Work Text:
On Sateda, tattoos were the marks of a warrior. Given to those who'd shown their bravery in battle, asked for by those who wished to express the loss of fallen comrades, the glory of victory, the pain of walking through blood and all the contradictory emotions of stepping out the other side.
Ronon got his first one after a skirmish with a force from Kilaak, Kel clapping him on the back and proclaiming that he was a soldier now, that he'd earned the right to display it on his body. He was only a boy then, really, still shaking when the platoon sat him down at the table in the barracks that night and Specialist Tilon took out his equipment, mixing the pigment that would paint him truly one of them. He didn't flinch when the needle cut his skin, just bit into the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. The flavor of it was bright like the red that had stained his sword, and when he looked in the mirror the morning after, he saw the edge of the things he’d done in the sign healing into the side of his neck, and barely in his eyes at all.
They’re standing with the body of a Wraith on the ground between them, the first time it occurs to him that they should get McKay a tattoo. Not that Sheppard and Teyla haven’t earned such markings, too - he’s never met two people more worthy - but the fact is they don’t need them. They know what they are, carry it with them for everyone to see, without symbols or signs. McKay would never call himself a warrior, though, Ronon would never have believed he could be one. But here he is, breathing heavily, hands trembling so that the empty Beretta he’s holding shakes like a leaf in the wind, eyes ridiculously wide as they look down on the fallen enemy at his feet. Ronon wishes he could paint this moment onto McKay’s skin, so that he’ll remember, so that he’ll understand.
Instead, he reaches across the dead Wraith and slaps McKay’s shoulder, and says,
“Come on, we need to find the others.”
He thinks about it now and then, after that. In the locker room as they gear up for a mission, in the showers by the gym after they've sparred, watching the water sluice down McKay's body from out of the corner of his eye. Thinks about where it should go, a tattoo like that, where he would choose to put it.
The neck comes first to mind, but McKay isn't Satedan, so that’s not quite right, and perhaps it would be too obvious, too out in the open. Besides, McKay being McKay, he'd probably prefer somewhere the needle would cause less pain. His arms, maybe, a ring of paint around his thick biceps. Or along the broad stretch of his shoulders. The inside of his forearm, where the skin is smooth, almost without hairs.
After a while, it becomes a kind of game he plays, sitting across from McKay in the cafeteria, listening to him argue the merits of some Earth movie with Sheppard, or leaning against the hatch of the jumper, watching him crawl all over the ship to fix a glitch. Imagining the possibilities, picturing what it would look like.
It’s always a good thought.
After they start sleeping together, the four of them, he thinks about other places on McKay's body, more intimate places where the skin is almost alarmingly pale, and the dark color of a tattoo would stand out in beautiful contrast, its patterns curving over muscle, sinking into the hollows where bones dip and connect. He runs his fingers over those places sometimes, picturing the path of the needle as McKay moves beneath him or above him or beside him, and it’s almost as if he can see the designs, as if they're really there and he can taste them in McKay's mouth when he tugs his face close to kiss.
Sometimes he imagines a line of ink where Teyla's hand strokes in a wave over McKay's chest, as if she'd painted it, or a pattern of circles where Sheppard sketches them with lazy fingers on his hip. Sometimes he dreams it, on the shoulder beneath his cheek as he falls asleep.
He doesn't really intend to ever say anything about it - it's a fantasy, and he likes to live firmly in reality - but one night, it slips out.
They're in bed together, all of them, in Teyla's large tent on New Athos where there is actually room enough for them all to sprawl out, on the soft bedding on the ground. They're still lying closer than they need to, though, maybe because that's what they're used to, maybe because it is what they need. Ronon isn't one to question such things.
He runs his hand over McKay’s back, feels him shift into the touch although they’re both sated, seeking the contact. The movement makes shadows flit over flesh and muscle, a pattern of darkness and candlelight flickering over soft skin.
“You ever think about getting a tattoo, McKay?” Ronon says.
McKay doesn’t open his eyes, but his face, half buried in their pillow, twists into a grimace.
“Yes, because going into anaphylactic shock from dye that is lodged under my skin sounds like a must-have experience. Why?”
”Just thought you'd look good in one," Ronon says. He lets his fingers stroke over the small of McKay's back, the dip of spine just above his ass where touch always makes him squirm.
"Huh," McKay says, one eye opening to fix a very dark stare on Ronon. "Just so we're clear: I'm not getting Property of Ronon Dex tattooed on my butt."
Teyla laughs, the sound brushing warm against Ronon's thigh where her head's somehow ended up resting. From somewhere in the same direction, Sheppard says,
"Don't think you're the only one who'd object to that one, Rodney."
It's a joke, but there's an edge in it, too, beneath the absolute laziness that's Sheppard after a good fuck. Well, Ronon isn't stupid. He knows where the lines are, here.
"Nah," he says. "We're Team, right? Don't see anything in here that isn't communal property."
He smacks McKay's ass with the flat of his hand for emphasis.
”Hey!” McKay objects, stabbing Ronon’s shoulder with his finger in retaliation, but he twists and arcs just right when Ronon turns the slap into a firm squeeze. ”No damaging the property.”
”You break it, you buy it,” Sheppard says, but Ronon can practically hear him relaxing, so apparently that means they’re good.
Ronon grins at McKay, who huffs and makes a show of settling more firmly into his pillow for sleep. He makes no attempt at all to dislodge Ronon’s hand from his ass, though.
Ronon closes his eyes, expecting to go to sleep like this, but then Teyla says,
”Among Athosians, tattoos are not a symbol of ownership. Rather, they are used to…I believe you might say ”highlight” a person’s inner qualities, what you see in their soul. I understand this was also true on Sateda?”
Ronon opens his eyes again, to find McKay looking right at him.
”Yeah,” he says. ”That’s pretty much it.”
His mouth feels suddenly dry, like he hasn’t drunk in days.
”Huh,” McKay says again. For once he’s completely still, just holding Ronon’s gaze.
The moment seems to stretch for hours.
Then Sheppard says -
”So we’re getting McKay a tattoo of what? A bowl of blue jello?”
- and he’s saved from the heavy silence by what quickly turns into a full-scale pillow fight.
No one mentions the tattoo thing after that, and he’s pretty sure it’s forgotten (and he doesn’t really know how he feels about that, not when he remembers that searching look in McKay’s eyes), until one day, about a week later, Teyla sits down opposite him at lunch and says, unscrewing the cap on her bottle of orange juice,
”I have had a very interesting conversation this morning with Lieutenant Wang. He tells me that all the inks he uses for his tattoos are hypoallergenic, and should cause no ill effects. However, he would recommend testing the ink on a small patch of skin for a period of time, before applying the tattoo itself, if you are concerned about a possible reaction.”
Beside him, McKay chokes on his jello (green, this time - Zelenka snagged the last blue one as the final point in what seemed to be a debate about something called dilithium crystals) and has a coughing fit.
He waves a hand wildly at them while he drinks some water from his glass, then clears his throat and says,
”I’m not getting a tattoo, Teyla. Since when have I ever seemed like a person who gets tattoos?”
”Who says she was asking for you?” Sheppard says, slouching further down into his seat, an arm thrown over the back of it. There’s the glint in his eyes that means he’s going to tease mercilessly and is taking no hostages.
”Oh, for…” McKay says. ”You all heard caveman over there. I’m the one he wants to turn into his new Lascaux. Of course she was asking for me.”
”Is it just me,” Sheppard says, turning to Teyla, ”or does he sound weirdly proud of that?”
Teyla nods, in that serious way she has that means she’s not really serious at all.
”I am not familiar with the meaning of Lascaux, but it would seem to be a great honor.”
McKay groans and buries his head in his hands.
A few days after that, there is an explosion on P7X-983, another device of the Ancestors running amok on them.
McKay, of course, does his best to try and stop it, pushing buttons on the control panel at a speed Ronon only wishes he himself could achieve in a knife fight. Then the steady whining of the machine suddenly changes pitch and doubles in volume, and McKay snatches his laptop up and says,
”Okay. So this is the part where we run.”
And they do, but they don’t quite make it far enough. The blast wave slams them hard in the back, knocking them down. Ronon manages to throw himself on top of McKay, shielding him from any flying debris with his body, while he shields his own head with his hands.
When all is quiet, he sits back on his knees in the tall grass, and looks behind him to see a crater where the device had been. McKay groans, and Ronon glances back at him. His eyes catch on a dark smear behind McKay’s right ear, and for a second he thinks it’s blood, his heart turning over in his chest. It’s not red, though, but black, and it seems already dried in place.
He reaches down and touches his fingers to the spot.
”What’s this?”
McKay starts and rolls away from him, snatching himself upright, even though he doesn’t seem completely steady on his feet.
”Don’t get any ideas here, okay? I’m not saying I’ll do anything, and it’s a ridiculous notion, anyway, I don’t see why you’re entertaining it, and just because I happen to be performing this test, out of scientific curiosity, that doesn’t mean you should infer any motive on my part beyond…”
”Ronon?” Sheppard’s voice says in his ear. In McKay’s ear, too, judging by the way he cuts off his babbling. ”Rodney? Come in.”
Ronon touches his hand to his earpiece.
”We’re okay, Sheppard. The machine is a loss, but McKay and I are good.”
McKay looks around, as if just aware of the destruction now, then taps his ear and says,
“You should ask the Trangorans if they’d let you build a golf course up here. We just made you a nice bunker.”
“Par for the course with you, Rodney,” Sheppard says, but his sigh of relief is unmistakable in Ronon’s ear. “Want to get your asses down here and explain the big bang to the villagers?”
“On our way,” Ronon says, and clicks his radio off.
McKay twists on the spot, scanning the grass for his laptop, but Ronon is closest to it, picks it up and holds it out as he gets to his feet. McKay comes close enough to take it, but doesn’t quite meet Ronon’s eyes.
Instead of letting his end of the laptop go, Ronon holds on to it, and lifts his other hand to cup McKay’s neck, stroke his thumb over the painted place behind McKay’s ear. He can’t decide if it’s McKay who shivers, or his own hand against McKay’s skin.
“So it’s tattoo ink?” he asks. “To see if you’re allergic?”
“It’s always useful to know what your allergies are,” McKay says. He sounds defensive, annoyed, like he’s arguing against something, and Ronon has to fight a sudden urge to pull him back down into the soft grass. To spread him out beneath him and lick at that spot behind his ear.
“You don’t seem allergic,” he says, instead, and he can hear the hopefulness, the hunger in his own voice.
“Not so far,” McKay agrees. He tilts his head into Ronon’s touch, and his lips move as if he’s about to say something else. But then, abruptly, he steps back, pulling his laptop from Ronon’s loosened grasp, and says, “We should get down to the village.”
Ronon nods, and sets off down the slope with him.
It’s not until they’re home, the two of them last out of the jumper bay, that McKay stops and lays a hand on his arm, holding him back while Sheppard and Teyla walk on down the corridor in front of them, laughing together. Ronon turns to him, meets his eyes, upturned and wide and very blue. There’s a streak of dirt on his cheek, still, from where he was pressed to the ground.
“If I’m not allergic,” McKay says, “what do you want it to be?” It stuns him, the question, and for a second he can’t find any words. “I mean, you have been thinking about this, right?” McKay goes on, his words running much quicker now, as if to make up for Ronon’s slowness. “I didn’t read you wrong? You…” his hand draws a complicated pattern in the air beside them “…want this?”
He grabs McKay by the shoulders, pushes him back against the wall, and kisses him. Touch always works better than words, anyway.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” McKay says when he pulls back.
“Give me a couple of days,” Ronon says. “I’ll show you.”
McKay nods absently, licking his lips.
Sheppard rubs his cheek against the inside of Ronon’s thigh, his stubble making a scratchy friction sound against the suede of his pants that feels just right beneath the hum of contentment from Sheppard’s throat. He uses his hands on Ronon’s thighs to lever himself up, and Ronon catches him by the chin, pulling him in for a kiss that topples him over, onto the couch and onto Ronon.
They’re always four, but sometimes, within that, they are two, and sometimes three, shifting and reforming from day to day, sharing one another with one another in all the possible ways, before returning again to their full number. When he thinks too much about it, it seems complex, but in his heart, it’s the simplest thing he knows.
This afternoon, it’s just him and Sheppard, which means that when their kiss ends, there’s room enough for Sheppard to stretch out on the couch beside him, the back of his head against Ronon’s leg, his feet dangling off the end. Staying within easy reach, but almost avoiding the physical contact that bothers him so much when it’s not leading towards sex. Ronon lets his hand settle on the flat of Sheppard’s chest, his thumb idly playing with the dog-tags outlined beneath the cotton of his t-shirt.
They stay quiet like that for a while, both of them catching their breath.
Then Sheppard says, picking up the thread of an interrupted conversation,
“You really want my help with…you know?”
Ronon thinks about Sheppard’s first reaction, about Earth-people and possessiveness.
“I could ask Carter,” he says. “Or Zelenka. Or we could forget about it.”
And he means that, he does, although he suspects McKay would have a whole rant’s worth of things to say about deferring to Sheppard. Sheppard waves a hand in the air and says,
“Nah, but I have to warn you…” He makes a pause, and Ronon holds his breath. “I haven’t got the first clue how to draw a bowl of blue jello.”
Ronon jerks his leg away and lets Sheppard’s head thunk down on the couch. But they’re both grinning.
McKay is alone at their usual table on the balcony outside the mess when Ronon finds him, eating breakfast the way he does when he’s completely lost in some kind of science project, writing on his laptop with one hand while he shovels cereal into his mouth with the other. There is another laptop on the table, and a data tablet balanced on his knees. He doesn’t notice Ronon as he approaches, and Ronon figures a greeting would probably be pointless. He simply lays the piece of paper he’s holding down on the keyboard.
“Hey!” McKay starts, dropping his spoon down into the bowl with a clatter and a splash of milk. “I’m working here!” Then he must realize what he’s looking at, because he grows completely still.
Ronon holds still, too. Waiting.
“Oh,” McKay says, and Ronon figures he’s recognized the single Satedan sign, the sweeping lines that make up the symbol for “bravery” and “honor” and “strength“. A warrior’s sign.
“That’s not…” McKay looks up at him, his mouth curved down at the corner, but his eyes almost yearning. “Really? I mean, that’s really not…”
“Look closer,” Ronon says, nodding his head at the paper, and McKay turns back to it.
“What…” he begins, then snaps his mouth shut, then opens and closes it again. “Oh,” he says, and runs his fingers over the lines of the sign, over all the smaller signs that they’re made up of. Over line after line of physics formulas and mathematical equations.
Ronon isn’t entirely sure what all of those mean, but looking at McKay’s face, he’s pretty sure Sheppard got them right, that he had the right idea when he asked for them.
There’s probably something wrong with his reflexes, though, because when McKay’s data tablet slides off his lap, he only just manages to catch it before it skids off the balcony.
“Ow. Owowow.“ McKay says. “Could someone please tell me again why I thought this was a good idea?”
“Want me to stop?” Lieutenant Wang asks, but his needle on McKay’s back doesn’t pause. He’s probably used to every kind of reaction to pain.
“Yes,” McKay says. “But then I would never be able to look certain people in the eye again, so no.”
“You are doing well, Rodney,” Teyla says, laying her free hand on top of McKay’s, which is squeezing her other one. “It is already almost half done.”
“Just don’t break Teyla in the process,” Sheppard says. “I need her for more important things around this place than holding your hand.”
His tone is very light, a perfect match for the way he’s slouched on the chair he’s straddling, leaning forward over the back of it. If Ronon didn’t know him so well, he could almost believe he wasn’t struggling with himself to keep from yanking Lieutenant Wang off McKay and breaking the man’s neck.
He crosses the room and lays a hand on Sheppard’s shoulder, squeezing once before pulling up a chair of his own. He is glad they are all here, that they are all witness. It is as it should be.
“Yes, yes, I’m so relieved you’re all concerned for her welfare,” McKay says. “Let’s not pay any attention to the man in excruciating pain, why don’t we?”
But he stays absolutely, appropriately still beneath the needle.
“Does it look weird?” McKay says, pausing with his blue civilian shirt pulled only half the way up, hanging behind him from the crooks of his arms as he tries to twist his head enough to see the tattoo on his back in the mirror. It’s placed between his shoulder blades, just beneath the last, protruding vertebra of his neck, and there’s no chance he can catch more than a glimpse of it like this. “It feels a bit weird, not being able to see what it really looks like.”
It’s been completely healed for about a week now, and Ronon knows exactly what it looks like. Knows what his own hands look like, stroking over it, hiding and revealing skin and ink and skin again. Knows Teyla’s fingers, digging into it when McKay dips his head between her legs. Knows Sheppard’s lips, his tongue and teeth, lingering right there when he thrusts inside.
He steps forward, and grabs McKay’s shirt. Slides it all the way on, watching in the mirror as the fabric settles over the inverted sign. Feels it mark him for what he is, in a way that clothes won’t hide, even from McKay himself.
“It looks like it should,” he says.
It’s his own back that hits the mirror, when McKay shoves him up against it and drags his head down for a kiss.