John could see that Carson was worried and though he didn't want to press the man into confidence, he knew that things could not carry on like this between them. Recently, Carson had seemed more withdrawn, he had failed to respond to John's glances and smiles with the grin that made John's heart melt. Instead, he was distant, sometimes when they talked John had the feeling that he wasn't really listening. When he told Carson about his missions, he smiled and nodded, but he wasn't really hearing. Especially when John mentioned Rodney. Carson tried to hide it, but he didn't do it well. John would have expected that someone with Carson's job would have grown adept at hiding his feelings, but one of the things he loved most about the doctor was his inability to do so. The look in his eyes when the two men were together was worth more to John than any halting words could express, and even if he knew Carson was keeping something from him, John still trusted him completely.
But he could see that Carson was hurting when John talked about Rodney, and he wondered why. Carson had told him about his feelings, and John was fine with that. Well, fine was hardly an expression he would use, but he blocked himself off from thinking about it, and anyway, he knew that Carson would never do anything to hurt him. If he said he loved John and didn't want Rodney over him, then John had only to look into those trusting blue eyes and he knew no doubts. In fact, he trusted Rodney, too. After their first meeting and as they settled in Atlantis, John had not been able to understand the respect that Rodney commanded throughout the expedition, and had assumed it was based purely on his intelligence and it's obvious implications for their survival. But as he had grown to know him better, he would be the first to admit that he admired Rodney. He liked him, and after Carson, he was John's closest friend there. Together they had faced dangers and brought each other out of them, and you couldn't do that sort of thing without forming a bond. But there was more than that. Underneath the prickly exterior, John sensed a Rodney that was quite different, and he had begun to understand just why Carson felt the way he did, his could feel his own feelings waver in that direction - yet another thing for them to share.
He trusted the other man so completely and was unsure why Carson didn't talk to him. Whatever it was, it would be much easier to face it together. He knew what Carson was like, he kept things to himself, he didn't want to burden others with the pain he felt, the regret for wrong decisions, and the self-reproach he constantly fought with. After the incident on Hoff, it had taken all of John's love and support to get Carson to admit to him that he felt responsible for every death on that planet, and it had taken some time before John had been able to persuade him to resume his research in the laboratories, without thinking of the wrongful uses to which it could be put. The anguish he had watch Carson go through, the nightmares through which he had held him were not something John wished to repeat, he didn't want to see Carson go through them and he didn't want to see him suffer that way again. He knew he would have to intervene and help him before it was allowed to get that far.