Got a Little Rhythm
I had a couple of hours off last night, and I spent them reading through my SGA stories that have died on the vine. (They are legion. LEGION. My favorite was the gender-switch story I started playing with back in the day before Ard burst upon my horizon, entitled "Your Curves Made Me Loose My Direction" after this awesome song:
When mama lay a-dyin' on the flatbed,
She warned me not to truck with girls like you,
But I was caught in the glare of your headlights,
And went joy-ridin' just for the view.
(Chorus)
You're a detour on the highway to Heaven,
I am lost on the backroads of sin,
I have got to get back on the four-lane,
So that I can see Mama again.
Your curves made me lose my directions,
My hands from the steering wheel strayed,
But you were just one more roadside attraction,
It's been ten thousand miles since I prayed.
If you ever get out of the fast lane,
And get back on that highway above,
I'll be waitin' for you at the toll booth,
In that land where all roads end in love.
After plowing through the 10,000 words I've got about the lovely Laura Cadman, I realized that my problem is that the "will they/won't they" bits about Carson are not enough of an Atlantis-based plot to carry all the character building bits.
Also, I am not particularly interested in nailing Carson, so it's been tough to write from the POV of someone who definitely is.
Here's a bit that probably isn't going to make it to the final round since I accidentally killed someone off that I hadn't been planing to kill, and it got sadder than the tone of the rest of the story. But I kinda liked it, and I though that posting it might inspire me to keep working - it's a bit where Ronon & Cadman don't sleep together. Please control your excitement.
PG-13
Ronon/Cadman
No spoilers
"Jenny" she said, when he quirked a brow at the picture. "My big sister." It was more answer than she usually gave, but he wouldn't have been there at all if she hadn't spent the day remembering. If he wanted to chat a little first, she could handle that. She'd liked to have called it strength, but it felt more like the response to a dare.
He nodded, squinting at the picture, assessing it. Forgetting the laser gun that lived at his hip, she had an insane moment of what the Marines called Noble Savage Syndrome. She imagined trying to explain photography and how it differed from painting or drawing - how Jennifer's soul was not captured in the image. She bit her tongue, choking on how much she wished that last wasn't true.
He said, "She looks kind of bossy", and she choked on laughter instead.
SGC teams were taught to question colloquial conversation; the easier the gate-translation sounded, the greater the chance of assumption and misunderstanding, but he had it so right.
"She was." Laura said. Past-tense. Appropriately so.
He nodded easily, and it was a strange-sad thing to be grateful for: the presumption of loss native to the Pegasus Galaxy. There a were few formal mourning phrases, mouthed by the more fortunate cultures Atlantis had encountered, but generally people assumed that absent friends were dead ones and didn't comment further without invitation.
The light in the room was brighter than it needed to be for their purposes. She had a hint of the gene, just enough to put a gloss on her natural ability for good soldiering when she was in the City, but nowhere near enough to turn the lights out with a thought. Her movement towards the manual switch turned his head towards her immediately - an animal response that called up the animal reasons she had brought him there. He turned towards her avidly enough when she brushed the lights lower, his body arching down towards hers, graceful and strangely supplicating. If she hadn't blinked her eyes open at just the right moment she would have missed the instant when his face was lit clearly enough for his expression to read through ingrained stoicism and beautiful bones; loss and loneliness and nothing like desire.
He kissed her a second later, and she kissed him back, opening her mouth and curling her tongue against his with real pleasure. But when she curved her arms around the corded muscles of his back she felt an infinitesimal hitch in his breath, and took the chance that the gate-translator had told her more than just his sympathy for her loss.
An hour later she had poured out fury and grief and story after story about Jennifer. In return he offered a handful of his life before Running, more than anyone else on Atlantis had heard. It was a litany of the dead more than anything else: Sharya, Andyl, Seldis, Melena - and, without need for translation or a proper name, Mother.
"Larell", he said, nodding at the picture of Jennifer. "She had the same look about the eyes."
"Of bossiness?" she asked, and he laughed in turn, relaxing against her until they were comparing a world that she would never see with ballet classes and high school dances and a sister so accomplished that the neighbors talked of nothing else.
As much as she'd been aching for it when she caught his eye at dinner, she'd lost the urgent need to fuck him long before their talk drifted into silence. She didn't expect him to stay and he didn't; stirring himself when she was half asleep, whispering kisses against her wrists and stomach and ankles in a rhythm that felt like a known ritual, though she couldn't hear the words. Part of her regretted the quiet close of the door behind him even as she fell asleep; Atlantis rumor agreed on one clear point - Ronon Dex, no matter the enticement, returned to no one's bed. But the greater part of her was grateful for the shoulder he'd lent her and the names he'd shared.
It might have been a healthier way of dealing with grief than sex would have been, but she was only human. The next day at dinner, looking deliberately over McKay's bent head, he smiled when he saw her looking back. She very carefully avoided eye contact with the rest of his table - especially with the Colonel - not wanting the any interference with her chance of landing him in her bed again.
When mama lay a-dyin' on the flatbed,
She warned me not to truck with girls like you,
But I was caught in the glare of your headlights,
And went joy-ridin' just for the view.
(Chorus)
You're a detour on the highway to Heaven,
I am lost on the backroads of sin,
I have got to get back on the four-lane,
So that I can see Mama again.
Your curves made me lose my directions,
My hands from the steering wheel strayed,
But you were just one more roadside attraction,
It's been ten thousand miles since I prayed.
If you ever get out of the fast lane,
And get back on that highway above,
I'll be waitin' for you at the toll booth,
In that land where all roads end in love.
After plowing through the 10,000 words I've got about the lovely Laura Cadman, I realized that my problem is that the "will they/won't they" bits about Carson are not enough of an Atlantis-based plot to carry all the character building bits.
Also, I am not particularly interested in nailing Carson, so it's been tough to write from the POV of someone who definitely is.
Here's a bit that probably isn't going to make it to the final round since I accidentally killed someone off that I hadn't been planing to kill, and it got sadder than the tone of the rest of the story. But I kinda liked it, and I though that posting it might inspire me to keep working - it's a bit where Ronon & Cadman don't sleep together. Please control your excitement.
PG-13
Ronon/Cadman
No spoilers
"Jenny" she said, when he quirked a brow at the picture. "My big sister." It was more answer than she usually gave, but he wouldn't have been there at all if she hadn't spent the day remembering. If he wanted to chat a little first, she could handle that. She'd liked to have called it strength, but it felt more like the response to a dare.
He nodded, squinting at the picture, assessing it. Forgetting the laser gun that lived at his hip, she had an insane moment of what the Marines called Noble Savage Syndrome. She imagined trying to explain photography and how it differed from painting or drawing - how Jennifer's soul was not captured in the image. She bit her tongue, choking on how much she wished that last wasn't true.
He said, "She looks kind of bossy", and she choked on laughter instead.
SGC teams were taught to question colloquial conversation; the easier the gate-translation sounded, the greater the chance of assumption and misunderstanding, but he had it so right.
"She was." Laura said. Past-tense. Appropriately so.
He nodded easily, and it was a strange-sad thing to be grateful for: the presumption of loss native to the Pegasus Galaxy. There a were few formal mourning phrases, mouthed by the more fortunate cultures Atlantis had encountered, but generally people assumed that absent friends were dead ones and didn't comment further without invitation.
The light in the room was brighter than it needed to be for their purposes. She had a hint of the gene, just enough to put a gloss on her natural ability for good soldiering when she was in the City, but nowhere near enough to turn the lights out with a thought. Her movement towards the manual switch turned his head towards her immediately - an animal response that called up the animal reasons she had brought him there. He turned towards her avidly enough when she brushed the lights lower, his body arching down towards hers, graceful and strangely supplicating. If she hadn't blinked her eyes open at just the right moment she would have missed the instant when his face was lit clearly enough for his expression to read through ingrained stoicism and beautiful bones; loss and loneliness and nothing like desire.
He kissed her a second later, and she kissed him back, opening her mouth and curling her tongue against his with real pleasure. But when she curved her arms around the corded muscles of his back she felt an infinitesimal hitch in his breath, and took the chance that the gate-translator had told her more than just his sympathy for her loss.
An hour later she had poured out fury and grief and story after story about Jennifer. In return he offered a handful of his life before Running, more than anyone else on Atlantis had heard. It was a litany of the dead more than anything else: Sharya, Andyl, Seldis, Melena - and, without need for translation or a proper name, Mother.
"Larell", he said, nodding at the picture of Jennifer. "She had the same look about the eyes."
"Of bossiness?" she asked, and he laughed in turn, relaxing against her until they were comparing a world that she would never see with ballet classes and high school dances and a sister so accomplished that the neighbors talked of nothing else.
As much as she'd been aching for it when she caught his eye at dinner, she'd lost the urgent need to fuck him long before their talk drifted into silence. She didn't expect him to stay and he didn't; stirring himself when she was half asleep, whispering kisses against her wrists and stomach and ankles in a rhythm that felt like a known ritual, though she couldn't hear the words. Part of her regretted the quiet close of the door behind him even as she fell asleep; Atlantis rumor agreed on one clear point - Ronon Dex, no matter the enticement, returned to no one's bed. But the greater part of her was grateful for the shoulder he'd lent her and the names he'd shared.
It might have been a healthier way of dealing with grief than sex would have been, but she was only human. The next day at dinner, looking deliberately over McKay's bent head, he smiled when he saw her looking back. She very carefully avoided eye contact with the rest of his table - especially with the Colonel - not wanting the any interference with her chance of landing him in her bed again.