Sensitivity: Part Two
Disturbing Behaviour
After the fourth man looked in on him and Teyla sparring, John felt as though he'd missed some kind of announcement
He hated being out of the loop.
"Teyla?"
"Yes?"
"Is there something I should know?" He took advantage of her momentary thought to attack, trying to move past her defences. She disarmed his attack with seemingly effortless skill, although he could see the faint sheen of perspiration gilding her skin in the light of the gym window.
"I do not understand what you mean."
He feinted, testing her this way and that, trying to find the moment when she would be open to attack, even in the midst of conversation. "Somehow, I don't think these guys are dropping by to see me."
Her brow creased in a slight frown as she blocked his feints. "There has never been any interest in our sparring activities before." She took the moment to attack him, and he managed to fend her off - barely.
John gave ground and looked for another opening. "Yeah, see, that was before. But now is after."
"After what?"
"After whatever it is that has all the guys coming around to check you out."
It wasn't entirely unusual for Teyla to be admired. Males were males the galaxy over, and she was a striking young woman. The guys on Tabaasa had been so attentive that even McKay had noticed it - and that was saying something.
But these were the members of the Atlantis expedition - guys who would ordinarily think twice about showing such overt interest in her. Not that they didn't admire, just that they knew better than to say anything about it around her or any of the other women in Atlantis.
Generally, John ignored the admiring looks and comments, unless the talk got a little too 'locker room' for his tastes. As the senior officer on the base, as well as the leader of her team he had to keep an eye on that sort of thing after all.
"I do not know what has occasioned these visits," she replied, with a hint of veiled annoyance as she parried his attack out so their staves locked above their heads. "So I cannot tell you if there is something you should know. Perhaps when you discover what it is that you do not know, you will tell me?" The faintest hint of teasing sparkled in her eyes before she disengaged their staves, then slipped one staff back in again and rapped him across the knuckles before spinning away.
John winced and reached for the staff he'd dropped since she was giving him the space and time to pick it up instead of promptly beating his ass. "I guess I should be grateful that you didn't comment on just how much I don't know."
"The way Dr. McKay would have?"
"Exactly." He attacked again, trying to force her backwards but failed. She twirled her staff in the air, taunting him with a smile.
The scientists had decided that Teyla's skill in hand-to-hand fighting and weaponry was as much a function of her background as training. Instincts more traditionally belonging to hunted creatures had been developed among the Athosians after generations of running from the Wraith. Those instincts were dulled in Earth genetics after thousands of years of being top dog on the planet.
Frankly, John didn't really care why Teyla's eye-hand co-ordination was better than his. He wanted to know how to beat it, at least once, just so he could say he had.
As they circled around again, he decided that a slightly different tack was in order. He attacked with the staves, watching the pattern of her moves, trying to find a weakness in her defence. On the staves alone, he couldn't hope to beat her, but if he added in something else...
So he repeated the pattern of his attack, and she defended against it. Dark eyes narrowed at him, with the comprehension that he was doing something but not quite the foresight to see what it was.
As they locked staves, John hooked his foot around hers and swept her feet out from under her. As she fell, he batted at her staves, close to the hand so she lost her grip on them and they tumbled from her hands. A moment later, he had one at her throat and the other pressing her wrist into the floor. "Ha!"
"That is not part of the usual training," she observed, but with a faint smile on her face.
"Yeah, well, training counts for some," he said, pleased with his move, "but there's nothing like a change of tactics to be successful in a fight."
The smile stayed in place, but her leg swept out. A moment later, he'd fallen to the floor - quite painfully hard - and she was straddling his hips with one of her staves at his throat. "Indeed," she replied serenely. "Were you not saying...?"
John was warm from the training. He knew that. His body knew that. They'd been at this for at least half an hour, during which someone had interrupted every few minutes.
However, his body was also telling him that there was a young woman sitting more or less on his lap, a friend and ally, but also an attractive female, panting slightly, and that if he caught her wrist and tumbled them over so she was beneath him...
His lips were descending towards hers when he realised she'd spoken his name.
"John?"
With a start, he realised that he had put thoughts to action, rolling them over so she was beneath him, and he was lying between her thighs. Under his chest, he could feel the rise and fall of her breasts, and his eyes slipped down to linger on their curves before he dragged his gaze back up to her face.
There was no fear in her eyes. Some women would have struggled against his imprisonment; others would have invited what he offered. Teyla simply returned his gaze, aware of his body against hers, of the sexuality of their positions, but neither inviting, nor rejecting it. She didn't encourage him, but she wasn't protesting either.
Then again, right now, simply breathing could be considered an encouragement.
His body quivered with desire, not quite inflamed but with the possibilities lurking, like undercurrents far beneath the surface of the sea around the city.
And, like Atlantis rising to the surface of the ocean, one thought separated itself from the currents and drifted to his consciousness.
What the hell?
John blinked, and pushed himself up on his arms, rolling out of the cradle of her hips to sit on the floor beside her.
As she levered herself up on her arms, he ran a hand through his hair, trying to make sense of the last few moments, trying to work out what had happened. He found Teyla attractive and she seemed to like him as much as she liked any of the men in Atlantis, but...there were more things in life than sex, and loyalties that ran deeper than physical relationships.
Teyla was valuable to him as a friend and ally. He liked her company and her interest in the things of Earth. She wasn't his superior in the expedition's chain of command, and she had a fighter's energy and spirit. John respected and admired all that about her.
And if there were moments when he watched her move and wondered what it would feel like to move against and in her lean, lithe body, they were only momentary thoughts. Probably nothing that any man on the base hadn't briefly thought at some stage or another.
A glance over his shoulder at her showed that she was watching him uncertainly. Probably trying to figure him out. He managed a smile, hoping it didn't appear too self-conscious. "Got you that time."
She regarded him solemnly a moment longer, before a smile eased its way onto her face. "As you said, a change in tactics can put an opponent off guard."
Teyla climbed to her feet to collect their staves and John watched the long-limbed grace of her movements. She moved like a dancer, whether in combat boots or barefoot, with the easy walk of a woman who knew her worth and was comfortable with her body. And yes, John found that attractive in a woman.
He met her eyes and knew that he'd been caught staring. A brief smile and a shrug seemed to satisfy the query in her eyes, but he felt her tense as he walked past her to pick up his own stuff. That momentary bracing of the body brought on an unexpected wave of anger, but she indicated the door, and they left the gym in silence.
They walked back through the halls without conversation, passing other personnel on their way.
Maybe it was just the intimacy of that earlier moment, but John was suddenly more aware of the men who turned to smile and greet them both, and the way their gazes lingered on Teyla as she walked past them.
It seemed that she was becoming aware of the looks and glances as well.
"I believe I am beginning to understand what you said before," she said as they passed a group of marines, who greeted them as they went past. "There is a remarkable interest in our training."
John paused. He wanted to tell her that the 'remarkable interest' was not in their training, but in her, but he had no proof. Just...a feeling that this was the case. That and the fact that the looks the other men were giving her made him just a little edgy. He felt as though he should raise his hackles, and maybe snarl at them as they passed by. He did neither.
"Maybe they heard that I was going to beat you today."
She looked over at him with delicate amusement, "You did not beat me," she pointed out.
Now that was going too far! "I beat you fair and square," he protested. "Just because I used slightly less orthodox moves..." Teyla arched a brow at him, and he qualified his words. "Okay, so they were completely unorthodox. But I won."
"These are tests of skill and stamina, Major," she said with gentle good nature. "They are not all about winning."
He didn't get that. "Why fight if you're not going to win?"
"To practise," Teyla replied. "To train and develop one's skill with such things."
"And ultimately, to win," he said.
She shook her head. "Sometimes there is gain in simply improving in skill."
"Where's the point if you're not going to use that skill for something?" They passed a couple of scientists; the guy glanced up at Teyla and smiled shyly. John felt a shaft of irritation, and narrowed his eyes at the man. The smile vanished and the man looked down. "The point of honing all this skill is to use it to beat someone else."
"Situations are not always as clear-cut as winning and losing," she countered.
Okay, he could get that. Sort of. "All the situations I have to deal with are." Which was probably why he and Weir occasionally clashed heads. She was diplomatic, he wasn't. Then there was the issue of the chain of command. That occasionally reared its head in his relationship with the expedition's leader.
John wasn't going to think about that right now.
"Friendships?"
"That's different."
She smiled, having made her point. Not all the situations he had to deal with were involved with winning or losing.
However this one was.
"I will concede the win," Teyla said with a smile. "But only this time," she warned as he broke into a grin. "Next time you must follow the rules of the fight.
"Rules wouldn't apply in a real fight."
"This is not a real fight."
"But if it had been a real fight, I would have won," he said. "Sometimes you need..."
"...to change your tactics to be successful against an enemy," she finished as she palmed open the door to her quarters and went inside. "So you have said." She tilted her head at him in dismissal, and her lips curved faintly at him. "Thank you for the exercise, Major."
John would have been happy enough to stand there and argue the point, but she raised a brow at him and palmed the door shut behind her, cutting off the conversation.
It wasn't until he was in his own quarters that John realised that she had changed his wording, just a little. He'd spoken in terms of an opponent, seeing their training as a friendly fight. Teyla had spoken in terms of an enemy.
And even the vaguest notion that she might consider him an enemy was deeply disturbing.
oOo
The Tabaasi crop fields were everything she could have wished for in her desire for growing plants and living soil.
Fruit pollen tingled in her nostrils, a miniscule dusting of motes in the air, and the faint sounds of the people working in the nearby gardens were lazy and rhythmic. There was a peace to the land, so different to the kind of silence that could be found in Atlantis.
Teyla would never have admitted to anyone in Atlantis just how much she missed the land and her people.
She would not admit such a weakness to the people with whom she now worked; she doubted they would have understood. But there were moments when she stood on the balconies where the Ancients had stood, when she looked up at the open sky and the broad expanses of sea beyond the city's edges, and wished for dust beneath her feet and the scent of growing things.
In the beginning, she had remained with the people from Earth out of a sense of duty to her people, that they have at least one advocate among these new people who had arrived from another galaxy. Now, she stayed out of friendship, respect, and hope.
Now, she stood in a circular garden, one of many that stretched out over the slopes and hills. The garden itself was roughly circular, but made up of smaller circles of growing things, a mélange of vegetables and grain, all growing higgledy-piggledy among each other.
Her team-mates had been surprised by the layout, and their astonishment had not wholly abated as their host, Hatiana, explained the Tabaasi way of growing. The mix provided protection from pests, variety in their food supply, and ensured that if one plant fell prone to a disease, it would not spread to other, nearby plants of the same kind.
Teyla listened from across the garden, pausing beside a stand of grain whose heads were ripe and bursting. She could feel the eyes of her team-mates upon her as she reached out to a tall plant from whose branches sprouted clusters of small reddish-orange globes. The clusters of fruit were turning from pale green to deep red, and she ran her finger down the surface of one of the fruit.
She glanced up, warned by an instinct, and caught Lieutenant Ford watching her with slightly narrowed eyes.
After the events that had ended last night's sparring, Teyla had abruptly become conscious of the interest and attention of the men of Atlantis around and about her. It had increased very recently, she was sure. Only a few days ago, she'd merited no more special interest than any other woman on the base.
Yet now, her team-mates were almost constantly watching her; an unnerving consciousness of their presence that she did not remember from even their jaunt before this one.
"We call them tangian," said a new voice just behind her, and she turned, startled.
The Tabaasi man had come up behind her on silent feet, his sandals making little sound in the sawdust of the path. He was tanned and handsome, with eyes that were nearly black and tilted upwards at the corners.
His glance took in the fruit she'd been touching. She glanced back at the plant, relieved to have her mind occupied with other matters. "They remind me of the denoggion my mentor used to grow."
"You are the one that is not from their people," he said. "Teyla Emmagen."
"I am," she replied, and gave him the greeting of her people.
He returned it with a deeper bow and a twinkle to his eye. "I am Istekhon of Tabaas, master of these gardens."
"You have cause to be proud of your work," she said. "I have never seen such variety and growth before."
"It is the variety that brings us the growth," Istekhon explained, moving past her to crouch and pluck out some thin green slivers that had pushed themselves up through the soil. "The esillia grows better in the company of the tangian," he said, caressing the rich green leaves of a smaller plant as he rose from the ground. "And the two go together well in the pot, richness in the flavours of our food."
He reached past her, and she began to step back. His hand on her shoulder stopped her and a moment later, he held a scarlet tangian from the branch.
"You speak of the denoggion of your people?" Istekhon asked, and Teyla nodded. "Try this tangian and tell me if the two are the same." She reached for the morsel with her hand, but he presented it to her lips and, after a moment's hesitation at the intimacy, she took it delicately from his fingers.
As she bit into the fruit, the rich, ripe flavours burst from the containing skin with the same tangy delight that she remembered in Charon's plants. Teyla closed her eyes and smiled, lost in the sensation of another time and place, the memories evoked by the taste of something she had not known in a long time. She could almost smell the fragrant smoke from Charon's fire, see her mentor's smile...
"Yes," she answered, although he could surely see her recognition. "They are the same."
Istekhon's finger brushed back against her lip, and her eyes snapped open in surprise.
There was no mistaking the admiration and desire in his gaze as he regarded her, and she was startled enough to step back. This intimacy was as disconcerting as Major Sheppard's actions of the previous day, with an intention that was as confusing as it was unexpected.
"Everything okay here, Teyla?" Major Sheppard's voice turned both their heads, the tone light and easy but with an underlying warning not intended for her.
Teyla was grateful for the intervention, although the hardness in Major Sheppard's expression did not reassure her. "Everything is fine, Major," she said, taking care not to sound hurried or apologetic. "Istekhon was showing me this fruit that resembles one I remember tasting as a child."
He glanced at the plant briefly. "Looks like a tomato to me."
"You recognise it?" Istekhon inquired, interested. If he was aware of the undercurrents, he said nothing of them. "Yet you are not one who grows things."
Major Sheppard frowned. "I don't think I need to be a gardener to recognise basic vegetables," he said.
"True," Istekhon said. He waved a hand at the gardens around them. "I believe our lorekhi has spoken with one of your people regarding an early shipment for your people. And one of your people was most concerned about certain foods that might disagree?"
"Dr. McKay has...bad reactions to certain foods," Teyla explained, relieving Major Sheppard of the need to explain. She did not think that the term 'allergies' was one that these people understood, any more than her own people had, prior to the arrival of the Atlantis expedition among them.
Truly, it was a strange and wonderful universe; with so much that they did not know and had never conceived of not knowing.
"Ah. He wishes to be certain that our food will not poison him?" Istekhon inquired with a twinkle in his eye. "It is understandable."
"It's just precautions," Major Sheppard said in a tone that fooled Teyla not at all. "In fact," he added, "McKay would probably like to be sure of it before we take anything back with us today. McKay!" He turned slightly so the other man would hear him better.
Teyla was surprised at his words. "We are taking some food back with us?"
"Just a sample," he said. "Mostly to confirm that it doesn't carry anything that we can't handle. Annoying as McKay gets, we need every person we have in the city."
"So nice to know I'm so valuable to you, Major," McKay said as he came up. "Not that you're not correct. You'd never be able to replace me and my knowledge."
Behind him, Lieutenant Ford caught Teyla's gaze and rolled his eyes in exaggerated exasperation. Teyla stifled a grin, but caught Major Sheppard's narrowed eyes as well as Istekhon's querying expression.
"If you wouldn't mind showing Dr. McKay and the Lieutenant the samples that the lady mentioned putting aside this morning, I'm sure we can take our supplies and get out of your hair as soon as possible."
There was an insincerity to Major Sheppard's smile that grated on Teyla's nerves. It was more like the baring of teeth than a pleasant agreement, and quite unlike him.
Naturally, Dr. McKay was oblivious to this. "So, remind me again, Major, since I'm the one who has the allergic reaction, why am I the one running the tests?"
"Because you're the scientist," Major Sheppard said. "And you're the one who probably has the best idea of the information we're going to exchange for our first shipment of food."
"Wonderful," McKay said without any enthusiasm whatsoever. "I had a feeling that was it. You do realise that all this pollen blowing in the air isn't good for my..."
"I realise."
"And that if I happen to be allergic to it, I could have a reaction..."
"I realise."
"And that you'll have to carry me back through the Stargate..."
"You have a reaction, McKay," Major Sheppard said heartlessly, "and we'll leave you here."
"Right. Now have you ever noticed why nobody ever calls you 'charming', Major?"
"About as often as you have, McKay." The Major indicated the direction of the growing-houses through which they'd been shown earlier today. "The sooner you get your tests done, the sooner we can get off this planet with the pollen that you may or may not be allergic to."
Teyla shared a look with Lieutenant Ford at the argument between their team-mates, and the young man took the opportunity to ask, "Sir, I don't suppose I could stay..."
"No, Lieutenant."
Lieutenant Ford looked rueful and Teyla shot him a sympathetic smile. Dr. McKay could be...tiring at times. He was a very knowledgeable man, and possessed very few traces of humility to leaven his arrogance. It was usually entertaining but, on occasion, became grating, as his team-mates had good reason to know.
Istekhon turned to Teyla, his hand reaching out to take hers. "It has truly been a pleasure meeting you, Teyla Emmagen," he said, apparently unaware of Major Sheppard bristling behind him. "I hope our paths shall cross again."
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the tips of her fingers lightly before walking away down the path to the exit of the garden. Lieutenant Ford blinked and his mouth formed the word, "Okay," before he followed after Istekhon.
Dr. McKay looked from her to Major Sheppard and back to her. "This would be one of those things about which I shouldn't ask."
"Good call."
"Yes, I thought so. Well." He hurried off after Lieutenant Ford.
Then it was just she and Major Sheppard.
In her quieter moments, Teyla sometimes mentally thought of him as 'John', but she never called him by his first name. The informality might speak of a degree of comfort and familiarity with the man, but she instinctively knew that it might also open up more possibilities than she was free to pursue at this point in time.
In a way, if she had not been as aware of him as an attractive man, she would have been less uncomfortable regarding his conduct yesterday.
And she might have been less uncomfortable with the hand that closed over hers before she could drop it to her side. "You sure you're okay?" Eyes that were a pale hazel in sunlight regarded her intently, and the warm caress of his fingers over her palm caused her a moment's distraction.
"I am fine, Major," she said, calmly. "Istekhon meant me no harm."
He didn't look satisfied with her answer, but there was nothing more she could do to reassure him. Even if there had been, Teyla was not so sure she would have done so. At this point in time, she wished to give him no encouragement to take a further interest in her life.
As it was, neither his proximity, nor his touch was assisting her state of mind after Istekhon's gallantry.
"Well, maybe not harm," he said. "But the guys around here have been watching you since we walked through the Gate."
Teyla was tempted to remind him of his actions in the gym the previous day. The memory of his body, hard and lean on top of hers burned in tactile memory. She didn't.
"Major Sheppard, Teyla Emmagen." Hatiana, their host, had made her way around the garden to speak with them. "You do not wish to be shown the harvested crops?"
"Oh, that's being taken care of by our team-mates," Major Sheppard said. "We're just waiting for them to get back with the food."
Hatiana glanced quizzically at Teyla, who summoned a smile. "Dr. McKay does not respond well to certain kinds of foods."
"Ah," Hatiana nodded, not without some sympathy. "There are some foods that do not agree with certain people, while others can eat everything without danger. There is always the possibility of...trouble."
There was an element of warning in the other woman's words, and Teyla felt her team-mate's shift. "What kind of trouble?"
The tanned woman tilted her head back to regard Major Sheppard. She was a small and trim, perhaps of an equal age with the Major, and with an aura of calm about her. Teyla had met her only this morning, and liked the woman; in the face of the watchfulness of her team-mates and the interest of the Tabaasi men, she had been grateful for another female presence.
"It is not something that should concern you," Hatiana dismissed after a moment's study.
"Look, we're going to be giving this food to our people," Major Sheppard said with some heat. "We don't want to be feeding them poison."
"I believe there is little fear of that, Major" Teyla interposed, hoping that her words might quell his fears - or remind him of basic courtesy. "Dr. Beckett is certain that there are no significant differences between your people and mine in body."
"And the insignificant differences?" It was to be expected that he would pick up on the one word implying the possibility that they were not exactly the same.
Anger sparked within her. His concern was understandable, but his behaviour was disturbing her. She regarded him with a semblance of calm. "Of those, I do not know."
"Yeah, well, what you don't know can still kill you," he said shortly.
A swift glance at Hatiana showed the woman with a faint frown wrinkling her high forehead as she looked from one to the other. Teyla slipped her hand from his, and reached past the Major to the bush from which Istekhon had taken the denoggion. She took his hand, pressed the plucked denoggion into it, and said, "You believed it to be like a food from Earth, Major. Perhaps you should try it yourself and be sure."
The slightest of scowls began to manifest itself on his face before she turned and walked away, choosing another part of the garden - one where he wasn't.
There, she stood at the end of one of the short, radial paths that reached into the garden beds, and breathed deeply of the scent of living things.
She didn't know what was happening. She didn't know what had happened to her team-mates, most particularly Major Sheppard. But it was disturbing her; more than anything had disturbed her before.
He - and Lieutenant Ford and Dr. McKay - were friends. And yet Major Sheppard's behaviour lately had been more like that of a jealous lover than a trusted friend.
"They do not mean harm by it, I imagine," Hatiana said from behind her.
Teyla turned and was relieved to see Major Sheppard pacing through the next garden over. "They have been lately unsettled," she said by way of explanation.
"Small wonder at that," Hatiana murmured, "with the moon waxing to the full." She crouched in the sawdust by Teyla, and began tugging at thin slivers of green sprouting from the ground beneath.
"And do your people celebrate the changing faces of the moon?"
Hatiana shook her head and gently dug out a few more sprouts. "Not as you might understand it. We plant and sow according to the seasons of the moon. That is our celebration, our rites of life and death. The moon dictates our patterns, we are drawn by it no less than the tides which wash our shores."
"The rhythm of life." A rhythm that had been sorely lacking in Atlantis, filled as it was with the bustle of people who counted their days in meaningless intervals.
"Yes," Hatiana said. She sat back on her haunches and looked up at Teyla, blinking a little into the brightness of the sky. "You are different to them, are you not? You comprehend the turning of the seasons, how the world may speak to those who live close by it. Yet it is more than that you are female."
"My people are like yours," she explained, letting her eyes wash across the vivid greens, browns, golds and reds of the garden and the plants that grew in it. "We lived off the land, and were hunted by the Wraith when they came."
"But your companions are not from your people, are they?"
"They are from a place which...which does not live as close to the seasons," Teyla said. Sometimes the simplest explanations were the best. "So they are not as sensitive to such things."
The Tabaasian woman nodded. "It seemed so - more so than merely that they are men and you are a woman." She rose to her feet again, dusting sawdust from the knees of the light, loose trousers she wore. "But you trust them, yes?"
"I do," she said.
"Then I suppose it is well for you," Hatiana said cryptically.
Something in her tensed at the tone of voice, at the stance of the other woman, and Teyla could not help but ask, "You suppose?"
The buzz of the insects around them seemed louder in the warm spring air, as Hatiana turned to face her. The small woman studied her for a long moment, and then came to an internal decision. "I speak to you, Teyla Emmagen, as woman to woman, from one people who understand the turning of the seasons to another. You must not return to Tabaasa in the next few days."
Teyla stared at Hatiana, confused.
Major Sheppard's behaviour was one thing, Istekhon's courtesies another, but her instincts had given her no inkling of this.
She grasped hold of the one thought that asserted itself amidst so many others in her mind. "But earlier today, it was arranged that we should return in several days to collect the first portion of grain..."
Hatiana's hand touched her arm. "I should have been more specific. No tinael should come to Tabaasa in the next few days." She regarded Teyla in all seriousness and gravity as she added, "If they do, it may be worth their life."
oOo
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