SGA Fic: No Myth
Title: No Myth
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: PG-13
Story note: Fairytale AU
Word count: 11,391
Summary: True Love’s Kiss = Unbelievably Ridiculous Variable of Plan
A/N: I'm sorry. Truly very sorry. This is an extremely bastardized version of Sleeping Beauty, in which neither John nor Rodney is the beauty in question, 'cause what's the fun in having John fight a dragon if Rodney isn't there to yell at him?
Massive thanks go to sga_addicted for the swift beta. I've also made a mini-glossary of terms. It'll help with Ronon.
Once, in a world known simply as Pegasus, there was a relatively peaceable kingdom nestled in a lush valley between two dangerous lands.
Prudently, this kingdom of Athos extended a hand of friendship to the not-too-distant land of Atlantis in the north. And Atlantis, sensing the fruitfulness of such a venture - since Athos was greatly known for its arable fields and dense magical forests - agreed to help protect Athos from the warring armies of the Wraith and Genii in exchange for uniting their kingdoms by way of holy matrimony.
So a deal was met and, at the ages of eight and eleven, the two heirs of these lands were contractually betrothed, to be wed on the youngest boy’s twenty-first birthday.
Unfortunately, Rodney of Athos and John of Atlantis clashed upon first meeting, and their relationship went downhill from there.
John mainly thought Rodney a whiney know-it-all with large, thick-lashed, disdainful eyes. And Rodney, alternately, thought John incredibly dim-witted, base, and skimming his way towards greatness - for he’d heard many times over of the young rival prince’s widespread likableness - by the twist of his admittedly pretty mouth and artfully mussed hair.
Years passed, filled with loud bickering and arguably satisfying arguments in which Rodney knew John was wrong about absolutely everything. And John tried his very best to piss Rodney off by leaning against walls - doorjambs, thrones, anything semi-stationary - and throwing lazy smirks at him, since he’d learned early on that getting Rodney so angry he couldn’t speak was the only way to actually shut him up. Plus, his hand gestures grew more pronounced, and that was just bonus hilarity.
John drove Rodney insane, really, so when Rodney’s sister, Jeannie, was born six years into the ally agreement, hale and hearty and with burnished red ringlets already adorning her crown, Rodney felt all the marital attention shift to his sibling with grateful relief. Honestly.
*
Almost all of Athos showed up to pay their respects to the princess a few weeks after her birth, as well as the royal Atlantean family, a troubadour satyr known for clever words, and three wild wood fairies, representatives from the First Forest that edged the kingdom’s arable lands - the same three wood fairies that had paid respects to Rodney when he was born, although their gifts of beauty, music and intelligence had skewed themselves as he’d grown.
According to his mum, his eyes were as clear and lovely as the sky at mid-morning, and his fingers stroked the keys of his baby grand with precision and technical grace. But he was far too practical-minded for singing, far too much of a perfectionist to ever be an accomplished pianist, and his endless hours seeking more and truer knowledge in the castle’s mammoth library - as well as his quite honorable quest to prove all his father’s men ignoramuses not fit to serve the king - left half his mouth pulled perpetually downward, and his skin too pallid for anyone to recognize him as beautiful.
His health, of course, was another matter entirely, and Rodney was still quite miffed that the fairies hadn’t thought of that when he’d been in the cradle. Allergies, especially his fatal one towards citrus, left him understandably paranoid and at a physical disadvantage, always out of breath when he trailed after John on one of his lack-brained adventures. Not to mention the detriments of his hypoglycemia, which the castle’s doctor - the quack - continuously refused to acknowledge.
Still. He was fourteen, and not completely pessimistic. The business that married John to his sister instead of him, for instance, was set to give him considerably more freedom. He certainly wouldn’t miss the company of the impetuous older boy.
“I suppose you’re ecstatic about this.” Rodney scowled at his ex-fiancé, arms crossed over his skinny fourteen-year-old chest.
John, just past seventeen and graced with his mother’s flirtatious demeanor, gave him an indulgent grin and drawled, “Of course.”
For all John’s complaining that Rodney was a pain in the ass, though, he was sort of disappointed that he didn’t have to marry him anymore. He’d spent the better part of six years resigned to the fact that someday he’d be sleeping next to Rodney and Rodney’s enormous brain, and it seemed surreal that the tiny, rosy-faced baby in the gilt-edged rocker was replacing him. He’d inherited a stubborn protective streak from his father that was liberally threaded with possessiveness and, honestly, he’d never been very good at sharing. The abrupt change of focus would take more than a little getting used to.
He’d no longer have to sneak into the kitchens and toss out all the lemons every time Rodney visited, because Rodney probably wouldn’t be visiting anymore. And he wouldn’t have to remind his mother about her cut flowers and Rodney’s overly-sensitive nose, and he wouldn’t have to hide snacks in every room, just in case the boy was off by himself being angry and right and he got a little dizzy from hunger. And there wouldn’t be any more shouting about who got to sit where at the Great Table, and he wouldn’t have to listen to Rodney’s lectures about the outdated and impractical use of feudal systems and, also, the total incompetence of every single man on John’s father’s staff.
John looked down at Jeannie’s delicate little hands fisted up close to her cheeks - cheeks that had the most adorable dimples - and hoped she wouldn’t be boring.
At the sound of a trumpet the boys snapped to attention, and the three wood fairies stepped out of the milling crowd, bowing first to Rodney’s parents and then turning beatific gazes onto the newborn girl.
The first fairy, the shy Miko, small-boned and pretty beyond measure, threw a wavering smile towards John and Rodney before bestowing her stock gift of beauty upon Jeannie, wand sprinkling pink sparkles down on the infant. And instantly all could see the radiant glow that emanated from her, and everyone gave a large, wistful, fond sigh.
Rodney snorted derisively and John sent him a censoring look.
The second fairy, the kind Elizabeth, soft in form and motherly-firm in manner, gave John a twinkle-eyed glance before circling her wand over Jeannie’s head, and strains of music, lush intertwining melodies, slipped out of the tip, settling down into her body and fading into an echo of singing joy.
The fierce Teyla - the only fairy, Rodney thought, with any sense at all - raised her wand next, but before she could utter a single word a sharp crack rang through the hall, and a thick cloud of black drifted down from the cathedral ceiling, lazily dissipating as it neared the stone floor to reveal a hunched and cackling figure.
The Sorcerer Kavanagh.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Rodney muttered, maneuvering around the bassinet to place himself between the grossly inept sorcerer and his sister. After a wry shake of his head, John joined him there, and they stood glowering at Kavanagh with equally foreboding expressions - Rodney’s more of a close-mouthed, lopsided scowl and John’s more of a steely-eyed warning.
Kavanagh dismissed and ignored them, launching into a loud tirade about not being properly invited to toast the princess’ birth - which caused both sets of parents to roll their eyes - and then he lashed out his wand, a bitter clenching of his teeth tightening the corners of his mouth, eyes beady little slits as he tossed the boys aside and growled down at Jeannie, “This kingdom doesn’t deserve any happily ever after.”
And that was when he cursed Jeannie to an early grave, killed at the tender age of sixteen by a spindle prick.
Rodney would’ve been more irate if he hadn’t felt so stunned - since when could that idiot actually curse someone? - and he was only vaguely aware of his mother’s wails, the hoarse shouts of his father ordering his guards to cut Kavanagh down, tar and feather him, hang him from the courtyard gallows - did they even have courtyard gallows? - even as the sorcerer, slippery and cowardly, escaped in another waft of thick smoke.
John slid into Rodney’s muzzy view, hands gripping the top curve of his arms. “Rodney?”
He swallowed hard, dragging a hand across his sweaty forehead. “I’m fine,” he managed, and the sheer lack of bite screamed to John that Rodney definitely wasn’t fine, but he couldn’t do anything about it right then except wrap a supportive arm around the younger boy’s shoulders, and watch as the fairy Teyla, who had not yet given Jeannie a gift, moved forward again.
“My apologies, Your Majesties,” the wild fairy intoned evenly, “for being unable to completely undo the damage the Sorcerer Kavanagh has done, but I will do all that I can to help.” Then she threw both her bare arms in the air and wove even more magic over the unknowing baby. “Let death not touch this child with the hapless prick of a spindle, but instead invoke a spell of dreamless sleep, to be broken only by true love’s kiss.”
A hush fell over the hall, even the queen’s weeping paused, and then the three wood fairies disappeared in a whirl of multi-colored sparkles.
“Better than death,” slipped past John’s lips on a murmur as the crowd’s silence was fractured by speculating and worried gossip.
Rodney turned an incredulous eye on him. “Oh yes, thank you, John, so much better,” he snapped. Because Rodney was under the impression that true love didn’t honestly exist, and, truth be told, John wasn’t much for it either.
But, of course, it was better. Of course it was.
So Rodney, vocally scoffing the fairy’s claim that nothing else could be done for his sister, locked himself up in the castle’s cavernous library. John, adrift from having one fiancé taken away from him and another cursed to sleep evermore, followed his royal parents home to Atlantis and began training in earnest to fight Athos’ enemies, since he could think of little else productive to do.
*
Years passed this way, and Jeannie grew with grace and beauty, the stone castle awash daily with her musical laughter. And she was smart; not as smart as Rodney, of course - who was? - but she was clever and witty and could spend hours in Rodney’s company without wanting to strangle him. And Jeannie became Rodney’s whole world.
*
When she was ten, all the spindles in the kingdom and all the spindles in Atlantis were burned to gray ashes, and Jeannie started making monthly trips to visit John.
John liked Jeannie. She reminded him of Rodney, only less obnoxious, but she was ten and he was twenty-seven, and he couldn’t really picture himself married to her one day. It never occurred to him to refuse, though - well, it did, but refusing would’ve required running away, and John never ran away from anything, particularly if it meant leaving Rodney’s kingdom at the mercy of the Genii or Wraith.
So he smiled at Jeannie and let her run rampant over his mother’s handmaidens, and John taught her the extended remix version of prime/not-prime, and he told her as many stories of Rodney’s youthful adventures in Atlantis as he could remember - and many more that he’d simply made up, because, honestly, the way Rodney had been heading he was bound to have made half the Atlantean Royal Guard cry at some point.
Which would’ve been cool to see, of course, but luckily John had a good imagination.
*
When she was thirteen, Jeannie strolled into the library in search of her brother and cornered him on the third balcony, pinned him against their five volume edition of Practical Magic Versus the Sea with a careful pout, and demanded, “Why don’t you ever visit John with me?”
Rodney, by then almost entirely immune to Jeannie’s Careful Pout, sent her a glower and a brisk, “Busy now, go away,” with a dismissive flap of his hand.
“He asks about you, you know,” she said, poking his chest.
Rodney’s eyes widened. “He does?”
“Yes,” she stressed, as if talking to a very slow person - which Rodney certainly wasn’t - “of course he does. You were friends, weren’t you?”
“Friends. Yes,” Rodney answered absently, because he hadn’t looked at it that way before. Since Jeannie’s birth, John and Rodney only ever saw each other on Christmas Day, and they always had too much wine and grinned too loosely and bickered tenaciously over the dark meat - even though Rodney honestly didn’t care if he had dark or white, just so long as it was meat, but he was self-admittedly contrary, and he didn’t get to fight with John any other time, so - and yes they’d been engaged at one point in their lives, but friends? “No, I don’t think so. Not really. Now go,” he waved her off again, “visit your spasmodically-haired fiancé and leave me be.”
*
When she was fifteen, John stared at Jeannie’s mouth as she shouted, “My god, you’re all imbeciles,” to the liege lords in his father’s Hunt, and he thought for the very first time that perhaps marrying Jeannie wouldn’t be that terrible after all.
*
When she was sixteen, despite all precautions, Jeannie pricked her finger on an old forgotten spindle in the topper most chamber of Athos Castle, and the old sorcerer Kavanagh laughed smugly as he layered the fierce Teyla’s magic with more of his own. In petty spite, he left the entire castle enchanted in slumber, right down to the winking hypoallergenic daisies on Her Majesty’s windowsill.
Then he coaxed the thick brambles surrounding the moat into even thicker tangles, rising high above the fortress walls and extending far down into the villagers’ arable fields, and, just for good measure, he froze the inner courtyard, encasing everything, stables and all, in thick, unforgiving ice.
Except. Except Kavanagh hadn’t left the entire castle enchanted in slumber.
For Rodney had read the complete five volume edition of Practical Magic Versus the Sea in search of anything remotely helpful in his never-ending desire to break Jeannie’s curse - it was the ‘practical’ part that’d initially attracted him, of course, though he hadn’t found anything the least bit feasible in it, except. Except he’d blindly roped out threads of what had been deemed, by the highly unfeasible book, as protective spells, and he’d encompassed the library with enough of them so that the sorcerer’s magic, raining down from above, fizzled into nothing without doing any damage at all.
Rodney wasn’t aware that anything was wrong with the castle ‘til he realized he hadn’t been brought his mid-morning meal, and he gazed around the library quizzically, finally sensing the unnatural quiet. He rose to his feet and stalked towards the door, only to be stopped by a buzzing ball of light, a tiny glowing figure housed in a bubble hovering just in front of his nose. Then the bubble expanded and burst, and the wild fairy Teyla was poised by the entrance, her body dressed for war.
“Prince Rodney,” she said softly, her loosely clasped fighting staff barring the way, “you cannot leave just yet.”
“What, why?” he demanded sharply.
She tilted her head, ear listing towards the door with an expectant air. “The snow hasn’t settled.”
“Well, that makes perfect sense,” he cracked. “It’s June.” At least, he was almost certain it was June.
Her smile was both indulgent and sad. “Your sister’s fate has come to pass, and the castle suffers and mourns still.”
“My sis…” He trailed off, mouth agape. “But she hasn’t… it isn’t…” he stammered, mentally calculating the past years because Jeannie couldn’t be more than fourteen yet, and nothing was supposed to happen at all until she was… “How old am I? Never mind,” he slashed his hand through the air, “that’s… how have I lost years?” Years, with nothing to show for them?
“You have been a good brother,” said Teyla, patting his arm encouragingly.
“Thank you for that astoundingly, so very wrong assessment. Years.” He rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. “I need,” he went on, snapping his fingers, “I need to start over. I’ve missed something, I know I have. Possibly some component I’d originally dismissed as too stupid to be of any-”
“Prince Rodney,” Teyla interrupted, “it is nothing you have missed. We must seek out Prince John.”
“Prince John...? Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Rodney exclaimed with disgust, then he jabbed an accusing finger at the fairy. “This true love nonsense is all your fault. Like John will be able to do anything useful at all!”
She inclined her head, unruffled. “Even so, I sense the answer lies with Prince John. We must go quickly, or the Sorcerer Kavanagh might realize you are awake.”
“What’s this ‘we’ business?” he asked, narrow-eyed. “Why don’t you go get John, and I’ll start with the Z’s and go backwards. Z’s. Where’s Zelenka, anyway? He mentioned yesterday he had a somewhat promising theory about the ecliptic coordinates of Pegasus’ orbit and the size of Kavanagh’s pe-”
“Prince Rodney,” her voice was starting to fray, “the whole of the castle is asleep. And you will travel with me to Atlantis.”
Rodney pressed his lips together, glaring at her mutinously. After a few moments, he let out an annoyed huff of breath and said, “If I could just map out a few more simula-”
“Prince Rodney,” Teyla said in warning.
“Fine. Fine! Let’s go get John.” He ground the name out like a curse and stomped a foot petulantly. But then he remembered his sister was curled up dead-asleep somewhere, and he couldn’t imagine how something that horrific wouldn’t affect her brain patterns irreparably, so he yanked at the door - this time, Teyla didn’t stop him - and set off down the corridor for the front foyer.
She matched his stride as he gingerly walked across the cold encrusted courtyard, and then she guided him towards the stable where he balked again, staring up at his father’s massive, frozen solid stallion, the blackness of his hide crystallized gray in the milky ice.
He shook his head emphatically. “Oh no. No, no. I don’t ride anything with four legs and that sounded really bad so not one word,” he wagged a finger in Teyla’s face.
“Perhaps your mother’s gentle mare, then?” the wild fairy suggested sweetly.
“Four legs!” Rodney nearly shouted.
Teyla nodded. “Ah, you would rather run. I see.”
“What? Are you insane?”
Teyla lit a fire between her fingers and not long after, though he wasn’t exactly sure how, Rodney found himself astride Primrose, a dappled chestnut palfrey with a powerful stride and a smart mouth. He was jostled like a loose sack of potatoes as they raced for the castle gate, and Teyla, light on her own steed - a beast that looked more like a tawny fawn than a horse - shouted encouraging directions at him which he promptly ignored. Grip with your calves; head up, heels down, wrists straight, blah, blah, blah. He was having enough trouble just keeping the mare on the right path.
Even though the portcullis was tightly woven with spiny branches, it rose smoothly when they approached, the wood fairy’s magic turning the winch with little resistance. And even though the once green ground outside the castle was a sea of brown thickets, they sailed effortless through the brambles without any snags or tears.
“Kavanagh’s spells,” Teyla explained, projecting her voice towards Rodney and hardly breathless at all from their grueling pace, “were only meant to keep intruders out of the castle. He is short-sighted and smug, and would not think anyone could have escaped his blanketed curse of slumber.”
Rodney gripped the reins and the ends of Primrose’s mane tighter, and wondered how the hell they were supposed to get back in.
*
Atlantis was a good four days away from Athos, even traveling the shorter path that ran parallel to the Furthest Forest and took them across the deepest part of their single clear-spring lake. They made the journey in two and a half.
Rodney had dropped to the ground in an exhausted heap when Teyla finally brought them to a stop that first night, the moon well past its zenith. Scant hours passed before the wood fairy roused the prince from a boneless sleep, riding hard once again through the morning, afternoon and half the night. By the time the famed glass walls of Atlantis Castle shone against the dying sun the day after that, Rodney could hardly speak, his complaints tossed with glares and the wordless pull of his mouth.
Teyla dismounted gracefully when they gained the courtyard, and Rodney slumped forward onto Primrose’s thick neck in relief.
“Rodney?” a worried voice hummed in his ear, and then warm hands were on his thighs, moving up over his sides, and John - he recognized John - was coaxing him to let go of the reins. There was a soft exhalation of laughter as Rodney staggered off the horse and into John’s arms, along with a teasing, “Jesus, Rodney, you weigh a ton.”
“Shut up,” Rodney snapped with as much bite as he could muster - which admittedly wasn’t much. “Shut up and give me a bed, and don’t wake me for three weeks.” And then he jerked his head up, almost clipping John in the chin, and grabbed onto the other man’s biceps with a frantic, “No, don’t, caffeine. Because…” He took a strangled breath and Teyla suddenly appeared at his shoulder.
“Princess Jeannie has pricked her finger as it was foretold, and Athos Castle has been wickedly enchanted by Kavanagh.”
“Well,” said John, spreading fingers through his hair. “Shit.”
“Yes. Yes, exactly.” Rodney was standing on his own by then, albeit wavering slightly, and he pressed shaky hands onto his abdomen. “When have I last eaten?” he asked wildly. “Oh my god, it’s been days, hasn’t it?”
“You were fed just this morning, Prince Rodney,” Teyla offered with some amusement.
“Hours, then. Do you realize what will happen if my blo-”
“Relax, Rodney,” John cut in placatingly, “you’re all right. Let’s just go inside and get you some food, and then we’ll figure out what to do next, okay?”
“What do you mean, figure out what to do?” Rodney demanded. “We need to get back into Athos Castle and you’ve got to kiss her.”
John grimaced. “I’m not sure that’s going to work.”
“Of course it won’t! It’s a completely ludicrous plan!” He turned a glare on Teyla. “If it wasn’t for you-”
“Jeannie’d be dead,” John pointed out softly.
“Ah.” Rodney visibly deflated, and he wrapped a wide palm over his nape. “True.”
Teyla’s brows rose.
“Thank you for that,” Rodney forced out grudgingly.
“You are welcome,” rejoined the wood fairy, then continued in an apologetic tone, “Had I realized that love would be a foreign concept for you, I would have chosen my words differently.”
“It’s fine,” John said, even though inside he was very close to panicking. John liked Jeannie a whole lot, but. True Love’s Kiss was going to be really hard to manage.
“What are we standing around for?” Rodney groused shortly, and Teyla nodded.
“We should be on our way as soon as possible, before Kavanagh thinks to contact the Genii king or the army of Wraith.”
“Because he’s just that moronic,” muttered Rodney, crossing his arms over his chest. Even the malevolent sorcerer called the magical Athosian forests home, and bringing the destructive Wraith down upon them would essentially be stabbing himself in the foot. No, Rodney wouldn’t put that folly past him at all.
John slipped an arm behind Rodney and started steering him towards the front doors of the castle. “Food first.”
“I’m not going to argue with that,” Rodney said tiredly, resisting the urge to lean into John. “Sleep would be good, too. Sleep would be heaven. Sleep would be the equivalent of chocolate if there wasn’t actually any chocolate in the vicinity, which I’m going to go ahead and assume there is for my own sanity. And by chocolate I mean coffee.”
John’s mouth twisted up in a half-smirk. “I miss you when you’re not around, Rodney. Once a year just doesn’t do it for me.”
“Ha. Very funny, John.” He couldn’t even work up enough energy for a proper scowl. “Your hair.”
“What?”
“Shut up. It made sense in my head.”
John’s eyes widened. “Oh, it’s waaaay past your bedtime.”
“I can function,” Rodney protested indignantly. “I’ll have you know I’ve reworked entire horribly wrong theorems on as little as two hours sleep and there was only that one miniscule, very small incident with Radek and Carson’s goat and why am I arguing? I thought I wasn’t going to argue?”
“You can’t help yourself,” John said sympathetically. Well, he was sort of sympathetic. At least he wasn’t laughing on the outside.
“I suppose we can spare a few hours rest,” Teyla offered magnanimously. “It would do no good to have Prince Rodney…”
“Hallucinating,” John finished for her. “Yeah, I get it.”
*
He drooled in his sleep. John had already known that, of course. Had commemorated the fact in pictures for future blackmailing opportunities - he’d realized at an early age the importance of stockpiling ammunition against his at-one-time husband-to-be. Although his cousin Laura had drawn a walrus into most of them, which kind of ruined their believability even while making them ten times more hilarious.
But anyway. Drool. Drool wasn’t supposed to be attractive, right?
John reached out and curled a hand over Rodney’s arm. It was a really nice arm, too, with more defined muscles than John would’ve guessed, and that thought was going no where good so he chirped, “Wakey, wakey,” in a tone that was sure to annoy the crap out of Rodney, and shook him briskly.
“Go ‘way,” Rodney growled into his pillow.
“Okay, sure,” John said amiably, settling down on the edge of the mattress. “Jeannie probably won’t mind waiting while you catch up on sleep. Especially since she’s, you know, unconscious in an enchanted castle and all.”
Rodney cracked one eye open and gave him a bleary glare.
John widened his own with mock-innocence. They stared at each other silently for a few, laborious minutes, and then John said, “You’re still a few clicks behind, aren’t you?”
“Shut up.”
“You’ve been saying that an awful lot lately,” John pointed out, head cocked to the side, a not-quite-smirk on his mouth, and Rodney rolled over onto his back with a groan.
The past few days seemed to have hit him all at once. Even his bones ached. “Primrose has clearly held a vendetta against me for years.”
“Horses are tricky like that,” John drawled. He was inordinately pleased with himself when he refrained from offering to give Rodney a rubdown, which, while it might’ve been nice - and, wow, now that he’d thought about it, really, really sexy - it would’ve been wholly counterproductive. Jeannie, breaking the curse, True Love’s Kiss - Christ, why couldn’t their parents have just left things well enough alone?
Instead, John patted Rodney’s stomach and gained his feet. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
*
Teyla knelt down beside Prince John by the small fire. Moving at a slightly slower pace than before, they had reached the Furthest Forest at the edge of Athos in two days, and she could feel inquisitive eyes upon them - had felt these eyes upon them for most of the evening. “We are being followed,” she told him in a hush, head pressed close to his.
He flicked a glance towards Rodney, fussing over Primrose and promising as many apples as she could eat when they got home if she’d just stop lipping the ends of his hair.
“I sense no danger,” Teyla continued evenly, following his line of sight without comment. “I just thought you should know.”
John nodded. “Thanks.” He stretched one leg out across the ground, looping an arm around the other, and gazed at her speculatively. “I gotta ask, Teyla. Why are you helping us?”
The wild fairy fingered the thin leather thong that attached her wand sheath to her thigh. “For thousands of years,” she explained with careful deliberation, “my people have named the Forests of Athos as ours, long before the Wraith and Genii claimed the lands to the east and west and burned the air to arid nothingness. Were it not for the bravery and strength of the Athos Guard, we believe the devastation to our home would be immeasurable.”
John furrowed his brow and said, “If anything ever happens to the forests, you know, you’re all welcome at Atlantis.”
Teyla bowed her head, soft pleasure curling her lips. “That is very generous of you, Prince John.”
“Just being neighborly.” He broke into a grin.
“Neighborly,” Rodney harrumphed, dropping down beside him and biting into a round of flat bread Teyla had wordlessly passed him. “You just want Atlantis to be as magical and cool as Athos.”
“Hey now,” John protested. “Atlantis already is cool. Two words, Rodney: glass. castle.”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, and perhaps one day someone will throw a rock and you’ll have to build something more structurally sound.”
“Yeah, since it’s not as if all of you over in Athos begged my parents for help with the Genii.”
John had a point, of course, but Rodney wasn’t actually going to concede it. “That proves nothing about the impenetrability of Athos Castle-”
“Except it does,” John interrupted smugly.
“And anyway, there’s an extraordinarily hirsute man striding towards us, though man is really too restrictive a term. It may be a dog.”
“Way to change the subject, Rodney, and he’s on two legs,” John drawled, but his eyes were sharp on the dark line of trees and the somewhat huge, hairy figure striding towards them. His hand automatically dropped to the sword lying on the ground by his hip.
“A trained dog, then,” Rodney amended, then snapped his fingers and held his palm out expectantly towards Teyla.
She arched a brow, but placed another piece of bread in his hand. “It is a basajaun,” she said.
“A what?” John asked.
“A lord of the woods. There are none currently living in Athos, but I believe he is a reassuring presence.” She rose to her feet smoothly as the basajaun drew closer, the ends of his matted, dark hair glowing strangely red-brown in the moonlight, any paleness of his body eclipsed by the twisted locks. Stepping forward to greet him in wild custom, she pressed her palms on either side of his chest and he bent his head to hers, touching their brows together lightly.
“Teyla of Athos,” she murmured, and he answered in turn with a brusque, “Ronon of Sateda.”
Teyla dropped her hands and moved away. “You have traveled far from your home,” she said curiously.
He grunted, then skimmed his gaze over the small campsite. “There’s no reason to return, so the distance means nothing.”
An uncomfortable silence fell, then John clapped his hands together. “Well. You’re welcome to our camp, but we won’t be here for long.”
Ronon nodded. “I’ve been following you.”
“Great.” Rodney bobbed his head. “That’s just, ah, fantastic. Really,” he said, then hissed to John, “what are you doing? He could be rabid!”
“Can it, Rodney,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth, then grinned brightly at Ronon. “Sit. Eat. Teyla has… bread.”
“Yes, but not an endless supply!” Rodney added desperately.
“I have brought plenty, Prince Rodney,” said Teyla. “You need not worry.”
John smirked. “That’s like asking the planet to stop spinning.”
Taking a chunk of bread from the wood fairy, Ronon hunkered down by the fire, the dreadlocked hair on his head tangling with the finer growth covering the rest of his body.
“My god, that isn’t a suit of scalps, is it?” Rodney demanded tactlessly.
Ronon narrowed his eyes at him.
“Seriously, I think we should know if there’s a possibility of you skinning us alive and wearing our hair like pelts,” Rodney went on, glancing at John. “Right?”
“Rodney,” John groaned, pressing two fingers into his forehead.
“What? Oh, like you’re not curious!”
“He is a basajaun,” Teyla repeated the term from earlier, a mixture of tolerance and censor in her tone. After all, she’d known Rodney since his birth. “The hair is his own.”
Rodney huffed, but kept silent, watching Ronon with a wary eye and scooting closer to John.
The night air seemed to breathe, the Furthest Forest housing sounds that were strangely soothing to the small party’s frayed nerves. Nightjars, the Athos nighthawk and the sad-songed poorwill, keened above the ebb and flow of chirruping crickets. The raw rasp of cicadas called and answered in the tall grass by the forest edge, and a single nearby owl queried the darkness in a low, throaty, stuttering voice.
Soon, Teyla broke their quiet with a soft, “We must sleep for a few hours.”
“You go ahead.” John nodded at Teyla. “This isn’t the greatest neighborhood, so-”
“I’ll keep watch,” Ronon cut him off, casually ripping into another piece of bread. “You should sleep.”
John arched a brow. “Nice of you to offer, but-”
“Prince John, we will be fine.” Teyla gave him a small smile, then reached out and squeezed Ronon’s wrist. In return, the basajaun dipped his head once and got to his feet, then melted noiselessly into the darkness surrounding them.
John expected Rodney to complain about being watched over by a guy that could possibly - in his mind - kill them all in their sleep, but Rodney was predictably already nodding off, slumped against John’s arm, cheek mashed into his shoulder. Fondly, John brushed a few damp strands of hair off his forehead, a half-smile pulling his lips. “He’s all tuckered out again,” he murmured.
When he lifted his gaze, Teyla was eyeing him from across the fire, a carefully blank expression on her face.
“All will be well,” she told him.
“You’re always spouting these sweeping assurances,” John commented wryly.
“And I am always right.”
“Rodney’s been rubbing off on you,” he teased.
Teyla’s gaze slid to Rodney, her lips pursed thoughtfully. “He is a better man than he thinks he is.”
“Yeah,” John readily agreed. “He kind of is.”
*
Athos Castle was hardly recognizable by the time they finally crested the last hill between the First Forest and the arable lands. The brambles had grown rapidly and lushly, snaking across the castle grounds in thick twists of thorns that had already overtaken three of the five villages settled in the kingdom’s valley.
“Wow,” John breathed. “This is gonna suck.”
The four of them - since the basajaun had pretty much invited himself along, and who was going to argue with that? - surveyed the mess with varying degrees of frustration.
And then Ronon rubbed a big hand under his nose and sniffed. “Something’s off,” he said.
“I sense it, too.” Teyla straightened her back.
“What?” Rodney swung nervously around, scanning the horizon. “I don’t see anything.”
The wood fairy held up a hand and cocked her head, listening for the mingled voices of the First Forest that gamboled on the wind. “Kavanagh knows we are here.”
“Ooookay,” John drew out slowly, “that isn’t good.”
And then the ground rumbled and dirt spewed through the air as the thickets surrounding the castle were swallowed into the soil, leaving the landscape riddled with wide, gaping holes.
Ronon bared his teeth. “He’s inviting us in to play.”
“I’m not so sure I like his tone,” said John, unsheathing his sword.
A flash of lightning sliced the sky in half, chased by a crack of deafening thunder, and the clouds above Athos Castle churned gray to black.
“Socially speaking,” John drawled, “I’m betting Kavanagh doesn’t inspire a lot of friends.”
On to part two
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: PG-13
Story note: Fairytale AU
Word count: 11,391
Summary: True Love’s Kiss = Unbelievably Ridiculous Variable of Plan
A/N: I'm sorry. Truly very sorry. This is an extremely bastardized version of Sleeping Beauty, in which neither John nor Rodney is the beauty in question, 'cause what's the fun in having John fight a dragon if Rodney isn't there to yell at him?
Massive thanks go to sga_addicted for the swift beta. I've also made a mini-glossary of terms. It'll help with Ronon.
Once, in a world known simply as Pegasus, there was a relatively peaceable kingdom nestled in a lush valley between two dangerous lands.
Prudently, this kingdom of Athos extended a hand of friendship to the not-too-distant land of Atlantis in the north. And Atlantis, sensing the fruitfulness of such a venture - since Athos was greatly known for its arable fields and dense magical forests - agreed to help protect Athos from the warring armies of the Wraith and Genii in exchange for uniting their kingdoms by way of holy matrimony.
So a deal was met and, at the ages of eight and eleven, the two heirs of these lands were contractually betrothed, to be wed on the youngest boy’s twenty-first birthday.
Unfortunately, Rodney of Athos and John of Atlantis clashed upon first meeting, and their relationship went downhill from there.
John mainly thought Rodney a whiney know-it-all with large, thick-lashed, disdainful eyes. And Rodney, alternately, thought John incredibly dim-witted, base, and skimming his way towards greatness - for he’d heard many times over of the young rival prince’s widespread likableness - by the twist of his admittedly pretty mouth and artfully mussed hair.
Years passed, filled with loud bickering and arguably satisfying arguments in which Rodney knew John was wrong about absolutely everything. And John tried his very best to piss Rodney off by leaning against walls - doorjambs, thrones, anything semi-stationary - and throwing lazy smirks at him, since he’d learned early on that getting Rodney so angry he couldn’t speak was the only way to actually shut him up. Plus, his hand gestures grew more pronounced, and that was just bonus hilarity.
John drove Rodney insane, really, so when Rodney’s sister, Jeannie, was born six years into the ally agreement, hale and hearty and with burnished red ringlets already adorning her crown, Rodney felt all the marital attention shift to his sibling with grateful relief. Honestly.
*
Almost all of Athos showed up to pay their respects to the princess a few weeks after her birth, as well as the royal Atlantean family, a troubadour satyr known for clever words, and three wild wood fairies, representatives from the First Forest that edged the kingdom’s arable lands - the same three wood fairies that had paid respects to Rodney when he was born, although their gifts of beauty, music and intelligence had skewed themselves as he’d grown.
According to his mum, his eyes were as clear and lovely as the sky at mid-morning, and his fingers stroked the keys of his baby grand with precision and technical grace. But he was far too practical-minded for singing, far too much of a perfectionist to ever be an accomplished pianist, and his endless hours seeking more and truer knowledge in the castle’s mammoth library - as well as his quite honorable quest to prove all his father’s men ignoramuses not fit to serve the king - left half his mouth pulled perpetually downward, and his skin too pallid for anyone to recognize him as beautiful.
His health, of course, was another matter entirely, and Rodney was still quite miffed that the fairies hadn’t thought of that when he’d been in the cradle. Allergies, especially his fatal one towards citrus, left him understandably paranoid and at a physical disadvantage, always out of breath when he trailed after John on one of his lack-brained adventures. Not to mention the detriments of his hypoglycemia, which the castle’s doctor - the quack - continuously refused to acknowledge.
Still. He was fourteen, and not completely pessimistic. The business that married John to his sister instead of him, for instance, was set to give him considerably more freedom. He certainly wouldn’t miss the company of the impetuous older boy.
“I suppose you’re ecstatic about this.” Rodney scowled at his ex-fiancé, arms crossed over his skinny fourteen-year-old chest.
John, just past seventeen and graced with his mother’s flirtatious demeanor, gave him an indulgent grin and drawled, “Of course.”
For all John’s complaining that Rodney was a pain in the ass, though, he was sort of disappointed that he didn’t have to marry him anymore. He’d spent the better part of six years resigned to the fact that someday he’d be sleeping next to Rodney and Rodney’s enormous brain, and it seemed surreal that the tiny, rosy-faced baby in the gilt-edged rocker was replacing him. He’d inherited a stubborn protective streak from his father that was liberally threaded with possessiveness and, honestly, he’d never been very good at sharing. The abrupt change of focus would take more than a little getting used to.
He’d no longer have to sneak into the kitchens and toss out all the lemons every time Rodney visited, because Rodney probably wouldn’t be visiting anymore. And he wouldn’t have to remind his mother about her cut flowers and Rodney’s overly-sensitive nose, and he wouldn’t have to hide snacks in every room, just in case the boy was off by himself being angry and right and he got a little dizzy from hunger. And there wouldn’t be any more shouting about who got to sit where at the Great Table, and he wouldn’t have to listen to Rodney’s lectures about the outdated and impractical use of feudal systems and, also, the total incompetence of every single man on John’s father’s staff.
John looked down at Jeannie’s delicate little hands fisted up close to her cheeks - cheeks that had the most adorable dimples - and hoped she wouldn’t be boring.
At the sound of a trumpet the boys snapped to attention, and the three wood fairies stepped out of the milling crowd, bowing first to Rodney’s parents and then turning beatific gazes onto the newborn girl.
The first fairy, the shy Miko, small-boned and pretty beyond measure, threw a wavering smile towards John and Rodney before bestowing her stock gift of beauty upon Jeannie, wand sprinkling pink sparkles down on the infant. And instantly all could see the radiant glow that emanated from her, and everyone gave a large, wistful, fond sigh.
Rodney snorted derisively and John sent him a censoring look.
The second fairy, the kind Elizabeth, soft in form and motherly-firm in manner, gave John a twinkle-eyed glance before circling her wand over Jeannie’s head, and strains of music, lush intertwining melodies, slipped out of the tip, settling down into her body and fading into an echo of singing joy.
The fierce Teyla - the only fairy, Rodney thought, with any sense at all - raised her wand next, but before she could utter a single word a sharp crack rang through the hall, and a thick cloud of black drifted down from the cathedral ceiling, lazily dissipating as it neared the stone floor to reveal a hunched and cackling figure.
The Sorcerer Kavanagh.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Rodney muttered, maneuvering around the bassinet to place himself between the grossly inept sorcerer and his sister. After a wry shake of his head, John joined him there, and they stood glowering at Kavanagh with equally foreboding expressions - Rodney’s more of a close-mouthed, lopsided scowl and John’s more of a steely-eyed warning.
Kavanagh dismissed and ignored them, launching into a loud tirade about not being properly invited to toast the princess’ birth - which caused both sets of parents to roll their eyes - and then he lashed out his wand, a bitter clenching of his teeth tightening the corners of his mouth, eyes beady little slits as he tossed the boys aside and growled down at Jeannie, “This kingdom doesn’t deserve any happily ever after.”
And that was when he cursed Jeannie to an early grave, killed at the tender age of sixteen by a spindle prick.
Rodney would’ve been more irate if he hadn’t felt so stunned - since when could that idiot actually curse someone? - and he was only vaguely aware of his mother’s wails, the hoarse shouts of his father ordering his guards to cut Kavanagh down, tar and feather him, hang him from the courtyard gallows - did they even have courtyard gallows? - even as the sorcerer, slippery and cowardly, escaped in another waft of thick smoke.
John slid into Rodney’s muzzy view, hands gripping the top curve of his arms. “Rodney?”
He swallowed hard, dragging a hand across his sweaty forehead. “I’m fine,” he managed, and the sheer lack of bite screamed to John that Rodney definitely wasn’t fine, but he couldn’t do anything about it right then except wrap a supportive arm around the younger boy’s shoulders, and watch as the fairy Teyla, who had not yet given Jeannie a gift, moved forward again.
“My apologies, Your Majesties,” the wild fairy intoned evenly, “for being unable to completely undo the damage the Sorcerer Kavanagh has done, but I will do all that I can to help.” Then she threw both her bare arms in the air and wove even more magic over the unknowing baby. “Let death not touch this child with the hapless prick of a spindle, but instead invoke a spell of dreamless sleep, to be broken only by true love’s kiss.”
A hush fell over the hall, even the queen’s weeping paused, and then the three wood fairies disappeared in a whirl of multi-colored sparkles.
“Better than death,” slipped past John’s lips on a murmur as the crowd’s silence was fractured by speculating and worried gossip.
Rodney turned an incredulous eye on him. “Oh yes, thank you, John, so much better,” he snapped. Because Rodney was under the impression that true love didn’t honestly exist, and, truth be told, John wasn’t much for it either.
But, of course, it was better. Of course it was.
So Rodney, vocally scoffing the fairy’s claim that nothing else could be done for his sister, locked himself up in the castle’s cavernous library. John, adrift from having one fiancé taken away from him and another cursed to sleep evermore, followed his royal parents home to Atlantis and began training in earnest to fight Athos’ enemies, since he could think of little else productive to do.
*
Years passed this way, and Jeannie grew with grace and beauty, the stone castle awash daily with her musical laughter. And she was smart; not as smart as Rodney, of course - who was? - but she was clever and witty and could spend hours in Rodney’s company without wanting to strangle him. And Jeannie became Rodney’s whole world.
*
When she was ten, all the spindles in the kingdom and all the spindles in Atlantis were burned to gray ashes, and Jeannie started making monthly trips to visit John.
John liked Jeannie. She reminded him of Rodney, only less obnoxious, but she was ten and he was twenty-seven, and he couldn’t really picture himself married to her one day. It never occurred to him to refuse, though - well, it did, but refusing would’ve required running away, and John never ran away from anything, particularly if it meant leaving Rodney’s kingdom at the mercy of the Genii or Wraith.
So he smiled at Jeannie and let her run rampant over his mother’s handmaidens, and John taught her the extended remix version of prime/not-prime, and he told her as many stories of Rodney’s youthful adventures in Atlantis as he could remember - and many more that he’d simply made up, because, honestly, the way Rodney had been heading he was bound to have made half the Atlantean Royal Guard cry at some point.
Which would’ve been cool to see, of course, but luckily John had a good imagination.
*
When she was thirteen, Jeannie strolled into the library in search of her brother and cornered him on the third balcony, pinned him against their five volume edition of Practical Magic Versus the Sea with a careful pout, and demanded, “Why don’t you ever visit John with me?”
Rodney, by then almost entirely immune to Jeannie’s Careful Pout, sent her a glower and a brisk, “Busy now, go away,” with a dismissive flap of his hand.
“He asks about you, you know,” she said, poking his chest.
Rodney’s eyes widened. “He does?”
“Yes,” she stressed, as if talking to a very slow person - which Rodney certainly wasn’t - “of course he does. You were friends, weren’t you?”
“Friends. Yes,” Rodney answered absently, because he hadn’t looked at it that way before. Since Jeannie’s birth, John and Rodney only ever saw each other on Christmas Day, and they always had too much wine and grinned too loosely and bickered tenaciously over the dark meat - even though Rodney honestly didn’t care if he had dark or white, just so long as it was meat, but he was self-admittedly contrary, and he didn’t get to fight with John any other time, so - and yes they’d been engaged at one point in their lives, but friends? “No, I don’t think so. Not really. Now go,” he waved her off again, “visit your spasmodically-haired fiancé and leave me be.”
*
When she was fifteen, John stared at Jeannie’s mouth as she shouted, “My god, you’re all imbeciles,” to the liege lords in his father’s Hunt, and he thought for the very first time that perhaps marrying Jeannie wouldn’t be that terrible after all.
*
When she was sixteen, despite all precautions, Jeannie pricked her finger on an old forgotten spindle in the topper most chamber of Athos Castle, and the old sorcerer Kavanagh laughed smugly as he layered the fierce Teyla’s magic with more of his own. In petty spite, he left the entire castle enchanted in slumber, right down to the winking hypoallergenic daisies on Her Majesty’s windowsill.
Then he coaxed the thick brambles surrounding the moat into even thicker tangles, rising high above the fortress walls and extending far down into the villagers’ arable fields, and, just for good measure, he froze the inner courtyard, encasing everything, stables and all, in thick, unforgiving ice.
Except. Except Kavanagh hadn’t left the entire castle enchanted in slumber.
For Rodney had read the complete five volume edition of Practical Magic Versus the Sea in search of anything remotely helpful in his never-ending desire to break Jeannie’s curse - it was the ‘practical’ part that’d initially attracted him, of course, though he hadn’t found anything the least bit feasible in it, except. Except he’d blindly roped out threads of what had been deemed, by the highly unfeasible book, as protective spells, and he’d encompassed the library with enough of them so that the sorcerer’s magic, raining down from above, fizzled into nothing without doing any damage at all.
Rodney wasn’t aware that anything was wrong with the castle ‘til he realized he hadn’t been brought his mid-morning meal, and he gazed around the library quizzically, finally sensing the unnatural quiet. He rose to his feet and stalked towards the door, only to be stopped by a buzzing ball of light, a tiny glowing figure housed in a bubble hovering just in front of his nose. Then the bubble expanded and burst, and the wild fairy Teyla was poised by the entrance, her body dressed for war.
“Prince Rodney,” she said softly, her loosely clasped fighting staff barring the way, “you cannot leave just yet.”
“What, why?” he demanded sharply.
She tilted her head, ear listing towards the door with an expectant air. “The snow hasn’t settled.”
“Well, that makes perfect sense,” he cracked. “It’s June.” At least, he was almost certain it was June.
Her smile was both indulgent and sad. “Your sister’s fate has come to pass, and the castle suffers and mourns still.”
“My sis…” He trailed off, mouth agape. “But she hasn’t… it isn’t…” he stammered, mentally calculating the past years because Jeannie couldn’t be more than fourteen yet, and nothing was supposed to happen at all until she was… “How old am I? Never mind,” he slashed his hand through the air, “that’s… how have I lost years?” Years, with nothing to show for them?
“You have been a good brother,” said Teyla, patting his arm encouragingly.
“Thank you for that astoundingly, so very wrong assessment. Years.” He rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. “I need,” he went on, snapping his fingers, “I need to start over. I’ve missed something, I know I have. Possibly some component I’d originally dismissed as too stupid to be of any-”
“Prince Rodney,” Teyla interrupted, “it is nothing you have missed. We must seek out Prince John.”
“Prince John...? Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Rodney exclaimed with disgust, then he jabbed an accusing finger at the fairy. “This true love nonsense is all your fault. Like John will be able to do anything useful at all!”
She inclined her head, unruffled. “Even so, I sense the answer lies with Prince John. We must go quickly, or the Sorcerer Kavanagh might realize you are awake.”
“What’s this ‘we’ business?” he asked, narrow-eyed. “Why don’t you go get John, and I’ll start with the Z’s and go backwards. Z’s. Where’s Zelenka, anyway? He mentioned yesterday he had a somewhat promising theory about the ecliptic coordinates of Pegasus’ orbit and the size of Kavanagh’s pe-”
“Prince Rodney,” her voice was starting to fray, “the whole of the castle is asleep. And you will travel with me to Atlantis.”
Rodney pressed his lips together, glaring at her mutinously. After a few moments, he let out an annoyed huff of breath and said, “If I could just map out a few more simula-”
“Prince Rodney,” Teyla said in warning.
“Fine. Fine! Let’s go get John.” He ground the name out like a curse and stomped a foot petulantly. But then he remembered his sister was curled up dead-asleep somewhere, and he couldn’t imagine how something that horrific wouldn’t affect her brain patterns irreparably, so he yanked at the door - this time, Teyla didn’t stop him - and set off down the corridor for the front foyer.
She matched his stride as he gingerly walked across the cold encrusted courtyard, and then she guided him towards the stable where he balked again, staring up at his father’s massive, frozen solid stallion, the blackness of his hide crystallized gray in the milky ice.
He shook his head emphatically. “Oh no. No, no. I don’t ride anything with four legs and that sounded really bad so not one word,” he wagged a finger in Teyla’s face.
“Perhaps your mother’s gentle mare, then?” the wild fairy suggested sweetly.
“Four legs!” Rodney nearly shouted.
Teyla nodded. “Ah, you would rather run. I see.”
“What? Are you insane?”
Teyla lit a fire between her fingers and not long after, though he wasn’t exactly sure how, Rodney found himself astride Primrose, a dappled chestnut palfrey with a powerful stride and a smart mouth. He was jostled like a loose sack of potatoes as they raced for the castle gate, and Teyla, light on her own steed - a beast that looked more like a tawny fawn than a horse - shouted encouraging directions at him which he promptly ignored. Grip with your calves; head up, heels down, wrists straight, blah, blah, blah. He was having enough trouble just keeping the mare on the right path.
Even though the portcullis was tightly woven with spiny branches, it rose smoothly when they approached, the wood fairy’s magic turning the winch with little resistance. And even though the once green ground outside the castle was a sea of brown thickets, they sailed effortless through the brambles without any snags or tears.
“Kavanagh’s spells,” Teyla explained, projecting her voice towards Rodney and hardly breathless at all from their grueling pace, “were only meant to keep intruders out of the castle. He is short-sighted and smug, and would not think anyone could have escaped his blanketed curse of slumber.”
Rodney gripped the reins and the ends of Primrose’s mane tighter, and wondered how the hell they were supposed to get back in.
*
Atlantis was a good four days away from Athos, even traveling the shorter path that ran parallel to the Furthest Forest and took them across the deepest part of their single clear-spring lake. They made the journey in two and a half.
Rodney had dropped to the ground in an exhausted heap when Teyla finally brought them to a stop that first night, the moon well past its zenith. Scant hours passed before the wood fairy roused the prince from a boneless sleep, riding hard once again through the morning, afternoon and half the night. By the time the famed glass walls of Atlantis Castle shone against the dying sun the day after that, Rodney could hardly speak, his complaints tossed with glares and the wordless pull of his mouth.
Teyla dismounted gracefully when they gained the courtyard, and Rodney slumped forward onto Primrose’s thick neck in relief.
“Rodney?” a worried voice hummed in his ear, and then warm hands were on his thighs, moving up over his sides, and John - he recognized John - was coaxing him to let go of the reins. There was a soft exhalation of laughter as Rodney staggered off the horse and into John’s arms, along with a teasing, “Jesus, Rodney, you weigh a ton.”
“Shut up,” Rodney snapped with as much bite as he could muster - which admittedly wasn’t much. “Shut up and give me a bed, and don’t wake me for three weeks.” And then he jerked his head up, almost clipping John in the chin, and grabbed onto the other man’s biceps with a frantic, “No, don’t, caffeine. Because…” He took a strangled breath and Teyla suddenly appeared at his shoulder.
“Princess Jeannie has pricked her finger as it was foretold, and Athos Castle has been wickedly enchanted by Kavanagh.”
“Well,” said John, spreading fingers through his hair. “Shit.”
“Yes. Yes, exactly.” Rodney was standing on his own by then, albeit wavering slightly, and he pressed shaky hands onto his abdomen. “When have I last eaten?” he asked wildly. “Oh my god, it’s been days, hasn’t it?”
“You were fed just this morning, Prince Rodney,” Teyla offered with some amusement.
“Hours, then. Do you realize what will happen if my blo-”
“Relax, Rodney,” John cut in placatingly, “you’re all right. Let’s just go inside and get you some food, and then we’ll figure out what to do next, okay?”
“What do you mean, figure out what to do?” Rodney demanded. “We need to get back into Athos Castle and you’ve got to kiss her.”
John grimaced. “I’m not sure that’s going to work.”
“Of course it won’t! It’s a completely ludicrous plan!” He turned a glare on Teyla. “If it wasn’t for you-”
“Jeannie’d be dead,” John pointed out softly.
“Ah.” Rodney visibly deflated, and he wrapped a wide palm over his nape. “True.”
Teyla’s brows rose.
“Thank you for that,” Rodney forced out grudgingly.
“You are welcome,” rejoined the wood fairy, then continued in an apologetic tone, “Had I realized that love would be a foreign concept for you, I would have chosen my words differently.”
“It’s fine,” John said, even though inside he was very close to panicking. John liked Jeannie a whole lot, but. True Love’s Kiss was going to be really hard to manage.
“What are we standing around for?” Rodney groused shortly, and Teyla nodded.
“We should be on our way as soon as possible, before Kavanagh thinks to contact the Genii king or the army of Wraith.”
“Because he’s just that moronic,” muttered Rodney, crossing his arms over his chest. Even the malevolent sorcerer called the magical Athosian forests home, and bringing the destructive Wraith down upon them would essentially be stabbing himself in the foot. No, Rodney wouldn’t put that folly past him at all.
John slipped an arm behind Rodney and started steering him towards the front doors of the castle. “Food first.”
“I’m not going to argue with that,” Rodney said tiredly, resisting the urge to lean into John. “Sleep would be good, too. Sleep would be heaven. Sleep would be the equivalent of chocolate if there wasn’t actually any chocolate in the vicinity, which I’m going to go ahead and assume there is for my own sanity. And by chocolate I mean coffee.”
John’s mouth twisted up in a half-smirk. “I miss you when you’re not around, Rodney. Once a year just doesn’t do it for me.”
“Ha. Very funny, John.” He couldn’t even work up enough energy for a proper scowl. “Your hair.”
“What?”
“Shut up. It made sense in my head.”
John’s eyes widened. “Oh, it’s waaaay past your bedtime.”
“I can function,” Rodney protested indignantly. “I’ll have you know I’ve reworked entire horribly wrong theorems on as little as two hours sleep and there was only that one miniscule, very small incident with Radek and Carson’s goat and why am I arguing? I thought I wasn’t going to argue?”
“You can’t help yourself,” John said sympathetically. Well, he was sort of sympathetic. At least he wasn’t laughing on the outside.
“I suppose we can spare a few hours rest,” Teyla offered magnanimously. “It would do no good to have Prince Rodney…”
“Hallucinating,” John finished for her. “Yeah, I get it.”
*
He drooled in his sleep. John had already known that, of course. Had commemorated the fact in pictures for future blackmailing opportunities - he’d realized at an early age the importance of stockpiling ammunition against his at-one-time husband-to-be. Although his cousin Laura had drawn a walrus into most of them, which kind of ruined their believability even while making them ten times more hilarious.
But anyway. Drool. Drool wasn’t supposed to be attractive, right?
John reached out and curled a hand over Rodney’s arm. It was a really nice arm, too, with more defined muscles than John would’ve guessed, and that thought was going no where good so he chirped, “Wakey, wakey,” in a tone that was sure to annoy the crap out of Rodney, and shook him briskly.
“Go ‘way,” Rodney growled into his pillow.
“Okay, sure,” John said amiably, settling down on the edge of the mattress. “Jeannie probably won’t mind waiting while you catch up on sleep. Especially since she’s, you know, unconscious in an enchanted castle and all.”
Rodney cracked one eye open and gave him a bleary glare.
John widened his own with mock-innocence. They stared at each other silently for a few, laborious minutes, and then John said, “You’re still a few clicks behind, aren’t you?”
“Shut up.”
“You’ve been saying that an awful lot lately,” John pointed out, head cocked to the side, a not-quite-smirk on his mouth, and Rodney rolled over onto his back with a groan.
The past few days seemed to have hit him all at once. Even his bones ached. “Primrose has clearly held a vendetta against me for years.”
“Horses are tricky like that,” John drawled. He was inordinately pleased with himself when he refrained from offering to give Rodney a rubdown, which, while it might’ve been nice - and, wow, now that he’d thought about it, really, really sexy - it would’ve been wholly counterproductive. Jeannie, breaking the curse, True Love’s Kiss - Christ, why couldn’t their parents have just left things well enough alone?
Instead, John patted Rodney’s stomach and gained his feet. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
*
Teyla knelt down beside Prince John by the small fire. Moving at a slightly slower pace than before, they had reached the Furthest Forest at the edge of Athos in two days, and she could feel inquisitive eyes upon them - had felt these eyes upon them for most of the evening. “We are being followed,” she told him in a hush, head pressed close to his.
He flicked a glance towards Rodney, fussing over Primrose and promising as many apples as she could eat when they got home if she’d just stop lipping the ends of his hair.
“I sense no danger,” Teyla continued evenly, following his line of sight without comment. “I just thought you should know.”
John nodded. “Thanks.” He stretched one leg out across the ground, looping an arm around the other, and gazed at her speculatively. “I gotta ask, Teyla. Why are you helping us?”
The wild fairy fingered the thin leather thong that attached her wand sheath to her thigh. “For thousands of years,” she explained with careful deliberation, “my people have named the Forests of Athos as ours, long before the Wraith and Genii claimed the lands to the east and west and burned the air to arid nothingness. Were it not for the bravery and strength of the Athos Guard, we believe the devastation to our home would be immeasurable.”
John furrowed his brow and said, “If anything ever happens to the forests, you know, you’re all welcome at Atlantis.”
Teyla bowed her head, soft pleasure curling her lips. “That is very generous of you, Prince John.”
“Just being neighborly.” He broke into a grin.
“Neighborly,” Rodney harrumphed, dropping down beside him and biting into a round of flat bread Teyla had wordlessly passed him. “You just want Atlantis to be as magical and cool as Athos.”
“Hey now,” John protested. “Atlantis already is cool. Two words, Rodney: glass. castle.”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, and perhaps one day someone will throw a rock and you’ll have to build something more structurally sound.”
“Yeah, since it’s not as if all of you over in Athos begged my parents for help with the Genii.”
John had a point, of course, but Rodney wasn’t actually going to concede it. “That proves nothing about the impenetrability of Athos Castle-”
“Except it does,” John interrupted smugly.
“And anyway, there’s an extraordinarily hirsute man striding towards us, though man is really too restrictive a term. It may be a dog.”
“Way to change the subject, Rodney, and he’s on two legs,” John drawled, but his eyes were sharp on the dark line of trees and the somewhat huge, hairy figure striding towards them. His hand automatically dropped to the sword lying on the ground by his hip.
“A trained dog, then,” Rodney amended, then snapped his fingers and held his palm out expectantly towards Teyla.
She arched a brow, but placed another piece of bread in his hand. “It is a basajaun,” she said.
“A what?” John asked.
“A lord of the woods. There are none currently living in Athos, but I believe he is a reassuring presence.” She rose to her feet smoothly as the basajaun drew closer, the ends of his matted, dark hair glowing strangely red-brown in the moonlight, any paleness of his body eclipsed by the twisted locks. Stepping forward to greet him in wild custom, she pressed her palms on either side of his chest and he bent his head to hers, touching their brows together lightly.
“Teyla of Athos,” she murmured, and he answered in turn with a brusque, “Ronon of Sateda.”
Teyla dropped her hands and moved away. “You have traveled far from your home,” she said curiously.
He grunted, then skimmed his gaze over the small campsite. “There’s no reason to return, so the distance means nothing.”
An uncomfortable silence fell, then John clapped his hands together. “Well. You’re welcome to our camp, but we won’t be here for long.”
Ronon nodded. “I’ve been following you.”
“Great.” Rodney bobbed his head. “That’s just, ah, fantastic. Really,” he said, then hissed to John, “what are you doing? He could be rabid!”
“Can it, Rodney,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth, then grinned brightly at Ronon. “Sit. Eat. Teyla has… bread.”
“Yes, but not an endless supply!” Rodney added desperately.
“I have brought plenty, Prince Rodney,” said Teyla. “You need not worry.”
John smirked. “That’s like asking the planet to stop spinning.”
Taking a chunk of bread from the wood fairy, Ronon hunkered down by the fire, the dreadlocked hair on his head tangling with the finer growth covering the rest of his body.
“My god, that isn’t a suit of scalps, is it?” Rodney demanded tactlessly.
Ronon narrowed his eyes at him.
“Seriously, I think we should know if there’s a possibility of you skinning us alive and wearing our hair like pelts,” Rodney went on, glancing at John. “Right?”
“Rodney,” John groaned, pressing two fingers into his forehead.
“What? Oh, like you’re not curious!”
“He is a basajaun,” Teyla repeated the term from earlier, a mixture of tolerance and censor in her tone. After all, she’d known Rodney since his birth. “The hair is his own.”
Rodney huffed, but kept silent, watching Ronon with a wary eye and scooting closer to John.
The night air seemed to breathe, the Furthest Forest housing sounds that were strangely soothing to the small party’s frayed nerves. Nightjars, the Athos nighthawk and the sad-songed poorwill, keened above the ebb and flow of chirruping crickets. The raw rasp of cicadas called and answered in the tall grass by the forest edge, and a single nearby owl queried the darkness in a low, throaty, stuttering voice.
Soon, Teyla broke their quiet with a soft, “We must sleep for a few hours.”
“You go ahead.” John nodded at Teyla. “This isn’t the greatest neighborhood, so-”
“I’ll keep watch,” Ronon cut him off, casually ripping into another piece of bread. “You should sleep.”
John arched a brow. “Nice of you to offer, but-”
“Prince John, we will be fine.” Teyla gave him a small smile, then reached out and squeezed Ronon’s wrist. In return, the basajaun dipped his head once and got to his feet, then melted noiselessly into the darkness surrounding them.
John expected Rodney to complain about being watched over by a guy that could possibly - in his mind - kill them all in their sleep, but Rodney was predictably already nodding off, slumped against John’s arm, cheek mashed into his shoulder. Fondly, John brushed a few damp strands of hair off his forehead, a half-smile pulling his lips. “He’s all tuckered out again,” he murmured.
When he lifted his gaze, Teyla was eyeing him from across the fire, a carefully blank expression on her face.
“All will be well,” she told him.
“You’re always spouting these sweeping assurances,” John commented wryly.
“And I am always right.”
“Rodney’s been rubbing off on you,” he teased.
Teyla’s gaze slid to Rodney, her lips pursed thoughtfully. “He is a better man than he thinks he is.”
“Yeah,” John readily agreed. “He kind of is.”
*
Athos Castle was hardly recognizable by the time they finally crested the last hill between the First Forest and the arable lands. The brambles had grown rapidly and lushly, snaking across the castle grounds in thick twists of thorns that had already overtaken three of the five villages settled in the kingdom’s valley.
“Wow,” John breathed. “This is gonna suck.”
The four of them - since the basajaun had pretty much invited himself along, and who was going to argue with that? - surveyed the mess with varying degrees of frustration.
And then Ronon rubbed a big hand under his nose and sniffed. “Something’s off,” he said.
“I sense it, too.” Teyla straightened her back.
“What?” Rodney swung nervously around, scanning the horizon. “I don’t see anything.”
The wood fairy held up a hand and cocked her head, listening for the mingled voices of the First Forest that gamboled on the wind. “Kavanagh knows we are here.”
“Ooookay,” John drew out slowly, “that isn’t good.”
And then the ground rumbled and dirt spewed through the air as the thickets surrounding the castle were swallowed into the soil, leaving the landscape riddled with wide, gaping holes.
Ronon bared his teeth. “He’s inviting us in to play.”
“I’m not so sure I like his tone,” said John, unsheathing his sword.
A flash of lightning sliced the sky in half, chased by a crack of deafening thunder, and the clouds above Athos Castle churned gray to black.
“Socially speaking,” John drawled, “I’m betting Kavanagh doesn’t inspire a lot of friends.”
On to part two