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kathierif_ficPart 1
Part 2
Silence.
John Sheppard wakes up to silence in his mind. Soft beeping fills the air around him, the hum of engines a steady background noise.
Someone is sitting next to his bed and is typing furiously, and without opening his eyes, John knows who it is, and a grin starts to form on his face.
“Rodney,” he croaks and turns toward the sound. His voice sounds as if he hasn’t used it in five years, croaking and gravelly, as if there is a pound of broken glass in his throat, ripping it open and leaving it raw. “What happened?”
The typing stops. A chair is being pulled closer.
“You crashed Atlantis,” Rodney says uncomfortably. “And then, you apparently spent the last five years as idiot savant slave in the Pegasus galaxy.”
He finally musters the strength to open his eyes. The lights are dim, but they still stab him in the eyes like a sharp knife, and tears blur his vision almost immediately.
Rodney, when he can finally focus on him on him, looks just like John remembers him, and yet, at the same time, startingly different. He’s thinner, and he has less hair than John remembers, and he’s dressed in civilian clothes.
“Yeah, I hoped that was a nightmare,” he mutters softly. “Where are we, anyways?” He decides to ignore the idiot savant slave thing for now, and struggles to sit up. “Daedalus?”
“No,” Rodney answers and pushes a pillow behind his back, “this is the Columbia, the newest ship in the Earth fleet.”
He looks up when soft steps come closer and smiles a crooked smile. Jennifer Keller returns the smile and touches his shoulder briefly before turning toward John.
“Colonel, how are you feeling?”
For a split second, John feels lost, and he understand why Laura insisted on not being called by her rank when they found her, but then, he shrugs. “Pretty good, I think,” he answers carefully. “What about the others?” He swallows. “Ronon and Teyla?”
“Everybody’s fine,” Rodney says. “Oh, hey, did you know Teyla’s pregnant again? She said if it’s a boy, she’ll definitely call him after me.”
“Rodney,” Jennifer interrupts gently. “Why don’t you let Teyla and Ronon know that the Colonel is awake?”
Rodney nods hastily and stands. “Yeah, I’ll do that,” he says, but he hesitates briefly before actually leaving. “It’s good to have you back, Sheppard.”
John smirks, just because he doesn’t know what to answer, and Rodney hurries off.
“Idiot savant slave, huh?” he asks Jennifer when he’s gone, and she blushes.
“Yeah, pretty much. Jeannie made him spend time with Madison, and since he couldn’t say no to her, he spent part of the past five years raising his niece. And cracking the reprogramming code. Jeannie was a really big help there, but Rodney did most of it.”
She squeezes John’s hand briefly and ten wanders off, to let him get some rest.
~*+*~
The next few weeks go by in a blur. Everybody wants to congratulate him for his return from the apparent dead and mindless, and he barely has a minute for himself. It is decided that he’ll return to Earth with them, and all John can think is that his uniform is unfamiliar and chafing against his skin.
Ronon and Teyla choose to stay in Pegasus galaxy, with their family and their peoples, and John feels numb when he says good-bye to them while carefully keeping his distance, to avoid accidental touches. Teyla’s eyes are sad, and Ronon looks anywhere but at John. It makes him uncomfortable, and part of him just wants to kneel down and assure Ronon that he wasn’t forced to anything and that he even liked being Ronon’s and Teyla’s slave.
He doesn’t.
He blames the reprogramming – after all, Rodney is still acting like a lovesick puppy when he’s around Jennifer, fulfilling every wish she might have, without hesitating.
He’ll be fine, he tells himself firmly, once he’s back on Earth – now that Atlantis is irrevocably lost, Earth is apparently the only home he has left, at least if he believes the things he’s told.
They still don’t know exactly what happened, why Atlantis suddenly reprogrammed all the ATA-gene-carriers, but they know it’s the reason why the city crashed, why John crashed the city.
It’s not his fault, but he still feels responsible and guilty, especially when Ronon and Teyla give them their collection of dog tags they kept for the past five years – all the members of the expedition who are lost somewhere in the Pegasus galaxy, and nobody knows if they are still alive and where they are.
He wants to promise that he’ll be back of them, that he won’t leave them behind, but he can’t.
Instead, he stays silent and lets Ronon and Teyla walk away, back to their lives, while he is the one staying behind this time, and he feels more helpless than he had all the years he’s spent as a slave.
~*+*~
It’s springtime on Satos, the first bright green leaves start to unfold on the trees, and the Athosian farmers are starting their work on their fields. They are thin after the long and hard winter, but they look healthy enough, and some are even smiling and singing while they work.
The Satedans guard the Stargate, but they let him pass without a moment of hesitation.
They know him, know who he is.
They know he’s no danger to them.
He wanders slowly along the path – it’s not a street yet, but wooden planks mark it and protect the travelers’ boots from the worst of the mud – and he feels how he slowly relaxes.
He thought he didn’t have a real home since Atlantis has been destroyed, but right now, he realizes that he might have been wrong there.
His home is in the Pegasus galaxy.
His family lives in the Pegasus galaxy.
He just hopes they take him back – or, in the first place, that they are well and have gotten over the winter without problems.
Almost subconsciously, he quickens his steps, equally scared and impatient to reach the house where he’s spent the past five years of his life.
Torren is the first to see him, and he greets John with a loud cry before wrapping his thin arms firmly around John’s hips. Melena follows her big brother and clings to John’s arm, and for the first time in almost a year, John laughs as he stands there, two children hanging off of him, and then, Teyla is there.
John expects her to touch her forehead against his, but the years of living with Ronon and with the Lanteans seem to have influenced her a little, because she catches him by surprise when she wraps her strong, sinewy arm around him and pulls him in a one-armed hug. The other arm holds the baby – “Malin Rodney Dex,” she introduces, and he’s a feisty little boy, healthy and with a downward twist of his mouth that looks almost painfully familiar.
“Ronon is inside,” she tells him after he lets her go and she lets him go. “Do you want to go in?”
He nods and wipes suddenly clammy palms on his pants.
“How….” His voice breaks. “How is he?”
“He has been missing you very much,” Teyla says quietly. “As have I.”
John feels his throat close up, and he swallows against the tightness.
“Well, I’m back now,” he says, trying to sound light and cool, and “If that’s okay for you.”
“Oh John.” For the second time, he has his arms full of Teyla and her strong body pressed tight against his, tight enough that he can feel her body heat and the firm softness of her breasts through their clothes. “You are most welcome in our home.”
He hugs her awkwardly, and then he turns and ducks into the house, because he doesn’t want Teyla to see him blush and because he really wants to see the big guy now, and he knows that he won’t be able to work up the courage to do so if he waits for much longer.
Ronon is sitting at the table. He cut off his dreads, John thinks, surprise making his entire body jolt. Ronon looks younger like this, not like the battle-hardened warrior he is, but…softer.
Ronon straightens and looks at John, a disbelieving frown on his face, and suddenly, all the doubts and fears in John settle as he realizes exactly what he wants to do.
He steps closer while taking in every detail of Ronon’s face – the narrowed eyes, the twitching muscle in his jaw, the ink of his tattoos – and when Ronon turns to face him, without getting up, John falls to his knees in front of him and reaches for Ronon’s pants.
“John.” Ronon’s voice is soft, a choked murmur of disbelief, and John smiles up at him and bends down, to take Ronon’s soft dick into his mouth and start to suck him, drawing from five and more years of experience to get Ronon hard.
He knows he’s successful when Ronon exhales shakily and his palm settles, warm and broad and confident, in the hair at the back of John’s skull, not to push him, but to guide him if he needs it. However, today John doesn’t want guidance. He knows exactly what to do, how to lick and slurp and kiss his way down the hard shaft and lick over Ronon’s balls before coming up again, one hand wrapped around the base and one teasing Ronon’s balls with confident fingers, while his lips close around the tip and taste salty fluid.
“John,” Ronon murmurs, and John slips down, taking in more of Ronon’s erection, and hums appreciatively, acknowledging that he has heard Ronon, but letting him know that he has no intention to stop what he is doing.
He has a job to do.
He grins around his mouthful and slides his hand a few times up and down, to keep Ronon interested while he plots what he wants to do, now that he has Ronon where he wants him, now that he is exactly where he wants to be.
“John,” Ronon grunts, and when John doesn’t stop, “Sheppard.”
John pulls off with a wet sound and raises his eyebrows questioningly. For a long moment, Ronon just stares at him with dark, hooded eyes, and then, he wraps his hands in John’s hair and pulls him up, into an open-mouthed, wet kiss.
“Bed,” he half-orders, half-asks, and John nods wordlessly and lets Ronon haul him back to his feet.
They stumble and tumble into the little bedchamber, holding each other up with their hands fisted into shirts and clutching at scarred skin. John is nudged by Ronon’s big hands until he is sprawled across the bed and his pants and underwear are tangled around his knees and his shirt is somewhere around his armpits.
Ronon ducks down and licks a wet, hot stripe across John’s stomach. John laughs, a startled huff of breath, and stretches his fingers out, to tap them against Ronon’s thigh.
“Come on, move,” he urges. “I wasn’t finished with that yet.”
Ronon groans against John’s hipbone, but he moves, shifting and twisting around until his knees are bracketing John’s skull and his erection is hanging right above John’s mouth, allowing him to study the dark underside of it closely.
He wraps his mouth around it again, trying to figure out how to deal with the different angle. For a moment, he feels as if he’s choking, as if Ronon’s thick length is suffocating him, and he presses his head backward, into the pillow, and wraps his hand firmly around Ronon’s dick, to keep some kind of control. He knows what to do, how to do it, has done this for more than five years. The only difference is that now, he is thinking, like he did before his brain got overwritten by an Ancient, malfunctioning program that accidentally got triggered. He’s thinking about Teyla, about Rodney; he even thinks about what Ronon might be thinking. It’s as if him talking has broken the mood and his determination and has allowed his insecurity and doubts to come back.
Ronon’s mouth pulls away from John’s dick, as if Ronon knows what’s going on in John’s head, and he presses a kiss to the crease between John’s groin and thigh before he turns around again, to look at John’s face.
“Good to have you back, Sheppard,” he says, his voice rough with emotions. A million things flit over his face, things unsaid and yet understood, and John swallows.
“Good to be back,” he answers and tries to reach for Ronon’s dick again.
Ronon chuckles and bends down to kiss John briefly, with closed lips. The taste of himself on Ronon’s tongue is something that used to bother John, before, on Atlantis, when they didn’t have more than a few stolen and carefully hidden away moments between them, but five years in the mind-frame of a slave took care of that, and Ronon knows that, too.
John frowns slightly when Ronon pulls back.
“Hey,” he says and runs his hands across Ronon’s chest. “I didn’t just forget the last five years and everything that happened.”
The words sound awkward, but John doesn’t know how else he can put it. He wants to belong to Ronon’s family again, he realizes, wants to be part of it, misses the feeling of being protected by both Ronon and Teyla. It’s like a blow to his stomach, this realization, and he lowers his eyes before Ronon can read the desperation and the truth in them.
“Wasn’t sure,” Ronon admits. His thumb brushes absent-mindedly against the inside of John’s knee.
John shrugs. “I remember everything,” he says and lets his hands fall into his lap, covering his softening dick.
Ronon is silent.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a long moment, and his voice sounds as wrecked and scratchy as John feels on the inside.
“Yeah,” he replies, because what else is there to say? He never wanted this either, the five years in slavery, the loss of Atlantis and his memories, but on the other hand, he can’t exactly say that he regrets ending up like this, with Teyla and with Ronon.
With people who cherish him and love him even when he doesn’t remember them. People who go the extra-mile for him because they care for him, even if he doesn’t remember why.
“I don’t regret spending the last five years like this,” he says, when the silence around them becomes oppressive. He waves a hand distractedly between Ronon and himself. “I had a good…”
A good what? Life? Family? Master? He doesn’t know what he wants to say and just trails off with a little, embarrassed shrug.
Ronon’s thumb is still stroking his knee, and John’s lips twitch into a fond smile.
“I care for you,” he blurts out, the words Ronon has explained to him, so many years ago, mean so much more than I love you to Satedans. He has wanted to say the words for five years and hadn’t been able to, and now, he finally can say them, and he doesn’t know how he can make Ronon understand that he means them.
Ronon stills for a moment. “Yeah,” he answers softly. “I care for you, too, Sheppard.” He smiles. “Want you. Always wanted you.”
John nods shakily. “Me too,” he answers and wraps his hand around Ronon’s wrist. “You could’ve had me,” he adds. “You had me.”
Ronon’s hand slides up John’s thigh. It’s warm and comfortable and sends a little shiver of anticipation through John.
“Not like this,” Ronon says and looks down, to where his hand is resting against John’s skin, high on his thigh.
“You could’ve,” John repeats softly, but Ronon shakes his head.
“No,” he says firmly. “You never said I could.”
“I would,” John says. “I wanted you, too.”
Ronon smiles at him sadly. “You couldn’t,” he points out, a tinge of sadness coloring his voice. “Not then.”
“But now I can,” John insists. Ronon’s pulse is strong under his fingertips, a quick flutter under his skin, and John tightens his grip on Ronon’s wrist, willing him to understand everything he doesn’t know how to put in words.
“You can,” Ronon agrees slowly. “But do you still want to?”
There is only one answer for John, he knows that without a doubt, but still, he needs a moment to get his mouth to work.
“I do,” he says finally, his voice low and gravelly, but firm. “Maybe not today, but I do.”
Ronon nods and grins, and John finds himself grinning back. There is still a lot they need to talk about, but for now, he thinks, they reached an agreement, the way they’ve always managed to do. It makes his chest ache, but in a good way, a way that tells him everything is okay and he will not be left behind.
He leans closer, his hand travelling up from Ronon’s wrist until he can tangle it in the soft hair at the back of Ronon’s skull, and he pulls Ronon into a kiss. He feels Ronon’s hand in his own hair, and he pulls away from their kiss to spread out on his stomach and take Ronon’s dick back into his mouth.
Neither of them is hard anymore, but it doesn’t matter. John has learned a lot about Ronon in the past five years, and it doesn’t take him long to get him back to hardness, and this time, he doesn’t let himself get distracted from his task. He falls into the motion of pleasuring Ronon with his lips and tongue, concentrates fully on Ronon, just the way he’s done it these past years. When Ronon comes, slick and hot down John’s throat, he has only a short moment to wipe a hand over his mouth before Ronon flips him over and takes John’s cock in his mouth, returning the favor. John’s eyes slip closed, but he still notices when Ronon slips a couple of fingers in his mouth, alongside John’s dick, and wets them, and he groans when the first spit-slicked finger rubs behind his balls and further down, around the opening to his body.
He comes when Ronon slips the finger deep inside him, a loud groan on his lips and his hips twitching, muscles trembling and finally relaxing. Ronon kisses his stomach and up to his chest, raking his fingers through graying chest hair and finally, he reaches John’s mouth, to cover it with his own.
Their tastes mingle, and John smiles.
~*+*~
They take their time getting up and getting their clothes straightened out, and getting back to the rest of the family. They are almost out of the door when Ronon asks, “You staying?”
John takes a deep breath and slowly releases it.
“The SGC has decided to keep a small outpost in Pegasus,” he says. “So, yeah, if you want to, you know, be allies and stuff…”
He doesn’t get any further than that before Ronon sweeps him into a tight hug, both arms wrapped firmly around John’s body, lifting him off his feet and against Ronon’s chest.
“Gotta ask the leader of the Athosian people what she thinks about it,” Ronon murmurs, close to John’s ear, and John laughs weakly and wraps an arm around Ronon’s shoulders.
“You do that,” he replies. “The Columbia will be here in about a week. Until then, we should’ve figured something out.”
“Yeah,” Ronon murmurs, both arms still wrapped around John.
Both arms.
It’s not a problem, though. John has his hand on his gun, ready to shoot anyone who’s a threat to them.
To his team.
His family.
“Welcome home,” Ronon murmurs into his ear, and John feels the last of the tension falling off his body.
He is, finally, home.
~end.
Part 2
Silence.
John Sheppard wakes up to silence in his mind. Soft beeping fills the air around him, the hum of engines a steady background noise.
Someone is sitting next to his bed and is typing furiously, and without opening his eyes, John knows who it is, and a grin starts to form on his face.
“Rodney,” he croaks and turns toward the sound. His voice sounds as if he hasn’t used it in five years, croaking and gravelly, as if there is a pound of broken glass in his throat, ripping it open and leaving it raw. “What happened?”
The typing stops. A chair is being pulled closer.
“You crashed Atlantis,” Rodney says uncomfortably. “And then, you apparently spent the last five years as idiot savant slave in the Pegasus galaxy.”
He finally musters the strength to open his eyes. The lights are dim, but they still stab him in the eyes like a sharp knife, and tears blur his vision almost immediately.
Rodney, when he can finally focus on him on him, looks just like John remembers him, and yet, at the same time, startingly different. He’s thinner, and he has less hair than John remembers, and he’s dressed in civilian clothes.
“Yeah, I hoped that was a nightmare,” he mutters softly. “Where are we, anyways?” He decides to ignore the idiot savant slave thing for now, and struggles to sit up. “Daedalus?”
“No,” Rodney answers and pushes a pillow behind his back, “this is the Columbia, the newest ship in the Earth fleet.”
He looks up when soft steps come closer and smiles a crooked smile. Jennifer Keller returns the smile and touches his shoulder briefly before turning toward John.
“Colonel, how are you feeling?”
For a split second, John feels lost, and he understand why Laura insisted on not being called by her rank when they found her, but then, he shrugs. “Pretty good, I think,” he answers carefully. “What about the others?” He swallows. “Ronon and Teyla?”
“Everybody’s fine,” Rodney says. “Oh, hey, did you know Teyla’s pregnant again? She said if it’s a boy, she’ll definitely call him after me.”
“Rodney,” Jennifer interrupts gently. “Why don’t you let Teyla and Ronon know that the Colonel is awake?”
Rodney nods hastily and stands. “Yeah, I’ll do that,” he says, but he hesitates briefly before actually leaving. “It’s good to have you back, Sheppard.”
John smirks, just because he doesn’t know what to answer, and Rodney hurries off.
“Idiot savant slave, huh?” he asks Jennifer when he’s gone, and she blushes.
“Yeah, pretty much. Jeannie made him spend time with Madison, and since he couldn’t say no to her, he spent part of the past five years raising his niece. And cracking the reprogramming code. Jeannie was a really big help there, but Rodney did most of it.”
She squeezes John’s hand briefly and ten wanders off, to let him get some rest.
~*+*~
The next few weeks go by in a blur. Everybody wants to congratulate him for his return from the apparent dead and mindless, and he barely has a minute for himself. It is decided that he’ll return to Earth with them, and all John can think is that his uniform is unfamiliar and chafing against his skin.
Ronon and Teyla choose to stay in Pegasus galaxy, with their family and their peoples, and John feels numb when he says good-bye to them while carefully keeping his distance, to avoid accidental touches. Teyla’s eyes are sad, and Ronon looks anywhere but at John. It makes him uncomfortable, and part of him just wants to kneel down and assure Ronon that he wasn’t forced to anything and that he even liked being Ronon’s and Teyla’s slave.
He doesn’t.
He blames the reprogramming – after all, Rodney is still acting like a lovesick puppy when he’s around Jennifer, fulfilling every wish she might have, without hesitating.
He’ll be fine, he tells himself firmly, once he’s back on Earth – now that Atlantis is irrevocably lost, Earth is apparently the only home he has left, at least if he believes the things he’s told.
They still don’t know exactly what happened, why Atlantis suddenly reprogrammed all the ATA-gene-carriers, but they know it’s the reason why the city crashed, why John crashed the city.
It’s not his fault, but he still feels responsible and guilty, especially when Ronon and Teyla give them their collection of dog tags they kept for the past five years – all the members of the expedition who are lost somewhere in the Pegasus galaxy, and nobody knows if they are still alive and where they are.
He wants to promise that he’ll be back of them, that he won’t leave them behind, but he can’t.
Instead, he stays silent and lets Ronon and Teyla walk away, back to their lives, while he is the one staying behind this time, and he feels more helpless than he had all the years he’s spent as a slave.
~*+*~
It’s springtime on Satos, the first bright green leaves start to unfold on the trees, and the Athosian farmers are starting their work on their fields. They are thin after the long and hard winter, but they look healthy enough, and some are even smiling and singing while they work.
The Satedans guard the Stargate, but they let him pass without a moment of hesitation.
They know him, know who he is.
They know he’s no danger to them.
He wanders slowly along the path – it’s not a street yet, but wooden planks mark it and protect the travelers’ boots from the worst of the mud – and he feels how he slowly relaxes.
He thought he didn’t have a real home since Atlantis has been destroyed, but right now, he realizes that he might have been wrong there.
His home is in the Pegasus galaxy.
His family lives in the Pegasus galaxy.
He just hopes they take him back – or, in the first place, that they are well and have gotten over the winter without problems.
Almost subconsciously, he quickens his steps, equally scared and impatient to reach the house where he’s spent the past five years of his life.
Torren is the first to see him, and he greets John with a loud cry before wrapping his thin arms firmly around John’s hips. Melena follows her big brother and clings to John’s arm, and for the first time in almost a year, John laughs as he stands there, two children hanging off of him, and then, Teyla is there.
John expects her to touch her forehead against his, but the years of living with Ronon and with the Lanteans seem to have influenced her a little, because she catches him by surprise when she wraps her strong, sinewy arm around him and pulls him in a one-armed hug. The other arm holds the baby – “Malin Rodney Dex,” she introduces, and he’s a feisty little boy, healthy and with a downward twist of his mouth that looks almost painfully familiar.
“Ronon is inside,” she tells him after he lets her go and she lets him go. “Do you want to go in?”
He nods and wipes suddenly clammy palms on his pants.
“How….” His voice breaks. “How is he?”
“He has been missing you very much,” Teyla says quietly. “As have I.”
John feels his throat close up, and he swallows against the tightness.
“Well, I’m back now,” he says, trying to sound light and cool, and “If that’s okay for you.”
“Oh John.” For the second time, he has his arms full of Teyla and her strong body pressed tight against his, tight enough that he can feel her body heat and the firm softness of her breasts through their clothes. “You are most welcome in our home.”
He hugs her awkwardly, and then he turns and ducks into the house, because he doesn’t want Teyla to see him blush and because he really wants to see the big guy now, and he knows that he won’t be able to work up the courage to do so if he waits for much longer.
Ronon is sitting at the table. He cut off his dreads, John thinks, surprise making his entire body jolt. Ronon looks younger like this, not like the battle-hardened warrior he is, but…softer.
Ronon straightens and looks at John, a disbelieving frown on his face, and suddenly, all the doubts and fears in John settle as he realizes exactly what he wants to do.
He steps closer while taking in every detail of Ronon’s face – the narrowed eyes, the twitching muscle in his jaw, the ink of his tattoos – and when Ronon turns to face him, without getting up, John falls to his knees in front of him and reaches for Ronon’s pants.
“John.” Ronon’s voice is soft, a choked murmur of disbelief, and John smiles up at him and bends down, to take Ronon’s soft dick into his mouth and start to suck him, drawing from five and more years of experience to get Ronon hard.
He knows he’s successful when Ronon exhales shakily and his palm settles, warm and broad and confident, in the hair at the back of John’s skull, not to push him, but to guide him if he needs it. However, today John doesn’t want guidance. He knows exactly what to do, how to lick and slurp and kiss his way down the hard shaft and lick over Ronon’s balls before coming up again, one hand wrapped around the base and one teasing Ronon’s balls with confident fingers, while his lips close around the tip and taste salty fluid.
“John,” Ronon murmurs, and John slips down, taking in more of Ronon’s erection, and hums appreciatively, acknowledging that he has heard Ronon, but letting him know that he has no intention to stop what he is doing.
He has a job to do.
He grins around his mouthful and slides his hand a few times up and down, to keep Ronon interested while he plots what he wants to do, now that he has Ronon where he wants him, now that he is exactly where he wants to be.
“John,” Ronon grunts, and when John doesn’t stop, “Sheppard.”
John pulls off with a wet sound and raises his eyebrows questioningly. For a long moment, Ronon just stares at him with dark, hooded eyes, and then, he wraps his hands in John’s hair and pulls him up, into an open-mouthed, wet kiss.
“Bed,” he half-orders, half-asks, and John nods wordlessly and lets Ronon haul him back to his feet.
They stumble and tumble into the little bedchamber, holding each other up with their hands fisted into shirts and clutching at scarred skin. John is nudged by Ronon’s big hands until he is sprawled across the bed and his pants and underwear are tangled around his knees and his shirt is somewhere around his armpits.
Ronon ducks down and licks a wet, hot stripe across John’s stomach. John laughs, a startled huff of breath, and stretches his fingers out, to tap them against Ronon’s thigh.
“Come on, move,” he urges. “I wasn’t finished with that yet.”
Ronon groans against John’s hipbone, but he moves, shifting and twisting around until his knees are bracketing John’s skull and his erection is hanging right above John’s mouth, allowing him to study the dark underside of it closely.
He wraps his mouth around it again, trying to figure out how to deal with the different angle. For a moment, he feels as if he’s choking, as if Ronon’s thick length is suffocating him, and he presses his head backward, into the pillow, and wraps his hand firmly around Ronon’s dick, to keep some kind of control. He knows what to do, how to do it, has done this for more than five years. The only difference is that now, he is thinking, like he did before his brain got overwritten by an Ancient, malfunctioning program that accidentally got triggered. He’s thinking about Teyla, about Rodney; he even thinks about what Ronon might be thinking. It’s as if him talking has broken the mood and his determination and has allowed his insecurity and doubts to come back.
Ronon’s mouth pulls away from John’s dick, as if Ronon knows what’s going on in John’s head, and he presses a kiss to the crease between John’s groin and thigh before he turns around again, to look at John’s face.
“Good to have you back, Sheppard,” he says, his voice rough with emotions. A million things flit over his face, things unsaid and yet understood, and John swallows.
“Good to be back,” he answers and tries to reach for Ronon’s dick again.
Ronon chuckles and bends down to kiss John briefly, with closed lips. The taste of himself on Ronon’s tongue is something that used to bother John, before, on Atlantis, when they didn’t have more than a few stolen and carefully hidden away moments between them, but five years in the mind-frame of a slave took care of that, and Ronon knows that, too.
John frowns slightly when Ronon pulls back.
“Hey,” he says and runs his hands across Ronon’s chest. “I didn’t just forget the last five years and everything that happened.”
The words sound awkward, but John doesn’t know how else he can put it. He wants to belong to Ronon’s family again, he realizes, wants to be part of it, misses the feeling of being protected by both Ronon and Teyla. It’s like a blow to his stomach, this realization, and he lowers his eyes before Ronon can read the desperation and the truth in them.
“Wasn’t sure,” Ronon admits. His thumb brushes absent-mindedly against the inside of John’s knee.
John shrugs. “I remember everything,” he says and lets his hands fall into his lap, covering his softening dick.
Ronon is silent.
“I’m sorry,” he says after a long moment, and his voice sounds as wrecked and scratchy as John feels on the inside.
“Yeah,” he replies, because what else is there to say? He never wanted this either, the five years in slavery, the loss of Atlantis and his memories, but on the other hand, he can’t exactly say that he regrets ending up like this, with Teyla and with Ronon.
With people who cherish him and love him even when he doesn’t remember them. People who go the extra-mile for him because they care for him, even if he doesn’t remember why.
“I don’t regret spending the last five years like this,” he says, when the silence around them becomes oppressive. He waves a hand distractedly between Ronon and himself. “I had a good…”
A good what? Life? Family? Master? He doesn’t know what he wants to say and just trails off with a little, embarrassed shrug.
Ronon’s thumb is still stroking his knee, and John’s lips twitch into a fond smile.
“I care for you,” he blurts out, the words Ronon has explained to him, so many years ago, mean so much more than I love you to Satedans. He has wanted to say the words for five years and hadn’t been able to, and now, he finally can say them, and he doesn’t know how he can make Ronon understand that he means them.
Ronon stills for a moment. “Yeah,” he answers softly. “I care for you, too, Sheppard.” He smiles. “Want you. Always wanted you.”
John nods shakily. “Me too,” he answers and wraps his hand around Ronon’s wrist. “You could’ve had me,” he adds. “You had me.”
Ronon’s hand slides up John’s thigh. It’s warm and comfortable and sends a little shiver of anticipation through John.
“Not like this,” Ronon says and looks down, to where his hand is resting against John’s skin, high on his thigh.
“You could’ve,” John repeats softly, but Ronon shakes his head.
“No,” he says firmly. “You never said I could.”
“I would,” John says. “I wanted you, too.”
Ronon smiles at him sadly. “You couldn’t,” he points out, a tinge of sadness coloring his voice. “Not then.”
“But now I can,” John insists. Ronon’s pulse is strong under his fingertips, a quick flutter under his skin, and John tightens his grip on Ronon’s wrist, willing him to understand everything he doesn’t know how to put in words.
“You can,” Ronon agrees slowly. “But do you still want to?”
There is only one answer for John, he knows that without a doubt, but still, he needs a moment to get his mouth to work.
“I do,” he says finally, his voice low and gravelly, but firm. “Maybe not today, but I do.”
Ronon nods and grins, and John finds himself grinning back. There is still a lot they need to talk about, but for now, he thinks, they reached an agreement, the way they’ve always managed to do. It makes his chest ache, but in a good way, a way that tells him everything is okay and he will not be left behind.
He leans closer, his hand travelling up from Ronon’s wrist until he can tangle it in the soft hair at the back of Ronon’s skull, and he pulls Ronon into a kiss. He feels Ronon’s hand in his own hair, and he pulls away from their kiss to spread out on his stomach and take Ronon’s dick back into his mouth.
Neither of them is hard anymore, but it doesn’t matter. John has learned a lot about Ronon in the past five years, and it doesn’t take him long to get him back to hardness, and this time, he doesn’t let himself get distracted from his task. He falls into the motion of pleasuring Ronon with his lips and tongue, concentrates fully on Ronon, just the way he’s done it these past years. When Ronon comes, slick and hot down John’s throat, he has only a short moment to wipe a hand over his mouth before Ronon flips him over and takes John’s cock in his mouth, returning the favor. John’s eyes slip closed, but he still notices when Ronon slips a couple of fingers in his mouth, alongside John’s dick, and wets them, and he groans when the first spit-slicked finger rubs behind his balls and further down, around the opening to his body.
He comes when Ronon slips the finger deep inside him, a loud groan on his lips and his hips twitching, muscles trembling and finally relaxing. Ronon kisses his stomach and up to his chest, raking his fingers through graying chest hair and finally, he reaches John’s mouth, to cover it with his own.
Their tastes mingle, and John smiles.
~*+*~
They take their time getting up and getting their clothes straightened out, and getting back to the rest of the family. They are almost out of the door when Ronon asks, “You staying?”
John takes a deep breath and slowly releases it.
“The SGC has decided to keep a small outpost in Pegasus,” he says. “So, yeah, if you want to, you know, be allies and stuff…”
He doesn’t get any further than that before Ronon sweeps him into a tight hug, both arms wrapped firmly around John’s body, lifting him off his feet and against Ronon’s chest.
“Gotta ask the leader of the Athosian people what she thinks about it,” Ronon murmurs, close to John’s ear, and John laughs weakly and wraps an arm around Ronon’s shoulders.
“You do that,” he replies. “The Columbia will be here in about a week. Until then, we should’ve figured something out.”
“Yeah,” Ronon murmurs, both arms still wrapped around John.
Both arms.
It’s not a problem, though. John has his hand on his gun, ready to shoot anyone who’s a threat to them.
To his team.
His family.
“Welcome home,” Ronon murmurs into his ear, and John feels the last of the tension falling off his body.
He is, finally, home.
~end.