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“I am still puzzled by this phrase,” Teyla persisted. “Why seven years and not six or eight? And is it always required to use the ceremony of marriage as a starting point?”
“People used to assume that if a couple were serious about each other, they’d get married pretty soon after starting a relationship,” explained Rodney around a mouthful of mashed not-potatoes.
“But what if they were not allowed? It was not until three years ago that you and John were finally able to marry. Before that your people’s laws...”
“His people’s laws, my people adopted civilized marriage laws considerably longer ago.”
“My point is that the two of you have known each other for several years more than you have been married. Are these years not thought to contribute to the ‘itch’?”
“Well, for one thing, we weren’t, uh, together for all of those years. We didn’t exactly jump on each other the first time we met in Antarctica.”
“I dunno, Rodney, that orange fleece was pretty hard to resist,” John put in.
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time you have a birthday coming up, Sheppard.” John grinned fondly, not at all put out that his husband still often – but not always –called him by his last name. “What I mean, Teyla, is that our relationship evolved gradually from colleagues to friends to, well, more-than-friends. It was pretty much a continuous process.”
“When’s the first time you had sex?” asked Ronon in a practical tone. Teyla shot him a look that suggested it had been accompanied by a kick underneath the table, and John looked slightly alarmed, but Rodney took the question all too seriously.
“Well, depending on how you define that term...”
“Rodney,” said John.
“...and taking into account the context in which the specific actions that are deemed to constitute ‘sex’ occurred...”
“Rodney?”
“...as well as the significance of said actions to the parties involved...”
“RODNEY!”
“WHAT? I’m just explaining why we shouldn’t count PX5-926 because the only reason it happened was that we were trying to keep from being put to death for allegedly defiling what was supposedly a temple even though it looked more like the Kensington Market, plus it was absolutely the worst blowjob I’ve ever given in my life and even if it had been a half-decent blowjob – which it wasn’t – neither of us would have gotten much out of it because there were large, scary guards with swords standing within a metre of us the entire time!”
Triumphant at having finished his sentence uninterrupted, Rodney scooped up another forkful of not-potatoes. It was only when he looked up from his plate that he realized that John was hiding his face in his hands, Ronon was grinning, Teyla was doing a fair job of pretending she was eating lunch on a different planet from the rest of the team, and the entire mess hall had gotten very, very quiet.
“Oh. Was that, uh?”
“Yes, Rodney,” gritted John, “That was your outside voice.”
“Oh. I’ll just, uh – I have work to do! Right now!” Rodney got to his feet, stuck his pudding cup in his pocket, grabbed his tray and beat a hasty retreat.
“Okay, so when was the next time after that?” asked Ronon.
***
John was not particularly alarmed when Rodney failed to show up either at dinner or in their quarters later that evening. Rodney worked late fewer nights than he used to, but it still wasn’t unknown for him to come stumbling back from the lab in the wee hours. John stuck a note on the bathroom mirror – “Wake me when you get in ;-)” – read for a while, thought the lights out and fell asleep.
He was a little more put out to wake up the next morning and discover that he was still Rodney-less. He picked up his radio.
“Hey, Ronon? Gonna have to cancel on our run this morning... No, I’m going to check the labs first... Okay, thanks for the offer, we may need that search party yet...”
Sure enough, the labs were empty except for one astrophysicist, sprawled out across his keyboard in a position that was guaranteed to kill his back. John prudently got the coffee started before attempting to wake him.
“Hey, Rodney.”
“F’off.”
“Rodney? You’re asleep on your keyboard.”
“Whuzzakib... Oh. Oh, is that coffee?”
“Yes, I’m making coffee. It’ll be done soon.”
Rodney pried himself out of his chair and stumbled into the washroom. When he returned a few moments later he looked slightly more awake. John handed him a mug of coffee.
“Thank you. So... are you still mad at me?”
“Nah. I wasn’t to start with, not much anyway. You?”
“Me neither. I was mostly embarrassed.”
“Yeah, that too.”
Rodney finished inhaling his first mug and got a refill. He and John sipped in companionable silence. Then:
“It’s an interesting question, though.”
“Ronon’s?”
“No, Hamlet’s. Seriously, if you discount all acts undertaken for the purpose of avoiding death and/or gaining ZPMs that might be considered sexual if they’d taken place in a different context...”
“Including kissing?”
“What are you, twelve? Kissing is not, in and of itself, sex.”
“Even if there’s tongue?” John asked and then ran his own tongue over his lips just to watch Rodney’s reaction. After all these years – however many of them counted – Rodney still got this look.
“Leaving aside kissing, with tongue or otherwise, when’s the first time we had sex on Atlantis?”
“Nah, you can’t count that. That was after MG2-841.”
“Oh, right. Planet of the Time-Delayed Alien Sex Pollen.”
“Yeah. The pollen whose effects kicked in 24 hours after exposure.” John’s tone was reminiscent.
“Twelve hours after we’d already cleared the infirmary.”
“While we were in the jumper bay trying to track down the hinkiness in Jumper 1’s handling.”
“The hinkiness you claimed existed in Jumper 1’s handling. Not that I’m complaining. It could have happened in the labs.”
“Scientists scarred for life.”
“Oh, please. My people are hardly that innocent. I meant it would have undermined my ruthless image. Anyway, you can’t count that, it wasn’t sex with intent.”
“So your criteria are sex – more than kissing – with intent on Atlantis? Jeez, Rodney, don’t you think you might be over-determining the system?”
“No, I don’t think I am – Sheppard, why are you pouting?”
“I’m not...”
“Oh, yes, you are. You’re doing that thing with your lips and your eyes – oh! You’ve got a specific incident in mind that doesn’t meet my criteria, so you’re trying to get me to change them. Are you ever going to just learn to say what you want? No, never mind that. What incident?”
“M5R-691.”
“M5R-691?”
“With the hot springs.”
“Oh, you mean the planet with the warring political factions where we got kidnapped by an insane and suicidal splinter faction who thought it would be smart to hide us in the middle of nowhere in a bunch of ruins...”
“With hot springs.”
“Except then they got themselves killed, at which point no one knew where we were including us and it was five days before Lorne’s team showed up with a jumper? Five days having to camp out...”
“With adequate shelter, two sleeping bags, plenty of food – and hot springs.”
“You’re making it sound as if it were a vacation at a luxury resort. Anyway, that’s irrelevant. The point is that it wasn’t our intent to be there.”
“No, but it wasn’t our kidnappers’ intent for us to have sex. As far as they were concerned, we could have spent the time playing tic-tac-toe.”
“Please, I would have insisted on chess. And it wasn’t my intent to have sex either. My intent was to wash myself and my clothes.”
“Yeah,” John smirked, maneuvering closer. “You got all... wet. And pink and... touchable.”
“’Touchable’ doesn’t mean you have to touch, Sheppard, we’ve been over this again and again with regard to Ancient tech!”
“You’re not Ancient tech, Rodney. And I wasn’t touching because I had to, I was touching with intent.” The words came out low, not quite in a growl.
“John? You’re looking, uh, predatory.” Ah, there it was – the surest of Rodney’s tells: John.
“Rodney, we were completely alone, we weren’t in immediate danger of death and I remember watching you and thinking that if I couldn’t get up the nerve then, I might never have another chance.” And finally John was close enough to pull his husband to him, run his hands along Rodney’s back, nuzzle Rodney’s sweaty neck.
“I touched back with intent,” Rodney admitted to John’s shoulder.
“Yes, Rodney, you did.”
“We ended up getting very clean.”
“Yes, we did,” John murmured against Rodney’s temple.
“Very, very clean.”
“Mmmm.”
“More than once.”
“Couldn’t have done that just once. Not with you.”
“John.”
“Mmmm.”
“Good morning, Colonel, Rodney.” Rodney yelped and yanked himself out of John’s grip. “Chuck? This is Radek. 07:05.”
“Radek, did you ever hear of knocking? And why are you radioing Chuck with the time? Unless – no. Please tell me there’s not a betting pool on how long it would take Sheppard and me to make up.”
“I would have knocked if I had known there was reason to knock. And of course there was a pool, Rodney. After the scene in the mess yesterday...”
“At which you were not present.”
“Which does not matter because we have radios and the Internet. Within an hour the story was already all over the city.”
“Which obviously means that people don’t have enough real work to do!”
Zelenka shrugged. “Are you up late or up early?”
“Up late and just leaving, Dr. Z,” said John cheerfully, “C’mon, Rodney.”
***
“Now I’m remembering when our radios started squawking on the fifth day and we had to scramble to get into our clothes before the rescue team arrived.”
“At least they were dry by then. Quarters first or mess hall first, Rodney?”
“Are you seriously trying to make me choose between sex and food?”
“Who said anything about sex? All that talk about getting clean, I thought I might take a shower.”
“I might believe that if you weren’t smirking,” Rodney snapped as they entered the transporter. John indicated the direction panel. “Okay, fine, quarters first.”
“Good choice.”
“Stop smirking! I really do need a shower. And clean clothes. Sheppard, will you just stop... You know what? Shutting up now.”
“Nah, c’mon, Rodney. When do you think it was?”
Rodney didn’t pretend to misunderstand, but he was silent as they exited the transporter. A few steps later: “The first time that I realized that this wasn’t going away was after PG7-286.”
“I don’t think I remember that one.”
“No, of course you don’t remember it. Nothing got blown up. No one got killed. No one even got seriously hurt. All that happened is that we walked far too many kilometres through a jungle, found a ZPM that still had 37% of its charge, picked it up and went home.”
“Now I’m remembering. You vanished into your lab for a week.”
“Except that when I woke up, I was in my quarters.”
“I got Ronon to help me carry you there.”
“And you were in my quarters.”
“Keeping an eye on you.”
“Playing freecell.”
“While I kept an eye on you.”
“We had a new ZPM with 37% of its charge and you were sitting in my quarters in broad daylight as if you had a right to be there and I knew wanted to wake up like that a lot more often and that it might even be possible that I could.” Rodney had his chin up, as if he expected the universe to disagree with this statement and was determined to argue it into submission.
John had to smile at the sheer Rodney-ness of it. “Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Sounds nice. I woke up alone this morning,” John observed as they reached their quarters.
“When I said to stop smirking, I didn’t mean trade the smirk for a pout. Okay, okay, don’t look at me like that! Look, uh, how about if I wash your back?”
“Only if I get to wash yours too.”
“Deal.”
***
“John?”
“Mmmm?”
“We don’t have to agree.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Actually, it would be better if we didn’t agree!”
John decided that maybe he should open his eyes for this discussion. “Uh, what we not agreeing about?”
“On how long we’ve been together. Because if we disagree, then we’ll never know when it’s been seven years, so we’ll never have to worry about the so-called seven-year itch, not that I believe any such thing exists outside the overactive imaginations of psychologists, but just in case it does, we don’t have to worry about it.”
“Rodney, that’s brilliant!”
“Hey, genius here!”
“Except, buddy?”
“Yes?”
“You get to explain it to Teyla and Ronon.”