John Sheppard's girlfriend is Lizzie Weir. Lizzie's smart, fun, and rather spectacularly unpredictable when not at school. Like when she puts on cherry-flavored lip gloss and gives him a blow job in his garage, or wants him to suck her fingers in between bites of Cheetos when they watch a movie.
Rodney McKay is John's friend. He's not his best friend, but something else, probably something more, but John doesn't think too hard about it. And if John has a few masturbation fantasies featuring his friend, the science genius? Well, after the thirty-third time, he both gets over it and goes with it.
When Lizzie rides him late at night in the front seat of his car in the park, John couldn't be happier, because, well, sex. His mind and body are riding tingling waves of rushing endorphins and his cock is throbbing in that oh-so-pleasant way.
But.
He turns his head to the right, to the passenger side, pretends to see Rodney sitting there beside him, pants unbuttoned and unzipped, hand inside of his underwear--slowly, up, steadily, down--mouth an O of near silent breaths.
John imagines telling Rodney to move his hand, then reaching over and grasping and jerking the other boy's cock in tandem with his and Lizzie's languorous, steady rhythm. He imagines Rodney's breath hitching and blue eyes going wide, his hands of course not standing still, but roaming over John's stroking arm. He imagines the now not-quiet mouth making pant after pant, moan after moan, until finally...
Lizzie's moans turn into a sudden gasp, and she grips his biceps tight. John closes his eyes, comes, and pretends that the Rodney in his mind came too.
# # # # #
There's a fireworks display in the park during Spring Break. The Friday before it, John asks Rodney to go with him. Rodney's face blanks for seven seconds, before working itself into a caged hopefulness. "Sure," he says.
John sits with Rodney at lunch. Lizzie isn't around, as she usually does honor society or club stuff during the first half of lunchtime. Rodney's friend, Radek, is also not there, and Rodney is complaining, more like ranting, to John about having to take notes for the other boy. John smiles into his mashed potatoes.
Lizzie's whatever finishes early, and she sits down beside John, puts her arms around him, and says hello to Rodney, who suddenly looks a little bit broken, maybe a little bit lost. The emotions are gone with a blink, though.
John tells himself not to tense, though every single muscle in his body is disagreeing. He, in fact, relaxes into Lizzie's touch and tries to ignore Rodney's looking away and forceful shoving of silverware into the food on his tray.
# # # # #
Spring Break comes, and so does John, this time in his own bed, with his own hand. Lizzie is sitting in a chair, watching him, eyes intense, mouth parted.
After John grabs a towel and cleans himself, she comes back to herself with a slight shake, and says, "So. I can't go to the fireworks display."
"Oh?" John says. And he thinks, Well, I didn't invite you anyway.
"Yes. The library's doing a children's night, complete with puppets and popcorn, and maybe even juice boxes." She smiles.
John smiles back, shrugs, which he hopes says 'no big deal' and 'have fun'.
"Okay, then." She brings her hands together, looking satisfied.
John thinks about Rodney, and he's pretty satisfied, too.
# # # # #
"You brought ear plugs?" John asks Rodney, who's putting the bright yellow plastic things in his ears.
Rodney gives him a glare, before saying--More like yelling, John thinks--"We're far too close, and my ears are far too sensitive."
John gives him an incredulous look and thinks about the volume of Rodney's rants, and maybe recording the decibel numbers to show where the real danger to his ears was going to come from. He mouths, "You're insane," to Rodney, but Rodney is turned, facing forward, toward the display which is set up across the, in Rodney's stated opinion, too-small lake.
They're sitting on the hood of John's car, which, tonight, is actually his dad's car. He's not admitting to himself that he didn't take his own car because it reminds him too much of Lizzie, and he just wants to think about Rodney tonight. Okay, maybe he is admitting it, especially when Rodney leans to the side over the hood to get something out of the cooler, and his shirt rides up, and John really wants to touch.
When Rodney sits back up, he's handing John a soda, and he's smiling. John smiles back.
Twenty minutes later, John looks over at Rodney, face lit from the bright radiance of the colorful pinwheels in front of them. Rodney sees his movement and looks at him, too, meeting his eyes, smiling. And when it appears he's going to glance away, he must see something in John's eyes, because his gaze stays, and his smile turns softer, somehow shy and confident all at once.
John leans forward and presses his lips to that smile, and feels the answering smile on his own lips. He closes his eyes and lets the bursts of colors--green, red, purple, blazing white, sparkling blue--wash over him.
# # # # #
John doesn't find out that Lizzie saw him and Rodney at the park until after break, from a note in his locker.
John,
You and Rodney looked very, very sweet, watching the fireworks (or, I guess, not watching them, as it were). While I think I would have appreciated an actual conversation about seeing other people/breaking up, there's no hard feelings. I'll be okay. Take care. Be happy.
Lizzie
John feel some knot inside himself come undone. He throws his backpack over his shoulder and heads to physics. And to Rodney.
The end