fic: Scar Tissue [body modification challenge]
Title: Scar Tissue
Author: Tielan
Summary: Every mark has a history.
Pairings: John/Teyla, Teyla/Rodney, Rodney/Ronon, Ronon/John.
Rating: hard R
Characters: John, Teyla, Rodney, Ronon
Wordcount: 1,700
Notes: I didn't think I'd get this in by the due date, actually; figured I was just going to end up posting it solo. Slash is not my regular bunny, so, uh, be gentle and use lube. I'm working my way up to a team orgy... *g*
Thanks to blacksquirrel for the beta, the advice, and the encouragement.
Scar Tissue
- autumn's sweet, we call it fall -
His fingers trace the delicate curlicues of the inked lines on her back - a sinuous curl of pigment twining around a single character outlined in black and coloured with red and blue. "What's this?"
He's not sure why he's never asked before - only that his mind rested briefly on the question, then dismissed it for another time.
"A tattoo."
"I can see that." There are times when John thinks that shooting Rodney for teaching Teyla how to reply with an obvious answer would be too kind. Then again, she'd probably just have picked it up from someone else in the city. "You know what I meant." He leans over and kisses her bare shoulder, smoothing his fingers across the marked patch of skin. "Where'd you get this?"
Beneath his hands and his mouth, her muscles tense and her silence is answer enough. John stills for a moment, but retreat isn't an option. After a moment, he brushes his lips across her nape and settles down beside her, one hand propped up beneath his head, the other still resting on her tattoo. "On Athos?"
She won't meet his gaze, her eyes skimming around him. A heavy silence grows and the answer comes at last, quiet and angry. "Yes."
He pushes the spill of her hair behind her ear, running his finger along the shell-like curve, down to caress the lobe. Teyla is an enigma in all her moods, and John usually enjoys the perplexity.
Tonight, her response frustrates him, but coaxing her into his bed has taught him patience and how to deal with Teyla Emmagen when she needs to be persuaded. She'll tell him, sooner or later.
And if she doesn't, John will live with his curiosity.
"Never mind," he says, letting his fingers trail down her throat.
"He went trading and did not come back," Teyla says at last, staring at her hands on the pillow. "There was a Wraith raid on the planet, and he was taken." Her eyes flicker up to his, finally. "It was our marriage mark."
John's hot and cold at once, repentant of the question yet resentful of the answer as he lies next to this woman about whom he knows so much and so little. She's questioned him about his own scars, but John was always distracted before he managed to ask her about the tattoo.
He wonders how much of that distraction was intentional on her part.
All the same...
"I'm sorry," he says and means it.
She shrugs, and her hair cascades back down over her shoulder like a veil or a dismissal. "You would have known sooner or later."
His fingers linger over the inked character - over the memory of another man marked into her flesh - until Teyla leans across and captures his mouth with her own. This time, her hair spills over his shoulder, silky as desire, provocative as a caress.
John traces over the tattoo once before fitting his hips to hers and letting desire take them.
- sarcastic mr. know-it-all -
Rodney is as intense and enthusiastic about sex as he is about his other pursuits.
Teyla enjoys it. Every man is individual, and Rodney's unbridled enthusiasm is a contrast to John's cool self-possession - although most men are not so talkative in bed.
Because of that enthusiasm, she makes him wait; lying him face-down in his bed as she strokes her fingers down his back in massaging patterns of desire. He is always tense when he comes to her, his muscles strained with the focus of his day. Teyla finds the routine of soothing that tension from him relaxing. It is her own way of working out some of the subtler stresses within her being.
And she learns a lot from Rodney's rambles about his day - from his perceptions of the cityfolk, stripped of the niceties others employ, to the way Lantean technology works, the gleanings of understanding that have made her comprehension of Earth systems so much easier.
"...so we tried to calibrate the energy field but it was like a Jaffa staff weapon - which you've never seen - and the variable energy output means we can't measure it with any kind of steady accuracy. So Radek worked up this program..."
She enjoys the feel of him under her fingers, beneath her thighs. He is softer than John's easy muscle, with the sleek comfort of one who has never had to live lean.
"...and of course it didn't work because he wasn't taking into account the specific vibration of the crystal panels..."
At the base of his spine, she reaches the scar from the arrow and measures it with her fingertips. Rodney wriggles a little but doesn't stop his tirade.
"...then I had to do the whole set again because of that one error..."
Teyla half-listens as she traces the shape of the raised flesh. She knows all his scars, from the fine slashes of cat claws on his forearms, to the pale slash that marks his upper arm where Kolya of the Gennii knifed him. Small and round and hardly as big as the tip of her little finger, this scar is small and unnoticed. Like the others, it will vanish with time, little more than the memory of injury - leaving his body sleek with the ease that is most of what he has ever known.
Her fingers trail past the scar, down between Rodney's buttocks as she bends over and lays a soft kiss on the scar while her hand cradles his stirring flesh.
He breaks off mid-sentence and twists around with a smirk. "Getting impatient?"
Teyla smiles and leans over to brush her lips up his spine, rubbing her nipple lightly against the back of his arm. "Perhaps."
- push me up against the wall -
Ronon isn't one for conversation during sex. He wants release, simple and easy.
Things aren't either so simple or easy for Rodney.
He likes the way the bigger man feels under his hands as he runs them over the hard muscle - the sense of physical power tamed but waiting. A lesser man might be intimidated by the sheer masculinity of Ronon Dex, but Rodney's never laid claim to being a lesser anything.
Besides, there's no point in denying the visual attractiveness of Ronon lying naked and face down on Rodney's bed, broad shoulders tapering down to the lean hips and well-developed buttocks.
The word 'beefcake' was invented to describe men like Rodney's team-mate.
Still, Ronon's got more scars than Rodney's had nightmares about being scarred. Every bit of scar tissue has a story behind it, from the small round hole of Phoebus-Elizabeth's shot to his stomach, to the nubbled lumps along Ronon's spine that look like small globs of tan-coloured solder amidst a network of narrow slashes.
Rodney runs one hand down the scars, rubbing over them in unstoppable curiosity. The largest scars are irregular and misshapen where the other man tried to dig out the tracking device. Both they and the slashes are paler against Ronon's bronzed flesh, like a pattern painted into his skin and left there for eternity.
Rodney can't help asking. "Do they hurt?"
"Not really." A shrug sends dreadlocks flying across Ronon's shoulders as he shifts his hips and turns to look at Rodney. "Are you going to do anything?"
"Patience, grasshopper." He smirks at the other man's growl of frustration, barely leashed.
Ronon's whole body is quivering with eager tension, but Rodney doesn't stop his exploration, even though he reaches for the tube of jelly he took out earlier.
There's a small star-shaped scar on Ronon's left buttock - a childhood sting from a crawly member of Sateda's native fauna - and Rodney lets his hand linger on the scar, even as Ronon assays a thrust into the sheets. Hot flesh scrapes against the cotton material, and lust hitches tight in Rodney's balls.
His team-mate carries the scars of a hard life, but it hasn't made him into a hard man.
Not that kind of hard, anyway.
- falling all over myself to lick your heart -
Sheppard's brisk about undressing, and more composed than Ronon thought he'd be.
A flush stains his cheeks and throat as he turns to face Ronon, but his voice is even. "What now?"
Ronon doesn't answer as he walks slowly across the room to the other man, stepping behind him, the better to examine what he thought he saw.
He saw right.
Beside a set of bruises in Sheppard's hip, a collection of small whitish scars stand out in the lightly tanned skin, each dot barely bigger than a fingertip, clustered in irregular groups.
He recognises the shape and placement of the bruises since McKay has a matching set on his hips - it seems Teyla forgets her strength in the throes of passion - but the scars puzzle him. The initial wounds weren't made by knives or by a tear in the skin. Neither bullets nor shrapnel leave such close-set scars, and Ronon's seen and studied nothing among the Lantean arsenal that could produce this kind of injury.
He moves around so he can meet Sheppard's gaze. He doesn't have to know. But he'd like to be told all the same. "What happened?"
The greenish eyes are steady and still, but watchful, too. This is something private and difficult for the man; that doesn't stop Ronon from keeping the question between them.
"Cigarette burns," Sheppard says, flat and distant.
He's seen the smokers in the city, standing around with their cigarettes and the constant, overhanging scent of tobacco.
"When someone snuffs out their lit cigarette on your skin, it leaves a scar." The explanation's simple, but there's a lot behind it. That seems to be the way of the Lanteans - nothing's ever straightforward for them.
Ronon glances down at the speckled white circles, spreading across Sheppard's hip like leprosy. They're not new scars, but old ones - very old. And, like the damage on Ronon's back that he inflicted but which he can't see, Sheppard will carry these markings to the grave.
He looks at Sheppard, at this man he respects and admires and desires, and doesn't ask.
Instead, he drifts his fingers into the scars, the dimples pressing back as he herds Sheppard along to the bed. There, he pushes the other man to sit on the edge and kneels down between parted legs as his hands slide up Sheppard's thighs.
The Lanteans may have their taboos and prohibitions, but this is something Ronon wants to give.
All the more after seeing those scars.
Note: I may be in need of an additional beta - someone who likes (or at least someone who isn't virulently allergic to) Teyla, John/Teyla, het, gen, and slash. One of my betas has gone missing and I can't keep piling it up on blacksquirrel - it's not fair to her. Help?
Author: Tielan
Summary: Every mark has a history.
Pairings: John/Teyla, Teyla/Rodney, Rodney/Ronon, Ronon/John.
Rating: hard R
Characters: John, Teyla, Rodney, Ronon
Wordcount: 1,700
Notes: I didn't think I'd get this in by the due date, actually; figured I was just going to end up posting it solo. Slash is not my regular bunny, so, uh, be gentle and use lube. I'm working my way up to a team orgy... *g*
Thanks to blacksquirrel for the beta, the advice, and the encouragement.
Scar Tissue
- autumn's sweet, we call it fall -
His fingers trace the delicate curlicues of the inked lines on her back - a sinuous curl of pigment twining around a single character outlined in black and coloured with red and blue. "What's this?"
He's not sure why he's never asked before - only that his mind rested briefly on the question, then dismissed it for another time.
"A tattoo."
"I can see that." There are times when John thinks that shooting Rodney for teaching Teyla how to reply with an obvious answer would be too kind. Then again, she'd probably just have picked it up from someone else in the city. "You know what I meant." He leans over and kisses her bare shoulder, smoothing his fingers across the marked patch of skin. "Where'd you get this?"
Beneath his hands and his mouth, her muscles tense and her silence is answer enough. John stills for a moment, but retreat isn't an option. After a moment, he brushes his lips across her nape and settles down beside her, one hand propped up beneath his head, the other still resting on her tattoo. "On Athos?"
She won't meet his gaze, her eyes skimming around him. A heavy silence grows and the answer comes at last, quiet and angry. "Yes."
He pushes the spill of her hair behind her ear, running his finger along the shell-like curve, down to caress the lobe. Teyla is an enigma in all her moods, and John usually enjoys the perplexity.
Tonight, her response frustrates him, but coaxing her into his bed has taught him patience and how to deal with Teyla Emmagen when she needs to be persuaded. She'll tell him, sooner or later.
And if she doesn't, John will live with his curiosity.
"Never mind," he says, letting his fingers trail down her throat.
"He went trading and did not come back," Teyla says at last, staring at her hands on the pillow. "There was a Wraith raid on the planet, and he was taken." Her eyes flicker up to his, finally. "It was our marriage mark."
John's hot and cold at once, repentant of the question yet resentful of the answer as he lies next to this woman about whom he knows so much and so little. She's questioned him about his own scars, but John was always distracted before he managed to ask her about the tattoo.
He wonders how much of that distraction was intentional on her part.
All the same...
"I'm sorry," he says and means it.
She shrugs, and her hair cascades back down over her shoulder like a veil or a dismissal. "You would have known sooner or later."
His fingers linger over the inked character - over the memory of another man marked into her flesh - until Teyla leans across and captures his mouth with her own. This time, her hair spills over his shoulder, silky as desire, provocative as a caress.
John traces over the tattoo once before fitting his hips to hers and letting desire take them.
- sarcastic mr. know-it-all -
Rodney is as intense and enthusiastic about sex as he is about his other pursuits.
Teyla enjoys it. Every man is individual, and Rodney's unbridled enthusiasm is a contrast to John's cool self-possession - although most men are not so talkative in bed.
Because of that enthusiasm, she makes him wait; lying him face-down in his bed as she strokes her fingers down his back in massaging patterns of desire. He is always tense when he comes to her, his muscles strained with the focus of his day. Teyla finds the routine of soothing that tension from him relaxing. It is her own way of working out some of the subtler stresses within her being.
And she learns a lot from Rodney's rambles about his day - from his perceptions of the cityfolk, stripped of the niceties others employ, to the way Lantean technology works, the gleanings of understanding that have made her comprehension of Earth systems so much easier.
"...so we tried to calibrate the energy field but it was like a Jaffa staff weapon - which you've never seen - and the variable energy output means we can't measure it with any kind of steady accuracy. So Radek worked up this program..."
She enjoys the feel of him under her fingers, beneath her thighs. He is softer than John's easy muscle, with the sleek comfort of one who has never had to live lean.
"...and of course it didn't work because he wasn't taking into account the specific vibration of the crystal panels..."
At the base of his spine, she reaches the scar from the arrow and measures it with her fingertips. Rodney wriggles a little but doesn't stop his tirade.
"...then I had to do the whole set again because of that one error..."
Teyla half-listens as she traces the shape of the raised flesh. She knows all his scars, from the fine slashes of cat claws on his forearms, to the pale slash that marks his upper arm where Kolya of the Gennii knifed him. Small and round and hardly as big as the tip of her little finger, this scar is small and unnoticed. Like the others, it will vanish with time, little more than the memory of injury - leaving his body sleek with the ease that is most of what he has ever known.
Her fingers trail past the scar, down between Rodney's buttocks as she bends over and lays a soft kiss on the scar while her hand cradles his stirring flesh.
He breaks off mid-sentence and twists around with a smirk. "Getting impatient?"
Teyla smiles and leans over to brush her lips up his spine, rubbing her nipple lightly against the back of his arm. "Perhaps."
- push me up against the wall -
Ronon isn't one for conversation during sex. He wants release, simple and easy.
Things aren't either so simple or easy for Rodney.
He likes the way the bigger man feels under his hands as he runs them over the hard muscle - the sense of physical power tamed but waiting. A lesser man might be intimidated by the sheer masculinity of Ronon Dex, but Rodney's never laid claim to being a lesser anything.
Besides, there's no point in denying the visual attractiveness of Ronon lying naked and face down on Rodney's bed, broad shoulders tapering down to the lean hips and well-developed buttocks.
The word 'beefcake' was invented to describe men like Rodney's team-mate.
Still, Ronon's got more scars than Rodney's had nightmares about being scarred. Every bit of scar tissue has a story behind it, from the small round hole of Phoebus-Elizabeth's shot to his stomach, to the nubbled lumps along Ronon's spine that look like small globs of tan-coloured solder amidst a network of narrow slashes.
Rodney runs one hand down the scars, rubbing over them in unstoppable curiosity. The largest scars are irregular and misshapen where the other man tried to dig out the tracking device. Both they and the slashes are paler against Ronon's bronzed flesh, like a pattern painted into his skin and left there for eternity.
Rodney can't help asking. "Do they hurt?"
"Not really." A shrug sends dreadlocks flying across Ronon's shoulders as he shifts his hips and turns to look at Rodney. "Are you going to do anything?"
"Patience, grasshopper." He smirks at the other man's growl of frustration, barely leashed.
Ronon's whole body is quivering with eager tension, but Rodney doesn't stop his exploration, even though he reaches for the tube of jelly he took out earlier.
There's a small star-shaped scar on Ronon's left buttock - a childhood sting from a crawly member of Sateda's native fauna - and Rodney lets his hand linger on the scar, even as Ronon assays a thrust into the sheets. Hot flesh scrapes against the cotton material, and lust hitches tight in Rodney's balls.
His team-mate carries the scars of a hard life, but it hasn't made him into a hard man.
Not that kind of hard, anyway.
- falling all over myself to lick your heart -
Sheppard's brisk about undressing, and more composed than Ronon thought he'd be.
A flush stains his cheeks and throat as he turns to face Ronon, but his voice is even. "What now?"
Ronon doesn't answer as he walks slowly across the room to the other man, stepping behind him, the better to examine what he thought he saw.
He saw right.
Beside a set of bruises in Sheppard's hip, a collection of small whitish scars stand out in the lightly tanned skin, each dot barely bigger than a fingertip, clustered in irregular groups.
He recognises the shape and placement of the bruises since McKay has a matching set on his hips - it seems Teyla forgets her strength in the throes of passion - but the scars puzzle him. The initial wounds weren't made by knives or by a tear in the skin. Neither bullets nor shrapnel leave such close-set scars, and Ronon's seen and studied nothing among the Lantean arsenal that could produce this kind of injury.
He moves around so he can meet Sheppard's gaze. He doesn't have to know. But he'd like to be told all the same. "What happened?"
The greenish eyes are steady and still, but watchful, too. This is something private and difficult for the man; that doesn't stop Ronon from keeping the question between them.
"Cigarette burns," Sheppard says, flat and distant.
He's seen the smokers in the city, standing around with their cigarettes and the constant, overhanging scent of tobacco.
"When someone snuffs out their lit cigarette on your skin, it leaves a scar." The explanation's simple, but there's a lot behind it. That seems to be the way of the Lanteans - nothing's ever straightforward for them.
Ronon glances down at the speckled white circles, spreading across Sheppard's hip like leprosy. They're not new scars, but old ones - very old. And, like the damage on Ronon's back that he inflicted but which he can't see, Sheppard will carry these markings to the grave.
He looks at Sheppard, at this man he respects and admires and desires, and doesn't ask.
Instead, he drifts his fingers into the scars, the dimples pressing back as he herds Sheppard along to the bed. There, he pushes the other man to sit on the edge and kneels down between parted legs as his hands slide up Sheppard's thighs.
The Lanteans may have their taboos and prohibitions, but this is something Ronon wants to give.
All the more after seeing those scars.
Note: I may be in need of an additional beta - someone who likes (or at least someone who isn't virulently allergic to) Teyla, John/Teyla, het, gen, and slash. One of my betas has gone missing and I can't keep piling it up on blacksquirrel - it's not fair to her. Help?