Fic: Scenes from an Intergalactic Marriage
Title: Scenes from an Intergalactic Marriage
Rating: T (only because of a little language)
Pairing: John/Teyla
Summary: Friendship is easy. Love is hard. Vignettes of the stages in John and Teyla’s relationship.
A/N: I started this six months ago to the day and it's finally done! I might add a few more vignettes later, but I kinda like where it ended. A big thanks to
greenconverses who beta’d this early in its infancy. Any mistakes made after that are mine and mine alone.
“Is he gone?” Teyla whispers, her breath warm against his cheek.
John shakes his head, careful not to bump his chin against her forehead. Belatedly, he realizes that in the darkness of the storage closet she cannot see the movement. Teyla moves a fraction closer and for a moment John doesn’t trust his own voice. He is saved from immediately answering by a crash of metal in the hallway outside.
“Might want to give it another minute,” John breathes.
Dimly he can hear Rodney ranting to a hapless bystander. John knows that several scientists saw him and Teyla hurry passed earlier, trying to escape Rodney and whatever harebrained scheme he wanted to enmesh them in. He hopes that those scientists’ fear of Rodney and their natural sense of self-preservation do not outweigh their loyalty to him and Teyla.
“How long do you suppose we will have to hide from him?” Teyla asks.
“I like to think of it as strategic maneuvering.”
“How long will we have to strategically maneuver?”
John smiles. “Let’s hope he gives up soon and chooses other test subjects.”
“You think that is likely?”
“Knowing McKay, no.”
Teyla sighs. “I am supposed to be sparring with Lt. Evans.”
“Evans?” Lt. Sam Evans was a new recruit, and from the little John knows about him, Evans would appreciate the subtleties and discipline of stick fighting as much as Ronon would appreciate the intricacies of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
“Yes, he is an eager student.”
“You don’t say,” John mutters.
His eyes have adjusted enough to the darkness that he can see a flash of white teeth as she smiles at him. “Jealousy does not become you, Colonel.”
“I’m not jealous,” John argues. “I’m…”
“Jealous.”
“I was going to say ‘protective’.”
Teyla shifts slightly. “Have you ever known me to need protection before?”
“No, but-“
“Then why would I need your protection now?” He thinks he can hear amusement in her voice. He hopes that’s what it is otherwise he will pay for his presumptuousness in one painful way or another in the week to come.
“You don’t. I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”
There is silence for a moment and John gets ready to grab her arm if she tries to stamp out of the storage closet in an angry huff. (She’s welcome to kick his ass six ways from Wednesday when they spar next, but if she leaves now he knows she’ll give away their position, and he’s not about to give himself up to Rodney’s special brand of torture.)
Finally, Teyla says, “What I am doing is offering my experience in hand-to-hand combat, Colonel, just as I have done for numerous others, including yourself. Nothing more.”
John knows it’s bad when she starts calling him ‘Colonel’ again during their downtime.
“Fine,” he says.
“Fine.”
Uncomfortable silence stretches between them, and John kicks himself for opening his big mouth.
This is why you should stay single forever, he reminds himself. You’ll have a longer life expectancy.
“Look,” he says slowly, doubting the wisdom of speaking again but strangely unable to stop himself, “I know you can take care of yourself. You’re better at it than probably 99% of the people I know-“
“Only 99%?” she asks, and this time he definitely hears the smile in her voice.
“You’re gonna have to fight that one out with Ronon. You guys might be tied for top billing. Anyways, I’m just-“
“Jealous.”
“All right,” he says, louder than necessary. He hopes the closest doors are a more insulated than he thinks they are. He lowers his voice and says, “Yeah, I’m a little jealous.”
She touches his arm. “Admitting you have a problem is the first step.”
“And you’ve been hanging around Rodney way too much.”
She laughs, and John, without thinking, leans down and kisses her. For a moment, he forgets everything but the feel of her lips against his, her hands gripping his forearms, the heady scent of her. Then reality returns, like klaxons sounding in his head. He steps back as far as the tight space will allow.
“I shouldn’t have done that-“ he starts to say but Teyla stops him with another kiss - quick and forceful. When she speaks, there is still laughter in her voice:
“All you had to do was admit it.”
They are in the middle of another kiss when Rodney finds them five minutes later. They reluctantly pull apart, not so much because of Rodney but rather because of the crowd of ten or so people clustered behind him.
“Well, thank God,” Rodney says. “I thought you had been culled by the Wraith or something.” He peers into the closet. “Nice hiding spot.” Rodney looks over his shoulder at Chuck and holds out a hand, beckoning impatiently. “I believe that my bet was for this week. Pay up.”
The crowd behind him groans and Chuck fishes in his pocket for a wad of bills (John’s surprised to see just how large a stack it actually is). Rodney pockets the money with a smug smile. “For that,” he says, his finger wagging back and forth between John and Teyla, “I’ll find someone else to play guinea pig.” His smile gets just that much more smug. “You’re welcome.”
Rodney turns around and shoos the crowd away. “Okay, folks, nothing to see here.”
The closet door slides closed again and the small space is plunged into darkness.
After a moment John says, “Well, I’d kiss you again, but I can’t see you.”
Teyla chuckles, and the sound sets something on fire low in John’s gut. “I am sure we will manage just fine.”
* * *
John surmises that in the year he and Teyla have been together they’ve only been on one official date. He can’t bring himself to use the word couple for what they are - that word implies PDAs, Saturday date nights, and Sunday afternoon brunches at the parents’. Their relationship is made up of sparring sessions, occasional weekend movie nights, and late lunches in the commissary. In fact, their romantic relationship isn’t that far removed from their previous platonic relationship except for the decidedly physical addition.
John recently moved into her room - he’s more surprised about this than anyone - but he has made sure his old quarters remain empty. He’s always been crap at relationships, and it doesn’t hurt to hedge his bets. Besides, it’s nice to have somewhere to go when Teyla kicks him out for snoring too loudly.
* * *
John Sheppard is good at friendship. Maybe too good, but all the same it’s a skill he’s grateful for - the ability to win people over. When it comes down to it, people aren’t so different. They all want to be heard, be understood, be appreciated. Once he had realized that, everything else fell into place.
Yes, friendship is easy. Love is hard.
He’s always been oblivious to it in others, which he finds strange, particularly when there are not that many steps separating the two. But he certainly expects to recognize it when he himself is in love.
In different ways he loved his childhood nanny, his first serious girlfriend, and, once upon a time, Nancy. But it’s been awhile since he’s been acquainted with the feeling.
In retrospect, John thinks he shouldn’t have been surprised that the realization blinds him. There’s a moment during a particularly dull briefing when he makes a joke sotto voce to Teyla. She throws him a quicksilver smile over her shoulder, and suddenly he feels like he’s been sucker-punched.
Maybe it’s the fact that the biologists have shanghaied movie nights lately and made them all watch far too many romantic comedies, but he’s expecting something else. Something flashy like fireworks, or dramatic like a trumpet fanfare, or even understated like the peal of bells. Something sensational to signal to himself and the world that he, John Sheppard, is in love.
Instead his reaction is purely physical - he feels sick and out-of-control. It’s not unlike that horrible moment he’s experienced all too often while skateboarding, when he first realizes he’s off-balance and that he’s going to hit the ground hard, it’s going to hurt a lot, and he’s going to have some serious roadrash to prove it.
In that moment (which feels like an eternity but is actually only long enough for Caldwell to glare at them and for Teyla to whip her attention around front again), John knows he’s going to get some serious emotional roadrash.
He thinks it might just be worth it.
* * *
Teyla’s father advised her to never walk away from the bargaining table in anger. She thinks that if he had known what her future circumstances were to be he might have also advised her to never embark on a mission in a similar mood.
She and John have had fights before - no relationship is conflict free - but none have lasted as long. The reason for it is silly, Teyla knows, but John’s stubbornness to keep their relationship stagnant has begun to frustrate her. Elizabeth once described John’s attitude towards relationships in general as “once bitten, twice shy”. Teyla believes it has never been truer. Since the beginning, she has been accepting and even supportive of the fact that John wanted to keep things casual. He has trouble displaying any affection in public beyond a friendly pat on the hand, he does not use pet names as she has noticed among many other Earthlings, and he cannot articulate his feelings toward her. She has not pushed it in the past. She knows what his feelings for her are, but she finds herself now wishing that he might occasionally verbalize it, even if only in private.
Everyone seems to know they’re not on speaking terms before they leave on their latest mission. Rodney tries to have it suspended until they are “out of their snit” (his reasoning: “For all I know they could stoop to some sort of grade school note-passing, and that doesn’t actually work when we’re running for our lives!”), but it is to no avail.
In hindsight, Teyla wishes they had suspended it.
Everything begins to go wrong from the outset when Rodney is taken prisoner for offending the High Priestess. By the time they make it back through the Gate, Ronon has a dislocated shoulder, John is nursing a swollen ankle, and Teyla is bleeding from a knife wound to the stomach.
She wakes up in the infirmary nearly a day later to a throbbing ache in her abdomen and a hand gripping hers tightly. When she groggily opens her eyes she finds John is the source of the death-grip on her hand.
“Hey,” he says with obvious relief. He leans forward to gently tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “How’s the pain?”
“It is not unbearable.” She blinks a few times, trying to clear the muzzy feeling in her head. “You?”
John nods at his ankle propped up on the footrest of his wheelchair. “Just a sprain. Keller said it should be good as new in a couple of weeks.”
“Rodney and Ronon?”
“Both fine - McKay’s the only one not hurting. Ronon should be fine in a day or two. He’s currently wearing a sling against his will.” He leans forward and whispers theatrically, “I think the only reason he’s still got it on is because he’s got a thing for Keller.”
Teyla’s laugh quickly dissolves into a hiss.
John winces in sympathy and squeezes her hand. “Shouldn’t make you laugh.”
Teyla shakes her head. “John, I am sorry about our fight. It was-“
“No. I’m sorry.” John absently strokes the back of her hand with his thumb. “I do love you, you know.”
Teyla smiles, as much for his words as for the uncomfortable look on his face. She knows just how hard it is for him to those words and she sincerely appreciates the effort. She closes her eyes and settles deeper into her pillows. “I know, but it is nice to hear it.”
“And?”
“And what?”
She hears movement and the rustle of fabric next to her. “And don’t you have something to say to me?”
She opens her eyes but just barely. “I have told you many times of my feelings for you.”
John’s smile is wry. “But it’s always nice to hear it.”
Teyla sleepily crooks a finger at him, and as he obligingly presses a soft kiss to her lips, she says, “I love you, too.”
* * *
John takes the news of her pregnancy rather well, Teyla thinks. They had never discussed the prospect and it came as a surprise to both of them. But Teyla finds herself happy about her pregnancy, and John takes it in stride, even seeming cautiously accepting of the idea that he is going to be a father.
Then one night, still early in her second trimester, she wakes to find John sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of their dresser with a screwdriver, a wrench, a handful of plastic zip-ties, and several other miscellaneous tools spread out around him.
“John?” she says hoarsely. She sits up and peers fuzzily at the clock. “It is 2:30 in the morning. What are you doing?”
“It’s not safe,” he replies, not taking his attention from the handle he is unscrewing.
“What isn’t?”
“This dresser isn’t. This room; this whole damn place! It’s not safe.” He throws down the screwdriver in frustration. It hits the floor with a heavy thunk and skitters to a halt deep under the dresser. “How the hell do you baby-proof Atlantis?!”
Teyla wraps the quilt on the bed tightly around herself and pads over to sit down on the floor next to him. She places a comforting hand on his leg.
He turns shadowed eyes on her before looking away. “This city has proven too dangerous for some of the best minds in two galaxies. A kid doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell,” he says.
“Many generations have successfully raised their children amid difficult circumstances. Who’s to say we cannot do the same?”
John reaches under the dresser to retrieve the screwdriver. “But they didn’t actively seek out dangerous situations - we do.”
Teyla takes the screwdriver from him and sets it out of his reach. She ignores the face he pulls and observes, “I have never known you to be so…”
“Paranoid?” he acknowledges with a wry expression.
“I was going to say ‘pessimistic’.”
“We’re having a kid, Teyla. Maybe a little pessimism is good.”
Teyla sighs. Her mate is a complicated man for all that he likes to pretend otherwise. She knows that if he’s letting his emotions overflow like this then they have been building for some time, like a dam stretched to its limits. “I thought you were pleased.”
John hunches his shoulders, biting his lower lip as is his habit when he is uncomfortable or doesn’t know what to do with himself. “I am, I think.” John’s sigh matches Teyla’s as he runs a hand through his hair. “Teyla, you have to understand that I never thought I’d have a family. The idea is still…unexpected.” He grimaces suddenly. “I didn’t have the best example growing up.”
“John, you may not have had the best example, but perhaps that is why you will be a good father; you will learn from your father’s mistakes. And you will make some of your own, but they are all learning experiences.” She grasps his hand and squeezes. “You are a good man, John. I have faith in you.” She smiles. “You should try having a little faith in yourself.”
John stares at the floor for a while and Teyla lets him. She knows that sometimes he gets into his own head and it takes time for him to get back out again. So she holds his hand and lets him stare at the floor, because she knows that he is a good man, and once he climbs out of his dark musings, he’ll realize it, too.
* * *
John tries not to cry when his and Teyla’s first child - a daughter - is born. He’s spent years ignoring his emotions, bottling them up in order to deal with them at some indefinite time. He’s not about to start blubbering now.
Instead he forces himself to think of all the things that have angered him over the years: his father, the IOA, the Replicators, the person who always steals the last piece of apple pie in the commissary.
It helps but he still gets misty-eyed staring down at the pink-blanketed bundle in his arms.
Rodney doesn’t mock him too badly even though John knows they all saw him swipe at his eyes. After all, Rodney gets misty-eyed, too.
* * *
John doesn’t fully imagine how having a kid will change his working life on Atlantis. He knows, in an abstract sort of way, that downtime will no longer exist but imagines that he will be able to keep his home life and work life completely separate.
He does not truly realize his error in judgment until he spends the entire night before an important diplomatic mission first in a steamy bathroom then out in the cool night air, trying desperately to alleviate the croup that has laid siege to his daughter’s tiny lungs. By morning, she is breathing easier but he is not. Combined with numerous other sleepless nights, it is through sheer force of will that he continues functioning.
Several hours into the mission, after the Denuvrias of MX9-727 have locked him in a dark cell for refusing the advances of their archchancellor, John’s too exhausted to come up with anything resembling an escape plan.
He’s more than a little put out when his team plus half a dozen Marines break down the cell door and a portion of the wall as well, rousing him from the first decent sleep he’s had in two months.
As they wave away the worst of the masonry dust, he peevishly asks if they could have waited a few more hours to bust him out. It wasn’t as if his crime was life-threatening after all. He fears his insomnia might be.
* * *
Teyla’s first pregnancy was relatively easy - very little morning sickness, no complications, and a smooth delivery. Her second pregnancy is not so incident-free. She suffers from terrible migraines and cannot eat anything but crackers without being violently ill. She spends much of her time trying to escape the sights, sounds, and odors that might make it worse. In a city often filled with the smell of experiments gone wrong, or sometimes - even worse - gone right, it seems to Teyla that nowhere is safe. She thinks that if more women suffered through their pregnancy as she does, many a race would have died out long ago.
John does his best. Teyla couldn’t ask for a more supportive mate - he keeps their two year-old daughter occupied on her bad days (or months, as the case seems to be), he keeps her stocked with soda crackers, and tries to be as supportive and compassionate as possible. But even John cannot make things better.
Teyla is put on bed rest when she is seven months pregnant. She is not accustomed to being so sedentary. And although the Atlanteans try to ensure she is never bored - bringing her movies, introducing her to Earth hobbies like knitting, reading accounts of fictitious crimes, and jigsaw puzzles - by the end of her third trimester, she is more than ready to be done.
John is off-world when she goes into labor two weeks early. Dr. Zelenka ends up sitting with her in the delivery room and holding her hand when she is rushed to surgery.
When she wakes several hours later, the first thing she sees is John sitting in a chair nearby. Her sleep-addled brain tries to recollect where he’s been but fails. She settles for giving him an once-over, checking for visible injuries. Other than a small scrape on his forehead, John seems fine. More than that, she observes, he seems content as he smiles softly at their newborn son cradled in his arms.
“When did you return?” she asks, and John looks up at her.
“Hi,” he says, then: “About an hour ago.”
“You should have woken me.”
“You needed your sleep. Besides,” he glances down at the baby, “it gave us some bonding time.”
For a few minutes they are both silent, then John asks, “Are you all right?”
“There were moments when I was not so certain, but Dr. Keller took excellent care of us and Radek was a wonderful coach.” She smiles reassuringly. “We are fine.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
Teyla can hear the weight of the world in his words and an undertone of fear. “There was nothing you could have done, John. Our son was impatient to see the world. You could not have known.”
John is silent for a long moment, staring down at their son, fast asleep in his arms. When he speaks again, it is in a low, deliberate voice. “Teyla, I don’t know what I-“
Teyla pushes herself into an upright position, ignoring the stab of pain. “John, we are both fine.”
He nods once then smiles at her. “I know.”
John climbs to his feet, walks over, and settles their son in her arms.
“You forget, don’t you,” he says in a soft voice.
“How small they are?” Teyla guesses. She had been thinking the same thing.
John smiles. “Yeah.”
“I am worried about one thing, though,” she says.
“What?”
Teyla removes the baby’s hat to reveal a soft tuft of haphazard black hair. She smiles. “He seems to have inherited your hair.”
* * *
The paperwork for their marriage is a nightmare. Although, as Colonel Carter had pointed out, they weren’t the first to have an intergalactic marriage nor would they be the last.
“And Teyla doesn’t have ten different identities that need to be swept under the rug like Vala did.” She had given him a bright smile then. “Or Vala’s obsession with all things ‘Earth’ including the need to throw huge, overpriced weddings. I though Daniel was going to have an aneurysm when she bought a $7,000 wedding dress.”
John is thankful that his bride has no idea what a caterer does and can’t name any designers. Their guest list is confined to non-hostile entities in the galaxy, and there’s no need for a seating chart. He has already done the society wedding business once and would rather chew off his own foot than be subjected to that again.
But then someone (and John has listed Lt. Cadman and Amelia Banks as Suspects #1 and #2) introduces Teyla to wedding magazines. The next thing he knows, she’s enquiring about whether the mess hall cook can recreate a four-tiered wedding cake she saw in Martha Stewart Weddings, and whether she can incorporate bridesmaid’s dresses into the Athosian joining ceremony. John sees his dreams of a small, private ceremony slipping away as Teyla begins receiving wedding-related catalogues at the Daedalus mail calls.
“They don’t need coordinating clothing,” John says firmly when Teyla shows him the outfits she’s picked out for the kids.
“They do if they are going to participate,” she argues.
John’s sigh is a little more frustrated than he had intended, judging by the surprised expression on Teyla’s face. “We don’t need participants in the wedding,” he says. “Well, you know, except for us.”
Teyla raises her eyebrows and the temperature of the room drops quickly. “You do not want our children to be part of the wedding?”
“Well, no, I mean, I want them there,” he stammers. “But I thought this was going to be closer to the Athosian joining ceremony than an Earth wedding.” At least, that’s what I was hoping, he adds silently.
“You do not want a wedding?”
John closes his eyes and counts to ten. When he opens them again, he says, “I want to marry you. The rest of it is just…stuff.” He runs a hand through his hair a couple of times. “So we can get married in a big ceremony if that’ll make you happy. I just want you, me, and someone that can legally pronounce us husband and wife.”
Teyla tilts her head to one side and stares at him hard for a moment. John thinks he’s made her mad somehow until a slow smile blooms and it’s like the first spring day after a long winter. “I think that is perhaps the most romantic thing you have ever said to me.”
John raises his eyebrows. That he had not been expecting to hear. “Really?”
“Really.” She kisses him, and for a moment, John forgets about all the headaches this wedding-fever of hers has caused. “I think we might be able to come to some sort of compromise.”
“Yeah?”
“Something small will be fine, I think.”
John smiles. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” she says then adds, “but I’m keeping the cake.”
* * *
Two months after their marriage is official, John disappears during a standard recon mission to an uninhabited planet. Rodney, Ronon, and several teams scour the planet but find no trace of him. After two weeks, General O’Neill calls off the search, promising that all expedition teams will keep one ear to the ground, but he can’t feasibly keep so many teams occupied with the task. A month passes and there is still no word. The general halfheartedly declares John officially missing and appoints the reluctant Lieutenant Colonel Lorne as the commanding military officer of Atlantis.
Teyla locks herself in the family’s quarters for a day so that she may properly mourn. At the end of that time she enters the world once more and continues on with the business of living.
She wants nothing more then to hide away from the looks of pity and trite attempts at comfort. She wants to cry until there are no more tears, but she has children that need a sense of normality, a city that expects her to be strong, and people that require her to do her duties to the best of her ability. There is no more time to mourn.
***
John stumbles through the event horizon three months later - shaggy, unwashed, but very much alive.
Teyla sprints to the Gateroom as soon as Chuck’s stuttering declaration comes over her earpiece - he’s back, he’s alive - and she moves faster then she has ever moved in her life.
She is afraid that she’s heard wrong, that there has been some sort of misunderstanding, but when she arrives, he is standing there, surrounded by an exuberant and astonished crowd of scientists, Marines, and refugees. They quickly move aside as she comes down the stairs and throws herself into his arms.
John crushes her to his body, his hands knotted in the fabric of her shirt as he murmurs comforting words into her hair.
Teyla cannot stop the tears, kept at bay for almost four months, as she realizes the words that John is saying, like a reassuring mantra, to her: I’m here. I’m home.
***
Rating: T (only because of a little language)
Pairing: John/Teyla
Summary: Friendship is easy. Love is hard. Vignettes of the stages in John and Teyla’s relationship.
A/N: I started this six months ago to the day and it's finally done! I might add a few more vignettes later, but I kinda like where it ended. A big thanks to
greenconverses who beta’d this early in its infancy. Any mistakes made after that are mine and mine alone.
“Is he gone?” Teyla whispers, her breath warm against his cheek.
John shakes his head, careful not to bump his chin against her forehead. Belatedly, he realizes that in the darkness of the storage closet she cannot see the movement. Teyla moves a fraction closer and for a moment John doesn’t trust his own voice. He is saved from immediately answering by a crash of metal in the hallway outside.
“Might want to give it another minute,” John breathes.
Dimly he can hear Rodney ranting to a hapless bystander. John knows that several scientists saw him and Teyla hurry passed earlier, trying to escape Rodney and whatever harebrained scheme he wanted to enmesh them in. He hopes that those scientists’ fear of Rodney and their natural sense of self-preservation do not outweigh their loyalty to him and Teyla.
“How long do you suppose we will have to hide from him?” Teyla asks.
“I like to think of it as strategic maneuvering.”
“How long will we have to strategically maneuver?”
John smiles. “Let’s hope he gives up soon and chooses other test subjects.”
“You think that is likely?”
“Knowing McKay, no.”
Teyla sighs. “I am supposed to be sparring with Lt. Evans.”
“Evans?” Lt. Sam Evans was a new recruit, and from the little John knows about him, Evans would appreciate the subtleties and discipline of stick fighting as much as Ronon would appreciate the intricacies of Shakespeare’s sonnets.
“Yes, he is an eager student.”
“You don’t say,” John mutters.
His eyes have adjusted enough to the darkness that he can see a flash of white teeth as she smiles at him. “Jealousy does not become you, Colonel.”
“I’m not jealous,” John argues. “I’m…”
“Jealous.”
“I was going to say ‘protective’.”
Teyla shifts slightly. “Have you ever known me to need protection before?”
“No, but-“
“Then why would I need your protection now?” He thinks he can hear amusement in her voice. He hopes that’s what it is otherwise he will pay for his presumptuousness in one painful way or another in the week to come.
“You don’t. I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”
There is silence for a moment and John gets ready to grab her arm if she tries to stamp out of the storage closet in an angry huff. (She’s welcome to kick his ass six ways from Wednesday when they spar next, but if she leaves now he knows she’ll give away their position, and he’s not about to give himself up to Rodney’s special brand of torture.)
Finally, Teyla says, “What I am doing is offering my experience in hand-to-hand combat, Colonel, just as I have done for numerous others, including yourself. Nothing more.”
John knows it’s bad when she starts calling him ‘Colonel’ again during their downtime.
“Fine,” he says.
“Fine.”
Uncomfortable silence stretches between them, and John kicks himself for opening his big mouth.
This is why you should stay single forever, he reminds himself. You’ll have a longer life expectancy.
“Look,” he says slowly, doubting the wisdom of speaking again but strangely unable to stop himself, “I know you can take care of yourself. You’re better at it than probably 99% of the people I know-“
“Only 99%?” she asks, and this time he definitely hears the smile in her voice.
“You’re gonna have to fight that one out with Ronon. You guys might be tied for top billing. Anyways, I’m just-“
“Jealous.”
“All right,” he says, louder than necessary. He hopes the closest doors are a more insulated than he thinks they are. He lowers his voice and says, “Yeah, I’m a little jealous.”
She touches his arm. “Admitting you have a problem is the first step.”
“And you’ve been hanging around Rodney way too much.”
She laughs, and John, without thinking, leans down and kisses her. For a moment, he forgets everything but the feel of her lips against his, her hands gripping his forearms, the heady scent of her. Then reality returns, like klaxons sounding in his head. He steps back as far as the tight space will allow.
“I shouldn’t have done that-“ he starts to say but Teyla stops him with another kiss - quick and forceful. When she speaks, there is still laughter in her voice:
“All you had to do was admit it.”
They are in the middle of another kiss when Rodney finds them five minutes later. They reluctantly pull apart, not so much because of Rodney but rather because of the crowd of ten or so people clustered behind him.
“Well, thank God,” Rodney says. “I thought you had been culled by the Wraith or something.” He peers into the closet. “Nice hiding spot.” Rodney looks over his shoulder at Chuck and holds out a hand, beckoning impatiently. “I believe that my bet was for this week. Pay up.”
The crowd behind him groans and Chuck fishes in his pocket for a wad of bills (John’s surprised to see just how large a stack it actually is). Rodney pockets the money with a smug smile. “For that,” he says, his finger wagging back and forth between John and Teyla, “I’ll find someone else to play guinea pig.” His smile gets just that much more smug. “You’re welcome.”
Rodney turns around and shoos the crowd away. “Okay, folks, nothing to see here.”
The closet door slides closed again and the small space is plunged into darkness.
After a moment John says, “Well, I’d kiss you again, but I can’t see you.”
Teyla chuckles, and the sound sets something on fire low in John’s gut. “I am sure we will manage just fine.”
* * *
John surmises that in the year he and Teyla have been together they’ve only been on one official date. He can’t bring himself to use the word couple for what they are - that word implies PDAs, Saturday date nights, and Sunday afternoon brunches at the parents’. Their relationship is made up of sparring sessions, occasional weekend movie nights, and late lunches in the commissary. In fact, their romantic relationship isn’t that far removed from their previous platonic relationship except for the decidedly physical addition.
John recently moved into her room - he’s more surprised about this than anyone - but he has made sure his old quarters remain empty. He’s always been crap at relationships, and it doesn’t hurt to hedge his bets. Besides, it’s nice to have somewhere to go when Teyla kicks him out for snoring too loudly.
* * *
John Sheppard is good at friendship. Maybe too good, but all the same it’s a skill he’s grateful for - the ability to win people over. When it comes down to it, people aren’t so different. They all want to be heard, be understood, be appreciated. Once he had realized that, everything else fell into place.
Yes, friendship is easy. Love is hard.
He’s always been oblivious to it in others, which he finds strange, particularly when there are not that many steps separating the two. But he certainly expects to recognize it when he himself is in love.
In different ways he loved his childhood nanny, his first serious girlfriend, and, once upon a time, Nancy. But it’s been awhile since he’s been acquainted with the feeling.
In retrospect, John thinks he shouldn’t have been surprised that the realization blinds him. There’s a moment during a particularly dull briefing when he makes a joke sotto voce to Teyla. She throws him a quicksilver smile over her shoulder, and suddenly he feels like he’s been sucker-punched.
Maybe it’s the fact that the biologists have shanghaied movie nights lately and made them all watch far too many romantic comedies, but he’s expecting something else. Something flashy like fireworks, or dramatic like a trumpet fanfare, or even understated like the peal of bells. Something sensational to signal to himself and the world that he, John Sheppard, is in love.
Instead his reaction is purely physical - he feels sick and out-of-control. It’s not unlike that horrible moment he’s experienced all too often while skateboarding, when he first realizes he’s off-balance and that he’s going to hit the ground hard, it’s going to hurt a lot, and he’s going to have some serious roadrash to prove it.
In that moment (which feels like an eternity but is actually only long enough for Caldwell to glare at them and for Teyla to whip her attention around front again), John knows he’s going to get some serious emotional roadrash.
He thinks it might just be worth it.
* * *
Teyla’s father advised her to never walk away from the bargaining table in anger. She thinks that if he had known what her future circumstances were to be he might have also advised her to never embark on a mission in a similar mood.
She and John have had fights before - no relationship is conflict free - but none have lasted as long. The reason for it is silly, Teyla knows, but John’s stubbornness to keep their relationship stagnant has begun to frustrate her. Elizabeth once described John’s attitude towards relationships in general as “once bitten, twice shy”. Teyla believes it has never been truer. Since the beginning, she has been accepting and even supportive of the fact that John wanted to keep things casual. He has trouble displaying any affection in public beyond a friendly pat on the hand, he does not use pet names as she has noticed among many other Earthlings, and he cannot articulate his feelings toward her. She has not pushed it in the past. She knows what his feelings for her are, but she finds herself now wishing that he might occasionally verbalize it, even if only in private.
Everyone seems to know they’re not on speaking terms before they leave on their latest mission. Rodney tries to have it suspended until they are “out of their snit” (his reasoning: “For all I know they could stoop to some sort of grade school note-passing, and that doesn’t actually work when we’re running for our lives!”), but it is to no avail.
In hindsight, Teyla wishes they had suspended it.
Everything begins to go wrong from the outset when Rodney is taken prisoner for offending the High Priestess. By the time they make it back through the Gate, Ronon has a dislocated shoulder, John is nursing a swollen ankle, and Teyla is bleeding from a knife wound to the stomach.
She wakes up in the infirmary nearly a day later to a throbbing ache in her abdomen and a hand gripping hers tightly. When she groggily opens her eyes she finds John is the source of the death-grip on her hand.
“Hey,” he says with obvious relief. He leans forward to gently tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “How’s the pain?”
“It is not unbearable.” She blinks a few times, trying to clear the muzzy feeling in her head. “You?”
John nods at his ankle propped up on the footrest of his wheelchair. “Just a sprain. Keller said it should be good as new in a couple of weeks.”
“Rodney and Ronon?”
“Both fine - McKay’s the only one not hurting. Ronon should be fine in a day or two. He’s currently wearing a sling against his will.” He leans forward and whispers theatrically, “I think the only reason he’s still got it on is because he’s got a thing for Keller.”
Teyla’s laugh quickly dissolves into a hiss.
John winces in sympathy and squeezes her hand. “Shouldn’t make you laugh.”
Teyla shakes her head. “John, I am sorry about our fight. It was-“
“No. I’m sorry.” John absently strokes the back of her hand with his thumb. “I do love you, you know.”
Teyla smiles, as much for his words as for the uncomfortable look on his face. She knows just how hard it is for him to those words and she sincerely appreciates the effort. She closes her eyes and settles deeper into her pillows. “I know, but it is nice to hear it.”
“And?”
“And what?”
She hears movement and the rustle of fabric next to her. “And don’t you have something to say to me?”
She opens her eyes but just barely. “I have told you many times of my feelings for you.”
John’s smile is wry. “But it’s always nice to hear it.”
Teyla sleepily crooks a finger at him, and as he obligingly presses a soft kiss to her lips, she says, “I love you, too.”
* * *
John takes the news of her pregnancy rather well, Teyla thinks. They had never discussed the prospect and it came as a surprise to both of them. But Teyla finds herself happy about her pregnancy, and John takes it in stride, even seeming cautiously accepting of the idea that he is going to be a father.
Then one night, still early in her second trimester, she wakes to find John sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of their dresser with a screwdriver, a wrench, a handful of plastic zip-ties, and several other miscellaneous tools spread out around him.
“John?” she says hoarsely. She sits up and peers fuzzily at the clock. “It is 2:30 in the morning. What are you doing?”
“It’s not safe,” he replies, not taking his attention from the handle he is unscrewing.
“What isn’t?”
“This dresser isn’t. This room; this whole damn place! It’s not safe.” He throws down the screwdriver in frustration. It hits the floor with a heavy thunk and skitters to a halt deep under the dresser. “How the hell do you baby-proof Atlantis?!”
Teyla wraps the quilt on the bed tightly around herself and pads over to sit down on the floor next to him. She places a comforting hand on his leg.
He turns shadowed eyes on her before looking away. “This city has proven too dangerous for some of the best minds in two galaxies. A kid doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell,” he says.
“Many generations have successfully raised their children amid difficult circumstances. Who’s to say we cannot do the same?”
John reaches under the dresser to retrieve the screwdriver. “But they didn’t actively seek out dangerous situations - we do.”
Teyla takes the screwdriver from him and sets it out of his reach. She ignores the face he pulls and observes, “I have never known you to be so…”
“Paranoid?” he acknowledges with a wry expression.
“I was going to say ‘pessimistic’.”
“We’re having a kid, Teyla. Maybe a little pessimism is good.”
Teyla sighs. Her mate is a complicated man for all that he likes to pretend otherwise. She knows that if he’s letting his emotions overflow like this then they have been building for some time, like a dam stretched to its limits. “I thought you were pleased.”
John hunches his shoulders, biting his lower lip as is his habit when he is uncomfortable or doesn’t know what to do with himself. “I am, I think.” John’s sigh matches Teyla’s as he runs a hand through his hair. “Teyla, you have to understand that I never thought I’d have a family. The idea is still…unexpected.” He grimaces suddenly. “I didn’t have the best example growing up.”
“John, you may not have had the best example, but perhaps that is why you will be a good father; you will learn from your father’s mistakes. And you will make some of your own, but they are all learning experiences.” She grasps his hand and squeezes. “You are a good man, John. I have faith in you.” She smiles. “You should try having a little faith in yourself.”
John stares at the floor for a while and Teyla lets him. She knows that sometimes he gets into his own head and it takes time for him to get back out again. So she holds his hand and lets him stare at the floor, because she knows that he is a good man, and once he climbs out of his dark musings, he’ll realize it, too.
* * *
John tries not to cry when his and Teyla’s first child - a daughter - is born. He’s spent years ignoring his emotions, bottling them up in order to deal with them at some indefinite time. He’s not about to start blubbering now.
Instead he forces himself to think of all the things that have angered him over the years: his father, the IOA, the Replicators, the person who always steals the last piece of apple pie in the commissary.
It helps but he still gets misty-eyed staring down at the pink-blanketed bundle in his arms.
Rodney doesn’t mock him too badly even though John knows they all saw him swipe at his eyes. After all, Rodney gets misty-eyed, too.
* * *
John doesn’t fully imagine how having a kid will change his working life on Atlantis. He knows, in an abstract sort of way, that downtime will no longer exist but imagines that he will be able to keep his home life and work life completely separate.
He does not truly realize his error in judgment until he spends the entire night before an important diplomatic mission first in a steamy bathroom then out in the cool night air, trying desperately to alleviate the croup that has laid siege to his daughter’s tiny lungs. By morning, she is breathing easier but he is not. Combined with numerous other sleepless nights, it is through sheer force of will that he continues functioning.
Several hours into the mission, after the Denuvrias of MX9-727 have locked him in a dark cell for refusing the advances of their archchancellor, John’s too exhausted to come up with anything resembling an escape plan.
He’s more than a little put out when his team plus half a dozen Marines break down the cell door and a portion of the wall as well, rousing him from the first decent sleep he’s had in two months.
As they wave away the worst of the masonry dust, he peevishly asks if they could have waited a few more hours to bust him out. It wasn’t as if his crime was life-threatening after all. He fears his insomnia might be.
* * *
Teyla’s first pregnancy was relatively easy - very little morning sickness, no complications, and a smooth delivery. Her second pregnancy is not so incident-free. She suffers from terrible migraines and cannot eat anything but crackers without being violently ill. She spends much of her time trying to escape the sights, sounds, and odors that might make it worse. In a city often filled with the smell of experiments gone wrong, or sometimes - even worse - gone right, it seems to Teyla that nowhere is safe. She thinks that if more women suffered through their pregnancy as she does, many a race would have died out long ago.
John does his best. Teyla couldn’t ask for a more supportive mate - he keeps their two year-old daughter occupied on her bad days (or months, as the case seems to be), he keeps her stocked with soda crackers, and tries to be as supportive and compassionate as possible. But even John cannot make things better.
Teyla is put on bed rest when she is seven months pregnant. She is not accustomed to being so sedentary. And although the Atlanteans try to ensure she is never bored - bringing her movies, introducing her to Earth hobbies like knitting, reading accounts of fictitious crimes, and jigsaw puzzles - by the end of her third trimester, she is more than ready to be done.
John is off-world when she goes into labor two weeks early. Dr. Zelenka ends up sitting with her in the delivery room and holding her hand when she is rushed to surgery.
When she wakes several hours later, the first thing she sees is John sitting in a chair nearby. Her sleep-addled brain tries to recollect where he’s been but fails. She settles for giving him an once-over, checking for visible injuries. Other than a small scrape on his forehead, John seems fine. More than that, she observes, he seems content as he smiles softly at their newborn son cradled in his arms.
“When did you return?” she asks, and John looks up at her.
“Hi,” he says, then: “About an hour ago.”
“You should have woken me.”
“You needed your sleep. Besides,” he glances down at the baby, “it gave us some bonding time.”
For a few minutes they are both silent, then John asks, “Are you all right?”
“There were moments when I was not so certain, but Dr. Keller took excellent care of us and Radek was a wonderful coach.” She smiles reassuringly. “We are fine.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
Teyla can hear the weight of the world in his words and an undertone of fear. “There was nothing you could have done, John. Our son was impatient to see the world. You could not have known.”
John is silent for a long moment, staring down at their son, fast asleep in his arms. When he speaks again, it is in a low, deliberate voice. “Teyla, I don’t know what I-“
Teyla pushes herself into an upright position, ignoring the stab of pain. “John, we are both fine.”
He nods once then smiles at her. “I know.”
John climbs to his feet, walks over, and settles their son in her arms.
“You forget, don’t you,” he says in a soft voice.
“How small they are?” Teyla guesses. She had been thinking the same thing.
John smiles. “Yeah.”
“I am worried about one thing, though,” she says.
“What?”
Teyla removes the baby’s hat to reveal a soft tuft of haphazard black hair. She smiles. “He seems to have inherited your hair.”
* * *
The paperwork for their marriage is a nightmare. Although, as Colonel Carter had pointed out, they weren’t the first to have an intergalactic marriage nor would they be the last.
“And Teyla doesn’t have ten different identities that need to be swept under the rug like Vala did.” She had given him a bright smile then. “Or Vala’s obsession with all things ‘Earth’ including the need to throw huge, overpriced weddings. I though Daniel was going to have an aneurysm when she bought a $7,000 wedding dress.”
John is thankful that his bride has no idea what a caterer does and can’t name any designers. Their guest list is confined to non-hostile entities in the galaxy, and there’s no need for a seating chart. He has already done the society wedding business once and would rather chew off his own foot than be subjected to that again.
But then someone (and John has listed Lt. Cadman and Amelia Banks as Suspects #1 and #2) introduces Teyla to wedding magazines. The next thing he knows, she’s enquiring about whether the mess hall cook can recreate a four-tiered wedding cake she saw in Martha Stewart Weddings, and whether she can incorporate bridesmaid’s dresses into the Athosian joining ceremony. John sees his dreams of a small, private ceremony slipping away as Teyla begins receiving wedding-related catalogues at the Daedalus mail calls.
“They don’t need coordinating clothing,” John says firmly when Teyla shows him the outfits she’s picked out for the kids.
“They do if they are going to participate,” she argues.
John’s sigh is a little more frustrated than he had intended, judging by the surprised expression on Teyla’s face. “We don’t need participants in the wedding,” he says. “Well, you know, except for us.”
Teyla raises her eyebrows and the temperature of the room drops quickly. “You do not want our children to be part of the wedding?”
“Well, no, I mean, I want them there,” he stammers. “But I thought this was going to be closer to the Athosian joining ceremony than an Earth wedding.” At least, that’s what I was hoping, he adds silently.
“You do not want a wedding?”
John closes his eyes and counts to ten. When he opens them again, he says, “I want to marry you. The rest of it is just…stuff.” He runs a hand through his hair a couple of times. “So we can get married in a big ceremony if that’ll make you happy. I just want you, me, and someone that can legally pronounce us husband and wife.”
Teyla tilts her head to one side and stares at him hard for a moment. John thinks he’s made her mad somehow until a slow smile blooms and it’s like the first spring day after a long winter. “I think that is perhaps the most romantic thing you have ever said to me.”
John raises his eyebrows. That he had not been expecting to hear. “Really?”
“Really.” She kisses him, and for a moment, John forgets about all the headaches this wedding-fever of hers has caused. “I think we might be able to come to some sort of compromise.”
“Yeah?”
“Something small will be fine, I think.”
John smiles. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” she says then adds, “but I’m keeping the cake.”
* * *
Two months after their marriage is official, John disappears during a standard recon mission to an uninhabited planet. Rodney, Ronon, and several teams scour the planet but find no trace of him. After two weeks, General O’Neill calls off the search, promising that all expedition teams will keep one ear to the ground, but he can’t feasibly keep so many teams occupied with the task. A month passes and there is still no word. The general halfheartedly declares John officially missing and appoints the reluctant Lieutenant Colonel Lorne as the commanding military officer of Atlantis.
Teyla locks herself in the family’s quarters for a day so that she may properly mourn. At the end of that time she enters the world once more and continues on with the business of living.
She wants nothing more then to hide away from the looks of pity and trite attempts at comfort. She wants to cry until there are no more tears, but she has children that need a sense of normality, a city that expects her to be strong, and people that require her to do her duties to the best of her ability. There is no more time to mourn.
***
John stumbles through the event horizon three months later - shaggy, unwashed, but very much alive.
Teyla sprints to the Gateroom as soon as Chuck’s stuttering declaration comes over her earpiece - he’s back, he’s alive - and she moves faster then she has ever moved in her life.
She is afraid that she’s heard wrong, that there has been some sort of misunderstanding, but when she arrives, he is standing there, surrounded by an exuberant and astonished crowd of scientists, Marines, and refugees. They quickly move aside as she comes down the stairs and throws herself into his arms.
John crushes her to his body, his hands knotted in the fabric of her shirt as he murmurs comforting words into her hair.
Teyla cannot stop the tears, kept at bay for almost four months, as she realizes the words that John is saying, like a reassuring mantra, to her: I’m here. I’m home.
***