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John woke up slowly. Something had crawled into his mouth while he slept and died a slow, painful, death - from dysentery. Trying not to swallow, he shifted only to feel something on his chest move. A blink of his eyes showed him something long, limber and brown. Near his neck something hissed across his skin and a thick, fat dread smacked him in the mouth. He coughed, swallowing some of the black bile and then stuttered.
"Ronon?"
The name bounded off the lead pipe of his tongue like a clot dropping on the inside of a drain-pipe. It started a merry-go-round of bongos in his head. His eyes watered.
Something tickled his leg. A toe. A slender toe. It couldn't be Ronon's toe. Ronon had big everything all over. John knew that for a fact. He and more than half the marines took casual looks and check-ins every time there was a general shower. He'd even asked Beckett a couple of questions, as discretely as he knew how, about if Satedans still counted as human or if they were a similar analogous but separate species.
"Arrrgh."
John blinked. That was a Ronon grunt alright. But what about the slender toe? He tried to remember what could have happened that he'd end up with the biggest mother of a hang-over he'd ever had, while in bed with Ronon and Slender Toes. A quick flash of the Atlantis crew he knew reeled through his mind. In his memories, John peered at their feet.
"Guh!"
Ronon's voice again, this time alarmed.
John tried to roll over and charge to the rescue, or at least see what was wrong. But someone pointedly jabbed their elbow into his stomach.
"Do not wake me abruptly. It will not go easy for you."
Teyla's voice.
He was in bed with Ronon and Teyla?!
"Otherwise what, woman? You try to eat us all alive?" Ronon seemed to rumble to John. Though that might have been the voice vibrations somehow making their way through his body.
"I do not recall you having a problem with my eating you both before, husband."
John let his head drop back onto a pillow. He was in bed with Teyla and Ronon, he had a hang-over and Teyla just called Ronon her husband. He closed his eyes. Maybe if he went back to sleep and woke up again, things would make more sense.
Something on his hip itched and John realized he was sticky all over and possibly crusty. The backs of his thighs hurt with a separate pain that throbbed in time to the headache blossoming in his head. He closed his eyes tighter.
Twirling lights, fire in shades of red, green, purple and blue. John wasn't focused on the colors. Ronon was arched over him, dark hair, brilliant teeth in a fierce grimace and John was shouting his head off.
Oh god that felt good! What the hell was the military thinking calling this wrong? It was so wrong it was good. It was heaven. That explained the Christian fundamentalists they didn't want...
"Oh god, yes!"
Ronon seemed to smile down at him. And John blinked in surprise when loose locks of brown hair curled over Ronon's shoulder and then a mouth licked over sweat dewed skin to bite the man on his shoulder. Teyla's eyes appeared above the gripping mouth, eyes wickedly alight somehow just as Ronon gave a shout, looking like John felt and did this twisting thing with his hips...
Slapped into a world of musky scents and blank static white - John stopped caring about anything.
A red ball of twine was being passed over and around his hands and Ronon's. John tried not to look the other man in the eye. But Ronon continued to look pleased and amused and comfortable.
John was anything but.
The twine made his skin tingle and he felt naked without his P90 and fatigues. He refused to think he felt naked because he actually was naked, or near to it. It was easier to focus on the circled bodies, faces he only dimly recognized and then up to the roof of the tent - subtly.
A voice was droning in something of a chant. But John wasn't going to check his ears back in. He'd never been much of a big fan of long ceremonies of any kind; military awards, school spelling bees, christenings, weddings or funerals. He wasn't going to start now.
Sneaking a glance out of the corner of his eye, he spent a few moments watching Teyla. Making a third point in their triangle, she looked stunning. Her body was sheened and she too barely had any clothes on. There were flowers in her hair and stuck somehow onto her skin.
The sight of her, lithe and lean and beautiful would have calmed him, if not for the wooden phallus, also lovingly oiled and flower accented that jutted out through the sheer panels of her skirt.
"You and Teyla have been sleeping together?!"
"We have shared our bodies, yes. She's a capable warrior - in all aspects."
John watched Ronon arch a brow as if it wasn't a big deal. But it was to him, however. Teyla was...untouchable, immune from crazy hormones and throbbing libidos. She was whatever the hell the opposite of Ice Queen was. Just as formidable but browner and warmer somehow.
The one time he'd kissed her, he'd been half out of his mind. And yet he could still remember the look she'd given him and how it'd made him take a mental step back. The look that oddly enough sounded like McKay as an automated voice booming out 'Alpha male not required. Request Denied'.
And Ronon had been sleeping with her! Like it was no big deal!
"The problem is not that Ronon has shared my bed." Teyla's voice reminded John that she was actually in the room seeing him go wide eyed. He pulled it back as he turned to look at her. He didn't have a leg to stand on when it came to saying anything about her private and personal business. And he couldn't start pouting now at the unfairness of it.
"The problem." She continued. "Is that Ronon has also been sharing his bed with you."
John didn't really think a couple of rough but exciting hand-jobs and one exquisite blowjob - received by him - counted as 'sharing a bed with'. And then he realized that Teyla knew and that meant that Ronon had told her.
"Are you two going exclusive now?" He tried not to sneer, reminding himself that they could both wipe the floor with him without breaking a sweat. Besides, he'd never had a chance with Teyla in the first place and he'd always known that Ronon would walk away one day and not look back.
"I have no intentions of giving you up, Sheppard."
John tried not to feel vindicated like some vengeful schoolgirl as Ronon's hand landed heavy on his shoulder. He just nodded to Ronon's remark.
"However," Teyla interrupted again. "As leader of my people I must make a good showing. And the time has come for me to pass from She Who Goes First to She Who Carries The Line. " Teyla put a hand over her womb in a way that made it impossible for John to pretend to misunderstand.
"And?" He said.
"Her mates must be properly bonded to her and to this planet." Ronon's hand squeezed John's shoulder and suddenly he didn't quite like the touch as much.
"Mates?"
"I am her mate and you are mine."
Pressed against the rough bark of a tree on the mainland, one leg wrapped around Ronon's waist, John gibbered, softly and happily. Ronon still smelt of hunting with the Athosians, of incense and camp fires and green plants and seared meat. And he smelt of himself, musky.
Ronon's hand did a downward twist and John cried out, only to find his mouth covered by Ronon's with a tongue forcefully making it's way inward to plunder and claim. His hand caught onto Ronon's dreads, finger tip notching a knife hidden in the thick hair. It was slowly cutting into his skin. He didn't care. His pants were bunched around his ankles and his gun was dangling from a branch. He'd stopped caring a while ago.
"Oh yes, oh yes yes yes! Fuck, yes!"
Ronon growled in his ear and John half-laughed in the midst of the pleasure bursting straight through him. He recognized that growl. He could categorize it. That was Ronon, off-duty, happy and horny.
He caught his breath, head leaned forward to rest on Ronon's shoulders and as his eyes found their focus again he noticed something new wrapped around Ronon's neck. A necklace. John touched it softly. "Off world purchase?"
Ronon shook his head, bringing John's blood pricked hand up to his mouth to suck. "Gift. From Teyla."
John watched Halling pull Teyla aside and couldn't quite hide his surprise to see the Athosian in Atlantis. He didn't remember seeing a schedule for Athosians to use the Stargate to travel for trade. But at the moment, he didn't care.
They were five minutes returned from a mission, de-briefing to follow in thirty. And all he wanted was a hot shower and something other than an MRE.
"Teyla, get Beckett to check you out." He waited until she nodded in his direction, a sign that she'd heard him and started to walk past, briefly catching a glimpse of something being pressed into her hand. Jewelry?
Teyla and Halling?
John shook the thought from his head just as an older Athosian woman walked around a corner and straight into Teyla and Halling's conversation. Shower then debriefing and maybe Beckett would have an explanation for why his team mate had been just a little off her game this round. She'd just gotten back from her monthly three day visit to the mainland. She was usually refreshed from checking in with her people. But at least she'd said it might be something physical. John hoped so. Then Beckett could fix it.