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Earth v. 17
John hates his job, it's ridiculous, and makes him feel like an idiot. The other reporters make fun of him, and being mocked by empty headed local television news reporters is somewhere lower than being made fun of by hookers, and a bunch of twelve year olds. He always gets the feeling people turn on his segments so they can say, "Well, my life may suck pretty badly, but at least I'm not that guy," as he's pretending to smile at some eighty year old woman showing off her 8,000 stuffed teddy bears.
Today, John is interviewing a guy named Rodney McKay, who is dressed in geek finery, a black shirt with a red dragon on it. John plasters a smile on his face as the camera flicks on, and he looks over at Rodney, inquiring "Where do you get your inspiration for your characters?" He is trying very hard to ignore the bouncing boobs on the female lead flashing across the flat screen near his head. She has short blonde hair, and no clothes. John longs for some Pitfall, and his smile becomes a little more real as she dies violently by falling off a cliff.
Rodney stares at him, and raises his hand hesitatingly, "Can I touch your hair?"
John's smile falters and he tries not to look over at the cameraman, "Excuse me?"
Rodney puts his hand on John's knee as John scoots back. "Can I take off your pants?
John jumps up, "Wow, is there anyone else I can talk to here? You can't possibly be the spokesperson for this place." He hits the side of the camera to get it to turn off. The cameraman is cracking up. Last time it was a fifteen year old with two forensic speech awards. They had practically had to crowbar her off him.
Rodney gets up and tries to grab John's arm, "I'm not, I own the company. I set this up so I could meet you. I watch you every morning."
"Oh my god."
"Look, I have a lot of money, and I was thinking I could take you away from this life."
The cameraman starts laughing even harder. John shoves a chair between him and the crazy guy. "Just because I'm on television doesn't mean I'm a whore, why the hell does everyone think that?"
John ends up having to run out of the room when Rodney grabs at his crotch. He hopes the cameraman leaves out, 'screams like a five year old girl,' when he tells this story to everyone at work.
Everyone stares at him for the rest of the day with amused looks and there are dragon pictures all over the door of the tiny room he gets ready in when he gets back to it. He sighs and slams the door shut to sulk for a few hours as he pretends to do on-line research mostly involving the evil threat of gay porn on the internet. He briefly remembers trying to make porn once when he was in college.
He was a freshman, and one thing lead to another, and there he was on some set in a filthy building. His boyfriend at the time had more camera equipment than the A/V department at school. John had tripped taking off his pants, banged his knee against a pipe, and spent the whole day miserably watching strung out idiots prove they had no gag reflex. His brain is even ruining the perfection of porn for him right now. He puts his head down on the desk and lies there in the dark for an hour until he can leave.
When John gets home that afternoon, his roommate sticks his head out to say, "So I heard you were molested by one the of guys you interviewed today."
John's head snaps up as he drops his bag, "HOW DO YOU ALWAYS KNOW THIS STUFF?"
Ronon walks out of his room and shrugs, "The make-up woman told me."
"I hate you. I hate my job. I hate my entire life. I need to do something else, but every time I try to go in for interviews, people laugh at me. I think I'm going to quit and sell sex toys. I bet I would be awesome at that." John flops down on the couch in despair.
Ronon walks over to the couch and offers, "I keep telling you that you can work with me."
"I can't sell make-up. Forty year old women aren't going to fawn over me, and buy twenty versions of the exact same shade of blue because I tell them they look hot in it."
"But people will buy dildos from you?"
"It can't be hard to sell them. All you have to do is point to something and go, hey, that will probably get you off, and people will buy it. Maybe I can have parties at my house."
Ronon nods and mutters in a low voice, "Sure, invite a bunch of women over so they can talk about their vaginas. I'm okay with that."
John slowly turns white. "Ah, on second thought."
Ronon ambles out with beer, and they drink a few six packs in front of the TV as John curses the Patriots. "I have to go to zoo tomorrow. I have to interview the guy who works with the elephants. The last time I did that the guy spent the whole time pointing out the elephant's dick, and talking about their mating seasons. I think I'm going to stab someone. Then I have to play golf with Ned, Ted, and Bob. Do you think I could fake my own death? We can pour some fake blood on the couch, and you can tell everyone I was killed by a gay porn star."
Ronon ignores him, and levers himself up off the couch, "You can clean up the bottles."
"Thanks a lot." John picks up the empties scattered around the table, and tosses them into the recycling. Sometimes he thinks his dad had a point about going into the military, but then again, he'd probably be cleaning some one's toilet or something, so never mind. He leans against the kitchen sink, and thinks about today. That guy was bizarre, but he had pretty eyes. John looks at himself in the window, and stares at his reflection. He really, really needs to get laid if he's thinking about the freaks he meets at work. Maybe he needs to get a boyfriend.
He thinks about the last three boyfriends he went through. Chris was a tax accountant, and John kept falling asleep when they were having sex. Jake was a college professor, and made John play naughty TA too much. Steven...John doesn't want to think about Steven. There was that time with the leather, and John had the locks changed on their front door just to be sure. People shouldn't be suddenly coming out with dungeons on their third dates. Ronon has a girlfriend named Teyla, she teaches kindergarten, and is the calmest person John has ever met. He's pretty sure she eats kittens on the weekends.
Ronon always has a lot of scratches on him that John pretends really hard not to see in the morning when Ronon wonders around the place with his shirt off. John usually ends up gripping the couch arm and trying not to pant when Ronon stretches his god-like arms above his head. Teyla has very specific rules about when they can and can not spend time together. Ronon is allowed to go over there on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday only. John had very quietly muttered the words, "pussy whipped," one time, and ended up tied up on the couch for four hours, covered in eyeliner and screaming.
The neighbors had all thought it was some kind of sex thing. John had complained to the super that the building was full of freaks who needed to have their leases revoked. The guy had slammed the door in his face after muttering about black kettles. John can't win no matter what he does. He goes to the zoo, listens to the idiots giggle as he grits his teeth, and thinks longingly about very nice drugs while they run the edit in the van.
John's eyes are half slitted with sleep when he sees the guy he didn't interview yesterday hanging around the big cats and staring over in their direction. He bangs on the side of the van in panic. The door opens and the cameraman, a huge ass guy named T, sticks his head out. John points and T rolls his eyes. John has had fifteen marriage proposals and three stalkers in the year he's been doing this. Apparently, it's some kind of record.
He hides in the van as T calls the station to inform them about stalker number four on the horizon. The producer chirps about making it a feature and T just looks at John with pity. John stares at the floor, and thinks, 'why not?' and answers, "Sure, let's make it a feature. In fact let's put every single person who stares at my ass on camera. They can all sit around and talk about what my best feature is, and I can pick a name out of a hat and fuck them on camera." Unfortunately T had hung up the phone right when John opened his mouth. John kicks at his shoe, "Why won't you let me get fired? Why do you hate me so much?"
T shakes his head, and turns back to the editing equipment, "I'll protect you, JohnSheppard."
"Stop saying my name like that, it's creepy. That guy is still out there." John got up and opened the door and yelled, "Hey, loser, I'm not going to let you touch me, so just get the hell over it right now and LEAVE ME ALONE!"
The guy seems to take that as a cue to walk closer. John shuts the door again and starts to laugh, helplessly. Five minutes later there is a knock on the door and John nudges T, "What are the chances he has a gun?" T shakes his head, and opens the door with a scowl. The man backs off quickly but waves at John who bites his lip not to laugh. He's learned not to encourage them. Rodney leaves an envelope on the floor of the van and looks at John.
T picks it up and rips it open. It's an invitation to some kind of gaming convention. John frowns as he looks it over, "You take dates to these things?" The guy shrugs, and smiles at John, and his mouth is crooked, and John almost says 'yes,' before he remembers, crazy, stalker, psycho who can kill me.
He hands the invitation back over T's forbidding arm, and shakes his hand. The guy nods, and walks away. John doesn't look at his ass as he walks away. Over the next six months, he gets presents once a week. Computer games, flowers, CDs, various IOUs to fix his computer, lessons on how to reprogram the keyboard of people who piss him off, and hacks for gay porn sites. John really likes those last two. He finally breaks and calls the cell phone number on the bottom of all the e-mails.
They go to an extremely expensive place called L'Amour of something John can't make out because the writing is in illegible fancy script. Rodney spills his wine on John's pants, insults the waiter, and flings part of his entree into the next table. He also perfectly skewers all of John's co-workers, offers to get John's pants dry cleaned, and grabs John when John trips over the too long table cloth. He also kisses so well John barely remembers they are in a parking lot with the valet clearing his throat loudly.
John thinks about not putting out on principle, but he hasn't been fucked in eight months, and he's not masochistic. They go to Rodney's clearly maid-cleaned apartment, and John crawls all over the bed, forgetting to remotely pretend to have any dignity. Rodney looks kind of surprised, but he catches up pretty quickly, pulling off John's pants, and his shirt in about two minutes. John touches his face when Rodney leans down, guiding him carefully as they kiss. John isn't exactly sure what happens after that, but he's suddenly on his stomach with Rodney kissing down his spine, making him shiver. Rodney is still dressed, and his shirt brushes John's bare skin as Rodney moves.
John fights his awesome mouth off and pushes him to the side so he can drag Rodney's shirt off, and attack his pants. Rodney is helping, and they get tangled up, with one of John's legs around Rodney's waist, kissing again. Slowly, so hot and wet, John's hand is rubbing the front of Rodney's boxers lewdly, while Rodney mutters against his mouth. It takes another ten minutes for them to get naked, and John ends up gripping the sheets as Rodney's fingers push into him. Rodney goes slowly, using his tongue, and a lot of lube, making John whine and push back, urging him on every way he can think of.
When Rodney finally does cover him, John is panting and trying not to shake apart. Rodney pushes into him carefully, making John curse and he can feel Rodney grinning against his cheek. John has trained himself not to swear, ever, for fear he will slip on air, and he is pretty sure he mentioned that to Rodney earlier tonight. Rodney moves in him as he kisses John's neck, and jaw, and the corner of his mouth. John closes his eyes, and lets his mind shut off as he sinks into the warm fuzzy mess his brain always becomes when he's getting fucked.
The next morning Rodney shows him a new gaming design. The hero looks like John, and he pretty much kicks the shit out of everyone else in the game. It's the best relaxant John's ever gotten other than the unholy hours of sex he just got. He vaguely considers proposing to Rodney right then, but decides he should at least wait until the second date, and a determination of exactly how much of a trophy wife he's supposed to be.
He ponders an equation for being a trophy wife being something like [M] insane amount of money times John's relative attractiveness [a] plus the [f] number of unspeakable sexual acts required by John [s] times with their mutual hotness [h] in there somewhere. Maybe money*attractiveness+hotness(frequency*sex) or m*a+h(f*s)/b*c with b = eventual boredom, and c = lack of things in common. If m=13 million [John had looked] and a= 8.5, and hotness = 1,000,0000,000 and John gives up when Rodney goes down on him, because he is pretty sure they could find something in common, and T would totally kill any exes of Rodney's for John. Also, Rodney can get John's entire cock down his throat, and most people can not, so the chances of boredom is probably also low.
John lays on the couch afterwards watching Rodney win his own game viciously, and decides to be happy for a few hours. On Monday he will have to get up at four in the morning again, and go see a high school science team who did...something. He doesn't remember or care right now. Rodney turns off the game, and John is suddenly worried that Rodney will now reveal whatever horrible secret he has that will ruin John's afterglow, but then John remembers he already knows Rodney is a crazy stalker so he relaxes.
Everyone should have crazy rich stalkers who give great head. The world would be a happier place, and he might be saying this out loud because Rodney is staring at him a little strangely. Rodney looks away, and then down at his hands before saying, "I jerk off watching you on tv in the mornings," and then he claps his own hand over his mouth as John loses it. John falls off the couch, curled up in a ball as Rodney is making horrified noises above him. John moves in with Rodney two weeks later. Well, it's more like Rodney moves all of the stuff out of John's apartment while John is at work, and QUITS JOHN'S JOB FOR HIM.
Neither producer thinks it's funny but John is so happy he hugs the entire staff of the new crew before reading a speech he wrote a long time ago, in a bar, on a series of wet napkins, that starts with, once upon a time I thought zombies weren't real, you people have proven me wrong...and ends with John being escorted out of the office as he yells, "and fuck you Ted! That turkey baster wasn't funny, you asshole!" He hits the outside air and stops, completely freaked out.
He just left his job, and there is no way in hell they will let him back in, ever. John wisely decides to go to the bar down the street to have a drink, and work out how to make the state believe the job fired him so he can get unemployment. The messages on his phone are increasingly worried messages requesting John's presence at his new home, mixed with a message from Ronon with confusion in his voice, and a message from John's dad that John quickly erases. He takes a cab back to Rodney's place several beers later, and falls face first on the couch. He lets Rodney feel him up as much as he wants as a thank you for the getting rid of the job thing.
Rodney's hands slide over John's skin as John drifts in a beer haze. He can freak out tomorrow. When he does wake up the next morning, Rodney is asleep with him on the couch, and John's neck hurts. He stumbles off the couch to find a bathroom, and almost dies falling over Rodney's satanic cat. The next month is a blur of sex and John sneaking out to look for jobs. He becomes more and more sure he's blacklisted from pretty much all news organizations in the country. He sits on the couch in his old apartment complaining to Ronon that it's not like he hit anyone while Ronon nods and flips through Mary Kay catalogs peacefully. John can't tell whether Ronon misses him or not.
He gives up looking, and tries volunteering at a few places. Living with Rodney works out pretty well, much better than John figured it would. Rodney has an office he hides in a lot, and he makes fun of John for cleaning up before the maid comes. John throws socks at Rodney's head and calls him a slob. They end up rolling around on the floor half the time until Rodney complains about rug burns. He goes through five volunteering jobs in a month.
He doesn't like stuffing envelopes, he doesn't like old people, period, the school he applies at pretty much comes right out and says they don't want a gay man near the kids. He's only half joking when he mentions alcoholism as a new hobby to Rodney when Rodney huffs and drags him to his job. John turns out to be totally awesome as a spokesperson. He can lie to reporters with a completely straight face, and not feel remotely bad about it.
The public relations firm tends to call him every time Rodney does something unspeakable in public, which happens about once a week. He charms everyone while wishing them dead, and takes great glee in being rude to his old colleagues when they show up trying to get an exclusive about some deal Rodney is pulling. Rodney shows him off in public a lot, in ways that would be embarrassing if John say, gave a shit. Instead, John tends to cut the pictures out of the paper and posts them in a scrapbook that he is planning on giving his father for his 60th birthday. [Love your son, the golddigging whore. John thinks he might still be in the will?] Ronon seems to migrate over to half-living in Rodney and John's place, so John figures that means Ronon does miss him, or likes going through their fridge, since Rodney insists that it be always fully stocked in case they get trapped.
Rodney seems to like Ronon, they bond over oreoes, mint chocolate ice cream, and insulting John. John responds by reminding Ronon that Teyla still lives by herself and feels superior as Ronon sulks around the place for three hours. Rodney rolls his eyes and goes back to playing Civ III for seven hours straight. He and John are in an internal grudge match over who can have the coolest civilization, and John is sure Rodney is using cheat codes, and it pisses him off that he can't prove it.
He's taken to laying traps in the game, waiting carefully for Rodney to stumble over them. John starts taking piloting lessons on the weekends with the incredibly stupid amount of money he gets paid for looking pretty in public, and he feels at peace as he moves through the air. His pilot instructor thinks John closing his eyes to feel the zen is less funny. The instructor's name is Jack O'Neill, and he's kind of a dick to John, but he flies like the plane is an extension of his body, and John wants that desperately.
The guy grudgingly admits John is a natural, and John smirks all the way home, happily tackling Rodney into the bed for a lot of 'yay I don't suck at least one thing!' celebration sex. The next week they have an actual grown up dinner with people from work, including Rodney's poor harassed design head, Radek Zelenka, and his scary human resources director, Elizabeth Weir. John makes sure it's on a Saturday so Teyla will come with Ronon, and she shows up in a gown that covers exactly 10% of her whole body. Rodney's mouth hangs open for about 15 minutes straight as John gets increasingly annoyed until he just shoves Rodney into a wall to make him stop.
The party goes pretty well, no one gets food poisoning [John's worry] and no one has to be rushed to the emergency room because of a previously unknown allergy [Rodney's worry.] No one gets into a fist fight, even though Ronon has to growl at a *lot* of people, including some of the women. Though he kind of seems to be torn on that issue. The night is declared over when one of the secretaries from the first floor drunkenly gropes at Rodney, and John kicks everyone out.
People hit on Rodney kind of a lot despite his complete lack of ability to communicate with the female half of the species in any way, shape, or form. John keeps having to pry stupid blondes away from him at conventions. He used to have more respect for gamer chicks, but apparently some of them are just as ditzy as the socialites that Rodney hides from. On the other hand, a lot of them also have pierced tongues, and mouths filthier than Rodney's, so John is probably being judgmental.
He's currently watching one of them decimate some poor geek who will probably be home crying in his mother's basement by the end of the night. Rodney is surrounded by mini-geeks who all listen to him like he's some kind of god, as he lectures about proper video game technique and calls the CEO of Sony a cocksucker. John has to herd him away before they get sued for something ridiculous like libel.
John isn't sure why the hell everyone calls him Gabe at these things, or why they yell Tycho at Rodney, but he figures it's some bullshit thing Rodney started. Rodney talked John into dressing up like his game version exactly one time. [It's an elf.] There is a large picture of him propped up in front of their company's display, causing John to smack Rodney in the head as tiny fanboys clutter around asking for John to sign their games.
Eight year olds seem to love the game for no reason anyone can fathom. Rodney's company does make things other than video games, Rodney just doesn't seem to give a shit about any of them, as long as they continue to allow him to afford more gaming consoles, and John. They have a kind of bad fight in the hotel where Rodney glares at John and hisses, "I know exactly what would happen to us if my money ran out," and John is furious for three days afterwards. Fuck Rodney, if he really thinks John is just there for some elaborate diamond tennis bracelet pay-off. Rodney ends up asking forgiveness by burying his face in John's stomach until John touches his hair, and tells Rodney to go into therapy to work on his insecurity issues.
Rodney counters by telling John to go with him to deal with his 500 years of crap, and they call a truce to break open the mini-bar and eat 900 dollar peanuts. John ends up falling asleep on Rodney's shoulder as they watch [read: heckle] Lake Placid on the Sci-fi channel, and John dreams about a life where he wears combat boots, and has a thigh holster. Rodney is by his side there too, and he smiles as Rodney's fingers touch his arm in both worlds.
When he wakes up, heart pounding over something he can't quite remember, Rodney is in the shower and John is laying twisted in the sheets. He blinks away the image of a poster of Johnny Cash, and sits up, pushing his hair back. He smiles over at Rodney when he comes out of the bathroom all pink skinned, and towel covered. They skip the last day of the conference to stay in the room, rubbing against each other slowly, re-memorizing the lines of each other's bodies. John sighs as Rodney mumbles into his neck about infinity and elves.