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SGA fic: Four Seasons on a Texas Ranch
Title: Four Seasons on a Texas Ranch
Word Count: 4300
Rating: PG
Pairings: a little Ronon/Melena in background, otherwise gen
Notes: This is my![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_pakistan story for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raphe1, who requested something from the Long Road Home AU 'verse. This takes place a year or two after the Rodney-in-DC snippet that I wrote awhile back.
1. spring
Teyla walked with the other Texas A&M graduates on a brilliant May day — clear and gorgeous, not too hot or humid, the sort of day that dangles the tempting possibility of all that a Texas summer could be (before crushing those hopes with the inevitable June heatwave to come).
But Teyla's smile was brighter than the sun, lighting up the stage as she received her diploma with the other biology students. The thought occurred to John that she was all but unrecognizable as the woman he found hiding in the bed of his truck five years ago. But then he realized that he was looking at it backwards — this woman, this glowing, laughing woman onstage, was the one that he saw all those months ago, under the dirt and bruises.
"Does this mean we can all tease you about being an Aggie now?" John asked afterward, tweaking the tassel on her mortarboard.
Teyla gave him an arch look. "As if you refrained before."
"If there's graduate school in your future," Rodney put in from her other side, "might I suggest somewhere closer this time? Driving up here just to see you is, not to put too fine a point on it, killing my back, and I don't think his truck has too many more highway miles left in it."
"Maybe if you took a turn driving every once in a while," John drawled.
"What, and kill my car on that collection of potholes you consider a road? Not a chance."
The graduation party was the following weekend at the ranch. They even invited the neighbors, and to John's surprise, some of them actually showed up: old man Caldwell from down the hill, Cadman the former Marine who'd just recently bought the place back of Caldwell's, and even a few people from town. A bunch of Teyla's friends were there too — Beckett the veterinarian, of course, along with several of her biology and veterinary-student buddies.
Teyla was still trying to choose between veterinary or medical school. As John had pointed out repeatedly, she didn't have to make a decision yet. She'd submitted applications to a few places, but even if they accepted her, she could still take a year off and think about it.
"Even if I leave, it will not be forever," Teyla said, giving him one of those looks that seemed to see right through him to the bottom of his soul.
John choked on his chips and cheese dip. "I never said that," he said when he stopped coughing.
"Even when we leave, we always come back," Teyla added, and nodded at Rodney, who was crouched in the yard, surreptitiously slipping treats off his plate to the lanky young greyhound that was stretched out in worshipful bliss at his feet. Giving the puppy to Rodney hadn't entirely worked out as intended, because the dog loved everyone at the ranch and seemed to have no idea who it was supposed to belong to — Ronon was its favorite — but it was such a friendly, cheerful dog that no one seemed to mind. Nor did anyone at the ranch begrudge it the fact that it was apparently as dumb as a sack of rocks; they had yet to teach it a single useful command.
"So stop fretting," she added.
"I am not fretting."
It was strange to have so many people on the ranch. For a long time, John had felt like he was hiding out there — first just him; then other people. The first couple of years that Teyla lived at the ranch, and subsequently Ronon and Melena, they hadn't invited anyone that they didn't implicitly trust, and there had been very few of those.
But along the way, something had changed. It doesn't feel like we're hiding anymore. Maybe they should have been, John thought, because all it would take would be one suspicious person turning them in, and then they'd all be in a world of hurt. Rodney seemed to be confident that his contacts in the State Department could do an end run around Immigration, if they really had to, and whatever he'd done to get Teyla into Texas A&M certainly seemed to have worked. But John didn't want to push their luck.
But ...you can't run forever. And out here, against all odds, was where they seemed to have stopped running. This was their home. He and Teyla had defended it against a gang of drug runners, and well, he wasn't letting anyone else take it, either — or anyone in it. Even if that meant taking on the U.S. government itself, if he had to.
His thoughts were running down an old familiar track now, and the crowded ranch house — the music, the voices — seemed too much, too loud. John slipped off and saddled Jumper, the vet-rescue sorrel that Teyla had brought home. While the party went on in the distance, he rode the horse up the rise behind the house, letting the sweep of the distant hills seep into his soul and wash out the uncertainty and confusion.
John had always liked wide-open spaces. What he'd found here in Texas was the same stillness that he'd found at thirty thousand feet: a space that was large enough for him to breathe.
He reined in Jumper and looked back. Dusk was gathering, tinting the wide sky purple, and sending long fingers of shadow creeping across the landscape. The lights in the house spilled out into the yard. Someone's battery-powered boombox was thumping out George Thorogood, and people were dancing — mostly Teyla's college-girl friends (he recognized her roommate, Jennifer the vet student, and that pretty little Katie Brown girl), but Beckett was also dancing with Ronon and Melena's youngest, tiny Rosa, holding her up and spinning her around while the adults clapped.
John watched, and caught himself grinning, especially when Beckett dipped Rosa deeply — turning her upside-down — and then let her go so that she could run squealing and giggling to hide her face in her mother's lap.
It was still a little strange to see all those people in the ranch house's yard, all those cars pulled in. But John thought he'd soaked in enough of the open country above the house. Time to go back, have a few beers, and soak in the company instead. "Right, buddy?" he said to Jumper, patting the horse on the neck. Jumper snorted.
John wheeled him around, and went down to join the party.
2. summer
Heat lay heavy and sticky on the Texas countryside, smothering the ranch beneath its grip. The grass was brown, and their motley assortment of rescue animals — and the handful of sheep which were, against all odds, surviving and prospering — cropped halfheartedly at it, but mostly huddled in the shade or around the water tank.
And Rodney got bit by a rattlesnake. He'd kept insisting it was going to happen, but Rodney's gloomy predictions of death and disaster almost never came true, so John was as shocked as anyone (except maybe Rodney) when this one actually did.
He and Rodney were fixing a section of fencing. It had taken a lot of coaxing to pry Rodney out of the ranch house, where he'd been glued to the window-mounted air conditioner unit, trying to get his satellite internet connection to work. Finally he deigned to be dragged out into the countryside, but only in a wide-brimmed hat, heavy boots and about a gallon of sunscreen.
When he yelled and fell down, John thought at first that he'd stepped in a hole. Then there was a quick flurry of motion in the grass and Rodney shouted "Snake!" in a voice high-pitched with panic. John ran back to see what the hell was going on.
What he saw was the greyhound, a few feet from Rodney with a big diamond-back in its jaws, shaking the snake like a cat with a mouse. Rodney was down on his back in the grass, gripping his knee in both hands.
"They're supposed to make noise!" Rodney yelled, like the snake had personally offended him by failing to obey its own rules.
"Not when they don't see you coming. Haven't we talked about this?" John dropped to his knees next to Rodney, after casting a cautious eye at the dog and snake. Rodney's pants were untucked from his boot, flopping loose. "Jesus. It got you above the boot?"
Rodney nodded. He looked absolutely terrified. John pulled up his pants leg, but it took him a moment to unravel what he was looking at. "Rodney, there's no bite mark. I think it got the pants rather than you."
"I felt it! It hurt!"
There was a thin scrape just below his knee. John pressed it with his thumb, but didn't see any signs of redness or swelling. "I don't think it was able to inject much venom, if any at all. I think it just ... winged you." If that was the right word as applied to a snake.
The greyhound trotted up and deposited the snake in a limp heap, like a fat coil of rope. John grabbed for the long-handled wirecutters that he'd dropped to tend to Rodney, but the snake wasn't even twitching anymore. "Huh," John said. "Good dog." He patted down the greyhound's body and legs, looking for bites, but the dog seemed to be intact — and very pleased with itself, tongue lolling happily.
"You're tending the dog rather than your dying friend?" Rodney said in disbelief.
"Hey, the dog just defended you from a snake, Rodney; show some gratitude."
He stood and offered Rodney a hand. Rodney just glared at him. "Aren't you supposed to stay laying down when a snake bites you?" he demanded.
"I think you're fine, but let's get back down to the ranch house and clean it, just in case."
"Walking," Rodney muttered, leaning on John. "Bad idea. If I die, I'm blaming you."
He wasn't even limping by the time they made it back to the ranch house; still, John checked the bite site out carefully — still no signs of swelling; for all he knew, the scratch might have been made by something completely non-snake-related, but Rodney still insisted he'd felt the fangs hit him. John got them a couple of cold beers while Rodney changed clothes and cleaned the alleged snakebite in the bathroom.
"Can I be considered to have served my term in farmwork hell at this point?" Rodney asked, flopping in front of the air conditioner and accepting the beer.
"Hey, you've got a great story to tell."
"Right, the time that a snake almost bit me. That's really manly. I'm sure it'll totally help me score in what passes for the singles scene around here." Rodney snorted. "Most of the women in this part of the country have probably shot more snakes than I've even seen."
"It winged you. That's something." John looked over at the dog, which was stretched out on the floor, back legs sprawled shamelessly. "And we finally found something useful that he can do."
They both regarded the dog for a moment. "You know," John said at last, "at some point, we probably ought to give that dog a name, considering that he's, what, a year and half old?"
"I'm open to suggestions."
"He's your dog," John said. "That's your job. It's not our fault if you can't decide on anything."
After a moment, Rodney said, "How about ... Killer?"
The dog cracked his jaws open, allowing his tongue to unroll onto the carpet. John was pretty sure he'd never seen a less intimidating animal.
"Or not," Rodney said.
3. fall
John had of course heard of the Day of the Dead, Dia de Los Muertos, even before moving to border country, but he'd never really known what it entailed, aside from cemeteries being involved.
Apparently in Teyla's part of the world, there were also kites.
"What do kites have to do with dead people?" he asked Teyla in the checkout line at Wal-Mart, after he and Rodney had helped her collect kite-making supplies.
"What do candy corn and pumpkin pie have to do with dead people?" she riposted back at him.
John guiltily tucked the bag of candy corn under a roll of crepe paper. "Okay. Point."
"The kites carry messages to the dead, or at least that is what my abuela always said. But, really, it's a holiday, and they're colorful and fun. That is the main reason." She smiled at him. "If you help build the kite, I'll make fiambre for you."
Rodney went suddenly attentive. "Is that a kind of candy? Some sort of festival treat?"
"It is a treat, yes. Every family has their own recipe. It's a sort of ..." She thought for a moment as she and John offloaded the cart onto the checkout conveyer belt. "A sort of salad."
Rodney's eagerness turned to horror. "You celebrate your holidays with salad? No wonder you left."
"Rodney," John muttered, glaring at him.
"That is all right," Teyla said loftily. "You do not have to eat any."
Come to find out, Guatemalan festival kites were not like the kites John imagined, the simple trapezoidal toys of his childhood. They were huge and round, brilliant with colors. Teyla, Ronon, Melena and the kids spent hours lying on the floor of the ranch house's living room, gluing together small pieces of tissue and crepe paper into a slowly evolving design that made John think of stained glass. He took his turns with glue and paper, too; it was a pleasant way to spend the lengthening evenings.
On Halloween, Ronon took the kids into town to trick-or-treat, over Melena's mild objections (she found it somewhat sacrilegious) and Rodney's much louder objections regarding poisoned apples and straight pins in candy bars. They came back with bags of candy, and after it had all been certified straight-pin-free by the adults, there was a minor candy orgy in the ranch house. In the kitchen, meanwhile, John helped Teyla and Melena chop sausage and boiled eggs for the fiambre — "salad" was sort of a misnomer for a dish that seemed to include dozens of different kinds of meat, cheeses and other ingredients. Teyla smacked his hand whenever he tried to sneak a bit of sausage. "You can eat it tomorrow," she said, smiling.
The following day dawned clear and relatively cool, with a brisk wind pushing wispy cirrus clouds around in the sky. Perfect kite-flying weather, John thought. The big kite struggled in their hands as they carried it up the rising land behind the ranch house; it jumped at each gust of wind as if it couldn't wait to fly. Melena and Rodney straggled behind, carrying a large cooler between them that had been packed with picnic supplies, including large Tupperware tubs of chilled fiambre.
Their motley collection of livestock — sheep, Jumper the horse, two llamas — watched the procession curiously from behind the electric fencing that had replaced the old broken-down barbed wire.
"You know," John said as he, Ronon and Teyla struggled to keep hold of the kite, "I have a feeling that when we let this thing go, it's going to be flying us."
"That's why you hold on tight," Ronon said, grinning broadly.
"Okay, but I'm just saying, if we get blown into Chihuahua, I'm blaming you."
On a wide flat ridge behind the ranch house, they laid the kite on the ground and Ronon attached the coil of strong rope that John had brought from the shed. Teyla slipped up beside him with a small object in her hand. As John watched curiously, she used a bit of bright yarn to tie the object — it was a folded piece of paper — to the kite's trailing, beribboned tail.
"What's that?"
"A message for the dead," Teyla said, and didn't elaborate.
Melena and the children joined them, each with his or her own folded piece of paper. John glanced curiously at Ronon, but he shook his head. "Don't really believe in that stuff."
"I am not sure if I do, either," Teyla said. "It's an old belief. But messages for the dead are for the living as well." She held out a notepad and pencil to John and Rodney.
Rodney shook his head, but at least had the sense to keep his skepticism to himself, even if it was written all over his face.
"Okay," Ronon said, stepping back. "Let's fly this thing!"
At first the kite didn't want to catch the capricious wind; it was sluggish, dragging on the ground, skipping a step and then falling back. But Melena and Teyla lifted it over their heads, one woman on each end, and suddenly it caught and sprang. Ronon had hold of the rope, bracing himself as the kite swooped and soared above them; Teyla joined him, giving additional weight to the end of the rope and keeping him from being dragged off the ridge by the kite's powerful pull.
John had never thought of himself as a kite person, but he'd never seen a kite like this one before. It was gorgeous. The colors had been pretty on the ground, but in the sky, it was like a living thing, sparkling as it turned with the wind. He'd never seen anything so beautiful or so free.
"You want a turn?" Ronon asked, holding out the coil of rope.
"I don't know, buddy. I'm not too steady on my feet." His bad leg was better than it used to be, but it ached fiercely after the climb up the hill.
"We will catch you if the kite tries to carry you away," Teyla said, her smile as brilliant as the kite's sun-kindled colors.
Against his better judgment, John took the rope. It went slack for an instant as the kite dipped, perhaps responding to the inexpert hand on the line. Then the wind caught it again, and John threw his shoulders and back into holding it. He could feel the wind sing down the rope's length, straining against him.
It was a little like flying, not unlike the way that the wind felt in a small plane's wings — the sense of capriciousness and strength, that he'd harnessed a power beyond his control and could only try to ride it to its finish.
When he felt that he was steady enough not to tip over, John tilted his head back and looked up at the kite above them, its dazzling colors flashing in the sun. Though he knew it was just an illusion of perspective, from down here the kite seemed to brush the high, trailing clouds as it ducked and soared. For the first time in years, he found himself thinking of Mitch, Dex and Holland, and let the thoughts come rather than pushing them back to the dark recesses of his mind. The kite scraped the clouds, and he thought, Would there ever be anything closer to them?
"Hey, Teyla," he said, surprising himself. "Do you have any more of that paper?"
He handed off the kite rope to Rodney and Teyla. A strong gust of wind nearly pulled them off their feet, and they staggered across the uneven ground, bumping into each other and laughing, while John stared at the notepad in his hand. Finally, with quick slashing strokes, he wrote FLY HIGH, GUYS.
Folding the paper, he tied it to the kite rope and then took it back from Teyla's firm, strong hands. She stepped back and he played it out, letting the wind carry the message into the sky.
4. winter
The closest thing to a church in their little two-filling-stations-and-a-motel highway town was a tiny Baptist congregation that met in the pastor's trailer. John didn't really feel the lack and had never been able to figure out if anyone else in his odd little household minded, but on Christmas Eve, they bundled into the ranch's motley collection of vehicles and drove an hour and a half to the nearest town that was big enough to have a Catholic church, so that Ronon and Melena could take their kids to Mass.
Rodney insisted on staying behind, until John pointed out that he'd be spending Christmas Eve alone, and did he really want to do that?
"Not really, no."
"Well then."
"They won't make me eat that wafer thing, will they?" Rodney asked nervously.
John rolled his eyes. "No one is going to hold you down and force Communion on you, Rodney, no. In fact, unless you lie and claim to be Catholic, it's not actually an option."
The last time John had attended Mass, he'd been twenty-three and making a last stab at getting back in his parents' good graces. It hadn't worked, and his Catholic upbringing had been one of many things that he'd packaged into that little sealed box in his head labeled The Past. In fact, although he wasn't about to admit it to Rodney, he'd considered staying home, too. It wasn't a matter of believing or not believing; it was the fact that he knew he was going to get smacked in the gut with a lot of things he didn't want to think about as soon as he walked through the church doors.
But it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd feared. The memories it stirred up were mostly good ones, older ones — his mother's bigger hand tucked around his own; raising a candle and his own small voice in song; falling asleep in the car under his father's wool coat, inhaling the smell of cigar smoke and his father's cologne.
He also caught Rodney singing along to the carols more than once.
It was after three in the morning when they turned down the rutted hill road leading to the ranch. Tinny Christmas carols played on a static-blurred radio station out of Laredo, fading in and out as the truck labored up and down the washouts. On the truck's bench seat next to him, Rodney had fallen asleep, slumped against the window with his breath fogging the glass. In all the wide dark country, the only lights that John saw were the taillights of Teyla's battered Wrangler rag-top, appearing and disappearing in front of him, leading him home.
He pulled into the ranch's yard behind her, and killed the truck's rattling engine, but he left the radio on until it finished a scratchy rendition of "Adeste Fideles". Then he nudged Rodney. "Wake up, sleepyhead; we're home."
As Rodney mumbled his way back to a semblance of wakefulness, John swung stiffly down from the truck's cab. The night was still and clear, frozen in that motionless span of time between midnight and dawn. It was chilly enough that John could see his breath.
The slamming of the Jeep's door carried to him across the yard, along with low voices and soft laughter. Ronon and Melena's kids were asleep; John could see that Melena had Rosa's small, blanket-wrapped form tucked into her arms, and Jesse's longer legs dangled from Ronon's gentle grip. John tucked his hands into his pockets and limped over to them along with a yawning Rodney.
Teyla turned to smile at them as they approached. "Look at the stars," she said softly.
The night was perfectly clear, without even a cloud to mar the heavens' perfection. A vast sweep of stars stretched from horizon to horizon. John felt as if he could fall upward into that infinity, and be lost forever. Only the ground beneath his boots kept him in place — that, and the soft voices around him.
"Merry Christmas," Ronon said, and suddenly John felt himself pulled into a half-hug with the big guy's free arm.
"Merry Christmas to you too, buddy."
Teyla wrapped one arm around John and the other around Rodney, and kissed each of them on the ear. "Merry Christmas," she said.
"Feliz Navidad," John said, which got a laugh out of her; she was always amused by his Spanish, spoken in what she assured him was an utterly dreadful accent.
"Guys, morning is going to suck," Rodney complained, and it was John's turn to laugh as Teyla cuffed him gently in the back of the head and then disentangled her arms from around the two of them.
He lagged behind the others as they sleepily tumbled through the door into the ranch house. The desert sky full of stars was an old friend to him; when he'd first bought the ranch, he'd spent a lot of nights out on the porch, with a beer in one hand and nothing to do but gaze up at the sky. He'd bought a book on astronomy, and halfheartedly learned the names of a few constellations.
This was the first time he'd looked up at the sky in a while, though. Things had just been too busy. I've been looking at the world, John thought, not out into nothingness. And it had been that way for a while. The transition from looking up to looking down had been so gradual that he hadn't even noticed.
Light spilled out into the night as someone turned on the kitchen lights, dimming the stars. Rodney leaned out from the block of lamplight in the doorway. "Hey, are you coming in, or are you just going to stay out there and commune with rattlesnakes?"
"It's winter, Rodney; the snakes are hibernating. And yes," he added, seeing Rodney's mouth open, "I'm coming, just keep your shirt on."
On the edge of the horizon, one star moved among the others with steady purpose: a jet on a night flight, from somewhere to somewhere else. The passengers would be sleeping while the dark world passed beneath them, the pilot awake and alone, keeping vigil in the night as they flew into a Christmas dawn.
John silently wished him well, that distant unknown pilot, and then he came in out of the cold.
~~~~
(ETA: I realized right after posting this that the timing is kind of ... bad, since here I am writing about hot drought-stricken summers, while in the real world, with special irony considering the reason why this fic was written, Texas is underwater. I'm really sorry, Texas! Please don't wash away!)
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comments.
Word Count: 4300
Rating: PG
Pairings: a little Ronon/Melena in background, otherwise gen
Notes: This is my
help_pakistan story for raphe1, who requested something from the Long Road Home AU 'verse. This takes place a year or two after the Rodney-in-DC snippet that I wrote awhile back.1. spring
Teyla walked with the other Texas A&M graduates on a brilliant May day — clear and gorgeous, not too hot or humid, the sort of day that dangles the tempting possibility of all that a Texas summer could be (before crushing those hopes with the inevitable June heatwave to come).
But Teyla's smile was brighter than the sun, lighting up the stage as she received her diploma with the other biology students. The thought occurred to John that she was all but unrecognizable as the woman he found hiding in the bed of his truck five years ago. But then he realized that he was looking at it backwards — this woman, this glowing, laughing woman onstage, was the one that he saw all those months ago, under the dirt and bruises.
"Does this mean we can all tease you about being an Aggie now?" John asked afterward, tweaking the tassel on her mortarboard.
Teyla gave him an arch look. "As if you refrained before."
"If there's graduate school in your future," Rodney put in from her other side, "might I suggest somewhere closer this time? Driving up here just to see you is, not to put too fine a point on it, killing my back, and I don't think his truck has too many more highway miles left in it."
"Maybe if you took a turn driving every once in a while," John drawled.
"What, and kill my car on that collection of potholes you consider a road? Not a chance."
The graduation party was the following weekend at the ranch. They even invited the neighbors, and to John's surprise, some of them actually showed up: old man Caldwell from down the hill, Cadman the former Marine who'd just recently bought the place back of Caldwell's, and even a few people from town. A bunch of Teyla's friends were there too — Beckett the veterinarian, of course, along with several of her biology and veterinary-student buddies.
Teyla was still trying to choose between veterinary or medical school. As John had pointed out repeatedly, she didn't have to make a decision yet. She'd submitted applications to a few places, but even if they accepted her, she could still take a year off and think about it.
"Even if I leave, it will not be forever," Teyla said, giving him one of those looks that seemed to see right through him to the bottom of his soul.
John choked on his chips and cheese dip. "I never said that," he said when he stopped coughing.
"Even when we leave, we always come back," Teyla added, and nodded at Rodney, who was crouched in the yard, surreptitiously slipping treats off his plate to the lanky young greyhound that was stretched out in worshipful bliss at his feet. Giving the puppy to Rodney hadn't entirely worked out as intended, because the dog loved everyone at the ranch and seemed to have no idea who it was supposed to belong to — Ronon was its favorite — but it was such a friendly, cheerful dog that no one seemed to mind. Nor did anyone at the ranch begrudge it the fact that it was apparently as dumb as a sack of rocks; they had yet to teach it a single useful command.
"So stop fretting," she added.
"I am not fretting."
It was strange to have so many people on the ranch. For a long time, John had felt like he was hiding out there — first just him; then other people. The first couple of years that Teyla lived at the ranch, and subsequently Ronon and Melena, they hadn't invited anyone that they didn't implicitly trust, and there had been very few of those.
But along the way, something had changed. It doesn't feel like we're hiding anymore. Maybe they should have been, John thought, because all it would take would be one suspicious person turning them in, and then they'd all be in a world of hurt. Rodney seemed to be confident that his contacts in the State Department could do an end run around Immigration, if they really had to, and whatever he'd done to get Teyla into Texas A&M certainly seemed to have worked. But John didn't want to push their luck.
But ...you can't run forever. And out here, against all odds, was where they seemed to have stopped running. This was their home. He and Teyla had defended it against a gang of drug runners, and well, he wasn't letting anyone else take it, either — or anyone in it. Even if that meant taking on the U.S. government itself, if he had to.
His thoughts were running down an old familiar track now, and the crowded ranch house — the music, the voices — seemed too much, too loud. John slipped off and saddled Jumper, the vet-rescue sorrel that Teyla had brought home. While the party went on in the distance, he rode the horse up the rise behind the house, letting the sweep of the distant hills seep into his soul and wash out the uncertainty and confusion.
John had always liked wide-open spaces. What he'd found here in Texas was the same stillness that he'd found at thirty thousand feet: a space that was large enough for him to breathe.
He reined in Jumper and looked back. Dusk was gathering, tinting the wide sky purple, and sending long fingers of shadow creeping across the landscape. The lights in the house spilled out into the yard. Someone's battery-powered boombox was thumping out George Thorogood, and people were dancing — mostly Teyla's college-girl friends (he recognized her roommate, Jennifer the vet student, and that pretty little Katie Brown girl), but Beckett was also dancing with Ronon and Melena's youngest, tiny Rosa, holding her up and spinning her around while the adults clapped.
John watched, and caught himself grinning, especially when Beckett dipped Rosa deeply — turning her upside-down — and then let her go so that she could run squealing and giggling to hide her face in her mother's lap.
It was still a little strange to see all those people in the ranch house's yard, all those cars pulled in. But John thought he'd soaked in enough of the open country above the house. Time to go back, have a few beers, and soak in the company instead. "Right, buddy?" he said to Jumper, patting the horse on the neck. Jumper snorted.
John wheeled him around, and went down to join the party.
2. summer
Heat lay heavy and sticky on the Texas countryside, smothering the ranch beneath its grip. The grass was brown, and their motley assortment of rescue animals — and the handful of sheep which were, against all odds, surviving and prospering — cropped halfheartedly at it, but mostly huddled in the shade or around the water tank.
And Rodney got bit by a rattlesnake. He'd kept insisting it was going to happen, but Rodney's gloomy predictions of death and disaster almost never came true, so John was as shocked as anyone (except maybe Rodney) when this one actually did.
He and Rodney were fixing a section of fencing. It had taken a lot of coaxing to pry Rodney out of the ranch house, where he'd been glued to the window-mounted air conditioner unit, trying to get his satellite internet connection to work. Finally he deigned to be dragged out into the countryside, but only in a wide-brimmed hat, heavy boots and about a gallon of sunscreen.
When he yelled and fell down, John thought at first that he'd stepped in a hole. Then there was a quick flurry of motion in the grass and Rodney shouted "Snake!" in a voice high-pitched with panic. John ran back to see what the hell was going on.
What he saw was the greyhound, a few feet from Rodney with a big diamond-back in its jaws, shaking the snake like a cat with a mouse. Rodney was down on his back in the grass, gripping his knee in both hands.
"They're supposed to make noise!" Rodney yelled, like the snake had personally offended him by failing to obey its own rules.
"Not when they don't see you coming. Haven't we talked about this?" John dropped to his knees next to Rodney, after casting a cautious eye at the dog and snake. Rodney's pants were untucked from his boot, flopping loose. "Jesus. It got you above the boot?"
Rodney nodded. He looked absolutely terrified. John pulled up his pants leg, but it took him a moment to unravel what he was looking at. "Rodney, there's no bite mark. I think it got the pants rather than you."
"I felt it! It hurt!"
There was a thin scrape just below his knee. John pressed it with his thumb, but didn't see any signs of redness or swelling. "I don't think it was able to inject much venom, if any at all. I think it just ... winged you." If that was the right word as applied to a snake.
The greyhound trotted up and deposited the snake in a limp heap, like a fat coil of rope. John grabbed for the long-handled wirecutters that he'd dropped to tend to Rodney, but the snake wasn't even twitching anymore. "Huh," John said. "Good dog." He patted down the greyhound's body and legs, looking for bites, but the dog seemed to be intact — and very pleased with itself, tongue lolling happily.
"You're tending the dog rather than your dying friend?" Rodney said in disbelief.
"Hey, the dog just defended you from a snake, Rodney; show some gratitude."
He stood and offered Rodney a hand. Rodney just glared at him. "Aren't you supposed to stay laying down when a snake bites you?" he demanded.
"I think you're fine, but let's get back down to the ranch house and clean it, just in case."
"Walking," Rodney muttered, leaning on John. "Bad idea. If I die, I'm blaming you."
He wasn't even limping by the time they made it back to the ranch house; still, John checked the bite site out carefully — still no signs of swelling; for all he knew, the scratch might have been made by something completely non-snake-related, but Rodney still insisted he'd felt the fangs hit him. John got them a couple of cold beers while Rodney changed clothes and cleaned the alleged snakebite in the bathroom.
"Can I be considered to have served my term in farmwork hell at this point?" Rodney asked, flopping in front of the air conditioner and accepting the beer.
"Hey, you've got a great story to tell."
"Right, the time that a snake almost bit me. That's really manly. I'm sure it'll totally help me score in what passes for the singles scene around here." Rodney snorted. "Most of the women in this part of the country have probably shot more snakes than I've even seen."
"It winged you. That's something." John looked over at the dog, which was stretched out on the floor, back legs sprawled shamelessly. "And we finally found something useful that he can do."
They both regarded the dog for a moment. "You know," John said at last, "at some point, we probably ought to give that dog a name, considering that he's, what, a year and half old?"
"I'm open to suggestions."
"He's your dog," John said. "That's your job. It's not our fault if you can't decide on anything."
After a moment, Rodney said, "How about ... Killer?"
The dog cracked his jaws open, allowing his tongue to unroll onto the carpet. John was pretty sure he'd never seen a less intimidating animal.
"Or not," Rodney said.
3. fall
John had of course heard of the Day of the Dead, Dia de Los Muertos, even before moving to border country, but he'd never really known what it entailed, aside from cemeteries being involved.
Apparently in Teyla's part of the world, there were also kites.
"What do kites have to do with dead people?" he asked Teyla in the checkout line at Wal-Mart, after he and Rodney had helped her collect kite-making supplies.
"What do candy corn and pumpkin pie have to do with dead people?" she riposted back at him.
John guiltily tucked the bag of candy corn under a roll of crepe paper. "Okay. Point."
"The kites carry messages to the dead, or at least that is what my abuela always said. But, really, it's a holiday, and they're colorful and fun. That is the main reason." She smiled at him. "If you help build the kite, I'll make fiambre for you."
Rodney went suddenly attentive. "Is that a kind of candy? Some sort of festival treat?"
"It is a treat, yes. Every family has their own recipe. It's a sort of ..." She thought for a moment as she and John offloaded the cart onto the checkout conveyer belt. "A sort of salad."
Rodney's eagerness turned to horror. "You celebrate your holidays with salad? No wonder you left."
"Rodney," John muttered, glaring at him.
"That is all right," Teyla said loftily. "You do not have to eat any."
Come to find out, Guatemalan festival kites were not like the kites John imagined, the simple trapezoidal toys of his childhood. They were huge and round, brilliant with colors. Teyla, Ronon, Melena and the kids spent hours lying on the floor of the ranch house's living room, gluing together small pieces of tissue and crepe paper into a slowly evolving design that made John think of stained glass. He took his turns with glue and paper, too; it was a pleasant way to spend the lengthening evenings.
On Halloween, Ronon took the kids into town to trick-or-treat, over Melena's mild objections (she found it somewhat sacrilegious) and Rodney's much louder objections regarding poisoned apples and straight pins in candy bars. They came back with bags of candy, and after it had all been certified straight-pin-free by the adults, there was a minor candy orgy in the ranch house. In the kitchen, meanwhile, John helped Teyla and Melena chop sausage and boiled eggs for the fiambre — "salad" was sort of a misnomer for a dish that seemed to include dozens of different kinds of meat, cheeses and other ingredients. Teyla smacked his hand whenever he tried to sneak a bit of sausage. "You can eat it tomorrow," she said, smiling.
The following day dawned clear and relatively cool, with a brisk wind pushing wispy cirrus clouds around in the sky. Perfect kite-flying weather, John thought. The big kite struggled in their hands as they carried it up the rising land behind the ranch house; it jumped at each gust of wind as if it couldn't wait to fly. Melena and Rodney straggled behind, carrying a large cooler between them that had been packed with picnic supplies, including large Tupperware tubs of chilled fiambre.
Their motley collection of livestock — sheep, Jumper the horse, two llamas — watched the procession curiously from behind the electric fencing that had replaced the old broken-down barbed wire.
"You know," John said as he, Ronon and Teyla struggled to keep hold of the kite, "I have a feeling that when we let this thing go, it's going to be flying us."
"That's why you hold on tight," Ronon said, grinning broadly.
"Okay, but I'm just saying, if we get blown into Chihuahua, I'm blaming you."
On a wide flat ridge behind the ranch house, they laid the kite on the ground and Ronon attached the coil of strong rope that John had brought from the shed. Teyla slipped up beside him with a small object in her hand. As John watched curiously, she used a bit of bright yarn to tie the object — it was a folded piece of paper — to the kite's trailing, beribboned tail.
"What's that?"
"A message for the dead," Teyla said, and didn't elaborate.
Melena and the children joined them, each with his or her own folded piece of paper. John glanced curiously at Ronon, but he shook his head. "Don't really believe in that stuff."
"I am not sure if I do, either," Teyla said. "It's an old belief. But messages for the dead are for the living as well." She held out a notepad and pencil to John and Rodney.
Rodney shook his head, but at least had the sense to keep his skepticism to himself, even if it was written all over his face.
"Okay," Ronon said, stepping back. "Let's fly this thing!"
At first the kite didn't want to catch the capricious wind; it was sluggish, dragging on the ground, skipping a step and then falling back. But Melena and Teyla lifted it over their heads, one woman on each end, and suddenly it caught and sprang. Ronon had hold of the rope, bracing himself as the kite swooped and soared above them; Teyla joined him, giving additional weight to the end of the rope and keeping him from being dragged off the ridge by the kite's powerful pull.
John had never thought of himself as a kite person, but he'd never seen a kite like this one before. It was gorgeous. The colors had been pretty on the ground, but in the sky, it was like a living thing, sparkling as it turned with the wind. He'd never seen anything so beautiful or so free.
"You want a turn?" Ronon asked, holding out the coil of rope.
"I don't know, buddy. I'm not too steady on my feet." His bad leg was better than it used to be, but it ached fiercely after the climb up the hill.
"We will catch you if the kite tries to carry you away," Teyla said, her smile as brilliant as the kite's sun-kindled colors.
Against his better judgment, John took the rope. It went slack for an instant as the kite dipped, perhaps responding to the inexpert hand on the line. Then the wind caught it again, and John threw his shoulders and back into holding it. He could feel the wind sing down the rope's length, straining against him.
It was a little like flying, not unlike the way that the wind felt in a small plane's wings — the sense of capriciousness and strength, that he'd harnessed a power beyond his control and could only try to ride it to its finish.
When he felt that he was steady enough not to tip over, John tilted his head back and looked up at the kite above them, its dazzling colors flashing in the sun. Though he knew it was just an illusion of perspective, from down here the kite seemed to brush the high, trailing clouds as it ducked and soared. For the first time in years, he found himself thinking of Mitch, Dex and Holland, and let the thoughts come rather than pushing them back to the dark recesses of his mind. The kite scraped the clouds, and he thought, Would there ever be anything closer to them?
"Hey, Teyla," he said, surprising himself. "Do you have any more of that paper?"
He handed off the kite rope to Rodney and Teyla. A strong gust of wind nearly pulled them off their feet, and they staggered across the uneven ground, bumping into each other and laughing, while John stared at the notepad in his hand. Finally, with quick slashing strokes, he wrote FLY HIGH, GUYS.
Folding the paper, he tied it to the kite rope and then took it back from Teyla's firm, strong hands. She stepped back and he played it out, letting the wind carry the message into the sky.
4. winter
The closest thing to a church in their little two-filling-stations-and-a-motel highway town was a tiny Baptist congregation that met in the pastor's trailer. John didn't really feel the lack and had never been able to figure out if anyone else in his odd little household minded, but on Christmas Eve, they bundled into the ranch's motley collection of vehicles and drove an hour and a half to the nearest town that was big enough to have a Catholic church, so that Ronon and Melena could take their kids to Mass.
Rodney insisted on staying behind, until John pointed out that he'd be spending Christmas Eve alone, and did he really want to do that?
"Not really, no."
"Well then."
"They won't make me eat that wafer thing, will they?" Rodney asked nervously.
John rolled his eyes. "No one is going to hold you down and force Communion on you, Rodney, no. In fact, unless you lie and claim to be Catholic, it's not actually an option."
The last time John had attended Mass, he'd been twenty-three and making a last stab at getting back in his parents' good graces. It hadn't worked, and his Catholic upbringing had been one of many things that he'd packaged into that little sealed box in his head labeled The Past. In fact, although he wasn't about to admit it to Rodney, he'd considered staying home, too. It wasn't a matter of believing or not believing; it was the fact that he knew he was going to get smacked in the gut with a lot of things he didn't want to think about as soon as he walked through the church doors.
But it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd feared. The memories it stirred up were mostly good ones, older ones — his mother's bigger hand tucked around his own; raising a candle and his own small voice in song; falling asleep in the car under his father's wool coat, inhaling the smell of cigar smoke and his father's cologne.
He also caught Rodney singing along to the carols more than once.
It was after three in the morning when they turned down the rutted hill road leading to the ranch. Tinny Christmas carols played on a static-blurred radio station out of Laredo, fading in and out as the truck labored up and down the washouts. On the truck's bench seat next to him, Rodney had fallen asleep, slumped against the window with his breath fogging the glass. In all the wide dark country, the only lights that John saw were the taillights of Teyla's battered Wrangler rag-top, appearing and disappearing in front of him, leading him home.
He pulled into the ranch's yard behind her, and killed the truck's rattling engine, but he left the radio on until it finished a scratchy rendition of "Adeste Fideles". Then he nudged Rodney. "Wake up, sleepyhead; we're home."
As Rodney mumbled his way back to a semblance of wakefulness, John swung stiffly down from the truck's cab. The night was still and clear, frozen in that motionless span of time between midnight and dawn. It was chilly enough that John could see his breath.
The slamming of the Jeep's door carried to him across the yard, along with low voices and soft laughter. Ronon and Melena's kids were asleep; John could see that Melena had Rosa's small, blanket-wrapped form tucked into her arms, and Jesse's longer legs dangled from Ronon's gentle grip. John tucked his hands into his pockets and limped over to them along with a yawning Rodney.
Teyla turned to smile at them as they approached. "Look at the stars," she said softly.
The night was perfectly clear, without even a cloud to mar the heavens' perfection. A vast sweep of stars stretched from horizon to horizon. John felt as if he could fall upward into that infinity, and be lost forever. Only the ground beneath his boots kept him in place — that, and the soft voices around him.
"Merry Christmas," Ronon said, and suddenly John felt himself pulled into a half-hug with the big guy's free arm.
"Merry Christmas to you too, buddy."
Teyla wrapped one arm around John and the other around Rodney, and kissed each of them on the ear. "Merry Christmas," she said.
"Feliz Navidad," John said, which got a laugh out of her; she was always amused by his Spanish, spoken in what she assured him was an utterly dreadful accent.
"Guys, morning is going to suck," Rodney complained, and it was John's turn to laugh as Teyla cuffed him gently in the back of the head and then disentangled her arms from around the two of them.
He lagged behind the others as they sleepily tumbled through the door into the ranch house. The desert sky full of stars was an old friend to him; when he'd first bought the ranch, he'd spent a lot of nights out on the porch, with a beer in one hand and nothing to do but gaze up at the sky. He'd bought a book on astronomy, and halfheartedly learned the names of a few constellations.
This was the first time he'd looked up at the sky in a while, though. Things had just been too busy. I've been looking at the world, John thought, not out into nothingness. And it had been that way for a while. The transition from looking up to looking down had been so gradual that he hadn't even noticed.
Light spilled out into the night as someone turned on the kitchen lights, dimming the stars. Rodney leaned out from the block of lamplight in the doorway. "Hey, are you coming in, or are you just going to stay out there and commune with rattlesnakes?"
"It's winter, Rodney; the snakes are hibernating. And yes," he added, seeing Rodney's mouth open, "I'm coming, just keep your shirt on."
On the edge of the horizon, one star moved among the others with steady purpose: a jet on a night flight, from somewhere to somewhere else. The passengers would be sleeping while the dark world passed beneath them, the pilot awake and alone, keeping vigil in the night as they flew into a Christmas dawn.
John silently wished him well, that distant unknown pilot, and then he came in out of the cold.
~~~~
(ETA: I realized right after posting this that the timing is kind of ... bad, since here I am writing about hot drought-stricken summers, while in the real world, with special irony considering the reason why this fic was written, Texas is underwater. I'm really sorry, Texas! Please don't wash away!)
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/279380.html with
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After a moment, Rodney said, "How about ... Killer?"
The dog cracked his jaws open, allowing his tongue to unroll onto the carpet. John was pretty sure he'd never seen a less intimidating animal.
"Or not," Rodney said.
LOL!! I love this dog soooo much!! And then we have the healing moments and friendship/family bits and Rodney being Rodney! The last line is excellent!
John silently wished him well, that distant unknown pilot, and then he came in out of the cold.
In more ways than one, John!! Lovely!
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In more ways than one, John!!
Indeed! Oh, John. Oh, everyone.
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I love the picture of John on a horse, Rodney being rescued by the dog with no name, Teyla sharing a tradition from her past and Ronon as a dad.
Thank you very much for this fic!
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This was the first time he'd looked up at the sky in a while, though. Things had just been too busy. I've been looking at the world, John thought, not out into nothingness.
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Oh, one minor nitpick - calling Cadman an ex-marine is a grave insult (former marine is acceptable)
"Marine is not an ex" (http://www.deseretnews.com/article/645197208/Excuse-us-Marine-is-not-an-ex.html)
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