Work Text:
Even with Leonard’s head start, Jim is the one who goes visibly gray first.
His stubble has always been a good deal darker than the hair up top, the same dark hickory shade as his eyebrows, which makes it easy to spot when the gray starts coming in. Easy for Leonard, anyway. Jim has preferred a clean shave for as long as Leonard’s known him, so the crew isn’t privy to the nuances of his evolving facial hair, but as someone who spends a fair amount of time getting up close and personal with Jim’s face, Leonard would have to be blind not to notice the little pinpricks of silver popping up in the kid’s morning shadow.
What’s surprising is how quickly the change happens. Jim is a hale and hearty thirty-five when the first grays appear, still among the very youngest captains in the Fleet, an athletic man in the prime of his life with the palate of a kindergartner and the bone density of an octogenarian. Leonard expects it to be a gradual process, a slow relentless march toward full gray with a decade or two of salt-and-pepper along the way, but then Jim never can be expected to take the measured and reasonable route. He hurtles through graying at breakneck speed, and by the time he passes forty he’s already gone mostly white around the jaw, dappled with a scattering of dark patches like a prize-winning Appaloosa.
“I can’t tell if that’s an insult or not,” Jim says, frowning at Leonard in the mirror as he scritches at his spotted scruff.
Leonard swipes a hand down his throat to check for any last stragglers and hands the razor over to Jim. “Nah. My great-aunt Mae raised horses. Always wanted one of my own.”
Jim pulls a face at him. “Asshole.”
“Aww, don’t be like that. You know I’m just trying to get your goat.”
Jim side-eyes him, suspicious. “I feel like that’s a joke I’m not Southern enough to understand.”
“You feel right.” Leonard reaches back and lands a nice firm tap to Jim’s pale (and still dazzlingly unblemished) hindquarters. “Don’t worry about it, kid. We ain’t putting you out to pasture just yet.”
“Okay, enough,” Jim says, but he’s laughing when Leonard hauls him over to lavish a few brief moments of appreciation on his silvery coat before the razor steals it away for another day.
+
By now, the gray has started sprouting up in more conspicuous places, threading through Jim’s eyebrows, creeping in at his temples. Jim likes to complain about it occasionally, vain little beast that he is, but more often than not he’s just angling for some ego stroking, assured as ever of his own appeal and happy to preen under Leonard’s attentions. The silvered look suits him and he knows it, though Leonard does just about laugh himself sick at the look on his face the first time some well-meaning chieftess politely inquires about how much older the esteemed captain is than his consort.
That’s not to say that Jim has entirely made his peace with these visible signs of aging, but his fretting doesn’t have a thing to do with pride or delusions of eternal youth. Hell, Leonard only wishes it were that simple. Vanity seems like it’d be a far easier demon to subdue than existential doubt.
After all, it’s one thing to assure a man that he hasn’t lost his looks; it’s a whole other kettle of fish to convince him he’s the man he’s supposed to be.
Jim never really talks about it, and Leonard doesn’t prod him to, mindful of not stirring up old insecurities. But despite all his usual cheer and optimism, Jim is still very much prone to the occasional bout of melancholy, and every once in a while Leonard will return to their quarters after shift change to find him brooding in the bedroom, still in uniform, staring gloomily at his reflection in the dresser mirror.
Leonard won’t ask him what he’s thinking, those nights. He’ll wrap his arms around Jim’s waist, rest his chin on Jim’s shoulder, press a kiss to the white-stubbled jaw that’s not quite as taut as it used to be and watch Jim’s mouth soften toward a smile as he relaxes back against him. Jim’s eyes will shift from his own face to Leonard’s, brightening with the quiet familiar joy of seeing him again at the end of a long day, his comet tails carving out deeper and more beautiful with every passing year.
“Hey,” he’ll say, or, “Took you long enough,” or sometimes nothing at all, as he turns around and loops his arms over Leonard’s shoulders, tight as Xemetian strangling vines.
Unlike most nights, Jim will dawdle before collecting the proper welcome home kiss he’s owed, choosing instead to paint lazy almost-kisses over Leonard’s face with soft brushes of his lips, chin and cheeks and forehead and laugh lines and every damn mole he can find, and when Leonard inevitably loses patience and redirects him he’ll hum blissfully into Leonard’s mouth like that’s what he was pining for all along, like Leonard was the one keeping him waiting.
From there it’s anyone’s guess where the night will take them. Jim might turn sweet or feisty or insistent, might urge Leonard back against the wall or lead him toward the shower or whisper pretty suggestions in his ear or simply nuzzle into his neck and ask what he wants for dinner. Any or all of the above works just fine for Leonard, who will always gladly take Jim any which way he can have him, especially when it means Jim’s focused on him and not on the men he doesn’t see in the mirror. As far as Leonard is concerned, he’s won the moment Jim turns around, choosing him over the siren call of his own doubts, allowing himself to be teased free from the grasp of ghosts and what-ifs and drawn back to the life that’s his.