Things John has had to tell Ronon, because they are things Ronon would not have ever figured out from available evidence:

John owns a car. It is a 1967 GTO. When Ronon asked if he rebuilt it himself, John raised an eyebrow and said, "Are you kidding?" Ronon thought that meant "Yes, of course, are you an idiot?" but John continued to say, "I bought it off a guy in Queens."

John's father was in the Air Force or NASA or something, and John spent most of his childhood in Florida with his father or Texas with his mother.

Both John's parents are dead. He has a younger sister and an older brother, neither of whom he speaks to. Ever.

John has a secret love of Tolkein that he has only spoken of once, but there's a tiny set of drawers hidden in the back of John's closet, and in one of those drawers is a One Ring that -- Ronon looked this up on the internet -- cost over ten thousand dollars. Ronon wants to know two things: (1) What the fuck? (2) What the fuck?

Ronon still has no idea why John became an editor. **

Things Ronon has had to tell John, because they are things John would not have ever figured out from available evidence:

Ronon's favorite fruit is the mango.

Ronon can cook -- and he can toss pizza dough. All knuckles, no fingers. He worked at Vinnie's on Nostrand his last two years of high school, and then he worked at Ray's on 11th all through undergrad.

Ronon learned to cook to be a credit to his mother, and also so that he could have supper on the table when she came home from working double shifts at the hospital.

It wasn't until high school that Ronon had the nerve to cut class; he was always positive that his mother would find him out and give him that disappointed look and say, "Baby, I try so hard to give you a good life, why you gotta throw it away?"

**

Conversations Ronon never thought he'd have, but did anyway:

The one that started with John putting his feet on Ronon's coffee table and asking, "So how many men have you fucked, anyway?"

The one that started with Stacks saying, "I think I'm going to transition."

The one that started with Elizabeth saying, "There's another picture of you and John in Locus -- can't the two of you keep your hands to yourselves?"

The one that started with Ronon's mother saying, "It's time for you to give me grandchildren, baby."

Those conversations ended like this, in order:

"Just you." Then a lot of sex.

"Into what?", thinking, "Butterfly?" Then a lot of blushing and stammering. (Now Ronon know Stacks's biological sex. He's not gonna tell anyone.)

"Uh." Then a lot of blushing and stammering, and a confession to John that sometimes Ronon thinks about Elizabeth naked, and a confession from John that sometimes he does too, and they both like the wrinkles around her eyes. Oh, and a promise to Elizabeth that he and John would refrain from having sex in public places, but not from kissing or holding hands.

"I think I'm going to be gay forever, Ma." Then a lot of yelling on his mother's part about cutting her out of his life. Then crying. Then pie.

**

Ronon enlists McKay's help: "What should I get John for his fortieth birthday?" he asks. He's sprawled in McKay's desk chair; McKay is on the floor with seventeen maps, two of which are original maps of London's tube system from a million years ago.

"He's turning forty again?" asks McKay and snorts. "Figures. He's always been a vain bitch."

Hm.

"Should I get him jewelry or something?"

McKay eyes him with raised eyebrows.

"Well, I don't know!" Ronon sips his coffee pensively. He feels pensive and he's sipping his coffee, but the adverb still feels misplaced.

"You know John has that secret Lord of the Rings obsession." McKay rearranges the maps, studies them, rearranges them again. "I'm going to kill Kavanagh for fucking this up."

"It's not very secret if everyone knows about it."

"I saw the drawers in his closet. I don't think too many people know about it. Although Chaya made a big deal of it when she bought him that ring."

"What ring?" asks Ronon. McKay's seen the drawers. Maybe he and John did more than blow jobs in the bathroom. Which Ronon does not care about, since they're not blowing each other in bathrooms anymore anyway.

"The One Ring. It was almost twelve thousand dollars you know." Rodney rearranges the maps again and studies them, then nods sharply. "Done."

Ronon looks down. The maps look the same.

"Maybe I should get him a first edition of The Lord of the Rings?"

"It's a trilogy, Conan," McKay snaps, then looks up at him. "That would show that fucking bitch."

"What was she like?" asks Ronon, before he can stop himself. McKay rolls his eyes, but opens his mouth.

"She was a fucking bitch." McKay stands up and says sourly, "Fuck, my knees."

Ronon grins.

**

Ronon is really fucking sick and tired of reading thrillers by people who watch too much CSI and NCIS and Profiler -- he stops reading submissions all together, focuses more on helping the junior staff (sometimes he thinks it would be pretty cool to, whatever, maybe take over for Elizabeth some day or something -- do more than just edit novels and hang around listening to gossip) and working with the authors he's already got, and even passes one or two of them on to Stacks.

Stacks and Halling get along really well. Really well. It kind of makes Ronon uncomfortable, so he doesn't think about it.

**

At the launch party for Door to Heaven, John and Ronon stand together in a corner, drinking more-expensive-than-usual-but-still-cheap wine and eating miniature bagels with lox -- Stacks did the catering order. They watch the Daniel Jackson/Sam Carter/Jack O'Neill drama with too much glee.

"Explain this to me," Ronon says around a mouthful of mini bagel. The lox is perfectly salty.

"Well..." John smirks. "Back in the days of yore --" Ronon rolls his eyes " -- O'Neill ran Atlantis and Elizabeth was the editor in chief --"

"And you were a lowly editor?"

"And," says John, ignoring Ronon, "Daniel Jackson was one of the production editors, and he and O'Neill... well, no one was really ever sure about them. Still aren't."

Ronon looks across the room to where O'Neill is standing too close to Daniel, with his arm around Daniel, and Sam Carter is scowling.

"Then when we were bought out by the Gate Group -- who saved our asses from the Goa Ould, I might add, so don't listen to Kavanagh's bitching -- they brought in Sam Carter to do the refinancing and pushed O'Neill into being a higher up administrator for the Group proper --"

"And Daniel?"

"O'Neill started dating Sam, and Daniel quit."

Rodney is with Sam and Daniel and O'Neill now, standing too close to Sam. Now O'Neill is scowling.

"People are strange," observes Ronon, and takes another mini bagel.

"Yup," agrees John. "Wanna go make out in the bathroom?"

"Don't people need to use the bathroom?" asks Ronon.

"I did some recon when we came in. There's a separate one for wheelchairs. Do you see anyone with wheelchairs?" John's arm sweeps across the room.

"It's practically an engraved invitation," says Ronon, and follows John out of the room, still clutching his wine glass. There are some things he never wanted to know about his authors. When he and John leave, he pretends he didn't see O'Neill and Daniel kissing in the coat check room.

**

For John's (second, according to Elizabeth) fortieth birthday, Ronon takes him out for tapas and then takes him back to Ronon's apartment, where a giant cardboard standup of Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn is waiting for them. John doesn't stop laughing for nine minutes, and then makes Ronon turn Aragorn to face the wall before they have sex on the couch.

**

"What's this?" asks John, and waves a book at Ronon.

Stacks raises an eyebrow and slides out of Ronon's office.

"It's a book." Ronon stacks his paperwork up into two piles: one needs his signature, the other just needs him to pretend that he looked at it.

"It's a first edition Tolkein with papers," says John flatly.

"Yes, well." Ronon pauses, as significantly as he can. "You only turn forty once, right?"

John stares at him and then stomps out of his office. Ronon giggles, but only once he's sure John is gone.

It was a hell of a lot of money, but it was worth it -- plus, as Ronon's mother is always saying, what else are credit cards for?

"Fuck you, Chaya," Ronon says to his ceiling, then goes to steal some Kona from McKay.

**

Teyla is a really great editor in chief. She keeps everything running smoothly -- for the first time in probably ever, John's copy is all on time. She never has to yell at McKay, she just speaks in that low, chiding tone, and everyone falls into line.

Ronon wonders how long it's going to be before she burns out, and hopes that it's a very very very long time. He really likes how nicely the office runs with her in charge (and hopes he's not jinxing anything by thinking that).

**

There is a blizzard on Ronon's 31st birthday. He and John fuck for hours under blankets, until they're sweaty and warm even though the heat is down really low, then drank pots and pots of coffee.

"I was going to take you out for supper," says John, watching Ronon toss pizza dough.

Unlike John, Ronon actually has groceries all the time, and just orders in or goes out when he's feeling lazy.

He has spinach, bags of herb salads, frozen portions of steak, heads of garlic, a drawer of potatoes, onions. He's got vinegar and five different kinds of sugar, two different kinds of flour, baking power and baking soda, seven types of salt (regular iodized, regular sea salt, kosher salt, garlic salt, flaked salt, grey salt, and salt from the Dead Sea that he doesn't actually cook with). He used to have small pots of herbs on his windowsills, but Khet and Sen peed on them and chewed on them and generally made it known that plants were their domain. Now all Ronon has is cat grass that he got at the Union Square farmer's market.

Ronon even has salad dressing, which John finds fascinating. While Ronon cooks, John either watches him, or organizes the salad dressings. Alphabetical order is John's favorite, but sometimes he does it by height, by fat content -- once by sodium content.

"It's okay," says Ronon. "I've got everything --"

"It's your birthday." John is staring at him. Ronon spins the dough into the air one last time, then sets it on the pizza stone he's already heated through and sprinkled with cornmeal. Where's the sauce?

"It's just a birthday," says Ronon. Sauce. Shredded mozzarella. More sauce. Is there pepperoni or sausage or something? John dances out of his way when Ronon opens the fridge. John's got Khet in his arms, kneading his chest. "Do you want ham or anything? I have some shredded chicken, I think. Roasted garlic?"

"Cheese is fine." John keeps staring at him. Once Ronon's slid the pizza back into the oven, John pushes him against the fridge and kisses him. Khet licks Ronon's throat while John licks into Ronon's mouth, and John seems... desperate.

Ronon just kisses him back.

The pizza burns.

They eat soup from a can, heated up in the microwave.

John's gift to Ronon is a model kit of the Serenity -- in Lego.

**

Things Ronon is never going to tell John because, really, it's all kind of girly and stupid, and even though Ronon is pretty secure in his masculinity, there are some things that don't need to be shared:

Ronon really likes the Sleeping Beauty waltz. His mother used to sing it to him --"Yes, I know it's true, that visions are seldom all they seem, but I know you, I know what you do, I waltzed with you once upon a dream." He sings it sometimes to Khet and Sen, but only when no one -- John -- is around to hear.

Ronon doesn't really care about cheese. He always has four or five kinds of cheese because John likes cheese. Herbed goat cheese, extra sharp cheddar from Vermont, mild cheddar from Wisconsin, Dutch gouda Ronon asked his mother to bring back from her vacation in Aruba (where Ronon is pretty sure she had sex, because there's a glow he's almost never seen before about her, and, well, good for her, but he is not going to think about it), fresh Italian mozzarella, soft Mexican queso blanco, even softer brie smeared on almost-burnt toast. Ronon is a cheese expert now, because once John said drunkenly, "Man, I love cheese, cheese on everything, cheese is great, cheese is my best friend, Ronon, are you listening? It's all about cheese, man. Why don't we publish books about cheese?"

John goes to ConQuest at the beginning of February because he's doing some gaming tie-ins. Ronon is supposed to go to Boskone, but he backs out when he realizes they haven't put him on any panels. He's got better things to do with his time than hang out with editors from Warner. So Ronon goes to John's apartment and does all his laundry and sleeps in his bed and reads his old paperback science fiction novels with yellowing pages and dog-eared corners.

When John sits close enough to Ronon that their sides are pressed together, Ronon gets shivery.

Sometimes Ronon likes to read Lindsay's romance novels. He trades with Peter, too, who also reads them. Peter likes the ones set in the South, with the crazy family dramatics. Ronon likes the ones set in "exotic cities" because the women are always ball-busting businesswomen who don't settle down even after they've found the right man. He and Peter agree on the ones set in the future -- they both like the ones in which all the men are slaves and the women are kickass warriors. It's hot.

Ronon likes the way John smells -- citrus and Cool Water cologne. Ronon also thinks John looks awesome in his aviator sunglasses. Ronon also thinks John would have made a hell of a sexy pilot, if his vision hadn't been such a problem -- but he's really really glad that John became a book editor.

Once Ronon let his girlfriend -- the one he met at the yoga class -- take him to a spa and get him a pedicure. He really liked the foot massage, and the pedicurist didn't even blink when he had her paint his toenails black.

Once Ronon was accidentally walking past Tiffany and he accidentally went in, and he accidentally picked out a ring that he would have bought for John, if John was a girl, and if Ronon wanted to get married. He still thinks about it sometimes -- it's a plain platinum band with small diamonds set into it. So small that it actually looks like the platinum is just engraved. Understated, just like John.

**

Sometimes Ronon likes to wander around the Flatbush Avenue farmer's market and buy fresh fruit and cheese (for John) and cat grass (for Khet and Sen) and pretzels and hot chocolate and fresh sausage.

He used to go with his mother on weekends, and then out for lunch, and then for walks by the river. Now he goes (sometimes) with John, and they have brunch, and drink, and walk by the river, and then go down and John tucks flowers into Ronon's dreads for a joke. They don't hold hands or anything, but they sometimes bump shoulders.

Ronon did not ever think they would bump into his mother.

"Baby!" she cries, her arms full of flowers and bags of what he guesses is probably greens and fruit.

"Mom!" he says, and feels bad that his first thought is to look for John and hope he doesn't come over.

"Come here often?" she asks, and bumps her hip into his, and winks.

"How are you?" He takes the heavy bags from her and kisses her cheek. "Can I buy you some hot cider?"

"Nah, nah, no, I'm good." She waves her now-free hand. "Are you still coming for lunch tomorrow?"

"Yes -- are you making --"

"Fried chicken." She nods. "So..." She looks over his shoulder. "Is that --"

"Ronon." John slings an arm around Ronon's neck and presents Ronon's mother with a single pot of tiny little blue flowers. Ronon scowls.

"So you're the young man my young man is seeing," she says speculatively.

"You must be Ronon's mother. It's nice to meet you, ma'am." There's a hint of southern -- Texas, Florida, whatever -- in John's voice that Ronon's never actually heard before.

"Shauré." She takes the pot and looks totally charmed. John is such a shithead.

Ronon realizes that his mother is closer in age to John than he is. That's kind of humiliating.

He is going to throw up.

**

John refuses to fuck him that night. Or to have any sex at all. Or to be touched.

"Aren't I the one who is supposed to be freaking out?" says Ronon. He sighs and rolls over onto his back. He really wants to ask all the questions he's been repressing now, about John's background and family. Most of the stuff he knows comes from reading John's Christmas cards (Ronon's card to him is the only one that says Happy Hanukkah), and tossoff things John's said, and, of course, grilling Lorne.

Actually, it's not so much grilling Lorne as it is listening to Lorne talk about John to Stacks and Lindsay and Laura while casting significant looks in Ronon's direction.

"I'm not freaking out. It's just weird." John rolls over on his back too, and Khet jumps up onto the bed and lands right on his chest. John doesn't even wince, just starts cuddling Khet to his throat.

"Maybe we should break up and you should date my mother," says Ronon, glaring at the ceiling.

"She's a woman."

"You were married."

"I'm not anymore." John sounds too reasonable. "Plus I bet she could totally kick my ass --" Ronon snorts; like Ronon can't? --"and it's kind of perverted."

Ronon knows he sounds like a prim prudish girl when he says, "Not as perverted as cradle-robbing."

John doesn't even glare at him, just continues thoughtfully, "No wonder you have a crush on Elizabeth. Your mom is just like her."

Ronon splutters a little, and finally says, "I do not have a crush on Elizbeth."

Now it's John's turn to snort. "If you weren't with me, when she broke up with Simon, you'd've totally been doing her."

"Not."

"Yes. Stacks too! Hey, that must be why you let Stacks order you around."

"Stacks is not like my mother," says Ronon, but even he isn't convinced.

"Stacks is totally like your mother. Stacks and Elizabeth. Huh." John is grinning, smirking, and Ronon shoves him, hard.

"Get out of my bed," says Ronon.

"Nope. Your apartment is closer to your mother's than mine is."

"Is not," says Ronon, which is true. John lives in Cobble Hill, which is way closer to Prospect Heights than Williamsburg is. Which is part of the reason why when Ronon was moving away from Prospect Heights, he moved to Williamsburg. Not to be far away from his mother, but to be -- far enough away.

"Is too." Khet jumps off John with an angry "Rawr" when John wrestles Ronon for his side of the bed back, and ends up on top of Ronon, eyes gleaming. Ronon scowls at him, hooks an ankle around John's leg, and rolls them over. He pins John's wrists above his head -- it's really too easy -- and puts his face right up to John's. John's breath smells like roasted garlic and chicken and coffee. It should be gross, but it's not.

"Take. It. Back," says Ronon. He pushes his hips into John's. "Say you're sorry!"

"I'm sorry," says John, and then adds, "that you have an Oedipus complex!"

Now it's Ronon's turn to smirk. "Is this an Oedipus complex or an Electra complex? I never knew my father, you know."

"You are so so so gross," says John, and thrusts his hips up. Ronon lets him flip them over again, because, frankly, he's just grossed himself out too. "I am not old enough to be your father."

"You could have been very young and taken advantage of." John is getting hard against his thigh -- from proximity rather than the conversation Ronon (hopes) figures. "You could have been a very precocious eleven year old."

"Your mother's forty-six?"

Ronon smirks up at John, and informs him, "You are fooling no one, princess."

"Nerf herder," says John, and lowers his mouth to Ronon's. "Let's never talk about this again."

Ronon murmurs an assent into John's mouth and lets his hands slide over John's ass, and lets John help him forget that tomorrow they're both going to his mother's for lunch.