If At First You Don’t Succeed: Chapter 10
Feb. 25th, 2024 12:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stringertheoryTitle: If At First You Don’t Succeed
Rating: R
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard
Word Count: 5613
Categories: action, drama, angst, hurt/comfort, team as family
Spoilers: none
Warnings: graphic violence and injuries; temporary character death
Summary: In a far corner of the galaxy, Ronon watches Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay die over and over again. And he follows them, over and over again.
He’s the only one who can remember, the only one who can save them—if he can figure out how.
Time isn’t running out, but that might be the problem.
Weir put them on indefinite stand down the day after their return.
Sheppard didn’t so much as twitch at the order, but he did balk at the lack of an end date.
“Why indefinite?” he asked, not angrily, but with clear confusion. “I mean, nothing actually happened to us. I don’t see why a week wouldn’t be enough time off.”
Ronon could feel when Sheppard’s gaze moved to him, knew he was looking for Ronon to back him up as he usually did when they were put on stand down. But the truth was, as much as Ronon felt like he was coming out of his skin, he didn’t actually want to leave the city again. Not for a while yet. But he didn’t know how to explain that to Sheppard—or any of the others—without it leading into conversations he didn’t want to have. For them, nothing had happened. Ronon was okay with keeping it that way for as long as he could.
So he avoided Sheppard’s gaze, and instead caught the way Weir’s eyes flicked in his direction before she responded.
“We’ve never encountered this particular technology before,” she diplomatically replied. “I just want to make sure there isn’t any kind of delayed reaction from your exposure.”
McKay scoffed then, crossing his arms over his chest. “Carson’s already cleared us,” he pointed out. “Not a single cell out of order, he said.”
“Residual effects don’t always show up right away, Rodney,” Weir countered, exasperation wearing through her composure. “It’s just a precaution.”
“Yeah, but indefinite?” Sheppard all but whined.
Weir only gave him a flat stare. “Should be plenty of time for you to catch up on all your paperwork. Your very late paperwork,” she emphasized, a wry smile curling at the corner of her mouth as she pushed back from the briefing room table and stood, signaling the argument—and their debriefing—was finished.
Sheppard looked abashed at the pointed reminder. The smug look McKay sent his way was instantly wiped from his face when Weir added, “You, too, Rodney.”
“I doubt I’ll need an indefinite period for that,” he mumbled in response, but didn’t push it any further.
And that was that. Sheppard and McKay diligently, if somewhat begrudgingly, set themselves to the task of their deeply neglected administrative duties. Teyla took time to visit the Athosians and busy herself with various projects around the city: teaching, training, all the things she got up to when they weren’t on missions.
And Ronon was left to fight his ghosts.
He went to see Heightmeyer, under Weir’s gentle but firm orders. He said all the things he was supposed to mostly because he wasn’t sure what else to say. There was too much inside him that he couldn’t voice yet, so he gave Heightmeyer what she wanted without giving her anything at all. Looking into her open, encouraging face, he knew that she knew he was lying, and that she was letting him get away with it. For now.
So he told her truths without substance while he tried to sort himself out on his own, knowing eventually he’d have to come clean and wondering if he’d survive it when he did.
He tried not to think about what had happened, even though the shadows of it followed him wherever he went.
Mostly, the city didn’t remind him of the facility. There were too many windows in Atlantis, too much sunlight and sea air and space for it to remind him of the underground tunnels and the death traps they’d contained. For all the Ancients’ adherence to a singular architectural aesthetic—McKay had definitely been right that they’d had very specific, unwavering tastes—Atlantis and the facility were two distinct spaces in Ronon’s mind. They felt different and that made it easier to forget the similarities.
Except the doors.
Early on after their return, Ronon discovered that if he was lost in thought when he approached a doorway, sometimes his mind forgot where he was and he reacted on reflex rather than reality, memories driving his actions in ways that, to the outside observer, would make no sense.
The first time it happened, it was the door to his own quarters. One second he was walking back from the mess, the next his back was slamming against the hallway wall, the entryway to his room gaping open across from him. It had never felt like a foreboding sight before, but now, with his heart racing and adrenaline like fire in his veins, Ronon’s body was telling him different.
Still braced against the wall, he took a few deep breaths to calm himself, staring into the shadows where he knew—he knew—only his familiar quarters awaited. Then he steeled himself and strode through the doorway. The sound of the door swishing closed behind him caused his slowly steadying heart rate to kick up a few notches again, and he understood what had happened.
The sound had triggered a reflexive response in him that hadn’t been there before. Even though there was nothing behind the doors of Atlantis for him to fear—mostly—his body still remembered the dangers of the facility. He wasn’t there anymore, but he wasn’t free from it yet, either.
For a while he was able to avoid having any door incidents in public. Or to at least mask his reaction well enough that the most attention it received was a wary side-eye. But finally something occurred that forced him to face the problem head on.
It was Ronon’s fault. By that point he knew better than to walk around the city with his mind wandering. But while headed to the gym one day, he forgot to pay attention to his surroundings. So when his subconscious recognized a door opening to his left, his body reacted on instinct. Ronon barely had time to register that his blaster was in his hand before his eyes focused in on the young man frozen at the barrel end of it.
He was a lab tech—Ronon had seen him around the city a few times before, though they’d never actually met. And now he was staring down the length of Ronon’s gun, eyes wide and terrified as stuttering apologies fell from his lips. Behind him, just visible through the open door, Ronon could see others peering out into the hall, wondering what was going on.
Embarrassed and shaken, Ronon quickly lowered his gun, his fingers trembling around the grip. He stumbled over an apology, then turned and fled. Inside, the residuals of the nameless fear that had risen in him at the sound of the door opening warred with the horrified guilt he felt at what might have happened if he had been just a little more out of it.
He knew the young man wouldn’t have been able to tell anything more than that there’d been a gun pointed at his face, but Ronon knew how close he’d come to firing, how tight his finger had been on the trigger before he’d pulled it and himself back from that edge.
After that, he stopped carrying his blaster around the city. He’d slipped back into the habit after they’d returned from the facility, needing the comforting weight of the gun against his thigh. But if he couldn’t even trust himself around damned doors, he couldn’t trust himself with the gun.
So he left it safely behind in his quarters and found himself a moderately busy corridor and settled himself in a quiet alcove. And he sat, and he waited, and he listened.
Despite what most people would probably think, if they thought about it at all, the doors in Atlantis didn’t all sound the same. Nor did they sound like the ones in the facility. There were subtle differences, nuances to the tones and pitch that set the Atlantis doors apart from the facility ones.
It might have been that different materials had been used in the construction of the two buildings, or different manufacturing methods, or different door mechanisms. Or maybe it was simply that time and usage had created differences in the sounds. Whatever the case, there were differences, and Ronon listened until he had them memorized, committed to his subconscious like muscle memory.
He spent a few days sitting in various spots around the city and, ignoring the odd looks thrown his way, focused just on the sounds. Fairly quickly, he felt he had a good grasp on the difference between what the facility doors had sounded like and what the Atlantis ones did. But he kept listening until he knew all the variances of the city ones, until he could tell by sound alone the difference between single and double doors, between doors in living spaces and those in the labs.
And he listened for the other differences as well, the sounds behind the doors that told of a city full of life, not of an empty, echoing facility full of death. As doors opened in Atlantis, Ronon could pick out the faint clacking of keyboards, or the soft murmur of voices, or the gentle rustle of clothing. All additional signs that he was in the city, not the facility, and that he wasn’t in danger.
The time he spent studying the doors offered a brief reprieve from the sense of helplessness that had been nipping at Ronon’s heels ever since the team had returned to the city. He’d nearly drowned in the feeling back on the facility planet, fighting and failing to keep them all alive, and it had followed him home to stalk his every move.
So he fought it the only ways he knew how, hoping that eventually they would work.
He ran all over the city, ran like he was running from something again. He had to move, had to do something physical and mindless and draining to shut his brain up. But he stopped venturing into the damaged, off-limit parts of the city, with their darkened, damp corridors and wouldn’t let himself think about why.
He spent a lot of time at the firing range, taking his frustrations out on enough targets that the supervising Marine eventually started rationing him. Either out of fear of Ronon’s retaliation for the measure, or sympathy for his sufferings, the man offered to help Ronon order a set of targets for his own personal use as part of the next supply delivery, if that was something Ronon wanted.
Irritated that shooting things wasn’t helping as much as he’d anticipated anyway, Ronon declined. But after dealing with two days of target rations, he regretted it and filled out the requisition form anyway. He knew Sheppard would see it, would have to approve it, but didn’t think he’d even blink at the request. Sheppard knew how much the targets cost, and how many Ronon had been going through. He might not suspect the reasons behind the numbers—though Ronon thought he might—but he’d approve the request regardless.
In the meantime, Ronon turned to his best bet for relief: sparring.
Even with his notoriety as a formidable fighter, Ronon was pleased to find that he rarely lacked for opponents. While he couldn’t say that he’d found his match yet—Teyla notwithstanding—there were more than enough capable fighters in Sheppard’s military contingent (and even among the civilians) to fulfill his needs. And whatever the Terrans might lack in skill, they made up for it with sheer crazy, which Ronon respected.
So Ronon found some willing volunteers and went to the mat to ease his mind. And it helped, for a while. Right up until it didn’t.
The corporal, Kepper, was younger than Ronon. While he hadn’t been in the city for long, he and Ronon had already fought a few times before. He was shorter than Ronon, but nearly as fast, and as such their match consisted more of blocking and dodging than it did actual blows. Not that Ronon minded much; he could always resort to just beating on the bags in the gym if that was what he was looking for. But it was the mental workout of having an opponent that he needed, and he was satisfied with what he was getting from Kepper.
But then something went wrong.
Ronon threw a blind hook that should have been blocked, should have been dodged, but wasn’t. Whether he had been too aggressive or whether Kepper had been too lax, the end result was the same. Ronon’s fist made direct contact with Kepper’s ribs, the staccato pops of them snapping clear even over the jeering of the small crowd that had gathered to watch the fight.
Ronon felt the ribs crack beneath his knuckles and froze, his mind immediately dropping him back under the weight of a collapsed ceiling and the memory of Teyla’s body giving way under his.
Then Kepper fell to one knee, one arm curling protectively around his torso, and the movement jerked Ronon back into the present. But he simply stared down at Kepper in blank disbelief, hand still clenched in a fist and heart in his throat.
Despite his reputation, Ronon never went into a sparring match looking to do serious damage. A bloody nose, or a few stitches in a split eyebrow now and then? Sure. But nothing serious. Injuries—both giving them and receiving—were a risk you took with sparring, one everyone accepted when they stepped into the circle.
And any other time, it wouldn’t have bothered Ronon so much. But he could still hear the sound of Kepper’s ribs breaking.
The spectators had started to disperse when Kepper went down, and Ronon watched numbly as a few of Kepper’s friends made their way over and helped him to his feet. Keeping one arm around himself, Kepper used the other to pat Ronon on the shoulder, mumbling, “No hard feelings,” with a small grin. As his friends steered him out the door and toward the infirmary, Ronon even heard him make a joke about getting some R&R out of the ordeal, if he managed to survive Sheppard reprimanding him for getting injured in the first place.
Then the room was quiet and Ronon was left alone, cold and sick and pinned to the spot.
Heart racing, chest aching, he blindly stumbled his way back to his quarters and locked himself inside. He sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands until it no longer felt like he was coming unraveled.
Knowing Teyla was on New Athos, he ignored the almost frantic need he had to see her, to get tangible proof that she was okay and that all the things clouding his mind were just memories. Instead, he hauled himself to his feet, stalked from his room, and went for a long run. But the need to check on her just followed him through the city’s corridors.
It wasn’t the first time he’d felt that way. Numerous times since the team had returned he’d been tempted to seek out one or more of the others for reassurance of their safety. Despite knowing they were okay, knowing that they had to be, he didn’t always feel it with that same certainty. The most random things would remind him of what had happened during the loops, triggering memories and feelings he struggled to control. Little things like the sound of running water or the smell of mold were all it took for him to suddenly, desperately need to check on the others.
But he never did. In truth, he avoided them.
He didn’t do it intentionally, not that he really needed to. Sheppard’s and McKay’s administrative backlogs, and Teyla’s duties on New Athos and in Atlantis, kept them all busy enough that Ronon wouldn’t have seen much of them anyway.
For a few days, he essentially had the city to himself, with no worries about getting cornered by any of them. And even after Sheppard and McKay blazed through their paperwork in record time—erroneously believing that would be enough to convince Weir to put them back on duty—it was easy enough for Ronon to keep himself occupied and unavailable, without it seeming suspicious. So that’s what he did.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see the others. He did, sometimes more than he wanted anything else in the universe. But he knew that they would want to talk about what had happened, and he wasn’t ready.
Sometimes, when he went places where he fully expected them to be, like the mess, and they weren’t there, he wondered if maybe they understood that and were avoiding him a bit, too, giving him the time and space he needed.
Oddly, he actually felt torn between wanting to keep them in his sights at all times and staying away from them entirely, between knowing exactly what they were doing and having no part in it at all. He didn’t understand why he felt that way, but he also didn’t have the energy or the desire to figure it out, so he just stuck to staying on his own.
Most of the time.
During the day, when he knew the others would be busy and would rarely be alone, it was easy to stay away from them. He knew they were fine then, or would at least have others around to help if something happened, so he didn’t need to be there, watching over them himself. They were alive, they were in Atlantis, and they were fine.
But at night, once they retreated to their own quarters, it was different.
At night Atlantis felt more like the facility, the darkened, lamp-lit hallways more closely matching the stone corridors Ronon still scrambled through in his nightmares. In the dark it was so much harder to believe that any of them were truly safe, even inside the city.
So, restless and anxious, Ronon prowled the shadowy halls.
The first few nights after they returned from the facility, that was all he did. He stalked noiselessly down the corridors, drifting from one teammate’s room to the next, pausing to listen at their doors for any sounds of distress. He would complete the circuit over and over again until just before sunrise, then retreat back to his own room for a few hours of fitful sleep, another day of everyone being kept alive.
But all too soon, that wasn’t enough. Because while he could catch noises coming from McKay’s room—faint snores, usually, sometimes the sound of him turning over—Sheppard and Teyla were always silent. And Ronon couldn’t take silence as safety. Not anymore.
So one night he began sneaking into their rooms.
He started with McKay, knowing his would be the easiest room to enter. McKay slept like the dead once he was under, and even if Ronon weren’t adept at moving silently, he doubted he would wake McKay with his movements. The sound of the door swishing open—a well-known tune, now—seemed unusually loud in the otherwise quiet hall, but Ronon swiftly ducked inside and let it close again behind him before he could second-guess himself. He swept McKay’s room with a searching look, not expecting anything to be out of place but needing to check all the same. Then he took up a spot not far from the door and studied McKay’s sleeping form.
As he had expected, McKay was dead to the world. He was half on his side facing the door, arms and legs thrown out to his sides and his mouth hanging open slightly. Ronon felt his heart clench and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, knocked sideways by the memory of that mouth filled with water.
But here and now, right in front of him, McKay took a breath caught somewhere between a snore and a grumble, and Ronon took his own slightly shaky breath in return.
McKay’s brow was faintly furrowed, as if he were working on a complex problem in his sleep. Ronon had seen that expression on a sleeping McKay before, and wasn’t surprised when McKay mumbled a bit and then rolled further onto his side, nestling deeper into the pillow under his head. After a few moments his face cleared and his breathing steadied again. Ronon watched him for a minute or so more, then stepped back out into the hall.
More relieved than he had any right to be—or cared to admit—Ronon headed for Sheppard’s room next. He hesitated outside the door, knowing there was a risk Sheppard would wake up as soon as it opened. But Ronon could feel himself growing more and more tense the longer he waited and knew that, regardless of the outcome, he had to see for himself that Sheppard was okay.
Opening the door and holding his breath, Ronon slipped inside Sheppard’s room. As the door slid closed behind him, his eyes adjusted to the shadows and he picked out Sheppard where he was lying flat on his back on the bed. Ronon ran his gaze around the room, a quick perimeter check, then returned it to Sheppard. He was breathing steadily and evenly, his face relaxed and body still, one arm bent up with the hand tucked beneath his head, the other draped across his middle. Ronon took a long, slow breath, feeling his own body relax a bit at the evidence that Sheppard was fine and sleeping soundly.
At least Sheppard gave no indication that he was aware of Ronon’s presence, so Ronon took that as proof he was asleep. For all he knew Sheppard could be faking it, though Ronon couldn’t think of any reason why he would. Even so, Ronon watched Sheppard closely for the next few minutes for any signs that he was actually awake before finally slipping back out into the hall.
Halfway to Teyla’s quarters, Ronon started feeling a little ridiculous. What was he doing, sneaking into his teammates’ rooms in the middle of the night? They were sleeping, he should be sleeping, this was stupid.
But he also couldn’t bring himself to stop or turn around, and his feet led him unerringly toward Teyla’s door. And he couldn’t deny that he did actually feel better having seen with his own eyes that McKay and Sheppard were safe, however absurd it was for him to have been worried about them in the first place.
Maybe his behavior wasn’t rational, but neither were his feelings. Eventually he’d get over this. He got over everything. But until then, he was going to do what he had to do. And if that meant being a little overprotective at night, then fine.
He half expected Teyla to sense him coming. She had a way of doing that, of knowing what others were thinking or planning even before they did, especially if it was something that had been building in them for a while.
But when he eased into her room, she was still asleep. At least as far as he could tell. She was on her side with her back to the door, and Ronon didn’t want to risk walking around the bed to see her face. But he could tell that she was breathing, could see the shallow rise and fall of the blankets draped over her middle, and that was enough for him. He leaned against the wall by the door and watched her breathe, feeling his own pulse slow in response.
She was fine. They were all fine. This was fine.
All through that first night Ronon completed the same rounds that he had before—McKay, Sheppard, Teyla—just with longer stops. He slept with sunrise and spent the rest of the day helping distribute the latest batch of deliveries from the Daedalus before conducting a training session for some of the newer military recruits to the city. Then, once night fell, he was back in the hallways.
He made it through three more nights of unplanned visitations before Sheppard caught him.
Each time he’d successfully made it into one of the others’ rooms without waking them, Ronon had grown more confident. He’d let himself stay longer, growing less and less worried that his mere presence might be enough to draw the others out of their sleep. Instead of hovering by the door, ready to duck back into the hall at a moment’s notice, he lingered.
He was in Sheppard’s room, sitting in a chair near the window and looking out at the stars, when Sheppard woke up.
“Ronon?”
The voice was rough with sleep and laced with confusion. Ronon went tense, his head snapping around and his eyes locking with Sheppard’s. Sheppard sat up and dragged a hand over his face.
“What’s going on?” Something shifted, Sheppard suddenly seeming more alert. He pivoted to throw his legs over the side of the mattress, coming to sit on its edge. “Is something wrong?”
Startled and more than a little ashamed at getting caught, Ronon quickly blurted out a terse, “No.” But when Sheppard’s expression morphed from worried to assessing, he realized he probably should have lied, should have made up some issue he’d needed Sheppard for. Any excuse for why he was sitting in the corner of Sheppard’s room in the middle of the night.
But nothing came to mind, and Ronon’s tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth anyway. He didn’t know what to say and was worried what Sheppard might ask. Sheppard’s searching gaze never left him, and Ronon didn’t think he could bear the burn of it for much longer. He eyed the closed door, calculating his escape route, muscles coiling ready for action. But before he could spring to his feet and literally run away, Sheppard sighed.
The sound was so unexpected it pulled Ronon’s gaze away from the door and back to Sheppard’s face. He was still studying Ronon, and even though his eyes were mere shadows in the dim light, Ronon could see the sympathy in them. It nearly broke him.
Then Sheppard rose to his feet, twisting around to pluck his pillow from the head of the bed, then stripping his blanket, too. Tucking both under his arm, he padded toward the door in bare feet, waving for Ronon to follow him.
“C’mon.”
Confused, and for some indefinable reason feeling like he had no room to argue, Ronon stood and did as he was told. Numbly, he tagged along behind Sheppard as he led them out into the hall and along the familiar path to Teyla’s quarters.
When they arrived, Sheppard opened the door and stepped just inside the room, quietly calling Teyla’s name. She woke almost instantly, lifting herself into a sitting position on the bed and frowning faintly in their direction. Her dark eyes were curious and concerned, and Ronon, standing behind Sheppard in the light of the hallway, internally cursed himself for a fool when her gaze moved over him.
“Grab your pillow,” was all Sheppard said.
Teyla looked at him for the briefest heartbeat before her eyes moved back to Ronon and her expression softened, almost imperceptibly. Then she simply nodded and slid from the bed in one fluid motion, pillow in hand. She paused, then turned back and grabbed another pillow before walking to a nearby chair and pulling a blanket from its back.
Like Sheppard, she didn’t bother with shoes, but walked beside Ronon in bare feet as Sheppard headed toward their final stop. Her shoulder brushed Ronon’s arm as they walked, and though he knew she was doing it on purpose—a gesture meant to be friendly or supportive or understanding, or all that and more—he couldn’t bring himself to look at her, knowing what he might see in her face.
When Sheppard reached McKay’s quarters, he walked right in without pausing at the threshold. He was nearly to the bed by the time he spoke.
“Wake up, McKay.”
In contrast to how difficult McKay usually was to wake up, this time he startled into consciousness immediately, jerking awake and hauling himself upright with a groan.
“What? What is it? What’s going on?” He tone wavered like he was trying to figure out whether he had the most cause to be grumpy or worried, and he blinked at them with a small scowl. His eyes initially focused on Sheppard before he caught the movement of Teyla and Ronon behind him, and he studied them both with narrowed gaze before turning back to Sheppard. “What’re you doing?”
“Sleepover,” Sheppard succinctly replied as he lowered himself to the floor beside McKay’s bed.
Given that pronouncement, McKay chose grumpy and wrinkled his nose at the top of Sheppard’s sleep-tousled head. “What? Why?”
As Sheppard fluffed his pillow, arranging it against McKay’s bed frame, Teyla joined him on the floor. She left a Ronon-sized space between them and, understanding his place, Ronon sank down to sit in it, his back against the side of McKay’s bed, Sheppard on his left, Teyla on his right.
“We have not spent much time together since we were taken off active duty,” Teyla casually replied in answer to McKay, also throwing him a small smile and a pointed look as she slid down into a horizontal position under her blanket. No doubt deliberately, she curled up in such a way that her bent knees pressed against Ronon’s lower leg.
On Ronon’s other side, Sheppard had made it onto his back, his blanket draped haphazardly over his torso, arms and legs sticking out from under its folds. When he breathed, his right shoulder moved against Ronon’s hip, steady as a heartbeat. Lifting his head to give his pillow one more fluff, Sheppard then settled back down and stared up at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling in a silent sigh.
Behind Ronon, he could hear McKay flop back down onto the bed, the motion transferring through the mattress and into his back where he was pressed against it.
“Yeah,” McKay grumbled, rustling around as he tried to get comfortable again, “but couldn’t we have, y’know, planned for it instead of waking me up in the middle of the night?”
Still feeling a bit ashamed—and now more than a little guilty—Ronon rumbled out a quiet, “Sorry.”
All noise and motion from McKay stopped, and Ronon almost wondered if he’d fallen back asleep. But just as he was about to turn his head and check, something soft nudged him between the shoulder blades.
“Here,” came McKay’s voice, tone clipped but not unkind, and Ronon turned to see that the soft thing pushing against him was a pillow.
He blinked at it in bemusement for a second, then looked up to find McKay watching him with a sleepy frown. “What?”
McKay’s frown deepened. “Seriously? I—” He huffed and pushed the pillow against Ronon’s back again. “Sit up,” he commanded.
Finally understanding, Ronon leaned forward and allowed McKay to shove the pillow between his back and the bed. McKay even hauled himself upright again to push it down into the space, his hands brushing against Ronon’s back as he maneuvered the pillow into an acceptable position. Once happy with its placement, he let out a satisfied, “There,” and lowered himself back to his own pillow with a sigh.
Ronon settled back against the pillow, fighting the lump in his throat. For some reason, the small gesture of McKay giving up one of his pillows—the pillows Ronon knew he’d had delivered from Earth, the special pillows he talked about needing for his back (whether that was true or not)—for him to give up one of those pillows for Ronon to rest against, after Ronon had acted like an idiot and woken him and Sheppard and Teyla in the middle of the night—it was a lot.
It shouldn’t have been. There was no reason why Ronon should be sitting on the floor of McKay’s room getting emotional over a damn pillow. But it wasn’t about the pillow. Not really.
Ronon glanced down at Teyla lying beside him, her eyes closed and breathing slow and even. Then he startled slightly at sudden movement just at the edge of his vision. He turned toward it to find McKay’s blanket-covered knees where they had bent toward the edge of the bed just past Ronon’s shoulder. Curious, Ronon turned the other way to find McKay’s head—cushioned on one of those pillows—about the same distance away from his shoulder on that side.
It was if McKay had curled around Ronon, his torso arched around where Ronon leaned against the side of the bed. McKay was still settling into the new position, wriggling slightly as he nestled deeper into the bed, his motions gently jostling Ronon as the bed moved in response. After a few seconds, finally comfortable, McKay let out a satisfied huff, and his face was close enough that Ronon felt the breath brush across his neck.
Without losing McKay from his field of vision, Ronon was able to glance down at Sheppard, who appeared to have fallen asleep. His eyes were closed, too, and his breathing deep and steady. Ronon could still feel Teyla’s knees against his leg, proof of her presence.
His team was there, all there with him all at once, and they were all safe. For the first time since he’d stepped through the Gate on his way to the facility all those long days before, Ronon finally fully relaxed. The effect was so strong and immediate that his head actually dropped back onto the mattress, bouncing a little from the impact.
Within seconds, he drifted into a dreamless sleep.
Rating: R
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard
Word Count: 5613
Categories: action, drama, angst, hurt/comfort, team as family
Spoilers: none
Warnings: graphic violence and injuries; temporary character death
Summary: In a far corner of the galaxy, Ronon watches Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay die over and over again. And he follows them, over and over again.
He’s the only one who can remember, the only one who can save them—if he can figure out how.
Time isn’t running out, but that might be the problem.
Weir put them on indefinite stand down the day after their return.
Sheppard didn’t so much as twitch at the order, but he did balk at the lack of an end date.
“Why indefinite?” he asked, not angrily, but with clear confusion. “I mean, nothing actually happened to us. I don’t see why a week wouldn’t be enough time off.”
Ronon could feel when Sheppard’s gaze moved to him, knew he was looking for Ronon to back him up as he usually did when they were put on stand down. But the truth was, as much as Ronon felt like he was coming out of his skin, he didn’t actually want to leave the city again. Not for a while yet. But he didn’t know how to explain that to Sheppard—or any of the others—without it leading into conversations he didn’t want to have. For them, nothing had happened. Ronon was okay with keeping it that way for as long as he could.
So he avoided Sheppard’s gaze, and instead caught the way Weir’s eyes flicked in his direction before she responded.
“We’ve never encountered this particular technology before,” she diplomatically replied. “I just want to make sure there isn’t any kind of delayed reaction from your exposure.”
McKay scoffed then, crossing his arms over his chest. “Carson’s already cleared us,” he pointed out. “Not a single cell out of order, he said.”
“Residual effects don’t always show up right away, Rodney,” Weir countered, exasperation wearing through her composure. “It’s just a precaution.”
“Yeah, but indefinite?” Sheppard all but whined.
Weir only gave him a flat stare. “Should be plenty of time for you to catch up on all your paperwork. Your very late paperwork,” she emphasized, a wry smile curling at the corner of her mouth as she pushed back from the briefing room table and stood, signaling the argument—and their debriefing—was finished.
Sheppard looked abashed at the pointed reminder. The smug look McKay sent his way was instantly wiped from his face when Weir added, “You, too, Rodney.”
“I doubt I’ll need an indefinite period for that,” he mumbled in response, but didn’t push it any further.
And that was that. Sheppard and McKay diligently, if somewhat begrudgingly, set themselves to the task of their deeply neglected administrative duties. Teyla took time to visit the Athosians and busy herself with various projects around the city: teaching, training, all the things she got up to when they weren’t on missions.
And Ronon was left to fight his ghosts.
He went to see Heightmeyer, under Weir’s gentle but firm orders. He said all the things he was supposed to mostly because he wasn’t sure what else to say. There was too much inside him that he couldn’t voice yet, so he gave Heightmeyer what she wanted without giving her anything at all. Looking into her open, encouraging face, he knew that she knew he was lying, and that she was letting him get away with it. For now.
So he told her truths without substance while he tried to sort himself out on his own, knowing eventually he’d have to come clean and wondering if he’d survive it when he did.
He tried not to think about what had happened, even though the shadows of it followed him wherever he went.
Mostly, the city didn’t remind him of the facility. There were too many windows in Atlantis, too much sunlight and sea air and space for it to remind him of the underground tunnels and the death traps they’d contained. For all the Ancients’ adherence to a singular architectural aesthetic—McKay had definitely been right that they’d had very specific, unwavering tastes—Atlantis and the facility were two distinct spaces in Ronon’s mind. They felt different and that made it easier to forget the similarities.
Except the doors.
Early on after their return, Ronon discovered that if he was lost in thought when he approached a doorway, sometimes his mind forgot where he was and he reacted on reflex rather than reality, memories driving his actions in ways that, to the outside observer, would make no sense.
The first time it happened, it was the door to his own quarters. One second he was walking back from the mess, the next his back was slamming against the hallway wall, the entryway to his room gaping open across from him. It had never felt like a foreboding sight before, but now, with his heart racing and adrenaline like fire in his veins, Ronon’s body was telling him different.
Still braced against the wall, he took a few deep breaths to calm himself, staring into the shadows where he knew—he knew—only his familiar quarters awaited. Then he steeled himself and strode through the doorway. The sound of the door swishing closed behind him caused his slowly steadying heart rate to kick up a few notches again, and he understood what had happened.
The sound had triggered a reflexive response in him that hadn’t been there before. Even though there was nothing behind the doors of Atlantis for him to fear—mostly—his body still remembered the dangers of the facility. He wasn’t there anymore, but he wasn’t free from it yet, either.
For a while he was able to avoid having any door incidents in public. Or to at least mask his reaction well enough that the most attention it received was a wary side-eye. But finally something occurred that forced him to face the problem head on.
It was Ronon’s fault. By that point he knew better than to walk around the city with his mind wandering. But while headed to the gym one day, he forgot to pay attention to his surroundings. So when his subconscious recognized a door opening to his left, his body reacted on instinct. Ronon barely had time to register that his blaster was in his hand before his eyes focused in on the young man frozen at the barrel end of it.
He was a lab tech—Ronon had seen him around the city a few times before, though they’d never actually met. And now he was staring down the length of Ronon’s gun, eyes wide and terrified as stuttering apologies fell from his lips. Behind him, just visible through the open door, Ronon could see others peering out into the hall, wondering what was going on.
Embarrassed and shaken, Ronon quickly lowered his gun, his fingers trembling around the grip. He stumbled over an apology, then turned and fled. Inside, the residuals of the nameless fear that had risen in him at the sound of the door opening warred with the horrified guilt he felt at what might have happened if he had been just a little more out of it.
He knew the young man wouldn’t have been able to tell anything more than that there’d been a gun pointed at his face, but Ronon knew how close he’d come to firing, how tight his finger had been on the trigger before he’d pulled it and himself back from that edge.
After that, he stopped carrying his blaster around the city. He’d slipped back into the habit after they’d returned from the facility, needing the comforting weight of the gun against his thigh. But if he couldn’t even trust himself around damned doors, he couldn’t trust himself with the gun.
So he left it safely behind in his quarters and found himself a moderately busy corridor and settled himself in a quiet alcove. And he sat, and he waited, and he listened.
Despite what most people would probably think, if they thought about it at all, the doors in Atlantis didn’t all sound the same. Nor did they sound like the ones in the facility. There were subtle differences, nuances to the tones and pitch that set the Atlantis doors apart from the facility ones.
It might have been that different materials had been used in the construction of the two buildings, or different manufacturing methods, or different door mechanisms. Or maybe it was simply that time and usage had created differences in the sounds. Whatever the case, there were differences, and Ronon listened until he had them memorized, committed to his subconscious like muscle memory.
He spent a few days sitting in various spots around the city and, ignoring the odd looks thrown his way, focused just on the sounds. Fairly quickly, he felt he had a good grasp on the difference between what the facility doors had sounded like and what the Atlantis ones did. But he kept listening until he knew all the variances of the city ones, until he could tell by sound alone the difference between single and double doors, between doors in living spaces and those in the labs.
And he listened for the other differences as well, the sounds behind the doors that told of a city full of life, not of an empty, echoing facility full of death. As doors opened in Atlantis, Ronon could pick out the faint clacking of keyboards, or the soft murmur of voices, or the gentle rustle of clothing. All additional signs that he was in the city, not the facility, and that he wasn’t in danger.
The time he spent studying the doors offered a brief reprieve from the sense of helplessness that had been nipping at Ronon’s heels ever since the team had returned to the city. He’d nearly drowned in the feeling back on the facility planet, fighting and failing to keep them all alive, and it had followed him home to stalk his every move.
So he fought it the only ways he knew how, hoping that eventually they would work.
He ran all over the city, ran like he was running from something again. He had to move, had to do something physical and mindless and draining to shut his brain up. But he stopped venturing into the damaged, off-limit parts of the city, with their darkened, damp corridors and wouldn’t let himself think about why.
He spent a lot of time at the firing range, taking his frustrations out on enough targets that the supervising Marine eventually started rationing him. Either out of fear of Ronon’s retaliation for the measure, or sympathy for his sufferings, the man offered to help Ronon order a set of targets for his own personal use as part of the next supply delivery, if that was something Ronon wanted.
Irritated that shooting things wasn’t helping as much as he’d anticipated anyway, Ronon declined. But after dealing with two days of target rations, he regretted it and filled out the requisition form anyway. He knew Sheppard would see it, would have to approve it, but didn’t think he’d even blink at the request. Sheppard knew how much the targets cost, and how many Ronon had been going through. He might not suspect the reasons behind the numbers—though Ronon thought he might—but he’d approve the request regardless.
In the meantime, Ronon turned to his best bet for relief: sparring.
Even with his notoriety as a formidable fighter, Ronon was pleased to find that he rarely lacked for opponents. While he couldn’t say that he’d found his match yet—Teyla notwithstanding—there were more than enough capable fighters in Sheppard’s military contingent (and even among the civilians) to fulfill his needs. And whatever the Terrans might lack in skill, they made up for it with sheer crazy, which Ronon respected.
So Ronon found some willing volunteers and went to the mat to ease his mind. And it helped, for a while. Right up until it didn’t.
The corporal, Kepper, was younger than Ronon. While he hadn’t been in the city for long, he and Ronon had already fought a few times before. He was shorter than Ronon, but nearly as fast, and as such their match consisted more of blocking and dodging than it did actual blows. Not that Ronon minded much; he could always resort to just beating on the bags in the gym if that was what he was looking for. But it was the mental workout of having an opponent that he needed, and he was satisfied with what he was getting from Kepper.
But then something went wrong.
Ronon threw a blind hook that should have been blocked, should have been dodged, but wasn’t. Whether he had been too aggressive or whether Kepper had been too lax, the end result was the same. Ronon’s fist made direct contact with Kepper’s ribs, the staccato pops of them snapping clear even over the jeering of the small crowd that had gathered to watch the fight.
Ronon felt the ribs crack beneath his knuckles and froze, his mind immediately dropping him back under the weight of a collapsed ceiling and the memory of Teyla’s body giving way under his.
Then Kepper fell to one knee, one arm curling protectively around his torso, and the movement jerked Ronon back into the present. But he simply stared down at Kepper in blank disbelief, hand still clenched in a fist and heart in his throat.
Despite his reputation, Ronon never went into a sparring match looking to do serious damage. A bloody nose, or a few stitches in a split eyebrow now and then? Sure. But nothing serious. Injuries—both giving them and receiving—were a risk you took with sparring, one everyone accepted when they stepped into the circle.
And any other time, it wouldn’t have bothered Ronon so much. But he could still hear the sound of Kepper’s ribs breaking.
The spectators had started to disperse when Kepper went down, and Ronon watched numbly as a few of Kepper’s friends made their way over and helped him to his feet. Keeping one arm around himself, Kepper used the other to pat Ronon on the shoulder, mumbling, “No hard feelings,” with a small grin. As his friends steered him out the door and toward the infirmary, Ronon even heard him make a joke about getting some R&R out of the ordeal, if he managed to survive Sheppard reprimanding him for getting injured in the first place.
Then the room was quiet and Ronon was left alone, cold and sick and pinned to the spot.
Heart racing, chest aching, he blindly stumbled his way back to his quarters and locked himself inside. He sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands until it no longer felt like he was coming unraveled.
Knowing Teyla was on New Athos, he ignored the almost frantic need he had to see her, to get tangible proof that she was okay and that all the things clouding his mind were just memories. Instead, he hauled himself to his feet, stalked from his room, and went for a long run. But the need to check on her just followed him through the city’s corridors.
It wasn’t the first time he’d felt that way. Numerous times since the team had returned he’d been tempted to seek out one or more of the others for reassurance of their safety. Despite knowing they were okay, knowing that they had to be, he didn’t always feel it with that same certainty. The most random things would remind him of what had happened during the loops, triggering memories and feelings he struggled to control. Little things like the sound of running water or the smell of mold were all it took for him to suddenly, desperately need to check on the others.
But he never did. In truth, he avoided them.
He didn’t do it intentionally, not that he really needed to. Sheppard’s and McKay’s administrative backlogs, and Teyla’s duties on New Athos and in Atlantis, kept them all busy enough that Ronon wouldn’t have seen much of them anyway.
For a few days, he essentially had the city to himself, with no worries about getting cornered by any of them. And even after Sheppard and McKay blazed through their paperwork in record time—erroneously believing that would be enough to convince Weir to put them back on duty—it was easy enough for Ronon to keep himself occupied and unavailable, without it seeming suspicious. So that’s what he did.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see the others. He did, sometimes more than he wanted anything else in the universe. But he knew that they would want to talk about what had happened, and he wasn’t ready.
Sometimes, when he went places where he fully expected them to be, like the mess, and they weren’t there, he wondered if maybe they understood that and were avoiding him a bit, too, giving him the time and space he needed.
Oddly, he actually felt torn between wanting to keep them in his sights at all times and staying away from them entirely, between knowing exactly what they were doing and having no part in it at all. He didn’t understand why he felt that way, but he also didn’t have the energy or the desire to figure it out, so he just stuck to staying on his own.
Most of the time.
During the day, when he knew the others would be busy and would rarely be alone, it was easy to stay away from them. He knew they were fine then, or would at least have others around to help if something happened, so he didn’t need to be there, watching over them himself. They were alive, they were in Atlantis, and they were fine.
But at night, once they retreated to their own quarters, it was different.
At night Atlantis felt more like the facility, the darkened, lamp-lit hallways more closely matching the stone corridors Ronon still scrambled through in his nightmares. In the dark it was so much harder to believe that any of them were truly safe, even inside the city.
So, restless and anxious, Ronon prowled the shadowy halls.
The first few nights after they returned from the facility, that was all he did. He stalked noiselessly down the corridors, drifting from one teammate’s room to the next, pausing to listen at their doors for any sounds of distress. He would complete the circuit over and over again until just before sunrise, then retreat back to his own room for a few hours of fitful sleep, another day of everyone being kept alive.
But all too soon, that wasn’t enough. Because while he could catch noises coming from McKay’s room—faint snores, usually, sometimes the sound of him turning over—Sheppard and Teyla were always silent. And Ronon couldn’t take silence as safety. Not anymore.
So one night he began sneaking into their rooms.
He started with McKay, knowing his would be the easiest room to enter. McKay slept like the dead once he was under, and even if Ronon weren’t adept at moving silently, he doubted he would wake McKay with his movements. The sound of the door swishing open—a well-known tune, now—seemed unusually loud in the otherwise quiet hall, but Ronon swiftly ducked inside and let it close again behind him before he could second-guess himself. He swept McKay’s room with a searching look, not expecting anything to be out of place but needing to check all the same. Then he took up a spot not far from the door and studied McKay’s sleeping form.
As he had expected, McKay was dead to the world. He was half on his side facing the door, arms and legs thrown out to his sides and his mouth hanging open slightly. Ronon felt his heart clench and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, knocked sideways by the memory of that mouth filled with water.
But here and now, right in front of him, McKay took a breath caught somewhere between a snore and a grumble, and Ronon took his own slightly shaky breath in return.
McKay’s brow was faintly furrowed, as if he were working on a complex problem in his sleep. Ronon had seen that expression on a sleeping McKay before, and wasn’t surprised when McKay mumbled a bit and then rolled further onto his side, nestling deeper into the pillow under his head. After a few moments his face cleared and his breathing steadied again. Ronon watched him for a minute or so more, then stepped back out into the hall.
More relieved than he had any right to be—or cared to admit—Ronon headed for Sheppard’s room next. He hesitated outside the door, knowing there was a risk Sheppard would wake up as soon as it opened. But Ronon could feel himself growing more and more tense the longer he waited and knew that, regardless of the outcome, he had to see for himself that Sheppard was okay.
Opening the door and holding his breath, Ronon slipped inside Sheppard’s room. As the door slid closed behind him, his eyes adjusted to the shadows and he picked out Sheppard where he was lying flat on his back on the bed. Ronon ran his gaze around the room, a quick perimeter check, then returned it to Sheppard. He was breathing steadily and evenly, his face relaxed and body still, one arm bent up with the hand tucked beneath his head, the other draped across his middle. Ronon took a long, slow breath, feeling his own body relax a bit at the evidence that Sheppard was fine and sleeping soundly.
At least Sheppard gave no indication that he was aware of Ronon’s presence, so Ronon took that as proof he was asleep. For all he knew Sheppard could be faking it, though Ronon couldn’t think of any reason why he would. Even so, Ronon watched Sheppard closely for the next few minutes for any signs that he was actually awake before finally slipping back out into the hall.
Halfway to Teyla’s quarters, Ronon started feeling a little ridiculous. What was he doing, sneaking into his teammates’ rooms in the middle of the night? They were sleeping, he should be sleeping, this was stupid.
But he also couldn’t bring himself to stop or turn around, and his feet led him unerringly toward Teyla’s door. And he couldn’t deny that he did actually feel better having seen with his own eyes that McKay and Sheppard were safe, however absurd it was for him to have been worried about them in the first place.
Maybe his behavior wasn’t rational, but neither were his feelings. Eventually he’d get over this. He got over everything. But until then, he was going to do what he had to do. And if that meant being a little overprotective at night, then fine.
He half expected Teyla to sense him coming. She had a way of doing that, of knowing what others were thinking or planning even before they did, especially if it was something that had been building in them for a while.
But when he eased into her room, she was still asleep. At least as far as he could tell. She was on her side with her back to the door, and Ronon didn’t want to risk walking around the bed to see her face. But he could tell that she was breathing, could see the shallow rise and fall of the blankets draped over her middle, and that was enough for him. He leaned against the wall by the door and watched her breathe, feeling his own pulse slow in response.
She was fine. They were all fine. This was fine.
All through that first night Ronon completed the same rounds that he had before—McKay, Sheppard, Teyla—just with longer stops. He slept with sunrise and spent the rest of the day helping distribute the latest batch of deliveries from the Daedalus before conducting a training session for some of the newer military recruits to the city. Then, once night fell, he was back in the hallways.
He made it through three more nights of unplanned visitations before Sheppard caught him.
Each time he’d successfully made it into one of the others’ rooms without waking them, Ronon had grown more confident. He’d let himself stay longer, growing less and less worried that his mere presence might be enough to draw the others out of their sleep. Instead of hovering by the door, ready to duck back into the hall at a moment’s notice, he lingered.
He was in Sheppard’s room, sitting in a chair near the window and looking out at the stars, when Sheppard woke up.
“Ronon?”
The voice was rough with sleep and laced with confusion. Ronon went tense, his head snapping around and his eyes locking with Sheppard’s. Sheppard sat up and dragged a hand over his face.
“What’s going on?” Something shifted, Sheppard suddenly seeming more alert. He pivoted to throw his legs over the side of the mattress, coming to sit on its edge. “Is something wrong?”
Startled and more than a little ashamed at getting caught, Ronon quickly blurted out a terse, “No.” But when Sheppard’s expression morphed from worried to assessing, he realized he probably should have lied, should have made up some issue he’d needed Sheppard for. Any excuse for why he was sitting in the corner of Sheppard’s room in the middle of the night.
But nothing came to mind, and Ronon’s tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth anyway. He didn’t know what to say and was worried what Sheppard might ask. Sheppard’s searching gaze never left him, and Ronon didn’t think he could bear the burn of it for much longer. He eyed the closed door, calculating his escape route, muscles coiling ready for action. But before he could spring to his feet and literally run away, Sheppard sighed.
The sound was so unexpected it pulled Ronon’s gaze away from the door and back to Sheppard’s face. He was still studying Ronon, and even though his eyes were mere shadows in the dim light, Ronon could see the sympathy in them. It nearly broke him.
Then Sheppard rose to his feet, twisting around to pluck his pillow from the head of the bed, then stripping his blanket, too. Tucking both under his arm, he padded toward the door in bare feet, waving for Ronon to follow him.
“C’mon.”
Confused, and for some indefinable reason feeling like he had no room to argue, Ronon stood and did as he was told. Numbly, he tagged along behind Sheppard as he led them out into the hall and along the familiar path to Teyla’s quarters.
When they arrived, Sheppard opened the door and stepped just inside the room, quietly calling Teyla’s name. She woke almost instantly, lifting herself into a sitting position on the bed and frowning faintly in their direction. Her dark eyes were curious and concerned, and Ronon, standing behind Sheppard in the light of the hallway, internally cursed himself for a fool when her gaze moved over him.
“Grab your pillow,” was all Sheppard said.
Teyla looked at him for the briefest heartbeat before her eyes moved back to Ronon and her expression softened, almost imperceptibly. Then she simply nodded and slid from the bed in one fluid motion, pillow in hand. She paused, then turned back and grabbed another pillow before walking to a nearby chair and pulling a blanket from its back.
Like Sheppard, she didn’t bother with shoes, but walked beside Ronon in bare feet as Sheppard headed toward their final stop. Her shoulder brushed Ronon’s arm as they walked, and though he knew she was doing it on purpose—a gesture meant to be friendly or supportive or understanding, or all that and more—he couldn’t bring himself to look at her, knowing what he might see in her face.
When Sheppard reached McKay’s quarters, he walked right in without pausing at the threshold. He was nearly to the bed by the time he spoke.
“Wake up, McKay.”
In contrast to how difficult McKay usually was to wake up, this time he startled into consciousness immediately, jerking awake and hauling himself upright with a groan.
“What? What is it? What’s going on?” He tone wavered like he was trying to figure out whether he had the most cause to be grumpy or worried, and he blinked at them with a small scowl. His eyes initially focused on Sheppard before he caught the movement of Teyla and Ronon behind him, and he studied them both with narrowed gaze before turning back to Sheppard. “What’re you doing?”
“Sleepover,” Sheppard succinctly replied as he lowered himself to the floor beside McKay’s bed.
Given that pronouncement, McKay chose grumpy and wrinkled his nose at the top of Sheppard’s sleep-tousled head. “What? Why?”
As Sheppard fluffed his pillow, arranging it against McKay’s bed frame, Teyla joined him on the floor. She left a Ronon-sized space between them and, understanding his place, Ronon sank down to sit in it, his back against the side of McKay’s bed, Sheppard on his left, Teyla on his right.
“We have not spent much time together since we were taken off active duty,” Teyla casually replied in answer to McKay, also throwing him a small smile and a pointed look as she slid down into a horizontal position under her blanket. No doubt deliberately, she curled up in such a way that her bent knees pressed against Ronon’s lower leg.
On Ronon’s other side, Sheppard had made it onto his back, his blanket draped haphazardly over his torso, arms and legs sticking out from under its folds. When he breathed, his right shoulder moved against Ronon’s hip, steady as a heartbeat. Lifting his head to give his pillow one more fluff, Sheppard then settled back down and stared up at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling in a silent sigh.
Behind Ronon, he could hear McKay flop back down onto the bed, the motion transferring through the mattress and into his back where he was pressed against it.
“Yeah,” McKay grumbled, rustling around as he tried to get comfortable again, “but couldn’t we have, y’know, planned for it instead of waking me up in the middle of the night?”
Still feeling a bit ashamed—and now more than a little guilty—Ronon rumbled out a quiet, “Sorry.”
All noise and motion from McKay stopped, and Ronon almost wondered if he’d fallen back asleep. But just as he was about to turn his head and check, something soft nudged him between the shoulder blades.
“Here,” came McKay’s voice, tone clipped but not unkind, and Ronon turned to see that the soft thing pushing against him was a pillow.
He blinked at it in bemusement for a second, then looked up to find McKay watching him with a sleepy frown. “What?”
McKay’s frown deepened. “Seriously? I—” He huffed and pushed the pillow against Ronon’s back again. “Sit up,” he commanded.
Finally understanding, Ronon leaned forward and allowed McKay to shove the pillow between his back and the bed. McKay even hauled himself upright again to push it down into the space, his hands brushing against Ronon’s back as he maneuvered the pillow into an acceptable position. Once happy with its placement, he let out a satisfied, “There,” and lowered himself back to his own pillow with a sigh.
Ronon settled back against the pillow, fighting the lump in his throat. For some reason, the small gesture of McKay giving up one of his pillows—the pillows Ronon knew he’d had delivered from Earth, the special pillows he talked about needing for his back (whether that was true or not)—for him to give up one of those pillows for Ronon to rest against, after Ronon had acted like an idiot and woken him and Sheppard and Teyla in the middle of the night—it was a lot.
It shouldn’t have been. There was no reason why Ronon should be sitting on the floor of McKay’s room getting emotional over a damn pillow. But it wasn’t about the pillow. Not really.
Ronon glanced down at Teyla lying beside him, her eyes closed and breathing slow and even. Then he startled slightly at sudden movement just at the edge of his vision. He turned toward it to find McKay’s blanket-covered knees where they had bent toward the edge of the bed just past Ronon’s shoulder. Curious, Ronon turned the other way to find McKay’s head—cushioned on one of those pillows—about the same distance away from his shoulder on that side.
It was if McKay had curled around Ronon, his torso arched around where Ronon leaned against the side of the bed. McKay was still settling into the new position, wriggling slightly as he nestled deeper into the bed, his motions gently jostling Ronon as the bed moved in response. After a few seconds, finally comfortable, McKay let out a satisfied huff, and his face was close enough that Ronon felt the breath brush across his neck.
Without losing McKay from his field of vision, Ronon was able to glance down at Sheppard, who appeared to have fallen asleep. His eyes were closed, too, and his breathing deep and steady. Ronon could still feel Teyla’s knees against his leg, proof of her presence.
His team was there, all there with him all at once, and they were all safe. For the first time since he’d stepped through the Gate on his way to the facility all those long days before, Ronon finally fully relaxed. The effect was so strong and immediate that his head actually dropped back onto the mattress, bouncing a little from the impact.
Within seconds, he drifted into a dreamless sleep.