A.N: This is the first in a series of short, one-shot, 'pub fics', which will describe some of the hostelries John and the team visit on their many and varied missions. It was inspired by a night out that was described to me and, of course, I couldn't help imagining it happening on an alien world, and how the team might react. No, it wasn't my night out. Really.

Rope

A new world, a new culture, a new place to stay while waiting for those in charge to make up their minds about the trade agreement. The inn wasn't the worst they'd stayed in either, there being edible food, a bedroom not shared with strangers and beer pleasant enough to be worth the ripe scent of the clientele in the taproom. The evening entertainment wasn't quite what John had imagined it would be, however. There'd be singing, he'd thought; some catchy tune with dubious lyrics that got stuck in your head and you found yourself mumbling it (tunelessly) back on Atlantis. In a meeting. With Caldwell.

Not singing, though, thought John, watching the large, naked, rope-bound man as he was hoisted into the air. The rope was hung from a hook in one of the broad beams, barely to be seen in the pall of scented pipe-smoke. That's some good tensile strength there, thought John. I wouldn't mind a coil of that in the Jumper, for emergencies.

He looked around at his team. Teyla, her position upright and relaxed, her hands resting calmly in her lap, watched the display with her usual open acceptance. When the small, leather-clad woman had finished torturing her partner... No, John knew what torture was and this was definitely not it; not judging by the man's reaction. John wriggled in his hard, wooden seat, glad of the smoke and the candlelight and the resulting shadowy dimness. Anyway, when the display finished, Teyla, no doubt, would spend some time with the female performer, talking about the complexity of her knots and the vagaries of male arousal with equal frankness; John would make sure he was elsewhere.

Rodney had a large bowl of salty, crunchy snacks on his lap and was consuming them with mechanical rapidity and precision, his cheeks flaming, his wide eyes fixed on the floor show as if he couldn't draw them away. John wondered what would happen when he ran out of snacks; he'd probably start to gnaw on the bowl.

Ronon. Where was Ronon? John's gaze flicked over the crowd and then, with a sigh, toward the little side room that he'd been determinedly looking away from, even at the cost of taking in the floor show. He squinted through the smoke, eyes beginning to sting, at the tangle of naked, sweaty limbs entwined in... whatever it was they were doing. Although, he thought, the seating in there looked much more comfortable than out here; you couldn't do that on this chair! Yes, there; there were definitely dreadlocks in the mix, and definitely another blind eye to be turned.

Unfortunately both eyes couldn't be blind to the display before him, which was reaching its climax, and even thinking the word was now becoming problematic. Ever the man of action, John decided passivity had had its day; the front door beckoned, so near and yet so far, only yards away and yet those yards filled with a closely-packed, avidly staring audience. There'd be some kind of dispute going on outside; there always was in a place like this and the crack of his knuckles against another man's face would swiftly dispel any unwanted effects from the floor show. The inevitable retaliation of someone's knuckles against his face would do the job twice as well, no doubt, and it was getting to the stage where John wasn't going to be choosy. So, a fight then; it was that or the bathroom, and he didn't want to speculate on, or chance becoming involved with, the dubious activities in progress in that decidedly unhygienic facility. John's deep sigh coincided with a deep groan from the gently-swinging performer.

The assembled voyeurs leant forward in anticipation, their ranks even more tightly packed. There was no escape, short of shooting a path with his sidearm, and John resigned himself. At least it would be an interesting mission report, and, he thought, Elizabeth could do with some more exciting bedtime reading than Kavanaugh's whinging emails. So that made it a matter of duty. He'd watch to the end then. Stoically. For Elizabeth.