kate | SURPRISE!

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SURPRISE!

spillingvelvet is such a dear that when I said I was too tired to write the treat I had planned for tonight, she said she'd write me a wee drabble and it'd be a guest treat. Which is brilliant! So I then went to

bluflamingo and asked her to write

spillingvelvet a treat.

And I also asked several other sweethearts on my flist/circle to write, and they came through with flying colors. This one's a treat for me as well as for everyone else.

Come on in and play with us! You can leave a ficlet comment with OpenID or anonymously if you don't have a Dreamwidth account (though if you want one, just ask! I will get you an invite - and if you're too shy to ask, try

dw_codesharing).

Happy holidays, everyone. This makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. *snuggles flist/circle*

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Their first winter on Earth, Teyla goes on this whole winter holiday kick. Ronon thinks it's her way of belatedly freaking out about the different-galaxy thing. Not like the Athosian rituals are really too hard to retune to a new planet -- her people were pretty bright, and they'd given up on tracking things to constellations and lunar cycles after the first few centuries of planet-hoping. But she volunteered to stay on as official Pegasus liaison to the IOA even after the other Athosians had settled into a pretty sweet planet, and it looks like she's finally starting to get the reality of the whole ex-pat thing.

Teyla's always been so much ... herself, so it's kind of unnerving when she tries to go native.

Halloween's pretty cool. They have a slasher movie marathon and take turns answering the door bell in the Darth Vader mask. Ronon doesn't bother asking the kids who they're supposed to be -- sometimes it's obvious, and he figures he won't have heard of the other costumes anyway -- but it's hilarious to watch McKay and Sheppard ride the sugar rush into full snark and critique all the costumes the second the door shuts. El Dia de los Muertos is better, because most of the time Ronon thinks Earth pretends that death is something that happens to other people. The cemetary Teyla takes him to is full of small alters, offerings, photographs, orange flowers and skeleton fetishes. She has a bag of sugar skulls that she got somewhere, and they trade them to strangers. Torren runs everywhere and Kanaan apologizes to about twenty people for the things he knocks over. No one seems to mind. Thanksgiving is a food orgy, and none of them can really cook but Teyla researches recipes and they do their damnedest. Amelia, in a pretty incisive move, takes custody of the turkey and locks everyone else out of the patio where she's set up the grill, so that Rodney can't poke at it with his stupid quantum thermometer and John can't get the barbeque sauce anywhere near it. Some of the food's pretty good and some of it's not, but Amelia fucking nails the turkey and Lorne has the foresight to just buy his pies from a store, so they all eat themselves semi-comatose and then watch The Incredibles. Ronon does the dishes.

Ronon remembers Christmas celebrations on Atlantis, but the ad-hoc parties were a night and a day there, and as far as he can tell the United States takes a whole month ramping up to it. There's a whole hodgepodge of symbology tacked up in all the public and residential areas, and Teyla keeps looking things up on Wikipedia, but the explanations are rambling and contradictory and Ronon suspects some of them are just made up. The ugly-sweater thing, for one; none of the articles mention hazing, which is only rationale he's prepared to buy. The advertising and the music all get switched over to new stuff, with a lot of fake snow and red and green, and Teyla is having a hell of a time trying to get John and Rodney to explain which of the observances are religious and which are commercial.

A couple of weeks into it, Ronon gets an email from Stein in engineering inviting them all to a latke party.

"Latkes?" he asks.

"They're Jewish food. Fried potato pancakes, traditionally eaten with--" she starts earnestly.

"Stop," he says. "You had me at fried."

So that's how they all end up on the floor of her living room, with plates full of crisp golden cakes covered in apple sauce and sour cream, trying with greasy fingers to spin the little wooden top. "Oh, hey," Rodney says, reaching for the pile of chocolate coins.

Keller smacks his fingers. "That's not gimmel, that's nun,."

"Ow!" Rodney recoils and glares at both her and the top. "Come on, they look practically alike!"

"So when you said anthropology was a 'useless enterprise,' what you really meant was that you are very bad at it," Teyla says soothingly, and spins the top again. "Ooh, hey."

"I still say poker's better," John says, spearing another latke off his plate.

Ronon pops another coin into his mouth; he's a lot better with the top than the rest of them are, so he can afford to burn some of his money early. "Yeah, but you won't let us play strip."

John goes beet red. Next to him, Amelia snorts and casually takes one of the big coins out of Ronon's stack. Ronon never should've explained Satedan courtship property-blending to her, except that he secretly like it when she treats his stuff like hers. Kanaan, covered in applesauce, shoulders Torren and says, "So is this the last winter holiday, other than Christmas?"

"Oh, no," Teyla says earnestly. "There is Kwanzaa, which I am still researching, and then the New Year -- or, several of them, actually, I have not yet mastered the overlapping calendars -- and then a romantic observance early in the second month ..."

Kanaan's smile is glazed, and slipping a little at the edges. "Don't worry, I'll loan you a stunner as a Christmas gift," Ronon says. Teyla throws her napkin at him. John starts laughing and Rodney steals the pot and Keller holds his latkes hostage and negotiates for the return of the stolen merchandise, and Ronon threads his fingers through Amelia's and grins at no one in particular, thinking that really, this is a pretty good way to end the year.

Oh god, the Ronon POV is PERFECT for this, I love it! The tinge of sadness at Teyla's holiday-researching just nails it for me.

Thank you so much for writing this for a treat, and making it Ronon and Teyla, and for just being your brilliant self. <33333

Oops! Commented to the wrong person.

Edited 2009-12-09 21:37 (UTC)

"Stop," he says. "You had me at fried."

HEEE. This makes me ridiculously happy.

So good! I love them all being together. And now I want some latkes. While watching The Incredibles, heh.

"Stop," he says. "You had me at fried." ... "Yeah, but you won't let us play strip."

It's all totally great and endearing, but especially these little hints that Ronon is going native too.

I LOVE THIS. That's really all I can come up with right now. LOVE.

Oh my God, seriously, this AU slash futurefic whatever 'verse is awesome like whoa. LOVE the whole immigrant research holiday thing Teyla has going on, and Kanaan's eyes glazing over, and Ronon and Amelia property-blending, and the latkes! And El Dia de los Muertos--Ronon's observation is spot-on. This was fantastic and I hope you write more in this 'verse.