new fic: Ode
Ode
by Hth
Rodney/Ronon
a sequelette to Satisfaction
Summary: Naked poetry. Yes, naked poetry. What, I can't have an id, too? It could totally happen, okay?
Special thanks to linabean for beta duties, as well as for the mere existence of this version of the characters. (I told you I'd post it if I ever found the wherewithal to add in the sex!) Also, I suppose, special thanks to Matthew Arnold, Louis MacNeice (SEKRIT ALCOHOLIC IRISH POET BOYFRIEND!) and e.e. cummings.
Ode
by Hth
“What are you doing here?” Ronon asked, which was not...the most ringing welcome in the world, coming from someone who theoretically had been known to enjoy Rodney’s company from time to time. Last night, even, he had claimed rather convincingly to enjoy Rodney’s company.
Rodney gestured aimlessly around him and said, “Just - um, stopping, stopping by?” Put that way, it did seem a little odd even to Rodney. He never stopped by Ronon’s quarters, had only seen the inside of the place a handful of times. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was here now, knowing that Ronon would probably appear later that night in the comfort of Rodney’s own climate-controlled room to steal Rodney’s prescription pillows and do - things to Rodney’s body that studies showed had extremely beneficial health effects. “I’m not interrupting...?”
Clearly he was interrupting. But Ronon set his book face-down on his chest and stretched, his bare toes curling, his back arching just a little off his fully made bed, and then he put one arm out across the bed and smiled and said, “C’mere.” So apparently it was a forgivable interruption.
Rodney used the edge of the bedframe to pry off his shoes and lay down on his side. He put his hand alongside Ronon’s face and kissed him softly. Ronon squeezed his arm when he pulled back and said, “Sorry I didn’t come over last night. Things were so crazy before. I guess I was tired.”
“No, no, that’s fine.” Rodney had been too busy catching up on badly needed sleep to give it any thought, actually.
“I was planning to come later.”
Rodney kissed him again briefly, then smiled with his lips still all but pressed to Ronon’s. “I know,” he said. Ronon was still for a moment, then put his hand behind Rodney’s head and kissed him more deeply than before, definitely less of a kiss hello and more of a kiss hello.
When Ronon let him go, Rodney settled in with one elbow propping him up by Ronon’s head and his other hand lingering on Ronon’s waist. “What are you reading?” Ronon held up the book so that Rodney could see the cover. “Great Poems of the English Language?” Rodney said dubiously. “You’re...reading poetry?”
“I guess,” Ronon said. “They don’t really sound like poems - like the kind of poems I’m used to. But they’re growing on me now. A lot of them are okay.”
“I wouldn’t think you would, uh, care especially for poetry,” Rodney said. “Where I’m from, soldier-types often...don’t.”
“Really? Even war poetry?”
“Oh, well, we don’t have much of that on Earth. I’m sure Sateda is chock full of glorious evocations of blood and bravery, but our poems are mostly about love. And sometimes...trees and vases and whatnot. What?” he said to Ronon’s look. “I distinctly remember both trees and vases!” Ronon rolled his eyes a little, and Rodney said, “Look, who had to take two semesters of English Lit, me or you? I think I can speak with slightly more authority on Great Poems of the English Language than you can.”
“Fine,” Ronon said. “I’m sure you know a lot of poems. Here, show me how to say these words.” He held up the book, and Rodney pronounced Sophocles and Aegean for him. Ronon grunted and nodded. “You like this one?” he said. “Dover Beach?”
“Mmm,” Rodney said.
“You’ve never read it,” Ronon scoffed.
“I have! It’s just been a long time. It’s...very famous. I remember reading it, I just don’t...remember....”
“It’s good,” Ronon said softly. “It’s really.... It’s really good.” Rodney smiled and put his head down on Ronon’s shoulder. “I don’t know,” he said, “probably a lot of them are really good, if you know all the places and people in them. I can’t get through the ones with a lot of names. I keep flipping through to see if maybe they come from other poems, but....”
“Some of them probably come from the Bible. The others - Sophocles and whatnot - those are Greek. From poems, but not this kind of poem. Epics. Lots of warfare, very Satedan. Well, at least - the Iliad is mostly warfare. The Odyssey, now. One of the rare sequels that surpasses the original.”
“You like that one?”
“Hmm, I suppose I do,” Rodney said. Almost as much as he liked Ronon’s thumbnail running up and down the back of his neck.
Ronon tucked the backs of his fingers up against Rodney’s neck and said, “Tell me about it.”
“Well,” Rodney said slowly. It wasn’t generally quite this hard to gather his thoughts. “It’s about Odysseus. Odysseus fought at Troy - that’s the war that the Iliad is about. Achilles is technically the hero of the Iliad - greatest warrior ever to live, felled a thousand foes, blah blah blah - but in spite of being the original drama queen, it wasn’t Achilles who won the Trojan War, it was Odysseus. Through his superior intellect, and the world’s first feat of engineering brilliance- “
“Okay, now you’re making it up.”
“I’m not! Not at all. The Greeks were a very rational and civilized people. Their great warriors came to glorious and bloody ends, but their tactical genius got his own epic, and every woman in the Mediterranean, too. Though some of them proved to be a bit of a handful. You’d like the Odyssey, though. It has a happy ending. He gets to go home to his wife. He was cursed by a god to wander the ocean lost for years, and he had the adventures and the women and whatnot, but...what he really wanted was to get home to his wife and son.”
“And she waited years for him to come back from the war?”
“Mm, it’s better than that, even. She was being pressured to remarry - he was presumed dead, and she was a rich widow and all that - so she promised that she’d choose a new husband when she finished weaving the, uh, the thing she was making, some tapestry or something. But every night she snuck into her workroom and undid all the threads she’d woven that day so she’d never finish and have to marry anyone but Odysseus.”
“Smart and loyal,” Ronon said. “She sounds like a good partner for a hero. Too bad he wasn’t.”
“Odysseus was very smart!”
“I meant the loyal part. It would make a good love story, if he didn’t spoil it by cheating on his partner.”
“Men are pigs,” Rodney said. “During portions of the Odyssey, quite literally, in fact.”
“I like Dover Beach better,” Ronon said, picking up the book. “Ah, love, let us be true to one another! For the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain....”
“Yes, that’s beautiful,” Rodney said wryly. “Nothing like fine art to really drive home the misery of existence. It must be really drafty in those garrets or something.”
“It is beautiful,” Ronon said testily. “Don’t tell me you don’t get it.”
“No, I get it,” Rodney protested, before he could be bothered to decide whether or not its true. But then Ronon was giving him a look, waiting, and Rodney realized he’d better stick to his story. “I get it,” he said again, weakly. “He’s a cynic, but...he still calls her love. He still believes in love.” Ronon added an arched eyebrow to the look, so Rodney obviously wasn’t finished yet. “I remember...there’s an ocean. And tides.” Ronon rolled his eyes and looked away, and - somehow that was worse than being pinned under a look. “He’s...loyal,” Rodney said. “Like Penelope. That’s the most important thing in the world to him. The ocean has - the world has - tides - that you can’t control. But he can choose this. He can choose who to be with, and...he can ask her to choose how she wants to be with him. That’s what they have left, even if...there’s no land of dreams. They still get to choose to stay together.”
“Okay,” Ronon said in satisfaction. “See? How’s that not beautiful?”
“It’s beautiful,” Rodney admitted, less facetiously this time. “Do you...write poetry like that?”
Ronon snorted. “Like Matthew Arnold? You’re kidding, right? When I was younger...I used to write a little. I was pretty bad at it.”
“I can believe that,” Rodney said. “You have the soul of a scientist.”
“Hey,” Ronon objected.
“That’s a compliment! You have a very - clear, concise way of - it’s a compliment! I’m not really crazy about poetry, truthfully. A lot of bells and whistles and white lace, covering up what you could just, you could just say. I don’t see what’s so wrong with simplicity.”
“Poetry can be simple,” Ronon said, flipping through pages. “I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me. Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me. Otherwise kill me. That’s - that’s clear, it’s perfect. I could never say that in a million years, but it’s...exactly the right way to say it. It’s...what I would say. If I could.”
Rodney ran his hand along Ronon’s side, feeling the muscles under his shirt and the even way his ribs expanded with his breathing. Not a stone at all, not an automaton or thistledown or spilled water, but warm and breathing and alive, an incredible kisser, a poetry lover - Odysseus’s resilience and Penelope’s faithfulness and all the best bits of Achilles, too, and Rodney had met a lot of soldiers in his life, but he’d never known a man like this one. He pressed up on his elbows and leaned over Ronon, crushing Great Poems of the English Language unnoticed between their chests, and said, “Ronon, I- “
Ronon put his hand on Rodney’s cheek, his thumb covering up Rodney’s lips. “Don’t,” he said kindly.
“But- “
“Shut up,” he said, even more kindly. “If you say it and I don’t say it back, then everything’s weird. I don’t want that, I want things how they are.”
“You know...the other way to fix that would be to say it back,” Rodney said, trying to make a little joke out of it and...not exactly succeeding. This wasn’t going quite how he had.... Not that he had planned it at all. It just sort of happened out of nowhere. Rodney blamed Matthew Arnold.
Ronon smiled at him, though, and pulled him down for a quick kiss, so it couldn’t be...all bad. “This way when I say it,” he said, his nose brushing the side of Rodney’s nose and his beard brushing the side of Rodney’s mouth, “we’ll both know I mean forever.”
When, not if. Rodney thought he could live with that. He settled back down alongside Ronon and said, “Don’t you like any of the happy ones? I feel sure I remember there being happy ones....”
“You want me to read you a happy one?” Ronon said, shifting his head just enough to let his breath ruffle Rodney’s hair. Rodney wasn’t entirely sure if he was being mocked or not, so he didn’t answer. He let his breath out carefully when he heard Ronon flipping through pages. “somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near.” For a moment, Rodney thought that was the end of it, but just before he started to say something to interrupt Ronon’s silence, Ronon’s voice dropped to a murmur, so low in this throat that Rodney had to strain to hear. “your slightest look will easily unclose me....” He faltered for a moment, a little restless tremor running through him, like sometimes happened when he was caught in some tension that made him wish there were bad guys nearby to throw around a little. He picked up again, speaking just a little too quickly, the rumble of his words almost running together. “though I have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose..”
“Oh, my God, that’s hot,” Rodney murmured back, feeling slightly drunk. He heard the book thudding to the floor as Ronon rolled over on top of him, one hand sliding behind Rodney’s neck. He kissed Rodney over and over, brief, warm kisses, and Rodney’s hands, gone numb and stupid with pleasure, scrabbled helplessly at the back of Ronon’s shirt. “What’s the matter with you?” Rodney snapped. “Help me with this.”
Ronon grinned and sat back on his knees just far enough to get his shirt off. That was a perfectly, unequivocally positive development, but then Ronon had to go spoiling it by spreading his legs wider and settling more heavily across Rodney’s hips. Rodney let out a helpless little noise, because Ronon was heavy and Rodney was hard and he was sure that at least half of the fireworks going off behind his eyelids had something to do with pain.
“Lemme help you with that, too,” Ronon rumbled, moving just far enough back to get at Rodney’s pants. “I know you need a lot of help,” he added, smirking, as he lowered the zipper.
“Wait,” Rodney said, because this was moving just a little faster than he wanted it to - tonight, anyway. Only the slight arch of Ronon’s eyebrow betrayed that Ronon had even heard him, so Rodney tried to put his hands in the way. Ronon brushed them aside impatiently, and Rodney said, “Wait,” again, breathlessly, and grabbed both of Ronon’s wrists.
Rodney was as surprised as anyone. He looked blankly at where he was holding Ronon’s arms, golden skin under his left hand, gold and blue under his right. He looked up at Ronon’s face and saw Ronon looking back at him with a little amusement and a lot of curiosity. “What?” he asked gently, and Rodney wasn’t sure if that constituted enough of a question to need an answer. “What do you want?” Ronon said, all gentleness and no amusement left at all.
“Slower,” Rodney said, because that was certainly an answer, if not precisely the right answer.
“Uh-huh,” Ronon said dryly. He freed his hands easily and lay down at Rodney’s side, cupping Rodney’s jaw and kissing him lightly several times in a row before grabbing Rodney’s sleeve in one hand and his shoulder in the other and pushing him up and away. Rodney’s eyes fluttered open and he was disoriented for a moment until he found himself propped up on his hands, looking down at Ronon. Rodney lowered his head and kissed him softly.
But after that, Ronon was still just lying there, looking up expectantly, as if Rodney had some kind of plan. “What - what now?” Rodney said, because Ronon was clearly waiting for...something.
“Whatever,” Ronon said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. Just...whatever. Of course Ronon didn’t suffer from any type of...anxiety or stress-related hyperventilation episodes under intimate conditions. Not that...that had ever happened to Rodney. Well, not for years. But if anything could bring on a relapse of acute adolescence, it was probably trying to please a lover like Ronon.
“Whatever,” Rodney grumbled. He tried nibbling on Ronon’s earlobe, then kissing behind it. That smelled nice, and got a nice little sound, a cross between a sigh and a growl, so he kept kissing down the side of Ronon’s neck.
Kissing was good; kissing had always worked on Ronon in the past. In fact, Rodney had a fairly reliable strategy of kissing Ronon until he lost patience and started doing something spectacular to Rodney’s body. But this time Ronon seemed to be settling in, relaxing into the mattress. He let Rodney peel off his leather pants then found a comfortable position for his legs, splayed open just enough for Rodney to fit between. Rodney let his hand settle on Ronon’s hip, caressing the ridges of blunt bone with his thumb. He had his other hand resting lightly high over Ronon’s ribs for balance, so he could feel the gathering tension in Ronon’s body, the soft, gasping breaths he swallowed back down noiselessly.
Rodney glanced up, and something about the way Ronon had bent his arms so that his wrists were up near his head and his fingers were curled in tightly over his palms...something about it made both Rodney’s cock and stomach twitch. “Do you have any lube here?” he asked, his voice dry and choppy. Ronon shook his head. “Okay,” Rodney said vaguely. “That’s okay.”
He took his time licking Ronon’s smooth, hard stomach, his hands slipping around so that his fingertips found purchase in the hollow in the small of Ronon’s back. Ronon’s body lifted and sank, oceanic, between Rodney’s hands and his mouth, surging with perfect, controlled strength and perfect, helpless need. He sucked gently on Ronon’s dampened skin and left a blunt little bite near his navel, which wrung a rough, impatient, “Come on,” from low in Ronon’s throat.
“What, you’ve got plans later?” Rodney said.
“I’m gonna be pretty pissed off if I don’t,” he gritted out. Rodney grinned and kissed his stomach again. Ronon’s legs closed around his thighs, nudging him upwards, and Rodney let himself be nudged as they collaboratively got rid of Rodney’s rumpled clothes. He kissed Ronon hard as his cock slid smoothly, perfectly against the slick, wet skin of Ronon’s abdomen, and he stayed there, holding Ronon’s face between his hands and kissing him desperately as his hips worked at a leisurely pace, freedom and sensation and the world’s best ego-trip as Ronon gasped brokenly into Rodney’s mouth.
“We should go on vacation,” Rodney said, which felt a little out of nowhere even to him. But still, it was a valid point. He moved one hand, his palm finding Ronon’s without effort, their fingers locking together as Rodney shifted his weight down and thrust a little harder. “Get away...just us,” he said. It only felt natural to balance himself with the other hand, and when his fingers slid between Ronon’s for the second time it felt like a circuit closing, like a power surge, and Rodney made a desperate noise and leaned into Ronon with his hands and his hips, pinning him down and going for it, the promise of an orgasm bright and sharp in his mind.
“Okay,” Ronon said shortly, letting his back arch and his legs tangle around Rodney’s. “Oh - yeah - Rodney. Oh, fuck.... Come on, come on.”
“You like this?” Rodney murmured against Ronon’s cheekbone - something midway between a tease and an honest question, not that he didn’t know - he knew - he did believe, finally - in Ronon, in him and Ronon - but still, he just wanted to...to hear....
Ronon whined from deep in his throat and sucked in breath to answer, and still had a false start before he could make himself say, “Yeah, yeah. You’re so - sexy on top....”
In spite of the hot, prickly sweat dripping down the back of his neck, that made Rodney shiver. He tried to kiss Ronon, but they were both moving so fast and rough that their teeth kept clicking together and they couldn’t quite connect and it didn’t particularly matter - just the taste of Ronon on his tongue was enough, inasmuch as anything was enough, inasmuch as there was anything in the world that would feel right again until - until -
The moment right before he came seemed protracted, almost nonlinear. Rodney wasn’t even sure if he was still moving or not and he wasn’t sure if the noises Ronon was making were words, but he knew that he was going to come or die at any moment, too wrecked to survive, too skinless to endure this much contact for much longer. And then it was over and all he could do was fall flat against Ronon, a few final spurts of come still pulsing out without much force between their bodies. He couldn’t let go of Ronon’s hands.
“Fuck,” he said blearily into Ronon’s shoulder. “God. You....”
Ronon twisted his neck so that he could press a little kiss to Rodney’s forehead. “You,” he corrected, the amusement back in his voice. “All I did was lay here. That was you.”
“Well, that’s all you have to do, then, isn’t it?” Rodney said, hoping his own amusement translated through his tired mumble. Reluctantly, he extricated one of his hands and used it to smooth Ronon’s hair into place. He kissed Ronon softly and whispered, “I mean it. We should go away together. I really want to be alone with you.”
“Yeah, now you want that,” Ronon said wryly. “I give it twelve hours before you start to make yourself crazy about what’s going on back here.”
“Then you’ll have to stop me. Bring me back to the task at hand.”
“So...vacation is different from my day job how?”
“Naked poetry under the stars?” Rodney suggested.
Ronon made a low, purring sound. But he sounded strangely serious when he kissed the corner of Rodney’s lips and said, “Whatever you want.” After a pause he settled his free hand on Rodney’s back and said, “You’ve never come to my room before.”
“Um,” Rodney said, playing for time until the urge to bark no talking, more kissing had passed. “I guess not...not often. Maybe I’m intimidated by your aggressive artwork.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my artwork. Summit at Dawn is a masterpiece.”
“It’s very...red. And I don’t know what those people are thinking while they watch us, but I’m not at all convinced that they approve.”
“Maybe once they get to know you.”
“Amazingly, that doesn’t always make people like me better.”
“You say stuff like that,” Ronon said thoughtfully, “but it seems to me like the people who don’t like you are the ones who don’t know you at all.”
“You’re entirely too nice to me,” Rodney said, stroking the side of Ronon’s face.
Ronon caught his wrist and turned his hand over, kissing the ball of his thumb. “Why’d you come here?” he pressed, soft-eyed and serious like he always got after sex. “You could’ve waited for me like always. I would’ve come.”
“I know you would have.”
“So why?”
Rodney pulled his hand free and used it to stroke a lock of Ronon’s hair. “You know why.” Ronon just gave him a look. “Because I wanted to see you,” he said, nestling down against Ronon’s chest, letting Ronon’s slow hand on his back soothe his overheated skin and his overcranked heart rate. “Now, not later - wanted - want you,” he said, bobbling his attempt at coherence, letting reason and romance both devolve into kiss after kiss against Ronon’s throat. He’d say anything to get this and have it and keep it all to himself, Ronon’s hands and his smile and his trust and everything that went along with.
by Hth
Rodney/Ronon
a sequelette to Satisfaction
Summary: Naked poetry. Yes, naked poetry. What, I can't have an id, too? It could totally happen, okay?
Special thanks to linabean for beta duties, as well as for the mere existence of this version of the characters. (I told you I'd post it if I ever found the wherewithal to add in the sex!) Also, I suppose, special thanks to Matthew Arnold, Louis MacNeice (SEKRIT ALCOHOLIC IRISH POET BOYFRIEND!) and e.e. cummings.
Ode
by Hth
“What are you doing here?” Ronon asked, which was not...the most ringing welcome in the world, coming from someone who theoretically had been known to enjoy Rodney’s company from time to time. Last night, even, he had claimed rather convincingly to enjoy Rodney’s company.
Rodney gestured aimlessly around him and said, “Just - um, stopping, stopping by?” Put that way, it did seem a little odd even to Rodney. He never stopped by Ronon’s quarters, had only seen the inside of the place a handful of times. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was here now, knowing that Ronon would probably appear later that night in the comfort of Rodney’s own climate-controlled room to steal Rodney’s prescription pillows and do - things to Rodney’s body that studies showed had extremely beneficial health effects. “I’m not interrupting...?”
Clearly he was interrupting. But Ronon set his book face-down on his chest and stretched, his bare toes curling, his back arching just a little off his fully made bed, and then he put one arm out across the bed and smiled and said, “C’mere.” So apparently it was a forgivable interruption.
Rodney used the edge of the bedframe to pry off his shoes and lay down on his side. He put his hand alongside Ronon’s face and kissed him softly. Ronon squeezed his arm when he pulled back and said, “Sorry I didn’t come over last night. Things were so crazy before. I guess I was tired.”
“No, no, that’s fine.” Rodney had been too busy catching up on badly needed sleep to give it any thought, actually.
“I was planning to come later.”
Rodney kissed him again briefly, then smiled with his lips still all but pressed to Ronon’s. “I know,” he said. Ronon was still for a moment, then put his hand behind Rodney’s head and kissed him more deeply than before, definitely less of a kiss hello and more of a kiss hello.
When Ronon let him go, Rodney settled in with one elbow propping him up by Ronon’s head and his other hand lingering on Ronon’s waist. “What are you reading?” Ronon held up the book so that Rodney could see the cover. “Great Poems of the English Language?” Rodney said dubiously. “You’re...reading poetry?”
“I guess,” Ronon said. “They don’t really sound like poems - like the kind of poems I’m used to. But they’re growing on me now. A lot of them are okay.”
“I wouldn’t think you would, uh, care especially for poetry,” Rodney said. “Where I’m from, soldier-types often...don’t.”
“Really? Even war poetry?”
“Oh, well, we don’t have much of that on Earth. I’m sure Sateda is chock full of glorious evocations of blood and bravery, but our poems are mostly about love. And sometimes...trees and vases and whatnot. What?” he said to Ronon’s look. “I distinctly remember both trees and vases!” Ronon rolled his eyes a little, and Rodney said, “Look, who had to take two semesters of English Lit, me or you? I think I can speak with slightly more authority on Great Poems of the English Language than you can.”
“Fine,” Ronon said. “I’m sure you know a lot of poems. Here, show me how to say these words.” He held up the book, and Rodney pronounced Sophocles and Aegean for him. Ronon grunted and nodded. “You like this one?” he said. “Dover Beach?”
“Mmm,” Rodney said.
“You’ve never read it,” Ronon scoffed.
“I have! It’s just been a long time. It’s...very famous. I remember reading it, I just don’t...remember....”
“It’s good,” Ronon said softly. “It’s really.... It’s really good.” Rodney smiled and put his head down on Ronon’s shoulder. “I don’t know,” he said, “probably a lot of them are really good, if you know all the places and people in them. I can’t get through the ones with a lot of names. I keep flipping through to see if maybe they come from other poems, but....”
“Some of them probably come from the Bible. The others - Sophocles and whatnot - those are Greek. From poems, but not this kind of poem. Epics. Lots of warfare, very Satedan. Well, at least - the Iliad is mostly warfare. The Odyssey, now. One of the rare sequels that surpasses the original.”
“You like that one?”
“Hmm, I suppose I do,” Rodney said. Almost as much as he liked Ronon’s thumbnail running up and down the back of his neck.
Ronon tucked the backs of his fingers up against Rodney’s neck and said, “Tell me about it.”
“Well,” Rodney said slowly. It wasn’t generally quite this hard to gather his thoughts. “It’s about Odysseus. Odysseus fought at Troy - that’s the war that the Iliad is about. Achilles is technically the hero of the Iliad - greatest warrior ever to live, felled a thousand foes, blah blah blah - but in spite of being the original drama queen, it wasn’t Achilles who won the Trojan War, it was Odysseus. Through his superior intellect, and the world’s first feat of engineering brilliance- “
“Okay, now you’re making it up.”
“I’m not! Not at all. The Greeks were a very rational and civilized people. Their great warriors came to glorious and bloody ends, but their tactical genius got his own epic, and every woman in the Mediterranean, too. Though some of them proved to be a bit of a handful. You’d like the Odyssey, though. It has a happy ending. He gets to go home to his wife. He was cursed by a god to wander the ocean lost for years, and he had the adventures and the women and whatnot, but...what he really wanted was to get home to his wife and son.”
“And she waited years for him to come back from the war?”
“Mm, it’s better than that, even. She was being pressured to remarry - he was presumed dead, and she was a rich widow and all that - so she promised that she’d choose a new husband when she finished weaving the, uh, the thing she was making, some tapestry or something. But every night she snuck into her workroom and undid all the threads she’d woven that day so she’d never finish and have to marry anyone but Odysseus.”
“Smart and loyal,” Ronon said. “She sounds like a good partner for a hero. Too bad he wasn’t.”
“Odysseus was very smart!”
“I meant the loyal part. It would make a good love story, if he didn’t spoil it by cheating on his partner.”
“Men are pigs,” Rodney said. “During portions of the Odyssey, quite literally, in fact.”
“I like Dover Beach better,” Ronon said, picking up the book. “Ah, love, let us be true to one another! For the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain....”
“Yes, that’s beautiful,” Rodney said wryly. “Nothing like fine art to really drive home the misery of existence. It must be really drafty in those garrets or something.”
“It is beautiful,” Ronon said testily. “Don’t tell me you don’t get it.”
“No, I get it,” Rodney protested, before he could be bothered to decide whether or not its true. But then Ronon was giving him a look, waiting, and Rodney realized he’d better stick to his story. “I get it,” he said again, weakly. “He’s a cynic, but...he still calls her love. He still believes in love.” Ronon added an arched eyebrow to the look, so Rodney obviously wasn’t finished yet. “I remember...there’s an ocean. And tides.” Ronon rolled his eyes and looked away, and - somehow that was worse than being pinned under a look. “He’s...loyal,” Rodney said. “Like Penelope. That’s the most important thing in the world to him. The ocean has - the world has - tides - that you can’t control. But he can choose this. He can choose who to be with, and...he can ask her to choose how she wants to be with him. That’s what they have left, even if...there’s no land of dreams. They still get to choose to stay together.”
“Okay,” Ronon said in satisfaction. “See? How’s that not beautiful?”
“It’s beautiful,” Rodney admitted, less facetiously this time. “Do you...write poetry like that?”
Ronon snorted. “Like Matthew Arnold? You’re kidding, right? When I was younger...I used to write a little. I was pretty bad at it.”
“I can believe that,” Rodney said. “You have the soul of a scientist.”
“Hey,” Ronon objected.
“That’s a compliment! You have a very - clear, concise way of - it’s a compliment! I’m not really crazy about poetry, truthfully. A lot of bells and whistles and white lace, covering up what you could just, you could just say. I don’t see what’s so wrong with simplicity.”
“Poetry can be simple,” Ronon said, flipping through pages. “I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with one face, a thing, and against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hands would spill me. Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me. Otherwise kill me. That’s - that’s clear, it’s perfect. I could never say that in a million years, but it’s...exactly the right way to say it. It’s...what I would say. If I could.”
Rodney ran his hand along Ronon’s side, feeling the muscles under his shirt and the even way his ribs expanded with his breathing. Not a stone at all, not an automaton or thistledown or spilled water, but warm and breathing and alive, an incredible kisser, a poetry lover - Odysseus’s resilience and Penelope’s faithfulness and all the best bits of Achilles, too, and Rodney had met a lot of soldiers in his life, but he’d never known a man like this one. He pressed up on his elbows and leaned over Ronon, crushing Great Poems of the English Language unnoticed between their chests, and said, “Ronon, I- “
Ronon put his hand on Rodney’s cheek, his thumb covering up Rodney’s lips. “Don’t,” he said kindly.
“But- “
“Shut up,” he said, even more kindly. “If you say it and I don’t say it back, then everything’s weird. I don’t want that, I want things how they are.”
“You know...the other way to fix that would be to say it back,” Rodney said, trying to make a little joke out of it and...not exactly succeeding. This wasn’t going quite how he had.... Not that he had planned it at all. It just sort of happened out of nowhere. Rodney blamed Matthew Arnold.
Ronon smiled at him, though, and pulled him down for a quick kiss, so it couldn’t be...all bad. “This way when I say it,” he said, his nose brushing the side of Rodney’s nose and his beard brushing the side of Rodney’s mouth, “we’ll both know I mean forever.”
When, not if. Rodney thought he could live with that. He settled back down alongside Ronon and said, “Don’t you like any of the happy ones? I feel sure I remember there being happy ones....”
“You want me to read you a happy one?” Ronon said, shifting his head just enough to let his breath ruffle Rodney’s hair. Rodney wasn’t entirely sure if he was being mocked or not, so he didn’t answer. He let his breath out carefully when he heard Ronon flipping through pages. “somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which I cannot touch because they are too near.” For a moment, Rodney thought that was the end of it, but just before he started to say something to interrupt Ronon’s silence, Ronon’s voice dropped to a murmur, so low in this throat that Rodney had to strain to hear. “your slightest look will easily unclose me....” He faltered for a moment, a little restless tremor running through him, like sometimes happened when he was caught in some tension that made him wish there were bad guys nearby to throw around a little. He picked up again, speaking just a little too quickly, the rumble of his words almost running together. “though I have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose..”
“Oh, my God, that’s hot,” Rodney murmured back, feeling slightly drunk. He heard the book thudding to the floor as Ronon rolled over on top of him, one hand sliding behind Rodney’s neck. He kissed Rodney over and over, brief, warm kisses, and Rodney’s hands, gone numb and stupid with pleasure, scrabbled helplessly at the back of Ronon’s shirt. “What’s the matter with you?” Rodney snapped. “Help me with this.”
Ronon grinned and sat back on his knees just far enough to get his shirt off. That was a perfectly, unequivocally positive development, but then Ronon had to go spoiling it by spreading his legs wider and settling more heavily across Rodney’s hips. Rodney let out a helpless little noise, because Ronon was heavy and Rodney was hard and he was sure that at least half of the fireworks going off behind his eyelids had something to do with pain.
“Lemme help you with that, too,” Ronon rumbled, moving just far enough back to get at Rodney’s pants. “I know you need a lot of help,” he added, smirking, as he lowered the zipper.
“Wait,” Rodney said, because this was moving just a little faster than he wanted it to - tonight, anyway. Only the slight arch of Ronon’s eyebrow betrayed that Ronon had even heard him, so Rodney tried to put his hands in the way. Ronon brushed them aside impatiently, and Rodney said, “Wait,” again, breathlessly, and grabbed both of Ronon’s wrists.
Rodney was as surprised as anyone. He looked blankly at where he was holding Ronon’s arms, golden skin under his left hand, gold and blue under his right. He looked up at Ronon’s face and saw Ronon looking back at him with a little amusement and a lot of curiosity. “What?” he asked gently, and Rodney wasn’t sure if that constituted enough of a question to need an answer. “What do you want?” Ronon said, all gentleness and no amusement left at all.
“Slower,” Rodney said, because that was certainly an answer, if not precisely the right answer.
“Uh-huh,” Ronon said dryly. He freed his hands easily and lay down at Rodney’s side, cupping Rodney’s jaw and kissing him lightly several times in a row before grabbing Rodney’s sleeve in one hand and his shoulder in the other and pushing him up and away. Rodney’s eyes fluttered open and he was disoriented for a moment until he found himself propped up on his hands, looking down at Ronon. Rodney lowered his head and kissed him softly.
But after that, Ronon was still just lying there, looking up expectantly, as if Rodney had some kind of plan. “What - what now?” Rodney said, because Ronon was clearly waiting for...something.
“Whatever,” Ronon said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. Just...whatever. Of course Ronon didn’t suffer from any type of...anxiety or stress-related hyperventilation episodes under intimate conditions. Not that...that had ever happened to Rodney. Well, not for years. But if anything could bring on a relapse of acute adolescence, it was probably trying to please a lover like Ronon.
“Whatever,” Rodney grumbled. He tried nibbling on Ronon’s earlobe, then kissing behind it. That smelled nice, and got a nice little sound, a cross between a sigh and a growl, so he kept kissing down the side of Ronon’s neck.
Kissing was good; kissing had always worked on Ronon in the past. In fact, Rodney had a fairly reliable strategy of kissing Ronon until he lost patience and started doing something spectacular to Rodney’s body. But this time Ronon seemed to be settling in, relaxing into the mattress. He let Rodney peel off his leather pants then found a comfortable position for his legs, splayed open just enough for Rodney to fit between. Rodney let his hand settle on Ronon’s hip, caressing the ridges of blunt bone with his thumb. He had his other hand resting lightly high over Ronon’s ribs for balance, so he could feel the gathering tension in Ronon’s body, the soft, gasping breaths he swallowed back down noiselessly.
Rodney glanced up, and something about the way Ronon had bent his arms so that his wrists were up near his head and his fingers were curled in tightly over his palms...something about it made both Rodney’s cock and stomach twitch. “Do you have any lube here?” he asked, his voice dry and choppy. Ronon shook his head. “Okay,” Rodney said vaguely. “That’s okay.”
He took his time licking Ronon’s smooth, hard stomach, his hands slipping around so that his fingertips found purchase in the hollow in the small of Ronon’s back. Ronon’s body lifted and sank, oceanic, between Rodney’s hands and his mouth, surging with perfect, controlled strength and perfect, helpless need. He sucked gently on Ronon’s dampened skin and left a blunt little bite near his navel, which wrung a rough, impatient, “Come on,” from low in Ronon’s throat.
“What, you’ve got plans later?” Rodney said.
“I’m gonna be pretty pissed off if I don’t,” he gritted out. Rodney grinned and kissed his stomach again. Ronon’s legs closed around his thighs, nudging him upwards, and Rodney let himself be nudged as they collaboratively got rid of Rodney’s rumpled clothes. He kissed Ronon hard as his cock slid smoothly, perfectly against the slick, wet skin of Ronon’s abdomen, and he stayed there, holding Ronon’s face between his hands and kissing him desperately as his hips worked at a leisurely pace, freedom and sensation and the world’s best ego-trip as Ronon gasped brokenly into Rodney’s mouth.
“We should go on vacation,” Rodney said, which felt a little out of nowhere even to him. But still, it was a valid point. He moved one hand, his palm finding Ronon’s without effort, their fingers locking together as Rodney shifted his weight down and thrust a little harder. “Get away...just us,” he said. It only felt natural to balance himself with the other hand, and when his fingers slid between Ronon’s for the second time it felt like a circuit closing, like a power surge, and Rodney made a desperate noise and leaned into Ronon with his hands and his hips, pinning him down and going for it, the promise of an orgasm bright and sharp in his mind.
“Okay,” Ronon said shortly, letting his back arch and his legs tangle around Rodney’s. “Oh - yeah - Rodney. Oh, fuck.... Come on, come on.”
“You like this?” Rodney murmured against Ronon’s cheekbone - something midway between a tease and an honest question, not that he didn’t know - he knew - he did believe, finally - in Ronon, in him and Ronon - but still, he just wanted to...to hear....
Ronon whined from deep in his throat and sucked in breath to answer, and still had a false start before he could make himself say, “Yeah, yeah. You’re so - sexy on top....”
In spite of the hot, prickly sweat dripping down the back of his neck, that made Rodney shiver. He tried to kiss Ronon, but they were both moving so fast and rough that their teeth kept clicking together and they couldn’t quite connect and it didn’t particularly matter - just the taste of Ronon on his tongue was enough, inasmuch as anything was enough, inasmuch as there was anything in the world that would feel right again until - until -
The moment right before he came seemed protracted, almost nonlinear. Rodney wasn’t even sure if he was still moving or not and he wasn’t sure if the noises Ronon was making were words, but he knew that he was going to come or die at any moment, too wrecked to survive, too skinless to endure this much contact for much longer. And then it was over and all he could do was fall flat against Ronon, a few final spurts of come still pulsing out without much force between their bodies. He couldn’t let go of Ronon’s hands.
“Fuck,” he said blearily into Ronon’s shoulder. “God. You....”
Ronon twisted his neck so that he could press a little kiss to Rodney’s forehead. “You,” he corrected, the amusement back in his voice. “All I did was lay here. That was you.”
“Well, that’s all you have to do, then, isn’t it?” Rodney said, hoping his own amusement translated through his tired mumble. Reluctantly, he extricated one of his hands and used it to smooth Ronon’s hair into place. He kissed Ronon softly and whispered, “I mean it. We should go away together. I really want to be alone with you.”
“Yeah, now you want that,” Ronon said wryly. “I give it twelve hours before you start to make yourself crazy about what’s going on back here.”
“Then you’ll have to stop me. Bring me back to the task at hand.”
“So...vacation is different from my day job how?”
“Naked poetry under the stars?” Rodney suggested.
Ronon made a low, purring sound. But he sounded strangely serious when he kissed the corner of Rodney’s lips and said, “Whatever you want.” After a pause he settled his free hand on Rodney’s back and said, “You’ve never come to my room before.”
“Um,” Rodney said, playing for time until the urge to bark no talking, more kissing had passed. “I guess not...not often. Maybe I’m intimidated by your aggressive artwork.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my artwork. Summit at Dawn is a masterpiece.”
“It’s very...red. And I don’t know what those people are thinking while they watch us, but I’m not at all convinced that they approve.”
“Maybe once they get to know you.”
“Amazingly, that doesn’t always make people like me better.”
“You say stuff like that,” Ronon said thoughtfully, “but it seems to me like the people who don’t like you are the ones who don’t know you at all.”
“You’re entirely too nice to me,” Rodney said, stroking the side of Ronon’s face.
Ronon caught his wrist and turned his hand over, kissing the ball of his thumb. “Why’d you come here?” he pressed, soft-eyed and serious like he always got after sex. “You could’ve waited for me like always. I would’ve come.”
“I know you would have.”
“So why?”
Rodney pulled his hand free and used it to stroke a lock of Ronon’s hair. “You know why.” Ronon just gave him a look. “Because I wanted to see you,” he said, nestling down against Ronon’s chest, letting Ronon’s slow hand on his back soothe his overheated skin and his overcranked heart rate. “Now, not later - wanted - want you,” he said, bobbling his attempt at coherence, letting reason and romance both devolve into kiss after kiss against Ronon’s throat. He’d say anything to get this and have it and keep it all to himself, Ronon’s hands and his smile and his trust and everything that went along with.