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damagereportTitle: The Median Trilogy
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: Stackhouse/Markham
Prompt: Too Much/Not Enough/WC: Balance
Word Count: total~ 1127
Rating: G/PG at worst.
Author's Notes: Three drabbles, to be read in order. Won't make a whole lot of sense without each other.
Excess
Prompt: Too Much
People always saw him as the one that brightened up a situation. Other people specialised in ballistics or alien technology or being arrogant asshats; but he specialised in being a 'people person', in making jokes and giving people hugs and giving them something else to think about. He was a little ray of light through the hard times, people said, and wasn't he just a-fucking-dorable? He wished they'd stop pinching his cheek.
Because sometimes he didn't want to be a 'little ray of light'. Every once in a while it got a little too much, and Jamie Markham didn't have the energy to talk about how cool it was that they'd come this far and how for every day they were here it was another day that they'd be working on a way to get them home, back on Earth. He didn't always have the energy to think those things, or even pretend he believed them.
Sometimes, he wanted to throw a tantrum or bitch someone out, or smack some smart-assed bicycle-face in the mouth for treating him like he shared a brain with thirty other guys just because they wore the same outfit to work. Sometimes, he wanted to reach out and take the comfort from someone else. But there was only one person who ever let him. And the more he let Jamie open up, the more that someone else became the 'too much' that he wanted to escape from.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he thought about climbing out of bed and creeping six doors down to slip under his best friend's covers. They would often sit on each other's beds whispering to each other, on Earth, when they shared a room with eight other guys. But now that their rooms were their own, it was all too tempting to try for more than words.
He wondered what Adam would do, if he did; if he would freak out and ruin everything, or if he'd move over and let him sleep where he was. Or if maybe Adam wouldn't freak out, and he wouldn't move over; at least, not away. But he never got out of bed and walked the twenty paces down the hall – although he sometimes made it as far as the door – because if he did, he'd know, and there was a damn good chance that if he knew, he wouldn't feel like cheering anyone up for a while. And who would there be to comfort him, then?
Deficit
Prompt: Not Enough
They were as close as brothers, because that was pretty much the protocol. You signed up, you got your ass kicked in boot camp, you joined a platoon and made a best buddy. Then, either he was KIA, or you were, and then if you were lucky you shipped out somewhere else, made a new one and told them war stories about how much you missed Bob, or Chip or fucking Drill Sergeant Himmler, if you were really playing it.
But with Jamie, 'brothers' didn't quite cut it.
The first time Adam asked him if he was okay was the night before they left for Pegasus. They'd both been knocking around the SGC for a couple of months, but he didn't really feel like he knew Markham at all. He was an Other Peoples' Person; the kind that seemed to leave a haze of popularity and pleasantness like pixie dust when he'd been around.
Adam was the sort that everybody liked, but no one ever noticed. They just didn't really have any excuse to mix, because Adam was always the observing satellite and Jamie was the centre of the Universe. But that night, in the quiet sighs of the dormitory, it was the silence from Jamie's bunk that pulled him out of orbit.
He hadn't expected three simple words to bring the other marine to his bunk, or for him to tell him precisely and in great detail why he couldn't sleep; he hadn't expected it to become a routine that would follow them into the Pegasus Galaxy and make him wish for shit to happen as often as possible. But for every time he sat quietly and allowed him to sound off, or punch the fuck out of soft furnishings, or just hung out with him after hours when the city was peaceful, 'brothers in arms' became less and less satisfactory. Until it wasn't enough at all.
But when Jamie fell asleep on the couch beside him, on the day they nearly died, it didn't seem too inappropriate to sidle a little nearer and tuck his shoulder under Jamie's head. And as he gazed at the space above the plasma screen on the rec room wall, he wondered if there could ever be enough words in the Universe to explain the way he felt when sleepy fingers curled around his own.
Prompt: Writer's choice. 'Median/Balance/Contentment'
It was clear from the start that they could each give what the other needed, but it took time to understand that what they needed the most they already had. For every time Adam gave Jamie a shoulder to lean on, Jamie gave Adam arms to fall into. They never really spoke about it at all, but let it roll with the peaks and falls of life on Atlantis. It was a careful and silent arrangement that grew in the shade of shuttered quarters on humid alien nights, but it would always begin with a handful of innocent words whispered in the heart of a mountain.
On the night of the day they ceased to exist and came back to being in the same instant, something was just a little different. From Adam, sitting patiently on the abused rec room sofa, delirious at what was being given to him but afraid to reach for more, to the butterflies that knotted in Jamie's stomach as he wondered if he had gone too far, the beginning of the middle was suspended in a tentative balance. Something ended and something began; and they paused in the middle waiting.
And as they plunged out of the moment and fell into the next in a rush of warmth and breath and clasping fingers, the scales tilted and the focus of the Universe shifted. Suddenly there wasn't only one satellite to watch over, and the centre of the Universe wasn't such a lonely place any longer.
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: Stackhouse/Markham
Prompt: Too Much/Not Enough/WC: Balance
Word Count: total~ 1127
Rating: G/PG at worst.
Author's Notes: Three drabbles, to be read in order. Won't make a whole lot of sense without each other.
Excess
Prompt: Too Much
People always saw him as the one that brightened up a situation. Other people specialised in ballistics or alien technology or being arrogant asshats; but he specialised in being a 'people person', in making jokes and giving people hugs and giving them something else to think about. He was a little ray of light through the hard times, people said, and wasn't he just a-fucking-dorable? He wished they'd stop pinching his cheek.
Because sometimes he didn't want to be a 'little ray of light'. Every once in a while it got a little too much, and Jamie Markham didn't have the energy to talk about how cool it was that they'd come this far and how for every day they were here it was another day that they'd be working on a way to get them home, back on Earth. He didn't always have the energy to think those things, or even pretend he believed them.
Sometimes, he wanted to throw a tantrum or bitch someone out, or smack some smart-assed bicycle-face in the mouth for treating him like he shared a brain with thirty other guys just because they wore the same outfit to work. Sometimes, he wanted to reach out and take the comfort from someone else. But there was only one person who ever let him. And the more he let Jamie open up, the more that someone else became the 'too much' that he wanted to escape from.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he thought about climbing out of bed and creeping six doors down to slip under his best friend's covers. They would often sit on each other's beds whispering to each other, on Earth, when they shared a room with eight other guys. But now that their rooms were their own, it was all too tempting to try for more than words.
He wondered what Adam would do, if he did; if he would freak out and ruin everything, or if he'd move over and let him sleep where he was. Or if maybe Adam wouldn't freak out, and he wouldn't move over; at least, not away. But he never got out of bed and walked the twenty paces down the hall – although he sometimes made it as far as the door – because if he did, he'd know, and there was a damn good chance that if he knew, he wouldn't feel like cheering anyone up for a while. And who would there be to comfort him, then?
Deficit
Prompt: Not Enough
They were as close as brothers, because that was pretty much the protocol. You signed up, you got your ass kicked in boot camp, you joined a platoon and made a best buddy. Then, either he was KIA, or you were, and then if you were lucky you shipped out somewhere else, made a new one and told them war stories about how much you missed Bob, or Chip or fucking Drill Sergeant Himmler, if you were really playing it.
But with Jamie, 'brothers' didn't quite cut it.
The first time Adam asked him if he was okay was the night before they left for Pegasus. They'd both been knocking around the SGC for a couple of months, but he didn't really feel like he knew Markham at all. He was an Other Peoples' Person; the kind that seemed to leave a haze of popularity and pleasantness like pixie dust when he'd been around.
Adam was the sort that everybody liked, but no one ever noticed. They just didn't really have any excuse to mix, because Adam was always the observing satellite and Jamie was the centre of the Universe. But that night, in the quiet sighs of the dormitory, it was the silence from Jamie's bunk that pulled him out of orbit.
He hadn't expected three simple words to bring the other marine to his bunk, or for him to tell him precisely and in great detail why he couldn't sleep; he hadn't expected it to become a routine that would follow them into the Pegasus Galaxy and make him wish for shit to happen as often as possible. But for every time he sat quietly and allowed him to sound off, or punch the fuck out of soft furnishings, or just hung out with him after hours when the city was peaceful, 'brothers in arms' became less and less satisfactory. Until it wasn't enough at all.
But when Jamie fell asleep on the couch beside him, on the day they nearly died, it didn't seem too inappropriate to sidle a little nearer and tuck his shoulder under Jamie's head. And as he gazed at the space above the plasma screen on the rec room wall, he wondered if there could ever be enough words in the Universe to explain the way he felt when sleepy fingers curled around his own.
Prompt: Writer's choice. 'Median/Balance/Contentment'
It was clear from the start that they could each give what the other needed, but it took time to understand that what they needed the most they already had. For every time Adam gave Jamie a shoulder to lean on, Jamie gave Adam arms to fall into. They never really spoke about it at all, but let it roll with the peaks and falls of life on Atlantis. It was a careful and silent arrangement that grew in the shade of shuttered quarters on humid alien nights, but it would always begin with a handful of innocent words whispered in the heart of a mountain.
On the night of the day they ceased to exist and came back to being in the same instant, something was just a little different. From Adam, sitting patiently on the abused rec room sofa, delirious at what was being given to him but afraid to reach for more, to the butterflies that knotted in Jamie's stomach as he wondered if he had gone too far, the beginning of the middle was suspended in a tentative balance. Something ended and something began; and they paused in the middle waiting.
And as they plunged out of the moment and fell into the next in a rush of warmth and breath and clasping fingers, the scales tilted and the focus of the Universe shifted. Suddenly there wasn't only one satellite to watch over, and the centre of the Universe wasn't such a lonely place any longer.