Author: miasnape
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Rating: PG-13
Size: 1625w approx.
Summary: Rodney keeps... noticing things.
A/N: Written for mcsmooch, inspired by that picture of Joe in Cate's journal.
Distraction
The first time Rodney noticed it was in the mess onboard the Daedalus, talking strategy with the team over acid-strong coffee. Rodney looked up from tying the plastic wrapper of his snack-cake into a tiny knot and it was there, right across the table from him.
Little, silvery strands of hair dusted across John's sideburn, just beside the smooth skin of his cheekbone and right above the trail of dark stubble currently outlining John's jaw. The blue-white lighting in the cafeteria picked each individual hair out like fragments of metal under moonlight.
Rodney had the urge, sudden and fully-formed, to put his mouth just on that spot; to feel the texture with his lips, run his tongue along the edges of the hairline, suck hard enough to taste the skin underneath, the fingers of one hand caught up in John's hair and the other's brushing John's neck, palm pressed against the pulse at his throat, holding him still and steady and open to Rodney's touch.
Rodney blinked his attention back to the real world when Ronon kicked at his shin under the table, and he left the idea discarded and forgotten like the knotted cellophane on the table, pushed aside by pros and cons and possible outcomes.
The second time he noticed it they were on a mission on PX9-434, following up on a lead from the friends of a trading partner that would undoubtedly end up being either nothing, or nothing but trouble. After hiking for two solid hours along an overgrown path between some trees and some more trees, headed towards yet more trees, Rodney wasn't sure which option to root for out of sheer boredom.
The path started to widen out in front of them, and after a couple of minutes they walked out into a clearing that was straight out of a Disney film, complete with a blanket of fallen leaves and an overturned tree trunk and woodland critters probably scampering about getting twitterpated and spreading deadly diseases, just waiting for some unsuspecting people to come along and get bitten or gnawed on.
They paused to look around, and Rodney used the opportunity to check his handheld for any interesting readings. John wandered up beside him and tried to peer around his hands to see the screen.
"Anything good?"
Rodney snorted. "I'm pretty sure that we're about to happen upon the meadow where Bambi's mother was shot, or maybe the Blair Witch, but other than that?" he asked, looking up and shoving the scanner back into his pocket, "Nope. Nothing."
He might have added more, or even listened to whatever it was that John was saying in reply, but the dappled light spilling through the foliage was hitting John's face and hair in an oddly mesmerizing pattern. He flashed briefly on that moment a while back on the Daedalus and let his gaze travel along the curve and ridiculous point of John's ear to John's sideburn. In natural daylight it looked more 'salt-and-pepper' grey, and Rodney still wanted to touch it, to just reach out and rub his fingertips over it, maybe even to step a little closer and nudge against the roughness with his nose.
About the same time that he realised that he'd just thought about nuzzling his team leader, on a mission, right in front of his team mates, he realised that if he didn't snap out of it and get moving, said team leader and team mates were going to leave him stranded here in a cartoon-perfect alien clearing to fend against rabid animals on his own.
Shaking his head to clear the insanity away, Rodney scrambled over the tree trunk and after the rest of his team.
After that, Rodney lost track of how many times he turned around or looked up or walked into a room and noticed John. And it wasn't just the silvery hair in his sideburns anymore, although that stayed a firm favourite. He noticed the hint of laughter lines at the corners of John's eyes. He noticed the eyes themselves, and the way they were almost blue one day, and then clearly green and amber the next, and then darker √ almost brown √ the day after that. He noticed John's lips, individually and as a perfectly curved set. He noticed fingers and shoulders and neck and scar tissue and cowlicks and boot laces and earlobes and the way sometimes John stood with his shoulders back and his hips tilted forward so that his stomach and chest drew the attention, and he wondered why he had the urge to close his eyes and just rest his cheek there, settled warm and soft against the cotton of John's t-shirt.
Well, that wasn't quite true. He knew why. He just... wasn't sure why. Why now, why John, why of all the things in the world to notice his obviously warped brain chose things like John's wrist bone, or the shape of his thigh when he kicked his feet up on to a table.
Rodney was in the middle of noticing the exact curve of John's left eyebrow while under the influence of Bruce Willis bounding around an office building in a wife-beater and no shoes when John sighed deeply, paused the movie, and turned to him with folded arms.
"Okay, what is it?"
Rodney blinked and let his vision pan out to cover the whole of John's face.
"Mmm?"
John sighed again and rubbed a hand through his hair.
"What is it?" he repeated. "You've been weird - weirder than usual - for weeks now."
"I have not," Rodney lied.
"Oh, you have so," John said, proving yet again that men who rode skateboards and read comic books and otherwise acted like ten year olds argued like ten year olds too.
"You stare off into space and get that look on your face like you're about to have an idea that'll change life as we know it or make something really big go boom, and then you slide back into whatever you were doing and try to pretend you weren't just miles away thinking about god only knows what."
Rodney looked away, gaze skittering over a plethora of noticed bits of John before resting on the neutral sight of his own fingers twisting together nervously. John shifted towards him on the sofa.
"Seriously, buddy, I know I'm not exactly the best guy to come to for advice or, you know, stuff like that. But you know you can tell me anything. And I'll only laugh a little bit."
Rodney huffed out a laugh and forced his gaze back up to meet John's.
"I just. I've been distracted." As if to prove his point, he found himself scrutinizing John's shoulder, and the way it joined up with his neck. "I keep noticing... things."
John's eyebrows scrunched up in bewilderment.
"What kinds of things?" he asked.
Rodney tilted his chin up and tried to ignore the tight band of fear around his chest.
"You."
John tilted his head.
"Me?"
"Yes, yes, you. You! You and your, your eyes and your hair and your wrists and your mouth. That little," Rodney lifted his hands and gestured towards John's face," little... divot right in the middle of your lower lip and those little lines beside your eyes, and..."
Feeling like a toy quickly running out of batteries, Rodney flailed his arms once more and slumped down into his seat.
"You have this grey hair, right here," he poked at his own face to illustrate," and I keep noticing it, and... I." He shrugged helplessly, out of explanation, and just waited in the sudden silence.
"You have really long eyelashes," John said, and Rodney looked up, startled. John looked right back at him, cheeks slightly flushed.
"And your mouth bends down on this side when you get frustrated or you're concentrating really hard. And you have a little circle of six freckles right above your elbow. And you wear your watch on the fourth hole even though sometimes it slides over to the side, because when you wear it on the third it leaves red marks on your wrist."
Rodney swallowed hard and kept staring as John half-smiled self-consciously.
"You're not the only one who's been noticing things, Rodney."
Rodney took a deep breath and smiled back. "Well, yes, apparently not. I didn't--"
"Notice?" John asked, smile quirking into a smirk, making Rodney huff out an annoyed breath, quickly followed by the amused grin he couldn't hold in.
"Neither did I," John admitted.
Rodney shifted a little, angling himself further towards John.
"So, are we going to keep just noticing? Or are we--"
He broke off when John's hand landed safely on his shoulder, squeezing once before travelling up Rodney's neck, thumb stroking back and forth over his skin.
"I think we... I mean I know I--"
Rodney put his hand on John's bicep and pulled, leaning in himself, and cut John off with a kiss - just lips, warm and soft, and he could feel the slight wet patch on John's lips where he'd licked them slide and catch, and tasted it when he pulled back and licked his own lips quickly before darting back again.
John pulled him closer with an arm wrapped around his waist, palm flat on his back, and Rodney went happily, deepening the kisses, licking his tongue into John's mouth, learning the feel of the shapes he already had memorized by sight and finding all sorts of new stuff to notice, like the taste of roof of John's mouth, and the smell of his skin, and how the hair on John's arm felt under his touch, and what it sounded like when they both moaned into a kiss at the same time, and then laughed.
The End.