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sga_flashficheaders and whatnot in part one, yeah?
The Athosians gave Ronon his own tent, so it wasn’t like he was sharing Teyla’s, exactly. It was only that he was with her so much of the time, and usually late into the night, that he kept going to sleep there. They used to share smaller shelters than that on missions, so there was nothing weird about it or anything. They mostly slept on opposite sides of the fire pit, at least for the first few weeks.
After Ronon had been there a month, hammering roofs and uprooting trees and trying to make himself useful any way he could, Teyla seemed to notice that he was moving a little slower than usual, stiffening up just the slightest bit. “We only ask so much of you because you appear not to mind it,” she said.
“I don’t mind it.”
“No one would ask you to overtax yourself.”
“I don’t mind it,” he said again. “Gives me something to focus on.”
She poked the fire for a moment, turning over ashes, smooring it down to warm red embers, and after they’d sat in tranquil silence for quite a while, she sighed and said, “Take your shirt off.” He raised his eyebrows, but the look she gave him back was pretty unamused, so he figured he’d better do what he was told. He sat cross-legged and shirtless while Teyla produced a stoppered clay jar from one of her trunks and settled behind him on her knees. Inside the jar was a substance somewhere between a gel and a cream, with a sweet, minty smell to it. It started to warm up immediately when she slathered it across his back, and he couldn’t hold back a groan when she knelt up and used her weight to bear down, the heels of her hands pressing hard into his shoulders and downward.
His eyes fluttered shut, the tent reduced to nothing but a dim red glow and the smell of candy-mint, her ungentle hands and his own shallow breathing. It wasn’t anything but a relief at first, the heat sinking into his muscles and loosening everything there, but once the soreness was mostly gone, it was hard to...keep thinking about medicine.
Not that he had much of a choice. He curled his hands into fists and rested them on his knees, trying to moderate his breathing as her hands worked downward in tandem, bracketing his spine, then pushed sharply upwards from the small of his back. After the way he’d ended things last time, he thought he’d given up the right to....
Teyla tipped her head forward so that her mouth and nose rested in the crook of his neck, and he jerked a little in surprise. She put a steadying hand on his arm, then slid it up to brush the tattoo on that side of his neck, then further up again, tracing the edge of his beard from beneath, touching the shell of his ear.
She moved back just enough to get her hands around his torso again, gliding slick and warm up his sides, and then her arms came around him and she was leaving fire-polished trails over his chest and his abdomen, a streak alongside his shoulder scar, one forming a cross with the surgery scar. He could feel her breath hot on his neck, and her breasts pushing against his back as she struggled with her own breathing.
Just when he thought he was maybe on the verge of being able to ask what she was doing, or at least what she wanted him to do next, she surprised him by reaching down for a blanket beside him and shaking it out, settling it across his lap. “I know you are – still loyal,” she said against his shoulder in a ragged, plaintive voice that made Ronon ache in whole new ways. She slid her hands under the blanket and unfastened his pants, and he stopped breathing altogether, but he still didn’t realize exactly what she wanted until she put her hand around his wrist and pried his stiff, unresponsive hand off his knee and guided it near his cock. Then she let go, adjusting the blanket around his waist and anchoring her own arms under his, her hands on his chest where they rose and fell sharply with his abrupt exhale. “Please,” she murmured just below his ear. That wasn’t what made Ronon decide to do it – he’d already decided that – but it was what shook him out of his stupid haze and made him actually uncurl his fingers and begin.
He wrapped his hand around his cock and squeezed, and it felt good but he realized right away he was going to need more, and no sooner had he thought it than Teyla was pushing the jar closer to his leg. He slipped his hand out from under the blanket and scooped some up with his fingers and, yeah, that was it exactly. But he didn’t know what he was supposed to think about – everything felt wrong, every thought in his head made it worse, made this feel like either way too much or not half enough, so he just kept his rhythm fluid and steady and let his mind fall into hunting-mode, all awareness, no stopping to think allowed. He moved his legs apart a little bit, crossing them at the ankles in a looser circle, and leaned back without thinking about who was there to hold him up.
His specialty, really, was doing this without thinking, so it wasn’t hard to tune out all the obvious questions – like was this a smart thing to do? and why would Teyla even want it like this, anyway? – and let muscle memory do its job, the basic up-and-down turning into a smooth twisting motion across the top, adding an extra little bit of textured pressure with his knuckles just under the lip of the head. And then it was just a blur of feeling, and the only thing that felt weird, momentarily, was the way her fingers dug into his chest when he arched his back and growled a little, but even that was easy to forget, since a moment later he was hanging onto his cock with all his strength, trying to protect the nice-looking blanket from the come pulsing out from between his fingers.
When he opened his eyes the fire had gone to nothing but sunset-red coals. He shivered a little, the spring night needling his bare skin, and Teyla shifted her arms around him, holding him tight and warm and lowering him to his side with his head on her thigh. She stroked his lips and his forehead and his hair, and he could feel her soft hair brushing his shoulder, and he wanted to say something, but he was afraid he knew the answer already.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sounding broken and strangely young. “I am so sorry....”
“No,” he said. “No, you don’t have to. It’s okay.” He thought about not saying anymore, but...if it would help Teyla, he thought he kind of had to. “I’m lonely, too,” he said, and she bent her head lower over him and tightened her arms around him and started to shiver herself.
*
Everyone scattered to the winds when Special Forces came through, even other soldiers; Ronon never stopped thinking it was funny, how a path would clear in front of Tyre wherever he walked, as if he were a much taller and stronger man than he was. But he was Tyre, sharp and canny and unpredictable with a predator’s smile and a predator’s grace. It didn’t hurt that he was usually followed by Ronon and Rakai, who were much taller and stronger men.
“You’ll be open late tonight,” Tyre said, tossing an envelope full of cash at the bartender. “A round for everyone here, so they can all toast my friend and his bride!”
“I really can’t stay all that late,” Ronon said. “We’ve all got to be on the train at a quarter-six, and I’m gonna look like hell if I don’t– “
That earned him a punch in each side from Rakai and Ara. Rakai made a rude noise, and Ara said, “We’ll get you on your fucking train, okay? We promise. Tonight you’re still ours, so quit whining and start drinking!”
“Hey, there’s gonna be a photoprinter there and everything, you know,” he protested, knowing it was pointless. “Do you know what her parents are going to shit if I ruin the wedding photos?”
“Fuck ‘em,” Rakai said. “You fuck their only daughter, you think they need a reason to be mad at you?”
“Just for that,” Tyre said, “we’re making you drink doubles all night long. No back-up plans tonight, love, and no saving our asses! Just drinking until we fall on them. To Ronon and his Lantern Hill girl!” he said, grabbing the closest drink off the bar, which might or might not have been put there for him to grab. “Proof positive that losing it to a Specialist can ruin the most elegant lady on the planet for life.”
Ronon growled and gave him a shove and scuffled Tyre to the floor while everyone shouted “HEY, DRINK!” and drank in his honor. Ronon had a drink, too, after he’d downed Tyre and smacked him around a little – the first of many.
By the second round, most everyone who wasn’t military had snuck out quietly. Ronon couldn’t really blame them; he was usually a few drinks behind most of his friends, so he’d had plenty of opportunities to observe what happened when Special Forces went out to celebrate, and plenty of chances to apologize and buy off the bartenders afterwards, too. Hell, even when they were stone cold sober, most Specialists had something vaguely intimidating about them, some combination of learned ruthlessness and earned arrogance that just came with the job. They wore uniforms and body armor when they were on mission, but they wore leather and knives and Wraith bones for jewelry when they were on their own, and nobody forgot them or ignored them, at least not more than once.
He wasn’t even one drink behind the pack tonight, though – nobody was going to stand for that. He was on top of the bar by eleven o’clock, singing “The Empty Flask” at the top of his lungs with Hemi and Tyre, and he barely knew where he was by twelve, except that he was dancing with Ara and he’d never been happier in his whole life. He was sure there was a reason for that, but he couldn’t quite recall at the moment.
They collapsed in a chair, Ara on his lap, and Ronon fumbled for the drink on the table beside him and nearly knocked it over. Morika was sitting on the other side of the table, and she was nursing a tankard but she must have been sober, because her arm shot out and she caught Ronon’s glass neatly before it went over. Ronon pointed at Morika but spoke to Ara, saying with deep seriousness, “She’s not drunk enough yet.”
“Oh, poor Morika,” Ara said, with her dazzling smile and her harsh, mocking voice. “And she needs it more than anyone, too. Need to borrow a little cash, Rika?”
“Fuck you, Ara,” Morika said shortly.
Ara leaned backwards, trusting Ronon’s arm to support her, and laughed loudly and giddily. She sat up again, wiping her eyes on her sleeve and said, “Poor, sad Rika. Try to have a little fun, yeah? Ronon, take her dancing, would you?”
“Yeah, sure,” Ronon said amiably, swinging Ara off his lap and coming around to Morika’s side. “Come on,” he said, taking her wrists in his hands. She shook her head, not looking at him. “Come on,” he said again, pulling at her. “Don’t be scared, I’m not that drunk, I won’t let you get hurt. Don’t I always have your back, love?”
“Don’t,” she said shortly, trying to pull her wrists back, but Ronon kicked her chair out and grabbed her by the waist. He thought she’d give in and let him have a dance then, but she fought him like a snake, twisting and spitting at him until he let her go.
“Rika, what’s wrong?” he said, starting to reach for her arm but stopping himself in time. “Are you mad at me?”
Ara slid behind him, throwing an arm over his shoulder and ducking under his other arm. “You’re such a stupid bitch, Morika,” she said, her voice all pleasure and poison. “You know our pretty, pretty professor would never marry a soldier girl – he’d never even fuck one! You’d settle for that, but he’s not the type who’d ever settle for you, is he?”
“Fuck you!” Morika yelled, and it was all Ronon could do to get out of the way before she flung herself at Ara and slammed her down to the table amidst the crash of chairs and glasses.
It seemed to happen pretty fast, but apparently people had time to get their bets in, because there was money changing hands by the time Tyre and Rakai dragged them apart, Rakai wrapped around Ara in a bear-hug, Tyre holding Morika’s arms roughly behind her.
“Stop, stop it,” Ronon said, holding out one hand toward each of them. “Please, come on. You guys are my family. I know you’re all mental, but can you – not crack up on me right before my wedding, please? I need you guys.”
The rest of the night was always a blur in Ronon’s memory afterwards. He knew they left the bar, but he wasn’t sure where they went – hopefully somewhere mostly private, because he remembered Ara and Rakai fucking each other hard and competitive (nothing new there), and he remembered his own arm around Tyre and Morika tangled between both of them. He thought he pushed her dreads aside and nuzzled her neck while Tyre kissed her for hours, years, and he thought he remembered holding her hips in between his hands while Tyre straddled her thighs and worked his hand inside her pants. He was almost positive he remembered her high, plaintive cries, and Tyre’s mist-faint kiss brushing the corner of his eye.
He had no idea how they got hold of an inksmith so late at night, but they were wearing bones and weapons, five Wraith-killers from Special Forces with blood in their eyes and the smell of rum and sex all over them, and what they wanted, they got. “This one,” Tyre said, pointing to an Ancient symbol that Ronon thought he remembered from school meant something like loyalty or devotion. “That’s a good omen for a marriage, isn’t it?” Tyre murmured just for him to hear, and Ronon sort of thought there was something wrong with the logic, but he agreed anyway, because he’d always been loyal to Melena, always devoted to her and no other woman, never wanted anything else.
At the last minute he balked at the placement, because the other four had gone first and gotten it on their necks, but he couldn’t do that. He wasn’t sure why, just that Melena would be pissed at him – something about the photoprints? – and he tried to get out of the chair, insisting that he wanted it on the back of his neck instead, where his hair would cover it. But Tyre put his knee between Ronon’s legs and his hand on Ronon’s chest and his other hand over Ronon’s mouth, pulling his head to the side and leaning down to whisper into his ear, “No, like this, you’re ours. Let everyone see how all of you are mine,” and Ronon shuddered and closed his eyes and gave in. He didn’t feel the needles at all.
Because Special Forces always carried out their objectives, they were all even on the train at a quarter-six, half-conscious with their good wedding clothes spilling crumpled out of their baggage, but there. Kell was the last to come aboard, and he looked around the car, taking them all in, and then sat down and shook out his newspaper with a small, wordless smile.
The jacket Ronon had chosen months ago for the wedding had a high collar on it, high enough to hide the tattoo, even though it rubbed the raw marks painfully even through the gauze Melena taped over it. She winced a little when they were finally alone and she could unbutton his jacket and loosen his shirtcollar and peel the gauze back to check on it. “That has to hurt,” she said.
“Nah,” he lied. “I’m...I’m sorry, though,” he said, because now that he was just hungover and not drunk out of his head, he could figure out exactly why he shouldn’t have done this.
Melena sighed and brushed his hair back behind his shoulder. “Never mind,” she said. “I know there will always be...things you can share with your friends that I wouldn’t...understand. In the same way. I mean, yes, I wish you hadn’t all decided that this was the appropriate moment to make a point of that, but – I did already know.”
“They don’t know me like you do,” Ronon promised, wrapping her hands up in his. “Nobody does. They’ve got my back, but Lena, you’re inside me. You always have been.”
“I know,” she said, the corner of her mouth curving dangerously, beautifully. “That’s why they’re so damned jealous of me. It’s annoying, but I suppose it’s a compliment, in a way.”
“I love you,” Ronon said, pulling her close and bending his head down to her shoulder. “I’m going to be married to you forever,” he marveled, just to hear it out loud, just to let everything else in the world dissolve into nothing inside the reality of that. “You’re my wife forever, nothing can change that now.”
“Come on, come here,” she said, her voice softly gleeful as she pulled him to the bed, trying to ignore the clumsiness of her long skirt as she wrapped her legs around his hips. “You’re never getting rid of me now,” she said between breathless kisses, her mouth curving against his in a joyful, wicked smile. He laughed and ran his hands up under her skirt and around to cup her ass and pull her tighter against him, and that was the only kind of loyalty he cared about that night, the only dedication that could possibly matter at all.
*
Ronon didn’t care for Earth clothes. Most of them were angular and dull; uniforms were designed not to say anything much about you beyond the obvious, but he had no idea why the Earth civilians and the off-duty military always seemed to design their wardrobes to look as much like uniforms as possible.
It was just a matter of bad taste, though, and he didn’t give it a lot of thought – didn’t think he really cared one way or another until they put him in an underground room on Earth and wouldn’t let him out to help his friend until he put on the clothes they gave him.
He yanked his own clothes off roughly and tossed them in the corner, then stared at the new set lying folded on a metal chair, and something – something started to happen to him, some slow drumbeat of banked panic that he didn’t understand. They were just fucking clothes – ugly clothes, okay, but....
He approached cautiously, as if they were rigged to explode, and he picked up the pants. They weren’t – so bad. They went on easier than leather, but they had something like a shape to them that held, not just flat and straight like Earth uniform pants. He buttoned and zipped them, then glanced at himself in the mirror. He didn’t know what he was being so jumpy about. They were fine, they were okay. They were just pants.
But he still must have been a little – something, because he was slow in untying his wrist guards and laying them on top of his belt and holster, and his heartbeat picked up erratically again when he took off his necklaces and added them to the pile. He looked at the mirror again, and his fingers went thoughtlessly to the Hand of Victory, which stood out a lot more once it wasn’t half-covered by the wrist guards.
He shook himself off. He was acting like a crazy person, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have anywhere to be. He told himself to hurry up and pulled on the shirt, and suddenly he was overwhelmed by sense memory. Just the feel of it, soft-crisp and clean, cool against his skin, and he was there again, he was home. It wasn’t any different to the touch than the shirt he’d worn when his mother died, when he left for the Infantry, than the new shirt he bought when he came home again – the one he wore at his wedding. He fumbled with the buttons on the cuffs, and that felt familiar, too. Much as he’d preferred the kind that laced up, most of the time he hadn’t had time to mess around with that. Most of his shirts buttoned at the sleeve – or did, before he’d stopped wearing civilian shirts altogether and begun to live in the sleek, fitted styles that Special Forces always favored. He touched the tattoo on his neck that this jacket wasn’t cut to hide.
The jacket wasn’t any better – didn’t feel any less Satedan than one of his old formal jackets or informal vests – but Ronon gritted his teeth put it on anyway. He started to button it, but that was too much, he couldn’t handle that somehow, and he left it undone like he never would have back home.
Ronon looked down at his arms, his hands – looked in the mirror at himself and felt everything slide out of place, all the pieces come unhinged. His old life, his new life. Infantry, Special Forces, the Runner, the Lantean – Hartoren and Soren and Kell, Sheppard and Tyre – Lena and Teyla. The rail station at Tanoa, the house at the bottom of Lantern Hill, the bombing of Honor Ford, the ruins of Yendikai. I can give you the Wraith. We could use a guy like you, and you look like you could use a place to stay. I’m going to be married to you forever. The way I see it, now that we’re back together, you belong with us. You have your mother’s airs. It was all coming undone, or maybe crashing together.
He braced one hand on the wall to steady himself, and when he looked up, he was looking at his reflection in the mirror. He touched the mark on his neck, one more sliver of his history that didn’t seem to line up with everything else anymore, one shard out of a thousand that didn’t end up adding up to a whole self. Loyalty. I know you are still loyal.
McKay.
He straightened up and turned his back on the mirror, still feeling like someone had pried his skin off, turned it inside out, and given it back to him to wear, but he still had the same armor he’d had since he was sixteen years old: his anger.
“I’m gonna need something for this,” he said, hefting his gun in his hand as he came out of the room.
Sheppard let his chair drop to all four legs and stood up. “Finally. I was starting to wonder what was going on in there.”
“Don’t talk to me right now,” Ronon growled. “Somebody just find me a fucking holster so we can get moving.”
*
He wore his Special Forces uniform to see Kell, but he stopped on the way home and changed, because Melena was leaving and he wasn’t, and that meant this might be the last time they ever saw each other. He didn’t want her to remember him as the soldier she’d never wanted him to become. If she never laid eyes on him again in this life, he wanted to be, today, the man she’d married.
He didn’t want to be an asshole, either, but he was carrying around so much terror and anger that he could barely stand up underneath it, and then when he got home and saw her by the window, so soft and pensive, her curly hair shining in the morning light, the knowledge of everything he was losing hit him at once and he had no grace left, no kindness, nothing but contempt for what his life had become. Save the fucking world. Right.
“What are you doing?” he snapped.
She turned to look at him, but that brain of hers was a million stars away – or a mile and a half, the distance from their front door to the Hope trauma ward. “I’m listening to the Chieftian’s speech,” she said, still distracted.
“Why aren’t you packing?” he said, tossing her luggage on the bed and throwing whatever of hers came to hand into it. She wore her uniform now more often than he wore his. She hardly had anything else to pack. “I traded every last thing we have to get you on Kell’s personal staff.”
“He’s a criminal!” she snapped, as if Ronon didn’t fucking know that by now. Everything Kell had ever promised him had been a lie or a swindle, and now all he had left in the world was stacked up on the chance that this one time, Kell wouldn’t let him down. “He’s using people’s fear for his own gain.”
“He’s a commander, and his staff gets to go through the Ring.”
“The hospital’s going to need me,” she said, already beginning to cry.
Ronon swiped a candlestick off the dresser and slammed the drawer shut. What he wouldn’t fucking give for enough time to sit down with her on their bed, to hold onto her and pretend he wasn’t crying with her. Instead he yelled at her. “There’s not going to be any need for hospitals, Melena! That’s just a bunch of words, meant to make the people who don’t get to leave think there’s a chance for them. We shot down two ships that came through the Ring – two small ships. Do you really think that’s all they’re going to send?” It had been two years and nine months since the day that Kell had promised him the Wraith were on their way, and that Ronon could have his life back, if only he’d promise to be there, standing against them when they did.
“Of course not,” she said, breathing in jerkily. Trying to stay calm in front of him, to be strong.
“Ships as big as our city have attacked other planets. No one that stays here is going to survive.”
She did start to cry then, in spite of it all. “Then why are you staying?”
He stopped moving for a minute, hearing Kell’s voice in his head. I can teach you how to use everything you were born with to do the only thing worth doing. So Kell was a liar and a con artist. Could it still be that he’d made Ronon believe that one thing and keep on believing it right up to the end? And if so, what did that make all of this – delusions of grandeur? Some kind of stupid fucking vanity? “I have no choice,” he said tightly. Because there was always duty. He’d lost the rest of them – Ara, Tyre, Morika, Rakai – he’d already lost almost everything that mattered most, but he had a squad waiting for him, seven other Specialists who weren’t even thinking about running now. He must owe something to them.
“Yes, you do!” She could always sense it when she was hitting her target with him, and suddenly she wasn’t crying at all, just coming toward him and harrying him like exactly what she’d always been: the piece of his soul that he might not ever let speak out loud if it wasn’t for her. “You believe in this fight! You know that they’ll eventually find us, no matter where we go. Our only hope is to show them that we’re not worth the effort, to go feed on some other planet that won’t fight back as hard as we will.”
He tried to walk away and she grabbed him by the arm, calling his name. He looked down at her hand on his sleeve, then back at her face. “You can’t run forever,” she said, and he didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t plan to run at all.
All he could do was look into the face of the one woman he’d loved since they were kids, the only thing he thought he’d ever be willing to give his life for, and hope that if this was the last time they ever saw each other, she wouldn’t remember him as a soldier, or as a coward, either.
If all he ever was to her was the music teacher’s son...he thought, after all, that would probably really be enough for him.
*
When the moon was full on their homeworld, the Athosians celebrated their Tendol feast. It was okay, in Ronon’s opinion; ruus wine was a little sweet for his tastes, but he liked the dancing, and it was always nice, in a life like this one, to see people smiling for no real reason. They’d partied twice as hard on Atlantea with its two moons, but on New Athos they were back down to just the one, which was ironic, because traveling by Gate rather than jumper, it was actually easier for Teyla to be there for each one now.
The full moon after the winter solstice was always a Grand Tendol. Ronon had never been to one of those, but he got the impression that they were a little more solemn than the regular ones, more like Regency Day back home. He didn’t know for sure if there was still dancing.
He knew Teyla was going because he saw her name on the clearance roster for Gate activation. What he didn’t know was how the fuck she’d gotten Sheppard to clear her to go by herself. Maybe she went over his head; she and Carter were pretty tight lately. Actually, a lot of the women on Atlantis seemed ten times more fascinated by Teyla than they had before she was pregnant.
She was struggling with the laces at the waist of her green and gold velvet dress when he showed up to see her. “Need a hand?” he said, gently taking the laces from her fingers.
Teyla frowned in frustration – not with him, he didn’t think. He undid what she’d already tried to do, loosening the bodice all the way and untwisting the laces before starting again, running them back and forth, overlapping each other. “I do not know that it will fit at all,” she said in resignation.
It was pretty tight – not just around the new shape of her belly, but in the chest, too – but the laces were pretty long. It might not fit exactly like it was supposed to, but Ronon thought he could make it work. “I got it,” he said.
When he was finished, she turned around to face him, smoothing her unbound hair back in an unlikely nervous gesture. Since when did he make her nervous? A lot of things, but never that. “You think this is a good idea?” he said quietly. She raised an eyebrow. “I mean....” There was really no good way to say it. “What’s the point?”
“New Athos is our home now,” she said, lifting her chin. “I am going home for the Grand Tendol, as I always do.”
“There’s nobody there,” he said gently.
“Nevertheless,” she said, so crisp she was brittle.
She tried to turn away, moving her attention toward the hiking pack on her bed, but he caught her face in his hands. She jerked a little, but didn’t exactly jerk away. She just looked up at him, that brain of hers for once not a million stars away at all, but right here with him. “It’s probably not safe for you to go alone,” he said. She rolled her eyes and began to lean back, out of his grasp. “How could it not hurt more?” he said, the words spilling out in an awkward hurry. He wanted her to stop right away. He wanted to leave his fingers on her skin for as long as possible. For as long as....
“If there is no one but me to carry on my people’s ways....” she began, trying for reasonable. But she couldn’t finish her sentence. Her eyes flooded in the space of a blink, and just that fast, there was a tear on each one of his hands. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to lift her sleeve up to her eyes. “I am prone to – pregnancy has given me a tendency to– “
He got there first and rubbed the tear tracks away with the edge of his long sleeves. “Don’t go alone,” he said. Her eyes flickered up to his, and it was still terrifying, and it still hurt, maybe more than a little, but – whoever told him that it was supposed to be easier than this, anyway? What did that even mean?
He breathed in, thinking courage, thinking victory, thinking devotion, and then he breathed out again and said, “Ask me.” She tilted her head, looking at him strangely. Ronon felt himself smile down at her, and he said again in a gently teasing voice, “Ask me.”
If she knew what.... She had to know. He had to believe she knew it as well as he did.
The silence went on and on, just long enough to test his certainty a little. But then she looked down shyly and up again slyly, bit her lip fleetingly, and said, “Will you come to the Grand Tendol with me, Ronon Dex?”
“Yeah,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist as she put her hands up to his hair. The velvet slid against his skin, and underneath the softness and the hardness that had always been Teyla to him. “Yes,” he said.
The Athosians gave Ronon his own tent, so it wasn’t like he was sharing Teyla’s, exactly. It was only that he was with her so much of the time, and usually late into the night, that he kept going to sleep there. They used to share smaller shelters than that on missions, so there was nothing weird about it or anything. They mostly slept on opposite sides of the fire pit, at least for the first few weeks.
After Ronon had been there a month, hammering roofs and uprooting trees and trying to make himself useful any way he could, Teyla seemed to notice that he was moving a little slower than usual, stiffening up just the slightest bit. “We only ask so much of you because you appear not to mind it,” she said.
“I don’t mind it.”
“No one would ask you to overtax yourself.”
“I don’t mind it,” he said again. “Gives me something to focus on.”
She poked the fire for a moment, turning over ashes, smooring it down to warm red embers, and after they’d sat in tranquil silence for quite a while, she sighed and said, “Take your shirt off.” He raised his eyebrows, but the look she gave him back was pretty unamused, so he figured he’d better do what he was told. He sat cross-legged and shirtless while Teyla produced a stoppered clay jar from one of her trunks and settled behind him on her knees. Inside the jar was a substance somewhere between a gel and a cream, with a sweet, minty smell to it. It started to warm up immediately when she slathered it across his back, and he couldn’t hold back a groan when she knelt up and used her weight to bear down, the heels of her hands pressing hard into his shoulders and downward.
His eyes fluttered shut, the tent reduced to nothing but a dim red glow and the smell of candy-mint, her ungentle hands and his own shallow breathing. It wasn’t anything but a relief at first, the heat sinking into his muscles and loosening everything there, but once the soreness was mostly gone, it was hard to...keep thinking about medicine.
Not that he had much of a choice. He curled his hands into fists and rested them on his knees, trying to moderate his breathing as her hands worked downward in tandem, bracketing his spine, then pushed sharply upwards from the small of his back. After the way he’d ended things last time, he thought he’d given up the right to....
Teyla tipped her head forward so that her mouth and nose rested in the crook of his neck, and he jerked a little in surprise. She put a steadying hand on his arm, then slid it up to brush the tattoo on that side of his neck, then further up again, tracing the edge of his beard from beneath, touching the shell of his ear.
She moved back just enough to get her hands around his torso again, gliding slick and warm up his sides, and then her arms came around him and she was leaving fire-polished trails over his chest and his abdomen, a streak alongside his shoulder scar, one forming a cross with the surgery scar. He could feel her breath hot on his neck, and her breasts pushing against his back as she struggled with her own breathing.
Just when he thought he was maybe on the verge of being able to ask what she was doing, or at least what she wanted him to do next, she surprised him by reaching down for a blanket beside him and shaking it out, settling it across his lap. “I know you are – still loyal,” she said against his shoulder in a ragged, plaintive voice that made Ronon ache in whole new ways. She slid her hands under the blanket and unfastened his pants, and he stopped breathing altogether, but he still didn’t realize exactly what she wanted until she put her hand around his wrist and pried his stiff, unresponsive hand off his knee and guided it near his cock. Then she let go, adjusting the blanket around his waist and anchoring her own arms under his, her hands on his chest where they rose and fell sharply with his abrupt exhale. “Please,” she murmured just below his ear. That wasn’t what made Ronon decide to do it – he’d already decided that – but it was what shook him out of his stupid haze and made him actually uncurl his fingers and begin.
He wrapped his hand around his cock and squeezed, and it felt good but he realized right away he was going to need more, and no sooner had he thought it than Teyla was pushing the jar closer to his leg. He slipped his hand out from under the blanket and scooped some up with his fingers and, yeah, that was it exactly. But he didn’t know what he was supposed to think about – everything felt wrong, every thought in his head made it worse, made this feel like either way too much or not half enough, so he just kept his rhythm fluid and steady and let his mind fall into hunting-mode, all awareness, no stopping to think allowed. He moved his legs apart a little bit, crossing them at the ankles in a looser circle, and leaned back without thinking about who was there to hold him up.
His specialty, really, was doing this without thinking, so it wasn’t hard to tune out all the obvious questions – like was this a smart thing to do? and why would Teyla even want it like this, anyway? – and let muscle memory do its job, the basic up-and-down turning into a smooth twisting motion across the top, adding an extra little bit of textured pressure with his knuckles just under the lip of the head. And then it was just a blur of feeling, and the only thing that felt weird, momentarily, was the way her fingers dug into his chest when he arched his back and growled a little, but even that was easy to forget, since a moment later he was hanging onto his cock with all his strength, trying to protect the nice-looking blanket from the come pulsing out from between his fingers.
When he opened his eyes the fire had gone to nothing but sunset-red coals. He shivered a little, the spring night needling his bare skin, and Teyla shifted her arms around him, holding him tight and warm and lowering him to his side with his head on her thigh. She stroked his lips and his forehead and his hair, and he could feel her soft hair brushing his shoulder, and he wanted to say something, but he was afraid he knew the answer already.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sounding broken and strangely young. “I am so sorry....”
“No,” he said. “No, you don’t have to. It’s okay.” He thought about not saying anymore, but...if it would help Teyla, he thought he kind of had to. “I’m lonely, too,” he said, and she bent her head lower over him and tightened her arms around him and started to shiver herself.
*
Everyone scattered to the winds when Special Forces came through, even other soldiers; Ronon never stopped thinking it was funny, how a path would clear in front of Tyre wherever he walked, as if he were a much taller and stronger man than he was. But he was Tyre, sharp and canny and unpredictable with a predator’s smile and a predator’s grace. It didn’t hurt that he was usually followed by Ronon and Rakai, who were much taller and stronger men.
“You’ll be open late tonight,” Tyre said, tossing an envelope full of cash at the bartender. “A round for everyone here, so they can all toast my friend and his bride!”
“I really can’t stay all that late,” Ronon said. “We’ve all got to be on the train at a quarter-six, and I’m gonna look like hell if I don’t– “
That earned him a punch in each side from Rakai and Ara. Rakai made a rude noise, and Ara said, “We’ll get you on your fucking train, okay? We promise. Tonight you’re still ours, so quit whining and start drinking!”
“Hey, there’s gonna be a photoprinter there and everything, you know,” he protested, knowing it was pointless. “Do you know what her parents are going to shit if I ruin the wedding photos?”
“Fuck ‘em,” Rakai said. “You fuck their only daughter, you think they need a reason to be mad at you?”
“Just for that,” Tyre said, “we’re making you drink doubles all night long. No back-up plans tonight, love, and no saving our asses! Just drinking until we fall on them. To Ronon and his Lantern Hill girl!” he said, grabbing the closest drink off the bar, which might or might not have been put there for him to grab. “Proof positive that losing it to a Specialist can ruin the most elegant lady on the planet for life.”
Ronon growled and gave him a shove and scuffled Tyre to the floor while everyone shouted “HEY, DRINK!” and drank in his honor. Ronon had a drink, too, after he’d downed Tyre and smacked him around a little – the first of many.
By the second round, most everyone who wasn’t military had snuck out quietly. Ronon couldn’t really blame them; he was usually a few drinks behind most of his friends, so he’d had plenty of opportunities to observe what happened when Special Forces went out to celebrate, and plenty of chances to apologize and buy off the bartenders afterwards, too. Hell, even when they were stone cold sober, most Specialists had something vaguely intimidating about them, some combination of learned ruthlessness and earned arrogance that just came with the job. They wore uniforms and body armor when they were on mission, but they wore leather and knives and Wraith bones for jewelry when they were on their own, and nobody forgot them or ignored them, at least not more than once.
He wasn’t even one drink behind the pack tonight, though – nobody was going to stand for that. He was on top of the bar by eleven o’clock, singing “The Empty Flask” at the top of his lungs with Hemi and Tyre, and he barely knew where he was by twelve, except that he was dancing with Ara and he’d never been happier in his whole life. He was sure there was a reason for that, but he couldn’t quite recall at the moment.
They collapsed in a chair, Ara on his lap, and Ronon fumbled for the drink on the table beside him and nearly knocked it over. Morika was sitting on the other side of the table, and she was nursing a tankard but she must have been sober, because her arm shot out and she caught Ronon’s glass neatly before it went over. Ronon pointed at Morika but spoke to Ara, saying with deep seriousness, “She’s not drunk enough yet.”
“Oh, poor Morika,” Ara said, with her dazzling smile and her harsh, mocking voice. “And she needs it more than anyone, too. Need to borrow a little cash, Rika?”
“Fuck you, Ara,” Morika said shortly.
Ara leaned backwards, trusting Ronon’s arm to support her, and laughed loudly and giddily. She sat up again, wiping her eyes on her sleeve and said, “Poor, sad Rika. Try to have a little fun, yeah? Ronon, take her dancing, would you?”
“Yeah, sure,” Ronon said amiably, swinging Ara off his lap and coming around to Morika’s side. “Come on,” he said, taking her wrists in his hands. She shook her head, not looking at him. “Come on,” he said again, pulling at her. “Don’t be scared, I’m not that drunk, I won’t let you get hurt. Don’t I always have your back, love?”
“Don’t,” she said shortly, trying to pull her wrists back, but Ronon kicked her chair out and grabbed her by the waist. He thought she’d give in and let him have a dance then, but she fought him like a snake, twisting and spitting at him until he let her go.
“Rika, what’s wrong?” he said, starting to reach for her arm but stopping himself in time. “Are you mad at me?”
Ara slid behind him, throwing an arm over his shoulder and ducking under his other arm. “You’re such a stupid bitch, Morika,” she said, her voice all pleasure and poison. “You know our pretty, pretty professor would never marry a soldier girl – he’d never even fuck one! You’d settle for that, but he’s not the type who’d ever settle for you, is he?”
“Fuck you!” Morika yelled, and it was all Ronon could do to get out of the way before she flung herself at Ara and slammed her down to the table amidst the crash of chairs and glasses.
It seemed to happen pretty fast, but apparently people had time to get their bets in, because there was money changing hands by the time Tyre and Rakai dragged them apart, Rakai wrapped around Ara in a bear-hug, Tyre holding Morika’s arms roughly behind her.
“Stop, stop it,” Ronon said, holding out one hand toward each of them. “Please, come on. You guys are my family. I know you’re all mental, but can you – not crack up on me right before my wedding, please? I need you guys.”
The rest of the night was always a blur in Ronon’s memory afterwards. He knew they left the bar, but he wasn’t sure where they went – hopefully somewhere mostly private, because he remembered Ara and Rakai fucking each other hard and competitive (nothing new there), and he remembered his own arm around Tyre and Morika tangled between both of them. He thought he pushed her dreads aside and nuzzled her neck while Tyre kissed her for hours, years, and he thought he remembered holding her hips in between his hands while Tyre straddled her thighs and worked his hand inside her pants. He was almost positive he remembered her high, plaintive cries, and Tyre’s mist-faint kiss brushing the corner of his eye.
He had no idea how they got hold of an inksmith so late at night, but they were wearing bones and weapons, five Wraith-killers from Special Forces with blood in their eyes and the smell of rum and sex all over them, and what they wanted, they got. “This one,” Tyre said, pointing to an Ancient symbol that Ronon thought he remembered from school meant something like loyalty or devotion. “That’s a good omen for a marriage, isn’t it?” Tyre murmured just for him to hear, and Ronon sort of thought there was something wrong with the logic, but he agreed anyway, because he’d always been loyal to Melena, always devoted to her and no other woman, never wanted anything else.
At the last minute he balked at the placement, because the other four had gone first and gotten it on their necks, but he couldn’t do that. He wasn’t sure why, just that Melena would be pissed at him – something about the photoprints? – and he tried to get out of the chair, insisting that he wanted it on the back of his neck instead, where his hair would cover it. But Tyre put his knee between Ronon’s legs and his hand on Ronon’s chest and his other hand over Ronon’s mouth, pulling his head to the side and leaning down to whisper into his ear, “No, like this, you’re ours. Let everyone see how all of you are mine,” and Ronon shuddered and closed his eyes and gave in. He didn’t feel the needles at all.
Because Special Forces always carried out their objectives, they were all even on the train at a quarter-six, half-conscious with their good wedding clothes spilling crumpled out of their baggage, but there. Kell was the last to come aboard, and he looked around the car, taking them all in, and then sat down and shook out his newspaper with a small, wordless smile.
The jacket Ronon had chosen months ago for the wedding had a high collar on it, high enough to hide the tattoo, even though it rubbed the raw marks painfully even through the gauze Melena taped over it. She winced a little when they were finally alone and she could unbutton his jacket and loosen his shirtcollar and peel the gauze back to check on it. “That has to hurt,” she said.
“Nah,” he lied. “I’m...I’m sorry, though,” he said, because now that he was just hungover and not drunk out of his head, he could figure out exactly why he shouldn’t have done this.
Melena sighed and brushed his hair back behind his shoulder. “Never mind,” she said. “I know there will always be...things you can share with your friends that I wouldn’t...understand. In the same way. I mean, yes, I wish you hadn’t all decided that this was the appropriate moment to make a point of that, but – I did already know.”
“They don’t know me like you do,” Ronon promised, wrapping her hands up in his. “Nobody does. They’ve got my back, but Lena, you’re inside me. You always have been.”
“I know,” she said, the corner of her mouth curving dangerously, beautifully. “That’s why they’re so damned jealous of me. It’s annoying, but I suppose it’s a compliment, in a way.”
“I love you,” Ronon said, pulling her close and bending his head down to her shoulder. “I’m going to be married to you forever,” he marveled, just to hear it out loud, just to let everything else in the world dissolve into nothing inside the reality of that. “You’re my wife forever, nothing can change that now.”
“Come on, come here,” she said, her voice softly gleeful as she pulled him to the bed, trying to ignore the clumsiness of her long skirt as she wrapped her legs around his hips. “You’re never getting rid of me now,” she said between breathless kisses, her mouth curving against his in a joyful, wicked smile. He laughed and ran his hands up under her skirt and around to cup her ass and pull her tighter against him, and that was the only kind of loyalty he cared about that night, the only dedication that could possibly matter at all.
*
Ronon didn’t care for Earth clothes. Most of them were angular and dull; uniforms were designed not to say anything much about you beyond the obvious, but he had no idea why the Earth civilians and the off-duty military always seemed to design their wardrobes to look as much like uniforms as possible.
It was just a matter of bad taste, though, and he didn’t give it a lot of thought – didn’t think he really cared one way or another until they put him in an underground room on Earth and wouldn’t let him out to help his friend until he put on the clothes they gave him.
He yanked his own clothes off roughly and tossed them in the corner, then stared at the new set lying folded on a metal chair, and something – something started to happen to him, some slow drumbeat of banked panic that he didn’t understand. They were just fucking clothes – ugly clothes, okay, but....
He approached cautiously, as if they were rigged to explode, and he picked up the pants. They weren’t – so bad. They went on easier than leather, but they had something like a shape to them that held, not just flat and straight like Earth uniform pants. He buttoned and zipped them, then glanced at himself in the mirror. He didn’t know what he was being so jumpy about. They were fine, they were okay. They were just pants.
But he still must have been a little – something, because he was slow in untying his wrist guards and laying them on top of his belt and holster, and his heartbeat picked up erratically again when he took off his necklaces and added them to the pile. He looked at the mirror again, and his fingers went thoughtlessly to the Hand of Victory, which stood out a lot more once it wasn’t half-covered by the wrist guards.
He shook himself off. He was acting like a crazy person, and it wasn’t like he didn’t have anywhere to be. He told himself to hurry up and pulled on the shirt, and suddenly he was overwhelmed by sense memory. Just the feel of it, soft-crisp and clean, cool against his skin, and he was there again, he was home. It wasn’t any different to the touch than the shirt he’d worn when his mother died, when he left for the Infantry, than the new shirt he bought when he came home again – the one he wore at his wedding. He fumbled with the buttons on the cuffs, and that felt familiar, too. Much as he’d preferred the kind that laced up, most of the time he hadn’t had time to mess around with that. Most of his shirts buttoned at the sleeve – or did, before he’d stopped wearing civilian shirts altogether and begun to live in the sleek, fitted styles that Special Forces always favored. He touched the tattoo on his neck that this jacket wasn’t cut to hide.
The jacket wasn’t any better – didn’t feel any less Satedan than one of his old formal jackets or informal vests – but Ronon gritted his teeth put it on anyway. He started to button it, but that was too much, he couldn’t handle that somehow, and he left it undone like he never would have back home.
Ronon looked down at his arms, his hands – looked in the mirror at himself and felt everything slide out of place, all the pieces come unhinged. His old life, his new life. Infantry, Special Forces, the Runner, the Lantean – Hartoren and Soren and Kell, Sheppard and Tyre – Lena and Teyla. The rail station at Tanoa, the house at the bottom of Lantern Hill, the bombing of Honor Ford, the ruins of Yendikai. I can give you the Wraith. We could use a guy like you, and you look like you could use a place to stay. I’m going to be married to you forever. The way I see it, now that we’re back together, you belong with us. You have your mother’s airs. It was all coming undone, or maybe crashing together.
He braced one hand on the wall to steady himself, and when he looked up, he was looking at his reflection in the mirror. He touched the mark on his neck, one more sliver of his history that didn’t seem to line up with everything else anymore, one shard out of a thousand that didn’t end up adding up to a whole self. Loyalty. I know you are still loyal.
McKay.
He straightened up and turned his back on the mirror, still feeling like someone had pried his skin off, turned it inside out, and given it back to him to wear, but he still had the same armor he’d had since he was sixteen years old: his anger.
“I’m gonna need something for this,” he said, hefting his gun in his hand as he came out of the room.
Sheppard let his chair drop to all four legs and stood up. “Finally. I was starting to wonder what was going on in there.”
“Don’t talk to me right now,” Ronon growled. “Somebody just find me a fucking holster so we can get moving.”
*
He wore his Special Forces uniform to see Kell, but he stopped on the way home and changed, because Melena was leaving and he wasn’t, and that meant this might be the last time they ever saw each other. He didn’t want her to remember him as the soldier she’d never wanted him to become. If she never laid eyes on him again in this life, he wanted to be, today, the man she’d married.
He didn’t want to be an asshole, either, but he was carrying around so much terror and anger that he could barely stand up underneath it, and then when he got home and saw her by the window, so soft and pensive, her curly hair shining in the morning light, the knowledge of everything he was losing hit him at once and he had no grace left, no kindness, nothing but contempt for what his life had become. Save the fucking world. Right.
“What are you doing?” he snapped.
She turned to look at him, but that brain of hers was a million stars away – or a mile and a half, the distance from their front door to the Hope trauma ward. “I’m listening to the Chieftian’s speech,” she said, still distracted.
“Why aren’t you packing?” he said, tossing her luggage on the bed and throwing whatever of hers came to hand into it. She wore her uniform now more often than he wore his. She hardly had anything else to pack. “I traded every last thing we have to get you on Kell’s personal staff.”
“He’s a criminal!” she snapped, as if Ronon didn’t fucking know that by now. Everything Kell had ever promised him had been a lie or a swindle, and now all he had left in the world was stacked up on the chance that this one time, Kell wouldn’t let him down. “He’s using people’s fear for his own gain.”
“He’s a commander, and his staff gets to go through the Ring.”
“The hospital’s going to need me,” she said, already beginning to cry.
Ronon swiped a candlestick off the dresser and slammed the drawer shut. What he wouldn’t fucking give for enough time to sit down with her on their bed, to hold onto her and pretend he wasn’t crying with her. Instead he yelled at her. “There’s not going to be any need for hospitals, Melena! That’s just a bunch of words, meant to make the people who don’t get to leave think there’s a chance for them. We shot down two ships that came through the Ring – two small ships. Do you really think that’s all they’re going to send?” It had been two years and nine months since the day that Kell had promised him the Wraith were on their way, and that Ronon could have his life back, if only he’d promise to be there, standing against them when they did.
“Of course not,” she said, breathing in jerkily. Trying to stay calm in front of him, to be strong.
“Ships as big as our city have attacked other planets. No one that stays here is going to survive.”
She did start to cry then, in spite of it all. “Then why are you staying?”
He stopped moving for a minute, hearing Kell’s voice in his head. I can teach you how to use everything you were born with to do the only thing worth doing. So Kell was a liar and a con artist. Could it still be that he’d made Ronon believe that one thing and keep on believing it right up to the end? And if so, what did that make all of this – delusions of grandeur? Some kind of stupid fucking vanity? “I have no choice,” he said tightly. Because there was always duty. He’d lost the rest of them – Ara, Tyre, Morika, Rakai – he’d already lost almost everything that mattered most, but he had a squad waiting for him, seven other Specialists who weren’t even thinking about running now. He must owe something to them.
“Yes, you do!” She could always sense it when she was hitting her target with him, and suddenly she wasn’t crying at all, just coming toward him and harrying him like exactly what she’d always been: the piece of his soul that he might not ever let speak out loud if it wasn’t for her. “You believe in this fight! You know that they’ll eventually find us, no matter where we go. Our only hope is to show them that we’re not worth the effort, to go feed on some other planet that won’t fight back as hard as we will.”
He tried to walk away and she grabbed him by the arm, calling his name. He looked down at her hand on his sleeve, then back at her face. “You can’t run forever,” she said, and he didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t plan to run at all.
All he could do was look into the face of the one woman he’d loved since they were kids, the only thing he thought he’d ever be willing to give his life for, and hope that if this was the last time they ever saw each other, she wouldn’t remember him as a soldier, or as a coward, either.
If all he ever was to her was the music teacher’s son...he thought, after all, that would probably really be enough for him.
*
When the moon was full on their homeworld, the Athosians celebrated their Tendol feast. It was okay, in Ronon’s opinion; ruus wine was a little sweet for his tastes, but he liked the dancing, and it was always nice, in a life like this one, to see people smiling for no real reason. They’d partied twice as hard on Atlantea with its two moons, but on New Athos they were back down to just the one, which was ironic, because traveling by Gate rather than jumper, it was actually easier for Teyla to be there for each one now.
The full moon after the winter solstice was always a Grand Tendol. Ronon had never been to one of those, but he got the impression that they were a little more solemn than the regular ones, more like Regency Day back home. He didn’t know for sure if there was still dancing.
He knew Teyla was going because he saw her name on the clearance roster for Gate activation. What he didn’t know was how the fuck she’d gotten Sheppard to clear her to go by herself. Maybe she went over his head; she and Carter were pretty tight lately. Actually, a lot of the women on Atlantis seemed ten times more fascinated by Teyla than they had before she was pregnant.
She was struggling with the laces at the waist of her green and gold velvet dress when he showed up to see her. “Need a hand?” he said, gently taking the laces from her fingers.
Teyla frowned in frustration – not with him, he didn’t think. He undid what she’d already tried to do, loosening the bodice all the way and untwisting the laces before starting again, running them back and forth, overlapping each other. “I do not know that it will fit at all,” she said in resignation.
It was pretty tight – not just around the new shape of her belly, but in the chest, too – but the laces were pretty long. It might not fit exactly like it was supposed to, but Ronon thought he could make it work. “I got it,” he said.
When he was finished, she turned around to face him, smoothing her unbound hair back in an unlikely nervous gesture. Since when did he make her nervous? A lot of things, but never that. “You think this is a good idea?” he said quietly. She raised an eyebrow. “I mean....” There was really no good way to say it. “What’s the point?”
“New Athos is our home now,” she said, lifting her chin. “I am going home for the Grand Tendol, as I always do.”
“There’s nobody there,” he said gently.
“Nevertheless,” she said, so crisp she was brittle.
She tried to turn away, moving her attention toward the hiking pack on her bed, but he caught her face in his hands. She jerked a little, but didn’t exactly jerk away. She just looked up at him, that brain of hers for once not a million stars away at all, but right here with him. “It’s probably not safe for you to go alone,” he said. She rolled her eyes and began to lean back, out of his grasp. “How could it not hurt more?” he said, the words spilling out in an awkward hurry. He wanted her to stop right away. He wanted to leave his fingers on her skin for as long as possible. For as long as....
“If there is no one but me to carry on my people’s ways....” she began, trying for reasonable. But she couldn’t finish her sentence. Her eyes flooded in the space of a blink, and just that fast, there was a tear on each one of his hands. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to lift her sleeve up to her eyes. “I am prone to – pregnancy has given me a tendency to– “
He got there first and rubbed the tear tracks away with the edge of his long sleeves. “Don’t go alone,” he said. Her eyes flickered up to his, and it was still terrifying, and it still hurt, maybe more than a little, but – whoever told him that it was supposed to be easier than this, anyway? What did that even mean?
He breathed in, thinking courage, thinking victory, thinking devotion, and then he breathed out again and said, “Ask me.” She tilted her head, looking at him strangely. Ronon felt himself smile down at her, and he said again in a gently teasing voice, “Ask me.”
If she knew what.... She had to know. He had to believe she knew it as well as he did.
The silence went on and on, just long enough to test his certainty a little. But then she looked down shyly and up again slyly, bit her lip fleetingly, and said, “Will you come to the Grand Tendol with me, Ronon Dex?”
“Yeah,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist as she put her hands up to his hair. The velvet slid against his skin, and underneath the softness and the hardness that had always been Teyla to him. “Yes,” he said.