fic: Presidential Dinner, With Gold Cufflinks - Part One [documentation challenge]

[tielan]

TITLE: Presidential Dinner, With Gold Cufflinks - Part One
SUMMARY: Hiding white tigers among other white tigers takes paperwork. And a few surprises.
RATING: PG-13
WORDCOUNT: 5,000 words or so. Plus images.
NOTES: With serious love to allisnow for suggestions and betaing.

- prologue -

"Sheppard mentioned this trip to you?"

Ronon's team-mate tucked her staves into her bag and swung it up onto her shoulder. "He did not, but Elizabeth has spoken of it."

He eyed her. "And?"

"And?" She seemed surprised as she waited for him to grab his towel off the punching 'dummy'. Exactly what was 'dumb' about it was beyond Ronon, but that was the Atlanteans for you.

Ronon shrugged the towel into place around his neck, glad of the dry nap of the material against his damp skin. "You're not excited?" He swung his head forward, then tossed it back so his dreadlocks lay on top of the towel rather than under it.

"I am sure it will be a very memorable experience."

A snort of disbelief escaped him before he could stop it. Teyla had a gift for understatement. "'Memorable?' It's Earth."

Her mouth quirked as she turned towards the door. "And that is why it will be memorable," she said.

Memorable? Ronon shook his head as he followed her out the door. "We'll be meeting their leaders." When he got no answer, he loped ahead of her and turned on one toe to face her, walking backwards by instinct and memory. "You're not interested in meeting the leaders of six billion people?"

Teyla tilted her head at him. "Would they not be much the same as the leaders of six thousand people - or six hundred?"

Practical as ever. But that couldn't be the whole of her response. "What about Earth? You don't want to see that stuff that Sheppard and McKay are always going on about?"

Her mouth curved in tolerant amusement. "Ronon, we see much of what they do here in Atlantis."

"Not all of it." Ronon was intrigued by the idea of a planet that had turned out people with mindsets as varied as he'd met in Atlantis. While Sateda had done things the Atlanteans couldn't - they really liked his guns for starters - the Atlanteans seemed to have levels to their society that Ronon just couldn't fathom. It was like peeling the aromatic bulbs - you took off one layer and there was another one right there.

"We would not see all of it on Earth, either," she told him. "What little I have seen was...amazing. Beyond anything I had ever imagined."

Ronon frowned. He didn't remember ever hearing that she'd gone to Sheppard's world. From the sound of it, they'd been stuck on Atlantis with no way back to Earth until just before Ronon came to the city. "You've been to Earth?"

Teyla hesitated. "Not exactly. Before you came to us in Atlantis, we went to a world which possessed the power to send a wormhole to Earth without the ZPM. However, we were unaware that every time the wormhole opened, billions of the population died." Her brow furrowed. "They were not people as we understand them - they were...energy."

"So you went to Earth?"

She shook her head. "They were able to make us believe we had gone to Earth in our minds - to stop us from going to Earth in our bodies."

"But you don't have any memories of Earth."

"Colonel Sheppard's memories of Earth were used for both of us."

Ronon couldn't help teasing her - he had yet to get a serious rise out of her. "You were in Sheppard's head?" Teyla's expression said all the things she wasn't going to say out loud, and he grinned and stopped needling her. "So you've seen Earth."

"A small part of it." She shrugged and continued on her way back towards the city. "If it is anything like that...dream, then I am sure it will be very enjoyable."

At least she sounded like she meant it this time.

--

Act One: You Can't Take It With You

Name: Ronon Dex

Date of Birth: Fourth natal, seventy fourth census

Sex: Male

Country of origin: Sateda

Nationality: Satedan

Passport: diplomatic exemption from passport

Address of residence while in the US: Hotel Washington, 15th and Pennsylvania Ave, N.W., Washington, DC

Purpose of visit: Meet your president and joint chiefs of earth. Diplomatic embassage.

Anything to declare:
1 large Degraal stunner Mark 4.

1 small Tablosi R44 LQ small shot.

1 Degraal blade, leather hilt wrapped.

22 assorted knives and blades.

Notes:

I want them back.

--

"I can't take them with me?" Ronon looked more than a little wary at the prospect of giving up his collection of lethal weapons.

John supposed that if he was on a strange planet surrounded by people who were, if not exactly hostile, not entirely friendly, he'd be reluctant to give up his weapons, too. Unfortunately for Ronon there was no way they were going to get from the SGC to DC with them on him. "You can't take them with you on the plane. You can put them in your luggage if you want."

Elizabeth went for the more explanatory approach. "Only specifically authorised personnel are allowed to take any weaponry onto civilian flights, Ronon."

"Why?"

The SF collecting the weapons looked just a touch unnerved by the way Ronon put his knuckles down on the table and leaned forward. Nearly a year of experience had taught John that his team-mate often didn't think about being intimidating - he just was.

They'd probably have to work on that in the next, oh, ten hours before dinner.

John wasn't up on state etiquette, but he was pretty sure that having the Secret Service arrest Ronon for threatening the President would be a bad thing - even if it turned out to be a misunderstanding.

"Because six years ago, a bunch of terrorists used weapons to take four planes hostage in mid-air," Rodney answered Ronon's question from where he was leaning against the doorway. "They then flew three of the planes into major population centres, killing about ten thousand people. As a result, the FAA are rather suspicious these days."

The explanation didn't seem to make Ronon any happier.

"You know, Ronon, I have a friend who can't even take her knitting needles on a plane," Elizabeth said, in an attempt to mollify him. "And they're just plastic."

"Come on," John protested. "Everyone knows that it's all knit and purl until someone loses an eye." He grinned when he got looks from not only Elizabeth and Ronon but also the SGC armoury personnel. Still, it looked like they were used to someone's wry humour, because the eyebrows lifted but they didn't make any comments. Then again, that might just be because he outranked them. He did catch the look Ronon gave Teyla, who seemed amused, but merely shrugged before the SF addressed Teyla.

"You don't have any weaponry, ma'am?" He looked as though he expected her to produce at least one unexpected weapon.

"No," she said. "I did not bring any this trip. However, I shall consider it the next time I visit Earth." Her smile made the SF flush a little. Then he caught John's pointed look and went hurriedly back to cataloguing Ronon's collection of weaponry.

Ronon allowed himself to be separated from his weaponry, but the look he gave John said quite clearly that if a situation came up and he wasn't able to fight back, he was going to be so very pissed off.

If a situation came up where they weren't able to fight back, then John was going to be pissed off.

As they made their way through the SGC, up through the NORAD facility and out to the Academy airbase, John noted that both Teyla and Ronon were getting quite a few looks from the personnel they encountered. Not the 'Oh, my God, they're aliens' appraising looks so much as the 'damn good looking people' interested kind.

This was something he hadn't expected.

John wasn't stupid. He'd seen the admiring looks his team-mates got around Atlantis. But Atlantis was one thing: the people there knew Teyla and Ronon - worked and trained alongside them. And the expedition - and the people who came to Atlantis - knew that they were part of John's team. This was Earth - it was a whole new ball game.

"We should give them a bit of an induction," he said quietly to Elizabeth as they climbed out of the SUV at the Academy airstrip where their transport was to pick them up for flying to DC.

"What kind of induction?"

"Well, social customs aren't quite the same here as they are in Pegasus."

Elizabeth nodded. "I've already told Teyla what to expect."

That was a surprise. "You have?"

"We discussed it the other night in the commissary. I think Laura mentioned something and it got her thinking." His colleague seemed considerably less concerned about Teyla's ability to handle social situations than John. "She's a diplomat, John, socialising won't be a problem for her." Her gaze crossed over to the tallest of John's team-mates. "Ronon, on the other hand..."

John grimaced. "You're going to say that because you had a chat with Teyla, I'm supposed to have a chat with Ronon?" Her laugh was all the answer he needed. "That's nasty."

The quirk of her expression asked if she was supposed to care. John glared and went over to where Teyla was shading her eyes against the sun, watching a C-141 Starlifter take off from the tarmac. "Great, isn't it?"

She turned to him with a quick smile. "I look at your world and all the things you have done, and I wonder if my people might have achieved such things had we not run from the Wraith."

"More likely you'd be dead," John told her. Going down the 'might have been' path wasn't helpful. He'd been that way himself more than a few times after Afghanistan - hell, he'd been that way in Atlantis. There were nights he lay in bed and thought about all the lives lost because he'd killed the Wraith Caretaker and woken the Wraith.

"Ronon's people fought back."

Teyla wasn't looking for reassurance - that wasn't her way. To her, it was just a statement of what was and what might have been.

He glanced around, looking for Ronon on instinct. Finding him leaning against the SUV and grinning at Rodney and Elizabeth, John spoke quietly. "And where are they now?"

Her eyes held his for a moment, before the wind caught tendrils of her hair and turned her face back to the jet that was now a dwindling speck into the sky. "And there will be no time to see the other parts of your world," she murmured.

"Not this trip." John regretted that, too. "Maybe next time."

She gave him a brief smile before they were called back to collect their baggage. Both John and Teyla had chosen the military duffles, while Ronon had opted for a pack. Rodney and Elizabeth had little suitcases on wheels - Elizabeth's squeaked in an irritating manner.

Halfway to the plane, John turned around to check that they had everyone, and grinned to himself. They made an oddly mismatched group out here on the Academy tarmac. Rodney and Elizabeth were clearly civilians in spite of their fatigues, while nobody would mistake Ronon for Earth military in a hundred years. And then there was Teyla, who was clearly not Earth military either, but who could act enough like one to fool at first glance.

He was so used to them in Atlantis, it felt decidedly odd having them all here back on Earth.

Odd, but good.

"Something funny?" Rodney asked, suspiciously, noticing John's smile.

John beamed at Rodney and kept walking. "Nothing to worry about, Rodney. Nothing to worry about at all."

Once they were on the plane - a proper jet, not a military transport - there was a brief disagreement between Rodney and Ronon as to who got the window seat opposite Teyla. Naturally, Ronon won.

Rodney glared until Elizabeth gently pushed him into the row on the other side of the aisle and headed up towards the back of the plane with something like a sigh.

John turned back to where Teyla was leaning back in the chair and angling her head so she could see out the window, while Ronon had practically glued his nose to the pane. "And this thing flies like a 'jumper?"

He considered how to condense a textbook's worth of aerodynamics into a couple of sentences.

Rodney saved him having to bother. "Actually, it flies nothing like a jumper at all. You see the propulsion system of this jet is combustion-based in order to oppose the natural forces of gravity--"

"Yes," John interrupted, glaring briefly at the scientist before turning to Ronon. "It flies. Not quite like a 'jumper, but close."

"It's nothing like a jumper," Rodney retorted.

"For the purposes of this discussion, let's pretend it's like a jumper," John said. "You can explain all the little details of what it's really like later." He rolled his eyes at Teyla, who'd turned away from the window to watch her team-mates argue.

Elizabeth came back and took the seat across the aisle, next to Rodney, then glanced at John. "There's been a slight change of plans. When we reach DC, Teyla and I won't be heading directly to the hotel."

Definitely not expected. "Where are you going?"

Beyond him, Teyla shifted in her chair and Elizabeth's eyes slipped past him and smiled. "We'll be doing some shopping."

The twinkle in her eyes boded badly for someone's pocketbook. John remembered Teyla's awe at the shopping possibilities during that weird dream where everything and nothing had been right. That had been impressive enough for him.

In the end, John was glad it wouldn't be coming out of his account.

- TBC-

Part Two

Comments

[rokeon.livejournal.com]

22 assorted knives and blades

*trying very hard not to wake everyone with the laughing*

I like this a lot. The little things, like the character details (and the SGC personnel with their well-developed O'Neill-tolerance), but also the whole concept and the way you've written it. Can't wait to see what's next.

[tielan]

The knives are the fault of that scene in 'The Hive' about Ronon being fun at airports.

I nearly wrote the scene where he's divested of them one by one, while the guards give John the 'where did you find this guy???' looks.

[alasse-fae.livejournal.com]

ooooooooooo you need to write that missing scene!! I'll bet he's got at least three hidden in his hair....

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Seconded!

[fan-this.livejournal.com]

Did you read my mind?

:glares you suspiciously:

Because, like two or three days ago, I was all "Have Ronon and Teyla gone to Earth yet? And if yes, WHY THE HELL NOT!?"

You are spectacular and I'm excited to see the rest!

[tielan]

GMTA? *g*

Glad to have provided!

[delurker.livejournal.com]

Notes: I want them back.
Hee! That's so perfect. This is fantastic.

[tielan]

Thanks!

[slm76.livejournal.com]

Notes:

I want them back.

Classic!

[theladyofshadow.livejournal.com]

Oh, God! I loved this! I loved how Rodney tried to explain how and airplane flied and how John shut him down.

[grav-ity.livejournal.com]

Hee!

I love the part about the "onion". And the declaration was *priceless*.

This should be fun!

[doxymom.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Love the line "I want them back." LOL.

[maxbo.livejournal.com]

Your attention to character detail is absolutely brilliant. So many entertaining moments - Teyla and Ronon's conversation in the beginning, the whole security check scene, the 'damn good looking people' looks that Teyla and Ronon were receiving, much to John's dismay. The John and Elizabeth diplomacy chat, Teyla's 'what if' chat with John, John's suitcases observation, Rodney and Ronon's 'who gets the window' scuffle, Elizabeth and Teyla's girl time shopping plans, and so much more. Wonderful stuff. Now on to Part two.