cinaed

I needed a break from my 10-page paper, so, um, here, Ange. Um, unless I toss it out because I don't know if I have Teyla's voice right.

So hot with love, we burned our hands

Radek was going to kill Rodney. Slowly and painfully. And then find an Ancient device that could temporarily resurrect someone and kill him again. Perhaps the second time could be done with citrus.

“Doctor Zelenka?” Teyla’s tone was polite but contained an undertone of puzzlement. “Are you ready to begin?”

He swallowed and forced himself to look towards her, careful to keep his gaze above her shoulders. Attempting a smile and knowing it probably looked awkward and forced, he nodded. “Yes, yes, of course. It is merely -- I am not a fan of the ocean.” He laughed weakly. “Well, obviously, or else we would not be here, yes?”

Teyla smiled at that. “If you need a moment,” she began, and then stopped with a raised eyebrow as Radek hastily shook his head to assure her that he was ready, truly. After all, the sooner they did this, the sooner he could throw on a shirt and escape to the safety of his labs to get revenge against Rodney.

“We can begin,” he said. He tried to ignore the warmth in his cheeks, hoping she would just assume any pinkness came from being out in the sun. Oh, how he was going to murder Rodney! After all, getting swimming lessons from Teyla was surely a method of torture for some offense Radek didn't remember committing.

“Very well,” Teyla said. If she was skeptical about his sudden, uncharacteristic eagerness, she didn't show it. Instead, she smiled at him and stepped into reach of the waves that lapped against the mainland's shore.

It was tempting, just to stand there and watch her graceful movements, and Radek suspected that even men with stronger wills than he could ever hope to possess would struggle against pausing to admire the way the sun caught in her hair and how the albeit modest one-piece bathing suit Teyla had borrowed from someone nevertheless showed off her figure and long, beautiful legs. He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, and took off his glasses, setting them down on his neatly folder shirt. Now at least everything -- including Teyla’s body -- would be blurred and not half so tempting.

Taking a few cautious steps towards the ocean, he couldn’t help the initial recoil at the first brush of the ocean against his ankles. The quick flinch was more a reaction to the cool temperature of the water than anything else, but he knew Teyla would think otherwise. Radek's stomach clenched just thinking about her pity.

When he opened his eyes, Teyla was watching him, and he could make neither head nor tails of her expression even as he squinted and studied it for any flicker of pity. He attempted another smile, managing somehow not to flinch when a second wave lapped against his ankles. “So, ah, are all Athosian children taught to swim?”

Teyla nodded even as she took another step further into the sea. “All Athosian children learn by the age of five.” Her smile turned wry. “Although many do not make a habit of swimming once they have learned.” At Radek’s raised eyebrow, she added, “Halling and many others are not fond of deep water.”

A sardonic chuckle escaped his lips at that. “I cannot say I blame them.” Ignoring the way his stomach began to tie itself into knots, Radek took a few more short steps. The silt shifted beneath his feet. "So," he said, more to distract himself than anything else, "who taught you to swim?"

"My mother," Teyla answered. When Radek refocused his gaze on her rather than the waves that seemed to swarm towards him, her expression was warm and amused. "She had to bribe me to get me into the water at first."

“And yet here you are, teaching me how to swim, so obviously you must have enjoyed it once she had coaxed you,” Radek commented.

Teyla actually laughed. It was a clear, bright sound that eased the tension in Radek’s stomach to more manageable levels. “Yes. She found herself bribing me to get back out of the water. My father did not stop laughing for hours.”

Radek couldn't imagine Teyla as a child, awkwardly growing into her arms and legs and lacking the self-possessed grace she embodied now, but the idea of her mother coaxing her from the water as her father laughed nevertheless made him smile.

“My mother had to bribe me as well, only it was to go outside rather than just sit reading books all day,” he said, remembering the fond exasperation in his mother’s voice as she snatched the latest book out from under his nose and told him, ‘Just an hour in the sun, that’s all I ask.’

The water reached his waist now and he stopped, struggling to ignore how unsteady the sand suddenly felt beneath his feet. There was no reason to be nervous; the water wasn’t even up to his chest, much less his shoulders, and Teyla was right next to him, but anxiety gnawed at his stomach anyway, shortened his breath, tightened up his shoulders until they ached.

“Radek?” Teyla’s voice was concerned, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

“Just one moment,” he forced out. He heard the slight catch on the final word, felt his cheeks heat with a mixture of shame and frustration rather than embarrassment this time.

The touch of her hand against his shoulder was unexpected, and he flinched a little. “That is enough for today, I believe,” Teyla said, voice mild, as though she were announcing that the sky were blue rather than the fact that Radek was acting like a terrified child.

When Radek finally forced himself to look at her, her expression was what John and Rodney privately called her Mona Lisa look – utterly inscrutable. He swallowed, tried to speak, “If you say so,” he said at last and could taste the humiliation, hot and bitter, at the back of his throat.

Teyla’s hand dropped away from his arm, and he stared miserably after her as she watched back towards the shore, too wretched and stricken with shame to be distracted by the sunlight in her hair or the graceful way she moved.

Truly, truly, he was going to hurt Rodney for this.

*

If you haven't read it already, go and read