important dawns on him. “You’re not wearing any clothes.”

“I just got out of the shower,” John says, and Rodney can see that, can see the damp curls of his chesthair, how it tapers off into a V and then creeps down underneath the edge of the towel. He wants to stroke his fingers over it, to follow the dark trail downwards.

“Did you finish the novel or are you still stuck?” John asks, closing the front door.

“I’m going to get a cabin,” Rodney says, leaning against the wall in John’s hall. His eyes seem to have slid shut on their own accord. “With nature and nature-y things. A moose maybe. No pencils. Do you want to live there with me and have lots of sex?”

John chuckles. “Still stuck then. When did you last sleep?”

“Lots and lots of sex,” Rodney mumbles.

He can almost hear John’s smile, and then Johns hands are on his shoulders, steering him out of the hall and into the bedroom. “Jeez, McKay, you couldn’t have cleaned up a little? I thought Laura made sure to hose you down every couple of days.”

“Huh?” Rodney sniffs his armpit and winces. Ouch, that’s bad. He remembers considering a shower yesterday but something must’ve gotten in the way. Possibly that passage in the middle of chapter six that still refuses to work in present tense. But if he changes it, he’s going to have to change the rest of the book to match, and he can’t cut it out because if he does, nothing will make sense.

Rodney blinks. When he opens his eyes again, he’s lying on his back on John’s narrow bed and John is in the progress of removing his shoes. He’s wearing clothes now, something that fills Rodney with sadness. John shouldn’t wear clothes ever. When they get their cabin, he’ll make John be naked all the time. Rodney will be naked too, of course.

“We’ll be naked,” he explains to John, because it seems important that John knows this. Maybe it’ll be a little cold, especially in the winter, but they can keep each other warm.

“That sounds great, buddy,” John answers in that half-amused, half-patient tone of his. “Why don’t you take a little nap? You were up all night again, weren’t you?”

“Hm...maybe? Laura went home. She said I had sucked away her will to live. Do you think cats and moose go together? Newton will need someone to play with while we’re having all the sex.”

John leans over him and brushes their lips together, so softly it’s barely there. Rodney lifts his head to get more contact, smelling soap and clean skin and John. It’s so good that suddenly it doesn’t matter that his writing career is over. He has John. As long as he has John, he doesn’t need books. It’s one of the fundamental forces in his life, something that can’t be explained in any other way. Gravitation, he thinks. A force unto itself, as yet inexplicable but still so powerful, drawing them relentlessly towards one another.

“Get some sleep, Rodney,” John whispers against his lips. “Turn that big brain of yours off for a while.”

Then he pulls away and that’s wrong, they need to stay in orbit around each other and Rodney reaches out and manages to grab a fistful of John’s shirt. “Stay,” he mumbles.

He can feel a slight hesitation, but then John joins him on the bed, slides up to sit against the headboard so Rodney can rest his head on his bony thigh. It’s not the best pillow in the world, but it’s John, the mass Rodney finds himself gravitating towards no matter what. That’s how he falls asleep, with John’s thumb stroking his neck.

* * *

When Rodney wakes up he’s alone in the bed, but he can hear the sound of the percolator from the kitchen. He rolls over and yawns. According to his watch, it’s almost two o’clock in the afternoon. He must’ve slept for several hours and the world makes sense again, mostly. When he sits up, the little cogwheels in his brain starts moving, like the only thing they needed to start working smoothly again was some sleep. By the time he has found his shoes everything is perfectly clear. He knows what he has to do.

John is sitting at the kitchen table with the paper and he doesn’t seem too surprised when Rodney starts rummaging through the drawers while muttering, “Pen, pen, pen, I need a pen and paper and, oh, is that coffee?”

“There’s a pencil by the phone,” John says and stands up to get a second coffee mug. “Did you have a good nap?”

“I’m a genius,” Rodney exclaims, snatching the yellow pencil and the notepad from beside John’s phone. “I’m going to make Kavanagh cry.”

John pours the coffee while Rodney jots down a new outline – it’s perfect, all he has to do is switch two chapters, write a new prologue, and possibly change the protagonist’s gender, but it will work. It’s going to be a brilliant novel, the best thing he’s ever written.

“I called Hal, he needs me to come into work for a couple of hours,” John says. “You want to stay here or are you going back?”

“What?” Rodney looks up. “Oh, I’m going home. I need to get this done and I think I have to get Laura some thank-you-for-not-strangling-your-boss flowers and I’m also pretty sure Newton hates me right now, but he’s easy, I’ll just give him some tuna.” He pockets the notebook and finishes his coffee.

John follows him into the hall, stands close enough that Rodney can feel his body heat and he is suddenly very aware of his own three-day old stink, but he doesn’t pull back when John’s hands circles his waist and he leans in for a kiss. Rodney thinks that this has to be love – he can’t remember when he last brushed his teeth but John is still sucking on his tongue like it’s chocolate-flavoured.

“Come back home tonight?” Rodney says when they eventually have to break apart. All the days without John seem to have left an empty aching space inside him and it needs to be filled up again before he can once more feel whole.

John smirks. “If you promise to take a shower. Then maybe we can discuss that nakedness you were talking about before.”

And that’s an idea Rodney can get behind, so he kisses John again, happy to be caught forever in his gravitational field.

-fin-