fic: where my hand is set
I wrote this for the Rodney/Teyla thing-a-thon, over at sticksandsnark. Such fun! Written for the lovely bingbulette.
Rating: NC-17
Prompts: first-time, culture clash, on earth
Notes: title taken from Donne's Elegy XIX, which may seem like a weird choice, but really it isn't. Also, I take some liberties as regards the eclectic and thorough beer-stocking of Pasadena hotels, but those liberties are done only in the service of fiction. And because I love beer.
where my hand is set
Teyla steps through the gate, as she has done thousands of times before. On the far side, a metal ramp slopes down from the gate to a wide, open room, overshadowed by another upper-level room that looks down on the gate from behind thick glass. There are four guards stationed in strategic positions, weapons at the ready in case something dangerous comes through; Teyla approves of their caution.
She finds herself missing their usual team formation, as she had in Atlantis before they set out; no Colonel Sheppard in front of her, no Ronon at her back. Despite the friendly territory, she wishes that the others could have made the trip with them. Beside her, Rodney sighs, a familiar sound that reminds Teyla of countless other off-world missions.
“Welcome to Earth,” he says, almost off-handedly, as they walk down the ramp, past the Marines who are on guard. The gate shuts off behind them.
-
Elizabeth had described the trip to her as “diplomatic,” but Teyla knew what she meant; there was no way that the Earth leaders would want to meet with just one Pegasus native, from an abandoned world, ex-leader of a displaced population, for diplomatic reasons. During his visits to Atlantis, the IOA investigator, Woolsey, had interviewed her several times. He was the type to repeat questions, or slightly different iterations of questions, in order to attempt to trip her up, not realising or not caring that to do so revealed his agenda. He wanted to know why she thought Elizabeth left her in charge of the city when she was away from Atlantis. He wanted to know what, precisely, her leadership experience with the Athosian people was. He wanted to know what she knew of their hierarchical command structure.
He wanted to know how soon she could come by to “meet and greet” the other IOA advisors.
They have three days of meetings scheduled for her, with various boards and committees and military advisory groups whose individual functions seem bizarrely similar. All claim to “collect information” or “weigh recommendations” or “advise,” none of which seems to amount to decision-making. In any case, she answers the same questions for every group of faces: the same questions she answered for Woolsey.
By the third day, her face is tired from smiling mildly and her throat is sore from justifying herself to these people whose claim to the City of the Ancestors is tenuous and theoretical; none have the love for the city that she has seen in Doctor McKay, or Colonel Sheppard, or Doctor Weir. Between her morning meeting (IOA Special Advisory Committee) and her afternoon (United Nations Board for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Interests), she finds her way to the commissary for lunch.
She is surprised to see Rodney just ahead of her in the lineup; over the last few days, he had been locked in his temporary office interviewing personnel, and Teyla has found herself missing his presence. Once she has her food, she makes her way over to sit with him.
“Good afternoon, Doctor McKay.”
He looks up, confused, but brightens in that easy way of his when he sees her standing in front of him.
“Teyla! I thought you were locked in with the bureaucrats.”
“I am,” she sighs, sitting down, allowing herself to slouch just a little. “I have to say that I cannot wait for this day to be over.”
Rodney nods sympathetically. “I don’t know why they’re putting you through all that, after four years with us on Atlantis. It seems a bit late to be trying to suss out your motives as some sort of evil alien spy.”
“Well, I would guess, though I have limited knowledge of your bureaucratic structures - ”
“Nobody has any knowledge of our bureaucratic structures,” Rodney interrupts. “ I find it more comforting to avoid knowing too much about the vast groups of morons who have ridiculous amounts of power over my day to day brilliance.”
Rodney can be relied upon to deride those who deserve derision with little regard for politeness; Teyla always finds it comforting. “Precisely. With limited knowledge of these structures, then, I will say that I do not believe they care about my motives. It is a show they are putting on for each other’s benefit. Their struggle over my status only serves them as another game to play among themselves. I have seen it many times before.”
Rodney grimaces. “So you’re finishing with a meeting tonight, then gating back to Atlantis?”
“That is the plan.”
“Huh. Wait, isn’t this your first visit to Earth?”
Teyla nods, a bit surprised by the non-sequitur. “Well, I did experience it once through Colonel Sheppard’s mind, when we were on the planet with the sentient mist. But in reality, this is my first trip, yes.”
“And they keep you locked in concrete underground and grill you about whether you’re good enough for us. Typical. What have they shown you that makes us good enough for you?” He raises a finger in the air the way he always does when pointing out other people’s mistakes.
“Nothing. Luckily, you and Colonel Sheppard and Doctor Weir have shown me plenty.” .She feels her face break into a real smile, then, which feels good after all of the expressions of polite interest she had been forced to wear throughout the morning.
Rodney beams back at her, absurdly pleased to be included in a list of Earth’s credentials. Then he cocks his head to one side. “Listen, you shouldn’t go back yet. I’m leaving for Pasadena tomorrow, for a physics conference; you should come. You can explore the city and see some of Earth culture while I try to talk Kroegar out of her ridiculous ideas about unpinning superfluid vortices.”
She considers. The idea of rest is appealing.
“I mean,” he continues, his voice nervous, “it’s American culture, and it’s Pasadena, so it’s not ideal. Maybe . . . actually, well, it’s a long trip to travel overseas, but maybe you should take a flight to New York, or San Francisco, or down to Mexico, or something. You probably don’t want to come to middle-of-the-road suburbia with me for your first taste of Earth.” He frowns, as if at himself.
There is tension, surprisingly, in his voice and in his gestures, a tension that Teyla normally associates with Rodney’s behaviour off-world. She wonders if he, too, has found his days on Earth trying. And, while she has navigated by herself on plenty of alien worlds, the prospect of traveling alone to a city of strangers is not comforting.
“No,” she says finally, “I think that your first idea was better. I would be glad to go with you to Pasadena.”
Teyla can’t help smiling back at the delighted grin that passes across Rodney’s face.
-
Once outside of the mountain, Rodney no longer seems as confident a guide. They use a car that the SGC provides, and while Teyla has seen him fly a Puddlejumper quite adeptly, she finds him sitting uncomfortably in the pilot’s seat of the car, staring at the controls as if it is they that were built by a strange ancestral alien race.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had to do this,” he says simply. In the twenty minute drive to the airport, he is uncharacteristically terse, his hands locked on the wheel.
The airplane is interesting, and impressive in its size, but nowhere near as civilized as the Daedalus or even the jumpers. She tells Rodney as much, and he laughs.
“See, you’ve been spoiled by Ancient technology, and the Asgard stuff on the Daedalus. In the movies, aliens like yourself are supposed to be impressed by our amazing level of technological advancement. Afraid of the big noises that come from above, and all that.” His mouth turns downward at the edge, to show her that he’s teasing.
Teyla makes a little noise of incredulity. “I should be impressed by what, this machine? If there is one thing that living all my life amongst Ancient technology has taught me, it’s that few people ever understand the machines they work with, anymore than they understand the people or the forces of nature around them. How many people on this airplane understand the science that makes it fly?”
Rodney grins at her. “That’s a good point; actually, unless someone’s had a breakthrough between the pretzels and the complimentary beverage service, and solved the Navier-Stokes equations, no one does.”
“Not so different from the Ancient technology, then, where you must often manipulate it without understanding it.”
“Hey! I’ll have you know that I always understand the Ancient technology.” He speaks as though deeply wounded by her remark, but his face is relaxed; his protest is automatic.
“Of course you do, Rodney.” He rolls his eyes at her teasing, then turns to look out the window. The plane is decreasing in altitude, clearly coming in for a landing, and from this height Teyla can see hundreds of houses, thousands of them, all similarly built, all gladly exposed to the sunshine, all permanent structures.
“I used to live down there somewhere,” Rodney says after a long moment, his voice soft. “When I was doing my first PhD at CalTech.” His finger presses against the window as if to single out the particular house that he had occupied. Teyla leans over him to get a better look.
“Oh, hey, I should’ve given you the window seat, shouldn’t I? Do you want to trade?”
“No, it is all right. I have seen cities like this one before, though admittedly seldom from such a vantage point.”
“Cities like this one? Do you mean on Sateda? Or that prison-planet, whatever it was called?”
“Olesia. Yes, but there were others. When I was a small child, the Uoth had cities much like this, thousands of people in structures of stone and metal and glass.”
Rodney’s brow furrows; Teyla draws back out of his space and settles again in her seat. “Why haven’t you taken us there?” he asks.
“They were culled,” she answers simply.
Rodney nods, looking back down at his previous home, his expression thoughtful. Teyla takes in the worried line of his jaw and the tense set of his shoulders and wonders whether he sees what she sees in the exposed lines of houses in the city below.
-
Rodney equips her with a map, shows her where the street signs are and how the buildings are numbered, and explains about taxis.
“Really, just tell the cab driver what kind of place you want to go to - a good place to eat, a good place to shop, a museum - and he’ll take you. There’s an art museum, the Norton something, it’s pretty good. I’m speaking at six thirty this evening, and I’m the last speaker, so if you want to be back here around eight thirty, I’ll meet you over there.” He points at a small green area with benches.
“That sounds fine.” She smiles at him, hoisting her backpack on her shoulders. Rodney cocks his head at her suddenly.
“You know,” he says, “I expected you to look more out of place here. I mean,” he adds hurriedly, as she glances down at her usual lace-shirt and black trousers, “you look fine, you’ve got a backpack so you look like a student. It’s just that . . . it’s funny, it’s everything else that looks out of place.” This last with a rueful look, as if Rodney believes that he is being ridiculous but does not know what to do about it. He casts a furtive glance in the direction of the conference centre, where his peers are assembling, greeting each other and talking cheerfully before entering the building.
Teyla remembers the weeks, after the Ancestors returned to the City and the expedition went back to Earth, that she spent hunting and farming and negotiating disputes among rival camps on New Athos. She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that she and Ronon were just biding their time, waiting to step back through the gate to Atlantis. The customs and traditions of her people, familiar since birth, had seemed alien to her, then.
She places a hand on Rodney’s shoulder and squeezes, drawing his attention away from the crowd of scientists.
“I understand, Rodney,” she says, willing him to hear the sympathy in her voice.
He gives her a shaky smile, then suddenly pulls her into a brief hug, squeezing her torso for a moment, his chin pressed to her shoulder briefly. He has only done this once before, when he thought he was going to die from the Ascension-machine, and the gesture surprises her. It has taken her a long time to learn that this physical intimacy doesn’t mean, on Earth, what it means to Athosians, so she is still slow to respond, but does manage to squeeze him back a bit, up on her toes to get her arms around his shoulders.
“Good luck with your talk,” she says, pulling back.
“Thanks. Have fun in the city. Remember about thieves and sick people and all that.” She rolls her eyes, a habit she learned from him, and goes off to find a taxi.
-
Despite their agreement, Teyla finds herself strangely worried about Rodney, as if this really were an unknown planet instead of Rodney’s home. But the habit of worrying about her team members - and Rodney in particular - is hard-won, is the trust for each other that they have built over the years. And so, at six o’clock, Teyla retrieves her bag from the museum coat-check, purchases one more frappacino (she doubts that they are in any way life-sustaining, but she can pretend) and climbs into a taxi to go back to CalTech.
By the time she finds the right room, Rodney is already on stage. She walks in quietly, but takes a seat in the front row. Rodney, glancing at the crowd, catches sight of her as she sits down, and - miraculously - stops talking for a moment, surprised, and smiles at her. Teyla, too, feels absurdly pleased to see him, as if they were surprised to meet back up and find each other unharmed, unimprisoned, untortured.
She listens to him speak as she always does: letting the more specialized science slip past her, listening to Rodney’s tonal cues to know when to really pay attention, letting his expressive hands and voice communicate the links between concepts. There is a white board behind him already covered with equations, and she amuses herself trying to translate some of the numbers into the 8-base counting system that the Athosians use.
Then, suddenly, there is a sound at the edge of her senses, and she finds herself stilled by hot white panic, clawing over her skin and behind her eyes, overwhelming, startling, ripping at her from the inside out.
Recognition: the noise of a Wraith dart, overhead, high-pitched screaming that has followed her nightmares since childhood. She curses herself for relaxing, for letting her guard down, curses her own empty hands. Her eyes lock with Rodney’s, which have widened, sweat breaking out on his face.
Then the moment passes - it was, really, only a moment, perhaps three seconds, but they had stretched to encompass her terror - and she realises that it was only the sound of the giant screen being lowered at the back of the stage.
She takes a deep breath and centres herself again. When she glances back at Rodney, he looks red and frustrated, beads of sweat still pooled on his upper lip, stumbling to take up the line of his argument again. The screen behind him displays curiously quaint images of wormholes - drawings, not photographs, which Rodney terms “theoretical.”
-
Once he has finished speaking, there is a question and answer period, during which he seems uncharacteristically disinclined to make fun of the questions that he obviously deems stupid. Her worry increases; he had deteriorated throughout the talk, not improved, and he seems to be having difficulty concentrating.
Nonetheless, there are so many questions and so much applause that Teyla finds herself fidgeting in her seat, something she has not done since she was a small child. She is bound by the conventions of politeness on this world, but faced with Rodney in distress; usually her choice would be easier. When, finally, they let him leave the stage, she is up out of her seat and at his side before he reaches the bottom of the steps.
He smiles at her and puts his shaking hands in his pockets.
“Teyla, you came! Um, how did you like the presentation?”
She feels her mouth compress into a hard line. She stills him with one hand to his shoulder, and places the other, cool and solid, against the back of his neck. She nearly bends forward to touch her forehead to his, but then realises that there are eyes on them, Rodney’s peers coming over to crowd around them.
“Doctor McKay.” She cannot think of anything else to say, how to explain her understanding to him. He meets her eyes, and perhaps he sees his pain reflected in her face, for he nods at her, once, seeming to accept the comfort of her hands.
“Doctor McKay!” booms a voice from behind her. She turns, losing contact with Rodney, to see a large, heavily-bearded man in thick glasses coming up behind her. She moves out of the way and allows the man to shake Rodney’s hand, allows ten such men - and one woman - to shake Rodney’s hand. She stands at the edge of the little knot of people, biding her time.
She determines to give these people precisely fifteen minutes, but then overhears them inviting him out to dinner. At that, she breaks through the cluster of bodies, all of them soft and pliable, like Rodney used to be, and clamps her hand again on Rodney’s shoulder.
“Unfortunately, Doctor McKay has a dinner engagement which he cannot break,” she interrupts.
There are some surprised glances from the other scientists, and quite a few knowing looks. Teyla remembers Rodney saying that she looked like a student, and is momentarily annoyed that these people would believe Rodney to be the kind of man who would use his power for sexual advantage, but brushes the annoyance away. She concentrates on Rodney, her eyebrows raised.
His face is all relief, and he grasps at the excuse she has given him. “Yes, thank you, Teyla, you’re right, unfortunately . . .” His babble trails off into incoherency, but it doesn’t matter, she’s got him, she’s leading him out of the press of people, to the door, to the car.
“Are you able to drive?” she asks.
His laugh is almost grotesque. “Of course I can drive. Why wouldn’t I be able to drive?” He unlocks the doors and gets in, so she climbs into the passenger seat beside him.
She reaches over and stills his hands as they twitch the keys toward the ignition.
“Doctor McKay,” she says again, unsure how to talk about something that had been so known and so unspeakable on Athos. “I felt it too. I have . . . felt it many times. A wisp of mist that looks like one of their illusions, or a bird that looked like a ship, out of the corner of the eye. Many times,” she finishes, awkwardly. Her hand covers his where it rests on his thigh.
“It’s not logical,” he spits, breaking her hold on him and starting the car. They drive back to the main road, stuck for a moment in silence.
“No,” she croaks, finally, her distaste echoing his own. “It’s not.”
-
At the rooming-house, Rodney breaks the silence, asking Teyla if she can go inside and book them a place to sleep while he parks the car. Stepping into the richly-appointed building, she approaches the woman behind the desk.
“I would like accomodation for the night, please,” she says, dropping her backpack on the ground.
The woman smiles. “You want a single or a double?” she asks.
“I’m sorry?”
“One room one bed, one room two beds, two rooms two beds, what?”
“Oh. One room with two beds will be sufficient, thank you.”
The woman smiles. “Where are you visiting us from?” she asks, and Teyla understands that this is a social question.
She tries to remember the name of a country on Earth other than Canada or America, where Doctor McKay and Colonel Sheppard are from. “Egypt,” she answers, finally, recalling the one conversation she had with Doctor Jackson while he was on Atlantis.
“Oh,” the woman says, sounding interested. “That’s wonderful. I’ve never been there; what’s it like?”
“Beautiful,” Teyla replies, her mind full of long piers and tall towers and gently lapping waves.
-
Rodney seems surprised that she booked only one room for the two of them, but doesn’t say anything; since their brief conversation in the car, he has been remarkably silent. Once inside, he tosses his bags onto one of the beds and picks up a piece of paper from the small table in the corner.
“You want anything to eat?” he asks. “Is there any Earth-food that you like?”
She thinks of the rarities that Colonel Sheppard smuggles on to base and shares with the team. “Beer,” she says, definitively. “And popcorn.”
Rodney laughs, a real laugh this time. “Beer and popcorn. That’s it, you are no longer allowed to listen to anything that Sheppard says on the subject of Earth cuisine. Luckily,” he picks up the telephone from its cradle and dials it, “I happen to agree with you. But we’ll get some real food, too.”
When the meal arrives, it turns out that Rodney has ordered more beer than they can ever hope to drink. “If you’re going to claim to like it, you have to learn that there’s more to it than that swill that Sheppard drinks.” He sets the bottles out in a long row. “Light, dark, bitter, stout, ale, German, Canadian, Mexican, Russian, British, Belgian . . . and some of these are cider, actually.”
They eat slowly, pausing often to open another beer, sharing the bottles back and forth. The table is surrounded by mostly-full glass bottles, apparently from all over the planet. She is as amazed by the dark beers - she had no idea that it could taste so good - as she is by the food. She’s had the steak and potatoes MRE many times, but this is much better, accompanied by a vegetable called asparagus that had never been shipped to Atlantis.
“This was delicious, Rodney, thank you,” she says, finally unable to eat any more.
“All courtesy the SGC,” he replies magnanimously. “Since Pasadena isn’t quite representative of Earth, you get a tour of the world’s beers. I’m sure General O’Neill is going to be surprised at our bar tab, though.”
“I believe it was worth it. All these different nations . . . tell me again. Heineken is - ”
“Dutch. Warsteiner's German. The Grasshopper and the Keith’s are Canadian, the Lindeman’s is Belgian, the Baltika is Russian . . .”
“And you lived in Russia once, yes?” she feels incredibly rude, interrupting, but the alcohol has made her light-headed and incautious.
“Yeah. Baltika is the reason I’m still sane.” He holds a bottle of it up as if to demonstrate its triumph.
“Have you been to all of these nations?”
Rodney snorts. “Nowhere near. I haven’t even seen anything good in Russia; I lived in the coldest, most remote part of it. Most people on Earth live their lives in one place, thinking the same thoughts, talking to the same people. For such a big place, it’s remarkably small.”
She shakes her head. “All Athosians travel through the gate from an early age. They spend their lives traveling. Even their hunting camps move around all the time, to hide from the Wraith.”
Their conversation pauses at the mention of the Wraith; it brings back the squealing sound of the dart that they heard earlier today, brings back the image of Rodney’s shaking hands and the wideness of his eyes.
“I am glad,” she says softly, breaking the silence, “to live on Atlantis, where we do not have to move all the time. It has been a rewarding experience, to have a permanent home. To live where there is less fear.” Her hand moves, almost of its own accord, to grip Rodney’s.
He doesn’t look at her for a long moment, but when he does, his eyes are remarkably clear, blue, unshadowed by the pain that they held earlier.
“Less fear,” he repeats, as if questioning her. She nods, still pressing her fingers into his palm, warm and tight.
Slowly, his eyes sleepy, he leans over and kisses her.
She has seen this coming since the crowd pressed around them at the conference centre, felt its potential in her sympathy and his anxiety and in their shared loneliness. She had told herself that he might need the comfort, and because she loves him, she knows that she would have no reservations about comforting him.
But when she answers his kiss, it is not out of affection or loneliness, though it is bound up in those things. She kisses him back hungrily, surprised at her own want, at the desire that has been crawling under her skin all day. They’ve been lost from the start, the two of them, and she finds her own comfort in the fact that, at this moment, she apparently needs him as much as he needs her.
She still grips Rodney’s right hand, but soon feels his left sliding up her thigh, pressing hard, gripping firmly with strong fingers. She cups the back of his neck, as she had after his presentation, and he shivers at the remembered touch. Too soon, he pulls away, though he doesn’t go far, and closes his eyes against the sensation of her fingers on his nape.
“Teyla, is this . . . are you, I mean, we’ve been drinking, and maybe this isn’t the best idea.” He says it fast, the way he does when explaining an inevitable forthcoming disaster.
She smiles, and strokes his face until he opens his eyes. “We can have this,” she says, wishing she had the words to describe this feeling. “We can have this tonight, at least.” But her mind is already betraying her, imagining a life with a permanent lover, constant and beautiful like the City she has come to call her home.
His answering smile is as bright and vulnerable as an Atlantis morning, so she kisses it softly, and, standing, pulls him to the bed.
They go slowly, touching everywhere, shedding clothes and murmuring encouragements to each other. For a long time, she is lost in the simple joy of skin pressing to skin, feels herself sinking into Rodney’s warm body and strong arms. They use their hands on each other, hers wrapped around his member while she rides herself against his clever fingers.
“I don’t have anything,” Rodney gasps, at one point, and she is confused until she remembers the contraceptives that they use on Atlantis. She grips him a bit tighter, drawing her hand up his length to cup the head. He moans, long and low.
“Can you - ” she gestures ineffectively. She has no wish to become pregnant, but doesn’t know enough about what exactly Earth sexual practices include. Surely any advanced civilization would . . .
Luckily, he quickly grasps her meaning and slides down the bed, his penis sliding wetly along her thigh before coming to nestle against her calf, and then his mouth is on her, his tongue inside her, and she sighs and spreads her thighs even further.
Rodney applies himself to the task enthusiastically, lips and nose and tongue and fingers all working in concert, pushing and sliding against her, into her, drawing her into swiftly mounting spirals of pleasure. One hand slides between her ass and the bed, squeezing and stroking, using the leverage to lift her to his lips. She’s surprised by how good he is at this, though she ought to have learned long ago that Rodney McKay can do anything with his mouth and hands free; equally surprising are the soft noises that he makes as he lips at her sex, humming against her, taking pleasure in the act. When she pictured this - and she had, she can admit it to herself, she had - she had pictured something faster, more desperate, than the slow press of Rodney’s mouth, stretching time out deliciously.
She slips her hands into his hair as the sensation increases, needing another point of connection between them. Her thumbs run across the points of his jaw, and he looks up to meet her gaze as she comes, her hips twitching and her back arching, pushing her into his touch as he draws it on and on.
When she comes back to herself, Rodney’s looking up at her with amazement, his hands caressing her thighs, up and down, skin on skin, over and over. She pulls him back up the bed and kisses him on the nose, on the lips, on the chin, tasting herself on him, sliding her tongue against his. His hand on her breast, fingertips sliding against her nipple, sets off nice little aftershocks that arc downwards.
His erection pokes into her hip, then, as if to remind her of its presence, and she laughs, breaking the kiss.
“Alright, alright,” she says, smiling widely at Rodney to let him know that she is teasing, and makes her way down his body, kissing his chest, his nipples, licking at his ribs and navel.
“Oh, god, Teyla, yes,” Rodney exhales, his hands stroking restlessly over her shoulders and neck as she gets one hand on his balls. He’s hard and red and wet, leaking at the tip, and she judges that it will not take much for him to orgasm; nonetheless, she goes as slowly as she can, drawing his pleasure out as he did for her, getting him into her mouth and sucking gently, gently, loving the weight of him on her tongue.
He groans again, his hips making a little aborted thrust, and she glances up at him, cocking an eyebrow. Then she reaches forward and holds his hips down to the bed, her muscles flexing as she restrains him.
“Yeah,” he whispers, his hands fisting in the sheets, straining against her hold on him. She gives him a bit more pressure, licking and sucking and sliding the roof of her mouth against the head, over and over and over, until he pulses and shoots into her mouth.
She uses her hand to pet him through the aftershocks while she spits his semen into one of the little plastic cups by the bedside. As his breathing slows, she comes back to nestle against him, her breasts pressed against his chest, her thigh slipping between his.
“That was amazing,” Rodney says in that endearingly sincere way of his, his hand falling chastely on the ball of her shoulder. “Really, just, amazing.”
“I thought so too,” she answers, feeling that bloom of affection in her belly that Rodney always seems to elicit. Unhindered, she gives in to the feeling and kisses him again, softly, slowly.
-
“Tell me about Athos,” Rodney says, sleepily, as his hand trails up and down her shoulderblade.
Teyla’s eyes are closed, and she doesn’t bother to open them to speak. “It looked much like the other planets in Pegasus. Forests, grasslands, hills.” She pauses, images swimming behind her eyelids. “I find it strange that you never visited it. Thinking back, it seems like you were there, in the first group with Colonel Sheppard and Lieutenant Ford.”
Rodney makes a little hmmm-ing noise of agreement.
“The days are short,” she goes on, encouraged by Rodney’s silence. “Perhaps half the length of the days on Atlantis. We would sleep every night, though, perhaps three or four hours, then work through the day. The sun was only ever in the sky for seven hours, at the most.”
“Live fast,” Rodney murmurs against her shoulder.
“Live fast,” she agrees, seeing the days stretched out before them, days filled with arching majestic sky and waves lapping against the solid piers of the City, a life led steadily in an inconstant universe.
Teyla falls asleep, warm with her body next to Rodney, and dreams of home.
-
-
back to main fic page
Rating: NC-17
Prompts: first-time, culture clash, on earth
Notes: title taken from Donne's Elegy XIX, which may seem like a weird choice, but really it isn't. Also, I take some liberties as regards the eclectic and thorough beer-stocking of Pasadena hotels, but those liberties are done only in the service of fiction. And because I love beer.
where my hand is set
Teyla steps through the gate, as she has done thousands of times before. On the far side, a metal ramp slopes down from the gate to a wide, open room, overshadowed by another upper-level room that looks down on the gate from behind thick glass. There are four guards stationed in strategic positions, weapons at the ready in case something dangerous comes through; Teyla approves of their caution.
She finds herself missing their usual team formation, as she had in Atlantis before they set out; no Colonel Sheppard in front of her, no Ronon at her back. Despite the friendly territory, she wishes that the others could have made the trip with them. Beside her, Rodney sighs, a familiar sound that reminds Teyla of countless other off-world missions.
“Welcome to Earth,” he says, almost off-handedly, as they walk down the ramp, past the Marines who are on guard. The gate shuts off behind them.
-
Elizabeth had described the trip to her as “diplomatic,” but Teyla knew what she meant; there was no way that the Earth leaders would want to meet with just one Pegasus native, from an abandoned world, ex-leader of a displaced population, for diplomatic reasons. During his visits to Atlantis, the IOA investigator, Woolsey, had interviewed her several times. He was the type to repeat questions, or slightly different iterations of questions, in order to attempt to trip her up, not realising or not caring that to do so revealed his agenda. He wanted to know why she thought Elizabeth left her in charge of the city when she was away from Atlantis. He wanted to know what, precisely, her leadership experience with the Athosian people was. He wanted to know what she knew of their hierarchical command structure.
He wanted to know how soon she could come by to “meet and greet” the other IOA advisors.
They have three days of meetings scheduled for her, with various boards and committees and military advisory groups whose individual functions seem bizarrely similar. All claim to “collect information” or “weigh recommendations” or “advise,” none of which seems to amount to decision-making. In any case, she answers the same questions for every group of faces: the same questions she answered for Woolsey.
By the third day, her face is tired from smiling mildly and her throat is sore from justifying herself to these people whose claim to the City of the Ancestors is tenuous and theoretical; none have the love for the city that she has seen in Doctor McKay, or Colonel Sheppard, or Doctor Weir. Between her morning meeting (IOA Special Advisory Committee) and her afternoon (United Nations Board for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Interests), she finds her way to the commissary for lunch.
She is surprised to see Rodney just ahead of her in the lineup; over the last few days, he had been locked in his temporary office interviewing personnel, and Teyla has found herself missing his presence. Once she has her food, she makes her way over to sit with him.
“Good afternoon, Doctor McKay.”
He looks up, confused, but brightens in that easy way of his when he sees her standing in front of him.
“Teyla! I thought you were locked in with the bureaucrats.”
“I am,” she sighs, sitting down, allowing herself to slouch just a little. “I have to say that I cannot wait for this day to be over.”
Rodney nods sympathetically. “I don’t know why they’re putting you through all that, after four years with us on Atlantis. It seems a bit late to be trying to suss out your motives as some sort of evil alien spy.”
“Well, I would guess, though I have limited knowledge of your bureaucratic structures - ”
“Nobody has any knowledge of our bureaucratic structures,” Rodney interrupts. “ I find it more comforting to avoid knowing too much about the vast groups of morons who have ridiculous amounts of power over my day to day brilliance.”
Rodney can be relied upon to deride those who deserve derision with little regard for politeness; Teyla always finds it comforting. “Precisely. With limited knowledge of these structures, then, I will say that I do not believe they care about my motives. It is a show they are putting on for each other’s benefit. Their struggle over my status only serves them as another game to play among themselves. I have seen it many times before.”
Rodney grimaces. “So you’re finishing with a meeting tonight, then gating back to Atlantis?”
“That is the plan.”
“Huh. Wait, isn’t this your first visit to Earth?”
Teyla nods, a bit surprised by the non-sequitur. “Well, I did experience it once through Colonel Sheppard’s mind, when we were on the planet with the sentient mist. But in reality, this is my first trip, yes.”
“And they keep you locked in concrete underground and grill you about whether you’re good enough for us. Typical. What have they shown you that makes us good enough for you?” He raises a finger in the air the way he always does when pointing out other people’s mistakes.
“Nothing. Luckily, you and Colonel Sheppard and Doctor Weir have shown me plenty.” .She feels her face break into a real smile, then, which feels good after all of the expressions of polite interest she had been forced to wear throughout the morning.
Rodney beams back at her, absurdly pleased to be included in a list of Earth’s credentials. Then he cocks his head to one side. “Listen, you shouldn’t go back yet. I’m leaving for Pasadena tomorrow, for a physics conference; you should come. You can explore the city and see some of Earth culture while I try to talk Kroegar out of her ridiculous ideas about unpinning superfluid vortices.”
She considers. The idea of rest is appealing.
“I mean,” he continues, his voice nervous, “it’s American culture, and it’s Pasadena, so it’s not ideal. Maybe . . . actually, well, it’s a long trip to travel overseas, but maybe you should take a flight to New York, or San Francisco, or down to Mexico, or something. You probably don’t want to come to middle-of-the-road suburbia with me for your first taste of Earth.” He frowns, as if at himself.
There is tension, surprisingly, in his voice and in his gestures, a tension that Teyla normally associates with Rodney’s behaviour off-world. She wonders if he, too, has found his days on Earth trying. And, while she has navigated by herself on plenty of alien worlds, the prospect of traveling alone to a city of strangers is not comforting.
“No,” she says finally, “I think that your first idea was better. I would be glad to go with you to Pasadena.”
Teyla can’t help smiling back at the delighted grin that passes across Rodney’s face.
-
Once outside of the mountain, Rodney no longer seems as confident a guide. They use a car that the SGC provides, and while Teyla has seen him fly a Puddlejumper quite adeptly, she finds him sitting uncomfortably in the pilot’s seat of the car, staring at the controls as if it is they that were built by a strange ancestral alien race.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had to do this,” he says simply. In the twenty minute drive to the airport, he is uncharacteristically terse, his hands locked on the wheel.
The airplane is interesting, and impressive in its size, but nowhere near as civilized as the Daedalus or even the jumpers. She tells Rodney as much, and he laughs.
“See, you’ve been spoiled by Ancient technology, and the Asgard stuff on the Daedalus. In the movies, aliens like yourself are supposed to be impressed by our amazing level of technological advancement. Afraid of the big noises that come from above, and all that.” His mouth turns downward at the edge, to show her that he’s teasing.
Teyla makes a little noise of incredulity. “I should be impressed by what, this machine? If there is one thing that living all my life amongst Ancient technology has taught me, it’s that few people ever understand the machines they work with, anymore than they understand the people or the forces of nature around them. How many people on this airplane understand the science that makes it fly?”
Rodney grins at her. “That’s a good point; actually, unless someone’s had a breakthrough between the pretzels and the complimentary beverage service, and solved the Navier-Stokes equations, no one does.”
“Not so different from the Ancient technology, then, where you must often manipulate it without understanding it.”
“Hey! I’ll have you know that I always understand the Ancient technology.” He speaks as though deeply wounded by her remark, but his face is relaxed; his protest is automatic.
“Of course you do, Rodney.” He rolls his eyes at her teasing, then turns to look out the window. The plane is decreasing in altitude, clearly coming in for a landing, and from this height Teyla can see hundreds of houses, thousands of them, all similarly built, all gladly exposed to the sunshine, all permanent structures.
“I used to live down there somewhere,” Rodney says after a long moment, his voice soft. “When I was doing my first PhD at CalTech.” His finger presses against the window as if to single out the particular house that he had occupied. Teyla leans over him to get a better look.
“Oh, hey, I should’ve given you the window seat, shouldn’t I? Do you want to trade?”
“No, it is all right. I have seen cities like this one before, though admittedly seldom from such a vantage point.”
“Cities like this one? Do you mean on Sateda? Or that prison-planet, whatever it was called?”
“Olesia. Yes, but there were others. When I was a small child, the Uoth had cities much like this, thousands of people in structures of stone and metal and glass.”
Rodney’s brow furrows; Teyla draws back out of his space and settles again in her seat. “Why haven’t you taken us there?” he asks.
“They were culled,” she answers simply.
Rodney nods, looking back down at his previous home, his expression thoughtful. Teyla takes in the worried line of his jaw and the tense set of his shoulders and wonders whether he sees what she sees in the exposed lines of houses in the city below.
-
Rodney equips her with a map, shows her where the street signs are and how the buildings are numbered, and explains about taxis.
“Really, just tell the cab driver what kind of place you want to go to - a good place to eat, a good place to shop, a museum - and he’ll take you. There’s an art museum, the Norton something, it’s pretty good. I’m speaking at six thirty this evening, and I’m the last speaker, so if you want to be back here around eight thirty, I’ll meet you over there.” He points at a small green area with benches.
“That sounds fine.” She smiles at him, hoisting her backpack on her shoulders. Rodney cocks his head at her suddenly.
“You know,” he says, “I expected you to look more out of place here. I mean,” he adds hurriedly, as she glances down at her usual lace-shirt and black trousers, “you look fine, you’ve got a backpack so you look like a student. It’s just that . . . it’s funny, it’s everything else that looks out of place.” This last with a rueful look, as if Rodney believes that he is being ridiculous but does not know what to do about it. He casts a furtive glance in the direction of the conference centre, where his peers are assembling, greeting each other and talking cheerfully before entering the building.
Teyla remembers the weeks, after the Ancestors returned to the City and the expedition went back to Earth, that she spent hunting and farming and negotiating disputes among rival camps on New Athos. She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that she and Ronon were just biding their time, waiting to step back through the gate to Atlantis. The customs and traditions of her people, familiar since birth, had seemed alien to her, then.
She places a hand on Rodney’s shoulder and squeezes, drawing his attention away from the crowd of scientists.
“I understand, Rodney,” she says, willing him to hear the sympathy in her voice.
He gives her a shaky smile, then suddenly pulls her into a brief hug, squeezing her torso for a moment, his chin pressed to her shoulder briefly. He has only done this once before, when he thought he was going to die from the Ascension-machine, and the gesture surprises her. It has taken her a long time to learn that this physical intimacy doesn’t mean, on Earth, what it means to Athosians, so she is still slow to respond, but does manage to squeeze him back a bit, up on her toes to get her arms around his shoulders.
“Good luck with your talk,” she says, pulling back.
“Thanks. Have fun in the city. Remember about thieves and sick people and all that.” She rolls her eyes, a habit she learned from him, and goes off to find a taxi.
-
Despite their agreement, Teyla finds herself strangely worried about Rodney, as if this really were an unknown planet instead of Rodney’s home. But the habit of worrying about her team members - and Rodney in particular - is hard-won, is the trust for each other that they have built over the years. And so, at six o’clock, Teyla retrieves her bag from the museum coat-check, purchases one more frappacino (she doubts that they are in any way life-sustaining, but she can pretend) and climbs into a taxi to go back to CalTech.
By the time she finds the right room, Rodney is already on stage. She walks in quietly, but takes a seat in the front row. Rodney, glancing at the crowd, catches sight of her as she sits down, and - miraculously - stops talking for a moment, surprised, and smiles at her. Teyla, too, feels absurdly pleased to see him, as if they were surprised to meet back up and find each other unharmed, unimprisoned, untortured.
She listens to him speak as she always does: letting the more specialized science slip past her, listening to Rodney’s tonal cues to know when to really pay attention, letting his expressive hands and voice communicate the links between concepts. There is a white board behind him already covered with equations, and she amuses herself trying to translate some of the numbers into the 8-base counting system that the Athosians use.
Then, suddenly, there is a sound at the edge of her senses, and she finds herself stilled by hot white panic, clawing over her skin and behind her eyes, overwhelming, startling, ripping at her from the inside out.
Recognition: the noise of a Wraith dart, overhead, high-pitched screaming that has followed her nightmares since childhood. She curses herself for relaxing, for letting her guard down, curses her own empty hands. Her eyes lock with Rodney’s, which have widened, sweat breaking out on his face.
Then the moment passes - it was, really, only a moment, perhaps three seconds, but they had stretched to encompass her terror - and she realises that it was only the sound of the giant screen being lowered at the back of the stage.
She takes a deep breath and centres herself again. When she glances back at Rodney, he looks red and frustrated, beads of sweat still pooled on his upper lip, stumbling to take up the line of his argument again. The screen behind him displays curiously quaint images of wormholes - drawings, not photographs, which Rodney terms “theoretical.”
-
Once he has finished speaking, there is a question and answer period, during which he seems uncharacteristically disinclined to make fun of the questions that he obviously deems stupid. Her worry increases; he had deteriorated throughout the talk, not improved, and he seems to be having difficulty concentrating.
Nonetheless, there are so many questions and so much applause that Teyla finds herself fidgeting in her seat, something she has not done since she was a small child. She is bound by the conventions of politeness on this world, but faced with Rodney in distress; usually her choice would be easier. When, finally, they let him leave the stage, she is up out of her seat and at his side before he reaches the bottom of the steps.
He smiles at her and puts his shaking hands in his pockets.
“Teyla, you came! Um, how did you like the presentation?”
She feels her mouth compress into a hard line. She stills him with one hand to his shoulder, and places the other, cool and solid, against the back of his neck. She nearly bends forward to touch her forehead to his, but then realises that there are eyes on them, Rodney’s peers coming over to crowd around them.
“Doctor McKay.” She cannot think of anything else to say, how to explain her understanding to him. He meets her eyes, and perhaps he sees his pain reflected in her face, for he nods at her, once, seeming to accept the comfort of her hands.
“Doctor McKay!” booms a voice from behind her. She turns, losing contact with Rodney, to see a large, heavily-bearded man in thick glasses coming up behind her. She moves out of the way and allows the man to shake Rodney’s hand, allows ten such men - and one woman - to shake Rodney’s hand. She stands at the edge of the little knot of people, biding her time.
She determines to give these people precisely fifteen minutes, but then overhears them inviting him out to dinner. At that, she breaks through the cluster of bodies, all of them soft and pliable, like Rodney used to be, and clamps her hand again on Rodney’s shoulder.
“Unfortunately, Doctor McKay has a dinner engagement which he cannot break,” she interrupts.
There are some surprised glances from the other scientists, and quite a few knowing looks. Teyla remembers Rodney saying that she looked like a student, and is momentarily annoyed that these people would believe Rodney to be the kind of man who would use his power for sexual advantage, but brushes the annoyance away. She concentrates on Rodney, her eyebrows raised.
His face is all relief, and he grasps at the excuse she has given him. “Yes, thank you, Teyla, you’re right, unfortunately . . .” His babble trails off into incoherency, but it doesn’t matter, she’s got him, she’s leading him out of the press of people, to the door, to the car.
“Are you able to drive?” she asks.
His laugh is almost grotesque. “Of course I can drive. Why wouldn’t I be able to drive?” He unlocks the doors and gets in, so she climbs into the passenger seat beside him.
She reaches over and stills his hands as they twitch the keys toward the ignition.
“Doctor McKay,” she says again, unsure how to talk about something that had been so known and so unspeakable on Athos. “I felt it too. I have . . . felt it many times. A wisp of mist that looks like one of their illusions, or a bird that looked like a ship, out of the corner of the eye. Many times,” she finishes, awkwardly. Her hand covers his where it rests on his thigh.
“It’s not logical,” he spits, breaking her hold on him and starting the car. They drive back to the main road, stuck for a moment in silence.
“No,” she croaks, finally, her distaste echoing his own. “It’s not.”
-
At the rooming-house, Rodney breaks the silence, asking Teyla if she can go inside and book them a place to sleep while he parks the car. Stepping into the richly-appointed building, she approaches the woman behind the desk.
“I would like accomodation for the night, please,” she says, dropping her backpack on the ground.
The woman smiles. “You want a single or a double?” she asks.
“I’m sorry?”
“One room one bed, one room two beds, two rooms two beds, what?”
“Oh. One room with two beds will be sufficient, thank you.”
The woman smiles. “Where are you visiting us from?” she asks, and Teyla understands that this is a social question.
She tries to remember the name of a country on Earth other than Canada or America, where Doctor McKay and Colonel Sheppard are from. “Egypt,” she answers, finally, recalling the one conversation she had with Doctor Jackson while he was on Atlantis.
“Oh,” the woman says, sounding interested. “That’s wonderful. I’ve never been there; what’s it like?”
“Beautiful,” Teyla replies, her mind full of long piers and tall towers and gently lapping waves.
-
Rodney seems surprised that she booked only one room for the two of them, but doesn’t say anything; since their brief conversation in the car, he has been remarkably silent. Once inside, he tosses his bags onto one of the beds and picks up a piece of paper from the small table in the corner.
“You want anything to eat?” he asks. “Is there any Earth-food that you like?”
She thinks of the rarities that Colonel Sheppard smuggles on to base and shares with the team. “Beer,” she says, definitively. “And popcorn.”
Rodney laughs, a real laugh this time. “Beer and popcorn. That’s it, you are no longer allowed to listen to anything that Sheppard says on the subject of Earth cuisine. Luckily,” he picks up the telephone from its cradle and dials it, “I happen to agree with you. But we’ll get some real food, too.”
When the meal arrives, it turns out that Rodney has ordered more beer than they can ever hope to drink. “If you’re going to claim to like it, you have to learn that there’s more to it than that swill that Sheppard drinks.” He sets the bottles out in a long row. “Light, dark, bitter, stout, ale, German, Canadian, Mexican, Russian, British, Belgian . . . and some of these are cider, actually.”
They eat slowly, pausing often to open another beer, sharing the bottles back and forth. The table is surrounded by mostly-full glass bottles, apparently from all over the planet. She is as amazed by the dark beers - she had no idea that it could taste so good - as she is by the food. She’s had the steak and potatoes MRE many times, but this is much better, accompanied by a vegetable called asparagus that had never been shipped to Atlantis.
“This was delicious, Rodney, thank you,” she says, finally unable to eat any more.
“All courtesy the SGC,” he replies magnanimously. “Since Pasadena isn’t quite representative of Earth, you get a tour of the world’s beers. I’m sure General O’Neill is going to be surprised at our bar tab, though.”
“I believe it was worth it. All these different nations . . . tell me again. Heineken is - ”
“Dutch. Warsteiner's German. The Grasshopper and the Keith’s are Canadian, the Lindeman’s is Belgian, the Baltika is Russian . . .”
“And you lived in Russia once, yes?” she feels incredibly rude, interrupting, but the alcohol has made her light-headed and incautious.
“Yeah. Baltika is the reason I’m still sane.” He holds a bottle of it up as if to demonstrate its triumph.
“Have you been to all of these nations?”
Rodney snorts. “Nowhere near. I haven’t even seen anything good in Russia; I lived in the coldest, most remote part of it. Most people on Earth live their lives in one place, thinking the same thoughts, talking to the same people. For such a big place, it’s remarkably small.”
She shakes her head. “All Athosians travel through the gate from an early age. They spend their lives traveling. Even their hunting camps move around all the time, to hide from the Wraith.”
Their conversation pauses at the mention of the Wraith; it brings back the squealing sound of the dart that they heard earlier today, brings back the image of Rodney’s shaking hands and the wideness of his eyes.
“I am glad,” she says softly, breaking the silence, “to live on Atlantis, where we do not have to move all the time. It has been a rewarding experience, to have a permanent home. To live where there is less fear.” Her hand moves, almost of its own accord, to grip Rodney’s.
He doesn’t look at her for a long moment, but when he does, his eyes are remarkably clear, blue, unshadowed by the pain that they held earlier.
“Less fear,” he repeats, as if questioning her. She nods, still pressing her fingers into his palm, warm and tight.
Slowly, his eyes sleepy, he leans over and kisses her.
She has seen this coming since the crowd pressed around them at the conference centre, felt its potential in her sympathy and his anxiety and in their shared loneliness. She had told herself that he might need the comfort, and because she loves him, she knows that she would have no reservations about comforting him.
But when she answers his kiss, it is not out of affection or loneliness, though it is bound up in those things. She kisses him back hungrily, surprised at her own want, at the desire that has been crawling under her skin all day. They’ve been lost from the start, the two of them, and she finds her own comfort in the fact that, at this moment, she apparently needs him as much as he needs her.
She still grips Rodney’s right hand, but soon feels his left sliding up her thigh, pressing hard, gripping firmly with strong fingers. She cups the back of his neck, as she had after his presentation, and he shivers at the remembered touch. Too soon, he pulls away, though he doesn’t go far, and closes his eyes against the sensation of her fingers on his nape.
“Teyla, is this . . . are you, I mean, we’ve been drinking, and maybe this isn’t the best idea.” He says it fast, the way he does when explaining an inevitable forthcoming disaster.
She smiles, and strokes his face until he opens his eyes. “We can have this,” she says, wishing she had the words to describe this feeling. “We can have this tonight, at least.” But her mind is already betraying her, imagining a life with a permanent lover, constant and beautiful like the City she has come to call her home.
His answering smile is as bright and vulnerable as an Atlantis morning, so she kisses it softly, and, standing, pulls him to the bed.
They go slowly, touching everywhere, shedding clothes and murmuring encouragements to each other. For a long time, she is lost in the simple joy of skin pressing to skin, feels herself sinking into Rodney’s warm body and strong arms. They use their hands on each other, hers wrapped around his member while she rides herself against his clever fingers.
“I don’t have anything,” Rodney gasps, at one point, and she is confused until she remembers the contraceptives that they use on Atlantis. She grips him a bit tighter, drawing her hand up his length to cup the head. He moans, long and low.
“Can you - ” she gestures ineffectively. She has no wish to become pregnant, but doesn’t know enough about what exactly Earth sexual practices include. Surely any advanced civilization would . . .
Luckily, he quickly grasps her meaning and slides down the bed, his penis sliding wetly along her thigh before coming to nestle against her calf, and then his mouth is on her, his tongue inside her, and she sighs and spreads her thighs even further.
Rodney applies himself to the task enthusiastically, lips and nose and tongue and fingers all working in concert, pushing and sliding against her, into her, drawing her into swiftly mounting spirals of pleasure. One hand slides between her ass and the bed, squeezing and stroking, using the leverage to lift her to his lips. She’s surprised by how good he is at this, though she ought to have learned long ago that Rodney McKay can do anything with his mouth and hands free; equally surprising are the soft noises that he makes as he lips at her sex, humming against her, taking pleasure in the act. When she pictured this - and she had, she can admit it to herself, she had - she had pictured something faster, more desperate, than the slow press of Rodney’s mouth, stretching time out deliciously.
She slips her hands into his hair as the sensation increases, needing another point of connection between them. Her thumbs run across the points of his jaw, and he looks up to meet her gaze as she comes, her hips twitching and her back arching, pushing her into his touch as he draws it on and on.
When she comes back to herself, Rodney’s looking up at her with amazement, his hands caressing her thighs, up and down, skin on skin, over and over. She pulls him back up the bed and kisses him on the nose, on the lips, on the chin, tasting herself on him, sliding her tongue against his. His hand on her breast, fingertips sliding against her nipple, sets off nice little aftershocks that arc downwards.
His erection pokes into her hip, then, as if to remind her of its presence, and she laughs, breaking the kiss.
“Alright, alright,” she says, smiling widely at Rodney to let him know that she is teasing, and makes her way down his body, kissing his chest, his nipples, licking at his ribs and navel.
“Oh, god, Teyla, yes,” Rodney exhales, his hands stroking restlessly over her shoulders and neck as she gets one hand on his balls. He’s hard and red and wet, leaking at the tip, and she judges that it will not take much for him to orgasm; nonetheless, she goes as slowly as she can, drawing his pleasure out as he did for her, getting him into her mouth and sucking gently, gently, loving the weight of him on her tongue.
He groans again, his hips making a little aborted thrust, and she glances up at him, cocking an eyebrow. Then she reaches forward and holds his hips down to the bed, her muscles flexing as she restrains him.
“Yeah,” he whispers, his hands fisting in the sheets, straining against her hold on him. She gives him a bit more pressure, licking and sucking and sliding the roof of her mouth against the head, over and over and over, until he pulses and shoots into her mouth.
She uses her hand to pet him through the aftershocks while she spits his semen into one of the little plastic cups by the bedside. As his breathing slows, she comes back to nestle against him, her breasts pressed against his chest, her thigh slipping between his.
“That was amazing,” Rodney says in that endearingly sincere way of his, his hand falling chastely on the ball of her shoulder. “Really, just, amazing.”
“I thought so too,” she answers, feeling that bloom of affection in her belly that Rodney always seems to elicit. Unhindered, she gives in to the feeling and kisses him again, softly, slowly.
-
“Tell me about Athos,” Rodney says, sleepily, as his hand trails up and down her shoulderblade.
Teyla’s eyes are closed, and she doesn’t bother to open them to speak. “It looked much like the other planets in Pegasus. Forests, grasslands, hills.” She pauses, images swimming behind her eyelids. “I find it strange that you never visited it. Thinking back, it seems like you were there, in the first group with Colonel Sheppard and Lieutenant Ford.”
Rodney makes a little hmmm-ing noise of agreement.
“The days are short,” she goes on, encouraged by Rodney’s silence. “Perhaps half the length of the days on Atlantis. We would sleep every night, though, perhaps three or four hours, then work through the day. The sun was only ever in the sky for seven hours, at the most.”
“Live fast,” Rodney murmurs against her shoulder.
“Live fast,” she agrees, seeing the days stretched out before them, days filled with arching majestic sky and waves lapping against the solid piers of the City, a life led steadily in an inconstant universe.
Teyla falls asleep, warm with her body next to Rodney, and dreams of home.
-
-
back to main fic page