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TITLE: Taking Rest From Desert Wanderings
SUMMARY: Sometimes sleep doesn't come easy; sometimes it does.
CATEGORY: drama, angst
RATING: PG-13
WORD COUNT: 564
NOTES: Written in the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
sg_rarepairings Fic Battle for the prompt "John/Teyla, wilderness."
Taking Rest From Desert Wanderings
Sleep didn't come easy to the small group of soldiers in a stony crevice in Afghanistan, and when they woke, it was to a cold, grey dawn on a cold, grey hillside.
"We," announced one man over the morning energy bars, "are being Israelites."
The pronouncement earned him more than a few sideways looks, one of them from John.
"Want to explain that one, Roberts?"
"The Israelites in the book of Exodus. Took them forty years to travel a distance that should have taken them about two weeks walking. A month if they took their time. They wandered for forty years in the wilderness before they found their promised land - their rest."
"Here endeth the reading for the day," muttered Jacobs.
John shook his head. "Thank you for that enlightenment. Now, if we've all been cheered up by that thought..."
But as they set off through the sparse cover of the hill, eyes and ears alert to noise and sound, John reflected that Roberts was on to something.
Somewhere between the insertion point and the pick-up point, their unit had come aground - or, more appropriately - had ended up high and dry in the brutal shale of the mountains, short on water and scant on ideas as to how to get to the pick-up point in the time left to them. The trip should have been short and sweet - a stroll across the desert - and had ended up besieged by trouble and turmoil and several encounters of the kind in which men died.
John doesn't like to think about that mission. Then again, there aren't too many of those mission he remembers with great fondness. Compartmentalisation is the name of the ops game, and anyone involved in his kind of work learns it well.
Fifteen years later, he's no longer in mountains with his butt wedged between grey shale, but floating on a broad blue sea in a city that would make Frank Lloyd Wright weep. He's no longer on Earth, but in a galaxy three hundred million light years away. He's no longer a mere Lieutenant way in over his head, but a Lieutenant Colonel with a firm grip on...okay, so he's still in over his head.
Not everything changes with time.
But some things do.
He drifts one finger over her shoulder, his head propped up on his other hand, his eyes on the slumbering profile curled up beside him in the bed - curve of cheek, drift of hair, sweep of lash, swell of lip. Tenderness wars with desire; let her sleep or rouse her?
They made love slowly and fiercely before, taking all the time they'd never taken to learn and tease and please. And something in John had unclenched as Teyla held him and her soft breathless laugh rang in his ears; delight in body and pleasure in soul.
Carefully, he eases himself down beside her, letting himself settle against her, feeling some of his emotional holes grow smaller, drawing up a blanket of contentment around them - however temporary.
It wasn't forty years, and it's not a promised land in which to rest - there's living and fighting to do yet - but it's been long enough for John, and he'll take this rest - and the love that comes with it - as it happens, one day at a time.
Sleep comes easy.
fin
SUMMARY: Sometimes sleep doesn't come easy; sometimes it does.
CATEGORY: drama, angst
RATING: PG-13
WORD COUNT: 564
NOTES: Written in the
sg_rarepairings Fic Battle for the prompt "John/Teyla, wilderness."Taking Rest From Desert Wanderings
Sleep didn't come easy to the small group of soldiers in a stony crevice in Afghanistan, and when they woke, it was to a cold, grey dawn on a cold, grey hillside.
"We," announced one man over the morning energy bars, "are being Israelites."
The pronouncement earned him more than a few sideways looks, one of them from John.
"Want to explain that one, Roberts?"
"The Israelites in the book of Exodus. Took them forty years to travel a distance that should have taken them about two weeks walking. A month if they took their time. They wandered for forty years in the wilderness before they found their promised land - their rest."
"Here endeth the reading for the day," muttered Jacobs.
John shook his head. "Thank you for that enlightenment. Now, if we've all been cheered up by that thought..."
But as they set off through the sparse cover of the hill, eyes and ears alert to noise and sound, John reflected that Roberts was on to something.
Somewhere between the insertion point and the pick-up point, their unit had come aground - or, more appropriately - had ended up high and dry in the brutal shale of the mountains, short on water and scant on ideas as to how to get to the pick-up point in the time left to them. The trip should have been short and sweet - a stroll across the desert - and had ended up besieged by trouble and turmoil and several encounters of the kind in which men died.
John doesn't like to think about that mission. Then again, there aren't too many of those mission he remembers with great fondness. Compartmentalisation is the name of the ops game, and anyone involved in his kind of work learns it well.
Fifteen years later, he's no longer in mountains with his butt wedged between grey shale, but floating on a broad blue sea in a city that would make Frank Lloyd Wright weep. He's no longer on Earth, but in a galaxy three hundred million light years away. He's no longer a mere Lieutenant way in over his head, but a Lieutenant Colonel with a firm grip on...okay, so he's still in over his head.
Not everything changes with time.
But some things do.
He drifts one finger over her shoulder, his head propped up on his other hand, his eyes on the slumbering profile curled up beside him in the bed - curve of cheek, drift of hair, sweep of lash, swell of lip. Tenderness wars with desire; let her sleep or rouse her?
They made love slowly and fiercely before, taking all the time they'd never taken to learn and tease and please. And something in John had unclenched as Teyla held him and her soft breathless laugh rang in his ears; delight in body and pleasure in soul.
Carefully, he eases himself down beside her, letting himself settle against her, feeling some of his emotional holes grow smaller, drawing up a blanket of contentment around them - however temporary.
It wasn't forty years, and it's not a promised land in which to rest - there's living and fighting to do yet - but it's been long enough for John, and he'll take this rest - and the love that comes with it - as it happens, one day at a time.
Sleep comes easy.
fin
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