NOTES: Stages of Love challenge: 'Intimacy'
Asked, Ungranted
It is not customary for an Athosian woman to spend all night in the bed of her lover.
Teyla lives in Atlantis, by the customs of the Atlanteans, but she cannot shake the customs of her people. As it is, she finds it difficult enough to accept what John Sheppard gives her - his flesh moving in her, bringing her ecstacy; his hands on her skin, teasing her senses; his mouth on her lips, murmuring things she hardly hears in the act of passion.
He usually watches her as she dresses, with the possessiveness of a man who is pleased by his lover. Teyla has that much of him and is careful with it - there are wounds in John that run deep beneath his exterior, and she would not have him hurt.
She imagines that he does not wish her to remain afterwards - he never gives any sign that he would like her to stay.
Until the night when she falls asleep in his bed and wakes to darkness and disorientation.
His fingers rest by her hip, close enough that she can feel their warmth. When she turns her head, his eyes are shut; but when she moves from the bed, his hand slides up her arm. "You could stay."
Teyla catches her breath, surprised by his wakefulness, thrown into disarray by his words. She disengages from his touch and answers with all the calm she has in her at that moment; it is little enough. "I should return to my own room."
She hears the rustle of sheets as he props himself up on his elbow. "Will you stay with me tonight?"
If his first statement confused her, initiating her retreat, this question startles her, chilling her more thoroughly than the sea breeze that blows across her bare skin. Turning back, she meets his gaze, her eyes picking out the planes and hollows of his face beneath the covering of night, shocked by his words.
The words are more than a mere question, they are a formal request: the plea of an Athosian lover for more than just sex.
A lover is granted the intimacy of a woman's body, but only a husband has the right to the intimacy of the night.
Does John know what he says? Does he know what he asks? He must not, she decides, for he would not ask it if he did.
Teyla shakes her head, denying both the request and the pleasure it brings her to hear those words spoken by him - even in all innocence. "I cannot," she says simply, stifling the ache in her breast.
To soften the words, she leans back over the bed to touch her lips to his. His mouth moves eagerly against hers, and his hand that curves around her, coaxing her back to him - if only for a little while.
But afterwards, Teyla clothes herself, brushes her lips against his brow and returns to her own bed.
--
John stares up at the ceiling for a long time after Teyla leaves. He sleeps restlessly.
He wakes alone.
- fin -