seperis said, "Write me kid!John snippets!" And I laughed and probably said no, because that's just what we do. And then she said, I will *trade* you a snippet for a snippet and I said, hey, okay. She said something along the lines of, I will write something when he's a child; and I'm trying to figure out if him doing the dripping with mud thing going to seduce McKay at the age of 16 counts as a child thing, or if I should just wait because we all know she's going to do that *anyway*, and then I can ask for something else and get *two*.
My life, it's filled with so many decisions. What the heck's up with that. Anyway--this one is Ronon pov; I have another John pov one in the works where we come to understand why John's arch-nemesis is one Katie Brown. *eg* Thanks to refracting for the amazingly fast beta--anything left mistakes-wise are obviously my own issues at work; and thanks to seperis for going "dawwww!" and "that's so cute!" at appropriate junctures. To read hers (which you must, before reading this because omg so cute and good), go: Part One, Part Two, Part Three
by Madelyn
This particular 'getting to know you' period was one of the easiest of Ronon´s life.
John had simple desires, overall. He liked toys and sleeping and running and sugar, and prioritized them differently on any given day.
John shoveled the fruit in his mouth, spearing chunks at random on the plate.
"Hey, how come you aren't using your fork?" John asked, utensil paused over his food.
"I don't like them," Ronon said.
"But don't you have to use them?"
"They're not my thing," Ronon shrugged.
John grinned, a little bit of syrup collecting on his cheek. Ronon sighed and motioned at his own cheek pointedly. John blinked a little and set down his fork with a small clatter. He replicated Ronon's own grip for eating and took a big bite of the juicy fruits.
…the juice seemed to be washing away the syrup, so Ronon stopped his motions and focused again on his own food.
"It tastes better like this," John said thoughtfully.
This lasted for all of two days, until Elizabeth found out, then she must have said something to McKay because he'd told John that little boys who didn´t eat like they should in polite civilization didn't deserve any foods in the a) waffle or b) pancake families, and had told John simply to "Shape up already!"
"This has a stainless false edge spear point blade," Ronon said, and John purred appreciatively. "And this one has a nickel silver guard and subhilt and if you move it like this?" John sighed happily as Ronon demonstrated the motion, "things die fast."
"Cool," John said a little breathlessly and gently set the knife down on Ronon´s collection as Ronon pulls out another.
"See, this one has a blackened blade. Do you know why?"
"It´d reduce glare." John said, holding out his hand for it already.
Ronon waited. "And...corrosion? Helps to prevent that," John finished. Ronon smiled approvingly and handed him the knife. Ronon watched John tilt his head, concentrating, and letting it fly at the target board he´d rigged up on the wall behind his bed.
"I got Katie Brown´s nose!" John smiled vividly.
"Were you aiming for her nose?" Ronon had to check.
"Well, I was aiming for that stupid little freckle on the top part of her nose," John frowned.
Ronon had no idea why the child seemed to dislike this particular botanist so much, but she did tend to bring out John´s more focused side, so he didn´t care to question it. "Hmm. Next time, tilt your wrist a little bit this way. Should give you some better velocity," he instructed, and John nodded.
The doors slid open and both John and Ronon twisted around.
"So I guess I´ve got John-watching an hour early since Elizabeth wants to…what the hel—ck is this? Heck. Heck." McKay repeated.
"Ronon is showing me his knives. They´re only the coolest things ever!" John piped up, and climbed on the bed to pry the current knife out of Katie Brown´s picture. McKay didn´t even seem to notice it´s his girlfriend—or ex-girlfriend—or almost girlfriend; Ronon really doesn´t have a clue—because his attention is all focused on John.
Teyla was standing frozen in the doorway, and it began to dawn on Ronon that perhaps she was not very pleased with him.
…and from the expression on McKay´s face, he´d say he´s about to be double teamed on that front.
"You. Outside." McKay said, and his voice was very clipped. John frowned at McKay´s tone and started to speak, but Ronon put a hand on his shoulder even as he finished packing away the knives and locking the small case.
"We´ll be right back," he said to John.
As soon as the door slid shut, it´s like a dam breaks. "What were you *thinking*; and here *I* was thinking you weren´t a complete imbecile after all--"
"He´s a *child*, Ronon, despite who he once was. A *child*," Teyla enunciated, gesturing just as wildly as McKay was.
"I was watching him the entire time."
"All it would have taken was one little slip up and boom, colonel with no hand," McKay yelled.
"He *wouldn't* have slipped because I was there the entire time," Ronon repeated.
"Ronon. I am sorry, but this was irresponsible. He should be learning about—about-"
Teyla floundered, but McKay was more than willing to pick up the slack. "About *physics* and *math* and things that are actually important, and not how to kill things with glorified nail files!" McKay hissed.
"Are you both done yelling at Ronon yet?" The doors slid open a fraction and John peeked his head out.
"No!" Teyla and McKay both said, a little too loudly in Ronon´s face.
John sighed and disappeared back into Ronon´s room.
"And you suck a lot," McKay said and walked past, muttering something about "done now!" Teyla just shook her head sadly and followed. Ronon followed the both of them and thought that one day, when John saved one of their asses with a nicely timed and aimed throw, he might be nice enough not to laugh in their faces.
But it´s more than likely he´s not going to be nice enough, no. He walked in just as John is saying to McKay, "And Ronon says that when I´m bigger I can practice with his big sword!"
McKay didn´t say anything, but instead stared at Ronon venomously. "And why couldn´t you say any of that in front of me?" John asked.
"Any of—what? There´s no way you heard us through those doors," McKay said.
"Sure I did. I told Atlantis I wanted to hear, and then I could."
They all stared. John shrugged a little under their combined regard. "Well, it´s not like it was really great, because there´s weird sounds next door. Why does Miss Laura call Dr. Beckett ‘Zeus´?"
They all turned their attention to the south wall, which happened to be Dr. Beckett´s quarters. "I—I do not know, John," Teyla said helplessly.
"Can I ask him on my next check-up?" John asked, but McKay´s already pulled him out the door, saying "no!" and "If you´re going to listen in on conversations, for God´s sake, it might as well be the chemists, because I think they´re plotting against me…"
Their voices fade down the hallway, and Teyla continued her perplexed staring at the wall.
"So we won´t talk about this ever again, right?" Ronon asked, just to be clear.
She nodded and smiled and settled in on the bed, already twisting out of her pants. "McKay will probably keep him occupied for an hour, and then it is my turn," but it´s not like she needs to explain and his shirt is already off.
After, she tells him she hopes he enjoyed it, because he´s being ‘cut-off´ for the next three weeks, so he has time to ruminate and reflect on the proper things one can and cannot teach an eight year old child.
They went on their morning run, ending up on one of the eastern piers this time, John peering out at the water. This particular sight is one of a very small number of things that are capable of rendering John speechless.
Ronon had not shared this hard-won knowledge with anyone, and doesn´t especially plan to. "You ready?" Ronon asked.
John shook his head. "My legs are kinda tingly. We ran really fast around that last curve."
Ronon grinned. The adult Sheppard had always hated that curve as well. He kneeled down. "Well, I am ready. You may continue to rest though." John smirked, and crawled onto Ronon´s back, arms gripping around Ronon´s neck loosely. They set off again inside, Ronon taking steps by twos, much to John´s delight.
John doesn´t feel like running again, but that´s fine, the slight weight of John´s frame is simply additional training. They ended up where they always ended up; the gym. Ronon had sessions with four marines this morning, and John liked to watch. Afterward, Ronon liked to try to figure out just how much John remembered of his own training by seeing if he can pinpoint where the marines go wrong.
Sometimes, it´s a surprising amount.
But then, other times, John naps. On any given day, it´s not very predictable.
***
Ronon comes out from his two minute shower, and John was still at it. "Would you stop that?" Ronon asked finally, eyeing John, who was presently kicking his feet completely arrhythmically against the bench in the training room.
"I´m bored," John sighed, fidgeting loosely in his seat.
"How can you be bored? I just finished fighting; you said you wanted to see some training," Ronon said, and he thought Teyla would be proud, he was getting better with her whole, ‘enunciate rather than growl´ plea.
"I said I wanted to see fighting, but your fighting is boring," John said, finally getting to his feet and motioning at the door. "Do you think we can go bug Rodney a little?"
"How is my fighting boring?" Ronon asked, genuinely perplexed. He´d even turned it on a little harder today, hit a little faster, dug his knees in, gave the marines a real workout for a change.
"You kept *beating* them, and they barely could do anything back," John said, his tone taking on an eerily similar note to that of his nicely aged, adult self, that tiny bite of annoyance mixed in with the admiration.
Ronon refrained from snorting, but only just. "So you´d have rather I just fought halfway, to make things a little more exciting for you?"
John´s face lit up, but crumpled slowly as he thought about it a little more. "I guess not. How would they get any better if they didn´t know they sucked?"
"That´s what I think," Ronon confided, reaching down and pulling John up with one arm. Sometimes, the easiest way to make John move already was to simply carry him there himself.
"Beckett wanted to see you this morning instead of tonight, so we´re doing that now. Then I think Teyla talked one of the mess hall cooks into making you blueberry pancakes--"
John made a tiny fist-punching-air motion and held onto Ronon´s shoulder a little tighter.
"And then?" John asked, taking a tiny braid of Ronon´s hair into his hands and braiding it with two others. Ronon nimbly ducked his head into a transporter and sighed as the doors closed on two very curious marines. He reached up to gently pull John´s hand away.
"I´m just making more braids," John protested.
"I like my hair as it is," Ronon said firmly, working in a hand to quickly undo the mess.
"I think it´d be cooler if you did it my way."
"Well, I don´t."
"Why won´t you just let me try it? I bet Teyla would like it."
"I´m not going to let you try it because it´ll look stupid, and no, Teyla wouldn´t like it," Ronon said, wishing the doors would just open already so he could distract him by telling him Beckett had one of the long needles today.
"But you can´t know Teyla wouldn´t like it if she´s never seen it," John said sensibly, and thankfully the doors opened.
"Beckett. Big needle," Ronon mumbled. John´s eyes narrowed, he could feel the little pinpricks of hostile eight-year old glaring on his cheek.
"One of the biggest I´ve ever seen," Ronon said, warming to the topic. John wasn´t a big fan of needles.
"You should probably put me down. I grew out of running away from the infirmary way long ago," John said.
"You grew out of running away from the infirmary two days ago," Ronon reminded, but set him down anyway. John straightened and seemed to set his shoulders a little bit before walking through the infirmary doors.
It was kind of irritating that they slid smoothly apart for a child, and opened sluggishly for Ronon, not two seconds later.
"Let´s just get this over with," John told Beckett matter-of-factly, and rolled up his sleeve. He hopped up on the examination table and started tapping his feet in the same hateful arrhythmic fashion as before.
Ronon watched John bite his lip a little as Beckett smiled and said something inane like, "Ach, wee thing, you´re getting so big on me!" and focused on the slight bewilderment, but mostly quickly fading courage playing out on John´s face. He moved in a little closer and clasped John´s hand, his tiny palm completely disappearing in Ronon´s.
"It´s okay. I didn´t like them on Sateda either," Ronon confided quietly.
John smiled up at him then, and it turned out to be perfect timing, because before they both knew it, Beckett said, "There we go, all done!"
John held up his arms and wordlessly, Ronon pulled him back up. John took his requisite sticker (John was collecting them on his Johnny Cash poster now) and sucker (though Ronon suspected those went to McKay) and said their goodbyes, and back on the transporter down to the mess, Ronon told him, "If they don´t have your blueberry pancakes, I´ll do a half-fight with them, all for you." John nodded solemnly, and pronounced:
"You´d better."
They polished off their breakfast—John still pouted that he had to use forks and that Ronon didn´t, but Ronon said that when he was bigger, he could decide for himself whether or not to use a fork, but for now, Elizabeth and McKay would decide that for him.
Ronon had to admit, mornings with John were pretty kick-ass. The company he kept these days ensured he´d have the best selections of any food available, and the kind of prissy way John always ate was strangely entertaining. He´d start at nine o´clock on his plate and go exactly counterclockwise, ending on the ten o´clock. Ronon had planned on maybe some archery outside, but John had other plans, and insisted they go to the lab to visit McKay.
John´s version of insistence was strangely potent: a combination of slightly widened eyes with a little corner of his mouth drooping. The kid was picking up way too many things from McKay, he thought, but they *worked*, and Ronon understood the tendency to not change up things that were effective.
Of course McKay huffed that he was busy; he didn´t have time for ‘playtime´ until five when he was picking up John from Teyla´s, and Ronon had started to say, fine, we´ll be going to the archery range when John spotted the dry erase board and pitched a marker at it.
"Who´s stupid enough to write that second half of this equation?" John yelled, and the lab fell dead silent.
McKay recovered first, of course. "Well, it´s about time someone noticed that there´s an error in *basic math* on the board."
"Well, that too," John said, only lowering his voice slightly. "But the second half of the green equation. That´s not right."
McKay´s eyes widened, and his mouth did the same drooping movement of five minutes ago. Ronon grinned when he realized that *McKay* hadn´t even seen it, but he glossed it over saying, "You´re all idiots! A nine--eight!--eight year old just found things I saw last week!" There were more vague threats and implications that all their grad school programs would drop their names from their lists of alumni out of shame.
Radek moseyed over a moment after McKay finished. "I am thinking you were so distracted by the little error that you did not think to even finish reading the rest. Yes?" he asked blandly.
"I´m thinking that´s entirely possible, yes," McKay muttered.
"You mean I actually helped?" John said, slightly high-pitched.
McKay clapped a hand over John´s mouth. "Shh, maybe a little."
John danced away from McKay´s hand, singing, actually *singing*, "I found something that you didn´t see, and I saw it first and--"
Ronon´s heart felt dangerously near to bursting with adoration of this child.
McKay hissed something in John´s ear, and Ronon only managed to catch a part of it "…no more Mandelbrot sets", but whatever it was, John narrowed his eyes and quieted down.
John had inexplicably glued a feather to a long string of leather and wrapped it around his forehead. What was more, he´d made one for Ronon too. He´d tried to point out that the feathers would stick up from the bushes, and that their quarry would undoubtedly see.
John had remained unmoved, and his voice had taken on that high pitch that meant he was about to launch into some sort of half-shouting, strangely half-commanding speech about how Ronon should just wear the weird thing with the feather so Ronon had just swallowed a sigh and instructed John on the three easiest ways to hunt the d´orges of the Athosian mainland.
"Can I hold your gun?" John asked hopefully.
"Ha, no," Ronon snickered, picturing Teyla´s horrified expression and his complete lack of really great sex for another three weeks, and managed to withhold the shiver.
"Not even a little hold?"
"…there´s no such thing as a little hold of a gun, John," Ronon said.
"When I´m older, I´m going to have way more guns than you," John promised fiercely, peering up through the bushes.
"I suppose if you count all the armaments in Atlantis, that´s true," Ronon muttered. Then he picked up on something to the left, and held out his hand. John immediately fell silent, tensing beside him. The moved together through the brush, John stepping so lightly that even Ronon would not have heard him had he not known for certain he was there.
Ronon smiled to himself and motioned once for John to cease his movements. Hmm. Two sets of d´orges tracks. Ronon nodded at John, indicating that he should choose which path to follow. John narrowed his eyes in concentration, looked up through the trees ahead and picked exactly the right one. Ronon set off again, John following silently behind.
There was a small vezer beest right before him, clearly trying to melt into its surroundings. Teyla had wanted one for a stew, and now was as good a time as any. He shifted and pulled out his longer knife, the motion perfect, the movement exactly precise until a small shriek made the vezer dart off past trees and hide behind a small group of rocks. Ronon stared at John, motioning for him to fall silent again, but John yelled, "What are you, some kind of weirdo? It´s a *rabbit*."
Ronon blinked and set the knife down closer to his side. "What are you talking about?"
"You don´t—it´s a *bunny*," John protested, grabbing at the thing so swiftly the vezer barely managed to control its trembling.
"It is an animal that Teyla wants for stew," Ronon said, hoping his slow enunciation would make an impact on the child.
"It´s a *bunny*, and his name is Max," John said, cradling the creature in his arms, smoothing its ears down and whispering, "Don´t worry, I´ve got you, he´s putting the knife away right now," and kept staring until Ronon finally did.
John was showing off Max to Simpson in the back corner, and Radek and McKay watched her coo at the stricken rabbit while John beamed like a proud parent.
"He´s not keeping that," McKay said flatly.
"You tell him," Ronon said.
"Fine, I will!" McKay straightened, just as John bounded over and held out the—the creature to him.
"You haven´t even petted him yet, Rodney. Rodney, this is Max. Max, Rodney. You´ll like him better later; he takes time to grow on you."
"Are you talking about the rabbit or Dr. McKay?" Radek asked seriously, as McKay glared just as John said, "Rodney, of course. Who wouldn´t like Max?"
McKay sputtered silently and ignored the tiny hands starting to tremble from the effort of holding out a rabbit for a full minute. "Aren´t you going to take him?" John asked, wide-eyed.
"No, because you´re not keeping him," McKay said.
"I´m not."
"Atlantis is no place for wild creatures," McKay sniffed.
"Max is *not* a wild creature; he´s a bunny! And he likes it here."
"He looks like he´s going to pee on the floor," Ronon commented.
"You´re just saying that because he had his accident in your lap the way over," John sulked.
McKay choked. "Oh, did he now? Well then, I think maybe we´ll get along just fine," McKay said; and Ronon knew he´d say later that it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that John´s eyes were huge and his little mouth was pursed and his hands were clasped tightly behind his back.
McKay held up the—the—Max, fine—to look at him a little more closely.
The rabbit did look like it was a little sick, ears twitching nervously, little nose and whiskers twitching with his rapid breath.
"You do realize you are completely and totally responsible for him, don´t you? I mean, feeding, taking it out to do its business, cleaning up after it, whatever has to be done."
"Yes, Rodney," John said anxiously, hopefully.
"Because you realize that none of us care if he gets caught in a transporter and is thrown into a part of the city that takes a year to walk to, correct?"
"Fine, Rodney," John sighed.
"Okay then." McKay gingerly handed the rabbit back. "If it eats any wires or anything vital—oh, what am I talking about. Just go get a cage from some of the zoologists."
John beamed and clutched Max to his chest, taking off down the hallway, leaving Ronon and Radek staring at McKay.
"What? What?" McKay demanded, not looking at either of them, checking through some test results.
"You are a big softie," Radek smiled and hit McKay hard on the arm, walking off.
Ronon shrugged. "Maybe it´s part of his ‘learning experience´." McKay gave a little start and shook his head.
Ronon smiled to himself. He had learned and adapted the usage of McKay´s Earth air quotes quite well these past few months; and whenever he used them, it seemed to freak McKay out a little bit.
He left the labs and trailed after John to help him find a suitable cage.