A/N: Tiny content warning for this chapter that I've put at the bottom so as not to spoil things. I think very few people will find it necessary, but it's there just in case. Nothing scary in this chapter, though, don't worry. It's just Ronon and Emma.

Ronon leaned over the balcony railing, voice recorder in hand, unsure of what to say or where to start. A couple days had passed since they returned from their mission to Talus and Woolsey had been insistent upon Ronon turning in this mission report on time. Apparently, bringing a live Wraith back into the city required a bit more documentation than usual.

The ocean had calmed with the passing of the monsoon, and the waves, dark and gray, pulsed steadily at the edge of the pier. There were no moons brightening the sky tonight, only the warm city lights burning like ancient, nearby stars. On nights like these, when the ocean was quiet, the city seemed to turn quiet, too. He might as well get it over with; he wasn't guaranteed to have another chance to record the report given all that was going on with Eva, Janus, and the Wraith.

Just as his thumb depressed the record button, the melodious chime of his door penetrated the silence of his quarters. He strode across his room to answer it, leaving the recorder on the dresser, but not before taking a cursory glance behind him to make sure it was neat enough for company. There was no way of knowing who was on the other side of the door, but he had a guess…or perhaps it was a hope.

He opened the door and his chest gave a little thump when he saw Emma Rogers there, smiling up at him as the doors slid open.

"Hi," she said softly.

She wore a loose V-neck t-shirt with the letters MIT emblazoned on it and a pair of shorts that fell to just above midthigh. It could have been his imagination, or maybe wishful thinking in regard to the intentionality of it all, but he swore she wore less and less every time she came to see him out of uniform.

"Hey," he replied, leaning against the doorframe.

"You look like hell," she stated.

"I feel like hell." The mission on Talus had left him with welts all over his body, a twisted ankle, a broken nose, and seven stitches in his forehead. He hadn't let the medics splint his nose, but dark bruises ringed his under eyes nonetheless, which somehow made him look even worse than he felt. "You come all the way here just to tell me that?"

"No, I'm sorry." Her eyelids fluttered closed. "I just wanted to stop by to give you something."

His gaze dropped to see that she was producing something that she had been hiding behind her back. A tall clear bottle, filled with amber liquid and stopped with a cork, he took it from her.

"What is it?"

"It's bourbon."

"Bourbon?" he repeated, raising an eyebrow.

"Whiskey," she shrugged. "From my hometown. I'm more of a tequila gal myself, but I thought you would like this better."

He shifted his focus from her to the bottle, read the label and shook his head. "Why?"

"It's…" she sighed, "well…it's a thank you. For a couple things."

He looked back at her.

"For keeping Eva safe and for bringing her back."

He opened his mouth to speak, but she continued.

"And…" A tinge of red colored her cheeks as she looked away. "And for letting me stay with you those two nights. It wasn't fair of me to ask you to do what you did for me."

Within the space of a couple sentences, Rogers had turned even redder and wouldn't make eye contact with him. It wasn't difficult to make her blush, but Ronon stiffened a bit when he realized that she did it more in response to him than anyone else.

"It was a weird thing to ask someone to do – especially that first night – and you didn't, um… benefit as much from it as I did."

She wasn't completely wrong. It had been challenging – lying innocently next to her while simultaneously yearning for more, denying his every desire to kiss her and see where it would lead – but she wasn't asking for anything outrageous, either. And he wasn't so sure that he agreed with her, that he didn't get as much out of it as she did.

If he were being honest with himself, he had enjoyed it; even when they were huddled together under his sleeping bag on M5R-233. He liked how her body felt against his. He liked how they lay next to each other – close enough to make anyone question how platonic it all was, but far enough apart to appease what Sheppard had called her "Southern sensibilities." He liked the soft little mewing noises she made as she fell asleep. He even liked how they had woken up a few mornings ago, embarrassed by how tangled up in one another they were, all sense of propriety crossed by the erasure of social boundaries found in the bliss of sleep. He liked how his bed would smell like her, long after she would leave.

She pressed on. "And…as long as you've got me in your room, I'm kind of preventing you from…from…"

Ronon furrowed his brow and shook his head indicating that he didn't understand what she was implying.

"From having someone else here." She spoke so quickly, the words seemed to tumble on top of one another.

A wry smile formed across his lips. "I uh…" he stared intensely at the label of the bourbon, "I don't mind."

He stole a glance back up at her and, somehow, her cheeks flushed an even deeper shade of crimson that by this point rivaled the color of her hair. A thrill of temptation rushed through him at the sight.

He cleared his throat. "But this is weird."

"I know and that's why I wanted to give you that." She outstretched her hand toward the whiskey.

"No. This," he lifted the bottle of bourbon, "is weird. Feels like you're…paying me or something."

"Oh. I – I'm sorry," she stammered. "I just wanted to do something nice –"

"You did." He shoved a hand in his pocket and took a deep breath. "You did." He shifted his weight from the doorframe and took a few steps backward. "I…think it would be less weird if you shared this with me."

"Really?" she said in a tiny voice. "Now?"

"You got other plans?"

Her posture tensed. "No."

He moved over and jerked his head to the side, inviting her in.

She passed by him, close enough that he could smell her, and it suddenly struck him that he had become more finely tuned to her scent – and not just that herbaceous, clean aroma of lavender from her shampoo or perfume or whatever the hell it was that stuck to his sheets – he felt like he could recognize the very scent of her skin. He hadn't even drunk any of the bourbon yet, and already he was inebriated.

Shaking himself out of his transient daze, he looked about his quarters and realized he only owned one drinking glass. It was a tall water glass, and it was still sitting on the nightstand closest to the window. He hadn't moved, emptied, or cleaned it since he had offered it to Emma after her asthma attack.

"I gotta get more glasses from the mess," he said as he set the bottle of bourbon on the other nightstand. "Unless you wanna drink straight from the bottle."

Emma appeared distracted, looking vaguely between the wooden chair and the bed.

"You want me to grab something you can mix it with?"

"Hm? Oh." Emma scrunched her lips and nose. "No. This whiskey's too good to mix." She returned her full attention to him and placed her hands on her hips. "And what makes you think I can't drink it straight?" she asked, pretending to be offended.

He smirked at her. "So…ice?"

"Ice," she smiled back.

Ronon headed out but glanced over his shoulder one last time to contemplate the woman in his room. A smile, both satisfied and unbidden, came to his face upon seeing that she had ultimately chosen the bed over the chair. She sat with her bare legs outstretched atop the furs that decorated it and fluffed a few pillows before relaxing into them. For an instant, he couldn't help but think that she looked at home.

Ten minutes later, he returned to his quarters balancing two glasses and a comically large bag of ice in his hands. As he stepped through the door, Emma glanced at him from the book in her lap and sat up straight to get a better look.

"You plan on building an igloo there, hoss?" she laughed.

"What?"

"That's a lot of ice," she said with a large grin.

"Yeah, well, it was the smallest bag I could find," he shrugged. "You can go get it next time."

"I'll put it into my calendar," she joked.

Ronon shook his head, smiling in spite of himself, and made his way to the bathroom to drop the ice in the sink. He scooped a few cubes into each glass, came back into the bedroom, and set the glasses on the nightstand next to the bottle of bourbon. Emma closed the book and Ronon, prompted by the sound, looked over to her.

"I hope you don't mind." She held it up for him to see. It was an old, rust colored volume, with a water damaged cover. "While you were on your voyage to Antarctica, I got a little curious."

He bit the inside of his cheek. "How much did you understand?"

"The Art of War?" she ventured.

Taking the heavy tome from her, he weighed it affectionately in his hand. "Close. The Poetry of Strife."

She frowned. "So is it poetry or is it a military treatise?"

He tossed it back onto the bed where it fell next to her legs. Had he ever seen her legs before? This had to be the first time. She always wore her uniform.

"Ronon?"

"Yes," he answered as quickly as he could, but he wasn't quick enough; she had caught him staring. "Both."

Turning his attention to the bottle, he yanked out the cork, and poured two generous glasses of the caramel-colored liquid.

"I can't believe I didn't realize Satedan was a language until," her eyes shifted to his wrist as he recorked the bottle, "until you and Eva made your oath together."

He handed her the glass with more ice. "Old Satedan," he corrected. "The common tongue was the official language since before I was born."

She pulled her legs into herself and crossed them, picking the book up again in her free hand. "The script is beautiful. Really complex."

Ronon looked from the wooden chair across the room, to the space still available on the bed next to Emma. "Yeah. I could always speak and hear it better than I could read or write," he said absently. "I learned from my grandparents."

"You'll have to tell me more about it some time. Preferably when I have something I can take notes on."

"Deal."

Decisively, he took the spot on the bed next to her and a soft smile spread across her face, but she buried it in her glass, sniffed and shuddered.

"Ooh!" she exclaimed. "That shit'll put hair on your chest, that's for damn sure."

"We have more ice," Ronon offered with a smirk.

"Oh, do we?" She laughed and rolled her eyes.

Ronon held his glass to hers and they clinked them together.

"On Sateda we always toasted to life."

Emma smiled. "At alminae?" she ventured.

"At alminae," Ronon nodded. She was a quick study.

They each took a swig of the alcohol. At first it was sweet, then burned pleasantly like woodsmoke as it went down, and finished with an earthy spice that all at once reminded him of his grandmother's cooking. He was impressed – she had predicted his taste better than he would have thought. Emma, on the other hand, choked a little and let out a small cough.

"You're not gonna have another asthma attack, are you?"

She forced a puff of air through her nose. "No. You won't have to babysit me again."

Taking another long draught of the bourbon, he let his thoughts drift to what Eva had said about those mysterious flowers from the other night – they had come with a note.

"Hey, speaking of which…"

He turned to look at her again.

"Did Eva stay true to her word on the mission?"

Ronon inhaled deeply and released it as a sigh.

"Take that as a 'no,'" Emma said under her breath.

He lifted one of his shoulders. "She sort of did."

"Sort of? Sort of how?"

He scrubbed at his face, flinching when his hand brushed against his nose. "Well for starters, she's the one who broke my fucking nose."

"What? Why would she do that?"

He shook his head and brought his hand to the back of it, scratching thoughtfully. "She was good…she was really good for most of the mission. Followed orders, even the ones she didn't like. But when," he gritted his teeth and took another sip of whiskey, "when Coughlin went down it was like something snapped." His eyes met hers again. "I'd seen it before back on Sateda with the people in my unit. We called it battle sickness."

Emma nodded her head and something in him knew she understood it wasn't only something he'd seen in others. Hadn't she been there, up close and personal, in the middle of his nightmare?

"It was like," he licked his lips, "this blind rage overtook her. She dropped her gun and pulled her knife. Ran straight to the soldier that had killed him and –" He looked into the distance. "She hacked at it until it was dead…long after it was dead. Went for its face."

Emma wrapped an arm around herself, but kept listening intently.

"By then, we had lost everyone. The Queen had fed on Miller and Simpson. Coughlin was dead. Lorne was stunned – thought he was dead, though. I needed her if we were gonna make it out of there." Another sip. He was already close to the bottom of the glass. "And when I was finally able to go over to her and pull her away, she was like an animal caught in a snare. Didn't know where she was. Didn't know who I was. So she took a swipe at me." He pointed to his nose.

"How did you get her to snap out of it?" Emma breathed.

He knitted his brows together. "I grabbed her – made sure she couldn't sock me first – shook her, gave her a task to do. Somewhere else to focus her energy."

"But you made it. You accomplished the mission. And you kept her safe."

"Did I?"

Her mouth fell open but he spoke before she could.

"You were right, Rogers. She shouldn't have come along. I thought it would give her closure but all it did was tear her wounds open again." He shook his head with spite before draining his glass. He hung his head, staring at the melted ice at the bottom.

"I told you Sheppard could be insistent," she said in a low voice.

He huffed at that. That was nice of her, to shift the blame back to Sheppard. Sure, it had been the colonel's suggestion that Eva come along, but Ronon knew the brunt of the decision to allow her to join the mission had been his own, despite Emma's protestations.

"Too bad I didn't have that thing going just now," he gestured to the voice recorder on the dresser. "Woolsey won't stop asking for my report."

Emma was easy to talk to, he realized. Conversation didn't usually flow so easily for him, but around her, it did.

"I imagine the booze helps," she said with a half-smile.

He almost shook his head, but stopped himself; it was more than that.

"I need another," he said, standing up. "You?"

Emma peered into her drink and after a second of evaluation, brought the glass to her lips, tipped back her head, and shot what was still left of it.

Ronon raised his eyebrows at her as a massive shiver surged through her body and into her now outstretched arm, making the ice rattle.

"Yes, please," she said with a strained voice.

He took her glass with a short laugh and poured them each another helping, his a bit more generous than hers. If this little Earth woman was going to try to keep up with a Satedan of his size, he needed to slow her down somehow.

With her new drink delivered, Ronon sat down again, leaned back against his pillow and placed his hand behind his head. "What do you toast to on Earth?" he asked her, hoping for a change of subject.

"On Earth? Life is a good one…health is another. I dunno," she shrugged, drawing shapes with her thumb through the condensation on the side of her glass. "There are so many different places on Earth. It's hard to generalize."

"What about where you're from?"

She giggled. "You mean like…a Texas toast?"

He didn't get the joke but she continued before he could ask her to explain.

"Hm," she purred, eyes looking upward as she thought. "Okay." She sat up, ran a hand through her hair, and brought her glass to Ronon's again. "I've got one." Her expression suddenly became serious. "Here's to you," she looked him in the eye, "here's to me. Here's to friends we'll always be…"

Ronon felt an uncomfortable squeezing in his chest. Friends. Did he like that? He liked it more than colleagues, that was for sure. Was it enough, though?

"But if ever we shall disagree," she continued, still staring at him, "then fuck you, here's to me!" She tried to stifle her laugh but it burst forth in a wellspring of mischief, liberated by drink and, he hoped, the company.

Ronon lowered his glass and shook his head, not without amusement, before fixing her with a long gaze.

She shifted where she sat. "What?"

"Nothing." He averted his eyes.

"Tell me."

"I just…" He looked at her once more. "I like to hear you laugh."

Ronon was many drinks in, and Emma wasn't too far behind – though to be fair, he had been making her drinks heavy on the ice, easy on the whiskey.

"Who's mit?" he asked.

"What?" She looked baffled.

He pointed to her chest. "Mit."

She looked down and her eyes grew wide, as if seeing her t-shirt for the first time. "Oh! It's not mit, it's MIT." She pronounced the three letters separately.

"My mistake," he said sarcastically, which made her laugh.

"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

He stared blankly at her. "That means nothing to me."

"It's where I went to school."

He narrowed his eyes and sucked in a cheek. "Technology, huh?"

"Massachusetts Institute of Technology," she repeated in confirmation.

"You have to pay money to go to that school?"

She blushed a little. "Well, I got a scholarship."

"You should ask for your money back," he teased.

"I beg your pardon!"

"Technology, my ass. You couldn't even get us out of that transporter the other day."

"That's just its name!" she said in her defense. "Like, yeah, most of the people who go there major in something like computer science, or mechanical engineering, or electrical engineering, or biomedical engineering, or aerospace engineering, or civil engineering –"

He waved his hand impatiently.

"But they have a great linguistics program, too. It was my first choice."

"So is this Machahu – Massassu – "

"Oh fer Chrissake, you can just say Boston," she laughed. Her Southern twang was getting stronger with every sip of bourbon she took.

He smiled and let his head fall forward in defeat. When he lifted it back up, he looked over at her again. "Is this Boston place far from Texas?"

She tilted her head to the side as she chewed on a chunk of ice. "Farther than my mom would have wanted. Fastest way to get there is by plane, and that takes about six hours."

"You left home?"

She nodded and absentmindedly raked her fingers through her hair a few times. "My momma was pissed I went so far north. She told me I wouldn't make it through the first winter there. It's hot in Texas," she explained. "It can get hot in Boston, too, but the winters? They'll chill you to the bone."

He glanced down to where she sat, or by this point, lounged. As the whiskey flowed, she had made herself comfortable, slipping her legs under the fur pelts. She wasn't in the bed completely, but she clearly had no qualms about keeping herself warm.

"So if that place gets so damn cold in the winter, how come you were shivering so bad that first night on M5…whatever?" He gestured vaguely in the air with his glass. "Thought you'd be used to it."

She hummed. "Maybe I am. How do you know I wasn't faking it?"

He lifted one corner of his mouth. "You wouldn't." Not with me.

She shrugged a shoulder with feigned innocence, then finished what was left of her drink.

The lights overhead flickered, and they both looked to the ceiling, before they went out completely, leaving the room in total darkness.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" he muttered, getting up and grabbing the box of matches on his nightstand.

"Again?" Emma asked. Ronon detected a slight waver in her voice.

He lit a taper on the dresser and moved methodically about the room, lighting every one of the near dozen candles he had. They had had electricity on Sateda since he was a boy, but his grandparents' house had been located so far from the city proper that they weren't hooked up to the main power grid. For the majority of his life, he had relied on candles – or for seven lonely years, just fire – for light. In this particular instance, he was thankful that he hadn't completely abandoned the old ways in exchange for luxury.

"Attention Atlantis personnel. We are experiencing another power outage. We have yet to locate the source of the problem and do not have an estimated timeframe for return to full power. Backup generators are already providing electricity to essential sections of the city, including the infirmary, control tower, and holding cells. We appreciate your patience, once again, as we work together to fix this problem."

Ronon returned the taper to the dresser and looked back at Emma, now bathed in the soft warm glow of his candlelit room. No matter how he willed them to move, his limbs locked up and he stood, immobile, staring at her. She was attractive – he knew that already – but to see her in his bed, so at ease, so serene, she was radiant. Her legs shifted under the furs as she drew them to her chest and the moment shattered.

"One more?" he asked, walking over to her and taking her glass.

"Might as well," she said quietly. "I imagine all the door controls are disabled."

Ronon glanced instinctually toward the door. He hadn't thought about that. She might be here with him for another night. Yet again, they found themselves confined together.

"I'm sorry you're stuck with me…again," she said with a feeble laugh, as though reading his thoughts, while he poured two more drinks.

He handed hers back to her. "I'm not."

She stared at him, but didn't smile. Instead, an almost pained expression came across her face. He sat next to her, nonetheless, and gently touched his glass to hers; they had run out of things to toast to several drinks ago. For the first time that night, there was a lull in their conversation and they drank in silence.

He wanted to turn and look at her, to watch the shadows play across her face as the candles quivered, but instead he fixed his gaze on a point on the wall across the room. The thought of simply taking her hand in his crossed his mind, but she was holding her glass in the hand closest to him and so he idly drummed his fingers on his leg instead.

Without a word, Emma set her drink on the nightstand and got out of the bed. Curious, Ronon watched as she pushed a few of the windows open. A cool sea breeze wafted in, disturbing the flames of the candles, and she stood for a moment in front of the largest of them, her hair gently lifting off her shoulders.

"I thought you were cold," Ronon said to her as she returned.

"You seemed…restless." She sat on the bed again, but didn't burrow under the pelts, and instead stretched her legs out in front of her. Ronon couldn't help but admire them.

"I know this isn't exactly a small space, but it's not huge either," she continued.

His eyes shot up to hers to see that she had already begun her nightly habit of braiding her hair.

"I would have opened the balcony, but…" she signaled with her shoulder to the control pad.

"Thanks," he managed to say, his voice suddenly hoarse. Maybe the alcohol was dimming his senses, but in this moment, he didn't seem to mind so much that they were, essentially, locked in.

Emma looked down into her lap as she finished the end of her braid, and Ronon set his drink down. He then reached up to her shoulder, his fingers brushing the side of her neck as he guided a small strand of loose hair to her hand.

She looked up at him, startled.

"You missed some."

Tentatively, she took the lock from him, but dropped her hands and stopped braiding as Ronon held the long plait in his own hand. He slid his fingers over her handiwork, feeling the softness of her hair as his thumb traced the hills and valleys of the braid, a finely-crafted silk rope. Ronon peered into her face and their eyes met, his now ardent with desire and hers still wide with astonishment.

For what had to be the hundredth time, he wondered what it would be like to kiss her, and it didn't last long. After he released the braid from his grasp, she leaned into him, hesitated long enough for him to feel her breath on his face, and tentatively touched her lips to his. He always thought she was brave. Before she could second guess herself and pull away, he laid a hand on the side of her neck, wrapped his arm around her waist, and drew her toward him to deepen the kiss. And for the briefest of minutes, they relinquished themselves to one another.

She tasted like whisky and felt like fire. His heart was racing, pumping the alcohol-rich blood faster and faster through his body, getting him drunker every second, but in the moment, he was certain that Emma was the one intoxicating him. The edges of his reality blurred and it wasn't long before he lost control of his hands. They moved along her waist, her back, into her half-braided hair, like he needed to touch all of her all at once. His mouth slipped from hers to her neck and as he kissed her soft flesh, she released a throaty sound of pleasure that instantly targeted one of the most primordial parts of his brain. The idea of stripping off her clothes, throwing them across the room, and taking her then and there flashed across his mind, but what little possession he still had of his own faculties kept the urge mostly at bay.

He felt her falling back onto the pillows, felt him going with her, on top of her. His hand slid up the back of her thigh and under the hem of her shorts as she hooked one of those damn legs around him. He felt fingers on his cheeks, the back of his neck, short breaths in his ear.

She was wanting. She was drunk. She was trapped. She could be his.

She wanted to be his.

The right thing to do would have been to wrench himself away from her, but it would have been easier to ask a man dying of thirst not to drink. He did something either with his hand or with his mouth that made her gasp and, as she went to capture his lips again, her nose brushed against his own. The pain sent an electric shock to his brain that jostled him from his frenzy and he managed to pull away.

"What's wrong?" Her voice was still thick with desire, syllables slurred with drink.

He rolled off of her. "I have to stop," he said, breathless, staring down at the bedclothes. He had to look anywhere but where she lay, breast heaving, lips swollen, waiting for him.

Slowly, she sat back up. "Why?" she timidly asked.

He looked over to her and could see the hurt and confusion on her face. "If I do that again," he started, heart pounding, "I won't be able to stop."

Her whole face, neck, and chest burned in the dim candlelight. It was clear that this was not the answer she was expecting. For a moment, the room was completely silent. Even the sound of the waves was drowned out by the deafening rush of blood in his ears.

"Well," she began, laying her hand on his forearm, "it's not like I haven't spent the night here before." She gazed up at him from underneath her thick red eyelashes and not for the first time, did he think that she looked alluringly vulpine.

"I know." He felt another surge of lust rip through him. "And I would keep you up all night. I would have you as many times as I could. Whatever you want, anywhere, until one or both of us pass out from exhaustion."

Her eyes were wide and unblinking, her chest visibly rising and falling with anticipation. He wondered if any man before him had ever spoken to her like this or meant it as much as he did. He hoped not.

"I want you, Emma," he declared. "It is killing me how much I want you." He paused. "But…I don't want you the way you want me."

The lights overhead flickered, then burst to life, but neither of them seemed to notice. Her breathing was still labored, her eyes locked on him as she waited for him to finish his point.

"Look, we're both drunk and I don't want this to mean more for you than it does for me," he concluded.

She glanced down into her lap, brought the heel of her hand to her forehead, and shook her head. Then, without another word, she got out of the bed, grabbed her shoes, and made her way to the door.

"Emma," Ronon called. "Don't—"

"Don't what?" she spat. "Go?"

He stared back at her.

"Look, I understand that you are still trying to heal from the death of whoever it was you loved so long ago, and I respect that. I promise I do. And if all you want is to fuck me, I get it. I bet there's already a whole damn club here dedicated to that." He could hear the tears already in the back of her throat. "But if that's all you want – all you feel for me – then you don't get to ask me to stay with you." She turned her back to him and disappeared through the door.

A/N: Behold, the longest chapter I have ever written. It went through about a thousand drafts. Do you hate me or do you love me? ;)

Credit for the "if I kiss you again, I won't be able to stop" goes to a random pin I once saw on Pinterest. Likely from somewhere on Tumblr.

CW: Some drunken kissing and foreplay. Consent could be considered questionable here, since both parties are drunk. Does not go past foreplay.