what is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind

Title: 5 times John and Rodney get outed
Pairing: McShep
Fandom: SGA
Rating: PG just for languageeeeee
AN: For rilestar. I hope you like it!



1.

When John was married, PDAs were so easy. A hand on the small of her back as he led her into a restaurant; tucking an errant strand of hair back behind her ear; brushing his lips over the corner of her mouth as a greeting.

With Rodney, it isn’t.

Not just because of DADT, but because Rodney’s a prickly sonofabitch, and he still doesn’t get that John wants to touch him, he still leans back in suspicion when John brushes a hand over his skin.

That’s why John’s been easing him into it, leaning against him in Team Movie Nights, peering over his shoulder in the labs, nudging shoulders on missions.

Of course, trust Rodney to fuck up his routine when, one day, Rodney puts his hand on John’s thigh, under the table in one of Elizabeth’s meetings, and John jerks in surprise, slams his knee up against the table and breaks two of Rodney’s fingers.

In the infirmary with Carson, Rodney glares at him and John flushes, rubs at the back of his neck.

“This is what I get for doing what you want? I thought you wanted me to touch you in public, and now I do, you break my fingers? You were the one who wanted PDAs! See if I put out for the next, oh, month!” Rodney snarls, and John glares at him, bites his lip and looks up at Carson.

Carson, who is standing shell-shocked by Rodney, eyes wide and impossibly surprised.

“Rodney!” John hisses, and looks pointedly at the good doctor.

Rodney winces. “Whoops?”

2.

When Rodney was 16, his sister (AKA Hellspawn) announced to Lauren, the pretty blue-eyed girl he’d been crushing on, that her brother was gay. He wasn’t, but Lauren believed Jeannie instantly.

This moment kinda echoes that one.

“Of course he’s gay,” Katie slurs, drunken and…drunken, hair swinging around her face messily. “Thass why he b’oke up. With me. Cause he’s gay!”

Rodney sinks his head into his hands and sighs the sigh of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. “I’m not gay,” He says, even though really, he kinda is. “Look, Katie, why don’t you go get a drink of water?”

Katie frowns at her bottle of vodka in confusion, her forehead crinkling. “Is water.”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “No. Is vodka.” He says, and does his best to ignore Zelenka cackling in the corner. “Why doesn’t Radek take you to the bathroom to freshen up, hmm? Zelenka! Bathroom!”

Radek stands, keeling to the side with hilarity, barely managing to tug Katie up and drag her to the connecting bathroom, muttering under his breath gleefully in Czech.

Sometimes Rodney hates his life.

Then John walks in, hair dishevelled, and he smiles at Rodney collapsed out on the couch. “Hey, buddy,” He says, all casual, as if this isn’t the most annoying day of Rodney’s life! But then, he crosses over to Rodney and kisses him, hot and slick and mmmm, until they’re disturbed by laughter worthy of Doctor Evil.

They both look up at Zelenka, the Czech man laughing crazily, tears tracking down his eyes. “Gay!” He wheezes, and Katie looks up from where she’s collapsed over the sink. “Wha?”

3.

So the thing is, John’s always gone for the people he shouldn’t. In eighth grade, he’d had a huge crush on his Math teacher. Ahh, Mrs Sutherland, with her dark hair and her intelligence and her bre- well, yeah. And in college it was Donnie Taylor, who was shy and quiet and a complete genius. Of course, he had been straight.

And now, there’s Rodney McKay. Snarky, brilliant, irritable Rodney McKay. The man who can fix anything.

“You can fix anything,” John says, crouched over McKay’s legs where the man is underneath a Jumper, arms and face hidden. He passes Rodney tools whenever he asks, content to just sit and help.

Major Evan Lorne watches them, amused, and raises his eyebrow when McKay rolls out from under the Jumper, a smear of something across his face.

“Yes, well, while your faith is flattering, you’d be of more use if you’d just move over, yes, like that. Good.”

“Hey, you’ve got something on your face.”

Lorne smirks when McKay swipes his hand over his face ineffectually, disgruntled as he asks, “Gone?”

John rolls his eyes and leans forward, wiping the smudge off and dropping a light kiss onto the newly-cleaned skin. “Squeaky clean, Rodney,” he says, and Lorne’s jaw drops, just a little, and he steps back out of the room and then in again, announcing his arrival with a heavy clunk of boots that has John and McKay surging apart.

“Hey, Doctor McKay, got my Jumper ready yet?”

4.

Rodney’s parents hadn’t understood him. They hadn’t known what to do with him, the thin child who looked up at them with serious eyes and asked why the rest of his first grade class was so “phenomenally stupid.

He hadn’t changed for his parents, and he hasn’t changed for anyone since, still berating his scientists whenever they screw up. However, only a few understand that it just means he always expects more, better, faster from them, because he trusts them.

Kavanagh isn’t one of those.

And one day, he goes too far, raging against Rodney and cursing him to hell and beyond. Of course, he’s stupid enough to do it in an almost-empty lab, screaming at Rodney viciously while the head scientist stands with his arms crossed over his chest.

It’s his bad luck that John happens to be walking past when he says, “It’s no wonder no one loves you! You arrogant bastard.” When he sneers, “It’s your fault that they died.” When he snarls, “You’ll die alone and miserable.”

John storms in, movements tight and controlled and absolutely furious as he slams a fist into Kavangh’s smug face. “If you ever say anything like that, I will do worse than this, you hear me?”

Rodney, pale behind him, makes a movement forward. “John-“

“He has done more than you ever could, he has saved more lives than you know, and he has more people who love him than you could ever think of,” He says, and his words are stilted and stiff and awkward, but sincere, and he believes them.

Then, quiet and honest and jagged, he says, “I love him,” and Rodney smiles, and Kavanagh’s jaw drops, and the fragile look in Rodney’s eyes melts away.

5.

John’s mother has a beautiful engagement ring. It’s silver and simple, understated, a series of inset diamonds lining it.

When John told her he was getting married, she gave him the ring, happy for her only son. John never gave it to his wife.

But now, he’s been carrying it in his pocket for the last three weeks, nestled in a bed of satin in a small, velvet black box. He’s, uh, kinda a coward about this sort of thing.

In the morning meeting with Elizabeth, Rodney drops his pen. It rolls under his chair to under John’s, and John gives Rodney an exasperated look and bends to pick it up, feeling the box in his pocket shift perilously close to the opening and, yes, falling out and landing next to Rodney’s chair.

Shit.

Rodney picks it up curiously, and snaps it open without a thought. Then he sees the ring and snaps the box shut again, throwing it at John furiously, and he gathers his things together, slamming his chair back.

“I’ve got to go,” He mutters to Elizabeth, and trips over his chair as he struggles to escape the hand a pale, pale John has wrapped around his wrist.

“Rodney,” John starts, ashen and stunned, and Rodney wrenches his arm free.

“Who is she?” Rodney demands, furious and hurt and shocked, ignoring the stunned expressions of Carson, Lorne and Radek, ignoring Elizabeth’s confusion, ignoring Ronon and Teyla’s interest.

“What? No, Rodney, you’ve got- Rodney! It’s for you, you idiot!”

“I-what? What? You…you were going to propose to me?”

“That was the plan! I can’t believe you thought I was cheating on you!”

“It’s not my fault! You’ve been weird for weeks, all twitchy and, and, and you were avoiding me! How was I meant to know?”

“Because I was nervous, you ass! It’s not everyday you ask your boyfriend to marry you!”

“What?” Elizabeth gasps, but they all ignore her.

Rodney closes in on himself a little. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be!” John’s hurt and concert melts into exasperation, and he tugs at Rodney’s wrist, sliding off his chair onto his knees, watching as Rodney blushes and smiles, as his eyes light up. “Well?”

“Well what?” Rodney asks, and the bastards’s gonna make him say it.

“Will you marry me?” John asks, and ignores Carson’s very, very feminine ‘aww’ in the corner in favour of catching Rodney when he flings himself awkwardly at John.

“Yes, you idiot!”