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Rodney stared at the Alderman's son with a gawp, mouth snapping shut before he took a deep breath that left him puffing up. For all he was the softest of SGA-1, he was not a small man. His muscles were often hidden, yet in affront he seemed to throw on the cast and mantle of the warrior he has slowly had to become in the last decade of living in Atlantis.
Ronon was amused, watching eagerly while walking closer to the altercation, taking in the brewing rant with a fine crinkle to his eyes from where his smile was fighting to show. Things that Lantians find offensive are many, and this rant is probably new. He missed what started the altercation, but does not miss the large pear shaped red fruit in the local man's hands. The fruit is familiar, if rare in most markets.
Here, the fruits grow in a grove, the entire town centered around the grove. Rodney has a soft spot for them as they taste like oranges but are not citrus. Ronon knows this in part because Rodney has checked this fact multiple times, at length. Whatever was said or done, Ronon knows Rodney won't foolishly throw a punch at the eager looking local, but seeing the muscles under the layers of softness does draw a warmth to his belly.
"Excuse you, I do not have a child in my belly, or whatever it is you were just implying. And while I am sure my genes would be a boon to any planet, it will be sometime after the heat death of the universe that I would ever have eyes for some slack jawed yokel that can't fetch a simple requested fruit without making a production out of it!"
Ronon's eyes widen before understanding what is happening. He is grinning as he leaps up to snag a ripe fruit from a high branch, thumping down and bringing it to Rodney with mischief curling in his eyes but a gruff tone to his voice, the grin of before schooled mostly off his face. "I thought I was your taste tester, Rodney?" As he thrusts the fruit towards the puffed up man. Even if this is a local marriage custom, as he suspects from what little he heard of the rant, it won't mean anything if they are both offworlders.
Rodney blinks, his shoulders losing the tense set, before rolling his eyes and grabbing the fruit. The joke is old between them and easy enough, banter leaving them both relaxing as the situation defuses. "Ha, ha, you are many things, but your penchant for stealing half my plate of food is not some service you do for me." He sniffs and Ronon's eyes crinkle up sharply at the edges like one of Dr. Kusanagi's fans, with how wide he smiles in return.
"No, the service is me putting the things safe for you on your plate, from mine." He teases, bending lower to try nipping a bite from the fruit Rodney is waving at him, clutched as it is in both his hands like an edible ZPM.
Rodney makes a squawking sound and pulls it back to his chest, taking a big, messy bite of the juicy red fruit before humming with pleasure. He clutches it triumphantly, looking smug as he chews and swallows the massive and messy bite, Ronon's own impulse has him darting a hand to flick some juice from Rodney's chin, sucking it from his finger. Rodney's gaze darkens with lust despite, or perhaps because of, the banter.
Around them a cheer breaks out, and both Ronon and Rodney are startled into a defensive pose to protect each other.
The team as a whole is not half as startled as they become by the way the entire town seems hell bent on railroading Rodney and Ronon into a marriage ceremony and bonding hut to bless the union.
This particular planet, the source of the Heart's Fruit, sees the acceptance of a gifted fruit, the offer to share it, and the eating of the fruit as the height of romantic marriage proposals. Rodney blusters, but when he learns new brides get bushels of the fruits, to ensure a new family has a good start, he goes along with it easily enough.
Teyla and John, and John and Rodney have been married for worse reasons. On a few occasions all four of them have gone through bonding ceremonies, it shouldn't mean anything.
But as Rodney looks up at him, slanted wide lips stained with the red juices, eyes bright and sparkling blue, he feels his heart kick over.
When he repeats the vow to plant all his future seeds in Rodney, and to nourish their fruits together, he feels... not amusement and humor, as he expects, but an earnest and consuming need.
He wants, quite suddenly, to take Rodney to his mothers, and ask them to bless Rodney. He wants to go to the Cradle Weaver and ask if their children will be compatible, or if they need be careful with crafting children.
Ronon knows, deep in his bones, that the smaller man would initially find it all as quaint and silly as he does the flowy red dyed linen robes they both were shoved and pulled into.
Even the technology of the great Looms and Cradles, would probably not make Rodney stop his tongue, until he realized how much it still meant to Ronon.
And that shouldn't leave Ronon aching for how he wishes Sateda had never fallen. How he wishes that taking Rodney to meet his family was at all an option. These thoughts fill his mind till there is no room for anything else within him. It keeps blooming larger, growing as they get through the ceremony and are shuffled into the bonding hut to consummate the marriage.
Rodney is sitting and fiddling with the tablet computer in it's drop resistant case, the edges of his linen robe gaping open enough that just the tips of his nipples peek out of sparse chest hairs. It makes them look delicate, like something to be protected. As if Ronon doesn't know the strength of the muscles under the padding. Has not personally helped Rodney cultivate them.
Ronon spins a fruit in the air between his hands, tossing it up and catching it, the game being to catch it gently enough to not bruise the over-ripe fruit. It's time is now. Time to eat it or feed it to the boars.
"Do you ever think about doing it for real?" Ronon asks, the fruit in the air, launched a fraction higher this time than last.
Rodney barely grunts at the question then squints his eyes as Ronon repeats himself. He frowns and speaks with exaggerated slowness as if Ronon is the one being slow, lips stained and teeth gleaming from where he has gorged himself on the tasty fruits as shamelessly as any toddler with a plate full of honey cakes they were given for the night before their naming birthday. "Do I think of doing what for real?" His blue eyes are dark in the low flickering light of the candles around them.
Ronon launches the fruit up again, the skin still unbruised and he knows this isn't how he should ask. He should do it while kneeling, pressing his forehead to Rodney's wrist. Should show the deference and honor Rodney's brilliant mind and skills deserve.
But Sateda is gone. Lost for over a decade, now. No one cares for the rites. The looms are smashed, his hands catch the fruit, and he tries to keep his breathing steady as he passes the fruit from hand to hand as if it is hot.
"Marriage. Not to Carter. But seriously." Rodney is scoffing, turning away again and Ronon feels that swooping feeling he only ever feels so keenly with Rodney. The Lanteans are not like other people. Even after years in Pegasus they don't understand.
Ronon speaks up, the ripe fruit in the air again. Keeping him from trying to do rituals that would only make Rodney instinctively flinch from him. He wouldn't mean to, and would blame himself and try to overcome it, all while blustering. It turns his stomach, that thought of pulling that awkwardness between them. But Ronon can't just let it lie, either.
"On my planet, we had what we called the Great Looms. A child could be made from many parents. And if something happened to the carrier, the cradles could nurture a zygote to being born, inside the tank. They weren't ancient tech, though they may have been reverse engineered from them."
He had Rodney's undivided attention now, tech always the best way to do that, short of food, even when he was caught in some Lantean or Rodney specific loop of thoughts.
"When a soldier had a love match, it was, seldom accommodated. When a scientist had a love match, it was the only match that mattered. The cradle. The loom. The spindle. All creations born from the love and grief of brilliant minds. The Wraith had drones and life drinking. The ancients had ascending and curiosity. My planet, my home... had love."
Ronon stops tossing the fruit, cradling it between too large hands, hands and a body that housed a sharp mind, but not a quicksilver one. Not one that wasn't more useful holding a gun than designing one. Some part of him remembers the old Rodney, the one that would be scoffing, not quietly watching and allowing Ronon space to talk through what he needs to without interruption. It is so hard won for them, that Ronon can even talk like this. An effort on both their parts. Ronon has to swallow hard before continuing.
"My mothers, they were all scientists, except Mama, she was a soldier. She carried me, and when I was born, she said she knew I would be like her. No matter what the loom techs had tried, I would be like her. I was. On my naming day, I mastered every physical task with ease, and could not focus for the sitting tasks of the mind. Special forces. My mothers wove more children, after me. But my Mama, she would bring me honey cakes with this juice in them, every year."
He swallows audibly, feeling like he is choking on it as his thumbs set about tracing the faint blemishes on the fruit. Not noticable till it was not in motion.
Stillness revealing the faintest of bruises that even the softest grip could not prevent. Revealing blessings in disguise.
Ronon doesn't meet Rodney's eyes, not from cowardice or even deference, but from the sheer overwhelming nature of feeling so many things all at once.
Rodney's hand has odd callouses, not from guns alone, or keyboards or pens, but bits of each. He was a scientist, a scientist on par with the very greatest minds, yet he has learned to shoot with accuracy and strike with some grace and the furious strength of a bear.
Ronon watches those hands, smaller and paler but no less strong than his own, cup his hand on the fruit.
For all the man can roll his eyes an puff and huff... in the quiet moments, he can be unbearably gentle. Ronon swallows again, and his thumb moves to rub Rodney's wrist where it is close enough to skim across.
Ronon has loved this man for years, and it took stillness and wedding robes dyed with Heart Fruit juices to realize it is not just some sex, or some comfort between soldiers. What he feels is not just calling of like minds.
As Ronon stares at Rodney, the line of his mouth is stained dark enough that the serious slant is obvious, even as he is backlit, shadowed due to how light can not directly reach his face with how close he is.
Ronon looks up at him despite how he is taller, and he feels a helpless falling sensation, as if his knees want to turn to water, and cut him down into his place as he understood it on his home world. That rushing feeling seeking drown out the words he is trying to say, not with the weight of an entire dead world and fragmented culture behind them, but as just two men, a soldier, and his love match.
"Love matches, are for the privileged. Soldiers, are the byproduct, not the goal. A mind sharp enough to be a scientist can be a soldier. But a soldier can not be as easily made into a scientist. That is, it is how my world was. How I still see things, sometimes. Soldiers have orders. They have comfort. But, they don't... keep, anything."
He swallows again and he can't see Rodney's eyes but he can see the berry stained lips, his eyes dark where they search his own face.
"If, my family still lived. And you agreed to hold the spindle with me, to check that our genes were a compatible match, and that we could have any kind of love match outside the loom itself, we would go to my mothers. And they would ask you questions, and they would escort you to the Loom and would, if after the spindle showed us both of suitable match, they would welcome you as their replacement son, and me back as your lovematch. That is what it means. To be a soldier. It means that when I want, so much, for this to have meant, something. It doesn't come easily."
His fingertips are sinking into the fruit and he thinks the fruit may be weeping juices for him, in that vauge, shocky way of feeling so overwhelmed he can not feel at all.
Rodney cups his hands tighter, the red juices smearing their fingers like so much ink, the candles guttering from how they have wasted all the time expected for consummating, night heavy upon them and silence around them.
Rodney's hands are steady, even as his voice is shaking with a dark protective fury for Ronon.
"That, is the most messed up society, and I lived in Canada, and deal with Americans regularly. You are, you are not, just some Soldier" he spits the word as if it is a bite of citrus, not even poison would leave his mouth with such revulsion. "Not some tin soldier, some, I can not believe, byproduct, Byproduct!" His hand is now shaking as he repeats himself in a near shrieking rage, the fruit crushed between their hands.
Ronon swallows hard, staring into the face of his lover, of the man he would want to bring home, even knowing what it would cost him. Would want to kneel for, if that was what Rodney needed.
The hand that raises to Ronon's jaw is sticky with juices, dark and smearing as he is guided down into a kiss that makes his toes curl inside his boots. He shudders, opening to the taste of love, as only his Mama could give him for so long that the fruit came to mean that love. That feeling, and he had forgotten it till now.
That feeling that now is so much more complete. So much richer than a few drops on honey cake, rich and dark as they were. In Rodney's lips and hot mouth, he tastes a love that would never ask him to kneel. A world that doesn't care for statuses, and a heart that doesn't care about the rules of others.
When Ronon is with Rodney, alone and in the still moments like this, all that Rodney is, is his, and all Ronon is... is Rodney's.
This kiss, this consumptive fire, this brilliant light even in darkness. His own hands raise to fist in Rodney's hair, forgetting they are coated in juices and not caring one wit. They fumble back, towards the bed, and Rodney growls against his lips, nothing like a refined and cold scientist. "Yes, I want to marry you, and show you all the ways you are mine. I can't muck it up any worse than that!" He seems to almost be pissed off that he can't see himself as able to sink below the bar set by Ronon's home planet.
Ronon has told Rodney of Melena. Of how they were a gene match, and how he had learned to love her, as she had loved him, in the end. He had never said, what her deciding it was her love match, meant.
What he had struggled with for so long that he had lost the chance to have it. Not for even a night.
Rodney, when he told him that so many years ago, had kissed his brow and held him. Now, where before he was his solace. His safety to grieve... now he was teeth and tongue and sticky clever fingers tempting Ronon into letting go.
Not of a single dead woman, but an entire planet. An entire history that, while it made him who he was, and while he was fiercely proud of it's accomplishments... was no more perfect than the flawed families of John or Rodney, both at odds with their siblings, both carrying soul deep wounds from their parents.
They wouldn't be marrying like a Satedan or a Canadian, or even like a Lantean.
When they left this room, they would be married as themselves. As Ronon and Rodney, the first and only wedding of their kind.
It was, exactly what he needed to settle back into himself, tugging Rodney's robe open to taste if those nipples were as sweet as the man's lips.
They were. Even without the Heart Fruit stains, the gasps he could pull from Rodney, were the sweetest sounds he could imagine. That is, till Rodney was gasping out, "mine, going to prove it's a real marriage to the whole universe." Before setting about sucking a mark on Ronon's neck sure to raise eyebrows.
And Ronon, he knew Rodney would. The man was his genius, and most importantly, his love matched husband.