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Entry tags:
SGA fic: The Pegasus Galaxy School of Massage
Title: The Pegasus Galaxy School of Massage
Word Count: 6600 words
Pairing: Basically, this is gen teamfic. But there are parts with faint undertones of Ronon/Rodney, and other parts that might be read in an OT4-ish direction, and some that could conceivably be seen in a John/Teyla sort of way ... Let's just say that I'm calling it gen (I really think that it is) but it's not completely unambiguous gen.
Summary: "You think you've seen everything in Pegasus," John said musingly. "And then you realize there are untold depths of weirdness still to be explored." An episode tag for 5x03, "Broken Ties", that ... grew.
Crossposted: on LJ | on DW | on AO3
As far as Ronon was concerned, there was no single worst part of recovering from Wraith enzyme addiction. It was all pretty bad. The initial detox was awful, a level of awful that he'd rarely experienced even in his years as a Runner, but luckily he didn't remember much of it. And then there was an interminable recovery, when he was infuriatingly weak, and his emotional control cracked at the worst moments, and his stomach could tolerate only the blandest food. His entire body ached, and worse, itched, a deep-down itch under the skin that he couldn't scratch.
And then there were the stares. After trying to find his place in Atlantis for three years, he'd finally, without even being aware of it, started to feel like he fit. He belonged. And now — now there were stares in the halls again, like his first days in the city. Word had gotten around. They all knew: they knew he'd betrayed them, gone over to the Wraith. He couldn't start over again from the beginning; he couldn't.
He felt too sensitive, like the world was scraping him raw. He refused to leave his quarters, although staying meant that he had to look at Tyre's sword, propped in the corner. He made himself stare at it, sometimes for hours. It was part of his punishment. He deserved it. Maybe he deserved to go out, too, and have the whole city stare at him — but he didn't have the strength anymore.
"Are you still experiencing symptoms?" Jennifer asked him when she came over to check his vitals and bring him a huge carton of soup. "Paranoia or depression? Discomfort? Nausea?"
"I'm fine," Ronon said.
Jennifer frowned at him, a small crease appearing between her brows. "Uh-huh." She left him a bottle of a drug that she said was for depression. Ronon dumped it down the toilet. He didn't want any more drugs.
John and Teyla took turns bringing him food, sometimes with Rodney in tow. They brought movies and watched them in his quarters, which was something that none of them had ever done — if they did something like that as a group, it was usually in the lounge or in John's quarters, occasionally Teyla's.
Ronon watched the team carefully to see if they were treating him differently. John was a little bit weird and stiff, but when it came right down to it, John was always a little weird and stiff except when he was out in the field. Fundamentally, no matter how hard he looked, Ronon couldn't identify anything out of the ordinary in the way John acted towards him.
Teyla touched him more than she used to — soft little touches on his shoulder or side. She would lean against him while they watched movies. Sometimes she put an arm around him, or kissed his ear before she left. It was hard for Ronon to tell how much of it was him and how much was just Teyla being a mom now, though. Usually she brought Torren, tucked into the crook of one arm or resting against her shoulder like an impossibly small baby-shaped pillow. For about a week, Ronon managed to hold out against her gently implacable efforts to thrust the baby into his arms, but finally gave in, and after that, he watched movies with Teyla leaning on his shoulder and Torren's soft, tiny mass snuggled into his arms.
Rodney was a totally different story: awkward, fidgety, never seemed to want to meet Ronon's eyes, half the time didn't even stick around for the movie. But Ronon took it for granted that Rodney didn't like him much anyway, so that wasn't a surprise.
At least, there weren't any surprises from that quarter until the day when his door chimed unexpectedly.
Ronon looked up; he'd been lying on his bed, gazing in the general direction of Tyre's sword. John and Teyla had brought him some books, but it was too difficult to get his brain to focus right now — another thing that sucked about the current state of affairs. He thought about not getting up, but the door chimed again. And again. It was like a sawblade on his nerves. Finally he dragged himself off the bed. "Yeah, what?" he demanded, palming the door open.
Rodney, on the other side, took a step backwards. "Uh. Hi. Can I come in?" He gestured nervously; when Ronon didn't say no, he shuffled quickly inside and shut the door behind him.
"What are you doing here?" Ronon's eyes dropped to a small sack in Rodney's hands. It wasn't big enough to contain food, at least not a reasonable quantity of food.
"Yes. Well. You see, there's —" Rodney stopped, cleared his throat. "Okay. Let me start over. As I'm sure you're aware, I've also been addicted to the enzyme in rather large quantities."
"Not this large," Ronon said flatly. Still, he'd forgotten that. Of course, he hadn't paid much attention to Rodney at the time; he had a dim recollection that Rodney might not have been around much for a while, but they'd only known each other for a few months, and he'd generally considered lack of Rodney to be a plus.
To some extent, he still considered it a plus, but it seemed that the only way to get Rodney to leave his quarters was to hear him out, so he tried to look attentive. Apparently, he only managed "intense", because Rodney backed all the way to the bed.
"Okay, right, yes. So the point is, I remember what it felt like — afterwards, you know?" Rodney's eyes darted all around, never settling on Ronon, and the thought occurred to him that he might have read Rodney wrong — what made Rodney nervous wasn't Ronon himself, so much as the reminder of that time in his life. "Like your skin's too small, like there are ants crawling under it, or an itch you just can't scratch —"
Ronon curled his hands into fists and concentrated on the feeling of the nails cutting crescent moons into his palm. "Get to the point, McKay."
Perhaps sensing that he was on thin ice, Rodney swallowed. "The point is, the point is — the point is," he said, straightening his back and looking directly at Ronon for the first time, "when I was in college, I had to take twenty-one credits of electives to meet the requirements for my undergraduate degree, and the vast majority of the electives available to me were either mind-numbing liberal arts classes with loads of busywork, or —"
"Get to the point."
"The point. Yes. The point is that I took two semesters of massage classes because they fit with my schedule and didn't require homework," Rodney said, all in a rush, and dumped the bag onto the bed. Ronon's eyes followed the tumbling bottles: they were small, utilitarian bottles of oil that had clearly come from the kitchen.
Ronon stared. Then he stared at Rodney.
"If you're going to hit me, could you get it over with?" Rodney said at last.
"Actually, I was wondering if 'massage' has the same meaning on Earth that it does in Pegasus, or if this is one of those translation things."
An immediate flaming blush flowed from Rodney's collar to the top of his head. "Oh my God. No. No, no, no. Not that kind of massage. Oh my God, I should have known you thought I meant —"
"McKay. Relax. What 'massage' means in Pegasus is, basically, that I lie down, you spread oil on my body and rub my muscles."
"Oh." Rodney's whole body deflated in a huge sigh of relief. "Yes. That was what I had in mind."
"It can also be foreplay, but I figured that wasn't what you meant."
Rodney's blush had faded, but now it reasserted itself in a more gentle, faintly pink version. "I hate you. Lie down."
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Ronon was still having trouble wrapping his admittedly fuddled brain around the fact that Rodney wanted to do this voluntarily, with no one pointing a gun at him or anything.
Rodney waved a hand wildly at the bed. "Just — lie down before I lose my nerve."
Bemused, Ronon did. He wasn't entirely convinced that he trusted Rodney in this capacity, but he was vaguely interested. And he'd been so distracted by Rodney's idea that he hadn't thought about taking Tyre's sword and carving the itch and the filth from under his skin in ... minutes, probably, so there was that, too.
The bed dipped under Rodney's weight. "I thought about asking Teyla for some of her scented oils, because I'm sure she has them if anyone does, but there was no way in hell that I was going to explain to her what I wanted them for. And asking anyone in the kitchen was straight out, for basically the same reason. So I palmed some of the little bottles of nut oils and so forth off the big buffet table in the mess. I have no idea what any of these are, but we play food roulette at practically every meal anyway, so I figured that it couldn't be that bad if I'm just rubbing them on you rather than eating them. Oh," he added briskly, "and you'd better take off your shirt." When Ronon hesitated, Rodney said, "Come on, move it, you're half-naked all the time anyway, it isn't like you have any modesty to begin with."
He didn't, at least not in the prudish Earth sense, but his skin no longer felt thick enough to insulate him from the world. And he had trouble keeping warm these days; even in his quarters, he'd taken to wearing long-sleeved shirts. Ronon had to stop himself from shivering as he sat up far enough to slide his shirt over his head, and then lay back down.
Meanwhile, Rodney had been opening bottles and spreading them out on the bedside table. He dipped a finger in one and sniffed. "Hmm. Sort of like peanuts. By the way, you don't have any nut allergies that you know of, do you? That would be the perfect way for this to go horribly, abysmally wrong, as my social events usually do."
"This is a social event?" Ronon said, unable to help himself. Things had been so tense and strained lately. He'd almost forgot how much fun it was to wind Rodney up.
"Ha ha, funny. Have I mentioned how amusing you are?"
Rodney's hands settled on Ronon's shoulders, unpleasantly greasy and rather cold. Ronon almost jumped out of his skin. Rodney jumped too. "Stop that!" Rodney said, sounding accusing. "It's me. Sitting right here, talking to you, hello."
"I know it's you, McKay."
"Good. I'd hate to think you lost much-needed brain cells to that ... stuff."
Rodney's hands minced tentatively down Ronon's back, tickling more than rubbing, aggravating the itch under his skin. Ronon flinched, flinched again.
Rodney went still. "Stop squirming!"
"I would," Ronon said, "if you'd stop tickling me."
"I'm not!"
"Yes you are. You have to push harder."
"I am pushing! And I really hope no one can hear this conversation outside your quarters, by the way!"
Ronon snorted. "It feels like you're brushing me with a feather duster."
"Feather duster. I'll show you a feather duster," Rodney growled under his breath, and got up on his knees, throwing his whole weight onto his spread hands, one on each side of Ronon's spine. Ronon gave a startled grunt, and Rodney instantly eased up. "I'm sorry! Did I hurt your back? Don't kill me!"
"It didn't hurt. Just surprised me, that's all. It felt sort of ..." Ronon hesitated, but it was true. "Sort of good."
"Huh." Rodney sat back on his heels, then got up on his knees again. "You want me to keep doing this?"
"Less talking," Ronon said into the pillow. "More rubbing."
******
In the end, Rodney spent about forty-five minutes massaging his back and shoulders with hands, elbows, and knees before finally calling it quits. "I'm going to blame you if I'm sore tomorrow," he complained from the bathroom, scrubbing the oil off his hands. "Oh good, I have peanut oil stains on the knees of my uniform. I'm looking forward to explaining that one to the guys down in Laundry." Finally he noticed that Ronon wasn't saying anything. "Uh, Ronon? Did I break you?"
Ronon managed to muster the energy to twist his face out of the pillow, turning his head in Rodney's direction before sinking back into it. "No," he said. "Feels good. Really good."
"Does it really?" Rodney had that squeaky tone to his voice that he got when he was genuinely pleased. "Well, I'm not — it's been a lot of years."
The itching and the aching and all the rest of it hadn't gone away, by any means, but for the first time in days or possibly weeks, Ronon felt relaxed. He could feel his muscles already starting to knot up again, but in the meantime, maybe he'd sleep. His head was turned so that he couldn't see Tyre's sword, and he was too drowsy to bother turning it the other way. He closed his eyes.
"What — are you asleep?" Rodney's voice approached the bed, then dropped to a loud whisper. "Oh, wow, I forgot how fast you can fall asleep. So, uh, I'll just let myself out, then?" Small clinking sounds followed, as he loaded the bottles of oil back into the bag. "So, right, um, lots to do in the lab, and I guess I'll see you later tonight if Sheppard is still planning on bringing down the next disc of whatever new, atrocious spin-off the Wormhole X-Treme guys have come up with now —" His stage whisper was receding, backing away towards the door. "Or maybe I'll be working; lots to do in the lab —"
"McKay," Ronon said, and he heard Rodney jump, the bottles clinking. "Thank you."
"Oh! Oh? Um ... you're welcome." The last words were almost too soft to hear, as the door closed behind him.
******
Ronon figured it would just be a one-off thing, but Rodney came back almost every day, invariably when their other teammates were occupied elsewhere. As Rodney's confidence and comfort grew, his technique improved; he began trying some pressure points, and working on Ronon's legs as well.
It had been a long time since anyone had touched Ronon like that. His mother used to give both him and his sister backrubs, and he and his squadmates had rubbed each other's sore muscles in the steam baths. And there had been Melena, of course. But then ... then there were seven years of Running, and three years among the Atlanteans, who did not touch each other in the casual way of Satedans. As he had grown used to living among them, Ronon had found it easier to slip back into the easy physical familiarity of his youth, but he'd tried to tone it down when he realized that he was making everyone except maybe Teyla uncomfortable.
It felt good to be touched again. And Ronon was pretty sure that Rodney liked it too — not only because he kept coming back to do it again, but because Rodney looked relaxed and happy himself after a massage session. In some weird way, it seemed to be de-stressing him, too; he came in tense and frustrated from the labs, and by the end of it, he was smiling more and his shoulders looked less hunched and tight.
Ronon had observed the same effect in John when they went to the gym and the rifle range. Or Teyla in her meditation sessions — or, for that matter, Rodney when he played video games with John. Everybody had things that calmed them down and relaxed them. But Ronon had never before had that effect himself on Rodney. It was oddly flattering.
Considering the amount of full-on bare skin contact involved, it was surprisingly unerotic, although ... not entirely. Ronon didn't find Rodney attractive in that way, but it had been a very long time since anyone had touched him, and sometimes it was hard to ignore the fact that he was being, well — touched; if not with love, necessarily, then at least with gentleness that he was not used to receiving. He didn't say anything, so either Rodney didn't notice or didn't care (at least not enough to mention it, and for Rodney, the line between thinking it and saying it was so fine as to be almost invisible).
On the other hand, the look on Teyla's face when she walked in while Rodney was straddling his hips in order to press down on his spine was totally worth it.
Teyla didn't normally make a habit of barging into his quarters, but in this case, she knocked and opened the door an instant later. "Ronon, I am so very sorry, but Kanaan is on New Athos and Torren —" Then she froze, wide-eyed, with Torren draped over her arm.
Rodney had managed to scramble partway off Ronon's hips, which, Ronon noticed when he craned his head around, just made it look more sexual, not less. Also, Rodney's blush wasn't making him look any more innocent.
"Don't they believe in knocking on Athos?" Rodney demanded.
"No, actually," Teyla said, "but I did knock, and — is that casa-nut oil?"
"I don't know. Is that what it is?" Rodney pulled himself off Ronon entirely, and, with hunched shoulders and a guilty expression, retrieved a towel from the bathroom to wipe his hands.
Teyla shook herself. "In any case, there is a diplomatic crisis on Manara and I am already expected in the gateroom. Ronon and — er — Rodney, if you could watch Torren for a couple of hours, please, I would be most grateful." Having apparently come to terms with whatever she thought she'd seen, Teyla was already in the act of depositing a sleepy Torren by Ronon's head as she spoke.
"Sure, no problem," he said, rousing himself enough to lay a protective hand across Torren's round belly.
"Teyla, I trust you aren't going to jump to any conclusions about anything that you may have ... thought you saw," Rodney said loudly from the bathroom. "There's a very logical explanation —"
"Saw? I saw nothing," Teyla said, and vanished out the door.
A couple of hours later, after Rodney had long since flustered off to the labs, Teyla came back to retrieve Torren. "I am very sorry for disturbing your privacy earlier," she said, picking up Torren as he squirmed cheerfully.
"'sokay," Ronon said. "Someone was bound to walk in on us eventually."
"I ... see. Perhaps you should consider locking the door."
Ronon couldn't help grinning, and he found that it was less effort to smile than it had been only a week ago. It just wasn't very often that he managed to discomfit Teyla. "He's been giving me massages, that's all. Nothing else to it."
Teyla, to her credit, remained perfectly cool. "I thought nothing else," she said.
"Sure you didn't."
"Which is not, of course, to suggest in any way that you would be ... unsuited, or that I would find it objectionable in any way other than the sheer unexpectedness of ..." She trailed off, then said, "As John says, I should quit while I'm ahead, shouldn't I."
"Yeah, probably."
******
By now Ronon had resumed working out in the gym, though he tended to go down at times when the place was as close to deserted as possible. John, of course, had figured this out and made a point of just happening to drop by at unlikely times, like three in the morning.
Tonight, John was already there when Ronon showed up, along with a couple of Marines. It was easier than it had been, Ronon noticed, to give them a casual nod and then to convince himself that they weren't staring at him. They were just working out, not paying much attention to him at all.
"Hey," John said, giving him a nod which then morphed into a smirk. "Talked to Teyla earlier, about you and Rodney."
"You Earth people are so weird about sex," Ronon said, picking out weights.
John sputtered, and Ronon had the pleasure of making two of his teammates blush in one day. "Who's talking about sex? I'm talking about you and Rodney and — massage therapy. What are you talking about? Not," he added quickly, "that it's any of my business at all. In fact, forget I asked, because I'm pretty sure I don't want to know."
It was really too easy. "We're not having sex," Ronon said, taking pity on him. For some reason this made John turn even brighter red. "Just doing this massage thing."
John cleared his throat and took a swig of water. His ears were bright pink. "I'd like to know how you talked Rodney into that. You must have some prime dirt on him."
"Nah." Ronon settled on the weight bench. "It was his idea."
"You're kidding."
"No. Guess he used to do it in college or something."
"Rodney," John said. "Gave massages in college."
"Well, he studied it or something."
"You think you've seen everything in Pegasus," John said musingly. "And then you realize there are untold depths of weirdness still to be explored."
"Hey, you gonna get over here and spot me, or stand there talking to yourself?"
******
The next day, Teyla arrived a minute or two behind Rodney. She had to have been lurking in wait, because her timing was perfect — just long enough for Rodney to get his oil bottles laid out, but not enough for Ronon to take his shirt off.
"Hello," Teyla said, sitting down crosslegged on the floor with Torren in her lap. "I would like, first of all, to apologize for intruding on you yesterday, Rodney."
"Oh really?" Rodney said. "Are you going to apologize for telling Sheppard, too?"
Teyla raised an eyebrow. Rodney wordlessly pointed at Ronon.
"It's not a secret or anything," Ronon said. By this point he was thoroughly amused with all of them. He'd have thought Teyla would be more sensible about this than the Earth people, but apparently not.
"I did not think so, at least not where John is concerned," Teyla said cautiously, "but, Rodney, I am sorry if I presumed incorrectly. In any case, I would like to ask a favor of you."
Rodney's face went from annoyed to horrified at a record-setting speed. "I'm not — I don't — No way, I'm sorry, I'm not going to be your masseuse and I don't care how many sticks you hit me with! First Kanaan would kill me, then Sheppard would do away with whatever was left —"
"I wanted to ask you to teach me your art," Teyla said, over the top of his verbal flailing. "We practice massage arts on Athos, but it is something I never learned, and now there are ..." Her face went dark and closed for a moment. "Not very many who still know those ways. In any case ..." Turning from Rodney, she offered Ronon a small, somewhat apologetic smile. "I had never thought that it might be helpful to know these things. Now I have realized that my education is lacking in this area. I would like to fix that."
"Oh." Rodney calmed down a bit, though now he looked uncertain and slightly wary. "Um, you do realize you're talking to ... me, right? Don't tell Zelenka I admitted this, but I'm not really the most — er, patient teacher, exactly."
"I have known you for five years, Rodney," Teyla said, perfectly deadpan. "It had not escaped my notice."
Ronon settled his head down on his crossed arms. This was going to be hilarious.
******
Despite his insistence to the contrary, Rodney was not actually a bad teacher. He wasn't an especially good teacher, but his big hands were deft and sure and surprisingly patient as he positioned them over Teyla's, on Ronon's back.
Ronon, naturally, had been pressed into service as the test subject. This was perfectly fine with him: he got two massages at a time, rather than one. Teyla was, of course, a natural at it.
Over a couple of massage sessions, Rodney's obvious pride in Teyla's progress gave way slowly to droopiness. By the time Ronon noticed, Teyla had not only noticed but, apparently, figured out what to do about it. She didn't give him any time to think about it, just rose from Ronon's bed in the middle of a session, walked over and plunked her oily hands down onto Rodney's shoulders, which immediately rose up to the vicinity of his ears.
"Rodney," Teyla said, sounding exasperated. "Relax."
"This wasn't part of the deal!"
"Why not?" Teyla inquired in her "I am dealing with small children and idiots" voice. "You have been giving Ronon massages for weeks now." Her face was soft and fond; Ronon could see it, though Rodney couldn't. "Perhaps it is your turn, for once."
Rodney still had his head drawn down between his shoulders, turtle style. "I don't do well with this kind of thing, okay?"
Watching lazily from the bed, with Torren sleeping contentedly next to his head on the pillow, Ronon felt something click over in his brain. Rodney was seldom reticent about touching people if he needed to — whether it was pushing a slower scientist out of the way of a computer workstation, or kneading Ronon's knotted neck muscles — but the difference was that he'd always been in charge. Usually Rodney was the one who controlled the amount of touching and the way it was done. Being on the receiving end was different. John was that way, too; he always had been. Maybe most Earth people were. "Teyla, don't do it if he doesn't want it."
Teyla looked surprised, but she withdrew her hands. "Rodney, forgive me; I did not mean to presume."
Rodney raised his head slowly. "No — no, don't go away. It's just ..." His face screwed up as if he were facing a punishment. "Go ahead. Just ... please go slow."
"I will stop the instant you ask it," Teyla promised, lowering her hands to his shoulders.
"And be gentle! I bruise easily!"
"I will not hurt you, Rodney."
Once Teyla had reduced Rodney to a boneless puddle sprawled limply on Ronon's desk chair, Ronon sat up on the bed. "Would you mind ..." he asked Teyla. "I'm not trained or anything, but we used to do this on Sateda, in the squads. For sore muscles and stuff." Suddenly, urgently, he was tired of always taking and taking. The itch beneath his skin was gone, and he hadn't even noticed when it had faded to become one with the background hum of his body. It was time to give back.
Teyla turned around and lifted her hair with one hand, pulling down the neckline of her shirt to bare her brown shoulders. Ronon settled his hands on the long muscles framing her slender neck. Teyla sighed, and uncoiled slowly into his touch.
Ronon began to see why Rodney (even if he wouldn't admit it) liked doing this so much. Being on the receiving end was relaxing, but so was the steady, rhythmic pressure and relaxation of his hands along Teyla's spine. As he felt Teyla settle into his palms, all the tension easing out of her, Ronon thought, We can't leave John out of this.
******
"You want to what?" John said.
"Give you a massage," Ronon said. "We're all doing it now."
John's body language got noticeably stiffer and more closed-off. Ronon thought that he should have known better than to try honesty when dealing with John and certain kinds of situations.
"Do I need to have Keller do brain scans on all of you?" John asked. "Or check your closets for pods?"
"Pods?" Must be a reference to some kind of Earth parasite; Ronon mentally filed it away, in a brain that was now sharp enough to retain that sort of thing again — it felt so good to be able to think like he used to. "Look, Sheppard —" John had taken a few quiet steps towards the door, and was regarding him with one of his less-than-sincere Placating The Hostile Strangers faces. "Forget it," Ronon said. "You're bringing over Akira tonight, right?"
"If I can get it from the botanists," John agreed. "No one is going to be springing any stealthy ninja massages on me, are they?"
"No ninja massages," Ronon promised him.
But as they all sprawled around on Ronon's floor watching the movie, he caught himself surreptitiously watching his teammates and noticing their body language. Things had changed a bit. Teyla was leaning on Rodney, who had his leg unselfconsciously pressed up against Ronon's back. Ronon had Torren spread out in his lap like a little starfish in a pastel-green wrapper — and, okay, that part was pretty much the same as the first few movie nights, before the massages began.
And so was John, who had taken the single desk chair, arms crossed over his chest. He could not have exuded a more powerful air of DO NOT TOUCH if he'd written it on a sign around his neck.
The movie wasn't even half over when John rose abruptly, stretched in an ostentatious kind of way, and announced, "Well, early morning; got the Daedalus coming in two days, and inventories wait for no man."
He was out the door before he'd finished talking.
Ronon met Teyla's eyes and could see his own thoughts mirrored there. He jerked his eyes at the door: Want me to go after him? Teyla gave a tiny shake of the head, and she rose in a graceful motion and headed for the door.
"Hey, wait —" Rodney began. "You forgot —" The door closed behind her. "— your baby," he finished weakly.
"She's coming back, McKay," Ronon said, flopping down onto his back so that he could pull Torren onto his chest.
Rodney lay back, too, and reached out to place one of his fingers into Torren's tiny fist, to watch the little hand curl shut. The entertainment value of that did not ever seem to wear off. "Sheppard's ..." he began, and trailed off.
"Teyla will catch him."
"Yeah, and then what? He's being all ..." Rodney waved a hand in the air. "All Sheppard."
Silence settled on them, thick and heavy. Even after three years, it was still difficult to be alone with Rodney without things getting awkward.
Torren woke up, flailing, and made a hiccuping sound. "Oh, hey," Rodney said, hastily trying to withdraw his hand. Torren held on, however, so all Rodney managed to do was flip him over. Torren slithered off Ronon's chest onto Rodney's arm, where the little starfish clung, facedown in Rodney's biceps. "Uh," Rodney said. "You want this back?"
"You caught it, you bought it," Ronon pointed out.
"It's a baby, not a designer vase or something," Rodney said.
Torren showed no signs of going anywhere on his own, not that he really had the muscle tone to make it possible. Rodney poked at him until he slipped down neatly into the space between them. There, cradled by the warmth of their bodies in a dim and cozy place, he fell asleep again.
After a moment, Rodney said. "Has the thought ever occurred to you that Teyla is completely nuts to let us anywhere near her kid?"
"All the time," Ronon said.
******
Teyla and John came back in an hour or so, a little out of breath. John had a new bruise over his right eye, and Teyla's hair was mussed. "We are ready to finish watching the movie," was all Teyla said about it.
They watched the rest of it in a somewhat uneasy silence. Even Rodney seemed to be stifling his usual tendency to make snide comments about the plot.
After they shut it off, there was a long, awkward silence. Then John sat forward with a sharp motion, clasping his hands between his knees. "Look, about the — see, I didn't exactly —"
"Apology accepted," Ronon said. Teyla gave both of them an encouraging smile.
"Right." John rubbed the back of his head and didn't look at any of them. He looked flustered and miserable. "It's kind of like this — I don't — I'm just not —"
"Not a touching-people kind of guy. Sheppard, we know," Rodney said impatiently, sitting up. Torren squirmed, and Ronon put a quick hand on him to keep him quiet. Rodney was still talking, oblivious. "And what you don't seem to get is that no one cares. It's not like a, a secret massage club or something that you don't have the passwords and special handshake for."
John smiled slightly, staring at his feet. "I appreciate that, it's just — it's not that I'm not trying, it's..."
There was a very old, very deep pain in those words, in the way he said them. Ronon could imagine a much younger John hearing those words from the adults in his life, the way they would have cut like knives: John, you aren't trying ...
"What have we ever done, John," Teyla said gently, "to make you think we want you to be other than what you are?"
John's head came up quickly. "It's not you! Not you guys at all. It's me, it's always been — see, the thing you need to know —"
"Hello, known you for five years, all right?" Rodney interrupted him. "Sort of gotten to know you a little bit in that time?" Not looking at John, he added in a rush, "Sort of gotten to like you a little bit? Like you are, I mean, not some ideal of Sheppardhood that apparently you think you don't measure up to —"
"What he means is quit being stupid, John," Ronon said over the top of him.
The more they talked, the more Teyla's expression had morphed from a supportive smile into an increasingly exasperated frown. "I have an idea," she said as soon as she could get a word into the conversation.
She plucked Torren from under Ronon's hand, and spread him out in John's lap, facedown. Torren was, as usual, asleep; at this stage in his life, he seemed to sleep nearly all the time. He curled up his whole body, all his limbs drawing together in an annoyed spasm, then stretched out again and began to slither bonelessly off John's knee.
John caught him in time to prevent disaster. "Teyla —"
"Wait." Teyla took John's hand gently by the wrist, and placed it on Torren's back. "Rodney, there is no reason why a baby could not be massaged, is there? My people do that sometimes, although I know little of how it is done."
"I don't know," Rodney said. "I've heard of baby massage, so yeah, I guess so. Um, don't squish him?"
John scowled, but he looked a little less miserable. "Gee, thanks for the advice, Rodney."
When Teyla took her hand away, John rested his palm on Torren's back for a moment, then began to rub in slow, gentle circles.
"That's it," Teyla said softly.
After a moment, she took John's hand again and slid it under the middle of Torren's plump, floppy body, then flipped him over, with the brisk efficiency of a mother who is very accustomed to manhandling her child in many different positions. Torren didn't even wake up, just burbled a little in his sleep.
John was clearly starting to get into the spirit of it. Using tiny, careful strokes, he rubbed Torren's small limbs and chest and neck. He cradled the little head in his hand while gliding his thumb over Torren's temple.
Though still dead to the world, Torren nestled into John's touch. John looked utterly entranced, his face as soft as Ronon had ever seen it.
"Does anyone know what time it is?" Rodney asked quietly, then answered his own question by looking at his watch. "Oh God. Some of us have to be up in ... okay, not very many hours."
"Spend the night," Ronon said, and when Rodney gave him a quick, startled look, "All of you. I got lots of blankets. No need to walk back for just a few hours' sleep."
He couldn't articulate it; he just knew that he felt drowsy and happy and comfortable in his skin for the first time since the Wraith had touched him. And he didn't want it to end.
"Kanaan is still on New Athos," Teyla said thoughtfully. "Where are your blankets, Ronon?"
Ronon pointed to the heavy, scarred wooden wardrobe that he'd retrieved from the ashes of Sateda. "If Rodney hasn't taken them, that is."
"Oh, for — it was one painting. And it was a year ago. Are you ever planning to let me live that down?"
"Go help Teyla," Ronon said, raising an arm to give him a little push.
"I'm comfortable!" But he did.
The wardrobe was nearly full. Over the years, Ronon had never quite lost the habit of making sure that he had extras of every necessary thing that he might need, rather than having to make do with one shirt and whatever he could improvise. And he had plenty of trade credit to buy it with. Knives and sheathes, shields and books shared closet space with heaps of quilts and furs from a dozen trading worlds.
"Aha!" Rodney said. "It's not that you always wear the same shirt, it's that you have, like, five of them that look identical. Wow, that's a lot of knives."
Teyla began moving furniture and clutter — bookcases, the desk, Rodney's computer — to open up the space in the middle of the floor. When she dragged a bookcase next to Tyre's sword in the corner, Ronon accepted the sharp dart of pain that sank through him, then said, "Put that in the closet, behind the blankets."
The gentle look she gave him made him think that he was transparent to her as always, but she picked it up and laid it reverently on the back of one of the shelves.
"There's only one bed, you know," Rodney said. "My back —"
"Teyla's got the baby," Ronon said. "Teyla gets the bed."
There were plenty of thick, soft quilts and furs to sleep on, anyway. They started out trying to make individual pallets, but in the cramped space, it was a lost cause. Well, they'd slept in closer quarters offworld, anyway.
John palmed off the lights, and they settled into the free-for-all of blankets, afghans, quilts and pillows. There was some muttering as the best spots were claimed. From the bed, Ronon heard Torren's little smacking noises as Teyla fed him, and he kind of wished that the lights had still been on, because John and Rodney's reactions the first time she'd done that had been one of the funniest things he'd ever seen. Earth people. Sometimes you'd think they didn't know what a woman's breasts were meant for.
"Sheppard, get off my leg," Rodney said in the darkness. "Personal space!"
"That's not me, McKay."
"It is me," Teyla said. "I will be arranged shortly."
Eventually the friendly bickering died away to the sounds of even breathing and the soft snores that Teyla still insisted she didn't make. John's shoulder was pressed against Ronon's side, and his breath stirred Ronon's hair whenever he exhaled. If it bothered him, he hadn't done anything about it, so Ronon leaned against him just a little more snugly, and closed his eyes in the darkness.
He drifted off to the sounds and the feel of his team around him.
~~~~~~
Word Count: 6600 words
Pairing: Basically, this is gen teamfic. But there are parts with faint undertones of Ronon/Rodney, and other parts that might be read in an OT4-ish direction, and some that could conceivably be seen in a John/Teyla sort of way ... Let's just say that I'm calling it gen (I really think that it is) but it's not completely unambiguous gen.
Summary: "You think you've seen everything in Pegasus," John said musingly. "And then you realize there are untold depths of weirdness still to be explored." An episode tag for 5x03, "Broken Ties", that ... grew.
Crossposted: on LJ | on DW | on AO3
As far as Ronon was concerned, there was no single worst part of recovering from Wraith enzyme addiction. It was all pretty bad. The initial detox was awful, a level of awful that he'd rarely experienced even in his years as a Runner, but luckily he didn't remember much of it. And then there was an interminable recovery, when he was infuriatingly weak, and his emotional control cracked at the worst moments, and his stomach could tolerate only the blandest food. His entire body ached, and worse, itched, a deep-down itch under the skin that he couldn't scratch.
And then there were the stares. After trying to find his place in Atlantis for three years, he'd finally, without even being aware of it, started to feel like he fit. He belonged. And now — now there were stares in the halls again, like his first days in the city. Word had gotten around. They all knew: they knew he'd betrayed them, gone over to the Wraith. He couldn't start over again from the beginning; he couldn't.
He felt too sensitive, like the world was scraping him raw. He refused to leave his quarters, although staying meant that he had to look at Tyre's sword, propped in the corner. He made himself stare at it, sometimes for hours. It was part of his punishment. He deserved it. Maybe he deserved to go out, too, and have the whole city stare at him — but he didn't have the strength anymore.
"Are you still experiencing symptoms?" Jennifer asked him when she came over to check his vitals and bring him a huge carton of soup. "Paranoia or depression? Discomfort? Nausea?"
"I'm fine," Ronon said.
Jennifer frowned at him, a small crease appearing between her brows. "Uh-huh." She left him a bottle of a drug that she said was for depression. Ronon dumped it down the toilet. He didn't want any more drugs.
John and Teyla took turns bringing him food, sometimes with Rodney in tow. They brought movies and watched them in his quarters, which was something that none of them had ever done — if they did something like that as a group, it was usually in the lounge or in John's quarters, occasionally Teyla's.
Ronon watched the team carefully to see if they were treating him differently. John was a little bit weird and stiff, but when it came right down to it, John was always a little weird and stiff except when he was out in the field. Fundamentally, no matter how hard he looked, Ronon couldn't identify anything out of the ordinary in the way John acted towards him.
Teyla touched him more than she used to — soft little touches on his shoulder or side. She would lean against him while they watched movies. Sometimes she put an arm around him, or kissed his ear before she left. It was hard for Ronon to tell how much of it was him and how much was just Teyla being a mom now, though. Usually she brought Torren, tucked into the crook of one arm or resting against her shoulder like an impossibly small baby-shaped pillow. For about a week, Ronon managed to hold out against her gently implacable efforts to thrust the baby into his arms, but finally gave in, and after that, he watched movies with Teyla leaning on his shoulder and Torren's soft, tiny mass snuggled into his arms.
Rodney was a totally different story: awkward, fidgety, never seemed to want to meet Ronon's eyes, half the time didn't even stick around for the movie. But Ronon took it for granted that Rodney didn't like him much anyway, so that wasn't a surprise.
At least, there weren't any surprises from that quarter until the day when his door chimed unexpectedly.
Ronon looked up; he'd been lying on his bed, gazing in the general direction of Tyre's sword. John and Teyla had brought him some books, but it was too difficult to get his brain to focus right now — another thing that sucked about the current state of affairs. He thought about not getting up, but the door chimed again. And again. It was like a sawblade on his nerves. Finally he dragged himself off the bed. "Yeah, what?" he demanded, palming the door open.
Rodney, on the other side, took a step backwards. "Uh. Hi. Can I come in?" He gestured nervously; when Ronon didn't say no, he shuffled quickly inside and shut the door behind him.
"What are you doing here?" Ronon's eyes dropped to a small sack in Rodney's hands. It wasn't big enough to contain food, at least not a reasonable quantity of food.
"Yes. Well. You see, there's —" Rodney stopped, cleared his throat. "Okay. Let me start over. As I'm sure you're aware, I've also been addicted to the enzyme in rather large quantities."
"Not this large," Ronon said flatly. Still, he'd forgotten that. Of course, he hadn't paid much attention to Rodney at the time; he had a dim recollection that Rodney might not have been around much for a while, but they'd only known each other for a few months, and he'd generally considered lack of Rodney to be a plus.
To some extent, he still considered it a plus, but it seemed that the only way to get Rodney to leave his quarters was to hear him out, so he tried to look attentive. Apparently, he only managed "intense", because Rodney backed all the way to the bed.
"Okay, right, yes. So the point is, I remember what it felt like — afterwards, you know?" Rodney's eyes darted all around, never settling on Ronon, and the thought occurred to him that he might have read Rodney wrong — what made Rodney nervous wasn't Ronon himself, so much as the reminder of that time in his life. "Like your skin's too small, like there are ants crawling under it, or an itch you just can't scratch —"
Ronon curled his hands into fists and concentrated on the feeling of the nails cutting crescent moons into his palm. "Get to the point, McKay."
Perhaps sensing that he was on thin ice, Rodney swallowed. "The point is, the point is — the point is," he said, straightening his back and looking directly at Ronon for the first time, "when I was in college, I had to take twenty-one credits of electives to meet the requirements for my undergraduate degree, and the vast majority of the electives available to me were either mind-numbing liberal arts classes with loads of busywork, or —"
"Get to the point."
"The point. Yes. The point is that I took two semesters of massage classes because they fit with my schedule and didn't require homework," Rodney said, all in a rush, and dumped the bag onto the bed. Ronon's eyes followed the tumbling bottles: they were small, utilitarian bottles of oil that had clearly come from the kitchen.
Ronon stared. Then he stared at Rodney.
"If you're going to hit me, could you get it over with?" Rodney said at last.
"Actually, I was wondering if 'massage' has the same meaning on Earth that it does in Pegasus, or if this is one of those translation things."
An immediate flaming blush flowed from Rodney's collar to the top of his head. "Oh my God. No. No, no, no. Not that kind of massage. Oh my God, I should have known you thought I meant —"
"McKay. Relax. What 'massage' means in Pegasus is, basically, that I lie down, you spread oil on my body and rub my muscles."
"Oh." Rodney's whole body deflated in a huge sigh of relief. "Yes. That was what I had in mind."
"It can also be foreplay, but I figured that wasn't what you meant."
Rodney's blush had faded, but now it reasserted itself in a more gentle, faintly pink version. "I hate you. Lie down."
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Ronon was still having trouble wrapping his admittedly fuddled brain around the fact that Rodney wanted to do this voluntarily, with no one pointing a gun at him or anything.
Rodney waved a hand wildly at the bed. "Just — lie down before I lose my nerve."
Bemused, Ronon did. He wasn't entirely convinced that he trusted Rodney in this capacity, but he was vaguely interested. And he'd been so distracted by Rodney's idea that he hadn't thought about taking Tyre's sword and carving the itch and the filth from under his skin in ... minutes, probably, so there was that, too.
The bed dipped under Rodney's weight. "I thought about asking Teyla for some of her scented oils, because I'm sure she has them if anyone does, but there was no way in hell that I was going to explain to her what I wanted them for. And asking anyone in the kitchen was straight out, for basically the same reason. So I palmed some of the little bottles of nut oils and so forth off the big buffet table in the mess. I have no idea what any of these are, but we play food roulette at practically every meal anyway, so I figured that it couldn't be that bad if I'm just rubbing them on you rather than eating them. Oh," he added briskly, "and you'd better take off your shirt." When Ronon hesitated, Rodney said, "Come on, move it, you're half-naked all the time anyway, it isn't like you have any modesty to begin with."
He didn't, at least not in the prudish Earth sense, but his skin no longer felt thick enough to insulate him from the world. And he had trouble keeping warm these days; even in his quarters, he'd taken to wearing long-sleeved shirts. Ronon had to stop himself from shivering as he sat up far enough to slide his shirt over his head, and then lay back down.
Meanwhile, Rodney had been opening bottles and spreading them out on the bedside table. He dipped a finger in one and sniffed. "Hmm. Sort of like peanuts. By the way, you don't have any nut allergies that you know of, do you? That would be the perfect way for this to go horribly, abysmally wrong, as my social events usually do."
"This is a social event?" Ronon said, unable to help himself. Things had been so tense and strained lately. He'd almost forgot how much fun it was to wind Rodney up.
"Ha ha, funny. Have I mentioned how amusing you are?"
Rodney's hands settled on Ronon's shoulders, unpleasantly greasy and rather cold. Ronon almost jumped out of his skin. Rodney jumped too. "Stop that!" Rodney said, sounding accusing. "It's me. Sitting right here, talking to you, hello."
"I know it's you, McKay."
"Good. I'd hate to think you lost much-needed brain cells to that ... stuff."
Rodney's hands minced tentatively down Ronon's back, tickling more than rubbing, aggravating the itch under his skin. Ronon flinched, flinched again.
Rodney went still. "Stop squirming!"
"I would," Ronon said, "if you'd stop tickling me."
"I'm not!"
"Yes you are. You have to push harder."
"I am pushing! And I really hope no one can hear this conversation outside your quarters, by the way!"
Ronon snorted. "It feels like you're brushing me with a feather duster."
"Feather duster. I'll show you a feather duster," Rodney growled under his breath, and got up on his knees, throwing his whole weight onto his spread hands, one on each side of Ronon's spine. Ronon gave a startled grunt, and Rodney instantly eased up. "I'm sorry! Did I hurt your back? Don't kill me!"
"It didn't hurt. Just surprised me, that's all. It felt sort of ..." Ronon hesitated, but it was true. "Sort of good."
"Huh." Rodney sat back on his heels, then got up on his knees again. "You want me to keep doing this?"
"Less talking," Ronon said into the pillow. "More rubbing."
In the end, Rodney spent about forty-five minutes massaging his back and shoulders with hands, elbows, and knees before finally calling it quits. "I'm going to blame you if I'm sore tomorrow," he complained from the bathroom, scrubbing the oil off his hands. "Oh good, I have peanut oil stains on the knees of my uniform. I'm looking forward to explaining that one to the guys down in Laundry." Finally he noticed that Ronon wasn't saying anything. "Uh, Ronon? Did I break you?"
Ronon managed to muster the energy to twist his face out of the pillow, turning his head in Rodney's direction before sinking back into it. "No," he said. "Feels good. Really good."
"Does it really?" Rodney had that squeaky tone to his voice that he got when he was genuinely pleased. "Well, I'm not — it's been a lot of years."
The itching and the aching and all the rest of it hadn't gone away, by any means, but for the first time in days or possibly weeks, Ronon felt relaxed. He could feel his muscles already starting to knot up again, but in the meantime, maybe he'd sleep. His head was turned so that he couldn't see Tyre's sword, and he was too drowsy to bother turning it the other way. He closed his eyes.
"What — are you asleep?" Rodney's voice approached the bed, then dropped to a loud whisper. "Oh, wow, I forgot how fast you can fall asleep. So, uh, I'll just let myself out, then?" Small clinking sounds followed, as he loaded the bottles of oil back into the bag. "So, right, um, lots to do in the lab, and I guess I'll see you later tonight if Sheppard is still planning on bringing down the next disc of whatever new, atrocious spin-off the Wormhole X-Treme guys have come up with now —" His stage whisper was receding, backing away towards the door. "Or maybe I'll be working; lots to do in the lab —"
"McKay," Ronon said, and he heard Rodney jump, the bottles clinking. "Thank you."
"Oh! Oh? Um ... you're welcome." The last words were almost too soft to hear, as the door closed behind him.
Ronon figured it would just be a one-off thing, but Rodney came back almost every day, invariably when their other teammates were occupied elsewhere. As Rodney's confidence and comfort grew, his technique improved; he began trying some pressure points, and working on Ronon's legs as well.
It had been a long time since anyone had touched Ronon like that. His mother used to give both him and his sister backrubs, and he and his squadmates had rubbed each other's sore muscles in the steam baths. And there had been Melena, of course. But then ... then there were seven years of Running, and three years among the Atlanteans, who did not touch each other in the casual way of Satedans. As he had grown used to living among them, Ronon had found it easier to slip back into the easy physical familiarity of his youth, but he'd tried to tone it down when he realized that he was making everyone except maybe Teyla uncomfortable.
It felt good to be touched again. And Ronon was pretty sure that Rodney liked it too — not only because he kept coming back to do it again, but because Rodney looked relaxed and happy himself after a massage session. In some weird way, it seemed to be de-stressing him, too; he came in tense and frustrated from the labs, and by the end of it, he was smiling more and his shoulders looked less hunched and tight.
Ronon had observed the same effect in John when they went to the gym and the rifle range. Or Teyla in her meditation sessions — or, for that matter, Rodney when he played video games with John. Everybody had things that calmed them down and relaxed them. But Ronon had never before had that effect himself on Rodney. It was oddly flattering.
Considering the amount of full-on bare skin contact involved, it was surprisingly unerotic, although ... not entirely. Ronon didn't find Rodney attractive in that way, but it had been a very long time since anyone had touched him, and sometimes it was hard to ignore the fact that he was being, well — touched; if not with love, necessarily, then at least with gentleness that he was not used to receiving. He didn't say anything, so either Rodney didn't notice or didn't care (at least not enough to mention it, and for Rodney, the line between thinking it and saying it was so fine as to be almost invisible).
On the other hand, the look on Teyla's face when she walked in while Rodney was straddling his hips in order to press down on his spine was totally worth it.
Teyla didn't normally make a habit of barging into his quarters, but in this case, she knocked and opened the door an instant later. "Ronon, I am so very sorry, but Kanaan is on New Athos and Torren —" Then she froze, wide-eyed, with Torren draped over her arm.
Rodney had managed to scramble partway off Ronon's hips, which, Ronon noticed when he craned his head around, just made it look more sexual, not less. Also, Rodney's blush wasn't making him look any more innocent.
"Don't they believe in knocking on Athos?" Rodney demanded.
"No, actually," Teyla said, "but I did knock, and — is that casa-nut oil?"
"I don't know. Is that what it is?" Rodney pulled himself off Ronon entirely, and, with hunched shoulders and a guilty expression, retrieved a towel from the bathroom to wipe his hands.
Teyla shook herself. "In any case, there is a diplomatic crisis on Manara and I am already expected in the gateroom. Ronon and — er — Rodney, if you could watch Torren for a couple of hours, please, I would be most grateful." Having apparently come to terms with whatever she thought she'd seen, Teyla was already in the act of depositing a sleepy Torren by Ronon's head as she spoke.
"Sure, no problem," he said, rousing himself enough to lay a protective hand across Torren's round belly.
"Teyla, I trust you aren't going to jump to any conclusions about anything that you may have ... thought you saw," Rodney said loudly from the bathroom. "There's a very logical explanation —"
"Saw? I saw nothing," Teyla said, and vanished out the door.
A couple of hours later, after Rodney had long since flustered off to the labs, Teyla came back to retrieve Torren. "I am very sorry for disturbing your privacy earlier," she said, picking up Torren as he squirmed cheerfully.
"'sokay," Ronon said. "Someone was bound to walk in on us eventually."
"I ... see. Perhaps you should consider locking the door."
Ronon couldn't help grinning, and he found that it was less effort to smile than it had been only a week ago. It just wasn't very often that he managed to discomfit Teyla. "He's been giving me massages, that's all. Nothing else to it."
Teyla, to her credit, remained perfectly cool. "I thought nothing else," she said.
"Sure you didn't."
"Which is not, of course, to suggest in any way that you would be ... unsuited, or that I would find it objectionable in any way other than the sheer unexpectedness of ..." She trailed off, then said, "As John says, I should quit while I'm ahead, shouldn't I."
"Yeah, probably."
By now Ronon had resumed working out in the gym, though he tended to go down at times when the place was as close to deserted as possible. John, of course, had figured this out and made a point of just happening to drop by at unlikely times, like three in the morning.
Tonight, John was already there when Ronon showed up, along with a couple of Marines. It was easier than it had been, Ronon noticed, to give them a casual nod and then to convince himself that they weren't staring at him. They were just working out, not paying much attention to him at all.
"Hey," John said, giving him a nod which then morphed into a smirk. "Talked to Teyla earlier, about you and Rodney."
"You Earth people are so weird about sex," Ronon said, picking out weights.
John sputtered, and Ronon had the pleasure of making two of his teammates blush in one day. "Who's talking about sex? I'm talking about you and Rodney and — massage therapy. What are you talking about? Not," he added quickly, "that it's any of my business at all. In fact, forget I asked, because I'm pretty sure I don't want to know."
It was really too easy. "We're not having sex," Ronon said, taking pity on him. For some reason this made John turn even brighter red. "Just doing this massage thing."
John cleared his throat and took a swig of water. His ears were bright pink. "I'd like to know how you talked Rodney into that. You must have some prime dirt on him."
"Nah." Ronon settled on the weight bench. "It was his idea."
"You're kidding."
"No. Guess he used to do it in college or something."
"Rodney," John said. "Gave massages in college."
"Well, he studied it or something."
"You think you've seen everything in Pegasus," John said musingly. "And then you realize there are untold depths of weirdness still to be explored."
"Hey, you gonna get over here and spot me, or stand there talking to yourself?"
The next day, Teyla arrived a minute or two behind Rodney. She had to have been lurking in wait, because her timing was perfect — just long enough for Rodney to get his oil bottles laid out, but not enough for Ronon to take his shirt off.
"Hello," Teyla said, sitting down crosslegged on the floor with Torren in her lap. "I would like, first of all, to apologize for intruding on you yesterday, Rodney."
"Oh really?" Rodney said. "Are you going to apologize for telling Sheppard, too?"
Teyla raised an eyebrow. Rodney wordlessly pointed at Ronon.
"It's not a secret or anything," Ronon said. By this point he was thoroughly amused with all of them. He'd have thought Teyla would be more sensible about this than the Earth people, but apparently not.
"I did not think so, at least not where John is concerned," Teyla said cautiously, "but, Rodney, I am sorry if I presumed incorrectly. In any case, I would like to ask a favor of you."
Rodney's face went from annoyed to horrified at a record-setting speed. "I'm not — I don't — No way, I'm sorry, I'm not going to be your masseuse and I don't care how many sticks you hit me with! First Kanaan would kill me, then Sheppard would do away with whatever was left —"
"I wanted to ask you to teach me your art," Teyla said, over the top of his verbal flailing. "We practice massage arts on Athos, but it is something I never learned, and now there are ..." Her face went dark and closed for a moment. "Not very many who still know those ways. In any case ..." Turning from Rodney, she offered Ronon a small, somewhat apologetic smile. "I had never thought that it might be helpful to know these things. Now I have realized that my education is lacking in this area. I would like to fix that."
"Oh." Rodney calmed down a bit, though now he looked uncertain and slightly wary. "Um, you do realize you're talking to ... me, right? Don't tell Zelenka I admitted this, but I'm not really the most — er, patient teacher, exactly."
"I have known you for five years, Rodney," Teyla said, perfectly deadpan. "It had not escaped my notice."
Ronon settled his head down on his crossed arms. This was going to be hilarious.
Despite his insistence to the contrary, Rodney was not actually a bad teacher. He wasn't an especially good teacher, but his big hands were deft and sure and surprisingly patient as he positioned them over Teyla's, on Ronon's back.
Ronon, naturally, had been pressed into service as the test subject. This was perfectly fine with him: he got two massages at a time, rather than one. Teyla was, of course, a natural at it.
Over a couple of massage sessions, Rodney's obvious pride in Teyla's progress gave way slowly to droopiness. By the time Ronon noticed, Teyla had not only noticed but, apparently, figured out what to do about it. She didn't give him any time to think about it, just rose from Ronon's bed in the middle of a session, walked over and plunked her oily hands down onto Rodney's shoulders, which immediately rose up to the vicinity of his ears.
"Rodney," Teyla said, sounding exasperated. "Relax."
"This wasn't part of the deal!"
"Why not?" Teyla inquired in her "I am dealing with small children and idiots" voice. "You have been giving Ronon massages for weeks now." Her face was soft and fond; Ronon could see it, though Rodney couldn't. "Perhaps it is your turn, for once."
Rodney still had his head drawn down between his shoulders, turtle style. "I don't do well with this kind of thing, okay?"
Watching lazily from the bed, with Torren sleeping contentedly next to his head on the pillow, Ronon felt something click over in his brain. Rodney was seldom reticent about touching people if he needed to — whether it was pushing a slower scientist out of the way of a computer workstation, or kneading Ronon's knotted neck muscles — but the difference was that he'd always been in charge. Usually Rodney was the one who controlled the amount of touching and the way it was done. Being on the receiving end was different. John was that way, too; he always had been. Maybe most Earth people were. "Teyla, don't do it if he doesn't want it."
Teyla looked surprised, but she withdrew her hands. "Rodney, forgive me; I did not mean to presume."
Rodney raised his head slowly. "No — no, don't go away. It's just ..." His face screwed up as if he were facing a punishment. "Go ahead. Just ... please go slow."
"I will stop the instant you ask it," Teyla promised, lowering her hands to his shoulders.
"And be gentle! I bruise easily!"
"I will not hurt you, Rodney."
Once Teyla had reduced Rodney to a boneless puddle sprawled limply on Ronon's desk chair, Ronon sat up on the bed. "Would you mind ..." he asked Teyla. "I'm not trained or anything, but we used to do this on Sateda, in the squads. For sore muscles and stuff." Suddenly, urgently, he was tired of always taking and taking. The itch beneath his skin was gone, and he hadn't even noticed when it had faded to become one with the background hum of his body. It was time to give back.
Teyla turned around and lifted her hair with one hand, pulling down the neckline of her shirt to bare her brown shoulders. Ronon settled his hands on the long muscles framing her slender neck. Teyla sighed, and uncoiled slowly into his touch.
Ronon began to see why Rodney (even if he wouldn't admit it) liked doing this so much. Being on the receiving end was relaxing, but so was the steady, rhythmic pressure and relaxation of his hands along Teyla's spine. As he felt Teyla settle into his palms, all the tension easing out of her, Ronon thought, We can't leave John out of this.
"You want to what?" John said.
"Give you a massage," Ronon said. "We're all doing it now."
John's body language got noticeably stiffer and more closed-off. Ronon thought that he should have known better than to try honesty when dealing with John and certain kinds of situations.
"Do I need to have Keller do brain scans on all of you?" John asked. "Or check your closets for pods?"
"Pods?" Must be a reference to some kind of Earth parasite; Ronon mentally filed it away, in a brain that was now sharp enough to retain that sort of thing again — it felt so good to be able to think like he used to. "Look, Sheppard —" John had taken a few quiet steps towards the door, and was regarding him with one of his less-than-sincere Placating The Hostile Strangers faces. "Forget it," Ronon said. "You're bringing over Akira tonight, right?"
"If I can get it from the botanists," John agreed. "No one is going to be springing any stealthy ninja massages on me, are they?"
"No ninja massages," Ronon promised him.
But as they all sprawled around on Ronon's floor watching the movie, he caught himself surreptitiously watching his teammates and noticing their body language. Things had changed a bit. Teyla was leaning on Rodney, who had his leg unselfconsciously pressed up against Ronon's back. Ronon had Torren spread out in his lap like a little starfish in a pastel-green wrapper — and, okay, that part was pretty much the same as the first few movie nights, before the massages began.
And so was John, who had taken the single desk chair, arms crossed over his chest. He could not have exuded a more powerful air of DO NOT TOUCH if he'd written it on a sign around his neck.
The movie wasn't even half over when John rose abruptly, stretched in an ostentatious kind of way, and announced, "Well, early morning; got the Daedalus coming in two days, and inventories wait for no man."
He was out the door before he'd finished talking.
Ronon met Teyla's eyes and could see his own thoughts mirrored there. He jerked his eyes at the door: Want me to go after him? Teyla gave a tiny shake of the head, and she rose in a graceful motion and headed for the door.
"Hey, wait —" Rodney began. "You forgot —" The door closed behind her. "— your baby," he finished weakly.
"She's coming back, McKay," Ronon said, flopping down onto his back so that he could pull Torren onto his chest.
Rodney lay back, too, and reached out to place one of his fingers into Torren's tiny fist, to watch the little hand curl shut. The entertainment value of that did not ever seem to wear off. "Sheppard's ..." he began, and trailed off.
"Teyla will catch him."
"Yeah, and then what? He's being all ..." Rodney waved a hand in the air. "All Sheppard."
Silence settled on them, thick and heavy. Even after three years, it was still difficult to be alone with Rodney without things getting awkward.
Torren woke up, flailing, and made a hiccuping sound. "Oh, hey," Rodney said, hastily trying to withdraw his hand. Torren held on, however, so all Rodney managed to do was flip him over. Torren slithered off Ronon's chest onto Rodney's arm, where the little starfish clung, facedown in Rodney's biceps. "Uh," Rodney said. "You want this back?"
"You caught it, you bought it," Ronon pointed out.
"It's a baby, not a designer vase or something," Rodney said.
Torren showed no signs of going anywhere on his own, not that he really had the muscle tone to make it possible. Rodney poked at him until he slipped down neatly into the space between them. There, cradled by the warmth of their bodies in a dim and cozy place, he fell asleep again.
After a moment, Rodney said. "Has the thought ever occurred to you that Teyla is completely nuts to let us anywhere near her kid?"
"All the time," Ronon said.
Teyla and John came back in an hour or so, a little out of breath. John had a new bruise over his right eye, and Teyla's hair was mussed. "We are ready to finish watching the movie," was all Teyla said about it.
They watched the rest of it in a somewhat uneasy silence. Even Rodney seemed to be stifling his usual tendency to make snide comments about the plot.
After they shut it off, there was a long, awkward silence. Then John sat forward with a sharp motion, clasping his hands between his knees. "Look, about the — see, I didn't exactly —"
"Apology accepted," Ronon said. Teyla gave both of them an encouraging smile.
"Right." John rubbed the back of his head and didn't look at any of them. He looked flustered and miserable. "It's kind of like this — I don't — I'm just not —"
"Not a touching-people kind of guy. Sheppard, we know," Rodney said impatiently, sitting up. Torren squirmed, and Ronon put a quick hand on him to keep him quiet. Rodney was still talking, oblivious. "And what you don't seem to get is that no one cares. It's not like a, a secret massage club or something that you don't have the passwords and special handshake for."
John smiled slightly, staring at his feet. "I appreciate that, it's just — it's not that I'm not trying, it's..."
There was a very old, very deep pain in those words, in the way he said them. Ronon could imagine a much younger John hearing those words from the adults in his life, the way they would have cut like knives: John, you aren't trying ...
"What have we ever done, John," Teyla said gently, "to make you think we want you to be other than what you are?"
John's head came up quickly. "It's not you! Not you guys at all. It's me, it's always been — see, the thing you need to know —"
"Hello, known you for five years, all right?" Rodney interrupted him. "Sort of gotten to know you a little bit in that time?" Not looking at John, he added in a rush, "Sort of gotten to like you a little bit? Like you are, I mean, not some ideal of Sheppardhood that apparently you think you don't measure up to —"
"What he means is quit being stupid, John," Ronon said over the top of him.
The more they talked, the more Teyla's expression had morphed from a supportive smile into an increasingly exasperated frown. "I have an idea," she said as soon as she could get a word into the conversation.
She plucked Torren from under Ronon's hand, and spread him out in John's lap, facedown. Torren was, as usual, asleep; at this stage in his life, he seemed to sleep nearly all the time. He curled up his whole body, all his limbs drawing together in an annoyed spasm, then stretched out again and began to slither bonelessly off John's knee.
John caught him in time to prevent disaster. "Teyla —"
"Wait." Teyla took John's hand gently by the wrist, and placed it on Torren's back. "Rodney, there is no reason why a baby could not be massaged, is there? My people do that sometimes, although I know little of how it is done."
"I don't know," Rodney said. "I've heard of baby massage, so yeah, I guess so. Um, don't squish him?"
John scowled, but he looked a little less miserable. "Gee, thanks for the advice, Rodney."
When Teyla took her hand away, John rested his palm on Torren's back for a moment, then began to rub in slow, gentle circles.
"That's it," Teyla said softly.
After a moment, she took John's hand again and slid it under the middle of Torren's plump, floppy body, then flipped him over, with the brisk efficiency of a mother who is very accustomed to manhandling her child in many different positions. Torren didn't even wake up, just burbled a little in his sleep.
John was clearly starting to get into the spirit of it. Using tiny, careful strokes, he rubbed Torren's small limbs and chest and neck. He cradled the little head in his hand while gliding his thumb over Torren's temple.
Though still dead to the world, Torren nestled into John's touch. John looked utterly entranced, his face as soft as Ronon had ever seen it.
"Does anyone know what time it is?" Rodney asked quietly, then answered his own question by looking at his watch. "Oh God. Some of us have to be up in ... okay, not very many hours."
"Spend the night," Ronon said, and when Rodney gave him a quick, startled look, "All of you. I got lots of blankets. No need to walk back for just a few hours' sleep."
He couldn't articulate it; he just knew that he felt drowsy and happy and comfortable in his skin for the first time since the Wraith had touched him. And he didn't want it to end.
"Kanaan is still on New Athos," Teyla said thoughtfully. "Where are your blankets, Ronon?"
Ronon pointed to the heavy, scarred wooden wardrobe that he'd retrieved from the ashes of Sateda. "If Rodney hasn't taken them, that is."
"Oh, for — it was one painting. And it was a year ago. Are you ever planning to let me live that down?"
"Go help Teyla," Ronon said, raising an arm to give him a little push.
"I'm comfortable!" But he did.
The wardrobe was nearly full. Over the years, Ronon had never quite lost the habit of making sure that he had extras of every necessary thing that he might need, rather than having to make do with one shirt and whatever he could improvise. And he had plenty of trade credit to buy it with. Knives and sheathes, shields and books shared closet space with heaps of quilts and furs from a dozen trading worlds.
"Aha!" Rodney said. "It's not that you always wear the same shirt, it's that you have, like, five of them that look identical. Wow, that's a lot of knives."
Teyla began moving furniture and clutter — bookcases, the desk, Rodney's computer — to open up the space in the middle of the floor. When she dragged a bookcase next to Tyre's sword in the corner, Ronon accepted the sharp dart of pain that sank through him, then said, "Put that in the closet, behind the blankets."
The gentle look she gave him made him think that he was transparent to her as always, but she picked it up and laid it reverently on the back of one of the shelves.
"There's only one bed, you know," Rodney said. "My back —"
"Teyla's got the baby," Ronon said. "Teyla gets the bed."
There were plenty of thick, soft quilts and furs to sleep on, anyway. They started out trying to make individual pallets, but in the cramped space, it was a lost cause. Well, they'd slept in closer quarters offworld, anyway.
John palmed off the lights, and they settled into the free-for-all of blankets, afghans, quilts and pillows. There was some muttering as the best spots were claimed. From the bed, Ronon heard Torren's little smacking noises as Teyla fed him, and he kind of wished that the lights had still been on, because John and Rodney's reactions the first time she'd done that had been one of the funniest things he'd ever seen. Earth people. Sometimes you'd think they didn't know what a woman's breasts were meant for.
"Sheppard, get off my leg," Rodney said in the darkness. "Personal space!"
"That's not me, McKay."
"It is me," Teyla said. "I will be arranged shortly."
Eventually the friendly bickering died away to the sounds of even breathing and the soft snores that Teyla still insisted she didn't make. John's shoulder was pressed against Ronon's side, and his breath stirred Ronon's hair whenever he exhaled. If it bothered him, he hadn't done anything about it, so Ronon leaned against him just a little more snugly, and closed his eyes in the darkness.
He drifted off to the sounds and the feel of his team around him.
~~~~~~
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So much love for this.
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*happy, contented sigh* Lovely story, almost lyrical. I love how the peaceful effects kept spreading out to comfort everyone on the team. Nicely done.
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I love your Ronon voice and the way you show the team and the way they're complicated, real people. And the story starts out with this itch, and then there's this warmth - fits the theme perfectly. Well done!
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I LOVE your Ronon voice. It makes me realise how much the show writers reduced him to one dimention. And I want to give all of the team hugs here, but they're doing it to each other which is even better :D
"Aha!" Rodney said. "It's not that you always wear the same shirt, it's that you have, like, five of them that look identical.
ahaha, that cracked me up so much. I loved Rodney being...well, so him, and actually that's what I was about to type out for each character. But it started off so raw and painful, and finished being beyond-words adorable. Really really hurt for Ronon, and for John too near the end. I loved how unexpected Rodney offereing a massage to Ronon was, and then "Uh, Ronon? Did I break you?" XD
Also loved Ronon's observations on the rest of the expedition, and the nice little touches of Satedan worldbuilding, making it into really a very seperate culture. I did laugh at him winding John up, and, John and Rodney's reactions the first time she'd done that had been one of the funniest things he'd ever seen. Earth people. Sometimes you'd think they didn't know what a woman's breasts were meant for.
Basically this was really lovely and happy-making, and thank you for writing it!
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Favorite bits:
"You want to what?" John said.
"Give you a massage," Ronon said. "We're all doing it now."
John's body language got noticeably stiffer and more closed-off. Ronon thought that he should have known better than to try honesty when dealing with John and certain kinds of situations.
and
If I can get it from the botanists," John agreed. "No one is going to be springing any stealthy ninja massages on me, are they?"
"No ninja massages," Ronon promised him.
What a sweet team bonding experience and I loved how it not only helped Ronon feel like he belonged again, but how it brought them closer. Even awkward John.
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And Torren spread out in his lap like a little starfish in a pastel-green wrapper is beyond adorable. ♥
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After a week of work overtime, reading this was rather like a relaxing massage. :)
"Hey, wait —" Rodney began. "You forgot —" The door closed behind her. "— your baby," he finished weakly.
haha
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One teeny weeny little complaint: wouldn't Rodney, being OCD like me, tell Ronon to lie down (rather than "lay down")? One lies down on a bed; one lays things down. (Yes, I am an English professor, funnily enough.)
I was a bit taken aback for just a moment at Rodney doing massage, but of course Rodney selected courses that wouldn't have homework so he wouldn't waste his valuable time on liberal arts! And he's good with his hands, even if not so good with people. They aren't just "people" any longer; they're his team.
I love Teyla in this, showing up unexpectedly and denying she's drawing any conclusions and telling John like that. She's great.
Your Ronon voice is spot-on. All the voices are, really. I like to quote my favorite lines when I comment on a story, but I have too many here. Besides, others have already quoted some of them. ("ninja massages" FTW!) I also like the body language: the moment Teyla touches him, Rodney's shoulders go up as high as they can; at the threat of a massage, John is even stiffer than usual! Ok, just one favorite line:
John was a little bit weird and stiff, but when it came right down to it, John was always a little weird and stiff except when he was out in the field.
(And I think your rating and description and warnings are perfectly fine too.)
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And thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :) Yeah, I think I had to work a little bit to sell *myself* on the idea of Rodney giving massages, but the more I thought about it, the more it kind of made sense for him.
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I love how they take care of each other.
Oh, John, you giant dorkwad! You are so blessed to have a team like this.
*sigh*
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Yeah, John is a lucky guy. :)
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Very enjoyable read. :)
eta: because boy did I pick the wrong icon! *facepalm*
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*luffs the team*
And John massaging Torren... DAWWWW!!!!! :D
Lovely!
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Just a great little story :D
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Not to mention that that massage... aaaaaaaah, want. I want it like a physical ache (oh, wait, that's just my shoulders XD) - though reading about other people relaxing is kind of nice. ♥
AND THE BABY. Awwwwwwwwwww, teeny tiny little Teyla-spawn and she is crazy to leave him with her teammates, only not, because there isn't a safer place in the world for him. Even though he's definitely going to grow up to be a child of many worlds. ♥
SO MUCH LOVE. STILL SMILING.
Please send Rodney to rub my back for me? :Dno subject
♥ ♥ ♥
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Perfect! I adore that Rodney tries so clumsily yet earnestly (and disclaims his unlikely offer as stemming from a distribution requirement, hee — he has such great hands for massage!). Seeing Ronon's gradual recovery is a very nice addition, and the different reactions of the team members to touch are just excellent. Team puppy piles (or approximations thereof) are always lovely. And Rodney's faltering protest that Teyla forgot her baby — bwah!
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