Rodney/Teyla fic for Siria
Feb. 12th, 2008 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneI'm not really here, okay? Or maybe I'm a ghost. Yes, let's go with that. Am very scary ghost. *haunts LJ*
Title: Two Honeymoons
Pairing: Rodney/Teyla
Spoilers: None
Length: 1,600 words
Summary, kind of: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
siriaeve. Not as fluffy as I'd have liked, and in fact there is vomiting, rain, suggestions of malaria, rope burn, and sharks. I spread cheer wherever I go, yessir.
TWO HONEYMOONS
EARTH
Teyla got sick on the plane. "There goes my one shot at the Mile High Club," Rodney muttered to himself, helping to hold Teyla steady as she retched into the tiny lavatory at the back of the aircraft, the flight attendant outside smiling rigidly as she ushered their fellow passengers away. He waited for Teyla to turn and glare at him, or roll her eyes in that subtle way she used to think he didn't notice (because it used to be, he didn't)—waited for her to do anything besides look ill, and worse, embarrassed. Then he realized that she didn't know what the Mile High Club was.
Things were better as soon as they were back on solid ground. Rodney enveloped them both in a thick cloud of bug spray—he wasn't going to travel the galaxy only to come back home to Earth and get malaria on his honeymoon in Polynesia—and Teyla, having gratefully had some time to herself in the much larger airport bathroom, sat looking far less peaky and much more refreshed, staring out the window of their cab while Rodney checked through their travel documents, passports (his: real; Teyla's: fake), and hotel reservation information for approximately the seventeenth time. It wasn't until after they'd checked in and were being escorted to their private bungalow that they realized what they'd inadvertently done.
Months and months had gone into the selection of this particular destination. Despite Rodney's initial attempts to feign indifference toward the whole honeymoon concept (it was kind of girly; relaxation was not something he did well), Teyla's apparently entirely genuine lack of need for any kind of symbolic trip had sparked a desire in him to give her one. On a brief sojourn to SGC, he'd downloaded a bunch of digital brochures, as well as roped Jeannie into sending him a packet of the old fashioned kind, a task she taken to with such thorough intensity that Rodney suspected he'd still be receiving glossy pamphlets with his monthly care package when (he wouldn't think if) he reached the age of fifty. After an initial hesitance, Teyla had agreed to go over them with him, and they'd spent many enjoyable nights laughing at some of the more ridiculous amenities offered as part of attempts to lure prospective guests, or arguing pleasantly about certain destinations (Rodney vetoed the working cattle ranch in Montana), or mounting imaginative trial runs to see if, say, sex in a hammock would really be their thing. (The rope burn was definitely a minus, but neither could fault some extra swing.)
At the time, the choice of Le Méridien Bora Bora had seemed perfectly innocent—the result of process of elimination, really. The exhaustive array of options had come to seem rather dizzying, actually, to the point where gradually Rodney began to sense that Teyla might be becoming annoyed. At first, he couldn't think why—her heart really couldn't have been set on that cattle ranch, could it?—but slowly (genius that he was) it dawned on him. He'd wanted to show her Earth, but instead he was showing off, shoving it in her face: this rich, ignorant little planet that most of the time, barely felt like his.
So, "How about this one?" he said, "It has a buffet," and Teyla had smiled and kissed him and not-so-accidentally pushed all of Jeannie's brochures off the bed.
Which explained Bora Bora. It did not, however, explain what exactly had prompted him—prompted them—to choose a hotel where their suite stood on stilts, surrounded on all sides by a clean, azure ocean. There was even a glass floor, so they could see the water glittering beneath their feet, watch it let in green and blue and silver light to drift though the canopy above their bed.
"It's Atlantis," said Rodney flatly, as the bellhop set their baggage down.
The bellhop smiled broadly (although that may have had more to do with the rather ridiculously large tip Rodney was absently shoving in his direction). "Thank you, sir. We'll think you'll find that Le Méridien Bora Bora does indeed bring all the qualities of a mythical island paradise to life."
It was a testament to Teyla's diplomatic skill that she waited until the bellhop was several feet down the walkway before she started laughing.
"It's not funny!" said Rodney. There were more brochures on the little desk, recommending that during their stay, they take advantage of activities such as jet skiing or shark feeding. Shark feeding? Honestly. "I wanted to—I wanted to show you—"
"A vacation," she said, pronouncing the word like it was something mystical and exotic, which for them it was. "Every day we travel through the gate to some strange, new place, Rodney. It will be nice to be somewhere safe, that still reminds us of home."
She smoothed down the collar of his brightly colored shirt, her graceful hands rubbing out wrinkles with a soft, smooth touch.
"All right," Rodney said finally. "But there will be absolutely no feeding of sharks!"
Teyla shook her head and grinned. Grinning, she pulled herself up onto the vast, white bed. The sun, reflecting off the water beneath their feet, drifted through the canopy and threw golden patterns on her face.
"I do not want to do anything," she said, "until you tell me all about this 'Mile High Club.'" She raised an eyebrow, and a leg. "I believe it requires some flexibility?"
The waves lapped gently as Rodney clambered up and pulled the curtain.
ATHOS
There was a large part of Teyla that did not want to go back. It would hurt, she knew, to see it this way: still ravaged, still scarred; the earth scorched and unlivable. Still alive, with so many memories.
But Rodney had never seen it. She wanted him to see.
He groused, of course. About the camping equipment, about the possible personal safety issues, about the rain. The rainy season is a time of renewal, she explained. The Ancestors bless the earth.
You do not really believe that, he told her, and she waited, one beat, two, until he rolled his eyes, sighed, Okay, fine. She smiled, then; she didn't want to have to bring up his insistence on (sheer manic delight in) Christmas presents once again, though it was always amusing to watch him squirm.
She held her breath as they passed through the gate—an old bad habit, resurfacing after many years spent broken and gone. It was both as bad as she thought it would be, on the other side, and as good; nowhere else did the air smell quite this way. She breathed deeply, then turned and was pleased to see that Rodney was doing the same—or at the very least sniffing with his explorer's nose. She imagined him deciding that he could root out danger, or Ancient technology, purely by scent. And so once again Teyla stood on Athos and smiled.
Rodney wanted to investigate the ruins, of course, which he had no doubt heard about from John, so many years ago. But Teyla had other plans, and because she had made sure that she would be the one to carry the pack with the food, he followed. She led him up into the hills, past the lake still dark and stained with oil, past a clearing of ashes at which Teyla tried not to look, and through a heavy cluster of trees where the pattering of rain became ever more distant and remittent. Teyla found the sound soothing—much like Rodney's litany of questions, especially as it evolved. "Where are we going?" and "Are we there yet?" eventually became, "What is the annual rainfall here, anyway?" and "Please don't misinterpret this as a sudden interest in botany, but what kind of tree is that?" And "So did you used to do this a lot, run around in the woods getting wet? Is this where you learned all your stealth forest moves?" And: "Is it weird to be back?"
She paused. "Yes, Rodney."
He scrunched up his face. "Weird-good or weird-bad? No, never mind. You don't have to answer that. I can't even tell how I feel when I go home, and it's not like the Wraith— I mean, it's Canada, it's processed cheese and shopping malls and bad weather, just like it's always been, so there's not a, a sense of, uh—"
"Rodney." She touched his arm, waited for him to still. "Shh."
They'd come to a small clearing, a little patch of grass and rocks overlooking the once-fertile valley below. Teyla looked out. There was a faint, grey mist rolling in over the water, and if you squinted or tilted your head, you could almost pretend it was a just a damp, grey day; a day of blessing as the Ancestors prepared to gift the earth with healing, life-giving rain.
"I used to come up here," she said. "As a girl."
"To survey your domain?"
This was not an entirely inaccurate guess, but Teyla chose to share with him the more honest answer. "When I wanted to be alone."
She could hear him shuffling behind her. "Do you, ah...do you want to be? I mean, I could, uh..."
"No." She caught his hand without turning around; held it. "No."
The rain came down, softly. Teyla knew that if she turned, she'd see it sticking in Rodney's eyelashes, teasing the edge of his nose. His hand around hers was large and warm. She opened her mouth, tilted her head back and let the rain run in rivulets down her cheeks.
"It is," Rodney said after a while. "It still is, you know. Beautiful."
"Mmm," said Teyla. "Yes, I know."
Though what she really thought was, One day, it may be so again.
She hoped their children lived to see it.
Title: Two Honeymoons
Pairing: Rodney/Teyla
Spoilers: None
Length: 1,600 words
Summary, kind of: For
siriaeve. Not as fluffy as I'd have liked, and in fact there is vomiting, rain, suggestions of malaria, rope burn, and sharks. I spread cheer wherever I go, yessir.TWO HONEYMOONS
EARTH
Teyla got sick on the plane. "There goes my one shot at the Mile High Club," Rodney muttered to himself, helping to hold Teyla steady as she retched into the tiny lavatory at the back of the aircraft, the flight attendant outside smiling rigidly as she ushered their fellow passengers away. He waited for Teyla to turn and glare at him, or roll her eyes in that subtle way she used to think he didn't notice (because it used to be, he didn't)—waited for her to do anything besides look ill, and worse, embarrassed. Then he realized that she didn't know what the Mile High Club was.
Things were better as soon as they were back on solid ground. Rodney enveloped them both in a thick cloud of bug spray—he wasn't going to travel the galaxy only to come back home to Earth and get malaria on his honeymoon in Polynesia—and Teyla, having gratefully had some time to herself in the much larger airport bathroom, sat looking far less peaky and much more refreshed, staring out the window of their cab while Rodney checked through their travel documents, passports (his: real; Teyla's: fake), and hotel reservation information for approximately the seventeenth time. It wasn't until after they'd checked in and were being escorted to their private bungalow that they realized what they'd inadvertently done.
Months and months had gone into the selection of this particular destination. Despite Rodney's initial attempts to feign indifference toward the whole honeymoon concept (it was kind of girly; relaxation was not something he did well), Teyla's apparently entirely genuine lack of need for any kind of symbolic trip had sparked a desire in him to give her one. On a brief sojourn to SGC, he'd downloaded a bunch of digital brochures, as well as roped Jeannie into sending him a packet of the old fashioned kind, a task she taken to with such thorough intensity that Rodney suspected he'd still be receiving glossy pamphlets with his monthly care package when (he wouldn't think if) he reached the age of fifty. After an initial hesitance, Teyla had agreed to go over them with him, and they'd spent many enjoyable nights laughing at some of the more ridiculous amenities offered as part of attempts to lure prospective guests, or arguing pleasantly about certain destinations (Rodney vetoed the working cattle ranch in Montana), or mounting imaginative trial runs to see if, say, sex in a hammock would really be their thing. (The rope burn was definitely a minus, but neither could fault some extra swing.)
At the time, the choice of Le Méridien Bora Bora had seemed perfectly innocent—the result of process of elimination, really. The exhaustive array of options had come to seem rather dizzying, actually, to the point where gradually Rodney began to sense that Teyla might be becoming annoyed. At first, he couldn't think why—her heart really couldn't have been set on that cattle ranch, could it?—but slowly (genius that he was) it dawned on him. He'd wanted to show her Earth, but instead he was showing off, shoving it in her face: this rich, ignorant little planet that most of the time, barely felt like his.
So, "How about this one?" he said, "It has a buffet," and Teyla had smiled and kissed him and not-so-accidentally pushed all of Jeannie's brochures off the bed.
Which explained Bora Bora. It did not, however, explain what exactly had prompted him—prompted them—to choose a hotel where their suite stood on stilts, surrounded on all sides by a clean, azure ocean. There was even a glass floor, so they could see the water glittering beneath their feet, watch it let in green and blue and silver light to drift though the canopy above their bed.
"It's Atlantis," said Rodney flatly, as the bellhop set their baggage down.
The bellhop smiled broadly (although that may have had more to do with the rather ridiculously large tip Rodney was absently shoving in his direction). "Thank you, sir. We'll think you'll find that Le Méridien Bora Bora does indeed bring all the qualities of a mythical island paradise to life."
It was a testament to Teyla's diplomatic skill that she waited until the bellhop was several feet down the walkway before she started laughing.
"It's not funny!" said Rodney. There were more brochures on the little desk, recommending that during their stay, they take advantage of activities such as jet skiing or shark feeding. Shark feeding? Honestly. "I wanted to—I wanted to show you—"
"A vacation," she said, pronouncing the word like it was something mystical and exotic, which for them it was. "Every day we travel through the gate to some strange, new place, Rodney. It will be nice to be somewhere safe, that still reminds us of home."
She smoothed down the collar of his brightly colored shirt, her graceful hands rubbing out wrinkles with a soft, smooth touch.
"All right," Rodney said finally. "But there will be absolutely no feeding of sharks!"
Teyla shook her head and grinned. Grinning, she pulled herself up onto the vast, white bed. The sun, reflecting off the water beneath their feet, drifted through the canopy and threw golden patterns on her face.
"I do not want to do anything," she said, "until you tell me all about this 'Mile High Club.'" She raised an eyebrow, and a leg. "I believe it requires some flexibility?"
The waves lapped gently as Rodney clambered up and pulled the curtain.
ATHOS
There was a large part of Teyla that did not want to go back. It would hurt, she knew, to see it this way: still ravaged, still scarred; the earth scorched and unlivable. Still alive, with so many memories.
But Rodney had never seen it. She wanted him to see.
He groused, of course. About the camping equipment, about the possible personal safety issues, about the rain. The rainy season is a time of renewal, she explained. The Ancestors bless the earth.
You do not really believe that, he told her, and she waited, one beat, two, until he rolled his eyes, sighed, Okay, fine. She smiled, then; she didn't want to have to bring up his insistence on (sheer manic delight in) Christmas presents once again, though it was always amusing to watch him squirm.
She held her breath as they passed through the gate—an old bad habit, resurfacing after many years spent broken and gone. It was both as bad as she thought it would be, on the other side, and as good; nowhere else did the air smell quite this way. She breathed deeply, then turned and was pleased to see that Rodney was doing the same—or at the very least sniffing with his explorer's nose. She imagined him deciding that he could root out danger, or Ancient technology, purely by scent. And so once again Teyla stood on Athos and smiled.
Rodney wanted to investigate the ruins, of course, which he had no doubt heard about from John, so many years ago. But Teyla had other plans, and because she had made sure that she would be the one to carry the pack with the food, he followed. She led him up into the hills, past the lake still dark and stained with oil, past a clearing of ashes at which Teyla tried not to look, and through a heavy cluster of trees where the pattering of rain became ever more distant and remittent. Teyla found the sound soothing—much like Rodney's litany of questions, especially as it evolved. "Where are we going?" and "Are we there yet?" eventually became, "What is the annual rainfall here, anyway?" and "Please don't misinterpret this as a sudden interest in botany, but what kind of tree is that?" And "So did you used to do this a lot, run around in the woods getting wet? Is this where you learned all your stealth forest moves?" And: "Is it weird to be back?"
She paused. "Yes, Rodney."
He scrunched up his face. "Weird-good or weird-bad? No, never mind. You don't have to answer that. I can't even tell how I feel when I go home, and it's not like the Wraith— I mean, it's Canada, it's processed cheese and shopping malls and bad weather, just like it's always been, so there's not a, a sense of, uh—"
"Rodney." She touched his arm, waited for him to still. "Shh."
They'd come to a small clearing, a little patch of grass and rocks overlooking the once-fertile valley below. Teyla looked out. There was a faint, grey mist rolling in over the water, and if you squinted or tilted your head, you could almost pretend it was a just a damp, grey day; a day of blessing as the Ancestors prepared to gift the earth with healing, life-giving rain.
"I used to come up here," she said. "As a girl."
"To survey your domain?"
This was not an entirely inaccurate guess, but Teyla chose to share with him the more honest answer. "When I wanted to be alone."
She could hear him shuffling behind her. "Do you, ah...do you want to be? I mean, I could, uh..."
"No." She caught his hand without turning around; held it. "No."
The rain came down, softly. Teyla knew that if she turned, she'd see it sticking in Rodney's eyelashes, teasing the edge of his nose. His hand around hers was large and warm. She opened her mouth, tilted her head back and let the rain run in rivulets down her cheeks.
"It is," Rodney said after a while. "It still is, you know. Beautiful."
"Mmm," said Teyla. "Yes, I know."
Though what she really thought was, One day, it may be so again.
She hoped their children lived to see it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 07:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 07:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 08:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 08:35 am (UTC)I adore this so much: Rodney wanting to show her where he comes from, but wanting to do it in a way that makes her happy, and Teyla showing him Athos and how it gives her hope and, and *insert incoherent keyboard mash here* This has cheered me up so, so much. ♥ ♥ ♥
I miss you. ♥
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 08:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 08:42 am (UTC)(Rodney/Teyla would so be my Sekrit SGA pairing if I could only like a bit more.)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 09:20 am (UTC)This is so lovely. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 09:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 10:25 am (UTC)(Welcome back?) :D
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 11:55 am (UTC)and this is fantastic :) i love me some rodney/teyla and it is awesome.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 05:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 05:38 pm (UTC)Crazy work scheduel? Don't let it get you down; I'm in crunch mode myself. It will pass.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 05:39 pm (UTC)*smishes you*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 05:50 pm (UTC)Missed you!
Two Honeymoons - story
Date: 2008-02-13 06:47 pm (UTC)Love, max
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-13 11:17 pm (UTC)(Hi! Hi! Hi!)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-02-14 04:15 am (UTC)I've missed you! And you come bearing gifts (even if they're not directly for me), aren't you the wonderful ghost? Feel free to haunt LJ (or me) anytime.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-01 04:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-05 05:27 am (UTC)At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I'd really like to read your Surfacing zine story if you'll be posting it.
Thanks!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-03-19 09:06 pm (UTC)*flaily!*