Fic: Office Hours 2/3
May. 15th, 2006 08:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneContinued from Part I
Office Hours (Part II)
What he couldn’t figure out was: why he didn’t just tell McKay to go away. He clearly wasn’t there to discuss class business; John was totally within his rights to ask him to scram. Instead he started buying two cups of coffee instead of one; Rodney produced bags of Reese’s Pieces from his bag and spilled them across the desk.
“What do you do with students who are particularly...persistent?” John asked, sitting on Elizabeth’s couch, midway through his third glass of wine.
“Irritating?” Radek asked.
“Persistent,” John repeated. He knew better than to second-guess his own diction.
“Invite them to come have dinner and watch TV,” Elizabeth said.
John choked on his wine. Ronon gave him a couple of manly, verging-on-painful, backpats.
“What?” said Elizabeth, once his face was a less prominent shade of purple. “I’ve invited whole seminars before. It improves morale and encourages a less formal, more open level of discussion.”
The idea of McKay being more open and less restrained with what he chose to say was truly frightening; John still couldn’t believe that he’d let Rodney get away with saying to him the things he had. But after the careful dance of politic, politically correct speech around which the rest of his day revolved, it felt surprisingly good just to hear somebody cut through all the bullshit. Even if he himself never could.
“Yeah, maybe,” John said, and forgot about it as Radek leaned over and topped up his glass.
As soon as he saw Rodney on Thursday, however, he remembered. Rodney had his feet up on John’s desk and he was ranting about James Joyce as he chased a peanut butter M&M around the tabletop. In John’s head he was suddenly transported to Elizabeth’s living room, feet propped casually on her coffee table, drinking her wine, encouraged into a more open level of discourse. John’s ears burned, as if Rodney, tongue loosened by the wine, would have secrets about him to spill. As if Rodney really knew him at all.
It was ridiculous. McKay was a student.
“Rodney,” John said suddenly, interrupting McKay’s “...voted the best novel of the 20th Century by the Modern Library’s board of idiots...” tirade. McKay looked up, batting his hair out of his eyes with an irritated sweep of his hand. He was grinning at John; he looked happy and comfortable in John’s office. “Yes, Professor?” he said, at once managing to make the familiar utterance of John’s title sound sarcastic and reverent. John’s thumb twitched.
“You spend an awful lot of time here,” he heard himself say. “Don’t you have any friends your own age?”
McKay blinked, but he did not look away. “People my age are boring and puerile, and I spend enough enforced time in their company already. Why should I seek out more?”
Because it’s more appropriate, John thought. Not that this wasn’t, but.
“Why don’t you spend more time with your fellow professors, hm?” McKay asked, crunching an M&M. “Professor Brady’s office is right next door; I hear he’s a laugh a minute.”
John couldn’t help making a face; Professor Brady was possibly the most ponderous man John had ever met, despite always having captivating bits of granola stuck in his beard. Rodney saw his expression and grinned, and John found himself grinning back. Suddenly, the idea of Rodney in Elizabeth’s living room didn’t seem so bad; if she started rambling too long about that night’s beverage selection, he’d probably just interrupt her or twist the conversation in some interesting new direction. And it would be nice for Rodney to get to know some more people outside his own puerile age group.
“We’re not all so bad,” he said. “Do you know Professor Weir—Poli Sci? She makes some nice penne arrabiata. Tomorrow we’re watching Battlestar Galactica and—”
“I’m a student,” Rodney interrupted. “You had me with the free food.”
“Great,” said John, shocked he’d been accepted, that he’d made the offer at all. “Good—great.”
He changed his mind once Elizabeth opened the door the next night and he heard Rodney’s voice floating out from the living room, followed by a burst of babble from Radek and capped by the familiar sound of Rodney snorting. Elizabeth raised her eyebrow at him as she beckoned him inside. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought I’d get here first—give you time to prepare.”
Ronon was chopping tomatoes at the counter. “He brought pie,” he said, shrugging.
“The universal passport,” said Elizabeth.
John lowered his voice. “He doesn’t have many friends,” he whispered, feeling like he needed to justify himself, despite the fact that this had kind of been Elizabeth’s suggestion in the first place. (Although, ever diplomatic, she probably would have invited everyone—Cadman and Kavanagh included.) “I don’t think he generally gets along with people very well.”
Elizabeth poured him a glass of wine and pressed it into his hand. “He and Radek seem to be getting along fine.” She walked back over to Ronon, and the food.
John looked down at the glass in his hand and took a sharp swig. Then he went around the corner and up the steps into the living room. “Hey,” he said.
Rodney was sitting on the couch, leaning toward Radek, who was in his usual chair. They were both chewing on thick strips of Ronon’s foccacia. When Rodney glanced up, his lips were shiny with olive oil.
“Hey,” he said. He dunked the bread again even as he licked his lips. “Guess what? Radek’s declaring war on the whole English Department.”
“Oh?” said John. He hesitated for a moment, then sat down on the couch, because that was where he usually sat. He took in Radek’s eyeroll as he reached for a piece of bread. “Why’s that?”
Rodney grinned and elbowed John lightly in the ribs. “Because you seduced me,” John must have overdone it with the vinegar, because he began to choke, “away from EECS—and as others have lamented, away from physics, astronomy, film even. Or so I was once told. Are you okay? You’re not allergic to rosemary, are you?”
John helped himself to some more wine and cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t fine. He felt uneasy and off-balance. He couldn’t concentrate on the TV, even though he was sure what was happening this week was very epic and exciting. He couldn’t concentrate on what anyone was saying. He smiled and chuckled a little and drank the wine Elizabeth poured him, but he felt even less there than usual. Vaguely somnambulant: which was odd, because Rodney was usually better than a dozen cups of coffee at making him feel awake.
He kept expecting Elizabeth to notice and say something, to chastise him for being even more anti-social than usual—and when he’d brought a guest, too! But instead, she just skipped him on the last few rounds of refills. “I see you brought your car for once,” she said, beaming. “That’s good; you can give Rodney a ride. I don’t trust AC Transit this late at night.”
“Um,” said John, watching as Rodney shrugged his denim jacket on over narrow shoulders. “Sure.”
They were still standing in the glow of Elizabeth’s porch light when Rodney turned to him and said, “So what’s up with the three of them? Are they all sleeping together, or do they just take turns?”
John stumbled and nearly dropped the container of leftover pie he was carrying. “Jesus, Rodney!”
“What? That’s a pretty important detail—a vital piece of characterization, I should think! And they’re your friends—aren’t you curious?”
“No,” said John, resolutely, unlocking the car. “It’s none of my business.”
“But it’s interesting,” Rodney said. “The sex bits always are.”
“I do not want to think about Elizabeth’s sex bits,” John said, pulling the car sharply out of park. The Volvo made an indignant noise as John started down the hill.
“Hm,” said Rodney, leaning back in the seat. John spared a glance in his direction, but his face was lost in shadow, the road dark save the sporadic streetlamps and the distant glow of a shrubbery-shrouded baseball field. At the bottom of the hill, the road diverged, and John turned south automatically, toward Berkeley. He’d reached Shattuck Avenue before he realized his mistake. “Oh,” he said, pulling up at a light, washing them both in red. “Have I missed your turn? You have to tell me where you live.”
“Why?” Rodney asked.
It was a question he asked a lot, an expression of his perpetual dissatisfaction with the accepted way of looking at things. John usually liked to hear it, but now it just confused him. “So I can take you home?”
“But why?” Rodney asked, and though John was staring straight ahead, he could feel Rodney’s breath on his neck, slow exhale slipping under his collar. He—he had to be imagining it, and if he looked over at Rodney, if he just looked over, he’d—
Then Rodney’s hand was squeezing his thigh and John nearly crashed the car into the big red tuning fork.
He slammed on the brakes. “What are you—” The car behind them blared its horn, and John, once he’d finished having a tiny heart attack, pulled over into the tiny parking area in front of Shattuck Cinemas. The marquee was still blazing; John felt horribly exposed.
R—McKay was still touching him, hand warm and oddly gentle. “Stop,” said John desperately, pushing him off, banging his elbow on the steering wheel. He felt sick. He’d heard of students cozying up to professors to ensure a good grade, but he’d never thought Rodney—
He still didn’t think Rodney would, not for something like that; and somehow that was even more disconcerting, the thought that he might actually want—
“What are you thinking?” he snapped. “You’re a student—you’re a child. Get out of the car!”
McKay drew back, lips a sharp slanted line. His eyes narrowed. “You’d make a child walk home alone at night?”
John steeled himself, then leaned across McKay’s body and grabbed the door handle, opening it with a shove. “You’re way out of line, McKay,” he said. He sat back, waiting until he heard the click of the seatbelt being undone. “The drop deadline was last week, but I’ll talk to Teyla and see what I can do about securing you a transfer.”
“Right,” said McKay. Movement: a blur in the corner of his eye. “Well. Have fun with Kavanagh. Have a nice, boring life.”
John almost said, Thank you, I will! but the door was already slamming shut.
He sat for a moment, fingers numb and still on the wheel. Then he pulled away from the curb and drove the last few blocks to his house. The last weeks were already rolling backward through his mind; he couldn’t shake the feeling that he really should have seen this coming.
He woke in the middle of the night, sweaty and painfully hard. It surprised him: he’d jerked off before bed, same as always, and that usually did it for him. But the covers were tangled around his calves and his cock was straining against his boxer shorts. Annoyed, he reached down and gripped himself: and immediately he saw Rodney’s face: he felt Rodney’s hand hot on his thigh. He gasped. Shuddering: blinking away the images. Unasked for, unwanted. Totally inappropriate.
On shaky legs, he walked into the bathroom and ran his head under the cold tap until his mind was clear. Towel in hand, he scrubbed fiercely at his scalp. It was three in the morning. One couldn’t be held responsible for three o’clock in the morning.
But it was worse at nine, and at ten. He paced around the apartment; he sat in front of his computer and stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. All he could think about was Rodney: the sharp lines of his wrists as he arranged Reese’s Pieces into patterns on John’s desk; his little intellectually superior grin that somehow included John as his co-conspirator; his voice, the obvious passion in it as he talked about books, about writing. The odd, wonderful combination of innocence and learning, enthusiasm untainted by failure and still so much energy, such conviction that he would be the one to tame the mother tongue, to make it sing. And—and it was disgusting to think that Rodney should want to, to sully himself by—
John threw down the book he had picked up; the sound of it hitting the floor echoed, following him back into the bedroom. He sat down on the edge of the bed, hands in his lap. He looked down at them, disgusted. There were a lot of unpleasant truths that he knew about himself, but he’d never thought himself a pervert.
Quite the opposite, actually. In sex hungry, sexually liberated Berkeley, he’d always felt somewhat out of place: the asexual, the cold fish. There were a few women that he’d dated, and a few more that he’d had sex with, but he’d never seen what all the fuss was all about. Right around the same time Mulciber Rising had fallen away without a whimper, his second novel had died its own passionless death. His hero was supposed to feel a connection with his heroine, but John had felt nothing, could never be made to feel anything. Sex was the least of his worries.
And it still was, he realized with a relieved sigh. Disturbing middle-of-the-night erections aside, he felt no sexual attraction to McKay—he was sure of it. He conjured up Rodney’s image in his head, and it was just as McKay had said of his peers: he was too young, too callow, too puerile. If John had felt anything at all, it was the slightest hint of camaraderie, of friendship; it was a pity that was now gone, wasted, but John had never needed it before. He did not need it now.
Satisfied, he went about his day. He made himself a sandwich, watched a little ESPN, flipped over to the Biography Channel for a while, flipped back to ESPN, turned off the TV and vacuumed his living room, and started rereading East of Eden in preparation for an upcoming class. He was still reading it, holding the book absently against his hip, as he made dinner, flipping the pages with one hand and stirring the pasta sauce with the other. He remembered Rodney, leaning up against his bookshelf, pale arch of neck, and the sauce bubbled over before he remembered to turn down the heat.
He read until it was quite late. It was, he was pretty sure, his fourth time through, but the book was still interesting and engaging; each reading brought out something new. This time it was a particular sympathy for Cathy, who had never loved anybody but her imaginary friend Alice; who Steinbeck himself, the benevolent narrator, wanted to call a monster... John thumbed the corner of the page down, a dreadful habit that he should really be able to break himself of, and flicked out the light. His shoulders felt tight, but the blankets were thick and warm. Up over his ears, they blocked out even the slightest hint of traffic.
In the morning, John noticed that he was out of milk. He was also low on peanut butter, and suffering from a strange craving for strawberries and steak (not together). He pulled on his tweed jacket, grabbed his satchel, and headed for the door.
Someone up there must still like him a little, because his bicycle had once again not been stolen overnight. He snapped on his bike clips and slid out onto the street, pedalling harder than necessary, just to feel his muscles working again. He hated his car, he really did, he should sell it and buy—
The fantasy deserted him, but it didn’t matter: for the moment, he had the wind in his face, and he wove effortlessly between the cars, arcing down Oregon Street and, far too soon, into the parking lot of the Berkeley Bowl.
Inside, he strolled somewhat aimlessly through the produce section. Even off-season, the Bowl had an incredible selection: high towers of more types of oranges than he knew the names for, of mangoes and pears and bananas and plums in a vibrant array of colors, of melons that looked on the verge of toppling over into the cramped aisles. John dodged a shopping cart, slipped past the display of potatoes, and was heading toward the berries when he saw a familiar blond head bent in close contemplation of a cantaloupe. His lungs did something interesting, not dissimilar from an evacuation procedure, and John spun around and ducked down behind a display of pineapples, nearly trodding on a small child in the process.
Okay, so this was more like what he had come to expect: the universe did hate him, after all. Justifiably, it seemed, because while he had actually seen nothing more than Rodney’s shoulders and the back of his neck, John found that he was suddenly proving himself a liar. Want swept through him, heady and intense; he had almost forgotten what it felt like. His breath coming quicker and sweat beading on his brow; the painful-pleasurable ache in his groin. Oh, God—Rodney’s mouth, glossy with oil as he bit off a piece of bread, or the curve of his lips as he sucked chocolate from his fingers. The slope of his cheekbones down toward his lips in the blinking lights of the movie marquee—how could he have never noticed it before?
He shouldn’t be noticing it now. He should—he should turn and leave right away, bike to Safeway or Andronico’s, buy his milk and his strawberries and his steak and work to wipe this from his mind. He could do it, he knew—he’d done it before. He’d felt his father’s cold stare, felt the cold sting of his knuckles—never on his own face, true, but it had been enough, his mother crying behind closed doors. So he’d leeched the anger from himself, the violence and all the emotions that could lead to it. And maybe he’d taken it a little too far, but he was safe with his books, the only sound the quiet rustle of the pages, and for a while, he’d been able to write a world where everyone’s motivations were clear to him. Except, perhaps, his own.
But that was all right, because he wasn’t motivated to need anything, to want anything, except to make it through, to turn the next page, and the next, knowing exactly what he’d find there. But nothing, in all his reading, had spelled out: You will have a panic attack in the Berkeley Bowl’s produce section and abandon what’s left of your dignity hiding behind a pile of pineapples. It was too farcical. A good editor would never let something like that slip by.
Abashed, he pulled himself to his feet. Looking over, he saw that the cantaloupes were now being fondled by a girl in a flowing hippie skirt; McKay was nowhere to be seen. Breathing a sigh of relief, John turned back toward the door.
McKay was standing there, eyes darting nervously between John and a tower of limes. For once, John thought, he seemed to be at a loss for words.
Then he blinked and said, “Well. This is an interesting coincidence.”
“Not really,” said John, meaning interesting was not the word he would choose.
“True,” said McKay, shrugging. John saw that he had several boxes of Annie’s Macaroni & Cheese under his arm. “Statistically, it’s not especially odd. Everyone shops here. If they live nearby,” he added. “I live nearby,” he elaborated, a moment later.
John flushed. He couldn’t believe that McKay was suggesting—that he was still suggesting...
“Are you crazy?” John hissed. “We can’t—”
“Can’t or won’t?” Rodney asked, reasonably. John opened his mouth. “And don’t say ‘don’t want to.’ I won’t believe you. I’ve read you well enough to—”
He stopped suddenly, his jaw clicking shut. Then he set his boxes of macaroni down on top of a stack of Brayburns and walked down the aisle and out the door.
John stared after him for a moment, nearly shaking with indecision. He didn’t have to be. He didn’t have to do anything. He could just stand there—one more minute, maybe two—and nothing would change. Everything would go back to normal.
“Oh, thank God,” Rodney said when he stepped outside, blinking into the sun. And John drew away from the hand that he reached out, but he said, “My bike’s over here” and nodded for Rodney to follow him as he unlatched it. Then he let Rodney lead, striding purposefully down Adeline Street while John trailed behind, walking his bike.
He couldn’t believe he was doing this. He didn’t know why he was doing this.
Rodney’s apartment was behind the Ashby BART, a shabby Victorian that had been divided up into flats. Rodney’s was on the first floor; he unlocked the door, then gestured for John to haul his bicycle up the steps and into the entryhall. In the living room there was a shabby grey couch that looked like it would be more at home in a ‘70s high school teachers’ lounge; there was a TV and an X-Box stacked on a pair of milk crates and a Lord of the Rings poster on the wall. It looked like typical student accommodations, really—which made John uneasy, but not as uneasy as the trio of bedroom doors.
“You have roommates?” John hissed. He felt a rush of anger and stamped it down. “How can you—”
“Relax,” said Rodney, tossing his backpack casually on the couch. “That one,” he indicated the middle door, “is never home—I’ve seen him maybe twice since I’ve moved in. And that one,” he pointed at the door closest to the front of the house, which was closed, “never comes out of his room. He plays World of Warcraft all the time; I think maybe he uses the bathroom and pours himself fresh bowls of cornflakes once in a while. But believe me, the house could burn down around him and he wouldn’t notice.”
Rodney stepped closer. John was aware of every millimeter of distance between them; they still hadn’t even touched. John still wasn’t fully convinced that he wanted to.
Rodney said, “You don’t honestly think that I’d do something stupid, do you?”
John knew that everybody was stupid when they were young. He remembered.
He shook his head, no.
“Good,” said Rodney. He turned and walked toward the back of the apartment.
John followed, trying to think of a way he could politely put Rodney off. He’d come this far and he felt silly, but the idea of, of actually having sex with Rodney, with a student, was even more ridiculous. John stared at Rodney’s back, at his skinny legs and almost invisible ass—he was just a boy, and John wasn’t attracted to boys. He wasn’t attracted to anybody, really.
“In here,” said Rodney, and opened the door to his room.
John’s breath caught. “Oh,” he said, fingers twitching at his sides. “Oh.”
Books. Books everywhere. They were on the shelves, which lined three of the four walls, almost every inch of space that wasn’t taken up by the bed (large) and the dresser (small). In places they were double-stacked, and they were in teetering, Pisa-like towers on the floor. Old books, new books; books in excellent condition with static-free plastic covers in place over their dustjackets; books bare and stained and with pages crumbling, spreading the smell of bookdust, musty and delicious, around the room. John made an incoherent noise. Dimly, he was aware of Rodney taking a seat on the bed, toeing off his shoes, grinning all the while. “It’s all right,” he said. “Feel free to browse.”
John wanted to move in. It was an extremely impressive, if messy and uncoordinated, collection. John liked that about it, kind of. And he’d be willing to bet that Rodney had his own unique system for finding things, a complete catalogue stored away in his brain.
His fingers skimmed randomly over the shelves, and blindly, he pulled away the first book that snagged against his nail. It was an old copy of Alice in Wonderland. He opened it up: the pages were yellowing with age, but on the first sheet, he could clearly see a child’s careful scrawl. This book belongs to Rodney I. McKay.
John shut the book quickly, his hand tight on the spine. He shoved it back on the shelf; he felt clumsy and awkward, suddenly overcome by what he—by what they were about to do: ruin this, this fragile whatever-it-was, with sex. And for what? He didn’t even want...
He felt arms snaking around his back and he jumped a little at the unfamiliar touch, at the warm hands and the slight, ungraceful poke of elbows. He could feel Rodney’s chin against his shoulder, his breath against his neck. His own began to come quicker; then Rodney said, “I could read to you in bed...”
John snorted. He untangled himself: turned and looked Rodney in the eye. “Are you sure you’ve actually had sex?” he asked.
“Yes!” said Rodney, indignant. His hair flopped into his eyes and he brushed it away, annoyed. “Are you sure you have?”
John frowned. “Yes.”
The was a sliver of scepticism in Rodney’s eye, which John, frankly, found kind of insulting. Yet he was at a loss: Rodney was looking at him, lips parted and expression nakedly hungry. John wanted to bolt for the door.
He should be in control of this, he realized: he was older, wiser, the one in the position of power, minor and ridiculous though it might be. But he wasn’t, and he had never been; Rodney had been authoring this little misadventure from the very beginning. The page turned and John turned with it; that was the only way to find out what happened next.
Rodney said, “Come here,” so he came. He’d never been any good at this, following instructions, but he was terrible at giving them, too. And where did that leave him? Here. Here, Rodney said, and ran his hands up John’s chest. John was stiff as a board, but Rodney’s hands were mobile; they moved under his jacket, sliding it off his shoulders. Rodney followed the fabric on its way down, hands caressing his shoulders, learning them, reading them like Braille. John shivered a little. He’d forgotten how it could feel to be touched.
Rodney moved closer, closer, until John could feel the heat from his body. His mouth hovered above John’s collar bone; his hands were firm on John’s biceps. Voice low, “I wish you were wearing your tie,” Rodney said. “I’ve been fantasizing for weeks about taking it off you. Writing little scenes...”
“Is this how you’d write it?” John asked. Rodney’s hands slid down his sides, teasing over his ribs.
“Mm,” said Rodney, lightly brushing his thigh, sniffing his neck. “You know, for once, I think I’d rather stop narrating. I want to see how you’d do it.”
“Me,” said John.
“Yes,” said Rodney, looking up, doing nothing more than gently massaging John’s shoulder blade through his thin cotton shirt. “You.”
John felt a surge of irrational anger. Rodney wasn’t going to make it easy on him. He was going to make him—make him work for something he didn’t even want. More and more, John thought, he was becoming convinced that he was just fulfilling a role in Rodney’s kinky schoolboy fantasy, some cheap piece of pornography that probably involved spanking and an inappropriate use of blackboard erasers. If they were indeed going to debase themselves that way, Rodney could at least have the decency to steer them in the relevant direction.
But no. Rodney just stood there, staring up at him, like he was waiting for John to instil some piece of profound professorial wisdom that John quite clearly lacked. His hands twitched uselessly at his sides, fingering the pockets.
“Okay,” said Rodney, after a minute. “Okay,” and he slid to his knees, pulling at John’s hips, grabbing him by the waist. He started to undo John’s fly, and John felt a flush of perverse satisfaction, knowing that he would find him soft, unresponsive. Cold fish.
But Rodney seemed undeterred. He took John’s cock in his warm hand, dipping his head, slowly taking John into his mouth. John watched all this numbly: it didn’t seem real, that this should be happening, that he should be here, not when less than an hour before, he’d been leaving his apartment to go buy milk. When just a few days before, Rodney had been sitting across from him, safe span of desk between them, ranting about Joyce.
Then Rodney looked up, met John’s eyes with his own brilliant blue ones as his mouth curved into a slight smile around the head of John’s cock. And John gasped, because suddenly it was real, it was happening: he was standing in Rodney’s bedroom with the Sunday afternoon sun drifting in the window, and Rodney was on his knees, Rodney had John’s dick in his mouth, Rodney was blowing him. His own knees felt suddenly weak, and his shoulders fell back against the bookcase, setting it shaking, setting a few volumes tumbling and toppling over. Rodney chuckled, hand pumping over John’s rapidly hardening dick, and John made a choked, incoherent noise. He shouldn’t want this: Rodney, sucking the head of his cock, cheekbones sharper than ever as he sucked, blond fringe tumbling into his eyes. He was John’s student: in two days John would have to stand at the front of the classroom and lecture while Rodney sat at the back and watched him; and every time their eyes met, he would know, they would know... John’s hips bucked forward and Rodney squeezed his thigh, smiled. He knew what he was doing. He was getting what he wanted.
John wanted—he wanted. More than this, even more, and so with effort he forced the words, “Wait, stop,” from his throat. Rodney pulled back, a flicker of nervousness in his eyes, but John, suddenly aware that he was bigger and stronger, yanked him up to his feet. He teetered for a moment, his eye level just below John’s, and then they were kissing, John was kissing him, tasting that wet wide mouth, and he had wanted this, he realized. Had and did: the crook of Rodney’s thumb caressing John’s cheek, and his clothed erection rubbing up against John’s bare one.
Skin: that’s what he wanted, everything laid bare, skin on sweat on skin. “I,” he said, fumbling at Rodney’s pants, and Rodney said, “Yes, yes,” squirming out of his jeans and yanking his t-shirt over his head, revealing a pale, skinny, almost hairless chest that was completely unlike anything John had ever thought he could desire. But it was Rodney’s, Rodney, and John’s mouth was suddenly desperate for each firm bud of nipple, hardening under his tongue, and for Rodney’s navel, warm soft skin, and for Rodney’s cock, jutting eagerly forward. John stopped and stared, and then Rodney’s hands were scrambling at the hem of his shirt, heaving it over his head and tugging John toward the bed. Rodney lay down and guided John on top of him, and yes, that was exactly it, what he wanted: chest to chest, moving over Rodney like a wave. His body felt electrified, alive, feeling thrumming out from his cock and the tips of his toes, and his mouth, moving on the slender curve of Rodney’s neck.
So good: so good: and so dangerous, frightening, to suddenly have this, to want it. Rodney arched under him, and John saw his smooth skin, the soft curve of his mouth, his eyes framed by thick and delicate lashes. He was beautiful, young and perfect and unspoiled: and John could ruin him with a word.
He’d never wanted that kind of power, not after he’d seen how it could be used, abused. But he did have it—he was the grown up, the more experienced one. And—
Rodney’s hands found his ass and squeezed, grinding him down against Rodney’s already spasming cock. His thoughts spun away, and for a moment there was nothing but Rodney beneath him, and his own body, thrilling in a way he had never felt, there, there, and he found Rodney’s mouth and he kissed it, blinking the tears that shouldn’t be falling away from his eyes. Rodney was smiling and making soft little contented noises, sated and pleased. John felt it, too—a physical lightness, weightlessness—but his heart was a heavy stone. He didn’t see how this could possibly end well, or how, once he’d cracked and let himself have something, he could ever bring himself to let it go.
“Not bad for a first draft,” said Rodney, and John wished he still had power over words, so he could write it, their happy ending.
More soon—after exams are over, probably. *crosses fingers*
What he couldn’t figure out was: why he didn’t just tell McKay to go away. He clearly wasn’t there to discuss class business; John was totally within his rights to ask him to scram. Instead he started buying two cups of coffee instead of one; Rodney produced bags of Reese’s Pieces from his bag and spilled them across the desk.
“What do you do with students who are particularly...persistent?” John asked, sitting on Elizabeth’s couch, midway through his third glass of wine.
“Irritating?” Radek asked.
“Persistent,” John repeated. He knew better than to second-guess his own diction.
“Invite them to come have dinner and watch TV,” Elizabeth said.
John choked on his wine. Ronon gave him a couple of manly, verging-on-painful, backpats.
“What?” said Elizabeth, once his face was a less prominent shade of purple. “I’ve invited whole seminars before. It improves morale and encourages a less formal, more open level of discussion.”
The idea of McKay being more open and less restrained with what he chose to say was truly frightening; John still couldn’t believe that he’d let Rodney get away with saying to him the things he had. But after the careful dance of politic, politically correct speech around which the rest of his day revolved, it felt surprisingly good just to hear somebody cut through all the bullshit. Even if he himself never could.
“Yeah, maybe,” John said, and forgot about it as Radek leaned over and topped up his glass.
As soon as he saw Rodney on Thursday, however, he remembered. Rodney had his feet up on John’s desk and he was ranting about James Joyce as he chased a peanut butter M&M around the tabletop. In John’s head he was suddenly transported to Elizabeth’s living room, feet propped casually on her coffee table, drinking her wine, encouraged into a more open level of discourse. John’s ears burned, as if Rodney, tongue loosened by the wine, would have secrets about him to spill. As if Rodney really knew him at all.
It was ridiculous. McKay was a student.
“Rodney,” John said suddenly, interrupting McKay’s “...voted the best novel of the 20th Century by the Modern Library’s board of idiots...” tirade. McKay looked up, batting his hair out of his eyes with an irritated sweep of his hand. He was grinning at John; he looked happy and comfortable in John’s office. “Yes, Professor?” he said, at once managing to make the familiar utterance of John’s title sound sarcastic and reverent. John’s thumb twitched.
“You spend an awful lot of time here,” he heard himself say. “Don’t you have any friends your own age?”
McKay blinked, but he did not look away. “People my age are boring and puerile, and I spend enough enforced time in their company already. Why should I seek out more?”
Because it’s more appropriate, John thought. Not that this wasn’t, but.
“Why don’t you spend more time with your fellow professors, hm?” McKay asked, crunching an M&M. “Professor Brady’s office is right next door; I hear he’s a laugh a minute.”
John couldn’t help making a face; Professor Brady was possibly the most ponderous man John had ever met, despite always having captivating bits of granola stuck in his beard. Rodney saw his expression and grinned, and John found himself grinning back. Suddenly, the idea of Rodney in Elizabeth’s living room didn’t seem so bad; if she started rambling too long about that night’s beverage selection, he’d probably just interrupt her or twist the conversation in some interesting new direction. And it would be nice for Rodney to get to know some more people outside his own puerile age group.
“We’re not all so bad,” he said. “Do you know Professor Weir—Poli Sci? She makes some nice penne arrabiata. Tomorrow we’re watching Battlestar Galactica and—”
“I’m a student,” Rodney interrupted. “You had me with the free food.”
“Great,” said John, shocked he’d been accepted, that he’d made the offer at all. “Good—great.”
He changed his mind once Elizabeth opened the door the next night and he heard Rodney’s voice floating out from the living room, followed by a burst of babble from Radek and capped by the familiar sound of Rodney snorting. Elizabeth raised her eyebrow at him as she beckoned him inside. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought I’d get here first—give you time to prepare.”
Ronon was chopping tomatoes at the counter. “He brought pie,” he said, shrugging.
“The universal passport,” said Elizabeth.
John lowered his voice. “He doesn’t have many friends,” he whispered, feeling like he needed to justify himself, despite the fact that this had kind of been Elizabeth’s suggestion in the first place. (Although, ever diplomatic, she probably would have invited everyone—Cadman and Kavanagh included.) “I don’t think he generally gets along with people very well.”
Elizabeth poured him a glass of wine and pressed it into his hand. “He and Radek seem to be getting along fine.” She walked back over to Ronon, and the food.
John looked down at the glass in his hand and took a sharp swig. Then he went around the corner and up the steps into the living room. “Hey,” he said.
Rodney was sitting on the couch, leaning toward Radek, who was in his usual chair. They were both chewing on thick strips of Ronon’s foccacia. When Rodney glanced up, his lips were shiny with olive oil.
“Hey,” he said. He dunked the bread again even as he licked his lips. “Guess what? Radek’s declaring war on the whole English Department.”
“Oh?” said John. He hesitated for a moment, then sat down on the couch, because that was where he usually sat. He took in Radek’s eyeroll as he reached for a piece of bread. “Why’s that?”
Rodney grinned and elbowed John lightly in the ribs. “Because you seduced me,” John must have overdone it with the vinegar, because he began to choke, “away from EECS—and as others have lamented, away from physics, astronomy, film even. Or so I was once told. Are you okay? You’re not allergic to rosemary, are you?”
John helped himself to some more wine and cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t fine. He felt uneasy and off-balance. He couldn’t concentrate on the TV, even though he was sure what was happening this week was very epic and exciting. He couldn’t concentrate on what anyone was saying. He smiled and chuckled a little and drank the wine Elizabeth poured him, but he felt even less there than usual. Vaguely somnambulant: which was odd, because Rodney was usually better than a dozen cups of coffee at making him feel awake.
He kept expecting Elizabeth to notice and say something, to chastise him for being even more anti-social than usual—and when he’d brought a guest, too! But instead, she just skipped him on the last few rounds of refills. “I see you brought your car for once,” she said, beaming. “That’s good; you can give Rodney a ride. I don’t trust AC Transit this late at night.”
“Um,” said John, watching as Rodney shrugged his denim jacket on over narrow shoulders. “Sure.”
They were still standing in the glow of Elizabeth’s porch light when Rodney turned to him and said, “So what’s up with the three of them? Are they all sleeping together, or do they just take turns?”
John stumbled and nearly dropped the container of leftover pie he was carrying. “Jesus, Rodney!”
“What? That’s a pretty important detail—a vital piece of characterization, I should think! And they’re your friends—aren’t you curious?”
“No,” said John, resolutely, unlocking the car. “It’s none of my business.”
“But it’s interesting,” Rodney said. “The sex bits always are.”
“I do not want to think about Elizabeth’s sex bits,” John said, pulling the car sharply out of park. The Volvo made an indignant noise as John started down the hill.
“Hm,” said Rodney, leaning back in the seat. John spared a glance in his direction, but his face was lost in shadow, the road dark save the sporadic streetlamps and the distant glow of a shrubbery-shrouded baseball field. At the bottom of the hill, the road diverged, and John turned south automatically, toward Berkeley. He’d reached Shattuck Avenue before he realized his mistake. “Oh,” he said, pulling up at a light, washing them both in red. “Have I missed your turn? You have to tell me where you live.”
“Why?” Rodney asked.
It was a question he asked a lot, an expression of his perpetual dissatisfaction with the accepted way of looking at things. John usually liked to hear it, but now it just confused him. “So I can take you home?”
“But why?” Rodney asked, and though John was staring straight ahead, he could feel Rodney’s breath on his neck, slow exhale slipping under his collar. He—he had to be imagining it, and if he looked over at Rodney, if he just looked over, he’d—
Then Rodney’s hand was squeezing his thigh and John nearly crashed the car into the big red tuning fork.
He slammed on the brakes. “What are you—” The car behind them blared its horn, and John, once he’d finished having a tiny heart attack, pulled over into the tiny parking area in front of Shattuck Cinemas. The marquee was still blazing; John felt horribly exposed.
R—McKay was still touching him, hand warm and oddly gentle. “Stop,” said John desperately, pushing him off, banging his elbow on the steering wheel. He felt sick. He’d heard of students cozying up to professors to ensure a good grade, but he’d never thought Rodney—
He still didn’t think Rodney would, not for something like that; and somehow that was even more disconcerting, the thought that he might actually want—
“What are you thinking?” he snapped. “You’re a student—you’re a child. Get out of the car!”
McKay drew back, lips a sharp slanted line. His eyes narrowed. “You’d make a child walk home alone at night?”
John steeled himself, then leaned across McKay’s body and grabbed the door handle, opening it with a shove. “You’re way out of line, McKay,” he said. He sat back, waiting until he heard the click of the seatbelt being undone. “The drop deadline was last week, but I’ll talk to Teyla and see what I can do about securing you a transfer.”
“Right,” said McKay. Movement: a blur in the corner of his eye. “Well. Have fun with Kavanagh. Have a nice, boring life.”
John almost said, Thank you, I will! but the door was already slamming shut.
He sat for a moment, fingers numb and still on the wheel. Then he pulled away from the curb and drove the last few blocks to his house. The last weeks were already rolling backward through his mind; he couldn’t shake the feeling that he really should have seen this coming.
He woke in the middle of the night, sweaty and painfully hard. It surprised him: he’d jerked off before bed, same as always, and that usually did it for him. But the covers were tangled around his calves and his cock was straining against his boxer shorts. Annoyed, he reached down and gripped himself: and immediately he saw Rodney’s face: he felt Rodney’s hand hot on his thigh. He gasped. Shuddering: blinking away the images. Unasked for, unwanted. Totally inappropriate.
On shaky legs, he walked into the bathroom and ran his head under the cold tap until his mind was clear. Towel in hand, he scrubbed fiercely at his scalp. It was three in the morning. One couldn’t be held responsible for three o’clock in the morning.
But it was worse at nine, and at ten. He paced around the apartment; he sat in front of his computer and stared at the blinking cursor on the screen. All he could think about was Rodney: the sharp lines of his wrists as he arranged Reese’s Pieces into patterns on John’s desk; his little intellectually superior grin that somehow included John as his co-conspirator; his voice, the obvious passion in it as he talked about books, about writing. The odd, wonderful combination of innocence and learning, enthusiasm untainted by failure and still so much energy, such conviction that he would be the one to tame the mother tongue, to make it sing. And—and it was disgusting to think that Rodney should want to, to sully himself by—
John threw down the book he had picked up; the sound of it hitting the floor echoed, following him back into the bedroom. He sat down on the edge of the bed, hands in his lap. He looked down at them, disgusted. There were a lot of unpleasant truths that he knew about himself, but he’d never thought himself a pervert.
Quite the opposite, actually. In sex hungry, sexually liberated Berkeley, he’d always felt somewhat out of place: the asexual, the cold fish. There were a few women that he’d dated, and a few more that he’d had sex with, but he’d never seen what all the fuss was all about. Right around the same time Mulciber Rising had fallen away without a whimper, his second novel had died its own passionless death. His hero was supposed to feel a connection with his heroine, but John had felt nothing, could never be made to feel anything. Sex was the least of his worries.
And it still was, he realized with a relieved sigh. Disturbing middle-of-the-night erections aside, he felt no sexual attraction to McKay—he was sure of it. He conjured up Rodney’s image in his head, and it was just as McKay had said of his peers: he was too young, too callow, too puerile. If John had felt anything at all, it was the slightest hint of camaraderie, of friendship; it was a pity that was now gone, wasted, but John had never needed it before. He did not need it now.
Satisfied, he went about his day. He made himself a sandwich, watched a little ESPN, flipped over to the Biography Channel for a while, flipped back to ESPN, turned off the TV and vacuumed his living room, and started rereading East of Eden in preparation for an upcoming class. He was still reading it, holding the book absently against his hip, as he made dinner, flipping the pages with one hand and stirring the pasta sauce with the other. He remembered Rodney, leaning up against his bookshelf, pale arch of neck, and the sauce bubbled over before he remembered to turn down the heat.
He read until it was quite late. It was, he was pretty sure, his fourth time through, but the book was still interesting and engaging; each reading brought out something new. This time it was a particular sympathy for Cathy, who had never loved anybody but her imaginary friend Alice; who Steinbeck himself, the benevolent narrator, wanted to call a monster... John thumbed the corner of the page down, a dreadful habit that he should really be able to break himself of, and flicked out the light. His shoulders felt tight, but the blankets were thick and warm. Up over his ears, they blocked out even the slightest hint of traffic.
In the morning, John noticed that he was out of milk. He was also low on peanut butter, and suffering from a strange craving for strawberries and steak (not together). He pulled on his tweed jacket, grabbed his satchel, and headed for the door.
Someone up there must still like him a little, because his bicycle had once again not been stolen overnight. He snapped on his bike clips and slid out onto the street, pedalling harder than necessary, just to feel his muscles working again. He hated his car, he really did, he should sell it and buy—
The fantasy deserted him, but it didn’t matter: for the moment, he had the wind in his face, and he wove effortlessly between the cars, arcing down Oregon Street and, far too soon, into the parking lot of the Berkeley Bowl.
Inside, he strolled somewhat aimlessly through the produce section. Even off-season, the Bowl had an incredible selection: high towers of more types of oranges than he knew the names for, of mangoes and pears and bananas and plums in a vibrant array of colors, of melons that looked on the verge of toppling over into the cramped aisles. John dodged a shopping cart, slipped past the display of potatoes, and was heading toward the berries when he saw a familiar blond head bent in close contemplation of a cantaloupe. His lungs did something interesting, not dissimilar from an evacuation procedure, and John spun around and ducked down behind a display of pineapples, nearly trodding on a small child in the process.
Okay, so this was more like what he had come to expect: the universe did hate him, after all. Justifiably, it seemed, because while he had actually seen nothing more than Rodney’s shoulders and the back of his neck, John found that he was suddenly proving himself a liar. Want swept through him, heady and intense; he had almost forgotten what it felt like. His breath coming quicker and sweat beading on his brow; the painful-pleasurable ache in his groin. Oh, God—Rodney’s mouth, glossy with oil as he bit off a piece of bread, or the curve of his lips as he sucked chocolate from his fingers. The slope of his cheekbones down toward his lips in the blinking lights of the movie marquee—how could he have never noticed it before?
He shouldn’t be noticing it now. He should—he should turn and leave right away, bike to Safeway or Andronico’s, buy his milk and his strawberries and his steak and work to wipe this from his mind. He could do it, he knew—he’d done it before. He’d felt his father’s cold stare, felt the cold sting of his knuckles—never on his own face, true, but it had been enough, his mother crying behind closed doors. So he’d leeched the anger from himself, the violence and all the emotions that could lead to it. And maybe he’d taken it a little too far, but he was safe with his books, the only sound the quiet rustle of the pages, and for a while, he’d been able to write a world where everyone’s motivations were clear to him. Except, perhaps, his own.
But that was all right, because he wasn’t motivated to need anything, to want anything, except to make it through, to turn the next page, and the next, knowing exactly what he’d find there. But nothing, in all his reading, had spelled out: You will have a panic attack in the Berkeley Bowl’s produce section and abandon what’s left of your dignity hiding behind a pile of pineapples. It was too farcical. A good editor would never let something like that slip by.
Abashed, he pulled himself to his feet. Looking over, he saw that the cantaloupes were now being fondled by a girl in a flowing hippie skirt; McKay was nowhere to be seen. Breathing a sigh of relief, John turned back toward the door.
McKay was standing there, eyes darting nervously between John and a tower of limes. For once, John thought, he seemed to be at a loss for words.
Then he blinked and said, “Well. This is an interesting coincidence.”
“Not really,” said John, meaning interesting was not the word he would choose.
“True,” said McKay, shrugging. John saw that he had several boxes of Annie’s Macaroni & Cheese under his arm. “Statistically, it’s not especially odd. Everyone shops here. If they live nearby,” he added. “I live nearby,” he elaborated, a moment later.
John flushed. He couldn’t believe that McKay was suggesting—that he was still suggesting...
“Are you crazy?” John hissed. “We can’t—”
“Can’t or won’t?” Rodney asked, reasonably. John opened his mouth. “And don’t say ‘don’t want to.’ I won’t believe you. I’ve read you well enough to—”
He stopped suddenly, his jaw clicking shut. Then he set his boxes of macaroni down on top of a stack of Brayburns and walked down the aisle and out the door.
John stared after him for a moment, nearly shaking with indecision. He didn’t have to be. He didn’t have to do anything. He could just stand there—one more minute, maybe two—and nothing would change. Everything would go back to normal.
“Oh, thank God,” Rodney said when he stepped outside, blinking into the sun. And John drew away from the hand that he reached out, but he said, “My bike’s over here” and nodded for Rodney to follow him as he unlatched it. Then he let Rodney lead, striding purposefully down Adeline Street while John trailed behind, walking his bike.
He couldn’t believe he was doing this. He didn’t know why he was doing this.
Rodney’s apartment was behind the Ashby BART, a shabby Victorian that had been divided up into flats. Rodney’s was on the first floor; he unlocked the door, then gestured for John to haul his bicycle up the steps and into the entryhall. In the living room there was a shabby grey couch that looked like it would be more at home in a ‘70s high school teachers’ lounge; there was a TV and an X-Box stacked on a pair of milk crates and a Lord of the Rings poster on the wall. It looked like typical student accommodations, really—which made John uneasy, but not as uneasy as the trio of bedroom doors.
“You have roommates?” John hissed. He felt a rush of anger and stamped it down. “How can you—”
“Relax,” said Rodney, tossing his backpack casually on the couch. “That one,” he indicated the middle door, “is never home—I’ve seen him maybe twice since I’ve moved in. And that one,” he pointed at the door closest to the front of the house, which was closed, “never comes out of his room. He plays World of Warcraft all the time; I think maybe he uses the bathroom and pours himself fresh bowls of cornflakes once in a while. But believe me, the house could burn down around him and he wouldn’t notice.”
Rodney stepped closer. John was aware of every millimeter of distance between them; they still hadn’t even touched. John still wasn’t fully convinced that he wanted to.
Rodney said, “You don’t honestly think that I’d do something stupid, do you?”
John knew that everybody was stupid when they were young. He remembered.
He shook his head, no.
“Good,” said Rodney. He turned and walked toward the back of the apartment.
John followed, trying to think of a way he could politely put Rodney off. He’d come this far and he felt silly, but the idea of, of actually having sex with Rodney, with a student, was even more ridiculous. John stared at Rodney’s back, at his skinny legs and almost invisible ass—he was just a boy, and John wasn’t attracted to boys. He wasn’t attracted to anybody, really.
“In here,” said Rodney, and opened the door to his room.
John’s breath caught. “Oh,” he said, fingers twitching at his sides. “Oh.”
Books. Books everywhere. They were on the shelves, which lined three of the four walls, almost every inch of space that wasn’t taken up by the bed (large) and the dresser (small). In places they were double-stacked, and they were in teetering, Pisa-like towers on the floor. Old books, new books; books in excellent condition with static-free plastic covers in place over their dustjackets; books bare and stained and with pages crumbling, spreading the smell of bookdust, musty and delicious, around the room. John made an incoherent noise. Dimly, he was aware of Rodney taking a seat on the bed, toeing off his shoes, grinning all the while. “It’s all right,” he said. “Feel free to browse.”
John wanted to move in. It was an extremely impressive, if messy and uncoordinated, collection. John liked that about it, kind of. And he’d be willing to bet that Rodney had his own unique system for finding things, a complete catalogue stored away in his brain.
His fingers skimmed randomly over the shelves, and blindly, he pulled away the first book that snagged against his nail. It was an old copy of Alice in Wonderland. He opened it up: the pages were yellowing with age, but on the first sheet, he could clearly see a child’s careful scrawl. This book belongs to Rodney I. McKay.
John shut the book quickly, his hand tight on the spine. He shoved it back on the shelf; he felt clumsy and awkward, suddenly overcome by what he—by what they were about to do: ruin this, this fragile whatever-it-was, with sex. And for what? He didn’t even want...
He felt arms snaking around his back and he jumped a little at the unfamiliar touch, at the warm hands and the slight, ungraceful poke of elbows. He could feel Rodney’s chin against his shoulder, his breath against his neck. His own began to come quicker; then Rodney said, “I could read to you in bed...”
John snorted. He untangled himself: turned and looked Rodney in the eye. “Are you sure you’ve actually had sex?” he asked.
“Yes!” said Rodney, indignant. His hair flopped into his eyes and he brushed it away, annoyed. “Are you sure you have?”
John frowned. “Yes.”
The was a sliver of scepticism in Rodney’s eye, which John, frankly, found kind of insulting. Yet he was at a loss: Rodney was looking at him, lips parted and expression nakedly hungry. John wanted to bolt for the door.
He should be in control of this, he realized: he was older, wiser, the one in the position of power, minor and ridiculous though it might be. But he wasn’t, and he had never been; Rodney had been authoring this little misadventure from the very beginning. The page turned and John turned with it; that was the only way to find out what happened next.
Rodney said, “Come here,” so he came. He’d never been any good at this, following instructions, but he was terrible at giving them, too. And where did that leave him? Here. Here, Rodney said, and ran his hands up John’s chest. John was stiff as a board, but Rodney’s hands were mobile; they moved under his jacket, sliding it off his shoulders. Rodney followed the fabric on its way down, hands caressing his shoulders, learning them, reading them like Braille. John shivered a little. He’d forgotten how it could feel to be touched.
Rodney moved closer, closer, until John could feel the heat from his body. His mouth hovered above John’s collar bone; his hands were firm on John’s biceps. Voice low, “I wish you were wearing your tie,” Rodney said. “I’ve been fantasizing for weeks about taking it off you. Writing little scenes...”
“Is this how you’d write it?” John asked. Rodney’s hands slid down his sides, teasing over his ribs.
“Mm,” said Rodney, lightly brushing his thigh, sniffing his neck. “You know, for once, I think I’d rather stop narrating. I want to see how you’d do it.”
“Me,” said John.
“Yes,” said Rodney, looking up, doing nothing more than gently massaging John’s shoulder blade through his thin cotton shirt. “You.”
John felt a surge of irrational anger. Rodney wasn’t going to make it easy on him. He was going to make him—make him work for something he didn’t even want. More and more, John thought, he was becoming convinced that he was just fulfilling a role in Rodney’s kinky schoolboy fantasy, some cheap piece of pornography that probably involved spanking and an inappropriate use of blackboard erasers. If they were indeed going to debase themselves that way, Rodney could at least have the decency to steer them in the relevant direction.
But no. Rodney just stood there, staring up at him, like he was waiting for John to instil some piece of profound professorial wisdom that John quite clearly lacked. His hands twitched uselessly at his sides, fingering the pockets.
“Okay,” said Rodney, after a minute. “Okay,” and he slid to his knees, pulling at John’s hips, grabbing him by the waist. He started to undo John’s fly, and John felt a flush of perverse satisfaction, knowing that he would find him soft, unresponsive. Cold fish.
But Rodney seemed undeterred. He took John’s cock in his warm hand, dipping his head, slowly taking John into his mouth. John watched all this numbly: it didn’t seem real, that this should be happening, that he should be here, not when less than an hour before, he’d been leaving his apartment to go buy milk. When just a few days before, Rodney had been sitting across from him, safe span of desk between them, ranting about Joyce.
Then Rodney looked up, met John’s eyes with his own brilliant blue ones as his mouth curved into a slight smile around the head of John’s cock. And John gasped, because suddenly it was real, it was happening: he was standing in Rodney’s bedroom with the Sunday afternoon sun drifting in the window, and Rodney was on his knees, Rodney had John’s dick in his mouth, Rodney was blowing him. His own knees felt suddenly weak, and his shoulders fell back against the bookcase, setting it shaking, setting a few volumes tumbling and toppling over. Rodney chuckled, hand pumping over John’s rapidly hardening dick, and John made a choked, incoherent noise. He shouldn’t want this: Rodney, sucking the head of his cock, cheekbones sharper than ever as he sucked, blond fringe tumbling into his eyes. He was John’s student: in two days John would have to stand at the front of the classroom and lecture while Rodney sat at the back and watched him; and every time their eyes met, he would know, they would know... John’s hips bucked forward and Rodney squeezed his thigh, smiled. He knew what he was doing. He was getting what he wanted.
John wanted—he wanted. More than this, even more, and so with effort he forced the words, “Wait, stop,” from his throat. Rodney pulled back, a flicker of nervousness in his eyes, but John, suddenly aware that he was bigger and stronger, yanked him up to his feet. He teetered for a moment, his eye level just below John’s, and then they were kissing, John was kissing him, tasting that wet wide mouth, and he had wanted this, he realized. Had and did: the crook of Rodney’s thumb caressing John’s cheek, and his clothed erection rubbing up against John’s bare one.
Skin: that’s what he wanted, everything laid bare, skin on sweat on skin. “I,” he said, fumbling at Rodney’s pants, and Rodney said, “Yes, yes,” squirming out of his jeans and yanking his t-shirt over his head, revealing a pale, skinny, almost hairless chest that was completely unlike anything John had ever thought he could desire. But it was Rodney’s, Rodney, and John’s mouth was suddenly desperate for each firm bud of nipple, hardening under his tongue, and for Rodney’s navel, warm soft skin, and for Rodney’s cock, jutting eagerly forward. John stopped and stared, and then Rodney’s hands were scrambling at the hem of his shirt, heaving it over his head and tugging John toward the bed. Rodney lay down and guided John on top of him, and yes, that was exactly it, what he wanted: chest to chest, moving over Rodney like a wave. His body felt electrified, alive, feeling thrumming out from his cock and the tips of his toes, and his mouth, moving on the slender curve of Rodney’s neck.
So good: so good: and so dangerous, frightening, to suddenly have this, to want it. Rodney arched under him, and John saw his smooth skin, the soft curve of his mouth, his eyes framed by thick and delicate lashes. He was beautiful, young and perfect and unspoiled: and John could ruin him with a word.
He’d never wanted that kind of power, not after he’d seen how it could be used, abused. But he did have it—he was the grown up, the more experienced one. And—
Rodney’s hands found his ass and squeezed, grinding him down against Rodney’s already spasming cock. His thoughts spun away, and for a moment there was nothing but Rodney beneath him, and his own body, thrilling in a way he had never felt, there, there, and he found Rodney’s mouth and he kissed it, blinking the tears that shouldn’t be falling away from his eyes. Rodney was smiling and making soft little contented noises, sated and pleased. John felt it, too—a physical lightness, weightlessness—but his heart was a heavy stone. He didn’t see how this could possibly end well, or how, once he’d cracked and let himself have something, he could ever bring himself to let it go.
“Not bad for a first draft,” said Rodney, and John wished he still had power over words, so he could write it, their happy ending.
More soon—after exams are over, probably. *crosses fingers*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-15 08:29 pm (UTC)Why is this - and John spun around and ducked down behind a display of pineapples, nearly trodding on a small child in the process - funny as hell?
Why is this - He could feel Rodney’s chin against his shoulder, his breath against his neck. His own began to come quicker; then Rodney said, “I could read to you in bed...” - so incredibly hot?
And why do I feel you're gonna break my heart with this?
Good luck with the exams!