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Tea and Candy (SGA; Rodney & Teyla)
Tea and Candy ~ Rodney & Teyla (post-EATG - references to canon pairings, perhaps a bit of Rodney/Teyla subtext), 2200 wds
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fandom_stocking. Originally posted here at fandom_stocking.
Ever since Teyla was a girl, the fifth day of the month of Estiren has been a time of sorrow, meditation and contemplation. Then, three years ago, 5th Estiren became ... something else.
This will be the fourth year for this private little ritual, and Teyla is not really certain if it will happen this year. After all, things are ... different now, and about to be more different. Still, she asks Kanaan if he might please take Torren out to the neighborhood park for the evening, to play with the other children. She asked him something similar last year, except in that case she'd asked if he could take Torren back to New Athos for a day or so. Kanaan didn't ask why, because he knows what 5th Estiren is for her; there are definite advantages to living with someone who's known her all her life. But while Kanaan knows part of it, he doesn't know the other part.
No one does, except one other person. It is something private, just for the two of them.
And she knows it may not happen tonight. Still, she moves about the little apartment that she and Kanaan share in Colorado Springs, setting out candles. This suite of rooms still has an unfinished, incomplete look to it -- much more so now, with most of what they own in boxes and the rest spread across every surface. It was never meant to be a permanent home. They never expected to live here for more than a week or two, and now it has been seven Earth months. But it will not be her home for much longer.
She treads on one of Torren's toys, and curses softly. Most of the boxes consist of things they've acquired on Earth -- DVDs, electronic games, toys, clothing -- and most will be going to Earth charities to help the unfortunate. They will not have much room on the Hyperion. But she has had to start over many times. This is just one more such time. It will not be the last.
She sets a kettle to heat on the electric stove in the tiny kitchen, and then leans on the sink with her eyes closed, breathing deeply, calming herself.
Just as the kettle whistles, there is a light, hesitant tap at the door. Teyla opens her eyes and finds herself smiling as she goes to open it.
"Rodney. Come in."
He looks different, she thinks, and supposes it is only her imagination, but still, she can't shake it. He's a little older, a little paunchier, his hairline a little farther back. When he smiles at her, there are lines around his eyes that she doesn't remember.
"I apologize for the state of the apartment."
"Don't worry about it," Rodney says, stepping over a pile of games for the X-Box next to them. He's carrying a couple of grocery bags. "You've seen my lab after a three-day work session, right? You guys are moving, anyway." He falls silent, then says hesitantly, as she takes the bags from his hands, "Sheppard said you guys are shipping out on the eighteenth, right?"
Teyla converts quickly to the Earth calendar in her head. Like Earth measurements, it is still something she has to do, even after all these years. "Yes. One week from today."
"We oughta do something before you go. You know. The old team." Rodney flutters his hands, then falls still for a moment, but only a moment -- as she starts to open the bags, he takes her by the shoulders and moves her away. "No, no -- I serve you, remember?"
Teyla has to stifle an inappropriate laugh. Trust Rodney to take her own people's custom and make himself a self-appointed expert on it. "Yes, that's right." She sits at the table and watches him take the tea things out of one of the bags, and from the other, a box of chocolate candies and some little white cartons such as takeout food comes in.
Last year, it had been little coconut candies from the markets of Kru'kutz and pizza from the mess hall. They'd sat on the new chairs that Kanaan's father and aunts had made for her as a wedding gift. The year before that, her people were gone; she was off the team and had become an emotional, pregnant mess. Rodney had shyly shown up at her quarters with some traditional Athosian foods that he'd convinced the mess hall to make -- the deep-fried tava root was half-raw, the kurga balls spiced completely wrong and made with half the wrong ingredients, but just the fact that he'd thought of it had made her burst into tears. That, she's fairly sure, had been the year they'd both realized that it wasn't going to be a one-time-only thing, a final farewell before dying.
Rodney brews the tea. While it steeps, he finds plates in her cabinets -- another thing to pack or discard, she thinks wearily. They are bone-white with bright yellow sunflowers on them; Kanaan bought them because they were cheap, thinking she would like them. She hates them, actually, but she finds that she's grown used to them. As Rodney spoons rice and a savory fried vegetable mix from the takeout boxes onto the sunflowers, she thinks that she might even miss the ugly, awful things.
Rodney pours the tea and Teyla lifts the cup to her mouth, inhaling the fragrance. He's gotten much better at it. She was willing to choke down nearly inedible tea while he was dying, but the second year, she'd begun giving him polite lessons in proper brewing technique, because there was only so much bad tea she could drink.
"So," Rodney says, after they've both sipped their tea and had a few bites of the food, which is really quite good. "This is awfully gloomy."
"I am sorry. I'm not good company tonight."
"You aren't supposed to be," Rodney says. "This is a wake ... sort of thing, after all, and you're the bereaved." Although it hasn't really been that for a few years now, and they both know it. "It's just ... this whole situation." He takes a bite of food and waves his fork around, speaking through the mouthful. Ancestors help her, she might miss that too. "Sheppard's so excited he's about to burst a gasket, by the way. I mean, as much as he gets. It's the Lieutenant Colonel thing all over again."
Teyla hides her smile behind her cup of tea. "Well, it is a very big deal for him, Rodney. A promotion and his own ship."
And that's the crux of it, really. Atlantis is never leaving Earth. That's become more clear as the months have gone by; with new enemies threatening Earth every year, it seems, the IOA and SGC are simply not willing to let it go. But then Woolsey pulled out a backup offer -- the idea of a joint Coalition-Earth defensive force in the Pegasus Galaxy, something like NATO. Now they're sending Earth's newest Daedalus-class ship, the Hyperion, with an IOA diplomatic team to broker a deal ... and a newly promoted Colonel John Sheppard at the helm. In the long run, the general hope is that the Hyperion will spend long tours in Pegasus, up to six months at a time, working with the Coalition.
Teyla and Ronon will be on that ship on its initial run, as part of the diplomatic team. Rodney, however, won't be. It's a military vessel with an attached group of civilian diplomats from all over the world -- civilian scientists are not part of the package. It's possible that Rodney might be able to talk them into letting him go as part of the diplomatic team if he's willing to a) quit his job and b) find a country willing to sponsor him, but Teyla is not even sure if he wants to go. He's finally mended fences with Jeannie, and sees her and Madison regularly. Jennifer has quit the Stargate program and is happily established in a private medical practice in Colorado Springs, while Rodney has a job he enjoys running the labs at the SGC, now that Carter spends most of her time offworld on the George Hammond.
Teyla had thought she had adjusted to it. She is happy and eager to be returning to the life she left behind, where she can make a difference in the lives of her people and everyone in Pegasus. And she will have three quarters of her team together, where they have been scattered all over this world.
Except they won't all be there ... and now they will be scattered across two galaxies instead.
"Are you going to eat your Mongolian beef?" Rodney asks anxiously. "I hope you like it -- I thought you'd probably like Chinese, it's sort of similar to that stuff on M36-F57 that you liked --"
Teyla swallows her sorrow, bitter on the back of her tongue. "No, it is excellent, Rodney. But I -- think I would like to see what is in the box, however."
He brightens. The unhappiness lifts from him a bit. "Oh, that! That's from this little candy store that Vala recommended. I wasn't sure what you'd like, so I got a little of everything." He opens the box on the table between them. Little balls of chocolate, some with sprinkles of different colors or drizzles of white icing, glisten in their little paper cups. "You get the first pick -- the lady in the store said that the raspberry is a big seller, and the mint one -- have you had mint yet? Mint chocolate anything? The mint chip ice cream in Atlantis always tasted like cardboard."
Half an hour later, the box has been demolished as they've taken turns picking flavors. Teyla's fingers are sticky and she's faintly nauseous, but she's laughing and so is Rodney.
"Oh God," Rodney groans, pushing a pile of folded laundry onto the floor so that he can flop down on her couch. "If I puke from a chocolate overdose, swear to me you won't tell Sheppard."
Teyla giggles. "I fear that I may be right there with you."
She brews more tea and brings it to the living room with her. "This should settle your digestion."
"I think my digestion is beyond settling at this point." But he raises himself up enough to the cup she offers him. Teyla sits on the floor, her back against the couch and Rodney's knees pressing between her shoulder blades.
"So where's Kanaan, anyway?"
"He is at the park with Torren." Teyla gazes out the apartment's one selling point, its big floor-length picture window. Outside the half-drawn curtains, darkness has fallen, unnoticed. "After that, I believe he said they were going to the McDonald's playland. He knows that these evenings are ..." She watches the headlights of the cars on the street below. "Well. He will not be back until later. What did you say to Jennifer?"
Rodney shrugs. "She didn't ask. Tonight's her night to volunteer at the clinic. She won't even be home until midnight."
Teyla sips her tea. Now that they both have other lives -- a husband and child in her case, a fiancee in his -- there is something oddly clandestine about this annual meeting. And, if she were to be strictly honest with herself, Teyla is not entirely convinced that it is completely platonic. But they've never talked about it, and they've never done anything that their significant others would object to. It is their night, the one night of the year that's just for them. That's all.
"Next year," Rodney says sleepily, and then doesn't say anything for a while.
"Next year," Teyla echoes at last, as the silence grows long.
Next year, she will probably be in the Pegasus Galaxy, and he will most likely be on Earth. But who knows? On last year's anniversary of her father's death, she would hardly have expected all the changes that would take place in the interim -- Rodney's relationship with Jennifer, Michael's death, and a seven-month stay on Earth, to name just three.
John's mission to the Pegasus Galaxy is supposed to end in a diplomatic alliance and a new Earth presence in Pegasus, to replace the old. There will be traffic between their two galaxies. This is not an end, she knows, even if it feels like one.
"Next year," Rodney says again, and his big hand closes over hers where it's resting on the edge of the couch by his leg. She looks over at him, surprised. His fingers are warm and just a bit sticky from the chocolate. Rodney gently squeezes her hand, and his smile is his real one, shy and warm and cautious, the smile that transforms his whole face.
Teyla finds that there are tears in her eyes. After thinking for a moment, she comes up with the right response, something she's heard in a dozen silly Earth movies, and squeezes back. "It's a date."
~
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/309202.html with
comments.
For
astridv at fandom_stocking. Originally posted here at fandom_stocking.Ever since Teyla was a girl, the fifth day of the month of Estiren has been a time of sorrow, meditation and contemplation. Then, three years ago, 5th Estiren became ... something else.
This will be the fourth year for this private little ritual, and Teyla is not really certain if it will happen this year. After all, things are ... different now, and about to be more different. Still, she asks Kanaan if he might please take Torren out to the neighborhood park for the evening, to play with the other children. She asked him something similar last year, except in that case she'd asked if he could take Torren back to New Athos for a day or so. Kanaan didn't ask why, because he knows what 5th Estiren is for her; there are definite advantages to living with someone who's known her all her life. But while Kanaan knows part of it, he doesn't know the other part.
No one does, except one other person. It is something private, just for the two of them.
And she knows it may not happen tonight. Still, she moves about the little apartment that she and Kanaan share in Colorado Springs, setting out candles. This suite of rooms still has an unfinished, incomplete look to it -- much more so now, with most of what they own in boxes and the rest spread across every surface. It was never meant to be a permanent home. They never expected to live here for more than a week or two, and now it has been seven Earth months. But it will not be her home for much longer.
She treads on one of Torren's toys, and curses softly. Most of the boxes consist of things they've acquired on Earth -- DVDs, electronic games, toys, clothing -- and most will be going to Earth charities to help the unfortunate. They will not have much room on the Hyperion. But she has had to start over many times. This is just one more such time. It will not be the last.
She sets a kettle to heat on the electric stove in the tiny kitchen, and then leans on the sink with her eyes closed, breathing deeply, calming herself.
Just as the kettle whistles, there is a light, hesitant tap at the door. Teyla opens her eyes and finds herself smiling as she goes to open it.
"Rodney. Come in."
He looks different, she thinks, and supposes it is only her imagination, but still, she can't shake it. He's a little older, a little paunchier, his hairline a little farther back. When he smiles at her, there are lines around his eyes that she doesn't remember.
"I apologize for the state of the apartment."
"Don't worry about it," Rodney says, stepping over a pile of games for the X-Box next to them. He's carrying a couple of grocery bags. "You've seen my lab after a three-day work session, right? You guys are moving, anyway." He falls silent, then says hesitantly, as she takes the bags from his hands, "Sheppard said you guys are shipping out on the eighteenth, right?"
Teyla converts quickly to the Earth calendar in her head. Like Earth measurements, it is still something she has to do, even after all these years. "Yes. One week from today."
"We oughta do something before you go. You know. The old team." Rodney flutters his hands, then falls still for a moment, but only a moment -- as she starts to open the bags, he takes her by the shoulders and moves her away. "No, no -- I serve you, remember?"
Teyla has to stifle an inappropriate laugh. Trust Rodney to take her own people's custom and make himself a self-appointed expert on it. "Yes, that's right." She sits at the table and watches him take the tea things out of one of the bags, and from the other, a box of chocolate candies and some little white cartons such as takeout food comes in.
Last year, it had been little coconut candies from the markets of Kru'kutz and pizza from the mess hall. They'd sat on the new chairs that Kanaan's father and aunts had made for her as a wedding gift. The year before that, her people were gone; she was off the team and had become an emotional, pregnant mess. Rodney had shyly shown up at her quarters with some traditional Athosian foods that he'd convinced the mess hall to make -- the deep-fried tava root was half-raw, the kurga balls spiced completely wrong and made with half the wrong ingredients, but just the fact that he'd thought of it had made her burst into tears. That, she's fairly sure, had been the year they'd both realized that it wasn't going to be a one-time-only thing, a final farewell before dying.
Rodney brews the tea. While it steeps, he finds plates in her cabinets -- another thing to pack or discard, she thinks wearily. They are bone-white with bright yellow sunflowers on them; Kanaan bought them because they were cheap, thinking she would like them. She hates them, actually, but she finds that she's grown used to them. As Rodney spoons rice and a savory fried vegetable mix from the takeout boxes onto the sunflowers, she thinks that she might even miss the ugly, awful things.
Rodney pours the tea and Teyla lifts the cup to her mouth, inhaling the fragrance. He's gotten much better at it. She was willing to choke down nearly inedible tea while he was dying, but the second year, she'd begun giving him polite lessons in proper brewing technique, because there was only so much bad tea she could drink.
"So," Rodney says, after they've both sipped their tea and had a few bites of the food, which is really quite good. "This is awfully gloomy."
"I am sorry. I'm not good company tonight."
"You aren't supposed to be," Rodney says. "This is a wake ... sort of thing, after all, and you're the bereaved." Although it hasn't really been that for a few years now, and they both know it. "It's just ... this whole situation." He takes a bite of food and waves his fork around, speaking through the mouthful. Ancestors help her, she might miss that too. "Sheppard's so excited he's about to burst a gasket, by the way. I mean, as much as he gets. It's the Lieutenant Colonel thing all over again."
Teyla hides her smile behind her cup of tea. "Well, it is a very big deal for him, Rodney. A promotion and his own ship."
And that's the crux of it, really. Atlantis is never leaving Earth. That's become more clear as the months have gone by; with new enemies threatening Earth every year, it seems, the IOA and SGC are simply not willing to let it go. But then Woolsey pulled out a backup offer -- the idea of a joint Coalition-Earth defensive force in the Pegasus Galaxy, something like NATO. Now they're sending Earth's newest Daedalus-class ship, the Hyperion, with an IOA diplomatic team to broker a deal ... and a newly promoted Colonel John Sheppard at the helm. In the long run, the general hope is that the Hyperion will spend long tours in Pegasus, up to six months at a time, working with the Coalition.
Teyla and Ronon will be on that ship on its initial run, as part of the diplomatic team. Rodney, however, won't be. It's a military vessel with an attached group of civilian diplomats from all over the world -- civilian scientists are not part of the package. It's possible that Rodney might be able to talk them into letting him go as part of the diplomatic team if he's willing to a) quit his job and b) find a country willing to sponsor him, but Teyla is not even sure if he wants to go. He's finally mended fences with Jeannie, and sees her and Madison regularly. Jennifer has quit the Stargate program and is happily established in a private medical practice in Colorado Springs, while Rodney has a job he enjoys running the labs at the SGC, now that Carter spends most of her time offworld on the George Hammond.
Teyla had thought she had adjusted to it. She is happy and eager to be returning to the life she left behind, where she can make a difference in the lives of her people and everyone in Pegasus. And she will have three quarters of her team together, where they have been scattered all over this world.
Except they won't all be there ... and now they will be scattered across two galaxies instead.
"Are you going to eat your Mongolian beef?" Rodney asks anxiously. "I hope you like it -- I thought you'd probably like Chinese, it's sort of similar to that stuff on M36-F57 that you liked --"
Teyla swallows her sorrow, bitter on the back of her tongue. "No, it is excellent, Rodney. But I -- think I would like to see what is in the box, however."
He brightens. The unhappiness lifts from him a bit. "Oh, that! That's from this little candy store that Vala recommended. I wasn't sure what you'd like, so I got a little of everything." He opens the box on the table between them. Little balls of chocolate, some with sprinkles of different colors or drizzles of white icing, glisten in their little paper cups. "You get the first pick -- the lady in the store said that the raspberry is a big seller, and the mint one -- have you had mint yet? Mint chocolate anything? The mint chip ice cream in Atlantis always tasted like cardboard."
Half an hour later, the box has been demolished as they've taken turns picking flavors. Teyla's fingers are sticky and she's faintly nauseous, but she's laughing and so is Rodney.
"Oh God," Rodney groans, pushing a pile of folded laundry onto the floor so that he can flop down on her couch. "If I puke from a chocolate overdose, swear to me you won't tell Sheppard."
Teyla giggles. "I fear that I may be right there with you."
She brews more tea and brings it to the living room with her. "This should settle your digestion."
"I think my digestion is beyond settling at this point." But he raises himself up enough to the cup she offers him. Teyla sits on the floor, her back against the couch and Rodney's knees pressing between her shoulder blades.
"So where's Kanaan, anyway?"
"He is at the park with Torren." Teyla gazes out the apartment's one selling point, its big floor-length picture window. Outside the half-drawn curtains, darkness has fallen, unnoticed. "After that, I believe he said they were going to the McDonald's playland. He knows that these evenings are ..." She watches the headlights of the cars on the street below. "Well. He will not be back until later. What did you say to Jennifer?"
Rodney shrugs. "She didn't ask. Tonight's her night to volunteer at the clinic. She won't even be home until midnight."
Teyla sips her tea. Now that they both have other lives -- a husband and child in her case, a fiancee in his -- there is something oddly clandestine about this annual meeting. And, if she were to be strictly honest with herself, Teyla is not entirely convinced that it is completely platonic. But they've never talked about it, and they've never done anything that their significant others would object to. It is their night, the one night of the year that's just for them. That's all.
"Next year," Rodney says sleepily, and then doesn't say anything for a while.
"Next year," Teyla echoes at last, as the silence grows long.
Next year, she will probably be in the Pegasus Galaxy, and he will most likely be on Earth. But who knows? On last year's anniversary of her father's death, she would hardly have expected all the changes that would take place in the interim -- Rodney's relationship with Jennifer, Michael's death, and a seven-month stay on Earth, to name just three.
John's mission to the Pegasus Galaxy is supposed to end in a diplomatic alliance and a new Earth presence in Pegasus, to replace the old. There will be traffic between their two galaxies. This is not an end, she knows, even if it feels like one.
"Next year," Rodney says again, and his big hand closes over hers where it's resting on the edge of the couch by his leg. She looks over at him, surprised. His fingers are warm and just a bit sticky from the chocolate. Rodney gently squeezes her hand, and his smile is his real one, shy and warm and cautious, the smile that transforms his whole face.
Teyla finds that there are tears in her eyes. After thinking for a moment, she comes up with the right response, something she's heard in a dozen silly Earth movies, and squeezes back. "It's a date."
~
This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/309202.html with
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It makes my heart break a little, but it's so very realistic and I could totally buy it.
*sigh*
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I like to think that they all keep making time for each other, even if their lives do take them in separate directions.
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Thanks!!!
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I have often wondered what would happened if Atlantis was to stay on Earth. Would the SGC eventually offer Teyla and Ronan a ride back home? As much as he loves his family and Jennifer I just can't picture Rodney staying behind.
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It always makes me sad to read stories where Atlantis stays on Earth, because they're always sadly plausible... that Earth would be so greedy to send an expedition to another galaxy to ultimately steal its greatest treasure. Even the idea of John's delight at commanding his own ship doesn't change the melancholy of this scenario. But it's good to explore the sad possibilities as well as the happy ones. I was glad to read this.
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