...Are Made of This - carleton97

Afterwards, he couldn't believe how long he'd missed the signs. The first, nearly orgasmic dream about coffee flavored ice cream should have been a hint that something hinky was going on, but nearly everyone in Atlantis had complained of a weird, inexplicable food craving at some point, so John had written it off without a second thought.

Never mind that he hated coffee ice cream.

The dreams about the Ancient shield device weren't all that odd either. He'd been wickedly curious about what it had actually been like for Rodney to be invulnerable and inside the energy cloud.

Even the dreams about Lieutenant Colonel Carter were something he understood. He'd only met her once, but she was an attractive woman and, even though his taste these days seemed to run towards a certain sarcastic, male physicist, he wasn't one to ignore beauty.

No, if he had to put his finger on what tipped him off to the strangeness, it would have to be the physics dreams. The dreams where the universe spiraled inward, threading together and making sense in the most beautiful set of equations he had ever seen. Equations he could never quite remember when he woke up hard and panting.

Rodney storming into his room, ranting incomprehensibly about 'kinked up bastards,' was, perhaps, the final clue something was wrong.

"What the hell are you talking about?" John lowered his sidearm and re-engaged the safety before setting it back in it nighttime spot next to his bed.

Rodney paced a tight circle in the limited space he had available. "What am I talking about? I'm talking about your complete inability to keep it in your pants, Captain Kirk!"

"Hey!" John knew he really didn't have a leg to stand on, but geez, you fall for one un-Ascended Ancient...

"Oh, god. Does that make me Mr. Spock? It does, doesn't it? I never should have let Simpson pester me into reading that story. I defiled the sacred Star Trek universe and now this is now my punishment. It's - "

"Rodney." John sat up, vaguely glad tonight's dream had been a shield dream and not a physics one. "I need you to calm down and tell me what is so important that you woke me up in the middle of the night ranting about Star Trek."

Rodney shot him a disgusted look and gestured sharply. "It's our dreams, Major.

"I'm not quite sure how it happened, though I suspect that artifact we picked up on M6X-479 that I distinctly told you not to activate, but it seems that somehow our dreams have been exchanged." Giving his explanation didn't seem to relax Rodney; in fact he seemed even more keyed up.

John opened his mouth to argue, but they were in the Pegasus galaxy where a dozen crazy things could happen before breakfast and, really, since when had physics gotten him hot?

Plus, he really hated coffee ice cream.

"Huh."

"That's all you can say? 'Huh?' I realize you are military, but I had begun to believe, erroneously I can now see, that you were smarter than the average bear, Major, but if 'huh' - "

"You have sex dreams about ice cream and physics?"

Rodney flushed bright red, seemingly unable to continue his harangue, and John grinned, ready to begin another round of McKay-baiting, when the full import of the situation hit him. Yes, Rodney apparently had sex dreams about frozen treats and the Grand Unified Theory, but John had sex dreams bout, well, Rodney.

And, if maybe, sometimes, in his dreams, the Ancient beds came equipped with thought-activated bondage shackles, well that was his business. Except that now it was Rodney's business too.

Crap.

"Um. Rodney - "

"So, we're going to go to the lab. Right now. And you're going to undo whatever you did."

John stood up and took a step towards Rodney, but stopped when the other man skittered back towards the door. "Okay. I need to get dressed first. Do you want to wait for me in the hall?"

The narrow eyed look of embarrassment and disgust was a little like getting shot. "I don't need to be seen skulking around outside your quarters in the middle of the night, Major. Meet me in my lab."

And then he was gone.

John sat heavily on his bed and dropped his head into his hands. This was all fucked up. He'd thought that maybe Rodney felt the same way he did, that their good-natured sniping (flirting, his mind whispered) was a sign of mutual respect and affection. A sign that maybe they were heading towards something more, but Rodney -

God, Rodney couldn't even stand to be in the same room with him. John grabbed his pants and did his best to get his head back in the game. It wasn't the first time his affections had gone unanswered and he was sure it wouldn't be the last time, but still...

It was all fucked up.

***

"Here." Rodney shoved the artifact into his hands before the door had even finished whooshing closed behind him. "Just...fix whatever you did."

"All right." John wanted to apologize or explain or something, but Rodney had retreated behind the worktable and was making impatient gestures at him. He concentrated on the cube in his hands and felt the strange sense of connection that marked his interactions with Ancient technology. Something indefinable and indistinct twisted in his head and the subtle sense of different he hadn't even been aware of the past couple of weeks dissolved. It was times like these he wished Rodney's various Ancient doohickeys came with user's manuals. Just once, he wanted to know what one of these shiny toys did before he activated it. He set the cube on the worktable with a sigh.

"That's it? You fixed it?" Rodney rocked on the balls of his feet, as if he were restraining himself from bolting out the door.

John shrugged and took a step towards the door, wanting nothing more than to retreat to his room and curl up with the Journal of Differential Geometry he had smuggled into Atlantis. "I think so. I guess we won't know for sure until we dream again, but it feels like I did."

Inexplicably, Rodney grinned and whispered excellent.

Then he jumped him.

Not for the first time, John was glad that spending the bulk of his adult life in the military had trained his body to respond without thought. It made it easy to slide his tongue into Rodney's mouth while still wondering what the fuck was going on. It made it easy to wrap his arms around Rodney's solid warmth while praying he hadn't accidentally turned on an Ancient mind control device. It made it easy to press his body to Rodney's while wondering if this was an enormous mistake.

Rodney's hands were big and warm against his face, holding him with a gentleness that seemed at odds with the bite and scrape of his kiss, and there was something about the touch that answered all the questions battering at John's mind. He ran his hands down Rodney's back and grabbed his ass, pushing and steering him towards the relatively uncluttered lab table.

Rodney pulled away a little and planted his feet. "No, no, no. I'll never be able to work in here. Come on."

John found it strangely endearing that Rodney poked his head out of the lab and made sure the hallway was empty before towing him out of the room and towards the residential section. It told him Rodney knew he wasn't ashamed of Rodney or anything, but Pegasus galaxy or not, the U.S. military did have certain regulations that John knew he had to appear to follow. But when Rodney's door closed behind them and he was pretty sure that no one was going to ask and he definitely wasn't going to tell, John figured he was golden.

Rodney's hands were back on him, pushing his shirt over his head and pulling him towards the bed by the waist of his pants. John returned the favor, getting his hands under Rodney's shirt when he paused to kick out of his loosely tied runners and undoing the fastenings on his pants. John kicked free of his pants, but his boxers were still tangled around his knees when Rodney tumbled him down to the bed.

Time seemed to telescope into an endless moment of kissing and groping and the rough tussle of both of them trying to roll the other underneath. Rodney had size on him, but John had 15 years of combat training to draw on, so he figured he still had the advantage. He had forgotten, though, that he was still semi-hobbled by his boxer shorts, so when Rodney planted a knee on the worn cotton and pinned his hands by intertwining their fingers, he was well and truly caught.

Not that he was going to complain. Rodney anchored him to the bed with his hands and mouth and the rolling press of his hips. He came five strokes ahead of Rodney and oofed out a breath when the other man's arms gave out and he collapsed down onto John. He shook his hands free of Rodney's grasp and just held on as Rodney sleepily nuzzled at his neck. It was hot and sticky and he was pretty sure he was going to have a bruise from where Rodney's knee was jammed into his thigh, but it somehow seemed more intimate than any other sexual encounter in his memory.

John shifted as much as he could underneath his scientist-blanket. "Rodney."

A low-voiced hmmmmmm and another nuzzle was his only answer, so John poked Rodney in the side.

"You're heavy and sticky. Off."

Rodney grumbled a little, but slid off to the side, keeping his face pressed into John's neck and wrapping an arm around his chest. "Night, John."

John had a vague thought about showering and maybe returning to his own quarters, but it was...nice being here with Rodney.

Even if Rodney was snuggled up to him as if he were a giant teddy bear.

"Sweet dreams, Rodney."

The End

disclaimer: SGA isn't mine, but sometimes I like to pretend it is.