Fic: Muted colors (PG)
Feb. 17th, 2008 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anyanka_egRating: PG
Pairing: McShep
Spoilers: Season 4, up to and including Outcast (but not much)
Summary: Rodney finds something in John's desk drawer.
He wasn't paying attention to the contents of the drawer he was riffling through because he really, really needed the ibuprofen and John had seen fit to stash the tablets somewhere that was not the first aid kit. And people called him untidy. Maybe the idiot colonel would draw a map for him with a big X marking the spot where he'd hidden the painkillers. It wasn't like Rodney needed them urgently or anything. Oh no. Not like he had a thundering headache that felt like someone was repeatedly stabbing him in the left eye.
If he didn't find the damn tablets soon he might be stabbing John in the eye when he finally saw fit to come back to the room. He wasn't used to being the one who came home to an empty room. He was the one who worked late, he was the one who got to flop down next to an already relaxed bedmate and he was the one who got to snuggle into a freshly showered, surprisingly cuddly boyfriend. It wasn't fair but he was certainly not going to give into the tears of frustration and pain he could feel pricking at his eyes.
He was about the slam he drawer shut in annoyance when he caught sight of the corner of a photo. Ignoring the pain for just a moment, he slipped the photo out from the stack of papers, wondering why John had it hidden in his unfiled reports drawer.
The picture was of a little boy, maybe three years old, buck naked except for a pair of over-sized sunglasses and a hand towel tied round his neck like a cape. Rodney smiled at picture, despite his headache, because the boy's grin was infectious. It was only when he was about to drop it back in the drawer to carry on his search that his brain finally caught up and pointed out that John didn't usually have photos in his desk, not family snaps anyway. He blamed the pain for making him stupid.
The logical part of his mind, normally the loudest of his inner voices, told him it was a cousin or a nephew or something but John never mentioned any of his family, so it seemed weird he'd be hoarding photos of them. Rodney only knew his brother was called Dave because Ronon had told him. John seemed to want to keep up the pretense that he didn't have a family back on Earth, even though he knew they all knew that he had. John was perverse like that.
Rodney supposed the picture could be someone else's, one of the marines, perhaps one of the ones they'd lost last week. He knew John seemed to feel the need to torture himself over every one of the deaths on Atlantis but Rodney had thought he'd gotten a little better since they'd become couple. Maybe he was just more furtive about it and had taken to staring at the personal photos of the men they lost.
That still didn't seem right though. The child in the photo looked vaguely familiar and Rodney stared at the picture trying to work out why. His head still throbbed, and he shut his left eye to try to ease the pain. It didn't really help but he couldn't let this mystery go, not when he was sure he'd never get to see the photo again. He knew John's secretive ways too well. Ronon hadn't mentioned anyone plying John with photos when they were on Earth, not that they were together the whole time. After all John had gone off to meet his ex-wife...
Jesus Christ, Sheppard had a kid! The little boy had John's goofy grin, crazy hair and scrawny frame. Fuck!
Rodney's knees gave out and he sat with a thud on the bed, his mind racing. He couldn't believe it. John hadn't told him about his ex-wife, at least not until he had to because Ronon was so not keeping that secret, and Rodney kind of got that. Who would want to talk about painful memories if they didn't have to? He'd known Sheppard dated women, had had relationships with women, so finding out he was married...not that big a deal. Even if Ronon did keep saying she was hot.
But a kid? That was something else. He'd thought he knew John but this...this was, well he didn't know what this was. The man he thought he knew wouldn't leave a child behind, or at least he wouldn't have if he thought it was a one way trip, like that first step through the gate. Now, with Midway and hyperdrive equipped ships, he supposed it wasn't that much different from being stationed in some dusty country where the natives wanted you dead. Okay, Earth didn't have life sucking vampires but Pegasus had way fewer IEDs, so he figured they were kind of even.
Even with the easier communication though he still didn't think Sheppard would be happy here knowing his son was growing up without him. It just jarred with everything he knew about the man, or thought he knew. Rodney thought Sheppard, for all the issues he had with his own father, would be a great dad and there was no way John wouldn't have felt duty bound to try. Every time they met a child off world, horrendous Harmony aside, John knew just what to do or say in that effortless way that made Rodney a little jealous and kind of proud.
The only conclusion that Rodney could come to was that Sheppard's bitch of an ex had sprung this on him when he was back on Earth. Except that made no sense either because John might have been a little quiet, okay quiet-er, since he'd gotten home but there had been nothing like the angst Rodney knew would accompany the news he had a son he'd never known.
Rodney had to admit he was confused. He looked at the photo again, suddenly hating the little boy whose name he didn't know because he was probably going to be the end of what he had with John. He knew, in the end, he'd lose Sheppard because there was no way he'd make the man choose between his lover and his son. It was a shame really, the kid looked kind of sweet, with his big goofy grin and his toys all over the carpet.
It was a truly hideous carpet. He'd imagined, somehow, that the bitch Nancy would have impeccable taste that didn't allow yellow and brown swirly patterned shag in her house. It was like something from the 1970s. Something clicked in his mind and he squinted harder at the photo, looking at the toys scattered over the floor. Toy planes and cars, a semi-naked GI Joe, a tin robot and...was that?...it was...a Major Matt Mason figure, legs bent at odd angles and looking kind of play-worn.
He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid.
The photo was taken in the 1970s. Jesus, he should be taken out and shot for being a moron. He should have recognized the strangely muted luridness of the colors that only photos from the early 70s seemed to have, even before the vile carpet clued him in. He also knew why the skinny little boy with the huge grin looked so familiar.
John had been very cute as a kid.
He was also a giant dork because what kind of kid wanted to be a naked superhero. He really needed to mock the colonel for this but he thought maybe he should just put the photo back and not mention it. He should probably wait until John wanted to show him, if he ever did. The door swished open and the option of hiding the picture disappeared.
“Hey,” John said, sounding all at once surprised and happy and a little confused to see him.
“I was looking for painkillers,” Rodney blurted out as soon as John spotted the photo in his hand.
God, this was going to be awful. John would clam up like he always did when anyone mentioned his family or his childhood or anything personal and then they'd have one of their weird one sided not-fights. Rodney hated those. John would sit sullen and angry and hurt, not saying anything, not even reacting to all the words Rodney felt he had to say to fill the awful silence.
“I...err...,” John started, dropping down on the bed next to Rodney. He seemed to stop even trying to speak once he was sat down, hunching his shoulders and curling in on himself, like he was armoring himself against the questions he thought were coming. Rodney would have laughed at the irony if it weren't so sad, because he used to think he who had a screwed up relationship with his family.
Well, Rodney decided, he wasn't going to do what John expected, admittedly mostly because he still needed the painkillers really badly. The headache that had receded a little in the face of his panic that John had a son, and he was never admitting to that little bout of madness, was returning, the stabbing behind his eyes was just as ferocious as before.
“Nice cape.”
John snorted a startled breath and then bumped his shoulder against Rodney's. Okay, so it was a little bit schoolyard as affirmations of affection and forgiveness went but Rodney'd take it. Now he just had to make John tell him where the painkillers were.
______________________________________________________________________________________
I was supposed to be writing Nephelai this weekend but this popped into my head after I saw a picture of a friend's kid dressed in sunglasses and a towel cape. As I was writing it I thought there may be another story in there that's funnier, has more banter between the boys and leads to their first time together. If someone else wants to run with that please feel free.
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