Work Text:
Rodney didn’t tell anyone about his disability. He didn’t even realise it was a disability until Gillian McLachlan dumped him. Just because he mentioned how he recognised her by the fact that she had one ear higher than the other. While Kathy, her equally blonde roommate, did not.
He would never make that mistake again. No amount of explaining that yes, he did think Gillian was hot because she had those pert breasts and that cute ass and those ripped jeans that showed tantalising bits of thigh would mollify her when he really had very little to say about her face.
It was a face. He could see there were eyes and nose and a mouth in what seemed to be all the correct places, but beyond that he really couldn’t say much about it. Because he couldn’t recognise people from their faces, and he couldn’t make much sense of people’s expressions and apparently everyone else on the planet could.
He tried, he really tried, but in much the same way other people couldn’t understand physics the way he could, Rodney couldn’t understand the weird conglomeration of features that lived between people’s eyebrows and chin. Eventually, he learned that he was not entirely alone, that his condition had a name, and that the reason he hadn’t realised it sooner was that his whole family had it too.
Rodney knew this would be a problem when he was asked to be CSO on Atlantis, but he got round it by hiring the most distinctive people possible. Tall, lanky, pony-tail guy and wild-haired diminutive Czech and owl-bespectacled, quiet Japanese woman and so forth.
Recognising others on the expedition was harder but thank heaven the other senior staff were easily pegged (brunette with breasts, Scottish without breasts, porcupine-haired, drawly) and well, there was no mistaking Teyla Emmagan with her precise speech, somewhat deconstructed clothing and coppery hair. But for the life of him he couldn’t tell Chuck apart from his good friend Carson except by voice (and their flags when they were in uniform), which led to certain awkward faux pas on social occasions.
The Major’s hair was a reassuring beacon at such times – he could recognise John across the room with perfect certainty. He would not turn out, once Rodney got talking, to be some random Canadian control room tech he barely knew. Sheppard’s hair was as distinctive as the rest of him was not. The man was utterly generic and unremarkable, but that hair was like Rodney’s north star, if he could find his way to it then John would do all the social heavy lifting with his rather superficial affability. He would recognise people and Rodney could just play along.
So, it transpired, Rodney had been on Atlantis for just a few months when he found John Sheppard had become something more to him than other members of the expedition. It even seemed like he sought Rodney out when Rodney wasn’t limpeting onto his social abilities for all they were worth.
Actually, he found he kind of liked John. Had started to recognise him not just by crazy hair and drawly voice but by his – quite masculine, as it happened – scent. It was comforting, and when Sheppard shoulder-bumped him or curled fingers round his bicep to get his attention he felt soothed by it. They might even be friends, he thought.
Dr Rodney McKay, double phd, was the most infuriating person alive. Everybody thought so, of course, but not for the reasons John, very privately, thought himself.
What could he do to get the man’s attention? He’d established Rodney’s bi credentials early on, and thought it unnecessary to divulge his own because John’s discreet flirting was usually quite enough to reel them in.
But Rodney McKay would not be reeled.
After a few months in another galaxy John had intensified the flirting to only a corpse would miss this, and Rodney still wasn’t taking the bait.
Look, John knew he was a pretty boy, he’d been told it his whole life. Told how he had the perfect come-to-bed eyes by countless women, the perfect mouth for cocksucking by countless men. It had always been easy to get the people he wanted into bed.
And then there was Rodney, who acted entirely oblivious to John’s looks, or his charms, or even his blatantly batting eyelashes.
It was kinda humiliating.
By this time, Teyla was giving John pitying looks and even Ford seemed to be cottoning onto the fact his CO was batting for more than one team (not that such things mattered in the SGC). John had become so single-minded he wasn’t even flirting with anyone else, and he’d run himself into an unexpected dry spell.
He decided he was just going to have to take the direct approach. He wheedled a flagon of ruus wine from the Athosians, lured Rodney off to the East Pier.
Unfortunately, John hadn’t counted on the potency of the wine.
“I’m tol’ ’m a very good-lookin’ guy,” John slurred at Rodney, some time later, leaning against him encouragingly and looking up through his eyelashes.
“You are?” Rodney exclaimed, sounding genuinely surprised and a little disbelieving.
John was somewhat taken aback, sure, but he might have rallied were it not for the fact that the tava bean stew that had been sitting uneasily in his gut since long before he started drinking decided to make a sudden reappearance. From there on, there was more being held by Rodney, and even being eased between the sheets by Rodney, which was rather nice. Alas, more in the vein of being a good buddy to his drunk and puking pal and less in the vein of anything approximating sexytimes.
Well, fuck.
Rodney warmed to John more after that night on the pier. He had his own predisposition towards exaggerating his attributes, so it was kind of endearing in Sheppard. He hadn’t seen the guy have any success with women and everyone on base treated Sheppard as someone easy to be around and non-threatening. Rodney didn’t know much about social interactions, sure, but this was not the way people, especially women, responded to a good-looking man.
So, Sheppard appeared to be as pathetic and hopeless as him, in his own way. That drew him even further towards the man. He found himself seeking John out more, and before long they’d formed a real bond, he thought. Sheppard was a bit clingy, sure, but Rodney thought that was sweet. The guy had less actual friends even than him, despite getting on superficially with everyone, and Rodney could be charitable.
John was smarter than you might think, he had that going for him, Rodney supposed. He was more-or-less competent at his job, for someone thrown in at the deep end. Not really the cream of the crop like the rest of them, given he’d been brought here just for his gene, but he’d risen to the occasion when Sumner was taken. Quite impressively, really. Maybe there was something extraordinary in amongst his ordinariness after all.
And he always did smell so very, very good, when he lolled around Rodney’s room talking nerd.
And then he said, “so long, Rodney,” and Rodney’s heart ripped all the way out of his chest. After that, it was impossible not to review his feelings and recalibrate.
They were back in Atlantis, at long last, but nothing was the same. John was Lt Colonel, Ford was in the wind, too many people were dead and Rodney? Rodney was being weird. One minute he was avoiding John, the next he was coming by John’s room wanting to hang out, but then suddenly finding somewhere else to be. John couldn’t get a read on him at all. He tried dialling up the flirting, but that was once again politely ignored.
Tonight, they were lounging on Rodney’s bed playing crazy eights, and Rodney had been fondling his Molson’s bottle obscenely for the last twenty minutes straight. John was about to explode. He might have assumed McKay was flirting, only his looks were too inscrutable to be sure, and well, if he wasn’t receptive to John’s overtures, why would he flirt himself? The man was so confusing.
“Rodney, what’s up?” John said eventually, because he really couldn’t bear the tension between them a moment longer.
“I… um… look, I have to go check on a simulation I’m running.”
That was it. McKay was clearly avoiding something and John had reached his limit with this bullshit. He knew how to make a suicide run and at this point there was no other way forward.
“Or… you could stay and let me suck your cock,” John said, pretending to be casual, but knowing how ridiculously desperate he sounded.
The discombobulated look on McKay’s face was somewhat gratifying.
“Oh. Um... Oh,” Rodney’s IQ seemed to have taken a hit. Good. “I didn’t know you…”
“Yes, Rodney. I suck cock. I’d like to suck yours.” John rolled his eyes. “This is hardly news.”
Rodney’s brows furrowed. Adorably, dammit.
“It isn’t? You never said!”
“I never said, but I, you know…”
John waggled his eyebrows and gave a meaningful look.
“You know what? And why are your eyebrows moving?”
Rodney just looked thoroughly confused. It was kind of endearing.
“I… hinted. A lot,” John said, feeling even more confused than Rodney.
Suddenly Rodney had his scientific breakthrough imminent expression.
“Oh. Let me guess, did you hint with your face?” Rodney asked.
“Well… yes?” John replied.
Weird question. This whole situation was not going in either of the directions John had predicted.
Rodney sighed, his face becoming unhappy, his mouth more than usually crooked.
“See… I don’t really do faces,” Rodney confessed.
“Huh?” was John’s intelligent reply.
That was the oddest way of turning down a blowjob John had ever heard, but ah well…
Rodney sighed again, and John noticed his hands were rapidly clenching and unclenching, fingertips rubbing against each other, one of his more obvious nervous tics.
“I…I don’t really tell many people this, but I have prosopagnosia.”
John thought about that for a while, because he was sure he’d heard the word before.
“Oh!” he exclaimed eventually, finally recalling where he’d heard it. “You mean… face blindness?”
He’d read about this! And this meant… maybe he’d been reading the situation with Rodney all wrong. Shit. Poor Rodney, that would be… he thought back over the last few months, the way Rodney leaned on him in social interactions, the way he so often looked puzzled for seemingly no reason, the way sometimes he fell out of step with everyone. John had thought him just too haughty to properly pay attention, and now he felt like an asshole.
“You know what that is?” Rodney asked him, looking vulnerable and hopeful in ways that played fast fiddle on John’s heartstrings.
“Sure, I read a thing, but you can tell me more, maybe? Must be… hard.”
Rodney’s face softened and his tensed shoulders slumped.
“Well, yes. I… I miss a lot, actually,” he said.
Like me flirting with you for all it’s worth.
“I wish I’d known.” John said. “You should tell people, Rodney. It would help them understand you better.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
He reached across the pile of cards on the bed to give Rodney’s bicep a squeeze.
“You can trust your team with this, at least, McKay.”
He felt Rodney’s muscles untense beneath his hand.
“Actually, I feel relieved telling you,” he said. “I just thought… it was something too weird, something I should hide.”
“Not weird. Just a thing about you that’s… a little different,” John said gently.
“I miss a lot,” Rodney said.
“Yeah, you do,” John replied wistfully, “but it’s okay, we can catch you up, you just need to ask.”
“Thank you,” Rodney said. “And I’m sorry I missed…”
John felt a momentary pang of sadness that Rodney would never be able to see what he was seeing right now: the unambiguously delighted expression of a man suddenly realising he’d been offered a blowjob.
A week later, Rodney was sitting at team breakfast feeling relaxed and happy. John may be the quintessential Mr Average in so many ways, but he gave the best head of anyone Rodney had ever known, and he even liked Rodney gripping his porcupine hair while doing it. And well, Rodney loved getting head, but he had a suspicious feeling he loved more than just the feel of John’s mouth on his cock. Because there had been kissing, and snuggling, and John made the best noises when Rodney reciprocated, and there had even been a twenty second exchange about feelings that had been… not a disaster.
On the whole, Rodney felt quite springy, and John had promised never to tame that hair and understood if he was ever subjected to a buzzcut Rodney wouldn’t be able to pick him out from any of his marines.
John strangely didn’t seem to mind that at all.
“I am glad you told us of your prosopagnosia,” Teyla told him. “it is helpful to know these things. If you ever need assistance interpreting looks or describing faces, please let me know.”
“Um, maybe you could tell me what Specialist tall-and-dreadlocked here looks like to you?” Rodney asked.
“Well, I think most people would say Ronon is very pretty,” Teyla told him. “He has a sweet face, when he isn’t thinking about his enemies, and fierce when he is.”
Ronon showed his teeth in a way that Rodney was fairly certain was a smile and not a threat.
“And what about John?” he asked.
Rodney saw John turn to her, and her eyes meet his, but of course he missed the meanings that passed between them.
“Oh, John is… pleasant-looking, but quite unremarkable. His real qualities lie elsewhere,” Teyla told him.
Rodney felt relieved. Maybe, when it came to John Sheppard, he wasn’t missing anything that mattered.