Martha--Welcome home! Hugs and positive vibes and best of luck with your continued recovery.

SGA, set some 6-8 months in the future
With many thanks to troyswann and nestra for beta.

Customary

Sometimes, when John was doing things like holding hands with Teyla and Ronon and meditating on the benefits of peace, love, and sharing, he toyed with the idea the inhabitants of the Pegasus galaxy were just fucking with them. He had a feeling that after his team left certain planets, the merry pranksters dialed up the Stargate to the next address and snickered, "Those gullible Atlanteans! You won’t believe what they fell for this time."

The harp(ish thing) paused briefly, but not for the full ten seconds that meant they could open their eyes and move to the next aspect of this happy sharing ritual. John tried not to shift too much. Teyla’s hand was small and strong, clasping his firmly. Ronon’s hand was big, warmer than Teyla’s, and his grasp was loose. Either Ronon was getting into this meditation thing or he was falling asleep or he thought he should be keeping his hand loose so that he could jump up and punch someone on a moment’s notice. John resisted the urge to slit his eyes open enough to check and see which was most likely.

It seemed like the natives who didn’t try to kill them on sight were often prepared to be their new best friends. Which was great, except that they were always so earnest about the weirdass friendship rituals they claimed were necessary to cement the alliance. Negotiating while naked, negotiating while wearing funny clothes, negotiating while holding candles to symbolize the warmth and light they would bring to each other--it was all fun and games until you had to peel dried candle wax off your arms.

Of course, ritual solemnity was better than the alternative. True, John was bored and a little fidgety, but he wasn’t being chased by ravenous beasts or held captive by assholes who wanted to keep him in cold storage until they could feed him to the Wraith, and that was nice. Especially given the last month, during which Atlantis had been hit by one emergency after another, and they’d hardly been offworld at all.

When the harp paused again, he counted off ten seconds and then opened his eyes, seeing Rodney blinking across from him, eyes darting back and forth to see what the other people in the room were doing. Ronon also scanned the room, eyes alert. John wasn’t entirely sure he’d closed them in the first place, not in a room full of strangers, but unless the Perwals took offense and said anything, John wasn’t going to push the matter. Teyla, who took this type of thing more seriously than the rest of them, took another moment to open hers.

Rodney and Ronon let go of each other’s hands, and John sent them a pointed glance, tilting his head to indicate the groups to either side of them, since no one else had let go yet. Rodney grimaced, half-apology and half-complaint, and reached for Ronon’s hand again, and they all sat there, sending surreptitious glances around the room. A single pluck of the harp string made everyone else come out of it, and then people were releasing each other’s hands--Teyla let go of his with a final gentle press, as did Ronon, somewhat to his surprise--and standing up gracefully.

The Perwals moved from groups of four to groups of two, the people who had been across from each other in the circles of four pairing off to face each other. John raised an eyebrow at Rodney, who managed not to look disparaging and ask when they’d break for snacks, though John could tell it was a near thing. They rearranged their own team so that he was standing across from Rodney, and Ronon across from Teyla, and then the head Perwal guy gave another little speech before they all sank back down to the floor. John eyed the two Perwals next to him so that he and Rodney could arrange their hands and postures accordingly. They both sat cross-legged, their hands stretched out between them. Rodney's right palm rested flat on his left, and vice versa. They didn’t have to close their eyes this time, at least, but were directed to look at their linked hands and reflect.

"We’ve already reflected!" Rodney mouthed. "A lot! All day!"

John shrugged the slightest bit in response, but then the harp music began again, and he bent his head obediently. When he glanced back up a moment later, Rodney had followed his lead and was focusing on their hands as instructed, frowning a little as if he were thinking of something else, or just concentrating on keeping still and quiet. John looked down again, noted the hangnail on his own thumb, the paper cut on Rodney’s ring finger, a loose thread from the mats they sat on that had attached itself to his trousers. He resisted the urge to pluck it off. Both of them were leaning in a little, and their knees bumped together gently.

A while later, Rodney’s hands jerked a little, one of them almost tightening into a clasp before it went slack again. When John glanced up at him, his face had gone as rapt and abstracted as the faces of the Perwals who surrounded them, though John guessed he wasn’t blissfully meditating but solving some problem that had come to his head. It would probably drive him nuts not to be able to reach for pen and paper or keyboard, and John guessed that as soon as they were released from this ritual, Rodney would be heading for his backpack and the data pad stashed inside, his hands gesturing along the way as if he could input commands through the movement of his hands in air. John smiled at the thought and looked back down.

It was weird and he still wasn’t sure someone somewhere wasn’t laughing at them, but it wasn’t, he guessed, such a hardship to sit silently for a while with his team around him and think dutifully about customs and traditions and community. (Secretly, he almost looked forward to strange customs these days, because it meant he could see his team's responses, Teyla's grave respect and Ronon's unflappability and Rodney's sidelong skeptical glances.) It wasn't a hardship at all to rest his hands comfortably against Rodney’s, to look at Rodney’s square, expressive hands, his wrists and forearms.

If his thoughts wandered, that was his own business.

***

The debriefing didn’t last long. "It was a planet full of hippies," Rodney said where he was hovering at the doorway, raising his fingers in a peace sign to demonstrate. "Nice hippies, though: they’re going to give us food. However, nothing of scientific interest, hence nothing that requires my input, so I’m going to talk to Zelenka about the problem we’re still having with the transporters, bye."

"Rodney, hold up a second," Elizabeth said, glancing at John. "Colonel?"

"Pretty uneventful trip. The rest of us can fill you in," John agreed with a shrug. His own people were back on their regular schedule by now, but Rodney and the rest of the science team were still bustling about, catching up with both repairs and routine maintenance that had been neglected during the past month. No reason to keep Rodney here.

The rest of them only met for another about twenty minutes or so anyway, to detail what food the Perwals were willing to trade and recommend a team for further negotiations. Then John went off and wrote his report, caught up on his other paperwork, and went to dinner, where he ended up sitting with Teyla and Ronon and explaining the concepts of hippies and tie-dye. Ronon looked so dubious about the concept of wearing anything that couldn’t also be used as camouflage that John debated ordering some extra-large tie-dyed t-shirts in the next Daedalus shipment. Ronon would probably be amused, even if it made him add another check to his mental tally of the Atlanteans’ frivolousness. Though he might not get the concept of gag gifts at all: he might respond to it like John responded to the Perwals’ attempts to share their ways with him, chalking off the behavior as harmless but strange, well-meaning but meaningless. The idea vaguely depressed him.

It felt strange to have a free evening, and John found himself restless without anything concrete to do. After skimming another ten pages of War and Peace, he gave up and went by the media library to browse through the DVDs. He signed out Pitch Black for the next week--seen before, but he could stand to see it again, or not--and headed over to Rodney’s quarters.

Three of the common recreation rooms had televisions, but Rodney had used his personal space allotment in the Daedalus run four months ago to bring over his own television and DVD player. Not that he hadn’t talked John into giving up half of his personal space allotment, too, so that Rodney could order coffee and new clothes and some new CDs, too. He’d made extravagant promises that John could use the TV whenever he wanted, to watch whatever he wanted, even if--and this had been a major concession--it involved very silly science.

John had started showing up randomly and frequently at Rodney’s quarters as a bit of a private joke at first, seeing how far he could push that promise before Rodney got huffy and started kicking him out. It turned out, though, that it was surprisingly easy to persuade Rodney to drop what he was doing and hang out for a while; even when he was busy, busy, busy and couldn’t watch himself, he didn’t mind John colonizing his couch while he tapped away at his laptop and muttered to himself.

When John knocked, the door whooshed open even as Rodney called for him to come in. Rodney was hunched over at his desk, looking like he usually did around this time of day, crumpled and creased and worn around the edges, like maybe he had the first inklings of a headache. John leaned in the open doorway, waiting for Rodney to finish scribbling notes on the paper he was reading, a page from some dense report from the look of it. Diagrams were involved. Rodney swiveled around after a moment, bracing his hands on his knees. John could see that he’d been, not actually irritated at the interruption, but fully prepared to be. The hackles went down when he saw it was John, though. John held up the DVD case. "You free for the next couple of hours?" he asked. "I’ve got Pitch Black."

"Sure, come in, I wouldn’t mind a break," Rodney said, face brightening with interest. Then he looked again at John, and at the DVD case, and added abruptly, "But Simpson’s running some simulations, and they’re planning to radio me or stop by at some point with the results. So, I mean, uh, if you, that is--" he shifted uncomfortably in his chair before his chin went up, and his tone became a little tart, though it seemed more self-directed than in response to anything John had done. "Interruption at some point is almost guaranteed."

John stepped into the room, letting the door close behind him. "You’ve seen this already, right?" he said, purposefully casual. "No big deal if you get called away."

"Right," Rodney agreed with a quick nod. "Right, then." He stood up and waved to the unbelievably comfortable Ancient couch-thing he’d scrounged in the last round of explorations. "Er, have a seat. I’ll get snacks and things." John put in the DVD, while Rodney went to retrieve a can of Coke for himself and, after an inquiring eyebrow and a "yeah, thanks," from John, a bottle of beer. They sprawled on the couch, a half-full bag of chips between them.

They were talking before the credits were done. John mentioned the tie-dyed thing to Rodney, and then they got onto whether they should maybe stock some Hawaiian shirts to trade with the brightly-dressed aliens they’d met on their last routine trip before things went haywire, and it went on from there. They shushed each other occasionally if they wanted to tune into a specific scene, but mostly they’d gotten in the habit of talking about anything and everything throughout movies. Someday if they were ever on Earthside leave again at the same time, John figured they’d have to see a movie in the theater, just to see if they could both keep their mouths shut for two hours in a row. He was guessing not.

Rodney hit the pause button about an hour in and got up, tossing the empty bag of chips on a table and getting a new can of Coke. John set his mostly-empty beer bottle down on the couch’s left arm (which molded around it to form an automatic cupholder, kind of freaky but neat) and did a full-body stretch before he slumped back down, feeling relaxed and content. Rodney looked like he was feeling the same way, the shadow of a headache gone from around his eyes, talking idly about the Perwals as he pulled back the tab on the can and took a sip. John enjoyed seeing him this way, with his quirked smile and his jeans-clad legs, familiar and comfortable and solid. He was easy on the eyes: John’s eyes, at least.

He was nicely aware of Rodney's eyes on him in turn as Rodney walked back to the sofa, was conscious of his own body, the way the couch encouraged him into a half-reclining position, with his legs sprawled out and one arm resting on his stomach. He grinned upwards lazily. "The harp music wasn’t so bad. What, you would have wanted to climb a nine-foot wall again?"

"Oh, god, don’t remind me of that," Rodney said as he sat back down. The bag of chips wasn’t between them anymore, but he left as much space as if it were. He set down the can and picked up the remote, but didn’t press Play. "At least I got a transporter fix out of today’s little meditation session."

"I knew you were coming up with something," John said.

"What else was there to do?" Rodney said. "Don’t tell me you were reflecting on the bonds of community and friendship." Rodney’s left hand was lying flat on his thigh. John wondered what Rodney would do if John reached over and took it, laced Rodney’s fingers through his own or drew them to his mouth. They would probably still taste of salt.

"No," John agreed, and tilted his head back to the ceiling for a moment to consider before he decided what the hell, he wanted this. Besides, Rodney had gotten to be reckless and pushy three weeks ago. It was his turn. He reached over, tapped Rodney’s hand with the backs of two fingers, and said, "Mostly I was having dirty thoughts about your hands. Or, trying not to, because--distracting." He let his hand slide down to the couch, skimming Rodney’s thigh along the way, feeling the denim and the muscle underneath.

Rodney’s eyes went wide. "You…really?" he said.

"Yeah," John said.

"Huh!" Rodney said, sounding surprised and pleased, head ducking down and mouth tilting up into a smile. John wasn't sure if the surprise was from the sentiment itself or because John was disrupting the status quo. Thus far, they’d managed to never ever discuss the post-crisis adrenaline-fueled sex...thing. Habit. Incidents. Whatever. "Huh," Rodney said again, less surprised, still pleased. He dropped his hand to John’s, pressing his thumb to the center of John’s palm, curving the rest of his fingers underneath John’s hand. John curled his hand around Rodney’s thumb in turn, feeling mostly mellow, a little-keyed up, pleasantly reckless.

"You have nice hands," John said. "Plus you’re, you know, good with them." He'd always had an idle appreciation for Rodney's hands, but it had grown since that first time three weeks ago, when Rodney had trailed off in the middle of a rant about the frequency of near-death experiences in the Pegasus galaxy and looked at John oddly before walking purposefully forward. John had just about registered that Rodney was way into his personal space before Rodney was kissing him. His weight had pressed John into the wall, and he'd smelled like seawater and chemicals and sweat, and his hands had slid underneath John's t-shirt, skimming across his stomach. "Okay? Is this--" Rodney had pulled away to ask, his voice breathless and uncertain, but John had already been answering, "yeah, more," to those hands, which were turning out to be a lot like his voice usually was: urgent, knowledgeable, and not, thank god, inclined to stop once started.

"You bring this up now, when we can’t really do anything?" Rodney said. "That’s totally not fair." The words were disgruntled, but there was absolutely no bite whatsoever in his voice, and he was grinning over at John now.

"It’ll keep," John said, feeling laughter bubbling up in his throat, tangling their fingers together more tightly. He leaned inward a little and said conspiratorially, "What’re you doing tomorrow night?"

"You, apparently," Rodney said, tone dry but eyes happy. This was new, too; that first time hadn’t been the only time, because once the precedent had been set--well, hey, orgasms. But they’d never planned ahead, just run into each other accidentally-on-purpose after the latest crisis was resolved. Which...the sex had been good, sure. It had even been pretty frequent. But it wasn’t like he and Rodney had to stick to that, did they, as if silence and hit-and-run sex were some ritual custom to which they had to adhere?

"Sounds good," John said, and Rodney leaned in and kissed John softly, his other hand coming up to cradle John’s head. John let his eyes close and focused on sensation, the way their fingers were still intertwined, the small motions of Rodney’s fingers stroking the back of his head, Rodney’s mouth moving against his, slow kisses with no urgency in them. Nice, in the way that having Rodney’s hands resting against his this afternoon had been: warmth without frenzy, without rush. "I’ll keep my calendar clear," he murmured when they parted, Rodney’s fingers skritching through his hair one last time, as if he were a cat that needed to be petted.

"Mmm hmm," Rodney agreed. His eyes were still focused on John's mouth. Then he reached up, and dragged his thumb, slowly and deliberately, across John's lips. Which was--they’d never taken the chance to touch each other quite like that, with intent. It was maybe a little more than nice, and--.

"Interruptions!" Rodney said, a little desperately. "Pretty much guaranteed, and I am not going into my lab all 'hi, yes, it’s perfectly obvious I’ve been making out on a sofa,' because it will be obvious, and Christ, it would help if you would stop looking at me like that."

"I’m not looking at you like anything," John protested. For form’s sake: he knew that was a lie. "Besides, you were the one who started the making out on the sofa."

"Did not. That was you, with your--" Rodney seemed to run out of steam, "um, compliments and all."

"Yeah, so very sorry for that," John said, and they smiled at each other for another moment before he said, "We could, uh, go back to watching the movie now."

Rodney rolled his eyes and said, "Right," and pressed Play. After a moment, he wriggled his fingers free of John’s, which was fine, of course. They weren’t teenagers at a movie theater. Then Rodney scooted closer, not really looking at him, and slung his arm around John’s shoulders, and John slouched down a little more, slumped against Rodney’s side, and grinned wryly at himself.

"Comfortable?" Rodney asked. He might have been trying for snide, but he wasn’t succeeding. He sounded tentative instead.

"Yeah," John said, resting a palm casually on Rodney’s thigh. It was sort of a lie. The sofa was soft, yielding, and ergonomic, the most comfortable piece of furniture they’d found in this galaxy, and on an objective level Rodney maybe suffered a tiny bit in comparison. But he was warm, and this was nice, and John was pretty sure that they had lots of leisurely sex in their near future: he was basically bone-deep content.

Rodney said, "Er. Depending on tonight’s results, I, uh, may actually be busy tomorrow night."

"When you’re free, then," John said, rubbing his thumb against Rodney’s jeans. "Possibly," he added thoughtfully, "we can even get completely naked."

"Okay, again, that was totally not fair!" Rodney said, not managing outrage very well, and then, pragmatically, "Well, at least it’s nice to have a goal," and John leaned a little more heavily against him and laughed.

END