Between the Lines by liketheriver (wordless challenge)

[liketheriverrun.livejournal.com]

Title: Between the Lines
Author:  liketheriver
Category: Slash... romance... whimsy
Word Count: ~2,800
Rating: T 
Characters: McKay, Sheppard
Warnings: None 
Spoilers: A few here and there but nothing too obvious.
A/N:  This is an early birthday present for Koschka and since the challenge got extended and it fit the wordless theme at least in passing, I'm posting my second fic for the challenge.
Summary: Sometimes wrinkles speak louder than words.

 Between the Lines

by liketheriver

 

A few months before his fortieth birthday, John noticed his first gray hair. Rodney wasn’t sure how he’d gone that long without one, which started him thinking maybe it wasn’t Sheppard’s first, but it was the first one McKay had noticed him noticing. Maybe it was because he’d plucked all the others. Maybe it was because the Wraith who had returned Sheppard’s life to him went a little overboard and reversed the effects of aging a few years beyond those that he had taken. Maybe he just had good genes besides the one that allowed him to operate the Ancient equipment, or the stress had finally gotten to him, or maybe it really didn’t matter. The point was, neither one of them said anything about it. Rodney just hung back in the doorway to the bathroom while John leaned forward across the sink to study it in the mirror, tilting his head to catch the light at different angles, as if he could walk with his head cocked precisely so and no one would notice it. Never mind that he looked like that dog listing to the phonograph from the old RCA ads… the fact that Rodney remembered those commercials vividly was enough to keep him from making any smartass comments. 

 

Aging was a bitch; there was no doubt about it.

 

Even when he sat with Sheppard’s head in his lap that evening while John held an ice pack to his newly blackened eye, he didn’t remark on the fact that the colonel had called out the youngest new marine to arrive on Atlantis to spar with that day. He’d simply run his thumb along John’s temple, across that strand of silver in the field of dark brown that had brought this all on in the first place.

 

“It’s a good look for you. Muy macho.”

 

The lopsided quirk of lips had the one visible hazel eye rolling. “Yeah, it’s a great way to earn the respect of my men.”

 

“Too bad you had a room full of witnesses or you could blame it on me. I could use a boost in the intimidation area.”

 

“You? The marines scatter like cockroaches when you walk in the room. You’re like human Raid to them.” 

 

The fact was, it wasn’t the marines he was worried about exterminating… er, intimidating. Each run of the Daedalus seemed to bring with it a fresh crop of scientists who were ready to outshine everyone, including their supervisor… especially their supervisor. And while nobody could go toe to toe with the illustrious and notorious Dr. Rodney McKay when it came to figuring out exactly how to save the city time and time again, it was becoming obvious to Rodney you couldn’t be the wunderkind if you weren’t really a kind any longer.

 

“The only thing I worry about,” John continued when Rodney’s mouth took a downturn, “is you spraining your tongue during one of your infamous tongue lashings.” Sheppard took the hand that was resting on his chest and linked their fingers. “And then how would you do that thing you did last night?” 

 

John smiled, fine lines crinkling around his eyes like discarded wrapping paper, and that’s exactly what Rodney thought of whenever John did that, because it had taken a while in the early days before McKay had seen a smile that really reached Sheppard’s eyes. And the fact that the first one he remembered seeing was meant for him when they had been playing with the personal shield in those initial weeks on Atlantis, just reinforced that birthday-present-inspired giddiness at seeing it even now.

 

Rodney’s smirk in return had his own creases deepening at the act. “We’ve still got it, huh?”

 

John settled in comfortably, closing his eyes in familiar contentment. “Can’t nobody take it away, either.”

 

*              *              *              *

 

When McKay turned forty-three, he finally broke down and got the glasses he’d needed for six months or more. The eye doctor claimed it was perfectly normal at his age to need corrective lenses, that a large percentage of people in their early forties who’d had perfect vision in their thirties suddenly found themselves squinting when they read or unable to see across the room as clearly as they had before.

 

Rodney grumbled as he picked out frames, the whole time thinking that he’d never been part of the median percentile with anything in his life, so why had his body decided this would be the moment when it caved to the peer pressure of normalcy just because he was getting a little older. 

 

Sheppard met him at the gate when he returned from Earth, Rodney’s stormy expression letting it be known that he had no intention of discussing the glasses that he now wore. Even Carter had the decency to attempt to cover her, ‘told you so, McKay,’ grin when he glowered in her direction. Never mind the fact that he could now actually see the smug expression from further than two feet away. Christ, he might as well have come back with a flashing neon sign over his head with the words ‘old man walking’ and an arrow pointing at his face.  And the fact that this was the result of his annual two-day physical at the SGC when he’d given no indication that he was even having trouble with his vision, had more than a few people doing a double take.

 

John was unable to cover the slight flush and indrawn breath when he saw the newly bespectacled man, but he did manage to keep his face as neutral a possible. “So no deal breakers? Still stuck with you on the team?”

 

“Unfortunately, yes. I even tried to fake a heart attack but the damn EKG wasn’t being fooled by it.”

 

Sheppard sighed with a shake of his head, although his eyes never left the thin frames perched on Rodney’s face. “Well, I guess we better go break the bad news to Teyla and Ronon.”

 

They stopped by Rodney’s room on the way to the mess hall to drop his duffle bag and John had him pulled into a deep kiss as soon as the door shut. “Miss me?” McKay asked when John started working to unzip the scientist’s pants.

 

“What the fuck do you think?” He was walking them over to the bed, kissing McKay again so that when he pulled away long enough for Rodney to peel John’s shirt over his head, Rodney’s vision was obscured by a smudge on his new lenses.

 

But when he went to remove the glasses, Sheppard grabbed his hand. “No, leave them on.” Rodney gave him a baffled look and John grinned, sly and seductive. “Did I ever tell you I had a thing for Clark Kent as a kid?”

 

McKay landed on his back where John had pushed him on the bed. “Really?”

 

“No,” John admitted as he climbed on top of him, sucking on Rodney’s neck in a way that had him not caring about the smear because his eyes were rolling back in his head anyway. “But I think I might now.”

 

“So… the glasses… are… oh, Jesus…” John was nipping at his jaw, nuzzling the temple piece, running his tongue slowly around the outside of his ear before moving behind and kissing and nibbling at the earpiece.

 

“Hot… insanely, fucking hot.”

 

And when John’s face eventually screwed up with his teeth biting at his bottom lip and his eyes squeezed tight, the creases splaying out from the corners long and thin like John’s body on top of Rodney’s a few seconds later, McKay couldn’t help but wish his eyesight had started to fail years before.

 

*              *              *              *

 

Ten years on Atlantis seemed to pass in the blink of a near-sighted eye. 

 

Rodney went through at least a couple pairs of glasses a year, mainly as a result of losing them somewhere in the city when he took them off to get a closer look at some piece of equipment, but occasionally as a result of damaging them on a mission. He’d managed to save the pair he was wearing on MX6-922, but they hadn’t come out completely unscathed. Evidently the locals on that planet had never heard the old adage about not hitting a guy with glasses. And, seriously, that was half the point of having the damn things. The butt of Sheppard’s P90 meeting the man’s nose pretty much showed the guy what the colonel thought of his punch, but it hadn’t kept the frames from bending badly, then snapping all together when Rodney tried to fix them on the run back to the gate. But then again, nothing stayed broken around McKay for long.

 

The blur of green and brown forest had almost as much to do with the attempt to dodge the bullets flying around them as it did his poor eyesight. But when the two of them took cover so that Sheppard could call in Teyla and Ronon for back up, Rodney took advantage of the time to fix the eyewear. When John returned his attention to McKay and saw the silver duct tape resting on the bridge of Rodney’s nose, he just shook his head even as he released a spray of suppressive fire over the stone wall.

 

“Christ, Rodney, deep down I always knew I was sleeping with a major geek; I didn’t need you to provide empirical proof.”

 

“Oh, ha, ha.” Rodney pushed up on one side of the frames only to have them droop once again as soon as he released them. Well, at least he could look death in the face and actually see more than an amorphous shape, even if it took corrective lenses to do it.  “You know, the fact that you’re able to use the term empirical proof correctly only confirms my suspicions that I’ve been sleeping with a major geek all this time myself.”

 

John shot a smirk over his shoulder before turning back to keeping a lookout for their teammates or the locals. “After ten years, something was bound to rub off.”

 

Rodney blinked behind his lopsided frames. Ten years. Ten years was… well, it was nine years, three hundred and sixty-four more days than he thought he’d live given the events of that first day in the city. It was ten years of growing ulcers and receding hairlines and wrinkles showing up where they’d never been before. It was ten years of failing eyesight and graying temples and spreading crow’s feet and fifty actually being closer than forty. It was ten years of John’s lips curling into a smile just for him, and John’s practiced hands moving over his body and John’s arm draped over his chest as he laid breathing next to him in sleep.

 

And between the lines and the hair loss and the sex and the mere presence of Sheppard, it was the best ten years of his life.

 

“McKay?” John’s forehead creased in worry at the way Rodney had kind of zoned out there for a second.

 

Shaking off his musings about the past decade he’d spent in Atlantis, he’d spent with Sheppard, Rodney rolled his eyes. “Too bad for you it wasn’t my rugged good looks and boyish charm.”

 

“Nah, that’s what you got from me.” The teasing smile just grew along with the crinkles radiating out from behind the sunglasses Sheppard wore, but before McKay could give him a sarcastic response in return, Ronon and Teyla showed up and they were off to the gate once again.

 

*              *              *              *

 

A few months before his fiftieth birthday, John pulled a muscle in his shoulder on a routine mission by simply ducking under a low-hanging branch. They’d come home, he’d taken a prescribed muscle relaxant, and laid back on the couch with a heating pad and lament of, “God, I’m getting too old for this shit.”

 

It wasn’t the first time Rodney had heard him say it, but it was the first time Sheppard had actually sounded like he meant it.  “Please, O’Neill was practically using a walker in the field by the time he finally called it quits and you never heard him complaining about it.”

 

John shifted with a wince. “Yeah, but O’Neill hated being trapped behind a desk.”

 

“And you don’t?” Rodney snorted in disbelief.

 

“Not when I can occasionally trap you on top of it.” His grimace morphed into a slightly pained smirk accompanied by a waggle of eyebrows.

 

McKay pushed on the bridge of his glasses and shook his head. “The fact that you can even think of doing something like that, much less actually follow through with it, just confirms that you’re years away from being too old for the job. Besides, what would you do if you weren’t doing this?”

 

Speaking around a yawn, Sheppard closed his eyes and settled in against the pillow Rodney had brought him. “Retire, buy a house and mow the lawn in dress shoes and black socks, complain about the neighborhood kids, wear my pants up under my armpits, play cards down at the VFW on Saturdays. You know, typical old man stuff.”

 

“Old men don’t stick fight in the gym. More than that, old men can’t get their stick up and you did both yesterday.”

 

“True,” he conceded with a self-satisfied grin.

 

“Besides, it wouldn’t be the same around here if you were off being a grumpy old fart back on Earth.”

 

“Eh, they’d get used to it,” he dismissed, his voice slurring slightly with approaching sleep. “Probably be glad to have one less grumpy old fart in the city.”

 

“Well, that would just increase my grumpy old fart burden here on Atlantis and I already have more than my fair share of work to do around here.”

 

John reached out blindly and took Rodney’s hand, resting it comfortably on his chest. “Why would you be here if I’m back on Earth?”

 

Why, indeed? Rodney thought, studying the man lying before him. He could remember a time when the lines on that face he knew better than his own were finer, the hair darker, and, yeah, the body a little stronger. And maybe Sheppard was right, maybe they were getting too old for this shit.

 

That single strand of silver had multiplied over the past decade so that his temples were almost as gray as they were brown, but the salt and peppering just made Sheppard look more distinguished, more daring, than he had in his younger days. And wasn’t that just fucking typical that the flyboy could, not only maintain, but improve upon that roguish exterior even as he aged? How could he think of ending this chapter of their lives when he still looked the part of the dashing hero? No, they still had years to go before they closed the book and Sheppard knew it. Still, skimming over the silent narrative laid open before him, McKay could see they’d had one hell of a run so far.

 

It was all there for anyone who could read between the lines and wrinkles, the story of their lives etched wordlessly in the growing creases and receding hairlines, told more eloquently than letters ever could. Some good, some not so great, but it was theirs and Rodney didn’t think he’d ever get tired of reading it. There was a crease between John’s eyebrows that used to only show up when John was worried, or irritated, or in pain but now it was always present. Rodney knew he owned a fair share of the responsibility for that line because he had unintentionally, or intentionally, inspired all three over the years. And maybe that one was one he wasn’t exactly proud of but it still defined a large portion of their time together.

 

But the line that ran down from the corner of John’s closed eye, the one that had barely insinuated itself on his face when they first met, that one McKay liked to think that he was more than accountable for. He’d watched it grow over the years, with every smile, every laugh, every breathless moan of his name. If Rodney had his way, it would keep doing just that in all their time to come. 

 

No, they were nowhere near the end of their run, but it was kind of nice to think that when it came, they’d start a new chapter together.

 

Reaching out, Rodney ran his thumb along that crease; the act had John opening his eyes with a befuddled question forming on his lips. McKay just leaned down and kissed the unspoken query away, let his own lips answer for him, sensed Sheppard’s mouth curl in response, felt the line under his thumb deepen a little further still.

 

The End

 

Comments

[mellyna.livejournal.com]

Beautiful piece. Thanks for sharing.

[liketheriverrun.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it.