NOTES: For the 'Stages Of Love' challenge on LiveJournal. Five stages of love: attraction, romance, passion, intimacy, committment - and a pairing for which a vignette must be written. The prompt for this story is 'attraction'.
Brightly Burning
He doesn't notice her at first.
There are other things to look at, other people to see. The woman who runs this expedition is not on Ronon's list of 'interesting people in Atlantis' at first. Sheppard, Teyla, and the marines - yes. Dr. Weir - no.
One afternoon, he notices her watching him train the marines, and, in a pause, glances at her. "You want to train?"
Dr. Weir starts, as though he's surprised her. "No," she says hastily. "I'm just watching."
Ronon shrugs and goes back to training. But he notices that Dr. Weir stays watching until the end of the session.
--
She seems uncomfortable around him.
He's not sure why.
Dr. Weir doesn't seem the kind of woman to be intimidated by physical size or strength. She'll give a team of marines the sharp edge of her tongue for some foolishness and never pause to think that they could kill her with their bare hands. And she deals with Teyla without a trace of the self-consciousness she always shows to Ronon.
They're passing in the corridors when she catches the toe of her boot on a patch of floor and Ronon finds himself holding up an armful of a very apologetic and embarrassed Elizabeth Weir.
She smells nice, slightly spicy, like something sweet and tangy.
"I'm sorry, Ronon," she says as she stands up, tugging at her clothing to straighten it and not quite looking him in the eye. "My fault."
Ronon shrugs and lets her go. "It's fine."
But he watches her until she's out of sight before he continues on.
That night, his dreams are filled with a woman whose limbs are long and slender, whose hair curls back from her face in dark waves, and who smells of the pie he remembers in the kitchen of the ranch back on Sateda.
Ronon wakes hard and eases the ache with his hands and thoughts of her.
--
This late at night, there's no-one around to see him out on the pier by the sea as he flows through the rhythm of this exercise, like a dancer performing to an audience no-one can see.
Sea air skims along his bare chest and back, cooling the sweat that dots his body as he kicks and lunges in furious motion. This is a private thing for him, from home, to be shared with no-one.
But as he finishes the exercise with a double-kick, his attention is caught by a gleam of light from overhead, and his eye swiftly tracks it to the wind-tossed curls of the woman watching him from her balcony.
An elemental awareness slides through him, like her hands over his damp flesh, and he knows.
Elizabeth Weir is the spark to his tinder, the flame to his oil.
Ronon burns.
- fin -