Written for the Badfic Summary Challenge

My prompt: "Rodney's boyfriend is mean and beats Rodney up and then John finds out and John figures out that he loves Rodney and John must rescue Rodney from Rodney's mean boyfriend. 1st fic! Plz rvw! Only nice things! Part 2 coming soon!", by moonlettuce.


"It's nothing. I ran into a door," Rodney said, and that's when John knew that something was wrong.

With Rodney, it was never nothing - it was a concussion, and brain damage, and a hemorrhage in his right eye, and an urgent need for anyone in the general vicinity to coo over his life-threatening injury, but not nothing.

Especially not with a black eye like that, which looked like it had to have hurt a whole lot. Probably still did. Not to mention that it was pretty damn hard to run into Atlantis' doors, which obligingly moved out of the way whenever you got near them. Which meant he was lying.

"A door," he repeated, slowly, drawing one eyebrow up skeptically, and Rodney flinched. Lying. Totally lying.

"Yes! A door! A - a cupboard door! Some moron must have left it open, and I ran into it. What's so hard to understand about that, Major?"

"And where did that happen?" he asked, just to make Rodney squirm some more.

"In... in... one of the labs! I don't know! I was kind of distracted by the immediate danger of losing my sight!" Rodney stammered, taking almost half a sentence to reach even a halfway credible imitation of his usual bluster. In conclusion, lying.

"Why don't you tell me who hit you?" John said gently.

This was just like Rodney, trying to deal with a perceived threat on his manhood all on his own, but really, whoever had done that belonged in the brig. Even if he himself had on occasion had to resist the temptation to sock Rodney. There was a difference between entertaining vengeful fantasies while spending eight hours sitting on an uncomfortable chair and being subjected to increasingly insulting demands to concentrate already, and actually going and punching a guy who had managed to come out of almost a year of hand-to-hand training completely unable to throw a decent punch.

"No one hit me! Door, Major! Door!" Rodney insisted, indignantly.

Oh, this was ridiculous. Rodney couldn't lie convincingly to save his life. "For God's sake, Rodney, it's nothing to be ashamed of!"

Rodney deflated slightly. "Look, it's not that I don't appreciate the concern, because I do. But it's completely unnecessary, alright? Nobody hit me. Let it go. Please."

He was gone before John could think of something to say to that.

---

John spent the afternoon at the gym, irritably punching the bag. When the gym started to fill up, he went to his room and tried to read. After he caught himself throwing the book down and pacing instead for the fifth time, he decided that he had had enough. Really, this was ridiculous - he couldn't force Rodney to press charges if he didn't want to, but damn it, he wasn't going to let anyone get away with punching an invaluable member of the expedition. Not to mention a friend.

Rodney's door didn't open for him, but the light that indicated when a room was empty didn't go off, either. He pressed the door bell, but it didn't react. Clearly, Rodney didn't want to be disturbed. Well, fuck that - if Rodney thought he was going to let him get away with sitting in his room and licking his wounds all alone, he had another thought coming.

A nagging little voice in the back of his mind tried to remind him that he had no idea if that was what Rodney was doing - for all John knew, he might be in there jerking off. But if that was the case, he could just apologize and back out, he told himself stubbornly, spreading both hands on the smooth surface of the door and feeling the click in his mind, overriding the locks.

The door slid open smoothly, soundlessly, and John stepped into Rodney's empty living room. There were voices coming from behind the half-closed door to the bedroom, and John was already halfway back out of the door - not sulking, then - when he realized just what they were saying.

"Come on, baby, don't be that way," a vaguely familiar male voice whined, and John abruptly felt his eyebrows trying to climb into his hairline. Baby?

"Stop calling me that! I've told you a thousand times that I don't like it!"

Rodney sounded furious. Even John, who had seen him at his very worst, irritated and tired and pissed off, was mildly impressed. This put the most scathing of Rodney's tirades to shame.

"And now take your hands off me and fuck off! I have nothing more to say to you, I don't want to hear it, and if I never have to see your face again, it will be too soon! Which is going to be a hassle in a place this small, so I suggest you start practicing avoiding me right now!"

"Oh, come on, don't be that way," the other guy wheedled. John rolled his eyes. If this was what he was suspecting with increasing certainty, he was going to be seriously disappointed with Rodney for falling for a slimeball like this. What had he been thinking?

"I have already apologized to you - what more do you want me to say? Want me to beg? 'cause I will, if I have to. You're worth it, baby."

"Oh, shut the fuck up," Rodney said, with at least as much disgust as John was currently feeling, audibly dripping from his words. "Seriously, you have ten seconds to get out of here before I call security. I mean it. Ten."

Go, Rodney! John thought, approvingly.

"Don't you think you're going a bit too far right now?" Whoa, slimeball was starting to sound pissed off, there. Good.

"I said I was sorry."

"Nine".

"Now just wait one fucking minute, here - "

"Eight."

"Rodney!"

"Se-ven", Rodney singsonged, clearly starting to get into it. John grinned vindictively.

"Oh, come on, be sensible!"

"You hit me!" Rodney hissed, suddenly not sounding amused at all anymore. John flinched.

Fuck. So that was the guy who had hit Rodney. His mind hadn't really wanted to go there. Fucking asshole. That was just the lowest of the low, hitting your partner. Why on earth hadn't Rodney reported the guy? What did he think he was doing, protecting an abuser?

John tugged the door the rest of the way open. He did know the slimeball, he realized when he saw the blond hair and broad shoulders. Sanders, one of the Marines. He towered over Rodney, but the smaller man didn't look the least bit cowed. His face was twisted with anger, the black eye giving it a bizarre, lopsided look that only emphasized the expression of fury. He didn't look like someone who needed to be protected.

Still, John took a cautious step closer. Sanders looked like an irritated pitbull, ready to attack at any moment. They weren't looking at him, and with the staring contest going on, he doubted they were going to any time soon.

"Get out now!" Rodney growled. "I don't have to take this shit from you, and I'm not going to. Fuck off, and stay out of my way, or I will report this! Now!"

"Now listen to me, you condescending little shit -" Suddenly Sanders was moving, attacking, just like John had feared he would. Rodney's eyes went almost comically wide when his back slammed against the wall, but he refused to be cowed. John's respect for him rose another notch.

"Let go of me!"

"Now will you -" Sanders started, voice cutting off with a little squeak when John's hands closed around his neck. John wrenched him back, off Rodney, pressing hard enough to make it hard for him to breathe, but not quite enough to cut off his air supply. The threat was there, though.

Rodney was staring at him. "Major? What are you doing here?"

John ignored him, knowing that it would take only one second of inattention to lose his edge with Sanders. And while he was pretty sure that he'd be able to take him when it came down to that, he really didn't need a knock-down drag-out fight with a subordinate.

"You might want to apologize," John said softly, into his ear, going for scary intensity and knowing he had hit his mark when Sanders jerked slightly. The muscles in his throat were fluttering, clenching against John's fingers. He tightened his grip a little, warningly.

"I'm - I'm sorry!" Sanders choked out.

"You'll be going now, and never bothering Dr. McKay again", John prompted.

"I'm - going. Yes. Going. I'm sorry, Rodney - Dr. McKay!" he hastily amended, when John squeezed a little bit harder.

John let go of him, flinging him roughly towards the door. "Go to my office. Wait there until I join you. We will be discussing your punishments then."

"No!" Both John and Sanders whirled around at the sound of Rodney's voice.

"What?" John asked incredulously. "Now please don't tell me that you're planning to take this slimeball back! Rodney, domestic abuse is an escalating behavior pattern, he won't just stop hurting you -"

"I know that!" Rodney said impatiently. "And no, he can go to hell for all I care. But I don't need you to fight this battle for me. I can take care of myself just fine, thank you very much. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I did not report this for a reason? I am not some poor abused victim that you need to protect, and I don't need you to make my decisions for me, either. As I said, I appreciate the concern, but I'm asking you to keep out of this."

Rodney's eyes were flashing angrily, and John sighed and relented. He could understand Rodney's need to take charge of this - hell, he'd want to reassert control, too, if his boyfriend had beaten him up.

"Fine. Fine, I'll keep out of this," he said. If that's how Rodney wanted it, that's how he could pretend to handle it. He could always arrange for Sanders to fall down some stairs later, and there were plenty of toilets in Atlantis that needed to be cleaned for the next twenty years or so.

"Thank you," Rodney said, sounding honestly relieved. "You - get out of here."

This time Sanders slunk off without further protest, still rubbing his throat where John had grabbed him.

Rodney slumped on the edge of his bed, scrubbing his hand through his hair tiredly. "Thanks", he said after a moment, sounding less reluctant than John would have expected. "That could have gotten pretty ugly, if you hadn't been there."

"Hm", John said, noncommittally, sitting down on the single desk chair. "Sorry for breaking into your quarters, by the way."

"Oh, forget it - I'll get worked up over that when I'm less exhausted, if you don't mind", Rodney said with a wry little smile. John's heart fluttered in his chest in a way that he knew wasn't entirely due to the relief of seeing him healthy and coping.

"You gonna tell me what happened now?" he asked.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Pretty much exactly what you're probably suspecting - we figured out we had a mutual itch to scratch, followed by a few nights of mediocre sex, he wanted to do something I wasn't comfortable with, he pressured me, I told him where to shove it, he hit me, end of story. Oh, and I somehow forgot almost a year of self-defense lessons and stood there like some stupid little damsel in distress, so excuse me if you coming to my rescue like the knight in shining armor was kind of annoying. Nothing personal."

John nodded. "Yeah, that's what I thought. But seriously, why don't you want to report him?"

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yeah, because I really needed to deal with a homophobic freakout on top of everything else. This is, despite the civilian administration, still largely a project of the US military. I can just see it, me standing in court and complaining that my boyfriend has beaten me up. Because I have so much respect with the Marines already, I can afford to lose some."

"Hey!" John protested. "On behalf of my men, I'm offended! These are SGC people, meaning, the best and the brightest, not a bunch of stupid jarheads. There have been rumors going around about O'Neill and that scientist, what's his name, Jackson? for years, and no one minds."

"O'Neill and Jackson?" Rodney repeated incredulously, momentarily distracted. "What, seriously?"

John shrugged. "I have no idea. I barely know them. The point is, a lot of the Marines believe it, and I've never heard a single negative comment. Seriously, this is not the bastion of homophobia you're suspecting. If you really don't want to press charges, that's your decision" - he was going to take care of some appropriate revenge, in any case - "but you don't have to be afraid to get gay-bashed any time soon, I don't think. I mean, I can't guarantee that everyone would be thrilled if you asked them out, but I don't think it will get you punched, either. So no more black eyes for the sake of wild monkey sex, you hear me?"

Rodney groaned. "I can't believe you just said that. Wild monkey sex? Really. Only you."

John laughed. "Got your attention, didn't it? By the way, you might want to get this looked at."

He reached out and traced a finger lightly over the outline of the purple bruise surrounding Rodney's right eye. Rodney shivered.

"So you wouldn't... punch me, if I asked you if you were interested?" he asked, hesitantly, and John's heart did that fluttery thing again.

"I... can't say that I'd mind, no," he croaked, voice suddenly going hoarse and deep on him. Huh. He hadn't really realized that he was quite that interested.

Rodney's whole face was lighting up with his answer. "Come here, then," he said, but John was already climbing onto the bed, one hand going around the back of Rodney's head, buried in his soft hair, their lips meeting eagerly.

God, this was good, Rodney's wide, mobile mouth moving against his, curious tongue tickling his lower lip - and then suddenly Rodney was laughing against his mouth, and he pulled back.

"What? What's so funny now?"

"Sorry, sorry", Rodney gasped, "It's not you, it's just... this is just the perfect end to this damn story, the damsel in distress being kissed by the knight in shining armor." He rolled his eyes.

John grinned. "Hey, we can end the story with some hot monkey sex, instead. I don't recall any fairytales ever ending that way."

Rodney's eyes lit up. "Mm, yes", he said appreciatively. "You could fuck me. Ooh, yeah, that would be good."

John did a double-take. "You sure? I just assumed that was what you meant, when you said Sanders wanted to do something you weren't -"

"- comfortable with. Well, duh", Rodney said in his very best "talking to the idiots" voice. "I didn't trust him."

=end=