shockedNote: So, this was definitely not supposed to be the first fic that I ever posted, but it kind of took over, and I certainly finished it much more quickly than I expected since I'm great at the beginnings of stories but not so good with the middle and the end (but especially the middle). But I wanted to have it done in time to actually do those who are having finals some good. It was also meant to be shorter, but exposition always gets away from me, and 3,000 words is fairly short, though it can't count as a quick sketch anymore. This is what happened when I put John, Rodney, an academic environment, and finals in my head and shook it a little. It doesn't really have a whole lot to do with Atlantis as we know it and is certainly not filled with clever references. I also couldn't stop writing even though the sky turned far too quickly from deep blue to light blue tinged with pink. Damn you, sunrise! And now, I shall shut up and go to bed.
Roommate Troubles*, McShep, NC-17
“John, you taste so good.”
Casimir's observation was that the second-quantized, quantum electromagnetic field, in the presence of bulk bodies such as metals or dielectrics, must obey the same boundary conditions that the classical electromagnetic field must obey.
“Oh, that tickles!”
Consider, for example, the calculation of the vacuum expectation value of the electromagnetic field inside a metal cavity, such as, for example, a radar cavity or a microwave waveguide.
“John! Your roommate’s here!”
To each and every possible standing wave corresponds an energy; say the energy of the nth standing wave is En. The vacuum expectation value of the electromagnetic field in the cavity is then—
“Mmm. Well, it’s worth it for that.”
Rodney slammed his book shut. That was it. He was not going to sit around and listen to his rommate make love to his girlfriend while he was in the room. He didn’t care what kind of Captain Kirk hot jock John Sheppard thought he was. He. Didn’t. Have. The. Right.
John and the girl didn’t seem to notice. What was her name? Abigail or Eleanor or something like that.
“
Rodney put on his headphones.
Rodney and John should never have been roommates a second year, but neither of them had found anyone else to room with, so they were stuck with each other. Rodney didn’t have any friends because he thought everyone around him—his professors included—was an idiot. John didn’t because…Rodney didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he didn’t know people. Their first year, Rodney had been subjected to a parade of John’s buddies, popping in whenever he was trying to sleep or study and being generally loud and obnoxious, talking at full volume about whatever it was guys like Sheppard talked about. Rodney didn’t know, because the first semester he’d practically lived in his earplugs, and that Christmas he’d asked for noise cancelling headphones.
But none of John’s ‘buddies’ had been close enough to want to room with him, so John had ended up with Rodney for another year.
This semester, instead of buddies, it had been girls, mostly international students, until about a month ago he’d started seeing
Oh, and what was Rodney doing, reading storybooks?
And then, when she finally left, if she left, John would complain that Rodney’s lamp and his typing were keeping him from falling asleep! Rodney had tried to study in the library, but all the books there kept distracting him. Maybe he should have tried the humanities library, but he shuddered at the thought. Besides, it was a long walk, and he couldn’t eat while he studied in any of the libraries anyway. The lab was out of the question, too; he spent enough time there as it was.
Didn’t they need to study, too? For god’s sake, it was finals. Rodney looked up when someone climbed down from the top bunk, almost stepping into his coffee.
“Okay,” John was saying. “What are the three additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions?”
On the other hand, maybe John had taken the class to meet women. Not that he needed any help. The guy was fricking beautiful and had the easy, boisterous charm of a society girl. Rodney had known from the moment he’d met him at the beginning of Orientation their freshman year that he was in very, very big trouble, and so far he hadn’t been wrong. It just went to show that rooming with John again was a really bad idea.
Above him, John’s girlfriend giggled.
Yeah, a really bad idea.
Rodney looked up from his old problem sets when he heard someone climbing down from the bunk above him again. It had been quiet up there for a few hours now, and he’d figured the wonder couple must have satd themselves and gone to sleep. He’d let his CD end, expecting to finally be ble to get in some quality sutdy time.
It was John, not
He was still looking up, though, when John came back, and for the first time that night, his roommates made eye contact with him. He stood there considering for a moment, then raised his hand and gestured to Rodney. Curious and temporarily tired of quantum field theory (as if he really needed to study this stuff anyway), he followed into the fluorescent-bright hall. Outside, John had his hands on his hips, an unreadable expression on his face.
Rodney crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, no idea what to expect. He felt strangely exposed in his t-shirt and boxers, barefoot against the rough carpet.
“Listen, I, uh, I know you’ve been trying to study,” John said. “I just hope we haven’t been bothering you.”
Well that hadn’t even made the shortlist. He’d thought he was going to get kicked out of his own room at three in the morning or hit up for notes from Math 214. Rodney didn’t really know what to say, because the truth was he had been bothered, but he didn’t want to coe off as the jerk who atually said so when his roommate was trying to apologize. He stared dumbly at John’s chest. Which was really hairy. In one and a half years, Rodney hadn’t thought much about John’s chest, but for some reason, it was all he could think about now, because John was very naked standing there in his boxer shorts.
And then John licked his lips.
Suddenly, Rodney wished he was wearing more than just two thin pieces of stained white cotton. For a moment, he thought about scrunching down and covering himself with his hands, but he would have looked pretty stupid standing there chest-high to his perfectly upright roommate as if trying to make himself a smaller target. It was 3 a.m., but there were still plenty of other students up and about. It was college. And it was finals. He wasn’t going to be able to cover himself, though. Instead, he hid behind some familiar sarcasm.
“I know you think you’re, like, some kind of intergalactic space bimbo magnet…” John wrinkled his brow puzzledly. “But don’t you think you should be studying, too? You know, finals? That strike a bell?”
John tilted his head. “
“Well, yeah, I don’t need to study, either,” Rodney said defensively. John had crossed his arms over his chest, tucking his hands into his armpits. Now, all Rodney’s attention was drawn to his stomach, which was remarkably flat and firm-looking. He could literally see the bones of John’s hips cuving down into his waistband. The patch of dark hair from his belly button, too, leading down. John Sheppard looked far too relaxed, and Rodney just couldn’t stand it anymore. He pushed himself off of the wall, intending to turn around and go back to the studying he didn’t need to do. But he must have misjudged the distance, because all of a sudden he was way too close to his roommate. Clearly, John thought so, too, because he had uncrossed his arms and was looking decidedly less relaxed.
Rodney wasn’t sure whether he leaned up or John leaned down—it was probably both—but he didn’t care because for the first time in a year and a half all the annoyance, all his irritation at his roommate dissipated. They kissed with all the stored up tension of those long months, and Rodney could almost read their story from John’s point of view in the kiss; the living basically on top of each other in a 14 by 14 room, the clashing personalities and battle of wits, John’s initial hurt at Rodney’s sharp tongue and his later delight in baiting him, his loneliness… It was smooth and fierce at the same time, and as first kisses, first kisses that came completely out of the blue, went, it felt so natural he almost forgot they hadn’t been kissing for months.
They pulled away before either of them got too caught up in it, Rodney staring up at John with wide eyes. John turned his face away a little under the scrutiny, and Rodney could see the tension in his jaw, but John was still holding onto Rodney’s upper arms, breathing too heavily.
A door opened down the hall, and John glanced around hastily. Still holding onto Rodney’s right arm, he ducked back into their room.
“What just happened?” he asked accusingly, as if it were all Rodney’s fault.
Rodney gestured mutely. “Well,” he whispered. “I, uh, think we just kissed. Which is really not what I expected was going to happen when you brought your girlfriend here tonight. Not, not to say that it wasn’t—”
He stopped short when he saw John’s wide eyes. Rodney followed his gaze up to John’s bunk behind him.
“
She held up her hand. “Don’t.”
“It wasn’t—it wasn’t,” John said desperately.
“I don’t know what you think you’ve been doing, John Sheppard, but it obviously was something,”
The door would have slammed behind her, but they didn’t slam in this dorm. In the deathly quiet of her departure, John slumped down onto Rodney’s bed. They didn’t usually share what small personal space they had in this little room, but Rodney sat down next to him, his heart both pounding and racing. He waited for John to say something, but his roommate was silent, staring down at his clasped hands.
“Look, I, uh,” he was gesturing with his hands again. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“ ‘S not your fault.”
“No, of course it’s not my fault, but we’re kind of…in this together? Now?”
“I really didn’t think
“Well, ah, her waking up was really just the last in a series of…issues, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, about that.” John scratched his chin. He was still practically naked, and now that
“Shut up.” This time, Rodney was sure he was the one who leaned over and kissed John, taking possession of the yielding lips. John’s stubble was prickly against Rodney’s chin, but he was used to that. At first, John didn’t reciprocate, but he didn’t resist either, and then Rodney was surprised when he felt John’s tongue pushing against his half-closed lips. In another moment, they were kissing with open mouths, and John had put his hands on Rodney’s arms again. He scooted back on the bed so that Rodney could kneel in front of him, straddling his legs. Rodney grabbed John’s head and pressed on his lips. John’s mouth was wet and warm, and Rodney ran his tongue all along his hard palette, tasting him. As John pulled him closer, Rodney withdrew his tongue and sucked, taking John’s tongue into his mouth in turn.
Rodney was now pressed up against John’s bare chest, his crotch sliding up towards John’s. John shivered as their cocks brushed together; Rodney’s had slipped out of the slit in his boxers, and John’s hands behind his ass pushed it flush with his stomach. The head rubbed against the hair there, a little rough and a little silky, and Rodney tried to hold back a moan, forgetting that
When Rodney broke away to kiss his way down John’s neck and chest, a line of pre-come stretched from his cock to John’s stomach, where the hair had gone all matted from the moisture. The line trailed away as Rodney continued down the scrawny torso to John’s abdomen, where he tasted himself tangled in the dark hair, salty and mild at this early stage. He raised his eyes to John’s as he kissed the bulge in his boxers where the F4F Wildcat (yes, Rodney had spent one bored afternoon studying John’s Aircraft of WWII poster) disappeared into a seam; he saw excitement, uncertainty, and just a little bit of fear in the hazel eyes. In all their time as roommates, John had never brought a guy back to their room for a snuggle, and Rodney had never brought anyone back, so he didn’t really know what John thought about homosexuality. Sure, he’d heard him joke about it with his buddies, but that could have been macho posturing…if they’d gotten this far, John had at least thought about doing it with guys, even if he’d never actually been with one.
Rodney grinned crookedly up at John because John was in for a big treat. He turned his attention back to John’s lap, pulling his airplane boxers down and over his cock, letting it spring up into the warm air in Rodney’s bunk. He licked his own lips, making sure they were nice and wet and anticipating the taste of come and sweat. Rodney loved the hidden, musky smell of a guy’s crotch, almost as much as he loved filling his mouth with the warm, smooth presence of a fully hard cock.
He wrapped his mouth around just the head, fitting his lips around its contours. Unable to resist, he flicked the tip of his tongue over the groove on the underside of the head and smiled to himself when John twitched all over. Rodney opened his mouth and let go, then stuck out his tongue and continued what he’d been doing with it, running it down the entire underside of the shaft now, ending at the base, where he circled up and made little sucky motions all along one side, back up to the head.
John was writhing now, thrusting up into the air, and Rodney relented and took his cock in one hand, guiding it into his mouth. John gasped and reached out wildly, finding and grasping Rodney’s hair. The pulling hurt, but Rodney ignored it, concentrating on the skin rubbing along his lips as he slid up and down John’s cock, bone-hard, pressing down his tongue. His saliva dripped down as he went, making the entire thing slick and slippery as it combined with the come John was leaking into his mouth. Rodney could feel John squirming underneath him, his back arching and the muscles in his legs tensing and untensing as Rodney sucked, lips folded down over his teeth. And when John was absolutely thrumming with the energy of the built-up sensation, Rodney reached back behind John and pushed him all the way into his mouth, swallowing him deep into his throat, a thick choking thing that was also the missing part of him, cutting off his air as his throat muscles worked convulsively.
John made a sound that Rodney was sure the entire floor could hear, his hands letting go of Rodney’s hair and flexing against his skull. He kicked out sideways with one leg, pushing Rodney’s comforter out from under them. His cock pumped and pumped into Rodney’s mouth, the come bitter and thick and tasting of everything Rodney had missed and wanted from John without even really knowing it. Rodney swallowed and held it still in his mouth until it was done jumping and spurting, and then he hauled himself up to where John was panting like he’d just run a 500-meter dash, deep and quick. Rodney wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned his head back against the wall, not sure if John was the sort of guy who could cuddle after coming or if he couldn’t stand to be touched. He was breathing almost as hard as John, though his own cock lay still hard and expectant against his belly. He started when John’s hand suddenly landed on his, and then he’d hooked his finger around John’s, and for a moment they sort of held hands, palm to knuckles. Then John swung his other arm around and grabbed Rodney’s shoulder, and suddenly he was back on top of John again, being kissed and held and it felt so good.
Then John’s hand was between their bodies and around his cock, and it felt even better, because John was jerking him off like he was pumping himself, and all the while John kissed him, taking in Rodney’s mouth the way Rodney had taken John’s cock, tongue everywhere. Rodney came, spreading a warm wet mess all over both their stomachs. As Rodney collapsed against John post-orgasm, his body limply pressing against a chest and hips that didn’t feel too bony at all, he realized that he was still wearing his t-shirt and boxers, which would now have yet another stain to add to what was already there. But it didn’t matter because he was now snuggling with his annoying roommate, who had tilted them both over onto the pillow and pulled the displaced comforter over them. Besides, he might just be able to convince John, who had always been a terrible neat-freak, to wash the t-shirt when he did his laundry tomorrow. Wednesday was always laundry day for John Sheppard; it was like clockwork.
Yes, Rodney thought contentedly, he was going to have clean underwear tomorrow, and he might even contribute some quarters.
*physics quotes randomly lifted from wikipedia
Written for 
toft_froggy's plea for revision porn. With a shoutout to my own first-year roommate, who was not Rodney to my John and couldn't have been, but gee, all the consternation would have been a lot better if it had gone like this.