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People from Earth are soft.
Ronon didn't understand for the longest time how they could all look so perfect. There's not an amputee among them, not even a missing eye or ear; they don't have pox scars or plague signs. If they have scars, they're usually from bullets; they wear those ones as marks of honor, but their medicine erases everything else. They rub creams and lotions and oils into their skin constantly- not as a luxury or a pleasure, but as if it's a necessity. They don't even really look like they're made of skin at all; they look like fabric, like fine pottery, like they've built themselves in their own image.
Their hearts and their beds are soft, too.
They come together and move apart as if there's nothing to it at all. Ronon gets more offers for sex just walking back from the gym than he would have in a year on Sateda. When they're under pressure, when it's down to the wire and it's clear they're all going to die- Ronon understands it then, the need for just one more, the itch of the adrenaline and how quickly it becomes unbearable. But they act just the same way when it's clear they're all going to live, and Ronon doesn't know how to handle that.
Zelenka- Radek- isn't like that.
It takes him a long time to even realize that Ronon hangs around all the time because he's interested- which is fine, because Ronon ends up learning way more about the puddlejumpers and how they work than he ever even knew there was to know. And when he finally catches on, he's wary and alert; he makes Ronon work for it, vets him until he's satisfied, doesn't hold back once he is.
Radek's skin isn't smooth and soft; it's going leathery in places from too much sun, but mostly it feels like skin should, just a bit coarse, stretched tight over wiry muscles. Ronon used to think he was little, but now he realizes that Radek's just compact, plenty of fight and drive packed onto his slight frame. Even the looks he gives Ronon when they're alone are hard, tight and hot and brooking no dissent, just like Ronon likes.
Right across his hip, there's a mark, the unmistakable result of hot metal pressed into flesh; Ronon should know, after all. He doesn't ask what it's from- an accident, most likely, but Radek's half-limned past isn't as soft and pretty as he seems to think should be.
It's like a secret that only Ronon knows; he brushes his thumb over it as they lie together in bed, his hand anchoring and heavy- partly out of his desire to be possessive and partly out of his desire to stop Radek from falling out of the tiny bed. The brand is very old, the edges faded and softened by the body's drive to remodel and reclaim, but Ronon knows that it won't ever disappear entirely. He'll always be a little marred, a little imperfect, a little bit human.
Ronon likes that.
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