Fic: stay beside me where i lie (John/Ronon) NC17 (Part 2/2)
Continued from here.
*
Rodney didn't take his firing with any sort of dignity. From what John has heard from Zelenka--who was his lab snitch on Atlantis and is used to giving John the lowdown on Rodney--there was a period of time in which Rodney actively lobbied for his job back.
When he was refused, he took desperate measures and began stalking members of the IOA. Eventually he was arrested and it was only some fast-talking by Carter and Elizabeth that kept him out of jail.
That was about when Rodney finally accepted reality and took himself off to CERN. Before he agreed to their offer, though, he made them give him three days a month off so that he could fly back to Colorado Springs every four weeks.
*
"Oddly enough," Rodney says with great impatience, "I do not, in fact, have any idea what 'I know' might mean in Ronon-speak. Ask Cadman about it. They used to have sleepovers and braid each other's hair, so she'd probably know."
John, sitting at the gate and waiting for his flight to board, covers his face with a hand and hunches in his seat. He thinks he might have something of a codependent friendship with Rodney, considering that he never thinks twice before making calls like this and blurting out every emo thing on his mind. And Rodney, well, John talks him through middle-of-the-night anxiety attacks and mid-day personnel issues on a regular basis without finding it odd. But, still. "I can't believe my life has come to this."
Rodney's snort is completely without sympathy. "Well, far be it for me to beat a dead horse or rub your nose in it, but it's entirely your fault. Also--hunh."
"What?"
"Oh. Well. It seems that Lorne just made two thousand dollars--US--on that parting scene in your apartment." John doesn't even know what to say because, really, would anyone? "I knew we should have disqualified him. He knows Vala too well and that gave him an unfair advantage over the rest of us."
"I'm hanging up on you now," John says very seriously.
"Oh, that's just great, you call me at all hours of the night to whine like a little girl and then you just--"
They start boarding John's plane not long after he ends the call. He sleeps the whole way and thinks it's sad that he can sleep better on a packed plane than in his own home of late. He wakes up when they touch down in Seattle and is one of the first people off the plane.
A black-suited driver is waiting for him just outside of the terminal. John follows her to a limo. He loads his bag into the trunk himself and nods his thanks when she holds open the door. Cadman is already in the limo and she grins when he slides in.
Her hair is shorter than it used to be, cut in a blunt line at chin-length, and dyed light brown. It's a severe and not entirely flattering hairstyle, and the color has a tendency to wash her out.
"Hey, Sheppard. Good to see you."
He's asked her to call him John a few times but she always refuses, just like all of the other ex pats.
"Hey, yourself." John smiles at her. Not the small, meaningless ones that he doles out to most of the world, but the genuine ones he saves for the people he gives a damn about. She's actually someone he might offer a hug, but he never tries. Cadman's personal space bubble has expanded and John thinks it would be shitty to try to encroach on it. "Thanks for the rescue, even if it was for Ronon's benefit."
Cadman nods at the driver and the limo begins moving at the same time that the privacy screen between the two compartments closes. She gives John a look of idle amusement and then rolls her eyes. "It was for my benefit, actually. Staging simultaneous security breaches in six buildings in three states is complicated, and I'll be glad for your help."
John stretches his legs out and slouches in his seat. He doesn't entirely believe her motives are so selfish but he nods anyway. "How've you been?"
She shrugs, nonchalant and uninformative. "I'm good." John might be concerned but he sees the lack of tension on her face and decides to take her at her word. She twists in her seat and lifts a leather case from the floor. "This is for you. Company issue laptop. Comms. An up to date briefing packet and CVs for the teams." She glances at her watch. "Get to reading. You're running a troubleshooting-slash-problem solving meeting in an hour."
John stares at her, disbelieving. "I think I was better off at home."
"Oh, I highly doubt that. From the payouts I've seen on the book--" John hates that damn betting book and all the compulsive gamblers who participate in it and are making money on his personal life. "--this is going to be far more relaxing than your loft."
John kind of agrees but refuses to admit it. Instead, he cracks open the briefing packet and pretends he doesn't hear Cadman laughing at him.
The planning that's been done for the op is impressive, and the briefing is concise and easy to read. All of that being said, everything he reads confirms the first thought he had when he was talking to Cadman on the phone: this is going to be a logistical nightmare. John's first order of business when he realizes just how much this is going to suck is to go through the CVs so that he knows what he'll have to work with.
He's not surprised that he recognizes a good third of the names. After removing them from Atlantis, the IOA had arranged for get-out-of-the-military-without-fuss passes for the military contingent. John wasn't the only one to resign his commission. In fact, he was just the first of, well, all of them.
He huffs out a laugh. "Laura Cadman: Patron of Atlantis Military Ex Pats Worldwide. Has a nice ring to it."
Cadman looks away. "They're good men. I trust them."
There isn't any emphasis on the words or heat in her voice. Even so, John hears a significance that he can only guess at. No one talks about why everyone is so careful and watchful of Cadman, why the employees she works with most closely are female, or why she refuses to be in a room with only one exit.
John has his own ideas about what happened but he doubts he'll ever know the truth of it given that Cadman seems disinclined to talk about it.
"Good at what they do, too," John says after the silence goes on a beat too long. "I'm surprised Lorne didn't come out for this one; it's right up his alley."
Cadman's grinning when she looks back. "Well, I tried to get him, but David's at a crucial point in his work and there wasn't an incentive big enough to make Evan leave him."
John nods his understanding. Lorne is part of the security contingent for an expedition in Peru that Parrish is heading, and John knows from experience how seriously Lorne takes his responsibilities.
But then Cadman goes on to say, "They're still in that giddy honeymoon stage, you know? It's sort of sickening," and John realizes that, okay, he's a bit out of the loop.
"Wait. Lorne and Parrish. For real?"
Cadman gives him a look of astounded confusion. "You didn't know? That's--wow. It's been five months, and, seriously, it was primo gossip. The only things that caused a bigger buzz in the ex pat grapevine were your reappearance, and Rodney and Katie's relationship going nuclear."
John looks down at the briefing packet and starts shuffling through it randomly. "I guess that's why Lorne resigned, finally."
Cadman is silent for a long time. Eventually, she says, "Not entirely." She clears her throat awkwardly. "Read up. We can talk more later."
Not if John can help it. He hadn't meant to say that, to say anything. Lorne is someone else whose relationship with Ronon was possibly more than platonic while John was off, in Rodney's words, "finding yourself like a 1950s housewife, except they had valid reasons--hello, oppression by the patriarchy!--for undertaking such an effort while you were just being a selfish, inconsiderate asshole!"
To make matters more awkward, Lorne hasn't made any effort whatsoever to even speak to John on the phone, much less visit, though he and Ronon are in contact on a semi-regular basis. That means something. John's not sure he wants to know what.
"We're here," Cadman says a few minutes later. John closes the packet and nods.
The meeting goes off relatively without a hitch, despite John's lack of detailed preparation. John has his time on Atlantis to thank for that because it made him capable of organizing an entire freaking war. One complicated op is nothing in comparison. Working with a large contingent of people he used to command and who know his style--just as he knows theirs--helps a lot.
Afterwards, Cadman's driver takes both of them to the five star hotel at which her company has several suites reserved.
"I'm down the hall from you," she says after handing off a keycard and preceding him into the lobby. John looks at her curiously and she shrugs. "I live outside of the city and traffic's a bitch. Staying here is easier, especially because of the early call. Want to hit the restaurant in the lobby for dinner?"
John nods. "Sounds like a plan."
"Let's meet down there in an hour."
In his suite, John settles himself on the bed and calls Ronon.
"You got in okay," is Ronon's greeting.
There's no censure in Ronon's voice, but John still feels bad. "Yeah, I did. Sorry for not calling you right away, but we went straight from the airport to a briefing." In the background, John can hear music. Loud music. "We're going to dinner--is that Shakira?"
Ronon grunts. "Vala put it on. She says she's going to show me how to dance from my hips."
John flops back on the bed and doesn't even try to hide his annoyed huff. "Of course she is."
Ronon sounds impatient and irritated. "Knock it off."
John's been trying to do just that but he's his own worst enemy when it comes to Ronon and this relationship of theirs. "It's just--you use your hips fine," John says earnestly. "Better than fine. Trust me on this."
Ronon laughs and John smiles despite himself. Ronon's laughter still isn't as frequent an occurrence as he would like, even if it does come more often than it used to.
The music gets a little lower in the background, like Ronon's walking away from it. "How's Laura?"
John shrugs. "Okay, I guess. Nothing stood out. Other than the, you know, usual." That would be John's not-so-subtle hint for Ronon to maybe share the story, which Ronon ignores, as usual. "Oh, hey, Lorne and Parrish? Do you know about them?"
"Yeah," Ronon says in such a way that implies: duh, of course I know, everyone knows. Dumbass.
"Oh. Well, gee, thanks for telling me." John thinks he can see Ronon's blank yet oddly disapproving stare through the phone; Ronon never encourages John's pissy sarcasm. "I mean--look, can we maybe--"
Ronon sighs and says, softly and with many layers, "John."
John scrubs a hand down his face, takes a breath, and closes his eyes. "Hey."
Something happens on Ronon's end to cut out all sounds of music. John doesn't ask, just listens to Ronon breathe until it's time to meet Cadman.
"Thank you," John says before they hang up. He's calmer and more himself than he's been since Vala arrived at the loft. In a way it's sad that it took John traveling a few states away for them to reconnect like this, but he'll take it.
"I love you," Ronon says, plainly and openly.
John closes his eyes. Ronon's far more comfortable with the words, with the sentiment, than John's ever been, but he's been teaching John how to own them. Not just the words, but them. Him and Ronon. Them. We. Us.
"Yeah, I know," John whispers. It's important to him that Ronon is aware that John does know, very much, how Ronon feels. "Love you, too."
*
John might have been the first to resign his commission, but Lorne was the last.
There's a blatant significance to be found in the fact that Lorne didn't resign until a month after Ronon came to California to be with John. Unlike the Cadman scenario, John thinks about it a bit too much.
*
After the op, which goes off with as few hitches as can be expected, Cadman conspires with a group of ex-marines from Atlantis to get John completely and totally shitfaced. It takes all of four drinks because John is a really cheap drunk nowadays.
Back at the hotel, John falls onto the sofa in Cadman's suite, a goofy smile on his face. "That was awesome," John says loudly. "The whole thing, you know? There were problems, yeah, but nothing big." He nods emphatically. "We work good together. Well. We work well together."
Cadman rolls her eyes and kicks off her sensible and sort of ugly pumps on her way to the fully stocked wet bar. She also shrugs off the boxy blazer she's had on since four that morning when they set out to start the pre-op rundowns.
"You're cut off. I, on the other hand, really need a drink at this point. Listening to you wax saptastic at Ronon on the phone during the ride back here was--" She wrinkles her nose and tilts her head. "Okay, it was actually pretty sweet, but a little much. Especially because it was his voice mail."
John looks at her seriously. "He has to know that I know."
Cadman blinks at him and then downs a shot of bourbon in. "I'm sure that will make sense any second now." She claps her hands together once, take charge and on top of things. "I need to change. Why don't you start drinking some water? Should help keep your hangover manageable."
"That's a very good idea. See, this is why you're the vice president and I'm learning to knit."
She reaches for the bottle and her shot glass again. "Sheppard, you are so very lucky that I know how to keep my mouth shut. Seriously. Knitting?"
"Crocheting was boring."
Cadman nods. "Of course it was," she says on her way out of the room.
John hauls himself to his feet and only sways slightly on his way to the wet bar, where he snags several bottles of water. He drinks one down while he waits for Cadman to return. She comes back out a few minutes later dressed similarly to John in track pants and a plain t-shirt, and has pulled her hair back in a sloppy ponytail.
While John sprawls out on the couch, his water on the table in front of it, Cadman gathers up the bottle of bourbon and several cans of coke. She curls up in the overstuffed arm chair to John's right and uses the side table to mix herself a drink.
Cadman puts away three medium-strength drinks over the next hour, during which John's drunkenness lessens by degrees, which leaves them both the same amount of buzzed. She fills him in on the latest Rodney insanity (an attempted reconciliation with Katie) against which John's been insulated recently due to his own drama. John gives her the unabridged version of Vala's visit and feels vindicated when she takes his side several times.
It's after two when they start fading into a state of drained buzz, the likes of which brings too-serious conversation and revelations better left unrevealed. Which is John's only excuse for telling her about Ronon's I know.
She makes an impatient noise. "God, you're both so special." She stares at John dead on, her expression softening at whatever she sees on his face. "He knows you're not going to take off again, Sheppard. That's what he meant."
John swallows and the inside of his mouth is so dry that he chokes a little. "Oh. That's...oh."
"You asked about Evan," she says a short time later.
John shakes his head. "No, I didn't ask."
"Sheppard. Stop being a dick or I'll sic Rodney on you. You asked, in your own way." John reluctantly nods, mostly because he knows she'd really sic Rodney on him and, yeah, he'd like to avoid that. "Anyway, the question isn't, why did he finally resign? It's, why didn't he resign with the rest of us?"
John reaches for Cadman's bourbon and takes a deep sip straight from the bottle. His voice comes out rough and raw with alcohol and guilt. "Ronon."
She nods sharply. "We don't leave men behind."
But John did. He left the one person in the world he never should have left after having spent six years fighting tooth and nail to bring back enlisted men whose names he wasn't always sure of but who were his.
"God, I'm such a dick, you should totally sic Rodney on me."
"You're not. Really." There's a pause that feels deliberate before she continues. "And I prefer to save Rodney for when I really need him, because he's sort of criminally insane."
John leans forward, puts the bourbon down carefully and stares at it. "Cadman. What--"
"I was raped." Her tone makes it clear that she knows he'd already guessed as much.
John looks up because if she can say it, he can look her in the eye and acknowledge it. "I'm sorry."
Cadman draws her knees to the chest and manages to look fierce instead of small and balled up. "It was pretty shitty," she says flatly. "I was still in Colorado Springs at the time. Guy was a local. Twice my size and trained."
That actually explains most of what John never could make fit. Cadman is small of stature, yeah, but she's not easy to take down. John never could make it work when he thought about some random freak going after her.
"Military?" John asks.
She shakes her head. "No, just into a lot of competitive martial arts." She licks her lips and takes a breath. "There were some fuck ups in the investigation and he got off on a technicality." Her lips curl. "He smirked at me when they cut him loose."
John's hands curl into fists and he breathes through his nose. "Christ."
"Rodney methodically destroyed his life with extreme prejudice." She smiles, cold and unpleasant. "I think he still pokes the bastard with a stick every once in a while just to make him cry."
"I'm surprised he's still alive." John snaps his mouth shut; he hadn't meant to say that.
Cadman just looks at him. "It was a close thing. On more than one occasion. For more than one of us." She glances to the side and then gets to her feet. "It's late, and we've got the post-mortem meeting at ten."
John takes the hint and stands. He's entirely sober now, and his head is pounding. He looks at Cadman for a minute and says, "Could I maybe, like, hug you...or something?"
She blinks at him, rolls her eyes, then steps forward and holds out her arms, presenting herself for a hug. John leans down and wraps his arms around her waist gingerly, careful to keep as much distance between them as is humanly possible during a hug. She stomps on his foot and jerks him closer.
"No, really, you're special," she reiterates. When she steps back a moment later she punches his arm. Hard. John doesn't bother holding back the flinch and she grins. "Get out. I'll meet you at the elevator at nine-thirty."
John salutes her and leaves.
*
A week or two after Ronon explained that he likes brooding to Bjork, John tried to offer an alternative because, honestly, skinning a cat. He hooked his iPod up to the stereo, pulled up his own personal brooding playlist and waited for Ronon to thank him and swear off of Bjork.
That didn't happen.
Instead, there was growling, pacing, and a somewhat trapped look before Ronon threw open the door and just...left. Without his keys, wallet, coat or weapons.
It was Elizabeth who told John that Zelenka bribed the SGC nursing staff to play Johnny Cash every time Ronon was confined to the infirmary for more than two hours, thereby conditioning him to dislike it. A lot.
"It was Radek's way of enacting some harmless revenge against you," Elizabeth said with careful neutrality, then arched a brow mockingly.
*
Ronon isn't at the airport when John's flight lands and John sort of stares around blankly for a while before doing the smart thing and pulling out his cell phone. It's still turned off from the flight and when he powers it up there's a voice mail waiting for him.
Ronon sounds ragged and hoarse, and the smallest bit harried. "You're going to have to take a cab home. I'll explain when you get here." The line goes quiet and just as John's about to hang up, Ronon's voice sounds one more time before the message ends. "Love you."
John blinks. Even with how comfortable Ronon is with the sentiment and the words, he doesn't say them lightly and casually. Which means that he does not end messages that way without a reason.
While John's standing in the taxi line, he calls Rodney.
"Oh my god, I am not your relationship counselor!" Rodney shouts at him. "I have my own relationship problems, and they are far more concerning than your angsty mandrama!"
"Mandrama?" John repeats, nonplussed. "I…don't even know what that is." He shakes his head. "And, you know, I heard about your relationship issues from Cadman, and they don't seem--"
"I accidentally proposed to Katie," Rodney very nearly screeches.
"Again?" John rolls his eyes. "Rodney, you have to stop--"
"She said yes."
John drops his cell phone and almost gets kicked in the face by the person in front of him in line when he bends down to pick it up. This is the fourth time Rodney has proposed to Katie without meaning to. She's never given him an answer before because she knows that Rodney can tie himself into verbal knots and doesn't actually mean it. John has no idea what made this time different for her.
"Rodney, I don't--what are you--"
"And then I accidentally slept with Dr. Makarovska."
"Again?" John literally pulls the phone from his ear and gapes at it, because, seriously. John can parse the accidental proposals, but he didn't buy the "accidental sex" explanation the first time Rodney slept with Makarovska, the mathematical physicist who works in another department at CERN.
"And now she thinks we're together and I can't even contemplate breaking up with her because one, we're not really together, and two, I'm a little concerned about a sexual harassment suit at this point. Women are mean when they're scorned, Sheppard. Mean!"
John rubs his forehead, steps up to the front of the taxi line and then gets into the waiting taxi. "Do you even realize that things like this don't happen to other people, Rodney? You just--when did this all even happen?" he says, not without awe, because Cadman spoke to Rodney thirty-six hours ago and there was no mention of any of this.
"Yesterday. Everything happened yesterday." Rodney makes a whimpering noise. "I think I have commitment issues." John manfully doesn't say anything like Duh! or You think?!. "All those years, I thought you were the relationship retard--"
"Hey!"
"--and here you are in a long term, committed relationship--with a man, no less--and here I am with accidental proposals and sex."
Rodney starts hyperventilating at that point and John talks him down as much as he can before Rodney declares that he has to get very, very drunk and just hangs up.
John scrolls through his phone book and has a brief moral debate with himself before calling Zelenka at his lab in Kyoto. He leaves a message asking Zelenka to email the book on Rodney and Katie. Zelenka calls back almost immediately and demands to know the relevant details from John and Rodney's phone call, and then throws numbers at John and makes him do stat conversions so that the book can be updated.
"You are on handicap," Zelenka informs him. "You know Rodney too well and he calls you often. But if you keep me in the loop, you get a portion of the take." He makes a noise. "Tends to be a few thousand dollars American for something like this."
"I don't--hey. Is Rodney doing that for me?" Zelenka hums, which is all the answer John needs. "Sign me up."
When the taxi pulls up to John's building Zelenka tells him something surprising. "I chased those rumors like you asked. Supposedly, Cameron Mitchell has gone off grid."
John has one leg out of the taxi and he freezes momentarily. "Since when?"
"Cannot be sure. Two months, at least. Most people believe he is still in Washington on a different posting."
Vala is not most people, though, and a lot of things are suddenly a little less foggy. "How do you know this?"
"Dr. Barinski told me. She's a chemist at SGC. She was one of Lorne, Ronon and Vala's fourths." Their fourth slot on the team had had a veritable revolving door for reasons that were wide and varied, from what John understands.
"Can you find Mitchell?" John asks.
"Highly doubtful. Very talented people within SGC have been trying and failing."
"Thanks for the information, Radek. Say hi to Miko for me."
"I will, and you are welcome. Stay in touch. Ex pats are very interested in Rodney's book."
John pockets his phone and makes his way into the building, hefting his bag and frowning as he thinks about what Zelenka told him.
SG1 was disbanded not long before the shake up on Atlantis, for similar political reasons. The team designator of SG1 was officially retired as a supposed show of respect at that same time, meaning that there is no current SG1 team and there never will be again. As for the team itself, Teal'c moved offworld; Jackson stepped back from the SGC except for limited consultations and is currently living in Egypt; Carter resigned, moved to Connecticut, and is working into the private sector; and Mitchell--now a full-bird Colonel--was made a liaison in Washington and commuted between there and Colorado Springs.
Vala, on the other hand, was assigned to the same offworld team that Lorne and Ronon would eventually join. Despite all of that, Vala is SG1. Just like John is Atlantis. Her team should have her back.
Further thought is halted when John opens the front door of the loft and walks into what looks like a disaster area. He drops his bag and stares around in shock. The place is trashed in ways that aren't incidental. John knows this because he's purposely damaged living quarters before and the end result was something like what he's currently looking at.
Broken dishes, overturned and broken furniture, torn paperback books, and a shattered window. That's the main damage, as far as John can tell. Oh, and the stylish room divider screens are a lost cause, he realizes sadly when he sees them flat on the floor, cracked and splintered.
With great trepidation John climbs the stairs to the second floor, bracing himself for whatever damage he'll find. Surprisingly, there isn't any. Everything is as tidy and whole as usual.
Well, almost everything.
Ronon and Vala are asleep on the bed, looking more than a little worse for the wear. He's got a bruise on the side of his face that John figures was Vala's doing. Her eyes are puffy from crying to the point that John isn't even sure if she can possibly open them wide enough to see.
"Christ," John whispers quietly. Ronon's eyes snap open and find John almost immediately. "Hey."
"Hey," Ronon says, sounding more hoarse than he did on John's voice mail. "It got bad."
John nods. "Yeah, I noticed. She tell you anything?"
Ronon carefully pulls one hand out from under Vala and scrubs at his face. "Some, yeah. She just kind of…broke."
John winces at the lost look on Ronon's face. "Go back to sleep. I'll clean up downstairs. Don't--just don't worry, okay? We'll figure it out."
Ronon's eyes seem suspiciously bright, but he tucks his face against Vala's hair before John can get a good look. John moves to the side of the bed and leans over to press his lips to the bruise on Ronon's face; he's already asleep again and doesn't react. John hesitates, but then brushes Vala's hair from her face before moving away.
He takes Ronon's laptop downstairs with him and finds on it the contact list that one of the ex pats put together a while back. He calls Daniel Jackson and leaves a message on his voice mail. "This is Sheppard. Vala's practically moved in with Ronon and me. She's kind of a mess and Ronon's getting more worried about her every day. So, I don't know, could someone maybe get their head out of their ass and come help her out?"
He feels marginally like a good...significant other for having done something to try to help the situation, but mostly he feels useless to do anything about that last look he saw on Ronon's face.
He throws himself into cleaning and it takes him a good ten hours to restore the first floor of the loft to something resembling its usual state. Ronon and Vala don't stir the entire time, for which John is grateful. He ends his day by listening to the Walk the Line soundtrack through the single stereo speaker that still works and drinking three beers.
*
The first time Vala visited Ronon at the loft, she brought him a large photo album filled with pictures from the previous year. Ronon smiled, hugged her, and then they spent the next chunk of time flipping through the pages and trading stories that, really, made no sense from John's perspective.
But he didn't need any stories to understand what he saw later when he turned the pages himself: Rodney, Ronon and Lorne sitting a table in the SGC mess; Ronon, Lorne and Vala looking red-nosed and sickly, bundled under blankets on someone's couch; Cadman riding Ronon piggy-back; Elizabeth, Zelenka, Miko and Ronon all dressed up and sitting at a cloth-covered table.
*
When John wakes up on the sofa the next day the first thing he sees is Vala's face because she's leaning over him and staring at him as though she's about to, like, suck his soul from his body. Or something.
John flails in surprise. She leans back and sits on a footstool she's dragged over.
"I wanted to apologize," she says. Her voice is raspy and jagged, but sincere, and she meets John's gaze steadily. John pushes himself into a sitting position and rubs at his eyes, trying to clear the sleep grit from them. "My behavior last week was rather extreme. I think the proper term for what I was doing is transference. You didn't--well, you didn't deserve it."
"Yes, I did." John shrugs at her narrowed-eyed look. "I deserved a lot more than I got, in fact. He never really--" John breaks off because, no, he's not going into this with Vala of all people. "Anyway, you don't have to apologize. It's okay."
"I'm also sorry about what I did to your home." Her face crumples and creases with what seems to be acute embarrassment. "I might have lost my mind for a bit, there. I'll pay to replace anything that couldn't be salvaged, of course."
John winces and thinks about the list of things that need to be replaced. He doesn't even know how he's going to explain to Elizabeth what happened to the gay fertility fetish thingie, which was really ugly but which she went to a lot of trouble to get for Ronon and him. "Yeah, that was sort of...yeah. But, mostly, as long as you don't do it again we should be okay."
"Good, because I would really like for us to be okay. Not just because it's unfair to Ronon for us to be at each other's throats but because--" She shrugs and sketches out a brief smile. "--we were actually rather friendly at one point, weren't we? I'm not imagining that, am I?"
John rolls his eyes. "We were friendly, and yeah, I'd like that too."
The next week of Vala's visit goes a lot better than the previous week, even though she's become somewhat--well, John doesn't want to call it fragile because Vala is too strong of personality and features for that to fit. But she's something like fragile. She's quieter and softer and prone to sobbing on Ronon's shoulder, which is something that John seems to keep walking in on even though he tries really hard not to because it's really awkward.
John finds himself fielding half a dozen calls from Rodney per day, some of which Rodney makes while hiding under his car and whispering. The Sheppard-Dex betting book goes blessedly quiet in favor of the McKay-Brown-Makarovska book, which gets so convoluted that John stops being able to comprehend most of what he passes on to Zelenka.
Things settle to something approaching normal. Vala starts going out on her own at least once a day to give John and Ronon time to themselves, though Ronon finds her digital camera sitting innocently on the dresser across from their bed one time, set to record video. He actually seems rather relieved by the gesture and takes it as a sign that she's returning to her usual self. John, however, starts undressing under the sheets.
Six days after John gets back from Seattle, Ronon and Vala head out to the early morning farmer's market across town. She likes to fill the loft with enough fresh flowers to give John allergies, and Ronon likes all the organic fruit. John sees them off with a request for fresh corn, which means they'll come back with bags and bags of vegetables, none of which will be corn, because that's just what happens on those outings.
When the bell rings, John assumes it's them and that they don't have a free hand between them to dig out keys. John buzzes the lobby door open, unlocks the loft door and leaves it slightly ajar, then returns to the task of replacing the pane of glass that Vala apparently punched out with her bare hand.
"Need some help?"
John startles at the unexpected voice and drops the new pane. It cracks into large pieces at his feet and he curses and jumps back. When he's clear, he spins around and comes face to face with Cameron Mitchell.
Mitchell looks his years, which isn't something John used to be able to say about him. His jeans and t-shirt are hanging oddly on him, too, like he's lost weight. Or muscle mass, John realizes when he sees the lack of definition in Mitchell's biceps.
"Crap. Sorry about that, Sheppard."
"What the fuck?" John snaps, and he isn't referring just to Mitchell's sudden appearance in the loft.
Mitchell's face goes blank as a slate and he tugs a duffel higher on his shoulder. "I heard Vala was here."
John stares at him, and it's...not at all like looking in a mirror a year and a half ago. Which, if he'd given it any thought, he would have expected.
Mitchell looks like he's been torn up inside and out and is still trying to fit the pieces of himself back together. When John took off it wasn't about anything other than being pissed that they'd taken Atlantis from him. Seems like Mitchell had a million better reasons for dropping off the face of the Earth.
"Put your bag down." John sighs, then rubs his forehead. "Vala and Ronon are out. Should be back soon. You want a beer?"
Mitchell looks so grateful when he nods that John pulls out the expensive Germanic import that Simpson--who's working for a think tank there--ships out to interested ex pats for indecent sums of money.
"You okay?" John asks when he trades the beer for Mitchell's duffel, which he then drops by the door.
Mitchell nods and takes a small, absent sip of the beer. He wanders into the living room and looks around, an odd expression on his face.
"This place is nice. Really nice." John refrains from mentioning what it looked like a week ago, and instead watches Mitchell look from the breakfast remnants on the table to the framed photos on the walls. "It's...homey."
John thinks about his first months on Atlantis, when the mist aliens played with his mind and he found himself in a tricked out bachelor pad. He thinks Mitchell was expecting something like that, and he would have been right a few years ago. But that place had been filled with ghosts and John's life now is fuller than that.
"Well, it is my home. That was kind of the point of getting it."
Mitchell takes a breath, sucks the rest of the beer down in one large, breathless gulp, then stares at John. "Any advice on how I should handle this?"
"None at all." Mitchell opens his mouth and John raises a hand. "No, I get that it's a similar situation, but Ronon and Vala...are nothing alike. Also? Ronon didn't tell anyone but I did keep in touch with him on a regular basis." Mitchell flinches and John grimaces. "You just disappeared without a trace, didn't you?"
"Kind of," Mitchell admits. He sinks down on the sofa and scrubs at his face with the palms of both hands. "I left her a note."
John actually winces on Vala's behalf and suddenly has a lot more sympathy for her because, ouch. Most of SG1 had moved on to various other cities, countries or worlds, and Vala was left behind, shuffled in with the last of the Atlantis unwanteds. And then they'd left her: Ronon for California and John; Lorne for South America and, apparently, Parrish. All that remained in Colorado Springs was Mitchell, who was commuting and only around rarely, and then he'd taken off, too, and hadn't even bothered to tell her in person.
John sits across from Mitchell and sips from his own beer. "Jackson obviously knew where you were."
"No, he didn't. He just did the smart thing and called my parents." Mitchell looks frustrated and a bit defensive. "I'm not as much of an asshole as you seem to think. Vala didn't know where I was, but she could have tracked me down easily enough. God knows she's been calling my mother randomly for years."
"I think the point is that she shouldn't have had to."
Mitchell's face screws up in annoyance. "Are you enjoying the moral high ground, Sheppard?"
"I'm actually really not," John answers honestly. There's nothing about what he pulled with Ronon that he'll ever enjoy, even in retrospect or in comparison. He makes a face that feels like it matches Mitchell's expression. "It's not much of a high ground, anyway."
"No, it's not."
"Grovel," John suggests to Mitchell when the bell rings a few minutes later and Mitchell freezes in what is obviously panic. "Grovel a lot."
To Mitchell's credit, he tries. He really does. It's just that Vala takes one look at him, drops the bags she's holding, and goes after him with fists and feet. Ronon drops his own bags but then, with a lowered brow and curled lips, pointedly crosses his arms and doesn't interfere.
"You utter bastard!" Vala shouts. Mitchell dodges the hits he can't block and makes it very clear and obvious that he's not going to try to hit her back or restrain her. John finds it interesting that, even before Mitchell makes that clear, Vala doesn't seem all that concerned on either front.
"I'm sorry," Mitchell repeats over and over again, a constant mantra that he fits around her shouted insults and expletives. "Vala, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I'm sorry."
When Vala's fist connects with Mitchell's nose, John takes a step towards them. Ronon manages to circle around the skirmish and grab John's arm. "No. Don't."
John looks at the rush of blood pouring from Mitchell's nose. "But--"
Vala comes to a graceless and sudden halt, then. She and Mitchell are both breathing heavily, and she's staring from his face to her bloodied knuckles. "Oh. Cameron--oh, I--"
Mitchell gets to her before the first tear slides down her cheek. He pulls her against her chest and she starts sobbing. John thought he'd seen her sobbing before, but not like this. This is a full body shudder, loud and messy and from the pit of her very being.
She tries to shove Mitchell away but he's not having it. He traps her arms between them, wraps his own around her back, and refuses to let go, no matter how hard she struggles.
"I'm sorry, so sorry," he says, quiet and firm, and the look on his face says that it's the only truth he knows in that moment.
Vala gets her arms free and grabs at Mitchell, her grip white-knuckled. She presses her face against his neck, still sobbing. Mitchell's eyes close and his expression shifts to something that's simultaneously pained and comforted.
"I hate you," Vala sobs against his neck. "You're a terrible, horrible man. I hate--"
"I know. I'm sorry. So sorry."
John looks away and tries to breathe against the weight that's pressing down on his chest.
Ronon tugs at his arm. "Come on."
*
When Ronon came to California, John apologized for his disappearing act. Ronon brushed it off, basically said it wasn't necessary. As far as John's been able to tell, Ronon believes that down to his bones.
John doesn't. Not in the least.
*
John and Ronon go to the aquarium, which is actually Ronon's favorite place in Long Beach. He loves Shark Lagoon and he's seen the Monsters of the Abyss 3D movie so many times that the staff greet him by name and have his ticket ready and waiting when they see him approach. John would mock him for it except that he's getting a little well-known himself around the Catch a Wave exhibit.
They spend half the day there, wandering aimlessly and avoiding the aviary, which makes Ronon twitchy and hyper alert. They don't leave until Vala calls. Ronon's face during the one-sided conversation runs the gamut from stonily concerned to quietly pleased. When he hangs up he's smiling softly.
"So...?" John prods.
"It's good. They're good. And leaving." John returns Ronon's smile because he can't not.
Ronon drives them home and John stares out the windshield, his mind replaying the scene between Vala and Mitchell, just like it has all day long. When they get upstairs, Ronon makes a noise of frustration as soon as they walk in the door. He spins John around to face him and crosses arms.
John blinks. "What?"
"What's wrong? You've been...off all day."
John's very first instinct is to deny anything and everything, but he's been worn down in the last few weeks, been reminded of this very thing too often for him to have any resistance left.
"You never did that," John says abruptly. Ronon looks confused. "You never yelled like Vala did."
Ronon opens his mouth, shuts it, then reaches out and pulls John's sunglasses off. He studies John's face as he folds them up and hooks them on the collar of John's t-shirt.
"Vala was pissed. She hated Mitchell when she walked in here." John nods because, yes, he's well aware of that. Ronon frowns and says, clearly and precisely, "I never hated you. I wasn't even angry."
"You should have been!" John says, too-loud, too-sincere.
Ronon shakes his head. "You wanted me to hate you?"
"Jesus Christ, Ronon, we were back on Earth for a grand total of a month before I took off! Call me crazy, but I think that had to piss you off."
Ronon makes a motion with his hand, like a knife slashing through air. It's sort of intimidating, but also kind of inappropriately hot. "This is why McKay calls you a girl, isn't it?"
"Rodney calls me a girl?" John asks incredulously, his face twisting. "He is such a--"
"Shut up." Ronon rubs his face and leaves his hands there, covering it. He sighs, sounding frustrated. "I didn't--when we were on Atlantis we dealt with everything in the training room. This is...hard. I don't know--"
Yeah, they had kind of always brought everything around to a physical sort of conclusion in Atlantis. It'd worked out pretty well for them, actually, but it's not an option any longer, and John has to make some kind of effort here because Ronon looks lost and confused, in more ways than John's ever seen.
"I should have stayed with you," John says in the silence.
Surprisingly, Ronon laughs, a thick sound that has nothing to do with amusement. He drops his hands and the look on his face is so fucking wretched that John moves forward and pushes his way into Ronon's personal space.
"Do you know how many times--" Ronon croaks, then clears his throat and takes a breath. His nostrils flare and his hands fist. John reaches out, takes hold of his wrists gently, and circles his thumbs against Ronon's pulse points. "I was glad you left, that you didn't stay. Every day, I was glad."
John stares at him and Ronon reverses their hands so that he's circling John's wrists with his fingers, and presses his lips together until a muscle in his jaw is ticking.
"Listen," Ronon says intently, and curls his fingers tighter, jostling John's hands lightly. "I was under constant surveillance, and it took months before they let me leave the mountain without an escort. It was--hard. I didn't handle it well. We would have hated each other by the end of it. If we'd even been able to see each other."
John sets his chin, which is something he picked up from Rodney at some point. "I could have--"
Ronon shakes his head. "And we both needed to mourn, and I had to learn how to live here."
"There's more," John insists. "The way you said--something happened. Something bad."
John missed a lot that he regrets in that year--Rodney's meltdown, Cadman's trauma, Radek and Miko's wedding--but he doesn't think he could live with himself if he missed something important of Ronon's.
Ronon shakes his head and tightens his grip on John's wrists. "Not to me, and it's not mine to tell."
"I'm still sorry." Ronon drags him forward until their chests bump, then dips his head down and presses their foreheads together. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."
John keeps saying it until Ronon's mouth settles onto his, rough and demanding and full of everything Ronon's so quietly comfortable with and which he's been teaching John to find comfort in, too.
John doesn't realize they're moving--that Ronon's moving them--until his back comes up against the brick pillar by the kitchen. John sucks at Ronon's lips and tangles his fingers in the material of Ronon's shirt, holding on harder than he ever remembers holding onto anything else. The sounds that Ronon utters into John's mouth are sweet and wet and as familiar as John's own breathing.
John swallows them down while Ronon opens John's pants and pushes them and his boxers down. John hangs from Ronon's shirt and lips, toes his shoes off and kicks his clothing away, and he's maybe shaking, he's not entirely sure.
Ronon's hands slide down and hook under the back of his thighs, and John was getting there, was on the cusp of searing arousal, but that sends him there so fast and immediately that he whines. Ronon lifts and John wraps his legs around Ronon's hips.
"Quiet," Ronon whispers into his mouth, and he realizes he's repeating his apology again.
John pushes his tongue between Ronon's lips, tries to muffle his words until he can stop trying to speak them, but Ronon has other ideas. He leans back, leaving John propped against the pillar, and works at his pants with one hand while digging in his pocket with the other for the lube he's taken to carrying around; they never did know when Vala was going to give them privacy. To keep himself quiet, John bites his lip hard enough that he's worried about drawing blood until Ronon's thumb touches his mouth firmly and tugs it free.
Then Ronon's hands are on John's legs again, hoisting him up and tipping his hips. John grabs at Ronon's shoulders, digs his fingers in and finds his balance just in time for Ronon's cock to slide inside, slick and smooth and right.
The pace Ronon sets is forceful and unforgiving. It drags John along the raw brick, his back only minimally protected by his t-shirt, and drives the breath from his lungs. Ronon's hands are curled tight and hard around the sides of John's thighs, holding him up, keeping him in place. They're going to leave bruises: delineated points marking Ronon's fingertips, and wider splotches to signify his palms.
John wants them as much as he wants the abrasions on his back, as much as he wants every single thing that Ronon is giving him right now, which is more than his cock or the sex or anything so easy to name.
Ronon's eyes are open, have been open since his first push into John, and his gaze is naked and intense. Once it catches John's he realizes it's also inescapable. Not that John is trying to escape. He's not. He doesn't want to be anywhere except where he is right now, with Ronon, in this space they've made their home, in this life that is theirs and no one else's.
John's arms have fallen to his sides, somewhere along the way, and are dangling and grasping at empty air. It takes concerted effort and he has to time it to Ronon's thrusts, but eventually he lifts them and get his hands where he wants them: tangled in the dreads at the very back of Ronon's neck, the skin of which is always hypersensitive because it's usually hidden and covered.
Ronon shudders and arches into the touch, then leans harder against John, his weight more solid and present.
"John," he says, his voice clear and sharp. The crispness of it startles John into coherence, so that his perception after he blinks is less fuck-dumb and he can see the unbending peace and acceptance in Ronon's expression. "I forgive you," Ronon says.
John comes with a suddenness that takes his sight, his hearing, and brings a dry sob up from the depths of his gut, where it's been lodged since he left Colorado Springs, left Ronon. He shakes and trembles in the aftermath, and it seems like only Ronon's weight and hands and cock are keeping him from floating away because he feels too light and hollow now that that something is gone.
Ronon comes not long after, the arch of his body drawn with taut lines and slick skin when he goes still and groans, his eyes never leaving John's face, and his expression never wavering. John inhales, deep and unsteady, and lets that place inside of him fill up with the weight of this moment, with the density of Ronon and him. Them. We. Us.
They stumble upstairs when they can move, Ronon practically carrying John, whose knees are aching from how tightly he had his legs wrapped around Ronon. Once they're in bed John pulls Ronon's clothes off with uncoordinated and inefficient motions. Ronon doesn't seem to mind that clumsiness and when John finally manages to get him naked, he stretches and burrows down against the mattress.
John props himself up on one shaking arm and fits his the palm of his other hand to the side of Ronon's neck. "Did you mean what you said?"
Ronon nods solemnly, his eyes watchful. "I would have said it before. I didn't realize."
For as large and harsh as Ronon is, he's always been full of grace. John's never been more grateful for that, or more humbled.
Ronon pushes up on one elbow, careful not to dislodge John's hand, and frowns uncertainly. "Will you let it go now?"
John spent a year running from what he lost when they took Atlantis away from him and in the process he left behind everyone important to him. It was childish, selfish and every other thing Rodney's accused him of being. John's been carrying the guilt of it around since before he actually asked Ronon to come to California and there's nothing about that he wants to hold on to, wants to keep carting around with him.
"Yeah. Yeah, I will."
Ronon smiles, contented and sweet, and falls back against the mattress. He pulls John to him, and John goes without reservation.
*
.End
*
Rodney didn't take his firing with any sort of dignity. From what John has heard from Zelenka--who was his lab snitch on Atlantis and is used to giving John the lowdown on Rodney--there was a period of time in which Rodney actively lobbied for his job back.
When he was refused, he took desperate measures and began stalking members of the IOA. Eventually he was arrested and it was only some fast-talking by Carter and Elizabeth that kept him out of jail.
That was about when Rodney finally accepted reality and took himself off to CERN. Before he agreed to their offer, though, he made them give him three days a month off so that he could fly back to Colorado Springs every four weeks.
*
"Oddly enough," Rodney says with great impatience, "I do not, in fact, have any idea what 'I know' might mean in Ronon-speak. Ask Cadman about it. They used to have sleepovers and braid each other's hair, so she'd probably know."
John, sitting at the gate and waiting for his flight to board, covers his face with a hand and hunches in his seat. He thinks he might have something of a codependent friendship with Rodney, considering that he never thinks twice before making calls like this and blurting out every emo thing on his mind. And Rodney, well, John talks him through middle-of-the-night anxiety attacks and mid-day personnel issues on a regular basis without finding it odd. But, still. "I can't believe my life has come to this."
Rodney's snort is completely without sympathy. "Well, far be it for me to beat a dead horse or rub your nose in it, but it's entirely your fault. Also--hunh."
"What?"
"Oh. Well. It seems that Lorne just made two thousand dollars--US--on that parting scene in your apartment." John doesn't even know what to say because, really, would anyone? "I knew we should have disqualified him. He knows Vala too well and that gave him an unfair advantage over the rest of us."
"I'm hanging up on you now," John says very seriously.
"Oh, that's just great, you call me at all hours of the night to whine like a little girl and then you just--"
They start boarding John's plane not long after he ends the call. He sleeps the whole way and thinks it's sad that he can sleep better on a packed plane than in his own home of late. He wakes up when they touch down in Seattle and is one of the first people off the plane.
A black-suited driver is waiting for him just outside of the terminal. John follows her to a limo. He loads his bag into the trunk himself and nods his thanks when she holds open the door. Cadman is already in the limo and she grins when he slides in.
Her hair is shorter than it used to be, cut in a blunt line at chin-length, and dyed light brown. It's a severe and not entirely flattering hairstyle, and the color has a tendency to wash her out.
"Hey, Sheppard. Good to see you."
He's asked her to call him John a few times but she always refuses, just like all of the other ex pats.
"Hey, yourself." John smiles at her. Not the small, meaningless ones that he doles out to most of the world, but the genuine ones he saves for the people he gives a damn about. She's actually someone he might offer a hug, but he never tries. Cadman's personal space bubble has expanded and John thinks it would be shitty to try to encroach on it. "Thanks for the rescue, even if it was for Ronon's benefit."
Cadman nods at the driver and the limo begins moving at the same time that the privacy screen between the two compartments closes. She gives John a look of idle amusement and then rolls her eyes. "It was for my benefit, actually. Staging simultaneous security breaches in six buildings in three states is complicated, and I'll be glad for your help."
John stretches his legs out and slouches in his seat. He doesn't entirely believe her motives are so selfish but he nods anyway. "How've you been?"
She shrugs, nonchalant and uninformative. "I'm good." John might be concerned but he sees the lack of tension on her face and decides to take her at her word. She twists in her seat and lifts a leather case from the floor. "This is for you. Company issue laptop. Comms. An up to date briefing packet and CVs for the teams." She glances at her watch. "Get to reading. You're running a troubleshooting-slash-problem solving meeting in an hour."
John stares at her, disbelieving. "I think I was better off at home."
"Oh, I highly doubt that. From the payouts I've seen on the book--" John hates that damn betting book and all the compulsive gamblers who participate in it and are making money on his personal life. "--this is going to be far more relaxing than your loft."
John kind of agrees but refuses to admit it. Instead, he cracks open the briefing packet and pretends he doesn't hear Cadman laughing at him.
The planning that's been done for the op is impressive, and the briefing is concise and easy to read. All of that being said, everything he reads confirms the first thought he had when he was talking to Cadman on the phone: this is going to be a logistical nightmare. John's first order of business when he realizes just how much this is going to suck is to go through the CVs so that he knows what he'll have to work with.
He's not surprised that he recognizes a good third of the names. After removing them from Atlantis, the IOA had arranged for get-out-of-the-military-without-fuss passes for the military contingent. John wasn't the only one to resign his commission. In fact, he was just the first of, well, all of them.
He huffs out a laugh. "Laura Cadman: Patron of Atlantis Military Ex Pats Worldwide. Has a nice ring to it."
Cadman looks away. "They're good men. I trust them."
There isn't any emphasis on the words or heat in her voice. Even so, John hears a significance that he can only guess at. No one talks about why everyone is so careful and watchful of Cadman, why the employees she works with most closely are female, or why she refuses to be in a room with only one exit.
John has his own ideas about what happened but he doubts he'll ever know the truth of it given that Cadman seems disinclined to talk about it.
"Good at what they do, too," John says after the silence goes on a beat too long. "I'm surprised Lorne didn't come out for this one; it's right up his alley."
Cadman's grinning when she looks back. "Well, I tried to get him, but David's at a crucial point in his work and there wasn't an incentive big enough to make Evan leave him."
John nods his understanding. Lorne is part of the security contingent for an expedition in Peru that Parrish is heading, and John knows from experience how seriously Lorne takes his responsibilities.
But then Cadman goes on to say, "They're still in that giddy honeymoon stage, you know? It's sort of sickening," and John realizes that, okay, he's a bit out of the loop.
"Wait. Lorne and Parrish. For real?"
Cadman gives him a look of astounded confusion. "You didn't know? That's--wow. It's been five months, and, seriously, it was primo gossip. The only things that caused a bigger buzz in the ex pat grapevine were your reappearance, and Rodney and Katie's relationship going nuclear."
John looks down at the briefing packet and starts shuffling through it randomly. "I guess that's why Lorne resigned, finally."
Cadman is silent for a long time. Eventually, she says, "Not entirely." She clears her throat awkwardly. "Read up. We can talk more later."
Not if John can help it. He hadn't meant to say that, to say anything. Lorne is someone else whose relationship with Ronon was possibly more than platonic while John was off, in Rodney's words, "finding yourself like a 1950s housewife, except they had valid reasons--hello, oppression by the patriarchy!--for undertaking such an effort while you were just being a selfish, inconsiderate asshole!"
To make matters more awkward, Lorne hasn't made any effort whatsoever to even speak to John on the phone, much less visit, though he and Ronon are in contact on a semi-regular basis. That means something. John's not sure he wants to know what.
"We're here," Cadman says a few minutes later. John closes the packet and nods.
The meeting goes off relatively without a hitch, despite John's lack of detailed preparation. John has his time on Atlantis to thank for that because it made him capable of organizing an entire freaking war. One complicated op is nothing in comparison. Working with a large contingent of people he used to command and who know his style--just as he knows theirs--helps a lot.
Afterwards, Cadman's driver takes both of them to the five star hotel at which her company has several suites reserved.
"I'm down the hall from you," she says after handing off a keycard and preceding him into the lobby. John looks at her curiously and she shrugs. "I live outside of the city and traffic's a bitch. Staying here is easier, especially because of the early call. Want to hit the restaurant in the lobby for dinner?"
John nods. "Sounds like a plan."
"Let's meet down there in an hour."
In his suite, John settles himself on the bed and calls Ronon.
"You got in okay," is Ronon's greeting.
There's no censure in Ronon's voice, but John still feels bad. "Yeah, I did. Sorry for not calling you right away, but we went straight from the airport to a briefing." In the background, John can hear music. Loud music. "We're going to dinner--is that Shakira?"
Ronon grunts. "Vala put it on. She says she's going to show me how to dance from my hips."
John flops back on the bed and doesn't even try to hide his annoyed huff. "Of course she is."
Ronon sounds impatient and irritated. "Knock it off."
John's been trying to do just that but he's his own worst enemy when it comes to Ronon and this relationship of theirs. "It's just--you use your hips fine," John says earnestly. "Better than fine. Trust me on this."
Ronon laughs and John smiles despite himself. Ronon's laughter still isn't as frequent an occurrence as he would like, even if it does come more often than it used to.
The music gets a little lower in the background, like Ronon's walking away from it. "How's Laura?"
John shrugs. "Okay, I guess. Nothing stood out. Other than the, you know, usual." That would be John's not-so-subtle hint for Ronon to maybe share the story, which Ronon ignores, as usual. "Oh, hey, Lorne and Parrish? Do you know about them?"
"Yeah," Ronon says in such a way that implies: duh, of course I know, everyone knows. Dumbass.
"Oh. Well, gee, thanks for telling me." John thinks he can see Ronon's blank yet oddly disapproving stare through the phone; Ronon never encourages John's pissy sarcasm. "I mean--look, can we maybe--"
Ronon sighs and says, softly and with many layers, "John."
John scrubs a hand down his face, takes a breath, and closes his eyes. "Hey."
Something happens on Ronon's end to cut out all sounds of music. John doesn't ask, just listens to Ronon breathe until it's time to meet Cadman.
"Thank you," John says before they hang up. He's calmer and more himself than he's been since Vala arrived at the loft. In a way it's sad that it took John traveling a few states away for them to reconnect like this, but he'll take it.
"I love you," Ronon says, plainly and openly.
John closes his eyes. Ronon's far more comfortable with the words, with the sentiment, than John's ever been, but he's been teaching John how to own them. Not just the words, but them. Him and Ronon. Them. We. Us.
"Yeah, I know," John whispers. It's important to him that Ronon is aware that John does know, very much, how Ronon feels. "Love you, too."
*
John might have been the first to resign his commission, but Lorne was the last.
There's a blatant significance to be found in the fact that Lorne didn't resign until a month after Ronon came to California to be with John. Unlike the Cadman scenario, John thinks about it a bit too much.
*
After the op, which goes off with as few hitches as can be expected, Cadman conspires with a group of ex-marines from Atlantis to get John completely and totally shitfaced. It takes all of four drinks because John is a really cheap drunk nowadays.
Back at the hotel, John falls onto the sofa in Cadman's suite, a goofy smile on his face. "That was awesome," John says loudly. "The whole thing, you know? There were problems, yeah, but nothing big." He nods emphatically. "We work good together. Well. We work well together."
Cadman rolls her eyes and kicks off her sensible and sort of ugly pumps on her way to the fully stocked wet bar. She also shrugs off the boxy blazer she's had on since four that morning when they set out to start the pre-op rundowns.
"You're cut off. I, on the other hand, really need a drink at this point. Listening to you wax saptastic at Ronon on the phone during the ride back here was--" She wrinkles her nose and tilts her head. "Okay, it was actually pretty sweet, but a little much. Especially because it was his voice mail."
John looks at her seriously. "He has to know that I know."
Cadman blinks at him and then downs a shot of bourbon in. "I'm sure that will make sense any second now." She claps her hands together once, take charge and on top of things. "I need to change. Why don't you start drinking some water? Should help keep your hangover manageable."
"That's a very good idea. See, this is why you're the vice president and I'm learning to knit."
She reaches for the bottle and her shot glass again. "Sheppard, you are so very lucky that I know how to keep my mouth shut. Seriously. Knitting?"
"Crocheting was boring."
Cadman nods. "Of course it was," she says on her way out of the room.
John hauls himself to his feet and only sways slightly on his way to the wet bar, where he snags several bottles of water. He drinks one down while he waits for Cadman to return. She comes back out a few minutes later dressed similarly to John in track pants and a plain t-shirt, and has pulled her hair back in a sloppy ponytail.
While John sprawls out on the couch, his water on the table in front of it, Cadman gathers up the bottle of bourbon and several cans of coke. She curls up in the overstuffed arm chair to John's right and uses the side table to mix herself a drink.
Cadman puts away three medium-strength drinks over the next hour, during which John's drunkenness lessens by degrees, which leaves them both the same amount of buzzed. She fills him in on the latest Rodney insanity (an attempted reconciliation with Katie) against which John's been insulated recently due to his own drama. John gives her the unabridged version of Vala's visit and feels vindicated when she takes his side several times.
It's after two when they start fading into a state of drained buzz, the likes of which brings too-serious conversation and revelations better left unrevealed. Which is John's only excuse for telling her about Ronon's I know.
She makes an impatient noise. "God, you're both so special." She stares at John dead on, her expression softening at whatever she sees on his face. "He knows you're not going to take off again, Sheppard. That's what he meant."
John swallows and the inside of his mouth is so dry that he chokes a little. "Oh. That's...oh."
"You asked about Evan," she says a short time later.
John shakes his head. "No, I didn't ask."
"Sheppard. Stop being a dick or I'll sic Rodney on you. You asked, in your own way." John reluctantly nods, mostly because he knows she'd really sic Rodney on him and, yeah, he'd like to avoid that. "Anyway, the question isn't, why did he finally resign? It's, why didn't he resign with the rest of us?"
John reaches for Cadman's bourbon and takes a deep sip straight from the bottle. His voice comes out rough and raw with alcohol and guilt. "Ronon."
She nods sharply. "We don't leave men behind."
But John did. He left the one person in the world he never should have left after having spent six years fighting tooth and nail to bring back enlisted men whose names he wasn't always sure of but who were his.
"God, I'm such a dick, you should totally sic Rodney on me."
"You're not. Really." There's a pause that feels deliberate before she continues. "And I prefer to save Rodney for when I really need him, because he's sort of criminally insane."
John leans forward, puts the bourbon down carefully and stares at it. "Cadman. What--"
"I was raped." Her tone makes it clear that she knows he'd already guessed as much.
John looks up because if she can say it, he can look her in the eye and acknowledge it. "I'm sorry."
Cadman draws her knees to the chest and manages to look fierce instead of small and balled up. "It was pretty shitty," she says flatly. "I was still in Colorado Springs at the time. Guy was a local. Twice my size and trained."
That actually explains most of what John never could make fit. Cadman is small of stature, yeah, but she's not easy to take down. John never could make it work when he thought about some random freak going after her.
"Military?" John asks.
She shakes her head. "No, just into a lot of competitive martial arts." She licks her lips and takes a breath. "There were some fuck ups in the investigation and he got off on a technicality." Her lips curl. "He smirked at me when they cut him loose."
John's hands curl into fists and he breathes through his nose. "Christ."
"Rodney methodically destroyed his life with extreme prejudice." She smiles, cold and unpleasant. "I think he still pokes the bastard with a stick every once in a while just to make him cry."
"I'm surprised he's still alive." John snaps his mouth shut; he hadn't meant to say that.
Cadman just looks at him. "It was a close thing. On more than one occasion. For more than one of us." She glances to the side and then gets to her feet. "It's late, and we've got the post-mortem meeting at ten."
John takes the hint and stands. He's entirely sober now, and his head is pounding. He looks at Cadman for a minute and says, "Could I maybe, like, hug you...or something?"
She blinks at him, rolls her eyes, then steps forward and holds out her arms, presenting herself for a hug. John leans down and wraps his arms around her waist gingerly, careful to keep as much distance between them as is humanly possible during a hug. She stomps on his foot and jerks him closer.
"No, really, you're special," she reiterates. When she steps back a moment later she punches his arm. Hard. John doesn't bother holding back the flinch and she grins. "Get out. I'll meet you at the elevator at nine-thirty."
John salutes her and leaves.
*
A week or two after Ronon explained that he likes brooding to Bjork, John tried to offer an alternative because, honestly, skinning a cat. He hooked his iPod up to the stereo, pulled up his own personal brooding playlist and waited for Ronon to thank him and swear off of Bjork.
That didn't happen.
Instead, there was growling, pacing, and a somewhat trapped look before Ronon threw open the door and just...left. Without his keys, wallet, coat or weapons.
It was Elizabeth who told John that Zelenka bribed the SGC nursing staff to play Johnny Cash every time Ronon was confined to the infirmary for more than two hours, thereby conditioning him to dislike it. A lot.
"It was Radek's way of enacting some harmless revenge against you," Elizabeth said with careful neutrality, then arched a brow mockingly.
*
Ronon isn't at the airport when John's flight lands and John sort of stares around blankly for a while before doing the smart thing and pulling out his cell phone. It's still turned off from the flight and when he powers it up there's a voice mail waiting for him.
Ronon sounds ragged and hoarse, and the smallest bit harried. "You're going to have to take a cab home. I'll explain when you get here." The line goes quiet and just as John's about to hang up, Ronon's voice sounds one more time before the message ends. "Love you."
John blinks. Even with how comfortable Ronon is with the sentiment and the words, he doesn't say them lightly and casually. Which means that he does not end messages that way without a reason.
While John's standing in the taxi line, he calls Rodney.
"Oh my god, I am not your relationship counselor!" Rodney shouts at him. "I have my own relationship problems, and they are far more concerning than your angsty mandrama!"
"Mandrama?" John repeats, nonplussed. "I…don't even know what that is." He shakes his head. "And, you know, I heard about your relationship issues from Cadman, and they don't seem--"
"I accidentally proposed to Katie," Rodney very nearly screeches.
"Again?" John rolls his eyes. "Rodney, you have to stop--"
"She said yes."
John drops his cell phone and almost gets kicked in the face by the person in front of him in line when he bends down to pick it up. This is the fourth time Rodney has proposed to Katie without meaning to. She's never given him an answer before because she knows that Rodney can tie himself into verbal knots and doesn't actually mean it. John has no idea what made this time different for her.
"Rodney, I don't--what are you--"
"And then I accidentally slept with Dr. Makarovska."
"Again?" John literally pulls the phone from his ear and gapes at it, because, seriously. John can parse the accidental proposals, but he didn't buy the "accidental sex" explanation the first time Rodney slept with Makarovska, the mathematical physicist who works in another department at CERN.
"And now she thinks we're together and I can't even contemplate breaking up with her because one, we're not really together, and two, I'm a little concerned about a sexual harassment suit at this point. Women are mean when they're scorned, Sheppard. Mean!"
John rubs his forehead, steps up to the front of the taxi line and then gets into the waiting taxi. "Do you even realize that things like this don't happen to other people, Rodney? You just--when did this all even happen?" he says, not without awe, because Cadman spoke to Rodney thirty-six hours ago and there was no mention of any of this.
"Yesterday. Everything happened yesterday." Rodney makes a whimpering noise. "I think I have commitment issues." John manfully doesn't say anything like Duh! or You think?!. "All those years, I thought you were the relationship retard--"
"Hey!"
"--and here you are in a long term, committed relationship--with a man, no less--and here I am with accidental proposals and sex."
Rodney starts hyperventilating at that point and John talks him down as much as he can before Rodney declares that he has to get very, very drunk and just hangs up.
John scrolls through his phone book and has a brief moral debate with himself before calling Zelenka at his lab in Kyoto. He leaves a message asking Zelenka to email the book on Rodney and Katie. Zelenka calls back almost immediately and demands to know the relevant details from John and Rodney's phone call, and then throws numbers at John and makes him do stat conversions so that the book can be updated.
"You are on handicap," Zelenka informs him. "You know Rodney too well and he calls you often. But if you keep me in the loop, you get a portion of the take." He makes a noise. "Tends to be a few thousand dollars American for something like this."
"I don't--hey. Is Rodney doing that for me?" Zelenka hums, which is all the answer John needs. "Sign me up."
When the taxi pulls up to John's building Zelenka tells him something surprising. "I chased those rumors like you asked. Supposedly, Cameron Mitchell has gone off grid."
John has one leg out of the taxi and he freezes momentarily. "Since when?"
"Cannot be sure. Two months, at least. Most people believe he is still in Washington on a different posting."
Vala is not most people, though, and a lot of things are suddenly a little less foggy. "How do you know this?"
"Dr. Barinski told me. She's a chemist at SGC. She was one of Lorne, Ronon and Vala's fourths." Their fourth slot on the team had had a veritable revolving door for reasons that were wide and varied, from what John understands.
"Can you find Mitchell?" John asks.
"Highly doubtful. Very talented people within SGC have been trying and failing."
"Thanks for the information, Radek. Say hi to Miko for me."
"I will, and you are welcome. Stay in touch. Ex pats are very interested in Rodney's book."
John pockets his phone and makes his way into the building, hefting his bag and frowning as he thinks about what Zelenka told him.
SG1 was disbanded not long before the shake up on Atlantis, for similar political reasons. The team designator of SG1 was officially retired as a supposed show of respect at that same time, meaning that there is no current SG1 team and there never will be again. As for the team itself, Teal'c moved offworld; Jackson stepped back from the SGC except for limited consultations and is currently living in Egypt; Carter resigned, moved to Connecticut, and is working into the private sector; and Mitchell--now a full-bird Colonel--was made a liaison in Washington and commuted between there and Colorado Springs.
Vala, on the other hand, was assigned to the same offworld team that Lorne and Ronon would eventually join. Despite all of that, Vala is SG1. Just like John is Atlantis. Her team should have her back.
Further thought is halted when John opens the front door of the loft and walks into what looks like a disaster area. He drops his bag and stares around in shock. The place is trashed in ways that aren't incidental. John knows this because he's purposely damaged living quarters before and the end result was something like what he's currently looking at.
Broken dishes, overturned and broken furniture, torn paperback books, and a shattered window. That's the main damage, as far as John can tell. Oh, and the stylish room divider screens are a lost cause, he realizes sadly when he sees them flat on the floor, cracked and splintered.
With great trepidation John climbs the stairs to the second floor, bracing himself for whatever damage he'll find. Surprisingly, there isn't any. Everything is as tidy and whole as usual.
Well, almost everything.
Ronon and Vala are asleep on the bed, looking more than a little worse for the wear. He's got a bruise on the side of his face that John figures was Vala's doing. Her eyes are puffy from crying to the point that John isn't even sure if she can possibly open them wide enough to see.
"Christ," John whispers quietly. Ronon's eyes snap open and find John almost immediately. "Hey."
"Hey," Ronon says, sounding more hoarse than he did on John's voice mail. "It got bad."
John nods. "Yeah, I noticed. She tell you anything?"
Ronon carefully pulls one hand out from under Vala and scrubs at his face. "Some, yeah. She just kind of…broke."
John winces at the lost look on Ronon's face. "Go back to sleep. I'll clean up downstairs. Don't--just don't worry, okay? We'll figure it out."
Ronon's eyes seem suspiciously bright, but he tucks his face against Vala's hair before John can get a good look. John moves to the side of the bed and leans over to press his lips to the bruise on Ronon's face; he's already asleep again and doesn't react. John hesitates, but then brushes Vala's hair from her face before moving away.
He takes Ronon's laptop downstairs with him and finds on it the contact list that one of the ex pats put together a while back. He calls Daniel Jackson and leaves a message on his voice mail. "This is Sheppard. Vala's practically moved in with Ronon and me. She's kind of a mess and Ronon's getting more worried about her every day. So, I don't know, could someone maybe get their head out of their ass and come help her out?"
He feels marginally like a good...significant other for having done something to try to help the situation, but mostly he feels useless to do anything about that last look he saw on Ronon's face.
He throws himself into cleaning and it takes him a good ten hours to restore the first floor of the loft to something resembling its usual state. Ronon and Vala don't stir the entire time, for which John is grateful. He ends his day by listening to the Walk the Line soundtrack through the single stereo speaker that still works and drinking three beers.
*
The first time Vala visited Ronon at the loft, she brought him a large photo album filled with pictures from the previous year. Ronon smiled, hugged her, and then they spent the next chunk of time flipping through the pages and trading stories that, really, made no sense from John's perspective.
But he didn't need any stories to understand what he saw later when he turned the pages himself: Rodney, Ronon and Lorne sitting a table in the SGC mess; Ronon, Lorne and Vala looking red-nosed and sickly, bundled under blankets on someone's couch; Cadman riding Ronon piggy-back; Elizabeth, Zelenka, Miko and Ronon all dressed up and sitting at a cloth-covered table.
*
When John wakes up on the sofa the next day the first thing he sees is Vala's face because she's leaning over him and staring at him as though she's about to, like, suck his soul from his body. Or something.
John flails in surprise. She leans back and sits on a footstool she's dragged over.
"I wanted to apologize," she says. Her voice is raspy and jagged, but sincere, and she meets John's gaze steadily. John pushes himself into a sitting position and rubs at his eyes, trying to clear the sleep grit from them. "My behavior last week was rather extreme. I think the proper term for what I was doing is transference. You didn't--well, you didn't deserve it."
"Yes, I did." John shrugs at her narrowed-eyed look. "I deserved a lot more than I got, in fact. He never really--" John breaks off because, no, he's not going into this with Vala of all people. "Anyway, you don't have to apologize. It's okay."
"I'm also sorry about what I did to your home." Her face crumples and creases with what seems to be acute embarrassment. "I might have lost my mind for a bit, there. I'll pay to replace anything that couldn't be salvaged, of course."
John winces and thinks about the list of things that need to be replaced. He doesn't even know how he's going to explain to Elizabeth what happened to the gay fertility fetish thingie, which was really ugly but which she went to a lot of trouble to get for Ronon and him. "Yeah, that was sort of...yeah. But, mostly, as long as you don't do it again we should be okay."
"Good, because I would really like for us to be okay. Not just because it's unfair to Ronon for us to be at each other's throats but because--" She shrugs and sketches out a brief smile. "--we were actually rather friendly at one point, weren't we? I'm not imagining that, am I?"
John rolls his eyes. "We were friendly, and yeah, I'd like that too."
The next week of Vala's visit goes a lot better than the previous week, even though she's become somewhat--well, John doesn't want to call it fragile because Vala is too strong of personality and features for that to fit. But she's something like fragile. She's quieter and softer and prone to sobbing on Ronon's shoulder, which is something that John seems to keep walking in on even though he tries really hard not to because it's really awkward.
John finds himself fielding half a dozen calls from Rodney per day, some of which Rodney makes while hiding under his car and whispering. The Sheppard-Dex betting book goes blessedly quiet in favor of the McKay-Brown-Makarovska book, which gets so convoluted that John stops being able to comprehend most of what he passes on to Zelenka.
Things settle to something approaching normal. Vala starts going out on her own at least once a day to give John and Ronon time to themselves, though Ronon finds her digital camera sitting innocently on the dresser across from their bed one time, set to record video. He actually seems rather relieved by the gesture and takes it as a sign that she's returning to her usual self. John, however, starts undressing under the sheets.
Six days after John gets back from Seattle, Ronon and Vala head out to the early morning farmer's market across town. She likes to fill the loft with enough fresh flowers to give John allergies, and Ronon likes all the organic fruit. John sees them off with a request for fresh corn, which means they'll come back with bags and bags of vegetables, none of which will be corn, because that's just what happens on those outings.
When the bell rings, John assumes it's them and that they don't have a free hand between them to dig out keys. John buzzes the lobby door open, unlocks the loft door and leaves it slightly ajar, then returns to the task of replacing the pane of glass that Vala apparently punched out with her bare hand.
"Need some help?"
John startles at the unexpected voice and drops the new pane. It cracks into large pieces at his feet and he curses and jumps back. When he's clear, he spins around and comes face to face with Cameron Mitchell.
Mitchell looks his years, which isn't something John used to be able to say about him. His jeans and t-shirt are hanging oddly on him, too, like he's lost weight. Or muscle mass, John realizes when he sees the lack of definition in Mitchell's biceps.
"Crap. Sorry about that, Sheppard."
"What the fuck?" John snaps, and he isn't referring just to Mitchell's sudden appearance in the loft.
Mitchell's face goes blank as a slate and he tugs a duffel higher on his shoulder. "I heard Vala was here."
John stares at him, and it's...not at all like looking in a mirror a year and a half ago. Which, if he'd given it any thought, he would have expected.
Mitchell looks like he's been torn up inside and out and is still trying to fit the pieces of himself back together. When John took off it wasn't about anything other than being pissed that they'd taken Atlantis from him. Seems like Mitchell had a million better reasons for dropping off the face of the Earth.
"Put your bag down." John sighs, then rubs his forehead. "Vala and Ronon are out. Should be back soon. You want a beer?"
Mitchell looks so grateful when he nods that John pulls out the expensive Germanic import that Simpson--who's working for a think tank there--ships out to interested ex pats for indecent sums of money.
"You okay?" John asks when he trades the beer for Mitchell's duffel, which he then drops by the door.
Mitchell nods and takes a small, absent sip of the beer. He wanders into the living room and looks around, an odd expression on his face.
"This place is nice. Really nice." John refrains from mentioning what it looked like a week ago, and instead watches Mitchell look from the breakfast remnants on the table to the framed photos on the walls. "It's...homey."
John thinks about his first months on Atlantis, when the mist aliens played with his mind and he found himself in a tricked out bachelor pad. He thinks Mitchell was expecting something like that, and he would have been right a few years ago. But that place had been filled with ghosts and John's life now is fuller than that.
"Well, it is my home. That was kind of the point of getting it."
Mitchell takes a breath, sucks the rest of the beer down in one large, breathless gulp, then stares at John. "Any advice on how I should handle this?"
"None at all." Mitchell opens his mouth and John raises a hand. "No, I get that it's a similar situation, but Ronon and Vala...are nothing alike. Also? Ronon didn't tell anyone but I did keep in touch with him on a regular basis." Mitchell flinches and John grimaces. "You just disappeared without a trace, didn't you?"
"Kind of," Mitchell admits. He sinks down on the sofa and scrubs at his face with the palms of both hands. "I left her a note."
John actually winces on Vala's behalf and suddenly has a lot more sympathy for her because, ouch. Most of SG1 had moved on to various other cities, countries or worlds, and Vala was left behind, shuffled in with the last of the Atlantis unwanteds. And then they'd left her: Ronon for California and John; Lorne for South America and, apparently, Parrish. All that remained in Colorado Springs was Mitchell, who was commuting and only around rarely, and then he'd taken off, too, and hadn't even bothered to tell her in person.
John sits across from Mitchell and sips from his own beer. "Jackson obviously knew where you were."
"No, he didn't. He just did the smart thing and called my parents." Mitchell looks frustrated and a bit defensive. "I'm not as much of an asshole as you seem to think. Vala didn't know where I was, but she could have tracked me down easily enough. God knows she's been calling my mother randomly for years."
"I think the point is that she shouldn't have had to."
Mitchell's face screws up in annoyance. "Are you enjoying the moral high ground, Sheppard?"
"I'm actually really not," John answers honestly. There's nothing about what he pulled with Ronon that he'll ever enjoy, even in retrospect or in comparison. He makes a face that feels like it matches Mitchell's expression. "It's not much of a high ground, anyway."
"No, it's not."
"Grovel," John suggests to Mitchell when the bell rings a few minutes later and Mitchell freezes in what is obviously panic. "Grovel a lot."
To Mitchell's credit, he tries. He really does. It's just that Vala takes one look at him, drops the bags she's holding, and goes after him with fists and feet. Ronon drops his own bags but then, with a lowered brow and curled lips, pointedly crosses his arms and doesn't interfere.
"You utter bastard!" Vala shouts. Mitchell dodges the hits he can't block and makes it very clear and obvious that he's not going to try to hit her back or restrain her. John finds it interesting that, even before Mitchell makes that clear, Vala doesn't seem all that concerned on either front.
"I'm sorry," Mitchell repeats over and over again, a constant mantra that he fits around her shouted insults and expletives. "Vala, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. I'm sorry."
When Vala's fist connects with Mitchell's nose, John takes a step towards them. Ronon manages to circle around the skirmish and grab John's arm. "No. Don't."
John looks at the rush of blood pouring from Mitchell's nose. "But--"
Vala comes to a graceless and sudden halt, then. She and Mitchell are both breathing heavily, and she's staring from his face to her bloodied knuckles. "Oh. Cameron--oh, I--"
Mitchell gets to her before the first tear slides down her cheek. He pulls her against her chest and she starts sobbing. John thought he'd seen her sobbing before, but not like this. This is a full body shudder, loud and messy and from the pit of her very being.
She tries to shove Mitchell away but he's not having it. He traps her arms between them, wraps his own around her back, and refuses to let go, no matter how hard she struggles.
"I'm sorry, so sorry," he says, quiet and firm, and the look on his face says that it's the only truth he knows in that moment.
Vala gets her arms free and grabs at Mitchell, her grip white-knuckled. She presses her face against his neck, still sobbing. Mitchell's eyes close and his expression shifts to something that's simultaneously pained and comforted.
"I hate you," Vala sobs against his neck. "You're a terrible, horrible man. I hate--"
"I know. I'm sorry. So sorry."
John looks away and tries to breathe against the weight that's pressing down on his chest.
Ronon tugs at his arm. "Come on."
*
When Ronon came to California, John apologized for his disappearing act. Ronon brushed it off, basically said it wasn't necessary. As far as John's been able to tell, Ronon believes that down to his bones.
John doesn't. Not in the least.
*
John and Ronon go to the aquarium, which is actually Ronon's favorite place in Long Beach. He loves Shark Lagoon and he's seen the Monsters of the Abyss 3D movie so many times that the staff greet him by name and have his ticket ready and waiting when they see him approach. John would mock him for it except that he's getting a little well-known himself around the Catch a Wave exhibit.
They spend half the day there, wandering aimlessly and avoiding the aviary, which makes Ronon twitchy and hyper alert. They don't leave until Vala calls. Ronon's face during the one-sided conversation runs the gamut from stonily concerned to quietly pleased. When he hangs up he's smiling softly.
"So...?" John prods.
"It's good. They're good. And leaving." John returns Ronon's smile because he can't not.
Ronon drives them home and John stares out the windshield, his mind replaying the scene between Vala and Mitchell, just like it has all day long. When they get upstairs, Ronon makes a noise of frustration as soon as they walk in the door. He spins John around to face him and crosses arms.
John blinks. "What?"
"What's wrong? You've been...off all day."
John's very first instinct is to deny anything and everything, but he's been worn down in the last few weeks, been reminded of this very thing too often for him to have any resistance left.
"You never did that," John says abruptly. Ronon looks confused. "You never yelled like Vala did."
Ronon opens his mouth, shuts it, then reaches out and pulls John's sunglasses off. He studies John's face as he folds them up and hooks them on the collar of John's t-shirt.
"Vala was pissed. She hated Mitchell when she walked in here." John nods because, yes, he's well aware of that. Ronon frowns and says, clearly and precisely, "I never hated you. I wasn't even angry."
"You should have been!" John says, too-loud, too-sincere.
Ronon shakes his head. "You wanted me to hate you?"
"Jesus Christ, Ronon, we were back on Earth for a grand total of a month before I took off! Call me crazy, but I think that had to piss you off."
Ronon makes a motion with his hand, like a knife slashing through air. It's sort of intimidating, but also kind of inappropriately hot. "This is why McKay calls you a girl, isn't it?"
"Rodney calls me a girl?" John asks incredulously, his face twisting. "He is such a--"
"Shut up." Ronon rubs his face and leaves his hands there, covering it. He sighs, sounding frustrated. "I didn't--when we were on Atlantis we dealt with everything in the training room. This is...hard. I don't know--"
Yeah, they had kind of always brought everything around to a physical sort of conclusion in Atlantis. It'd worked out pretty well for them, actually, but it's not an option any longer, and John has to make some kind of effort here because Ronon looks lost and confused, in more ways than John's ever seen.
"I should have stayed with you," John says in the silence.
Surprisingly, Ronon laughs, a thick sound that has nothing to do with amusement. He drops his hands and the look on his face is so fucking wretched that John moves forward and pushes his way into Ronon's personal space.
"Do you know how many times--" Ronon croaks, then clears his throat and takes a breath. His nostrils flare and his hands fist. John reaches out, takes hold of his wrists gently, and circles his thumbs against Ronon's pulse points. "I was glad you left, that you didn't stay. Every day, I was glad."
John stares at him and Ronon reverses their hands so that he's circling John's wrists with his fingers, and presses his lips together until a muscle in his jaw is ticking.
"Listen," Ronon says intently, and curls his fingers tighter, jostling John's hands lightly. "I was under constant surveillance, and it took months before they let me leave the mountain without an escort. It was--hard. I didn't handle it well. We would have hated each other by the end of it. If we'd even been able to see each other."
John sets his chin, which is something he picked up from Rodney at some point. "I could have--"
Ronon shakes his head. "And we both needed to mourn, and I had to learn how to live here."
"There's more," John insists. "The way you said--something happened. Something bad."
John missed a lot that he regrets in that year--Rodney's meltdown, Cadman's trauma, Radek and Miko's wedding--but he doesn't think he could live with himself if he missed something important of Ronon's.
Ronon shakes his head and tightens his grip on John's wrists. "Not to me, and it's not mine to tell."
"I'm still sorry." Ronon drags him forward until their chests bump, then dips his head down and presses their foreheads together. "Sorry, sorry, sorry."
John keeps saying it until Ronon's mouth settles onto his, rough and demanding and full of everything Ronon's so quietly comfortable with and which he's been teaching John to find comfort in, too.
John doesn't realize they're moving--that Ronon's moving them--until his back comes up against the brick pillar by the kitchen. John sucks at Ronon's lips and tangles his fingers in the material of Ronon's shirt, holding on harder than he ever remembers holding onto anything else. The sounds that Ronon utters into John's mouth are sweet and wet and as familiar as John's own breathing.
John swallows them down while Ronon opens John's pants and pushes them and his boxers down. John hangs from Ronon's shirt and lips, toes his shoes off and kicks his clothing away, and he's maybe shaking, he's not entirely sure.
Ronon's hands slide down and hook under the back of his thighs, and John was getting there, was on the cusp of searing arousal, but that sends him there so fast and immediately that he whines. Ronon lifts and John wraps his legs around Ronon's hips.
"Quiet," Ronon whispers into his mouth, and he realizes he's repeating his apology again.
John pushes his tongue between Ronon's lips, tries to muffle his words until he can stop trying to speak them, but Ronon has other ideas. He leans back, leaving John propped against the pillar, and works at his pants with one hand while digging in his pocket with the other for the lube he's taken to carrying around; they never did know when Vala was going to give them privacy. To keep himself quiet, John bites his lip hard enough that he's worried about drawing blood until Ronon's thumb touches his mouth firmly and tugs it free.
Then Ronon's hands are on John's legs again, hoisting him up and tipping his hips. John grabs at Ronon's shoulders, digs his fingers in and finds his balance just in time for Ronon's cock to slide inside, slick and smooth and right.
The pace Ronon sets is forceful and unforgiving. It drags John along the raw brick, his back only minimally protected by his t-shirt, and drives the breath from his lungs. Ronon's hands are curled tight and hard around the sides of John's thighs, holding him up, keeping him in place. They're going to leave bruises: delineated points marking Ronon's fingertips, and wider splotches to signify his palms.
John wants them as much as he wants the abrasions on his back, as much as he wants every single thing that Ronon is giving him right now, which is more than his cock or the sex or anything so easy to name.
Ronon's eyes are open, have been open since his first push into John, and his gaze is naked and intense. Once it catches John's he realizes it's also inescapable. Not that John is trying to escape. He's not. He doesn't want to be anywhere except where he is right now, with Ronon, in this space they've made their home, in this life that is theirs and no one else's.
John's arms have fallen to his sides, somewhere along the way, and are dangling and grasping at empty air. It takes concerted effort and he has to time it to Ronon's thrusts, but eventually he lifts them and get his hands where he wants them: tangled in the dreads at the very back of Ronon's neck, the skin of which is always hypersensitive because it's usually hidden and covered.
Ronon shudders and arches into the touch, then leans harder against John, his weight more solid and present.
"John," he says, his voice clear and sharp. The crispness of it startles John into coherence, so that his perception after he blinks is less fuck-dumb and he can see the unbending peace and acceptance in Ronon's expression. "I forgive you," Ronon says.
John comes with a suddenness that takes his sight, his hearing, and brings a dry sob up from the depths of his gut, where it's been lodged since he left Colorado Springs, left Ronon. He shakes and trembles in the aftermath, and it seems like only Ronon's weight and hands and cock are keeping him from floating away because he feels too light and hollow now that that something is gone.
Ronon comes not long after, the arch of his body drawn with taut lines and slick skin when he goes still and groans, his eyes never leaving John's face, and his expression never wavering. John inhales, deep and unsteady, and lets that place inside of him fill up with the weight of this moment, with the density of Ronon and him. Them. We. Us.
They stumble upstairs when they can move, Ronon practically carrying John, whose knees are aching from how tightly he had his legs wrapped around Ronon. Once they're in bed John pulls Ronon's clothes off with uncoordinated and inefficient motions. Ronon doesn't seem to mind that clumsiness and when John finally manages to get him naked, he stretches and burrows down against the mattress.
John props himself up on one shaking arm and fits his the palm of his other hand to the side of Ronon's neck. "Did you mean what you said?"
Ronon nods solemnly, his eyes watchful. "I would have said it before. I didn't realize."
For as large and harsh as Ronon is, he's always been full of grace. John's never been more grateful for that, or more humbled.
Ronon pushes up on one elbow, careful not to dislodge John's hand, and frowns uncertainly. "Will you let it go now?"
John spent a year running from what he lost when they took Atlantis away from him and in the process he left behind everyone important to him. It was childish, selfish and every other thing Rodney's accused him of being. John's been carrying the guilt of it around since before he actually asked Ronon to come to California and there's nothing about that he wants to hold on to, wants to keep carting around with him.
"Yeah. Yeah, I will."
Ronon smiles, contented and sweet, and falls back against the mattress. He pulls John to him, and John goes without reservation.
*
.End