"Absence" by Nu Hiep [38 Minutes Challenge]

[nuhiep.livejournal.com]

Title: Absence
Author: Nu Hiep
Rating: Gen
Notes: Thanks to covertpurin for beta.

Summary: This is a team-centric drabble that focuses on the relationships that the team has with Sheppard.



They're different when he's not around.

Teyla smiles more. Her eyes are sly, slanted. She glances out of the corners of her eyes, face lowered and tilted at an angle.

Ronon slouches. He has an almost laugh that sounds like a whumph of air. Sometimes he shows his teeth, not a smile or a grimace.

Rodneys is still Rodney. He is ever true to his enlightened self-interest, but he too is subtly different. He talks less if that is possible, one or two syllables here and there, dropped like crumbs and stones. He is more truculent, but means it even less than usual.

When he's gone, they fight like siblings. They squabble over who gets the last powerbar. Ronon always wins, because he just eats it before the other two can reach it. It's stuffed in his bulging cheek while Rodney waves his hands and threatens to die of starvation, his wonderful, indispensable brain poisoned slowly by ketoacidosis. Teyla bites her cheek instead, because protesting would make her sound too much like Rodney.

Off world - when he's gone to check the perimeter or trapped in a tower playing stud to the latest brood mare - they play games. There's the game to see who can annoy Rodney first. If Ronon feels like winning, he'll just pick something up off the ground and eat it while Rodney is looking. Teyla purses her lips and won't accuse him of cheating, but Ronon hears it all the same. He refuses to stop, because she's developed a trick of her own. It involves praising the native people, their culture and technological achievements. Teyla and Ronon have yet to decide whose trick is dirtier.

Rodney votes for Teyla, personally.

When he's not looking, when he ranges ahead of them, eyes towards the horizon tracking movement under the dark lenses of his aviator sunglasses, they often argue in a silent, shared language. Glances exchanged, shifting from foot to foot - they discuss with uncanny precision the matters of the day. Some days Rodney is the voice of moral reason, speaking of the dangers of colonial imperialism in the impatient flutter of his fingers. Ronon will roll his shoulders back in response, urging them to take the path of necessity. They will both glance at Teyla, walking in between them, because it will be her turn to decide.

None of this really matters, of course. When he is around, they don't exchange irritated glances, don't argue, don't acknowledge each other. He is the axle and they the spokes of a wheel. They look to him and, without thinking, adapt themselves to his expectations regardless of his wishes. He is their leader. That is his nature - to expect - and by extension it is theirs to comply. Because when he's not around, he can't hear the games friends play, can't see the fights that siblings have, can't know the work teams do.

In the end it doesn't matter.

Because he can't see it and none of it really exists.

Comments

[nuhiep.livejournal.com]

Thanks! John has always been a problematic character for me. I'm really ambivalent towards him, because I've had a hard time understanding his motivations, getting under his skin. I've always felt that no matter how people attempt to reach out to him (like Rodney), John has a really hard time reaching back. I wonder sometimes if this isolation isn't more self-imposed that we think, that being the leader is an excuse.

[slashfictionfan.livejournal.com]

'Self imposed isolation' - yeh, could be.. or a vicious circle once started so long ago, now nearly impossible to stop.
I've never had as much love for John as Rodney as he doesn't seem as rounded or fleshed out as he could be, although I guess that helps fic writers who can do the fleshing out themselves (did not mean for that to sound so dirty *g*).