Teyla hasn’t been the same since Ford left.

Rodney says that none of them have and to shut up and go bounce coins off bed sheets or fly recklessly fast or romance alien bimbos or whatever it is John does when not keeping him from brilliant lifesaving genius-stuff.

John can’t figure out whether Rodney just doesn’t want to talk about it (personal drama, someone else’s drama, something he can’t fix) or if he’s just waiting for John to admit that it’s not only Teyla that hasn’t been the same. But he doesn’t stick around to find out.

It’s a sunny day on Atlantis, just as it is every other day where there isn’t a lifethreatening, giant-wave-generating, Genii-coup-provoking, big-ass storm.

Teyla has beaten him eleven times with the twirly sticks. He can already count at least five bruises. He feels like he could fly.

“Are you going easy on me?” he says, teasing her.

She smiles her most flirtatious smile. It’s not the knowing one or the confused one or the bemused one or the diplomatic one or the simply joyous one. It’s John’s favorite.

“What do you think, Colonel?”

“I think you’re going easy on me,” he pants, rubbing at the bruise on his elbow as she grabs a towel to wipe the sweat from her brow. Teyla’s skin is slick and tanned, like someone straight out of the swimsuit edition but without the slightly fake orange glow. His body doesn’t respond, but only through hard-trained habit.

“I was not going hard . . .” she half jokes, half admits. “You are improving.”

“More time to practice.” They both know why. There are more gene carriers here. More officers. Less distractions. Ford’s gone. Neither will say it.

The silence stretches.

“Let’s call it a day,” John says, before it gets too awkward. He rubs another bruise. None of them really hurt.

“Tomorrow?” she raises her eyebrows.

“Tomorrow.”

She looks at him uncertainly, one of her less attractive looks. “Perhaps you would like to join me for dinner tonight?”

He wonders if she’s asking him out on a date.

“I can’t. Promised Rodney I’d go touch things for him after his seventh coffee.”

She smiles, and it’s one of the ones he still hasn’t figured out yet. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow.”

Teyla’s more comfortable with a knife than a gun, she admitted one day.

Rodney can’t wait for the day he can have his laptop embedded in his arm. And wouldn’t it be kind of cool to be a Borg? With a laser sight, he wouldn’t even have to do this insufferable target practice.

John tells himself that he likes to shoot first and ask questions later.

“You shouldn’t lie to Teyla,” Rodney says, grabbing the metallic Nerf-ball thing John had been tossing between his hands and placing it safely on the counter with his pointed ‘don’t touch things that could blow up and kill us all’ look.

“Oh, because you’re Mr. Truthful.”

Actually, Rodney rarely lies. He rolls his eyes. “Even if I wasn’t a terrible liar, I’d never be stupid enough to try to lie to Teyla. Genius here, hel-lo.”

John didn’t lie to Teyla. He was evasive, sure, but wasn’t everybody? “When have I lied to Teyla?”

“You told her you had to help me with something in the lab last night. When she saw me heading back to my quarters she asked me about it.”

“And you told her that we’d just finished, right?” Friends covered for each other.

“Yes, because I really want to antagonize a girl who can beat me into a submission with nothing more than a stick.”

“Most anyone could beat you into submission with a stick, and you don’t seem to mind antagonizing . . . I don’t know . . . everyone you meet. Including the ones with guns – if they’re religious.”

“Well, I do it with good reason. And backup. Besides, why in the hell would you want to lie your way out of a date with Teyla?”

“A date?” He’d been joking about that. With himself.

“I’m sure you, the all-American football-star flyboy, knows what that is. Picnic alone on the south pier . . . last of the popcorn . . . music and shooting stars.”

“She told you that?” Teyla and Rodney talked? Since when?

“No. But why else would she want to have dinner alone with you?”

“Huh.” John doesn’t know how he feels about that.

Rodney snorts.

Teyla has some smiles that he can’t decipher and may not want to.

Rodney is an open book.

John works hard at hiding things.

The next day, Teyla does go hard on him – hard like she hasn’t since those pressure-building weeks before the siege, before Ford, before they knew her connection to the Wraith, before it all changed.

He’s lying on his back, panting. Teyla kneels beside him and he can just barely hear the silky rustle of the fabric of her sparring skirt settle around her. She leans back and looks disarmingly small and demure.

“Are you . . .”

“I’m fine.”

He’s not. But he doesn’t know why. Not that there aren’t a multiplicity of reasons – a list even longer than that list of names that comes with official couriers and videotapes and faroff families dressed in black. Maybe it’s a summation, a network of interacting things, building upon each other, feedback loops multiplying and coalescing like neurons in a brain, like life.

He always says he’s fine. He never is. At least that much hasn’t changed, even when everything else has.

Teyla’s hand is warm and firm in his, surprisingly small for the strength of her grip as she helps him up. Her eyes are dark and her hair matted with sweat, but he loves her lips and oh god, her smile. And why fight this when everything else has changed?

When he pulls back from the kiss, her smile is radiant, lips parted, panting at a different octave than after a hard workout, soft and sexy and brilliant.

“Dinner?” he asks.

She’s just as enigmatic and charming and exotic as the first time they met. She cocks her head. “I would enjoy that.”

She touches her head to his forehead, and he’s wondering what this means. It feels different, like the first time, sparks flying between them.

He wonders if this means they can start all over again.

Teyla wants to talk about it.

Rodney just likes to talk.

John spends more time in the lab than he does in the gym.

They don’t head out to a starlit tower or pier or a room with lava-lamp-like crystals shimmering romantically. That reminds him of Chaya, of beautiful temptresses that see him just as a happy combination of genes and an interesting mind to fuck, nothing more.

He’s not really a romantic. And Rodney warned him not to lie to Teyla. So they spend the evening sitting on the intricately woven fabric of Teyla’s wide Athosian-made bed, sharing peaches and real pizza fresh from the Daedalus.

Teyla is strong and sensual, sitting with her legs half sprawled, leaning forward to grab a peach. Feeding it to her would be an insult and there’s nothing he’d like to see less (other than death and destruction and his father) than Teyla submissive enough to feed him.

He’s gotten pretty good at not looking at her chest, considering the tight low-cut shirts she wears, and it’s strange knowing that he no longer needs to make that effort.

“So.”

“So?” Her smile is teasing, teeth bared, full lips spread.

He shovels a spoonful of Campbell’s tomato soup into his mouth. It’s hot and delicious and he’s only considerate enough not to slurp as he shovels it down. He’s looking for something to say. “So, too bad about the mission.”

“I thought you did not care about this ‘botany.’” That smile again, with the eyebrow quirk. Deadly.

He shrugs, just like any other conversation – flippant, friendly, and flirtatious. “I don’t, but why miss out on a grade-A McKay bitching session?”

“Grade-A?”

“Best quality eggs. Oh, best grade too . . . the way they rank you in school . . . the place where Rodney wore a pocket protector and lorded his intelligence over everyone.”

“But he does . . .”

“Only now he’s lost the pocket protector and gets paid to do it.”

“They rank you?” She sounds almost appalled.

“Well, not in order. Kinda in order, actually, if you count the bell curve and class rank . . . but that’s statistics and . . . well, anyway. If we didn’t rank people, how would we know who was the best?”

Teyla levels her head, jaw jutting. “All that survive with just principles intact are worthy.”

Now he sees why Ford used to call her a hippie.

“But you don’t . . . you know, ever think, ‘I’m special. I’m the leader of my people?’” He knows her ‘leader of the people’ look.

“They chose me for the position. I was more than willing, but I did nothing to influence their choice.” A world without politics . . . without the Wraith, it could’ve been heaven.

“Well, if you have ‘just principles’ then you have to believe that your principles are better. There’s a right and a wrong . . .” John always tries to make the right decisions . . . he always does his best.

Teyla smiles, and it’s her schoolteacher ‘oh you naïve young thing’ smile. He thinks about Dustin Hoffman in his underwear and ‘The Graduate’. “My people are proud and strong, but we are no more worthy than any other beings herded by the Wraith.”

She can’t believe that. She’s just being contrary.

Even after he’s seen the worst humanity has to offer, John still sorta believes in the American Dream. Freedom is better, security is better, some things are right. Some are best. “But you’re better than the Wraith?”

“The Wraith are our enemy.” He’s not sure that answers the question. Teyla can be evasive too, sometimes, because her eyes darken and she looks away. “Even if we sometimes find our weapons pointed at those who should be friends.”

“Teyla . . . the Genii . . .” She’d known Sora for a long time, after all. John even once had a dream that they were lovers.

“It is Aiden Ford of whom I speak.”

John doesn’t want to talk about it. He can deal with it. Alone.

“Teyla . . .”

“You were right to go after him. And he would have listened to you if he were thinking properly.”

He knows. God, he knows. But he doesn’t want to . . .

He kisses her. It’s not romantic, but she doesn’t resist.

Teyla says that a belief is worth something so long as faith in it comes to good.

Rodney knows that there’s an objective truth out there and if you can’t pick up on it then you’re either stupid or wrong or both.

John wants to have faith, but he’s also a big fan of some extra guns in case it doesn’t work out.

“Hand me that transponder, will you?” Rodney’s fingers snap from beneath the jumper controls. “Today, please.”

John sighs and rolls his eyes. “Of all the things I could possibly be doing on this fine Wraith-free day, I’m stuck here with you, inside, without even the sunroof open.”

“What? You’d rather be trotting after Polan . . . Pushkin . . . Peterson . . . the overeager botanist on Planet Slow-Death-By-Radiation?”

“You shouldn’t name things either.”

The silence is awkward. He shouldn’t have said that. They don’t need to be reminded of Ford, because they don’t need to talk about it.

Rodney laughs really awkwardly. “Yeah, about that . . .” No, not Rodney, too. Rodney’s the last person he’d expect to expect him to be emotionally engaging. But, thank god, Rodney catches a look in his eye and turns away stuttering. “So . . . so you wouldn’t believe what Polkavich put in his report about how the vegetation survived healthily so that the radiation will only kill human beings slowly . . . I mean, first of all, I’ve been keeping track of my lifetime exposure to radiation, and there are those experiments at Area 51 in the early days, and god knows what those idiots in Russia had -wouldn’t let me take a radiation badge- and then there’s the Genii and their obviously radiation/inbreeding-induced paranoia, and flying so close to that sun, and the nanovirus killing nuke and the Wraith hive ship cloaking nuke and that nuke that the Canadian government didn’t detonate in Newfoundland . . .
“Really?” So Canada really was to blame? Since when?

“No. I was just checking to see if you were listening to me.”

“I always listen to you.” Okay, so he couldn’t exactly say that with a straight face.

“Sure you do. And Kavanagh has quit his day job to move to the suburbs and become the next Dr. Phil and Carson’s lab rats are really the Ancients come back to haunt us . . . or maybe that’s just your hair.”

“I thought you were too intelligent to plagiarize. And Douglas Adams . . . shame . . . he’s probably rolling in his grave.”

“You know what Newton said about the shoulders of geniuses.”

“Lot of dandruff?”

“Har har. Good thing we’re not going to planet ’Melanoma’, because getting nuked repeatedly is obviously already getting to you.”

“Nah, always been like this. Now, you . . . how often have you used your cell phone?”

“Oh, that’s nice, pick on the man with the possible brain tumor.”

“C’mon, McKay, even the Mona Lisa’s falling apart.”

“And now he thinks he’s Brad Pitt . . . seriously, Major.”

“Colonel.”

“Whatever. No matter how good-looking . . .”

“So you think I’m good-looking?”

“Don’t let it go to your head, Kirk. All the good it’ll do you is that if we fail to save this galaxy you can go home and model in a Gap catalogue.”

“Oh, should’ve gone to the radiation planet then. I need to work on my tan.”

Rodney rolls his eyes, but can’t get his witty rejoinder out before Teyla practically skips in, smile playfully questioning.

“Colonel Sheppard, Dr. McKay.” She nods to them both. John can’t help but notice that she’s wearing a new top and that it’s even tighter and more low-cut than usual.

Rodney obviously notices too, because he’s doing the thing where he’s deliberately looking down at his latest device and not at her.

“Teyla,” John acknowledges.

“I was hoping that you both might like to join me for dinner. It has been . . . many days since we have all dined together.”

Nobody mentions that they can’t all dine together with Ford still missing.

Rodney’s quick to decline, a familiar routine from the first days of the expedition. “Work. Important, life-saving measures that require my undivided attention, thanks to the fact that the new idiots from the Daedalus are even worse than the old idiots who at least came into this as a complete unknown and therefore had a slight sense of adventure and might I add that adventure . . . under the proper leadership . . .”

John and Teyla went to dinner. If Ford had dropped in on them and tried to show John how he figured out how to do this cool new thing with his bandana then it would’ve been just like old times. It wasn’t.

Teyla does her best to understand Earth culture and sometimes wishes the others would make the same effort with hers.

Rodney wonders why anyone bothers listening if people have nothing important to say.

John tells people what they want to hear but doesn’t always hear what they want to tell.

Teyla and John are sitting on John’s bed, casually making out. It’s like his first days in high school, tentative and expectant, like he doesn’t know exactly how far to push, exactly what comes next, only that he wants it.

How far will Teyla go? How fast? He doesn’t want to overstep his bounds, somehow irreparably damage their working relationship.

Hell, despite the attraction he’s always felt towards her, he never did anything about it before. What’s changed?

Maybe it’s the fact that he could lose her any day, the way they lost Ford. Maybe it’s the fact that maybe if they’d been closer, gotten past being colleagues and closer to friends, then Ford wouldn’t have left. Maybe then he would’ve trusted John to help him.

Or maybe it’s because he just doesn’t care anymore. Every time he tries to do the right thing, everything gets fucked up. He woke the Wraith. He almost got thirty people killed from that alien virus. He almost got the Daedalus grounded trying to teach the Wraith a lesson. Maybe he can just have this . . . maybe he can cross the line this once, because, seriously, how can it make things worse?

Teyla pulls back. Her eyes are wide and compassionate and her smile both seductive and innocent. She brushes her hair back from her face where it’s gotten matted from his hands running through it.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” he asks, trying to be a gentleman.

“I am quite sure, Colonel.”

“I think you can call me ‘John,‘ Teyla,” he chuckles.

Her smile widens, if that’s possible. “I had thought that it might be disrespectful for someone under your command . . .”

He clasps her hands in his. “Of course it’s not disrespectful. Even if we were only friends, I’d like you to use my first name.”

“Only friends?”

Okay, he’s confused. She wants him, right? Or she doesn’t think they were ever friends, only potential lovers? “Excuse me? Teyla, what exactly are you asking . . .”

“What more is there than friendship?”

John gestures in between them helplessly.

Teyla looks confused.

“You know . . . love.”

“Of course. I love you as well, John, as I love all my dearest friends.”

“So this . . . this is friendship?” So maybe he thought he shared a special connection with Teyla. Maybe he thought that she could be the one – not because he feels any specific sort of spark or anything, but because she understands him. She’s gotten closer, seen more weakness and pain and caring than he’s let most anyone else see, even his parents. But maybe Teyla isn’t looking for that spark. Maybe she just wants this to be a fuck buddies thing.

And hey, John’s a guy, he’s not going to turn down a fuck buddy, especially not one as beautiful and sexy and well . . . good, as Teyla.

“I can do that,” he says, enthusiastically, kissing away her look of confusion.

Teyla says that sex is an intimacy to share comfort.

Rodney wishes that the science team would put a sock in the melodrama and have a great big orgy, because everyone works better after a good old-fashioned orgasm.

John does it because the two minutes before and five afterwards are seven magic minutes when he doesn’t have to think about anything else.

God, Teyla’s wonderful - all soft curves and golden skin, flexible, athletic, brilliant. Her hands are all over him, dancing in his hair, over his chest, up and down his thighs. The caresses would almost tickle if he didn’t find the idea of laughing with such a gorgeous woman in his lap so idiotic.

Her kisses are sweet, teasing if not desperate or passionate. She doesn’t let him take control of her mouth, tongue moving quick and graceful, just like the way she fights. He moves from her lips to kiss her neckline, nibbles on her ear, taking an exquisite nipple into his mouth to feel the velvety flesh harden, feel her gasp and buck. She tastes like spices, like some exotic bazaar out of a fantasy book. She tastes like adventure, like Pegasus.

He wonders if he tastes like Earth, if by kissing him she can get closer to sharing the home he’s told her so much about. But he’ll never know, because she doesn’t find his skin with her lips. She doesn’t lap at the nape of his neck or bend her head to nip at his aching nipples, even when her talented fingers have already identified them as a hotspot.

She’s rubbing herself up against him now, and it’s been a long time, so he can’t restrain the thrusting of his hips, letting her set a rhythm that seems somehow alien, despite the fact that he’s had plenty of practice with this and with the rhythms of her body as she fights him.

She’s wearing nothing but one of her flowing skirts, and it’s easy for him to slip his hand between her legs and find that Aiden Ford had in fact won the bet he’d made with Sergeant Stackhouse about the Athosians not wearing underwear, because there’s nothing but yielding flesh and a slick straining heat pressing down to engulf his fingers.

He presses, strokes, uses every trick he knows to pleasure her, basking in her throaty moans and encouragements. He’d expected Teyla to be fierce, as defiant and almost-violent as in her fighting, but he finds that here she shows the grace, the dance in her every movement instead.

She’s already gasping, coming down from her first climax before she strips his pants off, tugging at them urgently. John smiles and stands, going to his closet for a condom.

“Join with me,” she pleads, looking hurt that he’s up and moving.

“Condom,” he says, realizing too late that she couldn’t possibly know what that means. “It’s um . . . it’s kind of like a hat . . . no, raincoat . . . well, it’s a . . . thing that I put on my . . . it acts as contraception and prevents STDs.”

“Contraception? STDs?” She’s frustrated, naked and panting in his bed, the sheets curled in glorious disarray around her.

“Well, STDs are sicknesses that are transmitted . . . um, well, sexually.”

“ I have never heard of such thing.”

Wouldn’t that be nice? Like the sixties all over again. “Be glad that you haven’t.” It’s strange, to know that there are people who have never heard of AIDS. “And contraception is just a fancy way of saying that it keeps you from getting pregnant.”

“Any child from our union would be joyous. Why should we seek to prevent something so natural?” Her words are too frank, too naïve. It’s almost frightening. She couldn’t possibly risk getting pregnant now. They have a war to fight. She can’t just . . . then again, the people of Pegasus have always had a fight and they’ve kept on living their lives.

“Well, I guess . . . we see things very differently, Teyla.”

“I am sorry, John, I thought you had desired this.” This goes beyond the realm of fuck buddies. Why didn’t he see that before?

“I do, Teyla. I want you. Really, I do.”

“Then why do you hesitate?”

“I just . . . I don’t think that we can do anything but casual, and casual is hardly the grounds to raise a child.”

“Well, with your duties on Atlantis, I could understand your hesitancy to be the primary parent, but I am perfectly . . .”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Teyla, I don’t think this is the time to be thinking about . . .” Fuck buddies do not discuss . . . Teyla’s already planning the goddamn child-support payments and they haven’t even had sex yet.

“You do not feel I would make an adequate mother?” Well, that tone of voice was a mood killer if he’d ever heard one.

“No, of course not, Teyla. I just think . . . these things have the proper time, that’s all. We have the technology to, with relative certainty, prevent pregnancy for the moment, and I think that we should employ this technology; that’s all.”

Teyla seems to consider it for a moment, then opens her arms. “Join with me, John.”

So he does.

Before she found out about her ancestry, Teyla had always been confident and sure.

Rodney thinks he’s infallible, except in the moments when he thinks they’re all going to die.

John would like as little responsibility as possible so he doesn’t have to worry about fucking up. It never works out that way.

God, he’s such a screw up. Ford ran into the beam. He ran into the fucking beam. John doesn’t know where he is, but he hopes that the kid really has proven himself. And he’s sick to his stomach, sick thinking about Ford’s body, a lifeless husk, the image of him with that Wraith attached to his chest drilled into his mind. Ford was a good kid and John was pushing him, maybe pushing too damn hard, into becoming a fine officer. And now . . . all that potential . . . and still, he just wants to prove himself.

Both Elizabeth and Teyla are doing their mommy routines, hovering and shooting him worried glances all through the debriefing. Only Rodney is too angry and freaked out to act concerned. He’s pissed that Ford tried to kill him, and caught between who he should be more worried about, Ford or Dex. John’d really like to go to the lab right now and just listen to Rodney bitch. He’d let the anger wash over him, get a chance to be mad at someone other than himself.

But he doesn’t get that opportunity, because Teyla follows him back to his quarters, like she has some right to pry . . . to check up on him. She’s not his mother. He wishes she’d leave him alone.

“I think we should stop.” John says it the moment they’re alone.

“Stop what, John?” She cocks her head to the side in a way that he finds suddenly infuriating, too birdlike, too alien, too different. He was wrong. She doesn’t understand him. She can’t.

“Stop . . . this. Teyla, what happened back there . . . if we’re captured again . . . if I ever have to leave you like that again in a hostage situation with a guy who’s even more crazy . . .”

“You will. Just as you did today.” Her voice is firm. She has too much faith in him. Maybe he did today. But what about later? She doesn’t know . . . she couldn’t possibly comprehend how hard it was for him to leave her in that cave with the fucking terminator while he got back to safety to retrieve Beckett. And Dex saw his weakness . . . he knows it. And he’s almost embarrassed by it – the knowing look in Dex’s eyes when he announced that Teyla would be staying with him, the piercing stare as he rushed to help her after Dex had shot her.

“It’ll only get harder.”

Again, she seems confused. “Why should it?”

“Because . . . you . . . we . . .” It’s obvious.

Or not. “Please explain.”

“I . . . look . . .” he already lost Ford; he’s not losing her too. It was hard enough having to point a gun at that kid. “I’m afraid of losing my objectivity.”

She smiles like she’s humoring him. It’s superior and it disgusts him. He looks away. “I do not believe there is a way to stay objective when it comes to those you care about.”

Which is why you should never let yourself care about anyone that much!

“That’s why we have to call it off.”

“There is no reason that physical comforts should change the love and caring we feel for each other.” She says it like a verdict. When she smiles like that, he can’t disagree. He’s willing to let her leave it at that, even nodding in agreement, but she pushes on. “But I think that perhaps you are concerned about your reaction to Lieutenant Ford. John, I can assure you that you have done the right thing. We are all concerned about Aiden, but we must also learn to move beyond this. He is sick. There is nothing that you or I could have done differently to make this better.”

But there are a million things, all rushing through his mind: not fallen prey to the trap of letting Ford idolize him and seek his approval; asked him to return as a friend, not as a CO; shot him; promised him . . . something; have brought more backup; have been there in the infirmary for him more; done something to make Ford trust him.

“You don’t know that,” he snaps.

“John, you cannot blame yourself for everything that goes wrong. Please, do not cut yourself off . . .”

“Can we not talk about this?”

She frowns, but lets herself out, allowing him his own disquieting silence.

Teyla thinks that she has expected too much from him.

Rodney knows better than to rely on anybody but himself.

John wishes he was smart enough to do the same.

“Where were you last night?”

“Huh?” John’s not really paying attention. Last he remembers, Rodney was rambling on about how Dr. Parish needs to have his head checked and something about selling gases emitted by sunscreen and perhaps the FDA, or whatever they call it in Canada

Rodney rolls his eyes and then pokes at John’s chest with a very annoying finger. “Where. Were. You. Last. Night?”

“Jesus, McKay, it’s not like I’m your girlfriend.” He sounds like a stupid little boy.

Rodney looks away sharply. John can’t see his profile from where the shadows of the latest nonfunctional alien device hide everything but the tremors in his voice. “I know that, Major.”

“Colonel.”

“Whatever. My point is that you said you’d be here helping me to get this baby . . .”

“Baby?”

“This big stupid piece of useless Ancient junk . . . obviously a female of the stubborn plump farm-wife sort. Now, seriously, where were you? Carson almost killed us when he accidentally turned on the Ancient buzz saw instead.”

“Cool. Ancient buzz saw? Where is it?” John looks around. Why does Carson always find the cool stuff?

“Not someplace where you’re going to get to see it until you answer my question about what’s so important that we can just forget about possible life-saving discoveries of Ancient technology. I told you that this might be some sort of secondary computer core . . .” Rodney crosses his arms over his chest.

“I thought you said it was a ‘big stupid piece of useless Ancient junk.’”

“That’s what they all are until Mr. Magic-gene decides to grace us with his presence and turn them on!” Rodney’s shouting now, flushed face puckered and blue eyes flashing.

Well, John knows better than to fight a losing battle. Rodney’ll make his life a living hell . . . and he’ll have no place to hide when Teyla gets in a ‘let’s have serious hippie heart-to-heart sharing conversations’ mood. “I’m sorry, Rodney. I was out with Teyla. But I’ll make it up to you, I promise. What can I touch?”

“Oh that’s just great. Lieutenant Colonel Kirk can’t stop himself from falling into alien pussy long enough to help us turn on technology that might save us all from horrible gruesome death by viruses and insane natives and life sucking aliens. He’ll just touch something and make it all better.”

“Fuck you, Rodney. I said I was sorry.” And it was pretty damned big of him, if he doesn’t say so himself.

“Sorry? Tell that to me when a Wraith is turning me to a wizened old husk or a half-mad superfreak!”

John’s voice is steel and he knows his eyes are shining, the way they do whenever someone mentions Colonel Sumner or Brendan Gall or the many others he’s had to bury. “Don’t joke about that.”

Rodney throws his hands up in frustration, but he catches the hurt because he’s suddenly quiet, apologizing too. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . . it’s just that you get a girlfriend and all of a sudden it’s like . . . it’s like . . . isn’t this going to screw up our team dynamic or some psychological bullshit like that?”

John does a double take. Since when does Rodney care about team dynamic? He’s made practically every member of his science team break down into tears. And John knows for a fact that he has a date with at least one of them. “You are such a hypocrite.”

That’s one of the worst insults he can give Rodney, he knows, because Rodney is a man who prides himself on his honesty. He balks. “Oh, come on. You know that things have been wrong ever since Ford . . .”

“Don’t.”

“Whatever. Look, Teyla’s not just some beautiful alien princess in a futuristic bikini. She’s not a gorgeous priestess who put the whammy on you. She’s an important member of our team . . . a caring . . . beautiful . . . sensitive . . . she’s a friend and probably the only thing keeping you from getting lost in the forest or chased with pointy spears at every key trading agreement.”

“You don’t think I know that, Rodney? You know, us grunts do consider other people upon occasion. Not that you’d know.”

He knows that comment will sting, but he hates it when Rodney does this. Yes, he knows that Rodney’s smarter than he is. Yes, he knows that Rodney thinks that everyone’s an idiot. But he likes to think that Rodney sees more in him than a jarhead who can’t keep it in his pants.

“This is all going to blow up in our faces. This is Teyla. We have to work with her. I have to work with her. I have to see her and know that whenever I’m off heroically saving the city from yet another crisis, the two of you are back at the ranch fucking like bunnies in the Viagra testing lab.”

Well . . . wait. He knows this tone. He knows the hurt little boy. He knows the guy who has to sit listening to his friends gloat about how their girlfriend finally let them take their bra off. He knows Rodney’s pissy little tantrums. He’s jealous. And, god, there’s nothing more annoying that Rodney’s jealous little spat routine. He remembers Chaya and winces. “If it’s going to make you so fucking jealous, then why don’t you join us?”

The silence that follows is unexpected, considering Rodney’s usually lightning-fast snark reaction.

“Okay,” Rodney says quietly, eyes way too bright.

John lets his jaw drop. Rodney, of all people should recognize angry sarcasm when he sees it. He doesn’t even want to contemplate the three of them . . .

“Sorry, I . . . I guess that was inappropriate.” Damn right it was, and even Rodney’s hollow laugh is not enough to jar the image from John’s mind.

Teyla looks at him knowingly.

Rodney speaks to Zelenka as though John isn’t there and calls him ‘it’ when he wants something turned on.

John gets to know Dex better.

John’s angry and Teyla is frowning at him, but he can’t stop. He feels like he’s going to explode. He’s getting careless, but even the bruises left by her sticks hitting his arms and chest feel good.

He can see why Teyla loves to fight, why Dex does, why Ford . . . did? Usually he’s pretty lazy. He appreciates people who are good at this, and he understands the necessity, but he’s always been far more comfortable with a precisely calibrated machine than in his own body. That’s what flying is, after all: a chance to be the blue the Air Force motto speaks of.

But he’s angry – too angry for his own good. Goddamnit! He hates avoiding Rodney. It’s not like they can truly avoid each other, anyway, with command staff meetings every day and team briefings and the like. But still . . . knowing that Rodney wants Teyla, too . . .

He should be feeling jealous. He should have that macho, ‘must protect mate from rival sperm donors’ thing going on. But he doesn’t. He’s just mad . . . so mad that he doesn’t know where all the anger is coming from.

A stick goes flying from his hand and clatters forgotten on the floor. Teyla shows just a twitch of a smile on her mask of determined focus. He brings the other stick around, swinging wildly towards her head. She parries easily and he doesn’t even see the second stick that hits him in the gut, nor the well-aimed leg-sweep that brings him to his knees. He only feels the sweat on his brow, the stick Teyla’s pressing to the jugular, and the thick haze of anger seeping from every pore, building like a wave in every breath.

“What is it, John?” Teyla demands.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing involving Dr. McKay and how you appear to be avoiding him?”

Damnit. She’s perceptive. He struggles against her chokehold, but she holds him there. If he wasn’t so pissed off, he might find this a turn on. “Is it really that obvious?”

“It is . . . apparent.”

“Ah.” He sighs. “Look . . . Rodney is . . . well, he can be pretty damn arrogant. I know he had a tough childhood and that this is all some sort of defense mechanism, or whatever, but would it kill him to learn how to interact with other people?”

“You have never taken such offense at Dr. McKay’s . . . lack of social graces before.”

“Well, he’s never requested to fuck my fu . . .” Teyla probably wouldn’t take too kindly to that term. “ . . . girlfriend before.”

“You mean me?”

“Yeah, of course I mean you.”

“I did not know Dr. McKay found me attractive.”

“C’mon, Teyla, everyone finds you attractive.”

She blushes, but contradicts him anyway. “Dr. Weir does not.”

“Well, Dr. Weir is a woman.”

“Is it not possible that she would still find me attractive?”

“It’s possible but probably not very likely.” Not that he wouldn’t keep that mental image in mind for future reference . . .

“If it is causing you and Dr. McKay so much distress, then perhaps it would be best if we did as he suggests.”

John whirls to face her, knocking her loosely held stick from her hand. “What?!”

“I believe that our . . . what did Lieutenant Ford call it? Our ‘team dynamic,’ will be damaged if you and Dr. McKay continue to avoid each other.” He doesn’t want to hear about Ford. And he doesn’t want to hear about Rodney either.

“I went thirty-six years without Rodney. What’s a few more?”

“He considers you a friend, and I believe you feel likewise. While initially, I found Dr. McKay to be . . . abrasive…”

“You can say that again,” he murmured.

“Nonetheless, I care about him deeply and would welcome him to join us, if it would ease his pain.”

“What pain?! Rodney’s not in any pain.” None of them were. They could deal with loss. They had to. They couldn’t afford to let this stop them. They had to move on, just like he moved on when he lost his mom and Mitch and Dex and Ryan and Colonel Sumner and Gall and Abrams and so many others.

Teyla just gave him a long-suffering look and turned away.

For Teyla, the glass is half full.

Rodney’s is half empty and it’s so not his fault.

John considers himself a pragmatic optimist, which is kind of bullshit.

John steals a quick glance across the mess to where Rodney’s sitting. Rodney isn’t eating, but instead plays aimlessly with his stylus. This is the most idle John has ever seen him when not passed out. He looks innocent, staring at the stylus so intently.

The room is full of people, but John can’t see anybody else. Rodney looks sad, oddly like a wounded teddy bear. John can’t stand that look. He just . . . he’s not used to caring about people like this. He cares about people in general, sure. But he’s not used to caring about a single individual the way he cares about Rodney and Teyla and perhaps Ford. It’s not just their general well being he’s concerned about; he wants them to be happy. And he wants it badly enough to swallow all his pride and stubbornness and embarrassment to walk across the room and sit down.

He’s big enough a man to pretend that it didn’t happen. He smiles and digs into his not-eggs, nudging Rodney with the toe of his boot.

“Ow,” Rodney says reflexively. “Watch it! Do you have any idea how easily I bruise?”

John grins, even if it is a little forced. “I can imagine. Penny for your thoughts.”

“You’re going to have to do a lot better than a penny, Colonel.”

“A hundred then.”

Rodney raises his eyebrows.

John shrugs. “Back pay.”

Rodney shakes a finger at him. “I’m holding you to that. With interest.”

“Fine. Now tell me, what’s so enthralling about your pen.”

“It’s a stylus, and as a matter of fact . . . nothing. I was just thinking about hockey and theoretical physics and how one might find energy without creating a self-contained bubble of space time and how I might apologize to you and a million other genius-things that you couldn’t possibly understand.”

John takes a second to unravel that. “Was that your apology?”

“Um . . . is that okay?”

John thinks about it. Rodney is his best friend. Even before Ford . . . Rodney was his best friend. And aren’t you supposed to forgive little Freudian slips like that, even if they can’t really be called subconscious? These questions are all a little too deep. He shrugs. “I’m feeling magnanimous. Why not?”

Rodney smiles, a little strained. “Good. Oh, and should I apologize to Teyla too? Cause seeing as how she could crush my nuts with her pinky . . . You didn’t tell her, did you?”

John winces. Rodney’s the one with all the totally inappropriate questions; why does he feel guilty? “Sorry about that. I was . . . a little pissed off.”

“I noticed. So do you think she’ll . . .”

“Don’t worry, your nuts are perfectly safe. Only danger is having them licked.” Wait . . . did he just say that out loud?

Judging by the way Rodney’s busy choking on his freeze-dried banana, he did. “What?! Give a guy a little warning before you say something like that . . . I could have asphyxiated, you know.”

“Sorry,” John says, sheepishly.

“What do you mean by that anyway? Because if you’re referring to some new fad in torture you picked up from the latest issue of Whips and Cuffs Weekly then I think you might’ve been browsing in the wrong section.”

John coughs into his collar. Well, there’s no going back now. “Actually, what I meant is that Teyla sort of . . . thinks that it’s a good idea.”

Rodney seems to go both flushed and pale at the same time. He gulps. “She . . . she said that?”

John nods.

“Well, that’s great.” Rodney’s eyes glaze over and he gets a far-off look again. “I didn’t bring my encyclopedia of sexual positions, but I’m sure we can figure something out. I mean . . . of course, if you’re okay with it . . .”

John doesn’t know what to say.

Maybe he’s sick. Maybe he’s just a little stir crazy. Maybe he misses Ford a whole lot, because for some reason he feels as though this wouldn’t happen with Ford here. Ford had a down-to-earth way about him. He was grounding. John always had ‘how will this look to Ford’ or ‘what will this do to our team dynamic’ at the back of his mind. But now . . . now, if it doesn’t save lives from the Wraith, he just doesn’t fucking care. And there’s a small, almost nonexistent part of him that thinks that it couldn’t really hurt to try.

John doesn’t know what to say, so he says, “Okay.”

Teyla says that they’re not broken. People cannot break.

Rodney says he can fix anything.

John knows that neither of them can be right.

Rodney is wearing a grey sweater that turns his eyes stormy but still bright. It looks even better than the suit jacket Cadman put on him for his big date with Katie Brown. John smiles nervously as he gets the door.

This is the first ‘team bonding’ night they’ve had since Ford, and John has to chuckle slightly at the voice in his head telling him that it’s not what his military superiors had in mind when they talked about bonding.

Rodney also smiles nervously, standing on his toes to wave to Teyla over John’s shoulder.

Teyla is sitting on the bed with one leg curled beneath her. She’s looking beautiful tonight, smiling like he hasn’t seen her smile since . . . since the siege. She looks relaxed, standing gracefully as the door shuts behind Rodney. “Dr. McKay, welcome. I had missed the time the three of us have often spent together.”

Rodney clears his throat, producing a small bouquet of wildflowers John recognizes from the mainland. He hands them to John who mentally calls up one of the Ancient self-filling vases from the middle of the table and drops them in.

John pulls out a bottle of red wine as they settle around one of the tables that comes out of the wall, drinking and smiling and before he knows it, John has forgotten what they all came together to do. It’s almost like old times. Except Ford isn’t here, trying to tease John and Rodney for being old men as they tease him right back. He isn’t smiling shyly at Teyla or doing random goofball things to make them all laugh. He’s in the belly of a hive ship somewhere, or scouting, or pumping his blood full of drugs, if he’s even alive.

Rodney and Teyla are talking about France of all things, and despite the fact that she knows absolutely nothing about the country, Teyla is laughing that high joyous giggle of hers. Her smile is so wide John thinks that it has to be contagious. Rodney’s talking animatedly with his hands, completely involved in his description of the failures of design in the Eiffel Tower and how French engineering was pretty much all downhill from there. And now, that Statue of Liberty thing was no big deal, because anyone stupid enough to build a monument for the Americans was obviously not smart enough to be a good engineer.

It’s ridiculous and inconsequential, and John is laughing, the wine forming a warm blanket over everything. This feels normal. It feels right, so he leans across the table, stealing Teyla’s smile in a kiss.

Rodney’s voice trails off as John and Teyla keep kissing and then he says, “Hey, I’m feeling kind of left out here.”

John doesn’t think, he just reaches out and pulls Rodney’s head in, kissing him and kissing him and kissing him.

John’s only ever kissed a man once and all he remembers is the scratch of stubble, the hangover, and the fact that it was a really stupid dare. This is different though. Rodney’s mouth is wide, his breath a mix of wine and something else thick and warm and oh-so-good, and his lips, though not soft as a woman’s, are nimble and frantic and entrancing.

He stands and practically leaps over the table to get closer . . . feel more, wondering why he’d never thought to do this before.

John plays with the lips, nips at them, lets his tongue dive deep into Rodney’s mouth, even as Teyla’s caresses dance down his spine, unbuckling his pants, touching him everywhere. He almost doesn’t feel her stroking his thighs, or reaching around him to get at Rodney because there are strong hands cupping the back of his neck and he’s being pulled in deeper, pressing into a hard cock and a tight embrace. And he thought this would be awkward and hard . . .

They finally break apart, panting and staring at each other, pupils dilated with lust, the smell of sex already in the air. Teyla is on her knees in between them, having rid them both of their pants and underwear. John pulls her up and kisses her, getting her shirt as Rodney tugs off her skirt. Teyla isn’t wearing a bra, but a strip of cloth wrapped around her in the tradition of her people. Rodney tries to rip it off and fails miserably, which has them all tumbling onto the bed in a peal of laughter.

Teyla frees two beautiful rounded breasts from her pseudo-bra and tosses it to the floor. John drags her into his lap even as she’s kissing Rodney. There are hands everywhere, but unlike that one time he spent with the twins in Dallas, John can tell the rough and frantically determined touches from the soft and graceful ones as two hands explore his body.

He cups Teyla’s full breasts and rubs her nipples as she straddles him, bucking against him.

Rodney has disappeared for the moment and John misses his hands on his skin almost immediately. But then he’s back and pulling a condom over John’s straining cock, swift and sure and precise, cupping John’s balls with just the right amount of pressure along the way.

John moans, Rodney capturing his mouth as Teyla slides down onto him, riding him hard. Oh, God, this is good. There are so many hands, so much motion, John can’t keep track, and he can’t thrust fast enough, can’t get enough of this, enough sensation. He hasn’t felt this much in a long, long time. It’s like he’s being thawed, like each caring gentle touch is a caress, like he’s at the center of everything, not as an idol or a savior or a tool, but as himself.

He’s thrusting wildly and it’s still not enough, even lifting Teyla off the bed and into Rodney’s hands holding her hips steady. Then someone is guiding him, flipping him over so he can dive into her, hearing her high-pitched moans of encouragement. But there are no words. Teyla thinks words are not needed for this, not even his name.

But there are words, spilling, tumbling familiar from a crooked mouth, “Oh, god, John . . . so beautiful. Fuck her. Teyla, oh . . . wow.”

Hands are on his back, stroking down his sides, lips at his neck as he keeps thrusting.

He’s right at the edge, but a voice tells him, “Don’t come yet, John,” and he obeys. He wants so much to please that melodic voice, the hands that are tweaking his nipples, the hard cock that’s rubbing itself up and down his crack in time with his thrusts.

Rodney bites down hard on his neck and a hand reaches down and squeezes his balls at the same time John’s whole back feels a warm sticky splash.

“Now,” Rodney says, and without a thought, John obliges and comes harder than he’s ever come before.

Teyla still thinks that gay means ‘happy.’

Rodney says he’d rather be queer than stupid.

John doesn’t ask what he means by that and he sure as fuck doesn’t tell.

A week. It’s been a week since they all slept together, and John’s not sure how many more excuses he can come up with not to go to the lab. Brushing off Teyla is surprisingly easy, as she seems to be allowing him his space.

She and Dex have been spending more time together. John can’t even bring himself to feel jealous. He knows that he and Teyla are over. They were over the second he and Rodney touched each other.

It was blatantly obvious that John and Rodney . . . sparked, and he and Teyla didn’t. It was in the gaze, in the caress, in every little movement, written as clear as the Ancient writings on the wall telling tales of culling after culling. It was a prophecy, and like that cave from long ago, not necessarily one that he wants to believe.

He’s not gay. Well, that’s not strictly true. There was this thing he had. He and his friend Jake used to sit on his basement couch, watching some pornos he stole by picking the lock to the confiscated goods locker on base, and jerking off. One day his hand found itself a different cock and Jake’s did the same. It never got to be more than that, but he liked it. Then again, don’t fourteen-year-olds enjoy any hand on their cock, especially any hand not their own? It’s not like that proves anything. He’s definitely too old to have a sexuality crisis. Wasn’t the whole Atlantis thing a crisis enough?

But this is different. Maybe it’s because he is in a different galaxy. Maybe the laws of attraction have changed along with the laws of physics and the laws of ethics. Or maybe it’s Rodney that changes the rules. Maybe it’s Rodney that has made all these fantastic, amazing things happen since they met more than a year ago. Reason tells him that it’s the change of location, the discovery of a great secret, but would it be as fantastic or amazing without Rodney here to share it with him? He just doesn’t know.

But that doesn’t mean that this whole new evolution of their relationship is a good thing. He knows that whatever he does, he can’t afford to fuck up the ‘team dynamic,’ as Ford would say.

What he needs to do is to move on. That shouldn’t be hard. He’s done it enough times to know how. He’s John Sheppard. He’s damned good at leaving people. He’s good at not returning phone calls or avoiding glances or big screaming matches that end up with the girl in tears. He’s even good at the ‘just friends’ thing, because it’s easier to accidentally lose the address of a friend and justify it.

But there’s no escaping this. There’s no way out. And John Sheppard has always been claustrophobic.

But he’s also brave.

So he looks in mirror at his hopeless hair and his black turtleneck, like every piece of clothing he owns. He stares at the haunted look in his tired eyes, the way the pupils are dilated almost black, like Ford’s. He doesn’t look half as attractive as he should, but he walks to the door anyway.

And finds Rodney waiting for him there.

“Colonel Sheppard, I’ve been looking all over for you,” Rodney says, nervous.

“Well, I guess you’ve found me,” he says, humorlessly. Flirting with Rodney is a lot harder now that he knows what it really means.

“Can I come in?”

John’s heart is racing, though he’s always been calm under pressure. He’s about to tell Rodney ‘no,’ but then he remembers that he was just on the verge of going to Rodney’s room to talk. “Mi casa es tu casa.” It sounds awkward. He almost cringes.

“Good.” Rodney rubs his palms together nervously, refusing the offered seat.

“Look, I . . .” Rodney says, at the same time John says, “So, about the other night . . .”

In the end, Rodney’s louder, so he continues, “I know that this is all my fault. I didn’t mean for it to get this far. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were probably thinking something along the lines of, ‘I need to get laid.’”

Rodney frowns, pausing for way too long. “I guess that’s one way to look at it.”

John crosses his hands over his chest as casually as he can. “And another way would be?”

“That I like you.”

“Good to know.”

“I really like you, John. You’re my . . .” his eyes shift around frantically. “You’re my best friend. I trust you.”

John tries to smirk, but he finds a genuine smile tugging at his lips. It’s strange, how good it feels to hear Rodney say that. He trusts Rodney too. He wouldn’t have done that with anybody else. He wants to say so but Rodney interrupts him just as he’s building up the courage to tell someone what he’s never told anyone before.

“But, about what happened. I want you to be honest with me, okay? Can you deal with it? And if not, what can I do to make things better?” Rodney’s frighteningly sincere, almost pleading.

John thinks about it for a second. He trusts Rodney. He’s not worrying about keeping this a secret, or about their ability to move past this. But there’s one problem. The problem is that John is too good at keeping secrets. He’s too good at lying and Rodney trusts him and he trusts Rodney. Wouldn’t it be good to be totally honest with someone for once? Wouldn’t it be good to let his guard down?

“The thing is . . .” John scratches nervously at the back of his neck. This is Rodney, not Leila Robinson at junior prom, he shouldn’t be nervous. Rodney knows him. Rodney practically hero-worships him. And Rodney yells at everybody so he doesn’t even have to worry about feeling singled out by his wrath. “. . . the thing is . . . I enjoyed it.”

Rodney’s jaw drops. His eyebrows rise. He stands perfectly still for a whole three and a half seconds – that has to be a record.

“Rodney?” John asks timidly.

Rodney gapes, jaw opening and closing like a fish. And then . . . a flash of awkward movement and Rodney has him wrapped in a tight hug. “Oh thank god. Because . . . because . . . I did too.”

John’s arms are pinned in Rodney’s surprisingly strong grip. He wants to bring them up to return the hug, to pull Rodney . . . to . . . to do what? They don’t even know how to go about this. “Now what?”

Rodney pulls back, looking into his eyes with a quirky half-smile. “Well, I guess there are some things we need to discuss if we want to keep doing this . . .”

Fuck that. John leans in to kiss him, and yeah . . . he still definitely likes it.

Teyla fights to practice for a greater fight.

Rodney wonders why you’d bother repeating if you’re good enough to get it right the first time.

John thinks that games with no winners and losers take all the fun out of it.

“Ow, what was that for?” Rodney is doing an amazingly good job at sounding offended when John nips at his neck. Then, of course, betting against Rodney being able to sound offended would be a damn stupid bet.

“That . . . was for kissing Beckett,” John says into Rodney’s neck.

“Yeah, because I had so much control over that.” John doesn’t need to look to know that Rodney’s rolling his eyes. “The next time my body gets hijacked by one of your insane lieutenants, I’ll remember to put, ‘no kissing my friends other than John Sheppard’ at the top of the list of rules, right after ‘no running.’ She also made me kiss Katie Brown.”

John pushes himself up on his elbows, which is surprisingly difficult from his position curled between Rodney’s legs. “She what?! You didn’t tell me about that!” Despite the fact that Beckett’s a man too, he knows that Katie’s much more of a threat. Beckett’s with Cadman now, but Rodney had been mooning about Katie Brown weeks before the two of them even got together.

Rodney rolls his eyes, trying to pull John back down to him. “Oh, come on, it’s not like I enjoyed it.”

“What?” Katie Brown was a botanist, sure, but she wasn’t bad looking.

“I’m sorry, I really enjoy having some estrogen crazy gun-slinging Cyrano de Bergerac taking over my body and making me go through with things all this put-on awkwardness was constructed specifically to prevent. It’s fun for the whole family.”

John is crawling away at little. “Put-on awkwardness?” What the hell?

“Yes, put-on awkwardness. Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean that I’m completely unaware of the opposite sex.”

John’s draw drops and suddenly the room is way too small. “You’re gay?”

“Duh. Do you think novices give blow jobs this good?” Rodney says, cupping John’s balls. Well, John had just attributed that to how much exercise Rodney gives his mouth. “God, John, I only like my blondes dumb.”

“But you . . . I thought you liked Teyla.”

“Of course I like Teyla. She’s nice and she keeps me from getting shot at.”

“That’s not what I mean.” John tries to squirm away. He was fine doing this . . . sleeping together before when he thought that Rodney wouldn’t push him, that they were both experimenting with this together . . . sort of like a joint mid-life crisis kind of deal.

“Look, everyone swings a little both ways, and we both know that Teyla’s a very attractive -and really flexible- woman. Plus, I thought it was the only chance I’d ever get to see you naked without having to hide the hardon. I was very pleasantly surprised. Now, can we please go back to the kissing?”

John leans further away, curling his legs to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. He’s gone off the map, far, far into uncharted territory. His voice is small when he finally finds it, not meeting Rodney’s imploring gaze. “What do you want from me?”

Rodney’s hands come up to stroke his calves, his thighs. He barely suppresses a shudder.

“I want you as a lover.”

“And Teyla?”

“I don’t care what happens between you and Teyla.” Well, they haven’t had sex since the incident, sure, and John is positive she’s avoiding him, sparring with Dex when he had planned to confront her about it, and then only saying that she didn’t need his protection when he tried to warn her. “Of course, I’d like you all to myself, but if you need to be with a woman every once in a while, I sure wouldn’t blame you for wanting it to be Teyla. She’s hot.”

John finds himself seriously considering it. Rodney has experience, sure, but he’s still Rodney. John likes him. John trusts him. John might even love him. “How far do you . . .” he’s never done that before, except with Tracy Adams, and even then it was a really small dildo.

Rodney kisses him deeply, unfolding his arms from around his knees. “I would never force you to do anything you weren’t comfortable with. But I won’t lie to you and say that I haven’t fantasized about being inside you, that I don’t hope that’s where this is headed.” John’s breath hitches and his muscles tighten. But his cock twitches at the low moan that is Rodney’s voice as he says it, like he’s already lost in fantasy. “But if it never gets there, I’ll understand. I want you either way.”

The hands come around to stroke his back. John heaves a sigh,

He wants to please Rodney. He wants to do that for him. He wants to hear that low moan again, and wants to see the promise inherent within it fulfilled. In fact, he was already considering asking about it the night he spent sitting, feeling oddly lonely, in his room, wondering if Rodney and he were ever going to get time alone without a military watchdog riding shotgun. Damn, wasn’t that frustrating?

John was tired of being alone. “Okay. But slow, okay?”

Rodney’s practically shaking with anticipation and John plants a chaste kiss on his lips when he squeaks, “I can . . . I can do slowly.”

Then Rodney’s hands are everywhere. His scent, arousal and coffee and a fresh new smell that John can’t identify, is all around them. Rodney tastes the way Earth should be. He tastes like pipe dreams and lofty ideals and grand promises that will never be fulfilled.
They spend minutes, or maybe hours, just kissing, slowly losing clothes, mapping newly exposed skin, pretending this moment will last forever. Tomorrow they’ll be taking Dex out for a walk. Tomorrow they’ll be a team again, fighting the good fight. Tomorrow anything could happen, so John wants to make tonight special.

He barely registers where Rodney’s fingers have gone until something warm and gentle and slick is stroking at his entrance. He shivers, but pushes back into it, recalling hours spent watching Rodney’s hands work.

Rodney plays him like an artist, finding his sweet spot and jerking him to the edge and back again so many times, until he comes with a strangled gasp, seeing stars.

“Oh, fuck, Rodney, that was so good.”

Rodney smirks, but then kisses him a little too seriously, sobering. “We can stop there if you want.”

John drags his head up from his boneless sprawl. “Do you want to stop there?”

“God, no. But I don’t want to push you if you’re not ready.”

John grabs Rodney’s fingers, not knowing if he’s shaking down from the high of orgasm or if he’s actually just nervous. His movements are sure, however, when he pulls Rodney’s fingers back down to his hole. “I trust you.”

Rodney kisses him so deeply that he forgets those talented hands again, forgets Rodney’s thick cock, forgets the Wraith, forgets everything isn’t the scant inches of skin they seem to share. “God, John, you don’t know how much that means to me,” he whispers against John’s cheek.

The first thrust is exquisitely slow, and the transcendent look in Rodney’s eyes alone is enough to overcome the pain. He’s stretching, he’s expanding, he’s leaving his body and into the blue, and oh, God, isn’t this good?

Minutes later, Rodney’s name is on his lips as he comes a second time. It’s the only name he knows, his own forgotten.

Teyla doesn’t come to him when he doesn’t show up for their sparring session.

Rodney left a bite mark on his shoulder but can’t make dinner until eleven.

John finally agrees to let Dex beat him to a pulp.

Even with Dex doing his best impression of Goldilocks, hair and all, and the whole getting tied up and beat up and the huge bruise on his knee from trying –very embarrassingly- to crack that stick on his leg, John is still satisfied with the mission.

Yes, he let a bunch of escaped convicts through the Stargate. Yes, he saw another world get culled, which probably included a lot of innocent people.

But he beat Dex’s initial mutinous instincts, managed to gain his respect, learned a bit more about Rodney, and to respect his grace under pressure even more, and things seemed okay between himself and Teyla. Life is good.

John moves stiffly down the corridor towards Rodney’s room. They’re set for a picnic on the south pier. John’s holding Rodney to his comment about being a romantic, even if it was in reference to death by electrocution. His heart’s fluttering, even as his rib cage aches. Even getting tossed around as much as he did today isn’t enough to put a damper on his good mood. If he weren’t so dignified, he’d be humming right now.

He rounds the corner to find Teyla walking along by herself, looking sweaty and carrying her gym bag in her hand.

She raises her eyebrows and smiles at him, noticing the picnic basket he’s carrying in his arms. “Colonel. Another ‘diplomatic picnic?’”

He laughs at the reference. Before that would’ve been a sore spot, but they’re so far beyond that now. “Actually, a private department heads meeting,” he says tentatively, though he’s guessing she already knows.

She just throws her head back with a throaty chuckle. Even though he knows they’re over, John still loves Teyla’s laugh. Hell, he still loves Teyla. “I see.”

He wants to ask if they’re okay now, but he doesn’t have to, because Teyla smiles again and says. “I was planning to visit with my people on the mainland tomorrow, and I was wondering if . . .”

“I’d love to fly you out personally.”

“I’m sure that Wex and Jinto will be very happy to hear that. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

She nods, then spontaneously drags his head down, into what he would think was a kiss, if he hadn’t gotten used to the Athosian equivalent of a hug. It feels warmer than anything even his mother ever gave him.

“Be well, Colonel,” she says, forehead still pressed to his.

“Same to you.” They pull back. “Oh, and Teyla, you can still call me John.”

Her lips curve, and her eyes glow, and she looks so beautiful.

When she smiles, he never quite knows what she means.

Even before her father died, her people treated Teyla like a leader.

Rodney’s parents only saw a mistake, and his colleagues, competition. His inferiors saw an object to be used.

John almost died trying to rescue three men who weren’t the family he was looking for.

Aiden Ford wants to prove himself, so he can be a part of something again.

FIN