Fic: Under Fire

[sgarb_mod]

Author: busaikko
Wordcount: 11,895
Rating: NC17
Pairing(s): Ronon Dex/Cameron Mitchell, Cameron Mitchell/John Sheppard, Ronon Dex/Cameron Mitchell/John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan/Kanaan
Summary: Pegasus AU. When the expedition from an embattled Earth arrived in the City of the Ancestors, they found it already occupied by the Satedan military. But Specialist Ronon Dex tried to avoid politics, intrigue, and diplomacy as much as he could; he was having a hard enough time building a team that worked together under fire.
Warning(s) highlight to read: some violence (no worse than canon)
Notes: Much love to betas gaffsie and sherry57

Companion piece to Sleeping Under (the) Fire.

Under Fire

Behind Ronon, the ring closed, to stand dim and empty. The sun was bright overhead, the surrounding meadow alive with the hum of insects in the wildflowers. He took a deep breath of sweet warm air, wished that this day wasn't going to suck, and then jumped the steps down from the ring platform to where Cam and John were waiting.

"So," Cam said, making a show of checking his weapon because he was too polite to say he thought this whole thing was stupid, "what are the rules?"

Ronon shrugged. "If you find Teyla within two local days, you get to join exploratory teams the way Weir wants. You screw up, and we go through really basic training again." He hoped his tone conveyed that he'd be really pissed if they failed.

"And you're going to follow us around to make sure we don't cheat." Cam made a sour face.

"Nah," John said. He was looking around with interest, or at least Ronon thought so; he wore dark lenses that hid his eyes. He had his hands crossed over the projectile weapon that was standard issue for the Tau'ri people of Earth. Ronon had got permission from Master Specialist Ara for both of them to be issued energy pistols as well. John wore the holster naturally; Cam kept fiddling with the straps, like he couldn't get it comfortable. But Ronon knew he had scars there from when he'd been injured in battle. Cam didn't talk about his past much, but he'd said once he was lucky to be able to walk.

Earth was a dangerous place, as far as Ronon knew: cursed with continual plagues, body-stealing snakes, and the robot insects that had eaten Earth's defensive spaceships. Cam had told Ronon that he'd been the third commanding officer assigned to the expedition; the two before him had died horribly. Ronon figured Tau'ri attitude was a mental defense against despair, but it was still really annoying, like the way John smirked when he spoke. "He doesn't think we're good enough to be able to cheat. He's here making sure you don't die."

And that there was why Ronon wished Ara had let him hold these tests separately. Cam insisted there was no way John could know that he was sleeping with Ronon, but it was obvious to Ronon that John knew and was bitter, because there was a hidden history there. It made things awkward. Cam wouldn't be assigned to Ronon's team if he passed the testing, anyway; he'd be going offworld as Weir's guard on missions with Ara — high-level diplomatic and trade talks. Ronon felt sorry for Cam. There was no way that wasn't going to be boring. He preferred exploration himself, the rush of traveling through the ring to other worlds, with animals and people and ruins and landscapes that were nothing like Sateda. That was why he'd trained as a Specialist and volunteered to go to the City of the Ancestors. It was the adventure of a lifetime, and even if it killed him his death would be for Sateda's gain.

Ronon wanted John on his team, or at least John's genetics. Hemi, his team's Tech, kept telling him how useful that would be offworld. John could fly the Ancestor's ringships and work weapons systems. Weir liked to keep her people separate, working parallel operations instead of joint, which didn't show much trust, but apparently too much trust could be fatal on Earth.

In private, Ara told Ronon that if she'd known better, she'd have had all the people from Earth shot as soon as they'd walked through the ring. "They can never find out where Sateda is," she told him. "We don't know if they're all human, or where their allegiances lie." All the Tau'ri had been through the Ancestors' medical scanning array once the City had power, but they'd been the ones to initialize the city's systems in the first place, so there was no real telling. "The Travelers are also not to be mentioned."

Ronon had the reports from the techs who studied Ancestral relics. They were all pretty sure that John could probably turn on derelict Ancestral ships the way he had the City.

Of course, John had also ended up draining the last of the power in the City when he arrived — accidentally — and caused a catastrophic shield failure, and only by the mercy and foresight of the Ancestors had they risen instead of drowning. Cam said that John was just like that. Every good thing he tried to do ended in failure or disaster or both.

"No one's dying, but I might need to kick your ass," Ronon said easily. It's the wrong thing to say to John, who just turned his blank expression to the low dark line where the forest began. Cam gave Ronon one of his told you so looks. For all Ronon liked him, well enough to be sleeping with him, sometimes Cam could be too certain he was right, to the point of being close-minded. "You should be able to pick up Teyla's trail before nightfall."

John didn't say anything, but turned and loped back up the steps to the ring platform. He took out a set of far-viewers and scanned the edges of the field.

"This planet have big animals?" he asked.

Ronon shrugged. "You tell me."

John's mouth went thin and tight; Ronon thought he probably expected him to make the test easier, out of some notion of friendship or team-feeling. Tough.

"Colonel," John said, absorbing the rebuke and moving on. "Come here and take a look."

Ronon snorted. It was going to be a long day if John was going to dig his heels in and be insultingly formal, the faint mocking smile daring Cam to call him on his insubordinate attitude.

Cam had already told Ronon that gene or no gene, no commanding officer wanted someone like John under them.

"Huh," Ronon had said. "So you didn't pick him for your mission."

"I'd have left him to rot underground in Antarctica," Cam had snapped, still steaming from some dumb thing John had done with the ringships that had Weir furious as well. Ronon knew Antarctica was a battlefield in the cold wastes of Cam's world, the place where Cam had been injured. Ronon had made the sign with the fingers of his left hand to avert ill wishes. He was a Specialist, and while he'd been trained to put his trust in facts, some superstitions got passed down from task-masters to recruits. You didn't wish someone dead unless you planned to kill them yourself, but maybe Cam thought differently; anyway, Ronon felt better turning the words away..

Fortunately for John, he'd found the path Ronon had spotted first thing, the broken branches and crushed grasses that led from the ring platform to the near edge of the woods. John pointed out how the path looked like it went into the woods, "but then ten meters to the northeast, there, look at the leaves. That's where she went."

Cam nodded sideways. "Lead on."

John was pretty good about not leaving much of a trail himself, with the exception of the heavy boots his military issued. Ronon followed eight paces behind Cam and John and wondered if Teyla had set any traps for them. She'd been a Runner for five years before Ronon's team had found her, and knew things even Master Specialists didn't.

Teyla had also been against John joining the team, but he'd won her over — not an easy thing to do — by joining her stick-fighting classes and introducing her to the ceremonial teas of his people.

John had a decent sense of when to go fast and when to go slow. Ronon realized he fell too easily into the habit of thinking of the Tau'ri as uncomfortable outside city walls or without their technology. He'd seen pictures of their home world. It looked a lot like the cool southern seacoast of Sateda's Naken Province.

"You're good at this," Cam said to John as he stopped, backed up, checked the ground, and then led them in a new direction. "Training school?"

John looked back at Cam. He'd taken his lenses off in the shade of the forest, and Ronon saw distrust in his eyes. "I suck at this. Teyla and Rakai gave me some lessons on the mainland. Any time you want to help out. . . ."

Cam shrugged. "What am I looking for?"

John made a face, but beckoned Cam over to look at something on the forest floor. Teyla's favorite backhand compliment for the soldiers Ronon sent to her was They are doing almost as well as a ten-year-old child of my people. One of the reasons Ronon kept up the active search for other Athosian survivors was the hope he'd find one of those well-trained kids. Maybe he'd learn something.

Whatever John was saying made sense; Cam was nodding, and then pointed away, to where the land rose steeply. John stood — apparently something had been decided — and then looked like he didn't know what to do with himself as Cam pushed himself up, stiff and graceless, holding his weight awkwardly off his bad leg. Ronon would have offered Cam a hand, but Ronon understood John's position. As Cam's subordinate officer, he didn't want to appear overly aware of Cam's weakness and create any suspicions about him wanting to seize command by force or subterfuge.

Ronon thought Cam didn't need to worry; John would rather fight Wraith single-handed than take over Cam's job. He felt much the same way about Ara's command of the City, and made a point of screwing up on purpose before the tri-annual performance reports if Ara suggested she'd List his name back home to Tyre. Ronon liked being in the City, and his team worked well. But Tyre favored him, and that combined with Tyre's political ambitions made Ronon worry his next posting would be boring diplomatic espionage on an ally world, Genii or Manara or — Ancestors-forbid — Olesia. Ronon still had a good four years left before mandatory Listing. Sticking around the City and exploring was his plan.

John started off at a good pace towards the slope. Cam turned around in a circle, maybe getting his bearings. He flashed Ronon a grin and an upraised thumb before following John. Ronon guessed that on Earth, that gesture didn't mean clitoris like it did to most people he knew.

The hillside was rocky and covered with a thick red-clay mud. Ronon didn't think Teyla had actually come this way; it was too much work to go up, and there were too many ways to screw up and leave accidental marks and traces. It was pretty funny to watch Cam and John climb, weighed down by all their gear and by doubts that grew the higher they went. Ronon waited until he figured they wouldn't knock him down if they fell and then took the slope at a run, which was the easiest way to do it.

"Now I feel old," John said, bending over with his hands braced on his knees and breathing hard. The air was cool but wet and heavy, and he was going to chill faster with his clothes sweat-damp. He took out his far-viewers and scanned their surroundings, even though they weren't high enough to be above the trees.

"I don't think she came this way," Cam said, pulling off his cloth cap and putting it on backwards so it didn't shade his face. "Nothing up here but more trees."

"Okay," John said, dragging the word out. Ronon had heard Cam's words as a complaint, but it sounded like John thought he'd been insulted. John held out the far-viewers. "Your turn. Colonel."

Cam shrugged and took a look, spending more time on the horizon and the sky. "Looks like there's a river about a mile down south from here."

John bit his lip, but made himself reply anyway. "You think she'll follow the river?"

Cam made a quarter turn and pointed. "Looks like if we go halfway down the other side this ridge there's a creek. Good way for Teyla to cut across to the river and get us lost, two-for-one special."

John nodded, and Cam handed the far-viewers back. John sealed them in his vest pocket, watching Cam carefully. "What's wrong?"

Cam turned and waved a hand to a narrow break in the eastern foliage. "I don't like that sky."

John squinted. "Storm coming?" He glanced at Ronon, who was all set to not give him an answer, but John said instead, "Colonel Mitchell's from Kansas, where the sky tries to kill everyone pretty much all the time."

"Hey," Cam said, grinning. "You don't get to slander my state."

"It's a great place," John returned immediately. "Really. . . flat."

"Kansas is God's ironing board," Cam said, like it was a proclamation. John almost laughed, and Cam clapped a hand on his shoulder quickly. "I say we head to the river, have a quick look up and down-stream, and then make camp. If that is a storm building, we're going to want the tent up before it hits."

"Better get a move on, then," John said, and started down with more speed than Ronon would have used, considering how wet the ground was. Ronon was behind Cam when John's feet flew out from under him and John went down hard, rolling until he twisted sideways and halted his fall with his arms outspread.

"Hell," Cam said, and then raised his voice. "You dead, Sheppard?"

"Think I broke my dignity," John shouted back. He twisted on his side, then pushed up on all fours. He was head to toe mud, but Ronon didn't see any blood seeping through.

"And that," Cam said, sidling as close to John as he dared and holding out a hand, "is how we do camouflage in the Air Force."

John waved Cam's hand away and pushed to his feet, but he wasn't too proud to grab a tree for support. He was lucky he hadn't bashed his head up against it. "Teyla knew one of us would do that."

Cam stepped back out of the way as John sloughed mud off his face and vest and trousers. "I'd bet good money she knew it would be you."

John gave him a look. "Yeah," he said. "Who else?"

Cam opened his mouth and Ronon wondered if he'd apologize or say something worse — with John and Cam, it could go either way. But then Cam swallowed down his words and started back down. After a moment, John followed him.

The creek was easy to find, and John washed as much mud off his skin as he could. They didn't talk much. The sky in the east was darker every time they reached a place with a clear view, and they didn't find any footprints or other marks along the creekbed. John seemed to take their absence personally, but Ronon figured seeing as John got blamed for everything that went wrong, he probably assumed getting lost would be his fault, too.

Cam was the opposite. He just came out on top naturally, and Ronon bet that drove John nuts.

By the time they walked out of the scrubby edge of the woods, the light had taken on a thick syrupy quality, making everything look surreal. The riverbed was wide and rocky; probably the spring floods here were bad, with the snowmelt off the mountains. The water moved fast, slick and serpentine until it encountered an obstacle, and then erupting in white foam.

John looked pleased, tugging his mud-stiffened pockets out so he could stick his hands in and rock a little on his feet. "So we can assume Teyla didn't cross this," he said. "Not on foot." He glanced at Ronon.

"She would have mentioned if she had a boat in her carry-all," Ronon said, keeping his face straight. "She doesn't need to cheat."

Cam asked for John's far-viewers and climbed up on a boulder. "Looks like all rock outcrops to the south," he reported, and then looked downriver. "And mostly trees the other side."

"I'll take the rocks," John said.

Cam gave him a hard look, but John was watching birds circling over the far side of the river. The oncoming storm was driving the insects down, making the air a feasting ground.

"Fine," Cam said, not sounding happy about it. "Stay off the cliffs. Teyla may have set you up to fall on your ass, but she'd miss you and your Celestial Seasonings if you died." Cam turned his radio on. "Turn back in an hour." After a moment, reluctantly, Cam said, "Watch for bears and T. Rex."

"Don't get kidnapped by aliens," John shot back, and gave Ronon a short wave before heading out.

"I do not know what to do with that boy," Cam said, sagging a little as John scrambled down to near the water's edge, his back to them as he walked away.

"Thought he was older than you," Ronon said. "You sound like a toothless village elder."

"Oh, that's nice," Cam said. He made a quick grab for Ronon. He was getting better; his fingers nearly closed on the edge of Ronon's coat as he spun back.

"Move your ass, Gramps," Ronon said. He was never quite sure whether the Tau'ri heard the same words he spoke; his people all tended to talk to the Tau'ri slowly and in little words when they wanted to make sure they'd be understood. But Cam glared and said he had better insurance, so he could afford to push Ronon in the river, which sounded like he got the joke to some degree, so Ronon let it go.

Cam was walking as he threatened, so Ronon figured they'd be okay for time. John probably thought he was giving them a chance for privacy, blowjobs or a quick fuck. Ronon preferred not to get bitten on the ass by whatever insects or small animals were local; he also didn't cross the line between professional and personal when he was on a mission, especially offworld. Back in the City, Cam had to abide by his military's weird sex taboos, but in their off-time the beds were soft and the doors locked.

He was thinking about John and about sex, so Ronon thought it made sense to ask Cam if John was angry that they were sleeping together.

Cam jerked, distracted into nearly falling over a rock, and then gave Ronon an irritated glare. "John shouldn't have any reason to know that."

Sometimes the Tau'ri were funny about sex. Other times their uptightness and embarrassment were just plain annoying. "He watches you all the time. I thought maybe you and he used to be together."

Cam snorted and gave Ronon his full scornful attention. "You can just ask without beating around the bush. And no. Not so much."

"Okay," Ronon said, challenging. "So what is it between you?"

Cam sighed. "Hell if I know. He wasn't even part of the Stargate program until we found out he had the gene a couple weeks before we left. He was taken out of combat for screwing up. Disobeying orders."

"So you don't want him in your command."

Cam probably didn't realize how much sighing he did when he talked about John. "Would you?" Then he remembered why they were on this planet, tracking Teyla. "I feel like it's just a matter of time before he puts us at risk. I'm sorry, but I don't think a leopard can change its spots that easy."

Ronon thought Cam was wrong, or at least he wasn't looking for the roots of his own feelings. "I like him," he said, slow and easy. "I like the way he talks to Teyla, even though he knows she was a Wraith-bringer."

"A victim," Cam said.

Ronon snorted. "Do you have a word for the victims of victims?" He'd already debated this frontwards and back with Cam, though, and wasn't interested in going through it again. Only a high-tech culture could have removed Teyla's tracking device, and none of them wanted to broadcast their location to the Wraith any more than the primitive worlds which drove her back through the ring. Hard to blame people for wanting to protect their own, when they had no other choice. He changed the subject. "So when you track someone through the ring, what important thing did you and John not do?"

Cam scowled. He looked like a kid chastised for playing instead of doing chores. "Keep an eye on the gate," he said. "Normally I'd put a guard on the gate or disable the DHD. Just how real is this training thing? I kind of thought it was a Pegasus snipe hunt, some hoops we had to get through."

The Tau'ri didn't speak in small clear words; Ronon had thought it was ignorance, but Hemi worked with the Earth techs and mechs and said it was mostly arrogance. They did it to their own people, expecting them to use and understand the dominant clan language, occasionally mocking them for mistakes. So Ronon didn't ask what a snipe was, or what the hoop-jumping ritual was. . . or about Kansas and iron boards, either. He wasn't the first Satedan to start sleeping with an Tau'ri — the City base had been too small to offer many choices outside of chain-of-command — but Ronon had still heard But what do you talk about? too often by now to give any answer but Fuck off.

"Teyla has her energy weapon and knives and she's probably made a set of sticks by now," Ronon said. "She can't kill you, but I said she can break small bones."

"Awesome," Cam said, obviously not pleased. After a pause, he added, "If she made sticks we'd have seen where she cut the branches and whittled them down, right?"

"A good tracker would have," Ronon agreed. Then, because he did kind of like Cam despite everything, "I didn't, if that's what you're asking."

Cam nodded. "So you think we're completely and utterly lost." He stopped walking to pick up one of the river stones about the size of a paeni egg. He tossed it back and forth between his hands, and then scrambled to catch up with Ronon. "Hey. Those birds Sheppard was watching. How come there aren't any birds in this part of the woods?"

Ronon shrugged. "The ring?"

Cam flipped the stone into the air; Ronon flicked his hand out so it disappeared into his hand, and then slid it into his pocket.

"The ring scare birds off where you're from?" Cam asked.

Ronon took a breath, and suddenly a lot of little things that he'd been attributing to the building storm suddenly seemed more sinister. He reached up and tapped the radio clipped to his coat lapel three times.

Cam watched him, arms crossed and expression opaque. When John tapped back twice and twice again, Cam relaxed his stance just a bit.

"Fall back," Ronon said. "We may have a situation."

"I found Teyla," John said, and Ronon knew this was going to be bad. "Bad news is, there's a couple guys after her. Not Satedan uniforms. She's staying ahead but barely. I can cut around — "

"Sheppard," Cam said, over his radio, and Ronon could have smacked him. Giving John more orders wasn't going to help.

There wasn't a reply. Ronon tried hailing again, but got the silence he expected.

"Think the signal's being jammed?" Cam asked. He looked equally furious and embarrassed and worried. He knew as well as Ronon that where there were two people you could see, there were probably twice that number out of sight.

"Maybe," Ronon said. "You were sloppy, but I put an alerter on the ring. It hasn't gone off."

Cam nodded sharply, checking his weapons to make sure they were charged and loaded. "So these guys were already here. Lying in wait for us?"

"Or they didn't come through the ring," Ronon said. He grimaced. "I'm not allowed to tell you that."

Cam stared a moment. He was a quick thinker; he said it was what made him a good pilot. "We'll talk about these spacecraft later," and that was going to suck; Ronon glared back because Cam knew damn well that Ronon wasn't going to fuck up his job just because they were sex-partners. "What's the plan?"

They'd walked down-river for nearly a quarter ring-ninth, and assuming John moved at the same pace — given the crappy terrain, a reasonable guess — that meant John was a half-ninth away from any help. If he was dead, injured, or captured, they were too far away and too late already. Still. "How fast can you run on these rocks?"

Cam grimaced, and then jerked his head up towards the forest. "More cover if we stick to the trees anyway."

"You make too much noise," Ronon said, and took off, picking up the pace easy and slow, matching his strides to the land the way he'd been taught as a child, trying to keep alert watchfulness of the surroundings. There weren't any birds this side of the river, even though he had to keep his mouth shut to keep the low-flying insects out. The quiet of the woods should have signaled that something was wrong, and Ronon asked himself the hard question of whether he had allowed his relationships with Cam and John to impair his judgment. He'd been so worried about whether they could work together, all that team-building shit Ara kept making him attend seminars on, that he'd let all of them walk into a bad situation.

And now he had John, who didn't respect or obey him, about to engage or antagonize unknown hostiles to back Teyla up.

It was entirely possible that the people hunting Teyla were her enemies but Sateda's allies. The training mission schedule had been posted openly like any other; the information that Teyla would be offworld and alone could have been passed on, much as Ronon hated to think about what a headache that would be. At the least, it would mean he couldn't shoot people without thinking of all the political ramifications. Or maybe they'd just stumbled onto someone's secret operation. Ronon liked using this planet for running programs because it was uninhabited, temperate, and challenging without being deadly. He couldn't be the only person in the galaxy who felt that way.

A sharp sudden wind cut down through the leaves overhead and brought a spatter of heavy fat raindrops. Sundown shouldn't be for another ninth, but with the way the shadows were crawling down from the sky, Ronon worried that the darkness would slow their pursuit.

They passed the place where they'd separated from John, making good time, but the forest fell back away from the exposed stone of the cliff.

"What do you think?" Ronon asked, waving Cam to a stop.

Cam was breathing hard and his collar was dark with sweat, but action suited him. He finally looked engaged and not bored. He took a sloppy gulp of water from his canteen and looked around. "You've been here before, right?"

Ronon frowned. "I've seen maps. Last couple times I was here we just went up into the mountains. Good hunting. Not so many damn bugs."

"Well, you're useless," Cam said easily, no sting in his voice. "So we stick to the woods a bit further., but check the riverside every ten minutes." He rolled his shoulders and twisted his neck loose. "Better get a move on before it starts pouring."

"Yeah," Ronon said, and took off fast without warning. Cam swore and laughed under his breath, trying catch up. It was exhilarating; Ronon thought that if the Chieftan ever lifted the ban on telling the Tau'ri where Sateda was, he'd like to bring Cam to the seacoast where he'd spent most of his childhood. A place like that, long sun-baked beaches, no people — it felt like you could run forever, run all the way around the world.

He knew Cam came from farmland and hadn't seen the ocean until after he'd left second-school. Ronon figured Cam had been attracted to flight because that had been the only way he'd been able to conceive of escape from the endless fields. John was as at home in the water as most of the Satedans, even though the ocean around Atlantis was so cold it made you look plucked after swimming a few ring-lengths. He wasn't sure what made John want to fly, but he suspected that it wasn't to get away from a place but from who he was. John threw himself into training, weapons work, piloting the ringships, swimming, running, and he seemed happy enough while he was in motion. Make him be still, though, or try to hold him down or back, and he became the person nobody liked very much.

Ronon realized he was doing it again, comparing Cam and John, and thought it must suck to be John.

The rain started coming down harder, and Ronon told Cam to stay back and try to hail John on the radio while he went to check the cliff for signs that John or Teyla — or anyone else — had been there. A little longer and searching would be futile, too wet and too dark. There were no tracks at the top of the cliff, and the cliff face itself didn't tell Ronon anything except that a person would have to be pretty desperate to climb down, when there was nothing below but dangerous water.

Ronon felt a prickling sense of wrongness at the back of his neck, which might have been the change in air pressure from the storm, but he heard noises coming from the woods that couldn't be blamed on the wind. He lowered into a crouching run, watchful, worrying about Cam. He knew if there was trouble, trying to make radio contact could put them both in danger. Ronon reached the edge of the woods and slipped into the cover of brush and trees with annoyance and frustration close under his skin. He pushed all that down, checking carefully to get his bearings, and circled around to where he'd left Cam.

Cam was gone, leaving nothing but a circle of destruction that showed there'd been a fight. Ronon could smell recent weapons fire, projectile and energy, and saw pale raw wounds to tree trunks where bark had been blasted away. The ground was churned; a quick survey suggested three to five people who'd descended on Cam from the west and north. But Cam wasn't lying dead on the ground, he'd been taken, and that made Ronon's concentration sharpen like a blade on the whetstone.

There was a crunch of old leaves and the sound of branches brushing against fabric, and John said, "I'll get him back," as he stalked out of the darkness between trees. Ronon's reflexes being faster than thought, he nearly took John's head off. His weapon hung there, an armspan from John's face, perfectly steady and set to kill, while Ronon breathed hard until his anger abated enough for him lower his arm.

John didn't even blink, but from behind him Teyla said, "Ronon," low and chastising. "We need to follow them now."

"Who?" Ronon demanded, jerking his chin at her to make her start moving. He wasn't feeling nice.

Teyla slid past him like oil on water, her eyes sweeping over Ronon like a judgment and making him feel like he'd just been reprimanded by a village elder. "Travelers," Teyla said. "I warned Ara. The City does not and should not belong to Sateda alone."

Behind Ronon, John fell into step, moving quieter now. Maybe Teyla had berated him with one of her looks, or perhaps he was only sloppy when the threat wasn't real.

"They think he's Ancient?" John asked, very quietly. He sounded furious. Ronon shrugged. "They know about the gene?"

Ronon thought about all the salvaged Ancestral warships that the Travelers possessed, often barely functional, crippled by the lack of access to even the most basic systems. He thought about the Ancestral weapons systems the Tau'ri techs claimed could bring down hive ships, and imagined taking the fight to the Wraith, killing them while they slept. Satedan espionage suggested Cowen of the Genii was trying to develop similar technologies, but he was decades away from a solution. All the Travelers needed in order to become the dominant power in the galaxy was someone with the right blood. "I know your Beckett gave Cam the medicine that lets him fly the ringships," he told John. "Your people suck at keeping secrets."

"We don't know yet if that's fatal or has side effects," John said shortly. "Weir worried if it did turn out bad you'd line us up and shoot us. Or send us to Olesia," he added. Ronon could hear scorn in the fast low words.

A lot of information from the Genii came from disillusioned scientists; Cowen's experiments caused cancers and birth defects and made pariahs of the afflicted. Ronon knew from things Tyre let slip that Sateda wasn't sure if it should support a coup or a mass defection of the Genii intellectual elite. He hated politics.

"Shut up," Ronon said. Talking only led to arguing, and he understood on one level that most of his anger with John was displaced. He still knew he'd end up punching John if John kept talking.

"Both of you," Teyla added. "They did not hide their tracks. And I smell smoke."

"They have a base," John said, a question in his voice, and then with more urgency, "Or they landed a ship. No need to waste time hiding if they're just going to leave."

"Yes," Teyla said, moving faster. "I agree." She moved with a knowledge of the land that Ronon would have been impressed with in daylight; in the rain and the dark it was preternatural. He'd been told stories as a child of the greiba, spirits whose faces could be seen in the first gush of energy from the ring. The greiba were profligate tricksters, but they were enemies of the Wraith; if you were fortunate enough to become friends with one, or have one in your debt, they would willingly die to save you. He'd spent days and days of his childhood trying to find one. Now he wondered if the legend had a pragmatic origin, a Wraith-hunting people encountered back when stories were being born. Perhaps a people like the Athosians. He'd ask Teyla, but she might have heard a similar story as a child; she might be insulted by the idea.

"There," Teyla said, and threw one bent arm back. Ronon stopped short, and felt John ghost past him to go stand at Teyla's other side.

There was a fire guttering under a smoke-cover in a clearing that was obviously recent, littered with trees blasted down and splintered. Judging by the state of the ground and the dampness of the fallen trees, Ronon thought the clearing and the camp in it must have been made in the past nineday. Three tents were set around the fire, which probably served as a cooksite. In the center of the clearing, the ground was dry and crushed down in a rectangular shape which was clearly outlined in puddles, about the size of an Olesian ringship. Ronon wondered why the Travelers were wasting their power on a cloak, when the signs were this obvious.

The Travelers worked silently in teams of two and three, breaking down the tents and carrying boxes into their ringship. Ronon counted eight of them; the ground was too scuffed and muddy to tell if anyone had left camp recently. One simple three-pole was still standing, slanted as if propped against the ship, and Cam was on the sodden groundcloth in an unconscious sprawl, missing his weapons, supplies, and vest and with his hat jammed sideways on his head as if by rough uncaring hands.

"There are too many of them," Teyla said.

"I can distract," John said, and handed Teyla his weapons and his gear-pack. Ronon could only see flashes of his eyes briefly when they caught the firelight, but he looked like a warrior, using his anger to fuel his will. "Are these guys friends of yours?"

"Yes," Teyla said firmly. Ronon snorted, and had his chin lifted hard by one of Teyla's sticks. "Sateda cannot afford to break their alliance, even if this group is at fault," she said. "There cannot be a war."

"I'll negotiate, then," John said, sounding like he was persuading himself that negotiation was something he was good at. "Get them to split up."

He moved back into the woods, circling east until Ronon lost sight.

"Find a good vantage point," Teyla said. "Make sure to watch your back."

"You watch yours," Ronon returned, and Teyla gave him a quick mocking smile as she ducked into the denser underbrush. She moved so lightly that even Ronon would have assumed she was a breeze kicked up by the storm.

Ronon found himself a good place, close but out of the light, and wondered how many people he could shoot before someone got a weapon to Cam's head. He counted seven people, but thought there might be an eighth inside the ringship, perhaps the group's leader, pulling rank to stay dry. Ronon thought he could eliminate enough of them — if he took them by surprise — that he and Teyla might have a fighting chance, but he suspected he was thinking with his anger, a dangerous thing to do.

Ronon caught sight of John at the same time as the people in the camp did. John walked out of the woods slow and easy, hands at the back of his neck in a pose of surrender. He was smiling. Ronon counted six weapons trained on him within seconds, and concentrated on breathing mindfully and feeling nothing.

"Excuse me," John said, as casually as if he'd just walked up to a market stall and planned on bargaining for greens and not his unit leader's life. "You've made mistakes, and you're about to make a bigger one." The Travelers stopped John where he stood, exposed in the clearing and looking like a lost child. They surrounded him, and John let them sweep his uniform to make sure he was unarmed, pulling off his vest and holster, and then his belt and watch. Ronon recognized the older one in charge from news-briefs: Lipsa Tal, who had headed a clan back on Sateda before returning to life on board a Traveler spaceship.

"You made a mistake showing your face here," Lipsa said, and the others laughed. Ronon assumed Lipsa knew John wasn't alone and was putting on a show, but with two hostages in their camp now, the Travelers must be assuming they had little to fear. Ronon used their confidence and noise, and moved in closer, keeping low to the ground.

"That man," John tipped his chin at Cam with casual disrespect, "doesn't have the gene, the Ancestral. . . power to make things work."

Lipsa smiled and patted the laced-up front of her leather and skin jacket. "I guess I look like a fool to you."

John shrugged. "Everyone's lying to protect their own interests. That makes things confusing."

"And your interest is in him." Lipsa smiled and must have made some kind of signal, because two of her people dragged Cam upright and slapped at his chest until he lifted his head and blinked around, stunner-dazed.

"He's my commanding officer." John studied Cam intently, checking him over for injuries and impairment. "He's important to a lot of people." He looked right at Lipsa. "If you'd just asked, he'd have given me to you. I have the gene, I'm a pilot, and he doesn't want me in his command. Win-win."

"You are allied with the City-stealers."

"We are fighting," John said tightly, "against a common enemy. Everyone wants more Wraith dead."

Lipsa grinned. "Take him inside and test him," she said to the guard on John's right. As John was being hauled away, spitting like a fang-beast in a trap, she called after him, "We already tested your friend, we know he has the blood."

From the other side of the clearing, Ronon saw Teyla slide out from the shadows and raise her sticks to signal that now was a good time to attack. Ronon got off two shots before he had to break cover, but each one hit a mark. The clearing swarmed like an insects' nest tipped over, but he saw Teyla standing over Cam, keeping him safe while he pulled to his feet and armed himself, so all Ronon needed to worry about was taking down the rest of the Travelers. Energy weapons were too awkward to use in a close skirmish, but he knocked one person in the head with Cam's rock and got another to lunge right across his back and knife one of his own, which was deeply satisfying.

He didn't notice when John appeared, carrying weapons taken from the guards who'd dragged him off. John aimed into the woods with a pistol and fired off a quick succession of warning shots before swinging around and leveling the weapon at Lipsa, using both hands to keep it perfectly level.

"For fuck's sake," John said, as if he had no patience with either side in the fight. "Every person here wants the Wraith dead. Just our damn politicians' ideas of how to do it that get in the way." He looked over at Ronon, who was covering his back, and jerked his head sideways. "Put your gun away. Make nice to the people who're going to let us play with their spaceships."

Ronon was seriously considering shooting John instead when John coughed and grabbed his side. Cam sucked in a sharp breath.

"Are you bleeding?"

As soon as Cam said the words Ronon could smell blood, sharp in the rain-clean air, and see that John's uniform was cut at the side.

"It's a scratch," John said. "We had. . . a kerfuffle."

"Sorry about that," said a short dark Traveler who looked like he'd embraced the mud during the fight. He slapped his shoulder three times, a weirdly ritual gesture, probably a Traveler thing that Ronon was just unfamiliar with. "Took me by surprise."

"Likewise," John said. He looked like he wanted to say something else, and every eye was on him, which was giving him an attack of speakers' nerves. He took a breath, and then another, and then folded stiffly to his knees in the mud.

Teyla had the muddy Traveler's knives off him by the time Cam had taken the few paces necessary to reach John's side, and she tossed Ronon the bloodstained one. It was curved, razor-sharp, and came to a wicked point, like a blade for cutting meat from bone and cartilage. Teyla had her rope out and was all set to lash the man's arms back painfully over her sticks when Cam knelt to put an arm around John, who was still swaying, trying to get upright. Ronon wanted to watch, feeling like something important was happening, but he needed to get Teyla to back off and he needed to talk to Lipsa and possibly arrange an airlift back to the ring.

"Whoa," Ronon heard John say, sounding confused. "Embarrassing."

Whatever Cam muttered back, holding John while he unbuttoned his shirt and his jacket to get a look at the wound, Ronon didn't catch, but he felt something twist in his chest.

"I want my own team after this," Teyla said. She was still bristling with knives and looked like she'd terrify even the Wraith. "You owe me, you know."

"Great," Ronon said, sour. "Come here for team building, go home with no team."

Teyla put her hand on his arm, right above the tattoo that he'd earned for completing his training under Tyre. "I enjoy the Tau'ri mech who makes explosives," she said thoughtfully. "She and I work well together. And my team needs a pilot of its own."

"This day sucks," Ronon said through his teeth, and turned when Lipsa called him by the rank on his epaulettes, gesturing towards the ringship, which flickered into view with a crackle of energy that danced over the hull.

Cam had tied a bandage over the cut on John's side, but Ronon could already see blood seeping through. Cam pulled John's arm over his shoulder and shoved them both to their feet on a three-count. He was still talking, trying to keep John from losing consciousness most likely, but Ronon caught words like home and John. They tangled like lead weights in his bad mood, dragging it deeper down.

"Hurry up," he told his team, and turned his back on them to stalk over to the ringship to try and have a well-reasoned conversation with Lipsa. He might have fooled Cam, distracted as he was by John, but one of Teyla's sticks stung hard on his hip as she passed him by, her head held high.

"Child," she said, not even looking at him, and Ronon couldn't be angry with that assessment. He was sulking as if he'd broken a plaything. He needed to. . . take a deep breath, push everything down, and not think until he was home, warm and well-fed and dry.

As a plan, it worked; it got him and his team back to the City within a quarter-ninth. But he still felt angry and tied up in knots, so while Cam and Teyla took John down to the medbay Ronon went to report to Ara.

She took one look at him and sent for a stack of towels. She poured him a glass of sweetberry wine and made him drink it down, then made him sit on a chair protected with a layer of towels over a plastic sheet. She turned on her voice-catcher, entered the date and the time, and walked him through the entire mission from start to finish.

"So we have a spy," Ronon concluded, giving up and letting his knee jitter off the rest of his pent-up energy.

Ara snorted and poured herself another drink. "We have a lot of spies," she said dryly. "I like to think of them as unofficial information conduits." Her eyes narrowed and she leaned back in her chair. "But I won't allow sabotage. At the least, it reflects badly on Satedan honor."

Ronon wanted to say fuck honor, she should be raging that her people were nearly killed and kidnapped by those they should have been able to trust. But he knew she was, on one level, and he knew he'd sound like he was whining. He had his own Satedan honor to think of. Though this incident was probably enough to keep him out of the running for getting Listed this year.

"Teyla wants her own team, and she wants John on it," Ronon said finally. He felt like he'd been talking all day, and he was too tired to be anything but blunt.

"Noted," Ara said, with a wry, calculating turn to her smile, and she clicked the catcher off. "Go take a bath, Specialist. I'll keep you off-duty until seconds. Get some sleep."

Ronon thought about arguing, but Ara was a good leader. Given the muck he had packed his head full of today, he trusted her judgment more than his own right now.

"Master Specialist," he said, standing and saluting.
.
"Dismissed," she said, already playing the changer into the data representor so that the words were captured and transfigured into script. One of the Tau'ri techs had built that for her, as a goodwill gift, and Ara was enchanted. Ronon didn't know how she'd live if she had to give it up.

Ronon had a bath off his quarters and a support staffer who came when he radioed to take his uniform and leathers away and make them clean — privileges of rank. He sluiced off mud with bucketfuls of water from the tub, then ran handfuls of scrub over his skin. He rinsed again until the water ran clear before getting in the tub, and then sat there, staring out at the ocean and the stars and the moons and thinking about absolutely nothing while the heat leached the tension from his muscles.

He heard the door open and Cam's heavy familiar tread, and then the one-four-two knock that the Tau'ri used.

"What?" he said, because he had to say something.

Cam stuck his head in. He had circles under his eyes and dirt spattered across his neck. "Mind if I join you?"

"The laundry's already gone," Ronon said. "And the water's getting cold."

Cam snorted through the fabric of his shirt as he pulled it off. "Considering you like the bath boiling, it's probably just right, Papa Bear."

Ronon squinted up at him but knew it wasn't worth asking about. "Medbay cleared you?"

"Eh," Cam said, and stripped off his pants and socks and boots. He tossed the boots over by the door and kicked the rest of his clothes into the corner and grabbed the bucket. "Post-stunner twitchiness. I took two aspirin." He worked a handful of scrub into his hair, and Ronon watched the muscles in his arms as he held the bucket up to pour a stream of water to wash away the dirty foam. Times like these, when they were both naked and comfortable together, Ronon felt the similarities between them the strongest. He always felt a sense of loss when Cam got back into his uniform.

"Move over," Cam said, and Ronon blinked, feeling as if he'd lost time. The tub wasn't really big enough for two, but Cam settled in with his legs tangled together with Ronon's and sighed, dropping his head back onto the edge with a sigh of pleasure. "John's okay, if you were worried," Cam said, still looking relaxed and easy, though Ronon suspected that was just to put him at ease. "Just needed stitches and some bigass shots of antibiotics. They're keeping him overnight to make sure he doesn't develop an infection or pneumonia or whatever. He was bitching about it to Teyla and fell asleep mid-sentence." Cam shrugged, sending ripples across the bath. "So what's the bee you've got in your bonnet?"

Ronon stared back up at the stars, irritated that he didn't even know what Cam had just said, but still understood what he meant. "You and John are lovers."

Cam shook his head. "I'm not cheating on you, that's not —" He twisted around, ostensibly to see what Ronon was looking at. "Oh, hey, that's pretty." He rubbed at his neck. "A couple times, a long time ago, we fooled around."

"He went to rescue you unarmed." Ronon kept seeing the way John had smiled while he was creating his distraction, like he didn't have a care in the world because the world didn't care for him.

Cam sighed. "He's stupid like that," he said, and turned around, closing his eyes. "Go dry your hair. I'm half over the bay."

"Then get your ass up and wash your clothes," Ronon said, giving his head a shake so water flew from the ends of his hair into Cam's face as he got up.

Cam muttered and grumbled under his breath, but by the time Ronon was finished with the Ancestral heat-dryer Cam had a pile of wrung-out clothes to hang in front of the vents.

"Bed," Cam said decisively, pushing the bathroom door open and giving Ronon a nice view of his ass as he crossed the room.. "God, am I tired."

Ronon turned the light off and then had to shove Cam out of the way. For some reason, both of them felt the need to claim the side of the bed nearest the door.

"John wants to be with you," Ronon said in the dark. Cam sighed like he couldn't be bothered with words. "Do you want — "

"I'm here now," Cam said, and shoved up in the dark to give Ronon a hard kiss that was broken by a yawn. "Don't. Just. . . don't."

If Cam thought Ronon was going to drop the subject that easily, he was obviously deluding himself, Ronon thought, and fell asleep vaguely plotting schemes for getting Cam to tell him truths about important things.

He woke with Cam's hand stroking his dick lazily, rose-orange sunlight spilling in through the window, and felt like he deserved a long fuck on his morning off. He grabbed a leather strap from the side table and ran it through the ring at the head of the bed. He made Cam hold the ends and told him not to let go, even though Cam laughed and said he felt silly, and used his mouth and hands to bring Cam to the point of desperation again and again, until Cam was sleek with sweat and cursing, demanding that Ronon fuck him already. So Ronon did, and Cam shouted and writhed and came with his legs over Ronon's shoulders and his ass clenching around Ronon's dick, chest heaving, hands pulling the strap so hard Ronon thought it might snap. Ronon felt fierce pleasure at having done that to Cam and grabbed his hips, holding Cam still through his own orgasm.

Ronon breathed hard through clenched teeth, head down, while pleasure ran through him like electric current. When the flood of sensation abated he pulled back, removing the sheath, tossing Cam a cloth, rubbing Cam's legs and his stomach, and then letting Cam haul him down to the mattress for slow lazy kissing.

Ronon wondered if Cam was going to go back to sleep, but then Cam rolled onto his back and stretched, making his neck and shoulders pop, and pulled one knee up.

"I should go," Cam said on an out-breath, sounding apologetic but not like he could be persuaded to stay. "Must be nearly five."

"Probably." Ronon's stomach was protesting lack of food, but he was feeling too lazy to do anything about it. "You going to see John?"

Cam shrugged. "Thought I might."

"He should be here," Ronon said. Cam shook his head, and Ronon elbowed him. "He already is."

"Where I come from, we don't do that," Cam said.

Ronon put his hand over Cam's dick and rolled it under his palm like clay while Cam yelped and twisted. Ronon hung on, not hard enough to hurt but refusing to be shaken off "You're not supposed to do this, either." Cam grabbed his wrist and held it tight, a warning pressure without pain. Ronon smirked and let go. "Ask him. Say I don't mind. Tell him I think he's brave."

Cam laughed like Ronon had got something obvious totally wrong, and sat up, sliding so his back was against the wall..

"John was disciplined for disobeying orders to rescue this friend of his," Cam said. "The Air Force tried real hard to dismiss him for being queer. Everyone knew they'd been fucking, except there was no evidence, and John never admitted to it."

"Sounds like everyone was wrong."

Cam shrugged. "He didn't need to admit anything to me. I knew he sucked dick because he'd sucked mine. So. . . I figured he deserved everything he got."

"That's fucked," Ronon said. He made a point of keeping his tone flat and non-judgmental, because it was a long time ago and everyone did stupid things when they were young. Cam's Earth military wasn't like Sateda's; Ronon figured that was because, as far as he could tell, before Earth was laid to siege by aliens and diseases, Cam's people spent most of their time killing each other. He'd been shocked to learn that, and other people in Ara's command had been equally shocked when the people from Earth confessed to to liking the Wraith as an enemy. When Ronon had first been told that he'd wanted to slam the person up against the wall and choke them until they stopped being ignorant. But the next thing they said was, because you don't feel bad for killing them, they're nothing like us, they're evil.

Ronon figured Cam's military's rules about sex and sexual taboos had something to do with their culture's ideas about separating men from women: who you sent into combat, and who you were protecting. He wasn't sure how to disagree without using the word stupid a lot.

"You want to know what's fucked," Cam said, and reached out to touch Ronon's hair. He caught one of the beads between his fingers and studied it. "I'm his CO now, and I've got this awesome boyfriend, which is pretty much an open secret. No one cares out here as long as you don't get people killed." Cam laughed, sharp and short, unamused. I hate that everything I do works like a charm, and John fails, over and over." Cam looked over at Ronon. "The last time I saw him, before he was chosen for this expedition, he tried to talk to me and I punched him in the face. Might have broken his nose, I don't know, there was blood everywhere. He never reported me, and the one guy who saw, he said John got what he deserved for being what he was."

Ronon wished that Cam had had a better task-master when he was in training: someone who challenged him, kicked him out of the shelter he was used to. He supposed Cam was in that place now, questioning his assumptions and values, but Ronon didn't believe that teachers should be their students' lovers, or vice versa. It wasn't like he had half the patience necessary for the job, either.

"Can I tell you a story?" Ronon asked.

Cam looked conflicted. Ronon knew his upbringing had been similar to his own, with the family elders raising kids on stories with morals and values, like strong medicine mixed with sugar. Cam said most of the stories he'd heard were based on a sacred text, but some of them were made-up and some were real.

"It's history," Ronon added.

Cam's cheeks flushed, embarrassed maybe that he hadn't been enthusiastic. "I was worried it was about," and he let the sentence die like that, unfinished.

Ronon slapped Cam's knee to get his attention, and grinned when he yelped. "Life is a ring that's never-ending," he started, because all stories start that way. "In my parents' grandparents' time, the Wraith were fewer, so people traveled and traded all over, not scared like they are now."

"The good old days," Cam said, with a bit of a smile.

Ronon shrugged. "More politics back then. Not having an enemy turns people into their own enemies." Like Earth, he meant, but wasn't sure Cam made the connection. "But Satedan traders found a planet of children and elders, where the adults lived on spaceships, moving from world to world. We didn't know about space travel back then," Ronon added. "But we traded with them. Thing about the spaceships, though, eventually the Wraith followed them home." He looked at Cam. "It's one of the first stories in the History Readers for Second School."

"Pretend I never went to Second School," Cam said dryly.

Ronon wondered for a moment if Cam had any pictures of himself as a child, and imagined him in the square hat and yellow uniform smock of his school. The image was ridiculous. "The Wraith came," Ronon repeated. "And the people opened the ring and fled to Sateda." He shrugged. "Different worlds have different rules, but you never, ever lead the Wraith to another populated planet. If you survive, you're put to death or exiled. Shunned."

"Like Teyla," Cam said, sharply. "People blame her for being made into a Runner."

"People died because of her. That's just a fact." Ronon stared at Cam until he swallowed his protest down, probably nursing it for later. "But Sateda was strong and we were allies, so we fought the Wraith. We weren't strong enough. But the Traveler spaceships came, and because we sheltered their people, they saved us."

"There's a word for that in English," Cam said, and then frowned. "Except it's not English, actually."

"Friendship," Ronon suggested dryly. "Anyway. Since then Travelers and Satedans live together. We have the same interests."

"So how many spaceships do these guys have?" Cam asked, scratching his elbow as if he was just curious. As if Ronon didn't know he was thinking that maybe he could return to his world and his people, his family. That Weir could trade the Travelers the technology of her world in return for passage home.

"Take the ZPM when you go," Ronon suggested, keeping a sharp edge to his voice. "Not like we need them as much as you." Cam bit his lip, like he wanted to say he hadn't been thinking that but realized lying wouldn't help. "I have my orders what not to talk about. Doesn't bother me. I hate talking." He looked sideways at Cam. "Sateda has enemies. People we smile at over expensive dinners and who try and stab us in our sleep." He frowned.

Cam nodded slowly. "Beckett said MS Ara's asked him to provide all the specifics on his gene-therapy project. Weir probably didn't sleep much last night. The reason we brought doctors and scientists is because we figured knowledge is all we'd have to trade. This gene therapy, if it works, it'd mean you wouldn't need John on your team, or any of us here in Atlantis."

Ronon shrugged with one shoulder. "John's going to be on Teyla's new team anyway," Ronon said. "She insisted, and I'm scared of her. Let me finish the story."

Cam grimaced. "I though I'd already been hit over the head with the moral."

"The moral is don't think you know everything. My dad told me that, his dad told him." Ronon took a breath and then was interrupted by a loud growl from his stomach.

"Saved by the bell," Cam said, and got up to go grab his clothes and get dressed. Ronon watched him leave and allowed himself a moment to be annoyed and wonder whether Cam — any of the Tau'ri — was worth the annoyance.

Cam came by that night, knocking on the outer door in his familiarly grating way. Ronon had spent a couple hours in the gym after work and was feeling balanced; he didn't want to fight, and he didn't think he could fuck without it somehow leading to fighting.

He opened the door anyway.

"Hey," Cam said. "I brought John."

John shifted his weight where he stood behind Cam, one arm pressed up under his ribs like he was in pain but didn't want anyone to notice. He noticed Ronon noticing, though, and straightened his posture as much as he could without wincing. The corner of John's mouth twitched up at the corner and he glanced significantly at Cam as if to say, His idea, don't blame me.

"What?" Cam said, narrowing his eyes at Ronon and then half-turning to look at John.

"Get out of the corridor," Ronon said. "And shut the door." He looked at John, then back to Cam. "Thought you said you didn't do threesomes."

That got Cam in the room fast, one hand dragging John forward and propelling him into the room, the other whacking at the door crystals to make the door slide shut and lock.

John kept his gaze locked steady on Ronon's, and then shook his head as if shaking water out of his ears.

"Look," John said. "Thanks, but really. No."

"Why?" Ronon asked. He pointed at the bed. "Sit." He stared John down until John sat, probably figuring he needed to conserve his energy for bigger battles. "I told Cam we should ask you, whether he did was up to him. I'm glad he did, though."

"He didn't actually say threesome," John said.

Ronon raised an eyebrow at Cam, who was leaning against the wall like he was trying to fade into it. Cam's cheeks reddened. "Cam can be an idiot sometimes."

"Hey," Cam said.

Ronon shrugged and sat down on the bed close enough that he could bump knees with John if he felt like it. He told Cam to shut up and just say if he wanted John or not.

"Yeah," Cam said, sounding a little lost and kind of sullen. "Yeah, I do."

"So get over here," Ronon said, with the last ragged bit of his patience. "And tell John this is his family, if he wants."

Cam came over and kissed John instead, careful and slow. After a moment John made a noise and kissed back, and Cam put one arm around Ronon and one around John. It was awkward, but Ronon figured that was just appropriate and probably a sign of things to come. He leaned into the embrace to take a kiss from Cam and then pass it on to John, who didn't object to being kissed, though he did start shaking with laughter after a moment.

"What?" Cam said, and John shook his head and said that this was weird. "That's just how we roll," Cam said with a shrug. "You're staying, right?"

"Maybe," John said, and Cam kissed him again and then pushed him over to kiss Ronon, who was beginning to think all the kissing was getting ridiculous. "Yeah," John said, and let Ronon ease him back onto the bed. "I'll stay."

---

Epilogue

---

Ronon walked through the gate into a sweet-smelling meadow and for a moment was caught up in memories. Then he heard voices and laughter, and started grinning thinking how the planet had changed. It was populated now, for one, with a settlement of Athosian survivors found by Traveler-kin to Lipsa. Ara had told John he should be the one to break the news to Teyla. When he did, she'd pulled his forehead down to meet hers and placed her hands on his shoulders. Cam had been there, and he said that Teyla hadn't been the only one crying. Not a dry eye in the gateroom, he'd said, probably not much of an exaggeration. Cam's own eyes had been red.

The settlement was a quarter's walk from the ring, but it was a festival day, so children were chasing each other through the high grass, and a group of them caught Ronon as he went along the path.

"Tell us a story," the littlest said, while the others grabbed hold of his coat pockets and used them as handholds for climbing. Ronon roared and shook all the kids off and chased them, arms up like a monster, making his eyes wild.

He caught a couple and showed up at the tents on the outskirts of the settlement with a child under each arm, screaming and kicking.

"Ronon," Teyla said, chiding, and he handed her the cleaner child of the two.

"I found a bunch of these things hanging around the gate," he said. "Like an infestation or something."

Teyla rolled her eyes and set the child down. It ran off towards the long tables laden with feast-food. "Ronon."

Ronon sent his kid after the other, and swung his pack down from his shoulders. "I brought meat."

Teyla put her hand on his arm to steer him through the crowd. "Then I forgive you for overexciting the children. The firepit is nearly ready. Cam," she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice, "is wearing an apron."

Ronon knew that much of her amusement was because Cam still pretended to be horrified that most peoples in Pegasus had never invented aprons, and insisted on sewing them — very badly — for all his friends. Ronon had three, each uglier than the previous one, and Teyla somehow managed to give away all of hers.

The cooksite was surrounded by a fence to keep the kids and animals out, and Teyla refused to follow Ronon in, claiming that there was an aprons-only policy.

"Hey," Cam said, turning around and giving Ronon a soot-streaked grin. "Look who's fashionably late."

Ronon shoved the pack of meat at him, and Cam slung it around and into the hands of the person in charge — Halling, Ronon thought, but he was bad at remembering all the Athosians' names. There were so many of them.

"Where's John?" Ronon asked. He wouldn't put it past John to avoid the work just so he didn't have to wear an apron.

Cam gave him a cagey look and then jerked his head back towards the wooden supply building, raised on stilts on the far east of the settlement. "Need more onion-like things," he said, and Ronon followed him away from the others, amused. "Teyla's young man. Kanaan," Cam said, deliberately taking the outside route that mostly avoided the festival crowd. "They're pretty serious. He wants to start a family. Have a baby," Cam added, with a roll of his hand. He was better now at understanding when he was being misunderstood; in this case, he'd been told often enough that they'd added John to his family that he knew families grew by more than just children. "She finally made Specialist, she's got her team to lead and responsibilities to this community, and she's young. She wants to wait. John," and Cam's voice went fond and a little smug, "took him off to put the fear of God into him." Ronon must have looked skeptical, because Cam waved as if sweeping protests aside. "We like the guy. He loves Teyla. He'll listen to reason."

"If he doesn't," Ronon warned, "I'm not stepping between John and Teyla's anger."

"Look," Cam said, and pointed. John and Kanaan were coming through the grass, walking close and smiling as they talked. "What's to worry about?" He called John's name and pushed Ronon's shoulder to get him moving, propelling him along an intercept course.

Ronon sparred with Kanaan sometimes and knew he could take John one-handed and blindfolded in a fair fight. So he supposed he didn't have anything to worry about, except for the postponing of his eventual change in status to uncle.

"There you are," Teyla said, slipping out to greet Kanaan with a smile and a touch of her bowed forehead. Cam took advantage of her distraction to grab John and pull him out of immediate harm's way. John rolled his eyes, but didn't shrug off Cam's arm around him. "Marta needs you to open the casks of ruus wine."

"Marta needs to learn patience," Kanaan said. "It's barely midday."

"But a festival day," Teyla corrected. "And we have much to give thanks for."

"Old friends and new," Cam said, the way he always did. Ronon supposed it wasn't very creative, but Cam always made the words sound like an oath, looking first and John and then at Ronon, as if for that moment they were all he saw in the world.

Then Teyla echoed, "New friends and old," and smiled, and led them back to the celebration.


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