sga_flashfic | FIC: First Lesson by Kylie Lee (School challenge)

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Title: First Lesson
Author: Kylie Lee (

kylielee1000)
Pairing: Ronon Dex/John Sheppard
Rating: NC-17
Length: ~2400 words
Spoilers: 2.06 "Trinity"
Summary: Ronon's first lessons.
Podfic: Read by

twasadark and available at http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/. Leave feedback for the reader here.
Author's note: I wanted to do a challenge about school that wasn't about formal education. No beta this time. The symbols that Ronon learned as a child are named after letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

First Lesson

"The address," Sheppard yelled over his shoulder as he reloaded. "For god's sake, Ronon, input the freaking address!"

Gunfire sounded closer. The address. The freaking address. He knew it. He knew the address. And his hands touched the DHD—they called it a DHD, a dial home device, home, Sateda. Home. He knew its address, the symbols, one through seven. Only Sateda was gone. The Wraith had destroyed it.

"Ronon!" Teyla screamed, just as McKay said, "Now would be good!" "It's the drug, whatever they gave him," Teyla said, and McKay said, "I liked him better when he was unconscious," and Sheppard said, "Dial! Dial now!"

Dial. Dial now. Dial the freaking address. Except somebody punched him in the shoulder and he fell down. No. He'd been hit. Beams of light shot past, and he thought he could see their trails, tails like falling stars. He didn't feel any pain.

He knew the address. It was the first thing he'd learned, from his father.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.

"What is wrong with him?"

"Ronon!"

Seven.

Home.

He couldn't breathe very well. His hand hit the input button as he fell to his knees, and he heard it: the gate moved.

***

"Ayin," his father gasped, and Ronon flexed and hefted. The first lesson had been the address of Sateda. The second lesson had been dialing it on the console. This was the third lesson. "Ayin! I said ayin! That's the one with the tail thing on the bottom!"

"I know ayin," Ronon said, following the symbol with his eyes. The gate made a grating sound as it turned. His hands burned as he frantically scrabbled at the dense stone. A fingernail had broken off, and he was bleeding.

"It's going to overshoot!"

"It's not."

It didn't. Ronon made sure it didn't. Ayin. And then kaf, letters that made a nonsensical word. Maybe the word had meant something to the gate builders. Maybe they could pronounce it, even though there were too few vowels. Ronon couldn't make the word fit his mouth. But he and his father could make the gate turn with the strength of their own bodies, the two of them, without a console. And he could make it vomit out power. Being able to do that was its own kind of power.

"To the side," his father ordered as the last chevron locked, but Ronon, young as he was, knew enough to avoid the burst of annihilating power.

There it was, that moment he loved, the moment where the power exploded, just as Ronon could explode as he jumped high. The power came from the same place: the center. Within. And then there was standing water, rippling slightly. On the other side was home.

"Let's go home to your mother," his father said, and he extended his hand, dirty, with broken nails. "It takes strength to dial manually. She'll be proud of you."

"Home to Sateda," Ronon corrected.

"Sateda," his father agreed, and he took Ronon's hand, and they stepped through.

***

"Does this look familiar to you?" Sheppard's voice asked.

"It does not," Teyla said. Her voice was precise when she spoke the trader's language, as she did now. Ronon had heard her voice when she spoke among her family, among the Athosians, in their own language. Then it was not so precise.

McKay's voice was next. "It's Sateda," he said. "Don't you recognize it?"

"No," Sheppard said, but his voice was different. "No, I don't. I didn't. But you're right."

"Why did he dial Sateda?" McKay groused.

Ronon said, "Because it's home."

"What? Did he say something?" McKay asked. "I thought he said something."

Ronon felt his body lift and drag, and he knew Sheppard was holding him in his arms. He was in Sheppard's lap, and Sheppard's arms were around him. Sheppard had dragged him through the gate. He remembered that now.

"Yeah, he said something, but I don't know what," Sheppard said. "Who cares why he dialed it? We got out of the firefight. Okay. Rodney, kindly dial up Atlantis. I think Ronon here is in pretty bad shape. He got hit in the shoulder. Also he's heavy. Really, really heavy."

"Put him down, then," McKay said.

"I'd just have to pick him up again in two seconds, after you dial the gate."

"Fine. I'm dialing. See? Dialing."

Ronon felt his body tip to the side, and his eyes flew open. "I don't feel so good," he said to the ground, which was very close to his face. This was a lie. He felt nothing, but he knew he should feel something, so feeling nothing was bad. He couldn't really feel his body. He felt only pressure against it, but nothing else.

"I know, big guy," Sheppard said soothingly. "We'll get you home and Dr. Beckett will fix you right up."

Home. "Sateda?"

"Yeah, Ronon, we're on Sateda."

Ronon closed his eyes again and let his head touch the ground. "One," he said as he heard the gate begin to turn. "Tet."

First lesson: know the address of home.

***

He'd known it would be him. He'd known since the first day he'd begun training. Kell's eyes had followed him after he'd bested three boys in a row in wrestling, watching, and Ronon had known that he'd been watched. He'd liked it, just like he'd known what Kell wanted, just like he'd known he'd be selected for Kell's regiment when Ronon turned sixteen. His father had regretted the necessity of Ronon going into the military because he prized the mind over the body, but Ronon knew where his strengths lay, and it wasn't in the arcane knowledge of his mother. It lay in the body.

He would show Kell. Ronon was the best—fast, strong. He could shoot a bird out of the sky. He understood tactics. He excelled at games of strategy. He could take the training, take the pain and turn it into power, the same power he'd imagined he'd had inside him when he was a boy, power like the gate, strong and blue-white, incinerating all in its path.

That same power made Kell want him. Ronon knelt and did as Kell wanted, but Ronon wanted it too. He had wanted it for a year and a half, since he'd arrived: the pleasure of approval from a man who was the best of them. And now he knelt, and he felt power, because this man wanted him. Wanted him. And it was easy, ridiculously easy, to drive him to extremity, to make Kell explode in his mouth, a gate locking onto an address, all heat and warmth and explosion and power. What lay beyond? What was beyond the gate? He no longer had his father to guide him. And he was a man now, not a boy, sixteen years old at last. He had to find his own way. That way lay with Kell, his new taskmaster.

"First lesson," Kell gasped when it was over, putting his hand on Ronon's head like a benediction. "Well done."

***

"Very. Big. Guy," McKay huffed. Ronon tried to open his eyes and managed to take in the floor, but he recognized that floor: Atlantis.

"Yeah, thanks for your help, Dr. McKay," Sheppard said into Ronon's ear, just as the gate switched off, an abrupt cessation of power. "Hey, Elizabeth. We got Ronon back, but he's been drugged, and he got shot."

"Dr. Beckett to the gate room," Weir said as Sheppard and McKay, holding Ronon between them, lowered him to the ground. "Medical emergency." The tone of her voice changed. "Who took him?"

"Well, it looks like the Satedans took him," Sheppard said.

"No," Ronon said, because his own people would never betray him.

"I think they questioned him and let him go," Sheppard continued. "But there was a firefight when we tried to get out. I have no idea what's going on."

"Ronon?" Weir asked, and Ronon took in her obviously concerned face as she knelt over him.

"Kell," Ronon said. "Payback. His regiment." He'd shot Kell, killed him where he stood, Kell a coward and a traitor, the man who let others die so he could live after he'd sworn to protect them, to lead them. Teyla knew. She'd been there. Satedans hadn't held him, questioned him. Sateda didn't exist any more. It had been Kell and the remnants of his followers. "Payback."

"Dr. Beckett," Teyla called, and Ronon knew she was covering for him, even as Weir frowned. "Please."

Please.

***

"First lesson," Sheppard said, his tone ironic. "What do you want to do for your first lesson?"

Ronon shrugged. "Whatever," he said. Sheppard wasn't in charge. It had taken him a while to get his head around that. Elizabeth Weir was in charge. Despite this, she did not lead the team that went offworld. She wouldn't tell Ronon what to do. And Ronon wasn't a part of their military.

Sheppard said, "Because something tells me you've got it down—all the everyday stuff, like the shooting."

Ronon cocked an eyebrow. "So—no lesson?"

Sheppard crossed his arms. "What do you need?"

Ronon considered. Sateda was gone. He knew it intellectually, but he didn't feel it in his heart. He'd run for years, and now he was free again. He could feel the address under his hands, the first thing he'd learned as a child: seven symbols to bring him home. Now those seven symbols led to nowhere. "Your rules," he said at last.

"Rules?" Sheppard had changeable eyes. Ronon didn't know what color to call them. He didn't know how to categorize Sheppard at all—eye color, role, whatever.

"Rules." Ronon ticked the rules off on his fingers as he listed them. "Eat with utensils. Don't scare the women. Don't fuck anybody. Don't make eye contact."

"Don't fuck anybody?" Sheppard interrupted. "What?"

Ronon stared him down. He couldn't read Sheppard, tell if he was making fun of Ronon. "Don't fuck anybody," Ronon repeated.

"You tried to fuck somebody—Teyla?"

"Nobody fucks each other," Ronon said, because it was true.

Sheppard held up his hands. "Okay. What?"

"You and Elizabeth Weir." Before he even finished the sentence, Sheppard interrupted with, "Oh, god, no. No, no, no. What makes you—?" and Ronon said, "You and Teyla, you and McKay—"

"Stop."

Ronon stopped, and he and Sheppard eyed each other.

"I'm not—uh—fucking anybody," Sheppard said.

"That's my point," Ronon said. "Why not?"

Sheppard cleared his throat. "Because we have rules," he said at last. "Because you can't have, uh, a relationship with someone in your chain of command."

Ronon considered. It seemed stupid to him. Sex cemented loyalties. He still remembered his first private lesson with Kell, what he'd learned. "Okay," he said, that useful word that everybody from Sheppard's planet used. It didn't quite mean "yes." In this context, it meant, "I understand, but I think it's stupid."

"Good," Sheppard said, as if they understood each other. He indicated the room, with its padded floor, with his head. "So. Sparring?"

Ronon considered. "No," he said. "Fucking."

"I told you—" Sheppard said, but Ronon knew he had him, knew that he could teach Sheppard something, because Sheppard shut up when Ronon kissed him, hard and deep, and he said "Ronon" as they fell to the floor, and later, Sheppard said "please" right before he came in Ronon's mouth.

***

When he opened his eyes, the light blinded him, light as bright as the punching of power that came through the gate, streaking through the dark, leaving a smear behind. He could shut his eyes and see the light imprinted there.

"Hey."

"Bright light," Ronon told Sheppard, and a moment later, as Sheppard dimmed the lights, he could open his eyes. "Thanks."

"You okay?" Sheppard looked concerned. "You, uh, you have an IV in your arm to rehydrate you, so don't move around too much."

Ronon looked down at himself, body covered with a smooth, white sheet. He felt as though he'd been beaten. A tube—an IV?—ran into his arm.

"I'll get Dr. Beckett," Sheppard said, turning.

"No," Ronon said immediately. Irrationally, he didn't want a doctor right now. He wanted—what did he want? "No, don't do that."

"Why not?" Sheppard asked after a second.

"It's my fault," Ronon said, because it was. If he hadn't killed Kell, this would never have happened. Kell's family, the remnants of the regiment loyal to him, his new allies—they had captured him, drugged him, questioned him.

Sheppard said, "It's your fault, so no doctor for you? You've been bad? Is that it?"

"Your rules don't make any sense," Ronon said. "You and me." Sheppard looked up and around sharply, and Ronon sighed. "We're alone," he said. He'd taught the first lesson to Sheppard: that colleagues in arms could be lovers. Sheppard had taught him the next lesson: that Earth rules meant that men couldn't be together that way. They both taught each other the same lessons over and over again, private and public, intimacy and coldness, day after day. "I, uh, I gave them the address. I think I gave them the address."

"Who's them?" Sheppard asked.

Ronon was too tired to explain. "Bad guys," he said. He didn't want to close his eyes, although they were heavy. He wanted to look at Sheppard, his changeable eyes, his hair. Being with Sheppard wasn't like being with Kell. It wasn't the same at all. "I'm sorry," he added. "I'm pretty sure it was the drugs."

"Yeah," Sheppard said. "Well, the iris. We got an iris over the gate. No signal, the iris doesn't open, and splat." He clapped his hands together to illustrate.

"I forgot about that," Ronon said, finding himself cheered. "Good. That's—good."

"You dialed Sateda," Sheppard said. He hadn't touched Ronon. A nurse or a doctor could come in at any time, Ronon knew. He understood. He understood.

"Force of habit," Ronon said. "It's still home, you know?"

"Yeah," Sheppard said. "I feel the same way about Earth. Everything's there."

Ronon held out his hand, the right one, the one that didn't have a plastic line in it. "Not everything," he said, and Sheppard took his hand and clasped it hard.

"No," Sheppard said, his mouth quirking into a smile. "Not everything."

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From:

dark-cygnet.livejournal.com

Lovely. Thanks for sharing!

From:

First Lesson

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