Rest of my Life, John/Teyla, 'Post-EatG'
Title: Rest of my Life
Summary: John Sheppard was lucky man.
Characters: Team plus Kanaan, Torren, Carson & Female OC Rebecca
Pairing: John/Teyla, Teyla/Kanaan, John/Rebecca & brief Keller/McKay
Rating: K+
Spoilers: Enemy at the Gate
The intimate setting was not lost on Kanaan but he was not sure which of the men from Earth were to blame. Outside, the snow continued to fall against the blackness of night while the fire kept the occupants of the small hotel chalet comfortable in its warm glow. It had been many long months since Kanaan had enjoyed the pleasure of an open fire; he and Teyla’s small home had central heating and radiators and Sheppard had told Kanaan that the, without a chimney, a log fire would not be possible. At the time, it had been completely lost on Kanaan but over time, he had come to enjoy the constant warmth and safety of the radiators. Still, he enjoyed the open fire as he lingered at its side, revelling in the hiss and cracks of the logs breaking under the heat.
It reminded him of a home he was now certain he would never see again.
His son, now three years old, rested lazily against the foot of a sofa, his soft voice singing along to the Bob Dylan song playing quietly over the speakers; his son had, thankfully, inherited Teyla’s gifted voice. Others staying at the hotel seemed very far away from the group of friends from Atlantis, choosing to dine and sit on the other side of the room leaving the larger seating area to the big group. He sighed and shifted in the chair he’d pulled over from one of the smaller tables, shifting the book in his lap. The others talked quietly around him as he read, some simply watching out of the window at the falling snow. Kanaan had wondered why Sheppard had been so insistent on their staying at a ski resort; his prolonged exposure to the inaccessible snow of Antarctica, he had explained on the plane trip on the way over, had only increased his desire to hop on his snowboard and glide down the perfect dunes.
Kanaan had been surprised - like many others - when Sheppard had asked some days before leaving on their trip if he another could join them. As far as Kanaan was concerned, Sheppard saw a small number of people outside of the usual group and those he did, he would not invite on a ‘family trip’. When Rebecca, one of the scientific doctors from Atlantis, had arrived at the airport with him the group had let out a collective murmur of confusion. Kanaan had tried to ignore the way Sheppard’s eyes had slid to Teyla’s, almost assessing, as he’d made the introductions.
Kanaan slid his eyes to Rebecca now and saw her sitting quietly beside Carson Beckett, laughing softly as he explained to her something Kanaan could not hear. She was an attractive woman; taller than Teyla, paler with lighter hair and blue eyes and Kanaan had the brief bitter thought if Sheppard had made the same comparisons. He knew now, after these last four years, that he need not fear; neither Teyla nor Sheppard had made any indication of the feelings they had once shared and while Kanaan trued Teyla, he had been there in those first years when Teyla had been with the people of Atlantis. Rebecca’s head tilted, her gaze wandering from Beckett’s and Kanaan followed her line of vision and smiled tightly. Sheppard and Teyla stood at the buffet table, Sheppard loading their plates for them as Teyla filled a smaller plate that he assumed was for Torren John. There was tension in the line of Teyla’s body and he could see Sheppard’s jaw clench slightly as he dropped lettuce onto the two plates, maintaining an exact distance between himself and Teyla as he followed her down the long table.
He sighed; things between the group had been strained for some time and Kanaan hoped - like the others did - that the break away from work and life would go a long way to healing those cracks. But Kanaan knew that it was a temporary fix - that the same problems would linger once they returned to their lives. Beckett and Ronon still wouldn’t be in Atlantis, Teyla and Kanaan would still be stuck on Earth and Sheppard and McKay and Keller would still be tucked away on the other side of the planet, far out of reach from the others. Kanaan wondered which of them had it hardest; he and Teyla had acclimatised, though they missed home. Beckett and Ronon seemed joint at the hip - Beckett even took up a job with Ronon’s company, acting as ‘bouncers’ for various night clubs around the city. It was Sheppard and McKay’s life that had been least disrupted and yet it was them who were most unhappy, most willing to keep the group of friends together. Kanaan knew that they didn’t really have anyone else.
Teyla appeared above him, thrusting the plate Sheppard had made up for her in his direction and he took it reluctantly. She sat on the arm of his chair, crossing her legs to give herself balance and watched the room from his vantage point. Sheppard sat at the window with Ronon, laughing with the Satedan as they pointed out of the window, intermittently picking at the food on their plates.
“Are you well?” He asked Teyla when she continued to sit in silence.
She turned to him suddenly then, smiling down to him but Kanaan could see through it. He knew her, better than she liked to believe. She took a sip of the pint of lager Kanaan had been nursing for almost an hour, her eyes roaming over the room, settling for a moment on Torren and Rebecca before moving to the other guests beyond their group.
“Yes. And you?” She replied, her hand falling to his wrist in a comforting gesture, though who it was meant to comfort, Kanaan couldn’t be sure. He nodded slightly, lifting a cool sausage roll in his fingers before putting it back on the plate. He’d never acquired a true appetite for the food of Earth. “It has been a good day,” she said lightly, some moments later and Kanaan could hear the lightness in her voice that had been absent. He looked up to her and smiled, taking her hand in his free one. “Did you enjoy the skiing lesson?”
Kanaan snorted as she smiled coyly down to him.
“I do not understand how the Colonel can do that with a single board,” he said with a half smile. “I had a difficult enough time trying to stay upright with two.” He enjoyed the sound of her laugh and the touch of her fingers in his hair.
“His family used to own a chalet similar to this in the mountains of Austria,” Teyla said by way of explanation and he nodded. Teyla had told him once, a long time ago, that John Sheppard had no family he liked to speak of. But since his return to Earth - and the death of his father - John Sheppard had become more open about his family and had even taken a holiday with his brother, though from what he heard, the latter had not gone so well as Sheppard had been back in Atlantis many days before he was scheduled to return. “He wishes to buy Torren a snowboard,” she said with light admonishment in her tone.
Sometimes, Kanaan wondered if Teyla regretted telling Sheppard how important the naming of a child was. Since that day, when Sheppard had been informed he would be the guardian of Torren if anything happened to Teyla and Kanaan, he had lavished gifts and experiences upon the child that Teyla had feared would ‘spoil’ him. In a way, she was right because Torren had come to expect a gift from Uncle John whenever Sheppard returned from Atlantis but he also knew that she enjoyed the attention Sheppard lavished on her son. It seemed that now was one of the moments when she regretted it but Kanaan simply smiled and shook his head.
“There is no snow back home,” he reassured her but she simply quirked her eyebrow and Kanaan shrugged. “That he can snowboard down, anyway.”
“He has already begun asking for a skateboard.”
Kanaan let out a chuckle and nudged Teyla’s hip with his shoulder and she sighed, rolling her eyes at herself slightly.
“Is that what you two were discussing at the table?” He probed gently and he felt Teyla tense beside him again, her eyes dropping to her hands.
“No,” she said tersely and Kanaan nodded.
He hadn’t thought so, anyway. He did not press. Torren trotted to her, nudging her legs slightly as he waved a small package wrapped in a napkin in her face. Frowning, Teyla took it from his grasp and opened it slowly, a large smile forming on her face for a brief moment before she looked across the room to Sheppard, who Kanaan could see was trying not to laugh. He met Rebecca’s eyes for a moment, sending a brief smile to her before she looked away, back to Beckett. Teyla sat back against him and pulled a floret of pink icing from the napkin and Kanaan noticed it was in the shape of a rose, from the cake he had seen on the buffet table. He smiled lightly as she dropped the piece of icing onto her tongue.
“Thank you, Torren,” she said and ruffled the boys hair as he moved away from her again, to the two men at the window. She sat back and Kanaan closed his book, slipping his bookmark into place. She sighed and leaned her head back. “The Apollo found a ZPM.” Kanaan perked up at that, feeling the adrenaline secrete into his blood at her words. “They had to use it to power their shields in a fight against an old enemy; by the time they got it back to Earth, there was barely enough power to raise the shield.” Kanaan felt himself deflate, despite himself and he felt Teyla’s body sag slightly. He knew she desired very much to return to their people; a desire that had grown more and more these past few months. Such false hope must have been crushing for her. He looked over to his son who was playing happily with his surrogate family and Kanaan wondered if they would - if they should - take Torren away from these people. They needed him as much as he needed them; he was possibly one of the few things tying them all together, still. “It is disappointing, and Rodney’s research does not go so well.”
Kanaan didn’t know whether to advocate, or console so he did neither, choosing silence which she could interpret as she chose. It was weak of him but when the answer was unclear to him, he could not counsel another - especially not Teyla.
“It is as it should be,” Kanaan said eventually as he laid a hand over hers and she turned to smile at him. “And for now, the Ancestors wish us to be here.”
She nodded and sighed, some of the tension draining from her body. He was glad; for many years, she had sought counsel from those of Atlantis - or rather, had only been eased by the counsel of those of Atlantis. Since being on Earth, she sought Kanaan’s counsel and was soon eased by it. He wondered if perhaps their stay on Earth was wearing more on Teyla than she would ever admit and at one time he would have asked Sheppard but it seemed Sheppard knew Teyla less than Kanaan had ever thought possible.
“I should apologise,” she said quietly some minutes of silence later and Kanaan turned to her, frowning. “I said some things...”
Kanaan shook his head and turned, smiling, to Sheppard who had Torren clambering up his back. Teyla followed his gaze and let out a puff of laughter.
“I am sure he understands,” Kanaan said lightly as he turned back to Teyla, smiling warmly up at her. “But I know you will not rest until you do what you feel is right.”
She smiled down to him indulgently, brushing her lips against his before she stood.
“I will return.”
As he watched her approach Sheppard, her hand touching his elbow as she drew to his side, Kanaan flipped open his book and shook his head.
--
In the lull of their conversation, Carson found his eyes wandering to the snow falling beyond the window and to the two people highlighted against the bright whiteness beyond. It was an old habit of his, from those first years on Atlantis when he’d sought for clues that would win him the bets going around. He’d noticed, on his return to Atlantis all those years ago now, that Teyla was pregnant and missing and Sheppard was willing to kill himself to get her back. He hadn’t thought for a moment that the child hadn’t been Sheppard’s until he’d tried to rescue Teyla from Michael’s grip in the old warehouse.
There were trends in the two’s relationship that he was sure they were oblivious to and Carson had been sure, until last year, that the two would eventually get together, despite Kanaan. They hadn’t - they weren’t - and Carson no longer thought that they would; he’d seen the subtle change in the way Sheppard looked at the lassie, the way they argued when they thought no one was looking - and it wasn’t just the heated bickering of the first year on Earth -, the way they stood and sat and spoke with one another. To Carson, their relationship had been characterised by the game of push and pull they’d played since day one and while neither of them pushed, they’d also stopped pulling the other in. Carson didn’t know if it was the distance - she was in Colorado, he was in Antarctica - or the lovely lady sitting beside Carson but it seemed that... The thought almost broke Carson’s heart because he still had two thousand dollars riding on his bed but the two seemed to have gotten over one another.
And then tonight had happened and Carson wasn’t so sure anymore.
Jennifer lay against Rodney on the large sofa in front of the fire and it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Carson that they were the only couple seated together. Ronon stood by the buffet table, picking up pieces as he wandered from one end to the other and back, not bothering with a plate, while Kanaan sat in a chair by a long thin window near the fire. Sheppard, Torren and Teyla stood at the window, the toddler resting sleepily on Sheppard’s hip as the older man spoke quietly to Teyla.
There wasn’t anything overly intimate about the situation - except for the glaringly obvious setting, he thought as he rolled his eyes at the picturesque hotel they were in - but there was something there that Carson couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“What is she to him?”
Carson started and turned his eyes back to Rebecca as she looked beyond Carson’s shoulder to the pair at the window and Carson winced slightly. He wondered if his musings, his staring had drawn her attention to them.
“Excuse me?”
Rebecca quirked a smile at him and he instantly eased back into the chair. The girl was far from naive; she obviously knew enough to not ask the question with the complicated answer and Carson grinned internally.
“Teyla - what is she to Sheppard?”
Carson sighed, weighing his options. He didn’t think she would appreciate a lie - thought maybe she knew enough already to know that he was lying.
“The man risked his life to save her - many times.”
It was as empty an answer as Carson had ever given and he was glad his politics classes in university had been good for something.
“That doesn’t answer my question, Carson,” she said lightly, though there was an edge to her tone and Carson heaved a sigh.
“Listen, don’t take this the wrong way,” he said as he took her upper arm in his grasp, squeezing her lightly before looking away again, studiously avoiding the objects of his thoughts. “But for a long time I was sure she was the person he was going to spend the rest of his life with.”
To Carson’s surprise, Rebecca let out an almost delighted sigh, a smile playing at the edges of her lips that Carson daren’t interpret. Carson watched her as she studied Sheppard, her eyes travelling over his body and Carson inwardly groaned at the sudden change in the colour of her eyes. Her eyes flicked back to Carson and he smiled tightly, unsurely as her grin lessened to a thin smile.
“I don’t need the rest of his life.” Carson frowned but she continued. “What we have just now is more than enough.”
Carson blinked once, twice but didn’t say anything.
John Sheppard was a very lucky man.