"John!" Three girls flutter around him, painted butterflies with their faces made up in lurid reds and greens and blues no sky has ever been. "John, you have to!"
They've already left finger-marks on his shoulders, golds and silvers like tiger stripes, vanishing into the camouflage of his tank-top, echoed with the metallic greens that are scattered into his eyes, his hair, even his ears. Jacy's on his lap, grinding her heat into his stomach and it's all he can do not to pull away. Girls are good, he had told Rodney, and it's true, they are. Just not for sex, mostly, and especially when it's clear his jeans are going to be damp when he finally pries her off him.
"Hey," he says when his lips are painted pink and glossy, tingling from something in the mixture until they're fuller.
"I want your mouth," Jacy moans at him, and for once, it's not sexual at all. She hates how littler her own mouth his, her lips practically nonexistent, and she can't wait until she's twenty one and doesn't need Daddy's permission for cosmetic surgery.
"Sorry," he says, grinning lazily because anything else is too much for these frittering, fluttering air-heads, "can't have them. Already in use."
He's still not sure why he said yes, why he let his knees ache, mouth raw and stinging after Rodney came. He knows why he vanished into the bathroom, hiding in the farthest shower stall with the water set on scalding, mouth clamped shut while he swallowed and swallowed, running his tongue over teeth and palate and the inside of his lips, hunting down every last trace while his hand flew over his cock.
He's really not sure why he's been avoiding Rodney, except Rodney's avoiding him. That's understandable -- straight boys rarely take it well. But he'd thought.
Well. He'd thought wrong.
Eventually the girls de-tangle themselves and John's allowed to dance with the lights strobing pink and purple around them, the music so loud he can't hear, and no one gives a damn that his pants are wet because everyone assumes their own private fantasies, John's own wishes be damned. He kisses girls and boys with equal abandon, not the slut others claim he is, but easy in his own body, his own wants, and sharing touches like the words he gives out so freely, the ones that never mean anything at all.
He's still tipsy when he comes back home, just enough to maintain his laughter, his smile as he walks in to look at Rodney again, at what he wants and isn't ever going to have. Except. Except Rodney's vibrating with eagerness and confusion, dancing on the edge of his bed as he tries to make his words work, his brain stuttering around the ignominy of asking for what John wants to give anyway.
So it's easy. It's so easy to brush the glitter off his cheeks, knees once again bruised and aching as he fumbles Rodney half-naked, legs spread, perfect cock trembling and hard, the perfect combination of driving lust and nervous confusion and John wants.
Takes.
Rodney's cock is just big enough, just thick enough, filling up all the cold, empty places inside John's mouth, the hidden places he never gives to anyone except like this. The taste of him is salty, bitter, addictive on his tongue as he sucks hard and fast because Rodney wants it, John wants it, eager and rushed and when Rodney comes John does too, matching dampness on either side of his jeans, marking him for what he knows he is.
And now Rodney does, too.
He's always known that Rodney is a demanding bastard. Live with the man for five minutes, instead of the eight months John's enjoyed, and anyone would know that Rodney's a demanding bastard. It's no surprise to John that after the third time -- three is often a magic number with Rodney -- Rodney doesn't fumble through his request, doesn't babble or stammer or blush so appealingly.
He just lies there during the early, pre-dawn gloom and says, "I could do with a blow job."
And John goes, eager and already heavy-mouthed, crawling across the miles and miles between them because standing is too hard. He nuzzles Rodney open, sucking him filthy-wet and slow, not caring when Rodney grabs his head and positions him differently, riding along his tongue and throat, because that's good too. John comes wet and sticky against the side of Rodney's bed a full ten minutes before Rodney fills his mouth and by then, John's sure he could come again if he wanted to.
If Rodney wanted him to.
"Do all gay men like it this much?" They're in the bathroom, the only ones around this early, and Rodney's probably blushing fire red. It doesn't stop him from asking, though.
John looks down at his chest, thick and growing thicker by the day. Do gay men have to wax? Is it some kind of creed that he has to abide by? Maybe Rodney won't want him to. "Like what, blow-jobs?"
Rodney's just a disembodied voice, but his eye-roll comes in loud and clear. "Yes, because you're eunuchs. Idiot. I meant giving them."
John shrugs, reaching for his shirt. "I don't know. I don't know if it's a gay thing so much." He stops, but the words roll loud and thunderous through his mind: so much as a me thing.
Because John loves to suck cock, will do anything within the limits of safety to find someone who can stay hard for an hour, more if John can learn their cues, until John's jaw aches and his sinuses feel funny and his chest is tight, head swimming from lack of continuous air. Rodney can probably stay hard, he thinks, running a palm-full of gel over his hair. He needs to get it cut.
Rodney exits the shower fully dressed but as he passes by John, he reaches up and tweaks a nipple. It's unexpected, un-prepareable because Rodney's never once indicated that he wants to touch John, and aburptly his pants are way, way too tight.
"Huh. I wondered. So it's a you-thing."
That seems to be all the cue Rodney needs because suddenly Rodney isn't asking, he's just taking. He'll loiter outside of John's classes, waiting for the regurgitation of students to pour out into the halls, deftly snagging John -- when nothing, ever, is deft about Rodney -- hustling him into a closet and shoving at his shoulders until John goes to his knees, mouth already open and ready and hot. Rodney usually fucks his face then, riding over lips and teeth hard, enjoying the barest hint of pain while John scrambles to keep his mouth wet and tight. He likes his balls touched then, cupped and squeezed lightly until he comes with a tiny, satisfied moan and is buttoning up before John's finished soaking his own pants, come still trickling down his chin.
After the labs or the library Rodney wants to talk, so John's allowed to go as slow as he wants, drawing it over calendar days, lush, luxurious sucking that leaves him unable to taste anything but the after-memory of Rodney's cock for half a day. John gets to lie down for these, tucked between Rodney's raised thighs as he bobs and makes hm noises, wordlessly encouraging Rodney to speak and thrust and speak until John so logged with words and come and yet more and more words that he has to change Rodney's sheets when he's out getting food or a shower, so Rodney doesn't have a wet-spot to sleep in.
Rodney's uncut, which John enjoys for novelty's sake, and the connoisseur in him relearns how to handle the head, the slightly more giving skin over the shaft. Lately, Rodney allows him to touch as well as suck, finding the right rhythms and speeds, working Rodney as expertly as John works himself, fingers flicking shadows onto the wall, bizarre animals and strange, perverted demons as he wrings orgasm after orgasm from Rodney.
John's almost constantly hard, lately, lips always swollen and red, body left aching because Rodney lets him suck, lets him touch and taste, but that's all they do. He's never sure if it's Rodney's reticence -- not that he has much -- or John's inability to show that he welcomes more, but either way John's losing his voice, raspy and rough and Rodney seems to like it.
"Shep!" Lorne smiles big and plastic when John jogs off the field, handing over a water bottle and towel as matter of course. "Hey, I was wondering if -- "
John shakes his head before he hears the full request. "Sorry, man, I'm busy tonight." Rodney has a test today, a presentation he's fuming about, and he'll want long and slow and throat-bruising afterward. John's mouth is already wet with anticipation, and he's constantly licking his lips. "Maybe sometime this weekend?"
Lorne cocks his head, narrow nose flaring in thought. "Yeah," he says. "Maybe. Hey, you know that you can say no, right?"
John lets an eyebrow go up, scrubbing beneath his chin. He needs to shave; Rodney doesn't mind stubble, but he's sandpaper-grade now. "Say no to what?"
Lorne watches for a moment, steady and dark like a hunting dog, assessing prey, before he nods and moves on. "Never mind. Hey, have fun."
John's grin twists happily. "I always do."
He's halfway back to the dorm when Rodney bustles into step next to him, red-faced and ranting, furious until abruptly he stops, hand freezing mid-air from its impatient get on with it, open the door gesture John knows well. "Please don't take this as a criticism, but I'm not sure I -- that is, I think I should probably -- "
"Hey." It's easy to soothe Rodney, easy to calm him with words and a tilted head, and has been from day one. No one understands how he can put up with an obvious prima donna, which always makes John smirk and change the topic. Rodney's simple: he doesn't know how to take care of himself, doesn't want to know how. So John does that, allows himself the pleasure of directing that part of Rodney's life, and now is no different. "It's okay."
It's not, Rodney claims, but as he's pushed back onto the bed, carefully stripped while John does the same, he starts tripping over his words, spooning them into incomprehensible gibberish. "Oh," he says, John working himself loose and slick while Rodney watches, blue eyes wide enough to hurt. "Um. You'll, ah, turn over? Is the phrase?"
John just smiles. He doesn't have to say he's been waiting, because he hasn't, really; it's Rodney's call, Rodney's show, and as Rodney pushes in too hard, too fast, just right, John spreads his legs and holds on to the wall, slick where it isn't cracked under his fingers, taking each of Rodney's powerful, frantic, off-balance thrusts.
"Can I -- " His voice cracks. Swallowing, John lowers his shoulders, pushing back, while the head of Rodney's cock goes no where near his prostate, hot and slick-thick inside him. "I need -- can I -- "
Rodney's not a genius for nothing and he snorts. "Gay boys," he snaps, tone ruthless and annoyed, no matter that his hands were clammy against John's ass and hips. "If you're asking me -- "
"No!" John interrupts, freeing one bent, aching hand to curl around his cock, jerking hard and fast. "No, this is good. I got it. Oh, god."
"Do you like this?" Rodney sounds analytical, he always does during sex. "I mean, does it feel good?"
John moans, shifting just enough and oh, there, there. "Yeah, buddy. It feels good."
"It's so wrong to hear you call me that when I'm fucking your ass," Rodney says, and John instantly comes white and breathless.
The new pattern is established. John is at Rodney's beck and call, his own life, his own pursuits happily on hold as Rodney takes his ass, and mouth and hands. Sometimes it's brusque, almost impersonal, just a chance for Rodney to get off and go back to whatever he's doing that's more important. Sometimes it's longer, slower, Rodney's fingers gentle against John's cheeks and nose and eyebrows, scratching his scalp as his cock powers into John's throat, and John wants absolutely nothing more than this.
When Rodney stays over the summer, John does too, warming his bed and his desk and his lab when it's three am and Rodney can't wait, waking John up out of a sound sleep. John goes, every time, head always facing forward; he doesn't need to look back.
Spiral by ladycat777
Story Notes:
Based on the world created in How To Have A Relationship Without Even Trying, this is a darker look at what might've been, if Rodney was a little bit more of a bastard and John a little more passive.