beachlass: sailboat (sail away)
[personal profile] beachlass
SGA story
for[livejournal.com profile] beadattitude
prompts: John/Rodney, crickets, bottle, polish
Kind of an accompanying piece to Sleeping Arrangements
Spoilers, yup.
Characters not mine.

Bead - *spreads hands hopelessly*  It went in an unexpected direction.


Eventually of course, it all goes to hell. As things do in either of the galaxies John has lived in.

It starts with Torren. Teyla’s son is small and warm and smells like milk and John loves him so much it hurts. And they’ve just gotten Teyla back, but now there’s Kanaan, and John… John is jealous.

And Rodney is self-involved, but awfully good at reading John. So there it is. John loves Teyla and the baby and is jealous of Kanaan, and Rodney is jealous of that, and everytime he sees Teyla and Kanaan and Torren, he’s reminded that he’ll never have that. Never have a family of his own.

Before long, Rodney is waking up alone in his bed, no longer rolling over to burrow more closely against John’s hairy chest and belly and reach down for a lazy morning handjob. John is spending afternoons with Torren when he can, doing paperwork with a crib in his office.

Then Rodney starts seeing Jennifer, and Ronon gets quieter, and John starts spending his evenings with Richard (evenings at least, and Rodney is not, not, not going to check the surveillance footage). And anyway he’s with Jennifer. And happy. He is. They come back from Earth and Teyla is pregnant again, round full belly sticking out. She can’t reach her feet anymore, but can still beat John with the bantos rods.

Kanaan finds them one afternoon, Torren building a block tower on the sunlit floor, John holding Teyla’s foot in his hand, ineptly painting her toenails. One hand is curled around her ankle, the other holding the small wet brush. They startle at the door opening, and knock over the little bottle, a bright stain spilling across Atlantis’ floor.

The next time they go offworld, Teyla asks to change the sleeping arrangements, to honour Kanaan’s discomfort with John and Teyla sharing a bed. There is a silence, broken only by the chirping shrr-shrr noise of the meadow insects, and Rodney won’t meet John’s eyes. And Ronon says “Fine.” and throws his pack into John’s tent.

John and Ronon sleep back to back, and occasionally wake one another up with nightmares. John comes back from more than one overnight trip with a black eye. Ronon feels helpless when John cries in his sleep.

Teyla sleeps on Rodney’s shoulder, but wakes up whenever he starts talking in his sleep. Rodney wakes up each time the baby kicks, and each time Teyla gets up to pee. In the mornings, they’re both tired and irritable.

Ronon brews tea for Teyla, and Rodney has a set of gloves for Ronon. Jennifer packed them. John sits by the fire and longs for the time before things changed. Knows they won’t be home in time for him to see Torren. Misses nights in Rodney’s bed, warm weight pressing him into the bed, greedy, clever fingers engineering pleasure out of skin and touch.

They endure, as you do, in one galaxy or the next.

Until the grey scree hillside on P7C-5K4 gives way and Ronon lands in the infirmary with a broken leg. Rodney won’t leave his side, yells at Jennifer until she cries and Ronon yells at him. Jennifer keeps Ronon overnight, and when John stops in Rodney is asleep in the chair beside Ronon’s bed. John loses three backgammon games to Ronon before Jennifer shoos him out. She doesn’t say anything to Ronon, but the look they exchange seems to John to communicate more than he’s ever heard said in words between Jennifer and Rodney.

So things change again. At home in Atlantis Ronon sleeps with his walking stick leaning against Jennifer’s bed. She sleeps curled half on top of him, careful of the cast.

Teyla sleeps with Kanaan, the new baby resting between them, Torren in his own room in the large set of rooms they’ve moved into in the south tower. In the morning, Torren will wake up and pad in bare feet across the common room. The dining table is still covered in Wraith drive specs and wine glasses. The couch has a football tucked into one corner and his mother’s weaving loom in the other. With a careful child’s knock he will wait at the door (“Knock. You…. God just… please Torren, please KNOCK in the mornings”) until he’s invited into the uncles’ room, where Rodney sleeps with his face smashed into the pillows, and John greets him with a quirked smile.

Later there will be cheerios with John and stretches with his momma, and someone else will hold the baby so he can sit on her lap. Rodney and Kanaan will pick up the threads of their argument about the third subspace drive, and John will run over to meet Ronon.

.




Date: 2009-02-28 06:59 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Such a sad, sad story... I liked seeing this sequel though, even if it is heartbreaking. Then again, real life is like that: convenience rather than romance, making do rather than preference and sometimes stories need to reflect that.

Your writing is very good and I hope to see more of it.

Date: 2009-03-01 02:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Thank you!

Date: 2009-02-28 07:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fanficfan.livejournal.com
Not a sad story at all to me, unlike the previous comment by someone, but one about weathering discomforts in change and adapting succesfully to change--a positive one about romantic love integrated into friendship/family community, and nicely done.

Date: 2009-03-01 02:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Thank you very much - that's where the story went for me... that the relationships weren't static, but they stuck together anyway, and found new ways of being together.

Date: 2009-02-28 07:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] chaps1870.livejournal.com
I love that they found something that works and they each have what they need. Lovely story.

Date: 2009-03-01 02:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Thank you.

Date: 2009-03-01 02:28 am (UTC)

Date: 2009-02-28 09:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beadattitude.livejournal.com
Oh sweetheart. Thank you for making it feel *right* instead of *sweet,* if that makes sense. Oh, John about broke my heart with the crying in his sleep. :;rubs chest:;

Thank you SO MUCH.

Date: 2009-03-01 02:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
*hugs you* I'm so glad you liked it, I was a bit nervous 'cause it went to such a sad place. Because John. He was just MISERABLE.

Date: 2009-02-28 10:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sweeneybird.livejournal.com
I love this because it's about grownups.

Date: 2009-03-01 02:29 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Oh wow. Thank you. I have a deep and abiding fondness for stories about grownups - so I'm thrilled to hear it hit that chord for you.

Date: 2009-02-28 10:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] enviropony.livejournal.com
That's really cool. John and Rodney get what they want from family - kids to hug, people to hold, trust, talk to and to argue with - and they get each other, too.

Nice touch with Kanaan and the drive specs, and the fact that he apparently hasn't (yet) killed Rodney arguing over them. Makes him more of a 3-D character. I would really like somebody to flesh him out as a real person, rather than just Teyla's tag-along sperm donor that she likes a lot. I want to know why she fell in love with him, damn it! :-p

Date: 2009-03-01 02:34 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Oh, I'm so glad you liked the bits about Kanaan. Thanks for reading!

Date: 2009-02-28 10:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] carolyn-claire.livejournal.com
Oh, ow! This one after the other, what a contrast, but what a good one. Things change, and people fuck up, and they don't always end as well as this did. It's a really perfect continuation of the other.

Date: 2009-03-01 02:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Thanks so much... I think you read them in quick succession? So I'm glad to hear they worked together.

Date: 2009-03-01 03:57 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stillwaters11.livejournal.com
I like this, how they all move in and out of each other's orbits, settling in when it's right and comfortable. Lucky Torren, to have such a unique and loving family.

Date: 2009-03-02 03:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Thanks for reading. Moving in and out of orbit is a wonderful way to describe them.

Date: 2009-03-01 04:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ezazahaz.livejournal.com
Aww... Sadder than the first, but still ends warm and cozy. Lovely.

Date: 2009-03-02 03:04 am (UTC)

Date: 2009-03-01 05:37 am (UTC)
kisahawklin: Sharpened pencil writing 'kisa' (Default)
From: [personal profile] kisahawklin
Mmm, yes. More complex, but so them. I really like the resolution. I like that they worked it out, even if it was a bit of a long way round (I love that they didn't just get it all right right away, that they had to come to it, like real people do).

Date: 2009-03-02 03:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Oh thank you. Just like real people is marvelous praise!

Date: 2009-03-01 09:45 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wanted-a-pony.livejournal.com
Gorgeous. I love your spare descriptions! Just, ... each a polished perfect gem, chiming as they fall one by one, bouncing to form a mosaic of their lives while the viewer still hears the echo of each landing, intertwined in a melody of past-present-history-future.

Gods this is painful, & then hopeful, & always loving & so human. Thanks so much for sharing this!

Date: 2009-03-02 12:02 am (UTC)
ext_1771: Joe Flanigan looking A-Dorable. (Default)
From: [identity profile] monanotlisa.livejournal.com
I second every word of this review (lame as that, this seconding, is). ♥

Date: 2009-03-02 12:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Hee! I fully empathize with that - sometimes I'm trying to leave a review and someone upthread has said exactly what I mean. Only better.

Thank you so much for reading!

Date: 2009-03-02 12:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
*faints away with happiness*

Thank you so much!

Date: 2009-03-02 05:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] accidentalfan.livejournal.com
Heart-aching and real, and very well done. I like how you show how imperfect and a little broken everyone is, and how they all make do and hang on until things shift again.

Date: 2009-03-02 05:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beachlass.livejournal.com
Aw, thank you! Sometimes enduring is the only thing, eh?
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