amends
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Teyla does not normally complain, but there are times when it is difficult. She is grateful for the infirmary closet stocked with ibuprofen, heat compresses and other supplies to ease the monthly inconvenience of being a woman in the middle of a great war, but there are still times like tonight, times when she is on another world for the night and no diplomatic task can distract her from the ache that sits low in her pelvis. Fidgeting is impolite; shifting in her seat unacceptable no matter how badly she wishes to bend her chest to her knees in a long warming stretch, and the only relief is that the Genii take their supper early, so after tea and a few parting pleasantries with Ladon, she is able to retire to her rooms. The entire dinner had been grueling. As a representative of both her own people and Atlantis, Teyla is expected to smile and listen and make everyone glad of their alliance, but tonight she feels heavy with a dark intolerance that snakes its way through her limbs and settles into a hot coil at the base of her spine. Everything is blurred at the edges, smeared with pain, and she had gotten through the evening meal by sliding her gaze carefully across the faces of her hosts and forcing her lips into a smile to conceal how their voices gnawed at her nerves. When she opens the door, Sora is there, barely more than a halo of gold in the dark hallway until she lifts her face into the light. Teyla is taken aback for a moment, and then abruptly shot through with discomfort, her skin too tight—her entire body too tight—because Sora is one of the annoyances that’s been orbiting her sphere of awareness all day long. Her usual decorum has been stretched too thin for a visit, especially from Sora, whose presence alone calls for certain level of caution. “I am tired,” Teyla says, and nods her head in dismissal, but Sora steps into the doorway. She has always been too forward. “I know you are,” Sora says as she walks inside, all straight lines in her uniform, and lets the door swing shut behind her. “I’ve been watching you all day.” Teyla takes a long breath. It calms her, but does nothing to eliminate the ache, which has bled through into her lower back. “I do not understand.” Sora pushes her hair back behind her ears and tilts her head appraisingly. “Your posture is usually much better.” “I…” Sora leans in, a conspiratorial slant to her mouth. “You have the straightest back of anyone I’ve ever seen,” she whispers. “Thank you,” Teyla says, uneasy, glancing towards the door. She wants to sit, to curl up under the covers or in a bath, all of which ought to be done in private. As long as Sora stays, she will stand. “There’s no reason for you to suffer,” Sora says, and unclasps a blue cloth sack from her utility belt. “There are remedies.” Her fingers work busily at the ties for a few moments before Teyla realizes she is waiting for an answer. “Thank you,” she says, “But the Atlanteans’ medicine is far more advanced.” “But I know you. You won’t take anything, not while you’re here,” Sora says, another annoyance, that she is able to read Teyla so well. “And anyhow, this isn’t from Genia. It’s from Thoria.” Her voice goes low on the last word, her face soft and dark and eager, like the proposition Teyla had expected her whole life, until it had disappeared in the flash of a shining blade. “Thoria,” Teyla says. They had never dialed that place from Athos, but everyone has heard the stories. The people are hedonistic and often culled, and the only reason anyone visits is for pleasures of flesh and things that Charin had told Teyla she was too young to know of. “I traded for it myself,” Sora says, with color high on her cheeks, and Sora’s nerves alone are enough to capture Teyla’s interest. “Cowen forbade it, but it isn’t harmful; it’s natural.” “If it is not harmful, then why is it not allowed?” Teyla asks as she watches Sora take the items from her bag one by one and place them on the table. Sora shrugs. “It’s- It doesn’t contribute to the war against the wraith. People don’t understand. Who makes the rules? Cowen, Kolya, Ladon, and none of them would know anything about this.” This much is true. “They would not,” Teyla agrees. “And they don’t need to know. The point is, it’ll make you feel better, and no one else can do this for you.” “But you can do this for me,” Teyla murmurs, looking over the items, which appear harmless enough; oils and wraps and some kind of green paste. “I want to,” Sora says quietly, her head bent over her work. There are many reasons why allowing this is out of the question. Sora’s offhand defiance is appealing, but Thoria is wicked and corrupt. On the other hand, Teyla has heard stories, stories far removed from the Wraith; intriguing tales spun from wistful suitors’ lips, and they lurk within a part of Teyla that has nothing to do with skill or duty or survival. Even though she cannot allow it, there is suddenly an intriguing edge to the ache that binds so tightly at her midsection. “Have you done this before?” she asks. Sora’s hands move absently over the items, even as she holds Teyla’s eyes. “Only to myself. There’s no one else to share it with, and even if there were…” She shrugs, and despite her forward behavior, her training is evident in her expressionless face. Teyla is reluctant as Sora to give anything away. The prospect of relief is a temptation, as is the means by which she suspects it will be administered. Yet she resists, even as discomfort drips from her belly, down into her thighs. She resists because to say yes has always been difficult; she resists out of habit, and because it still comes down to the fact that while she has always known to guard herself against the Wraith, until Sora she had never known to guard herself against the stunningly deep wounds of betrayal. “This is my apology,” Sora says, blinking up at Teyla and clearing the traces of violence from her eyes. Teyla’s mouth feels suddenly not her own, soft and tremulous with an emotion that reaches all the way down her throat and cannot be swallowed. She loves that violence as much as she loves the affection that coexists in Sora’s honey-brown eyes, flashing from one extreme to the other so quickly that Teyla has always been intrigued in spite of herself. “You have already given your apology,” she says, her hand pressed to the small of her own back in an attempt to ease the ache. The day has already been too much, and surely this is not weeping that has risen up in her chest. “And you were so polite in your acceptance,” Sora says, as anger paints her cheeks with color. “Things are not settled between us, Teyla. I can’t stand to sit at the negotiation table with you, anymore--not while you whisper in Colonel Sheppard’s ear and take Ronon’s hand and leave nothing for me.” Teyla has had much time to come to terms with the way she was so abruptly cut out of the Genii’s good will, but she will admit to no one how greatly she had grieved, which makes Sora’s confession a concession worth far more than her apology. “I am not as I was five years ago,” Teyla warns, but she is tired, and no one among the Lanteans or Athosians would dare to offer what Sora is here demanding as her right. Since the baby, the offers have become even more unlikely, as though she has stepped prematurely into Charin’s skin. “Five years ago, neither of us were free. Teyla,” Sora says, the word twisted into a plea, and Teyla closes her eyes for a long moment, the only assent she can give with her heart jerking in her chest as though she has taken a dose of Ford’s enzyme. Sora’s fingers are hot and damp as she catches Teyla’s hand in her own. With the other, she shakes a large blue towel over her arm until the surface is as smooth and inviting as the promise of her hands. “It’s to be done in the bath,” she says, beckoning in a manner that reminds Teyla how many men are now under Sora’s command. Beneath Sora’s soft curves and golden shine is an infrastructure of steel, and that strength speaks to Teyla, makes her trust where she has doubted for so long. As she follows Sora into the washroom and watches her fill the high, square tub, she lets her eyes travel a brief path over the mess of Sora’s hair, the narrow length of her waist, and the dangerous angles of her hands, which twist the faucets to her will. “To think of all the years we spent carrying water from the well,” Teyla says, her voice merely a wisp of sound beneath the rush of sound and rising steam. Already, her hair feels damp against her face, as wilted as her sense of resolve. Sora does not reply. She is occupied with unbuttoning her uniform jacket and shedding it to the floor, to reveal a gray, long-sleeved shirt underneath. It should not be exciting to see Sora push her sleeves up to the elbows, but the Genii are a modest people, brought up to disdain weaknesses such as nakedness, and all the unwatchful things that can follow. They are even more modest than the Lanteans, so when Sora draws down the zipper that runs from throat to belly, Teyla knows that she is the only one to have ever seen the way her breasts hang lightly in their garment of black netting, her pale skin stark beneath the severe fabric, like a sky of infinite stars. No wonder Sora has had to keep to such secrecy with her goods from Thoria; even in their dress, the Genii are not concerned with comfort. She cannot help a glance at Sora’s brave, guarded face, before she smiles gently—as if there were any other way, with the gentleness that has swollen like an unruly tide through every part of her—and begins to undress; the Athosian skirt and top, and the Earth-made undergarments that win Sora’s curiosity. Still in her stiff uniform trousers, Sora turns to shut the door and fasten the lock. She is hazy through the steam, but Teyla can track the slight curve of her spine down to the belt that still holds a half-dozen weapons. While she is turned, Teyla finishes undressing and steps into the tub; hot, but not scalding. “How shall I sit?” Teyla asks, and Sora may have been raised with the modesty of the Genii, but she finishes stripping with military efficiency, draping her belongings over the table of toiletries and pushing her hair behind her ears. “Kneel near one end,” she says. “I’ll kneel behind you.” Teyla does as she asks, with the same strange, bruised feeling skirting the edge of overwhelming. She is not often foolish enough to make herself vulnerable in this way. Even with Kanaan, neither of them had been undressed; his hand searching beneath her blouse as she had reached into his pants and guided him to where she wanted him. This is not like that. Her weapons are in the next room, her back turned, and her team would be furious, bewildered, if they discovered she had put herself in this position, but they have never carried this relentless pain for an entire day, so they could not possibly understand why she is so quick to fold her arms over the edge of the tub and let Sora settle in behind her. Or perhaps they would understand, after all. Perhaps they would understand why she already feels clenched so tightly between her legs, heavy and sensitive, as though Sora is massaging her cunt in small hard circles, instead of her back. The water is deep; it nearly covers her thighs, and she can feel Sora’s knees between her calves as she moves in, close enough to feel Sora’s smooth dry belly against her buttocks. “It’s easier this way,” Sora says, the heel of her hand rubbing a thick oil into the small of Teyla’s back. She does not need an explanation, though; she has given her consent to this treatment, and if she has agreed to this intimacy, then why would it surprise her to find Sora in the tub? The pressure and heat smother the worst of the pain right away. Teyla lets her head fall forward onto her arms, her breasts swaying above the waterline. “This is very strange,” she murmurs. She is certain there is a law somewhere that must forbid this act which blithely tramples the boundaries of all proper alliances—boundaries which are set in place for their own protection. Sora’s hand pauses just above the curve of Teyla’s buttocks. “You have to give it a chance. I’ve barely started,” she protests. “Of course,” Teyla says into her folded arms, her skin wet from the cloud of steam that has settled everywhere. She arches her back in apology, stretching toward the hard press of Sora’s hand. If there is more, then she is ready to receive it. The clink of Sora opening a glass container, and then the same hand that had once tried to put a knife through her chest is dragging a thick, grainy substance over the soft part of her belly. “This is it,” Sora says in a ragged whisper, as though spreading the paste over Teyla’s abdomen requires her whole concentration. For a moment it is merely pleasant, a casual caress, but then Sora presses hard into Teyla’s hip, and the coarse substance scrapes a trail of heat wherever Sora so chooses. Her hand is a match that strikes against Teyla’s skin until it is evident that her purpose is to burn the ache out, to leave her fingerprints on the curve of Teyla’s thigh, and the swell of her belly, the ridge of her pelvic bone. “I didn’t think you’d let me do this,” Sora says as Teyla sags against the tub. Let her do it? At this point, Teyla is not certain she would allow it to stop. When she opens one eye, a languorous attempt, she glimpses the foaming green water and the motion of Sora’s hands as they work. “Did you know it would be done this way?” Sora asks, and there can be no mistaking her point, the wet drape of her body against Teyla’s back as she reaches for all the places she needs to touch. The medicinal properties have just begun to take effect—less like medicine and more like the magics of offworld traders, because although she is warm and sleepy as Dr. Keller’s painkillers, there is a fullness everywhere Sora touches her, skin and bone blurred down to the sensation of heat, and Teyla would be not at all surprised to look down and see Sora wrist-deep in her body, kneading out the pain and making the space her own. She has always been this way. In the winter, Teyla would wrap herself in an extra fur or soft-knitted scarf, knowing that Sora would trail her fingers over the luxury—the Genii have always preferred unyielding wool—and nearly drown in avarice until she wrangled a trade. When she had made Teyla her enemy, she had been equally unwavering, so it does not surprise Teyla that Sora’s apology would be colored with the same sense of entitlement. “Did you?” Sora asks again, her cheek pressed to the back of Teyla’s shoulder. “Of course I did,” Teyla says, the words drifting from her lips like the steam that hangs heavy in the room. Sora’s palm has stilled where it fits the curve of Teyla’s belly, sticky with Thoria’s forbidden goods. “I’d hoped,” Sora says, and her questions had been edged in armor, but perhaps the bath has melting qualities after all, because now there are only eager words that Sora spills out over Teyla’s skin. “You’ll feel so much better if you let me do this,” she says as two fingers slip lower, into the place where Teyla has been throbbing since the oil had dripped down between her buttocks. “I have no pain,” Teyla chokes. The pain that has kept her so miserable all day has been replaced with a different kind of ache, and she breathes heavily into the cradle of her arms when Sora finds a way to ease that ache, her fingers crooking lightly against Teyla’s cunt, giving a little while withholding the rest, just as she has always done. “I’ve always wanted this,” Sora says, burrowing in a bit deeper with her fingers, working languid circles where no one has touched since her son was born, and before that, the long months of her pregnancy. “But then you showed up with the Lanteans, and you were gone.” And the pleasure is distracting, but not so much that Teyla misses the desperate turn of Sora’s tone, the way she presses so close, her breath coming hot and fast with emotion in a way Teyla has never seen, save one bad memory. Teyla turns wet and slick in Sora’s arms to see her unguarded and astonished, undone by her own plans. “I was never gone. I am here now,” she says, and draws Sora down, down, into the murky waters.
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