fic: "Discomfort Zones" by Tielan [fucking freezing challenge]

[tielan]

Title: Discomfort Zones
Author: Tielan
Summary: There was never much of a comfort zone between them; now, it's grown considerably smaller.
Pairing : John/Teyla
Disclaimer: The characters from Stargate Atlantis aren't mine and I am making no money from their use.
Notes: Has vague spoilers for 3.12 - Spoils Of War. Also written for the choc_fic challenge - prompt: 1st February: Stargate: Atlantis, John and Teyla: Forbidden Pleasures - Why did you do that?/Sensual and Romantic but not trashy.

I apologise if this isn't in the precisely correct format. I'm posting via email from China (where they don’t like LJ) and have not entirely mastered the art of email-posting from LJ!

Discomfort Zones

There is no comfortable way for a pregnant woman to hold an unconscious man in her arms.

Outside the single room of the shelter, snow and wind rage a battle against light, heat, warmth, and life. Within the space that is barely as wide again as the narrow bed Teyla shares, the air is still if not warm, and if the cold bites, its teeth are not so sharp in here.

Beneath the blankets she tucked around them, John lies on his side, anchored with her arm over his shoulder. His arm lies over her belly, his shoulder tucked beneath her arm.

As he protected her against the avalanche, pushing her into a crevice along the path they walked, forcing her out of the way of the blocks of snow and ice and tumbled rock with one hand splayed across her belly in automatic protection, so Teyla now protects him against the bitter cold.

She dug them out of the waist-high snow through sheer determination, and could have wept when he roused enough to stumble the last fifty yards of ground to the shelter for which they'd been aiming after the blizzard rose around them. That she managed as much as she did amazes her, even as she recalls the desperation that beat steadily in her veins, born of fear for him, her unborn son, and herself.

Slowly, she tilts her head, sliding her mouth and jaw across the top of his head, taking pleasure in the closeness, however unexpected, in the knowledge that she is repaying his protection out in the cold with her own here in the warm. The scent of him is tinged with fond memories of mornings spent learning the Earth alphabet, afternoons spent sparring, and evenings absorbing Earth culture through movies and sports games.

Teyla sighs through his hair and presses her chin lightly against the top of his head, wishing that his hair did not tickle so, wishing that things were otherwise.

Between them, the hard curve of her pregnancy serves as physical divider, much sharper than the lines Teyla drew around herself when first she came to the city of the Ancestors. Unlike the day in Rodney's lab, trapped between the memory of Kanan whom she allowed herself to love and the presence of John whom she did not, there is no turning away this time.

Perhaps she should not take such pleasure from John's proximity when she still does not know Kanan's fate. And yet, in Teyla's mind, that she loved one man does not diminish her care for the other.

So she holds John and waits for an end to the storm that rages outside; the battle that might have raged within is long since over.

--

After the blistering cold, the heat of the headman's house is like a drug to John's stilled, chilled body, washing over him like the chatter and laughter of the locals as they congratulate themselves on a successful search and rescue.

His joints are stiff, his muscles aching - he feels older than he did when Todd took life from him to escape Kolya's goons. Ronon takes one glance as he eases out of the furs, and bellows for the headman.

"I'm fine," says John shortly, pushing away the flagon of hot wine being pushed into his hand. Ronon drinks his down in one gulp, Rodney takes a sip and starts coughing. John shakes his head. "I'm going to check on Teyla. You guys go ahead."

He passes out into the fast-falling snow. Not a blizzard any more, but still cold. Rodney got his energy readings, the locals got their lost children, and John set the headwoman and her friend on Teyla to make sure she didn't try to sneak out with a hunting party. She might be a little more careful with her unborn son since the Wraith Queen, but he's damned if he'll let her wear herself out when there's a village full of people who can do the job just as well.

Once again, the quilted curtains part to cheek-burnishing heat, and John finds her sitting in furs amidst a gaggle of women, smiling as she listens to an anecdote from a young woman. The smile fades a little when she sees him, but she takes his hand to be helped up, her fingers warm in his cold ones as she draws him aside, away from the locals eyeing him. "The messenger said they were found. They are not hurt?

"Rodney had enough energy to complain; Ronon said they were good. You're okay?"

"I will be better once I know you are in the springs, warming up," she surveys him, briskly but with a care that squeezes his heart as she briefly squeezes his fingers. They aren’t ones for physical contact, Teyla and him, not outside of sparring. "You have seen Rodney and Ronon safe. Now go look after yourself."

He stifles the urge to take her hands and press them to his cheeks, to take her slim, hot body in his arms and let her warm him the way she did last night. But if he didn, it wouldn't be survival this time, but comfort. And he won't do that to her.

He can't do that to himself.

"I'm going," John says, tugging his hands from hers and feeling the cooling air against them like a fist around his heart.

It would be dangerous to linger on the memory of his head tucked into her throat, the hand that rested comfortably between his shoulderblades, his arm caught between the curve of her breasts and the swell of her belly, her legs lying beside his, slim and swathed.

John shouldn't try to remember - that way lies madness.

Because somewhere within him, John knows that Kannan of Athos took with him the memory of Teyla's arms holding him fast in the middle of his own personal storm, and a bubble of something too close to jealousy rises inside.

There's no comfortable way for John to deal with this, so he buries it deep in the ice and snow of his own personal Antarctica and goes to the hot springs with the boys.

- fin -

Comments

Re: Discomfort Zones - story

[tielan]

Late to reply, but - thank you!