Even through hyperspace, the flight takes time, and though she knows she needs every minute of it to learn her part, she cannot wait to get there, cannot wait for this to be over. Her new skin itches, tight around her, a hunter’s net or a snare she wishes she could cut herself free of, and Todd’s lessons in the throne room only make it feel more confining, teaching her to comport herself like the creature she sees in the mirror.
It is a peculiar experience, playing at being what she once had nightmares of becoming, and it is restless and tired she returns to the room Todd has furnished for them.
Her team do not like her new appearance - her temporary appearance - any more than she does, and their worry and discomfort is plain on their faces, in the stiffening of their bodies as they greet her, although she knows they do not wish her to see it. Another mirror to view herself in - the way John looks and looks away, the nervous twisting of Rodney’s hands, the over-vigilance beneath Ronon’s easy sprawl - and the awkward silence which falls around the wooden table makes her want to turn on her heel and walk away; too foreign, suddenly, in the midst of her family.
No silence ever lasts long with Rodney McKay in the room, though, she learnt this within her first week in Atlantis. It took her longer to realize how often it is a relief and not a curse.
“You know,” he says, turning to her, tapping his fingers on the table top. “You’ve been in the room, what, ninety seconds already? If you really were an actual wraith queen, I’m pretty sure you’d have Sheppard on his knees by now. Statistically speaking.”
It is a joke, an old one with a new turn that is not precisely funny, but it reaches for her, and she appreciates the attempt.
“Never noticed her having any trouble with that when she isn’t a wraith,” Ronon says, matter-of-fact.
Rodney huffs a near laugh, and she cannot keep her lips from twisting into a smile. They are all a little freaked out, as the Earth people say, but they can still be freaked out together.
“It is not a very taxing task,” she says, looking at John. Her voice is wrong, distorted, but she hopes he knows her well enough to hear all the different meanings she wishes to convey, the affection and the double-edged tease and the sincerity.
She expects him to show embarrassment, defensiveness, answer her challenge with some quip of his own.
Instead, he comes to her.
Lays the P-90 he has been fiddling with down on the table and gets up, his fingers trailing the back of Rodney’s chair as he steps around it, crossing the room to where she is standing. He stops just in front of her, eye to eye, biting at his lower lip in the way she associates with concentration and nervousness both. He lifts his hands to her shoulders, the touch light but steady, and for a second she does not know whether to tilt her head forward to meet him in greeting, or back to receive him in a kiss. But he does not lean in, simply traces his thumbs along the high collar of her coat, stroking her neck.
He did not wish her to do this, but he is the first of them to touch her, skin to alien skin.
“Not ‘taxing’ for you,” he says, and there is mockery in his voice at the word choice, but his eyes are serious. Too serious for him to hold her gaze for more than a moment before he ducks his head, frightened as always of facing emotions. But he speaks her name, another truth through the veil of her disguise, another caress. “Teyla,” he says. “Jesus.” And then, so quietly she almost does not catch it, “You never even have to ask.”
She does have him on his knees, then, his hands sliding down her body as he folds himself to the floor, their weight coming to rest on her hips. He presses his face to her belly, the gesture intimate and warm, and she cannot see his expression, he would not want her to, but she knows what he is trying to say.
She combs her fingers through his hair, and something leaps inside her, the net, the snare suddenly loose enough for movement, for breath. For desire, when his lips brush her flesh through the peculiar fabric of her pants. She makes a noise, a moan that is not quite her own, but it is drowned out by the scraping of Ronon pushing his chair back, rising to join them. His hands light on her shoulders, where John’s have just been, his body a familiar heat against her back, and she sinks into it, reminding herself of how they fit together. He bends down, stroking her mane of false hair aside, his beard a rough tickle against the remolded shell of her ear when he speaks.
“You’ll do fine,” he says, soft and calm and real. “You’re Teyla Emmagan and we’re with you. Right, McKay?” he adds, louder, out into the room.
She lifts her gaze from John at her feet, lets it seek out Rodney where he is sitting at the table. His eyes meeting hers are blown wide, reflecting the flames of the incongruous candles.
“Yes. Yes, of course,” he says, springing to his feet, but he does not come closer. She wonders if he can see her thoughts at all, through the contact lenses she is wearing, the slitted yellow of her mask. Then she remembers, visceral, Sheppard’s eyes transformed exactly into this, but not a mask at all, not an act, and her fingers tighten in John’s hair, her other hand reaching out to Rodney.
It is only a step, and his hand is in hers; another, and she can raise it to her face, leaning her cheek into his palm.
He is still for a moment, then runs his thumb along her cheekbone, strokes her temple, the corner of her eye. He makes a quiet sound, intrigued, brings his left hand up to touch her more, fingertips gentle at the line of her jaw. Tilt of his head, curious, and it hits her that he has wanted this, has wanted to touch her, this version of her, to contrast and compare. Has wanted to know her, the feel of her, as he knows the texture of her real skin, carefully studied the way he studies everything that matters.
She grabs for him, hand around the back of his neck, urging him in, and brings their mouths together. Lips against lips, tongue against tongue, and whatever she is he will know her, they will all, always, as she knows them.
Scrape of her teeth - too sharp, awkward, not hers - across his tongue, and he pulls back, his breath hot against her chin.
“Ow,” he says. “Fangs. Seriously, you should watch those things. Mutilation is so not a turn-on.” But he dives back in, the kiss eager and tender and not careful at all.
Ronon chuckles in her ear, amused, licks her there, and she cannot resist the urge to bite deliberately, a quick nip to Rodney’s bottom lip, because she is wearing a costume and nothing prevents her from playing with it; with these men, she is safe to do so.
Rodney moans into her mouth, half annoyance, half desire, a sound she knows well, and John snorts his odd laughter against her stomach, recognizing it, too. He has found his way through the layers of her borrowed clothing, down to bare skin, his tongue lapping at her hip bone, moving lower. She arches forward, into the touch, giving him permission, and he slides her pants down, just far enough.
As he buries his face between her legs, Ronon strokes his hand down the length of her arm, down to take her hand where it rests on John’s head. Their fingers entwine, and she squeezes hard, lets her pleasure pass into him, into Rodney through the kiss they share.
The tips of Ronon’s fingers brush her palm, rub across the opening Keller has cut in her flesh. Her anatomy is false, but the touch is genuine, and it reaches all the way through to where her heart beats. She can feel it against the pulse and breath of who she is, she can feel them all there, where she feels herself.
