Title: Fluid Moments
Summary: She says it should be easy. He can't ever imagine it being easy.
Characters: John & Teyla
Pairing: John/Teyla
Rating: K

When she wakes up, he'll leave. It's what he tells himself every time. He tells himself he'll stay until she returns to consciousness and leave before she knows he's there.

Every time he waits, just to see her eyes, just to hear her voice and he knows the words that come out of his mouth are not the ones he should be saying.

He just doesn't know what the other one's are. He's not sure if he even wants to vocalise them.

Every time he's beside her bed, the different scenarios play out through his head. His mind conjures up her reaction to the words he can't bear to give life to. His head reels with the weight of the emotions he can't distinguish.

She once told him that when the time was right the words would come; that he wouldn't need to think about them and it's why he's not told her yet. Because every time he's sitting next to her, her cold hand clasped in his it's all he can think about. And when she opens her eyes, the almost hopeful glint there frightens the words away.

She says it will be easy.

He can't ever imagine it being easy.

He'd been told once that man's deepest fear was a woman's rejection and, until recently, John Sheppard had never understood.

It's why, despite the desire to tell her something that he doesn't. Because a part of him must not be ready. He knows, even when the right words come into his head at some point during the night that it doesn't matter because he'd thought about it too much, forced the words to come to him.

And she deserves better than that.

It's why, when she opens her eyes and squeezes his hand for a moment, all he can offer her is a smile and a joke before he departs, the words lingering on his lips, unsaid.

He hates it.

But it's not their time.

Not yet.