(no subject)
Title: I Am The Weapon (a.k.a. Miles To Go Before We Sleep Together)
Rating: R for this section. NC-17 for the series.
By: Jenda Vis
Spoilers: Oh, all the way through to the bitter end. Seriously. Pretty much every episode.
Genre: Episode Tags
Warnings: Unbetaed AND it's the first thing (well, er, things) I've ever written of my own free will.
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: They don't always get along...
A/N: Comments= Love!
69 Brain Storm
John checked the heads up display again, even though he knew they were on the right heading. "You know, for all your complaints about how you don't get offworld enough, I thought you'd be more into this."
"There's not going to be anything to do."
"Well, I'm going to show you how to surf. We're stocked with food and a decent amount of beer, and the worst trouble we'll find is sunburn."
"That's cool." Ronon shrugged, stretching back over his seat, apparently reconsidering. "Guess I don't really see the appeal of just hanging out."
"Do you see the appeal of just hanging out without having to make sure no one's in the hallway?"
"When you say it like that," Ronon grinned, widely, for the rest of the flight.
John followed the shore around until the crags turned into forest, and then until a sliver of white appeared, breaking the water from the land.
---
The first afternoon was spent on the beach, where John put Ronon through an hour or two of the most stupid amount of posturing he'd ever endured.
Eventually, though, John told him to check his leash, and they were finally wading out into the water, Ronon pushing his board out in front of himself.
"Hop on!" John called, watching carefully. He was standing guard, in case something went wrong, Ronon figured, once it inevitably did.
He breached the surface again, cursing and sputtering, flipping the board back over, barely aware that he was still gripping John's steadying arm.
He finally stopped coughing enough to say, "This is a lot easier on the sand," before he felt like he was choking again. And it's stupidly dangerous, and foolish.
"Yeah, but it's a lot more boring. You okay?"
He wanted to go back to land, wanted to cough up all the salt water he'd swallowed, but John was looking concerned, maybe a little nervous, and he hated that more than he hated the water.
"Nothing wounded but my pride."
---
John listened to Ronon sitting up, sliding out of the sleeping bag, pulling his clothes back on quietly, clearly trying not to wake him. It was a little late for that, but John was willing to let the illusion ride.
He didn't need to ask if it was the dreams again, the ones that crept out of the ground whenever Ronon slept on it. That found him when no walls were there to block him from the sky.
Tomorrow night, we'll sleep in the jumper, he decided, slitting his eyes open to find Ronon stirring at the dying fire with a stick, tossing it on to burn once it got going again.
The increased brightness was enough of a pretense for John to awaken, and so he did, beginning with a noisy, shuffling stretch and a yawn that wasn't entirely an act. He ran his hands over his face and blinked up towards Ronon, catching him in the middle of looking away.
Don't ask. Let me be.
John stood up and pulled his jeans. "What's up?"
"Guess I'm too used to guard duty," Ronon's grin was convincing enough, but he wouldn't look up from the fire. "Habit, you know?" He turned, though, checking his blind spot when John moved to stand behind him.
"Yeah, me too," he answered, bringing a hand up under Ronon's chin, tilting his head back so he could press a firm kiss between his eyebrows.
---
After another day or so, Ronon began to get the hang of lying on the board, keeping his head and chest up, and letting the waves push him towards the shore without swallowing half the ocean. When he returned out to the water, he would find John waiting for him, right where he'd started.
This time, though, John came back with him, ran up on the beach, and grabbed his own board. They jumped over the low waves, pushing the boards ahead of themselves awkwardly as they waded out.
John went a few meters away, before nodding at Ronon and jumping onto his own board, leaving him standing alone in his own part of the ocean. Ronon began another run, and he made it to shore before realizing that John wasn't already there.
He spied him, still out on the water, standing on his board riding alongside a wave, approaching the beach in a gentle trajectory.
Ronon hadn't expected him to look so graceful, so capable.
John finally arrived forty-odd meters away before picking the board up under his arm and running back down the beach. Even splashing through ankle high water, John moved with more ease than he did when they ran on the solid floors of the city.
Ronon watched his wide smile as he drew close, content and unworried, and he started understanding something about John that he hadn't known he'd missed.
---
Crawling onto the board had been awkward enough, but not nearly as disastrous as trying to stand on it once it was on the water. John stayed near, again, for most of the morning, reminding him to get his arms up over his head when he fell.
Ronon was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to need the reminder. Some things were just instinctual, he figured, right up until the rail caught him on the side of the jaw the third time he went down.
By the time he resurfaced, John had apparently decided that he was tired, that it was getting a bit late, that they should head in. Ronon was a little too dazed to disagree or call him on the worry that still clouded his face. He let John dive under the surface to unclip the leash connecting him to his board, and let him push it back towards the beach.
The sunlight reflecting off the sand was almost too bright to look at, and the contrasting shadows cast by the trees beyond it made it even harder to focus. Everything was too sharp and clear to look at, and Ronon squinted against the sight, letting his feet carry him forward.
His eyes were barely open when he felt John's hand on his arm, guiding him back to the fallen trunk, easing him down. The trunk was rough and gritty under his palms, and he welcomed the sensation. Solid. Grounding. He hung his head back and felt the water evaporating from his skin, half-listening to John busying himself in the jumper.
"Ouch," John, suddenly sitting next to him, handed over a beer that he didn't feel like drinking, instead holding it up against his jaw, over the bruise that probably hadn't appeared yet. "Your ankle."
Ronon looked down, and it wasn't as bad as he'd momentarily feared it would be, but the inside of his right ankle was red and scratched from sliding over the deck whenever he'd tried to stand up. "Board rash?"
"Yeah." John tilted his head back to drink. "Well, we've finally got blood in the water. Just be glad there aren't any sharks."
"Like in Jaws?" Ronon began to scan the surface of the water, finally settled enough to open his beer.
"Yeah. They're attracted to blood, and think surfers look like prey."
"And your people still go out there?"
"We came all the way out here, didn't we?"
Ronon watched John lean back to look up at the sky, and started understanding something about John that he hadn't known he'd known.
---
They've never waited this long before. It's been weeks, maybe a month, since he's heard the sound of a gate engaging, of darts cruising overhead, of solid footsteps that weren't his own.
The wraith have been hunting him as long as he's been running, and they know how best to hurt him, now. He can run, or he can fight, and he's good at both. Deciding between the two, however, is his weakness, and he knows it as much as they do.
But it doesn't mean…
He knows that they haven't given up. If he could be safe- somehow- for three years or ten- they would come again. They always will. Relentless. Their sights are longer. The wait would be nothing to them.
Someone should already be here, but he's seen no one since arriving. There were people here, once, five years ago or a hundred. If their buildings fell to age or the wraith, he doesn’t know. It all looks the same, the life sucked from them either way.
But this is a good place. The food is plentiful, the water is clean, and the wraith have yet to appear. He's warm and rested, even clean, for the first time in weeks, maybe months, but he's not at ease.
Indecision is what kills, he'd been taught. To fight is to decide.
He doesn't know how hard to run, or how far. How many traps he can lay, how much food he can afford to cache. If he dares to risk diving back into the water lapping at the beach. If he has enough time to find a safer place to sleep, or if he should dial through now, leave this place.
This inaction is worse than the chase. He has no idea how much of a lead he has, if he has another week in this sunlight, or only an hour.
He has to make a choice.
He doesn't know what to do.
He paces, half-hoping that the gate would come to life and force his hand, but it hadn't yesterday, and it might not come today.
He chides himself. Staying in paradise is less useful than gaining ground, and he forces himself to activate the gate, not knowing if it's retreat, or if he's moving forward.
The gate connects, and it's open, and he's about to step through, but he stops, even before he knows why, and then it hits him.
He's opened the gate already. No one can come through. He's locked them out.
He knows, he is certain, that he has a span's time before he has to run again. It's the only certainty he's felt in an age. He's absolutely alone, and it's the safest he's been in almost three years. Safe.
He sits, putting his back to the gate for the first time since he was a child, and gazes out over the land. Takes in the ruined city, the trees, the wide, soft shoreline and the water beyond it. The alcove in the ruin where he'd slept. The fire that he'd let himself build there. He tries to memorize all of it.
He wants to remember this place, to remember that he'd been here.
--
The fourth morning, John woke to rain pelting the roof and side of the jumper, and looked blearily at the rain outside the open rear hatch. He blinked once, and let himself do something that he hadn't done in a lifetime.
He stole some more of the blanket back from Ronon, and went back to sleep.
---
The weather hadn't cleared any by the time he awoke again. He found Ronon watching the rain on the water from underneath the rear overhang. The scene would have been peaceful, had John not learned, long ago, how to read the tension in Ronon's shoulders.
But, somewhere along the line, he'd also learned how to ease it.
"Sucks outside, huh?" he said, kneeling behind Ronon and leaning over his shoulder.
"Yeah. Bored."
"Been up long?"
"Nah. Hour or so." Ronon let him kiss the bruise on the side of his face and turned to nip at John's lips. "Mm. Warm."
"Not for long, and you're cold," John blinked, thinking about coffee, not wanting to deal with the fire, and not caring enough yet to set up the small stove stowed underneath the bench. "Come back inside, huh? We'll shut the door for a while."
"What do you want to do?"
"I've got some ideas, but I'm too lazy for most of them right now." He crawled back towards the bedroll, Ronon closed the door and followed. His skin was freezing against John's back as he settled back underneath the blankets.
"Not really tired," Ronon murmured, sliding a palm over John's ribcage and resting it over chest.
John handed back one of his earphones, putting the other in his own ear. Tilting the music player up, he clicked the wheel a few times, and then a man's voice began to speak.
"No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. That as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water…"
---
Ronon eventually did get the hang of it, of course he did, but every small failure and second attempt was beautiful to watch.
Likewise his face, when John could see that Ronon was beginning to realize that he was learning it, that it was doable. Wariness and uncertainty turned to confidence. Annoyance and irritation grew into pride and excitement. Monosyllabic grumbling became trash talking, shouted out over the waves as they narrowly missed colliding for the third time in an hour.
Eyes intent and curious, happy and laughing, looking back at him for guidance, and not threat assessment. It was a combination Ronon had never shown him, might never need to show him again.
---
On the eighth day, which started with stretches and yearnings for real beds, the radio began to follow them down to the beach, and then inland.
---
They had followed the stream back towards its source, and were lazing on an outcropping, watching the waterfall and carving off strips of fruit with their knives.
John broke off his narration to take another bite of the pear type thing, and again found himself reaching for his pocket, patting it down to ensure that the radio was still there.
If Ronon noticed, he didn't comment. He was still staring into the water, trying to catch glimpses of the fish he'd seen downstream. He was paying attention, though, and after a few moments, prompted John to continue. "So, wait. Weren't the Gypsy people wearing speckled scarves or something?"
"Well, yeah." John's head snapped up, blinking back into his story, trying to figure out where he'd lost the plot. "Here's the thing, though…"
---
As they made their way back from the waterfall, Ronon's stories about Jarvag Tenear, the Satedan Sherlock Holmes, began to come in increasing fits and starts.
Pausing at another rise in the land, looking out over the rocks breaking the rushing water, Ronon turned back to John and asked, "So when we get back, what's the worst case scenario?"
"Atlantis is gone."
Ronon nodded once, needing no more information at the moment, and followed John down the slope. "Anyway, Councilwoman Tenear, while she was down in the gardens, looked up and saw that one of the bells in the tower had been cracked…"
It was late in the day when they caught sight of the white sand through the trees. They would be back at the jumper in another ten minutes or so. John was picking his way over a jagged, moss covered outcropping, and was almost too distracted to hear Ronon.
"So what's the second worst?"
John hopped back down onto the ground. "Some new Genii faction, the wraith, or those Asgard assholes have the run of the city, and control didn't get a chance to send us a message first."
"Think that could happen?" Ronon was assessing the odds, but didn't seem to have an opinion either way.
"Think about it often enough" John reasoned.
"All right. What should we do?"
"The usual. Split up and ambush."
"Sounds like enough of a plan."
"No it doesn't." John shook his head apologetically. "But it might have to do."
"Ah, it's fine." Ronon stepped around him, slapping his shoulder as he passed. "You just aim where you need me to shoot."
---
Though they didn't discuss it, nightfall came, bringing with it several concerns, foreboding and unvoiced.
We could be the last people left.
This could be the last time we get to have each other so completely.
After a few last morning waves, they would be back in Atlantis by lunchtime, and once the unspoken decision was made, the beach, their time there, began to feel severely impermanent.
---
When Ronon returned from burying the remains of dinner- the fish John had caught earlier in the day- he found John down at the edge of the ocean, standing just far back enough that the water only washed over his feet only when the slow waves crept up onto the shore.
His bare feet were the only thing that made the scene any different from any given night out on the pier. Ronon couldn't tell if he was looking out, or looking in, and wondered if John was thinking, too, that they'd been away from the fight for too long, because there, in the moonlight, he looked almost shapeless without it.
He toed his boots off before coming close enough to slide his hands underneath John's arms, settling against his chest and tethering him to the spot. The sand was warm beneath his feet, even now, an hour after sunset.
"Hey."
"Hey. You alright?"
"I'm good," John's drawl was content, a little teasing. "You sound like you're brooding again, though."
Ronon didn't get a chance to respond, before John was turning in his arms, pressing against him, sliding his hands underneath his waistband, playing at the skin over his hips.
"Not brooding," Ronon grinned, curling into the contact.
"Good," John mumbled against Ronon's lips before connecting fully.
He pulled John back, away from the water, before yanking at John's shirt, tangled with John's hands as they fumbled with the buttons on his vest. He tossed their clothes in the general direction of the jumper before allowing John to pull him back towards the water.
It was still giddy and strange, standing naked with John out in the open like this, even if there was no one else to see them.
He let John pull him down to the damp sand, chest to chest, tight hands finding wrists and shoulders, mouths finding wet lips and throats.
John's hands were slick against his skin, skidding up from his waist to grasp at his shoulders, massaging lightly, but letting the water do most of the work as their hips found each other.
He felt water rushing up over their thighs, and John surging along with it like he was some part of the sea, washing over him. Lips skipped across throats and down to lap at wet shoulders.
Ronon opened his eyes to find the stars looking back at him, and he felt the ground, real beneath his back, and the only difference between this and a thousand other nights was John.
Suddenly wild, he tugged at John's hair to kiss frenetically at his face, to let John answer him, reckless and rough.
---
There was something awesome, something completely overwhelming, in the tangle of limbs, of the twist of Ronon's body as they rolled over, legs splashing in the water, of the rough beard scratching low against taut muscles.
Ronon's hands were wrapped around his wrists, pinning him, grinding his fists back into the wet sand, as harsh as his mouth wasn't as it followed over the ridge of his hips, biting and sucking and drinking the skin there, so fucking close, John could feel his breath, hot, and wanted it more than anything. He was almost too gone to notice that the waves were coming up higher, they had already reached his thigh, and they were starting to splash against his hip, and-
This is about to become a very, very bad idea.
He dragged his hands up again, pulling at Ronon's until he was forced to look up with the most scathing annoyance he had seen in weeks. John barked out a laugh anyway.
"What?" Ronon growled, not yet having noticed his soaked dreadlocks.
"We should head back to the jumper. It's our last night, and I don't want to have to worry about giving you mouth-to-mouth."
Ronon rose over him and scowled down in mock puzzlement as he moved to the side. "Isn't that what we were doing?" He followed John back into the water, rinsing the sand from their legs.
"Plus, sand chafes, so unless you want to tell the doctors how you managed to get board rash on-" he was cut off as Ronon knocked him into the water. By the time Ronon had finished rinsing himself off, John was scowling again at him from the sand.
"What? I'm a lot nicer than you, have no problem giving you mouth-to-mouth."
"Jackass," John rolled his eyes, laughing and holding out his hand, yanking Ronon out of the water. "Come on."
---
"It's still there," Ronon laughed at his own relief as they drew closer to the clearly unharmed city. He sat back in his chair, swiveling a little to look away, out the windshield, even as his arm swung up towards John.
"Yeah." John replied through an easy grin, initiated contact with the control room, and caught Ronon's hand in his, squeezing back.
Bonus points if you can guess the audiobook they're listening to. :)
70 Infection