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damagereport2011-12-21 03:18 pm
rosiedoes) wrote in damagereport2011-12-21 03:18 pm
Night Lights (1/?) - Stackhouse/Markham - PG-13
Author: alfirin_kirinki
Beta:shiny_starlight
Pairing: Stackhouse/Markham
Rating: about a PG-13, but with a few four-letter words.
Notes: A while ago, I toldiocane I was writing a consequences fic from Thirty-Eight Minutes. This fic is not it – but it does follow a fairly similar premise. The other fic, Twist will probably turn up sooner or later. For the time being, this is part one of a fic that should have been a oneshot...
Let's pretend we don't know The Brotherhood happens, eh?
Night Lights (1/?)
And save me from the dark.
Prompt: Light
For the first few nights afterward, James Markham slept with the lights on. If he slept at all. When he did manage to sleep, he'd wake every few minutes, jerking upright and clutching for a hand that wasn't there. No one was there at all.
Thirty-eight minutes. For thirty-eight minutes they'd stopped existing altogether; they could have died without even knowing it. He'd always expected to stare death in the face before it got him; everyone did in this job. Now, he didn't think he was ready to face death at all.
---
Adam Stackhouse took night duties for a while after the Jumper Incident. He spent the dark hours pacing the halls, chasing composure the way the city lights chased him down the corridors as he walked. He didn't want to admit that he was disturbed by what had happened, but no one had even asked how they were, yet. Both he and Markham had been poked and prodded and deemed healthy enough to continue as normal, but he knew something wasn't quite right and the slice of light from beneath the other marine's door each night suggested he might think so, too.
---
Dragging himself in for breakfast each morning was becoming excruciating for Jamie. He was barely conscious, most of the time. Night after night spent staring at the ceiling or the photo of his family on the bedside cabinet wasn't exactly leaving him in a fit state for duty. On the sixth day after it happened, a tray slid on to the otherwise empty table opposite him, shortly followed by Stackhouse.
Stackhouse picked up his fork, prodded at the scrambled eggs reluctantly and dropped the utensil back on to the tray a moment later.
"You get any sleep last night?" he asked, and the question was obviously rhetorical. Markham shook his head anyway. "'You look like crap. Have you seen the Doc?"
"Nothing's worked, yet. Just makes me tireder than I already am, but I can't sleep, still. I just keep waking up."
Stackhouse stared at him with a perplexed frown, "Eat that, go back to bed. I'm going to talk to Sheppard. This is a fucking joke."
---
Sheppard had visibly cringed when Adam had gone to him to explain that Markham needed a break and that he really wasn't fit for mess duty, let alone to take part in off-world missions. He'd folded his arms with the expression of a man consulting his mental protocol archives, and scrunched his nose.
Then he'd given them both a week off.
---
Jamie mumbled half-coherently and buried his face in his pillow, resisting the light spilling into his room. He'd thought for a minute that he might fall asleep, and was waiting to be jolted awake as tiny pieces of himself seemed to start ripping away from his body.
Instead, his team leader's voice broke the quiet.
"You awake?"
"No."
There was a pause, and then, "Well, if it's okay with you, I'll just sit here and wait for you to wake up."
But Jamie had drifted off to sleep.
---
Adam jerked awake more rested than he had in what felt like an eternity, despite an uncomfortable crick in his neck. He gazed around in the darkness for a few moments, trying to figure out where he was. Silhouettes of furniture looked familiar, but it wasn't his room. And the hand that suddenly groped at his ear and shoulder certainly wasn't his, either.
"Stack?" his team mate's voice asked groggily.
"Markham?"
"What time is it?"
Adam pressed the tiny button on his wristwatch to activate a violent teal glow that made him squint for a moment. "That... that can't be right!"
"What? Why, how long have I been asleep?"
Swallowing and ruffling a hand through his hair as he stood, Adam gulped, "More than nineteen hours. It's almost five on Tuesday morning."
---
Walking into the mess hall that supper time, Markham cast a careful scanning glance across the room and then focused on his tray until he reached Drs Schneller and Magdziarz's table. He knew the unlikely pair from his shifts on the laboratory patrols, and they'd taken to showing him things and teaching him what they were doing – which was more than most of the scientists had bothered to do.
"You are look better!" the Pole announced, almost dipping his white-coated elbow in his colleague's stew while thumping Markham's shoulder amiably. "Long time since you haf colour in cheeks, Sergeant."
Schneller's thin lips hitched up at one corner. "Vell... the exertion..."
"What exertion?"
The pair exchanged wry smiles before simultaneously turning to their food.
"The grapevine it is... full of juicy today."
"It's full of 'juicy'? Why is it full of 'juicy'?"
"Vell... you disappear whole day –"
"- nobody is seen you until morning – "
"- the Sergeant, he is not seen until coming from your room very early – "
"- now, both are looking better."
"Ve are scientists, Sgt Markham. Ve deal in logic only."
That false assumption was precisely the reason he'd chosen to sit with them rather than the rest of the marines five tables over. Abruptly, he realised he wasn't hungry.
---
If he had to explain one more time that he'd fallen asleep on Markham's floor because he'd been so exhausted, and no, nothing illicit had happened whatsoever, he was going to shoot someone in the goddamn foot. Almost a day's sleep had been nice, yes, but it didn't make up for all the hours he'd already missed.
The darkness seemed eerier now than it had even when they'd first arrived; creepier than the mysterious intelligence that seemed to activate every single thing they discovered or used within the city. There was an emptiness in the dark. A heart-stopping desolation, like the moment he'd thought he'd been stranded alone at the beach at eight years old – convinced his parents had gone home and forgotten him.
He really would have preferred a few more hours sleep, but he was afraid that if he disappeared from the view of the rest of the city and Markham had also done so, the rumours would spiral out of all proportion.
So he did the sensible thing. He kicked off his boots and stretched out on the couch in the non-comms' rec room, and tried for a nap before he was disturbed.
---
The last thing Jamie remembered was pulling his pillow over his head and scrunching his eyes closed. It was something of a shock, therefore, to wake to the sound of amused whispering, curled up in a chair in the rec room.
He heaved himself upright and squinted around to see six of his fellow marines huddled in the doorway, and a confused and bleary-eyed Stackhouse just waking on the sofa nearby.
"Markham?"
"How'd I get here?"
"Do I look like I know?"
"Hey, guys – look, they're having a tiff already!"
There was something about their simultaneous order to "Shut the fuck up, Parker!" which proved highly effective.
---
Some time around 2am, Adam gave up trying to sleep. He hauled himself out of bed and shuffled back to the rec room, as he'd had more luck there. He suspected it was something to do with it being a public area. He wasn't closed in or entirely alone – regardless of the time of day or night people would pass through the corridors outside and marines on various shifts would stop by when they took breaks or finished for the day. At this time in the morning, however, it should be quiet enough for some rest.
When he arrived to find Markham slumped, half catatonic, at one end of the couch he wasn't particularly surprised. Sighing with resignation, he lifted the other marine's feet, shoved them out of the way and sat down.
"You gotta quit stalking me, man..." he murmured, settling into a more comfortable position.
"Fuck off. I got here first. And I wasn't the one who slept in your room without asking..."
"Didn't do that on purpose..." Adam told him, lifting his head to look over at him, and finding Markham squinting back at him attentively. "I think... I think I kinda got scared of the dark. Hanging out in your quarters I wasn't by myself, so I could sleep. Something like that, anyway..."
"If that's all you got, think yourself lucky... I feel like those particle things we're made up of are tearing apart from my skin... like I'm falling apart one itty bitty piece at a time..."
"Go to Heightmeyer."
"You go to Heightmeyer!"
"Go to sleep."
"I would if you'd shut up."
---
When he next woke, it was to Stackhouse slapping at his shins and hissing his name. He peered around at the empty rec room and demanded, "What?"
He'd been enjoying the rest and wasn't pleased to have been woken up.
Stackhouse silently took Jamie's own arm and raised it so his wristwatch was directly in front of his face.
It was lunchtime. The door was closed. And someone had thrown a blanket over them.
---
For the next few hours, Adam did his best to avoid Markham. It was becoming extremely embarrassing that people kept finding them together like that. However, at around ten that evening, just as he was considering going to find the other marine because he was starting to feel isolated – even with the lights on – there was a knock at his door and Markham walked in.
"I been thinking," he announced, without preamble, "and I think... I don't know about science, much, but... I think something got mixed up in the wormhole."
"No shit."
"Well, y'know – we ain't supposed to be in there all that time... what if bits of us drifted around and... kinda ended up in the wrong place?"
Adam's heart skipped a beat. "That can't happen..." he said, before pausing to consider this concept and adding less certainly, "I don't think that can happen."
"Well, maybe it can't if you're just in there a while... but we got stuck in there a hell of a long time, Stack... It ain't supposed to work like that."
"Doc Beckett would've known. We'd be in isolation if that was possible."
"Not if they don't know. Maybe it never happened before. Maybe we're like... the first."
"Wait – there was that guy from the SGC... he got stuck for days."
"By himself! There ain't much to get mixed up with if you're by yourself!"
Adam was afraid he might have a point.
---
"We can't just go and tell Beckett that!"
"Why not?" Jamie demanded, rolling over on Stackhouse's narrow bunk and almost falling off as he tried to prop himself up on his elbows. "It's true!"
"Because it sounds stupid! And what if it's not true? It makes us sound... weird."
"Stack, I can only sleep when I'm right by you. You can only sleep when I'm right by you. It is weird. And it's gonna have to stop... People are talking."
"Yeah. I noticed."
"Well, don't you think that getting a real reason from the doc is gonna look better than keep making excuses no one's believing?"
"But what if he says it's not the reason?"
"Well, what the hell other reason can you think of?!"
Jamie couldn't help notice the way Stackhouse blushed.
---
Adam didn't sleep at all, that night. Markham returned to his own quarters and stayed there, leaving him to gaze into the darkness, growing more and more tired and more and more lonely.
He told himself it was just homesickness catching up with him, after a busy few weeks. That finally the knowledge that he was stuck lightyears away from home had sunk in. But that didn't explain why he didn't fall asleep in Thompson's lap watching Apocalypse Now two days after it happened. And yet, every time he was within feet of Markham he'd happily curl up and drift off. For hours. And hours. And also: hours.
He slid onto the bench beside him at breakfast the next morning. Markham's plate was pushed aside and his face was buried in his folded arms.
"Well rested, huh?"
"Get bent."
Adam rolled his eyes and chewed idly on his toast. "Why bother? Thanks to you, everyone thinks I am, anyway..."
Markham drowsily raised his middle finger in response.
There was a long silence until finally Adam suggested, as nonchalantly as he could, "After breakfast, you want to go for a nap?"
A moment later Markham was on his feet. "Forget breakfast."
---
When they arrived at the rec room, Jamie was dismayed to find the whole of the fourth recon team lounging around – their mission for the day cancelled due to the inclement weather at their assigned planet.
"No rest for the wicked, huh?"
"No rest my ass," Stackhouse muttered, setting off back down the corridor and dragging Jamie with him by a fistful of shirt. "C'mon."
"Stack, where are we going? 'Cause this is looking bad enough already..."
"We're going to get a sick note."
---
Beckett rubbed at his forehead when they walked in and attempted to explain their predicament, looking utterly perplexed.
"I should really bring in Dr McKay," he said. "This is... well. I've no bloody idea what to do, to be honest. I'm a geneticist – not a physicist. Are yeh quite sure that's what happened – because I've never heard of something like this... And if yeh don't mind me saying – neither o'yous are experts, neither."
"Doc. It feels like bits of me are falling off. It itches. When I try to sleep, I wake up thinking I'm vaporising!"
"And it's like I'm missing bits."
"What bits?!"
Stackhouse spread his palms, "Just bits! Not those bits. Don't you think I'd have come by sooner if it was important bits?"
"He didn't want to come at all," Markham agreed. "It's not those bits."
"But when you're together you feel alright?"
"Well, if you don't include just about everyone thinking it's suspect..."
"And having to sleep in the rec room to try to stop everyone thinking it's suspect..."
"Doc – we can't sleep. People go crazy without enough sleep! You've gotta fix us!"
Beckett scratched his head and waved them over to the end of the room. "Go and get forty winks up there, the pair o'yous... I'll go have a word with McKay."
He ambled out of the room, muttering to himself.
---
"Stack?"
"What?"
"I can't sleep."
"Markham?"
"What?"
"Neither can I, if you won't shut the fuck up!"
There was a pause. "It's... I think it's because you're all the way over there."
"I'm not rearranging Beckett's furniture."
"Fine." There was a quiet rattling of the metal gurney across from Adam's own. "If I'm gonna lay awake staring at the ceiling, I'm going to do it in the comfort of my own bed. See ya."
---
"Wondered how long it'd take you..." Markham mumbled, his face half buried in one pillow while he fumbled blindly around on the floor for another and tossed it to Adam as he stood in the doorway. "Now shut the goddamn door."
Adam stepped out of the door sensor's range, so it slipped shut behind him, and walked over to the end of the bed.
"Don't just stand there – if you're staying, get comfortable... just... personal space, right?"
"Personal space?! Markham, it's a single bunk! And... I can't get in bed with a guy... that's..."
Markham's voice took on a tearfully frustrated tone, "Then sleep on the goddamn floor, will ya? I just wanna sleep... please, God, let me sleep..."
Giving a deep sigh, Adam sat on the edge of the mattress and threw his pillow at Markham's head. "Quit whining and move over."
---
Jamie woke up with a violent sneeze that prompted an exclamation of disgust from someone who raised a hand and smacked him awkwardly in the face. He raised his own hand to sooth the now stinging cheek and realised he'd just withdrawn it from being tucked around someone's torso.
"Christ!" He sat up abruptly and shifted away. "Stack... man... I'm sorry!"
"Never happened."
"Damn... how long this have I been asleep this time?"
Stackhouse lifted his wrist to show him over his shoulder, then rubbed at his neck. "Go back to sleep. And don't sneeze on me again."
---
For the first time in days, Adam woke up slowly, drifting contentedly back into consciousness with and nuzzling into the squishy, comfortable mass wrapped around him – and opened his eyes to find himself nose-to-nose with a still half asleep Markham. A Markham who tightened his arms and nuzzled closer, murmuring incoherently.
For a moment, Adam considered closing his eyes and going back to sleep, but Markham suddenly jolted awake and launched himself backward so hard that he thumped his head on the cabinet beside his bed.
"OW!"
"That had to hurt."
"Y'think?" Markham snapped, sitting up and looking back down at him. "Wait... were we just...?"
"Uh... you kinda make it hard to pretend things didn't happen when you back them up with... snuggling."
"I was not snuggling."
"Whatever. I'm going to get food."
---
"We can't go in there together."
Stackhouse rolled his eyes, "Okay. I'm going in now. I'll see you when you're hungry."
Jamie huffed irritably and followed him to the serving queue. He hadn't eaten a full meal in days.
They'd just sat down when Beckett rushed over looking relieved. "There you are! Good God, you gave me a fright..."
"Couldn't sleep on the gurneys," Stackhouse said shortly, and started on his food.
"Where did you go?"
"Doc. Really. Don't go there."
"The only place you're going, lad, is back to that infirmary. Chop chop."
"Oh no. No, I'm gonna sit right here and eat this – then I'll go wherever you want me," Jamie assured him, picking his fork up pointedly.
"Seconded."
"Then you'd better make it bloody quick, son – we've got to get you sorted out before bits really do start falling off!"
---
All Adam could think of, as he sat on the gurney with Drs McKay and Zelenka attaching probes and taking readings and ruining his personal space, was his hurriedly abandoned dinner.
"You look like something off TV!" Markham snickered from across the isle.
"Really? That's funny, 'cause you look like a moron."
"Fuck you! I'm gonna laugh my ass off when you get those little sticky things ripped off your nipple wig."
"Don't worry, Markham – when you grow up you won't look like someone waxed GI Joe, either."
"GENTLEMEN!" McKay snapped, "Would you please stop pulling each other's pigtails for five minutes while I deal with these readings because I assure you I would take great pleasure in leaving you to snuggle up like fluffy little puppies while your extremities fall off."
After a short silence Markham grumbled, "It wasn't snuggling."
---
"The best I say, is we make them stay together for time being."
"Well, thank you, Galen."
"Are yous sure that'll work?"
"About as sure as we are that there's a God, this isn't all someone else's dream and Maj Sheppard isn't really an oversized twelve year old who learned his trade through the flight simulator at the local arcade, yes."
"Is our only choice until we find cure."
"Well, why can't we just stick them back through the gate?"
"Oh yes, and the next person who comes in having downed a gallon of industrial bleach should be told to stick their fingers down their throat! Because everything can be fixed if you just do it backwards!"
"I only asked."
"Do I honestly need to say 'don't'? Really? Hm?"
"Can I ask? Who is to tell Bates? He is the man in charge of accommodation, yes?"
If Adam had been Beckett, he would have paled, too.
---
Adam tossed his things down on his new bed irritably. He liked having his personal space; he did not like the merry song and dance that we being made of his and Markham's move into shared quarters. They'd been given strict orders never to venture too far from each other, and assigned a new, twin room whose only redeeming feature was its proximity to the mess hall.
"Least now we can both sleep without you accusing me of snuggling."
"At least when we were snuggling I got something out of being stuck with you."
Markham paused in unpacking his things and tossing them on the floor, and gazed at him in surprise.
Adam smirked and shrugged. "Ammunition."
---
It may not have been fun for Stackhouse or Markham to have been ordered to spend every waking, sleeping and eating hour in each other's company, but it was hilarious by everyone else's standards.
By the time they headed out for breakfast the next day, news had spread to every single member or the expedition. Someone had raided all the holepunches in the city and scattered a confetti of little circles all over them as they arrived. Parker offered his congratulations and told them PX1785-t would make a great destination for a honeymoon, this time of year.
Parker accordingly received the back of Stackhouse's hand to his forehead soon after; which was nothing, considering the retribution they dealt out to Watts for bringing them Athosian baby blankets for their firstborn.
He wouldn't be drinking milk again for a while...
But all it took was forty-eight hours of taunting before they'd quietly decided not to even bother venturing out.
---
"What do we do if they can't fix us?" Markham asked, around the dogtags Adam had discovered he had an infuriating habit of putting in his mouth, as he removed his boots for bed.
"Redecorate."
"Shut up. I'm serious."
"No, you're not. You're seriously annoying, though..."
"Look who's talking! Have you heard yourself snore?"
"No... because generally, if I'm snoring I'm, y'know... asleep."
Markham gave an irritable sigh and folded his arms. "Seriously, Stack..."
"They'll fix us," Adam assured him, shoving his toothbrush in his mouth.
"But if they don't...?"
"If they don't... you'd better get used to my snoring."
---
It was the early hours of the next morning that Adam was woken by an hysterical babbling from the next bed. He jabbed at the lamp, leaping up and crossing to Markham's bunk, half afraid of what he'd find.
"Hey. Hey – Markham. Wake up, man. Wake up – you're dreaming."
Markham sat up in a manner eerily similar to reanimated corpses in horror movies, and clutched for Adam desperately in obviously overwhelming panic.
"Don't go – don't go!"
"I'm not going anywhere. What's up?"
"God... God – it was the nightmare – the old nightmare..."
"What – the one that stopped you sleeping? That old nightmare?"
"Yeah. Fuck. You can't leave me, Stack – I feel sick, I can't sleep if I'm going to keep having that nightmare! I can't..."
"But I'm just over there..."
"It's... it's not..." Markham ran a hand through his hair, eyes wild and face flushed.
"It's not enough?" Adam finished for him.
Silently, with a shade of embarrassment, Markham shook his head.
---
"Imagine every cell, or whatever they are, pulling apart one by one... watching yourself disintegrate or something... and then waking up, and your skin itches and burns like they're still trying to..."
"Sounds fun."
"It ain't."
"Yeah, well... I kind of figured that from the fact you woke up hysterical."
Jamie raised his eyes to the marine laying flat on the bed beside him, arms folded across his chest; "Don't you get the same thing?"
"No. I just feel like every time the light goes out I'm missing something. Or... like I'm the one missing. Completely alone."
"But that stopped when you started sleeping with me? Completely?"
"Well, until now. And I'm not 'sleeping with you'. Please don't go telling people I'm sleeping with you..."
"Not like it matters, now... They all think we are anyway...."
"Yeah, well... that doesn't make it a cue..."
"Hmm..." Jamie mumbled, huddling closer and closing his eyes.
---
For a long time after Markham drifted off, Adam remained awake, gazing into the darkness above them. It didn't feel isolated, anymore, but that was probably because he had a marine half-laying on him.
Markham was sleeping like a baby, just as he had when they'd first taken to sleeping in each other's presence. His chin was pressing slightly painfully in Adam's shoulder, his hands were both knotted in the material of his t-shirt.
Adam tried to ignore how comfortable it was, despite the chin, and assured himself that if it wasn't for Markham apparently carrying half his molecular structure, that wouldn't be the case. But as Markham gave a disconcerted burble in his sleep, Adam still found himself shifting to wrap a comforting arm around him – allowing Markham to bury his face in the side of his chest, instead of his shoulder – and wondered what the hell his father would say if he could see him now.
---
Part Two
alfirin_kirinkiBeta:
shiny_starlightPairing: Stackhouse/Markham
Rating: about a PG-13, but with a few four-letter words.
Notes: A while ago, I told
iocane I was writing a consequences fic from Thirty-Eight Minutes. This fic is not it – but it does follow a fairly similar premise. The other fic, Twist will probably turn up sooner or later. For the time being, this is part one of a fic that should have been a oneshot...Let's pretend we don't know The Brotherhood happens, eh?
Night Lights (1/?)
And save me from the dark.
Prompt: Light
For the first few nights afterward, James Markham slept with the lights on. If he slept at all. When he did manage to sleep, he'd wake every few minutes, jerking upright and clutching for a hand that wasn't there. No one was there at all.
Thirty-eight minutes. For thirty-eight minutes they'd stopped existing altogether; they could have died without even knowing it. He'd always expected to stare death in the face before it got him; everyone did in this job. Now, he didn't think he was ready to face death at all.
---
Adam Stackhouse took night duties for a while after the Jumper Incident. He spent the dark hours pacing the halls, chasing composure the way the city lights chased him down the corridors as he walked. He didn't want to admit that he was disturbed by what had happened, but no one had even asked how they were, yet. Both he and Markham had been poked and prodded and deemed healthy enough to continue as normal, but he knew something wasn't quite right and the slice of light from beneath the other marine's door each night suggested he might think so, too.
---
Dragging himself in for breakfast each morning was becoming excruciating for Jamie. He was barely conscious, most of the time. Night after night spent staring at the ceiling or the photo of his family on the bedside cabinet wasn't exactly leaving him in a fit state for duty. On the sixth day after it happened, a tray slid on to the otherwise empty table opposite him, shortly followed by Stackhouse.
Stackhouse picked up his fork, prodded at the scrambled eggs reluctantly and dropped the utensil back on to the tray a moment later.
"You get any sleep last night?" he asked, and the question was obviously rhetorical. Markham shook his head anyway. "'You look like crap. Have you seen the Doc?"
"Nothing's worked, yet. Just makes me tireder than I already am, but I can't sleep, still. I just keep waking up."
Stackhouse stared at him with a perplexed frown, "Eat that, go back to bed. I'm going to talk to Sheppard. This is a fucking joke."
---
Sheppard had visibly cringed when Adam had gone to him to explain that Markham needed a break and that he really wasn't fit for mess duty, let alone to take part in off-world missions. He'd folded his arms with the expression of a man consulting his mental protocol archives, and scrunched his nose.
Then he'd given them both a week off.
---
Jamie mumbled half-coherently and buried his face in his pillow, resisting the light spilling into his room. He'd thought for a minute that he might fall asleep, and was waiting to be jolted awake as tiny pieces of himself seemed to start ripping away from his body.
Instead, his team leader's voice broke the quiet.
"You awake?"
"No."
There was a pause, and then, "Well, if it's okay with you, I'll just sit here and wait for you to wake up."
But Jamie had drifted off to sleep.
---
Adam jerked awake more rested than he had in what felt like an eternity, despite an uncomfortable crick in his neck. He gazed around in the darkness for a few moments, trying to figure out where he was. Silhouettes of furniture looked familiar, but it wasn't his room. And the hand that suddenly groped at his ear and shoulder certainly wasn't his, either.
"Stack?" his team mate's voice asked groggily.
"Markham?"
"What time is it?"
Adam pressed the tiny button on his wristwatch to activate a violent teal glow that made him squint for a moment. "That... that can't be right!"
"What? Why, how long have I been asleep?"
Swallowing and ruffling a hand through his hair as he stood, Adam gulped, "More than nineteen hours. It's almost five on Tuesday morning."
---
Walking into the mess hall that supper time, Markham cast a careful scanning glance across the room and then focused on his tray until he reached Drs Schneller and Magdziarz's table. He knew the unlikely pair from his shifts on the laboratory patrols, and they'd taken to showing him things and teaching him what they were doing – which was more than most of the scientists had bothered to do.
"You are look better!" the Pole announced, almost dipping his white-coated elbow in his colleague's stew while thumping Markham's shoulder amiably. "Long time since you haf colour in cheeks, Sergeant."
Schneller's thin lips hitched up at one corner. "Vell... the exertion..."
"What exertion?"
The pair exchanged wry smiles before simultaneously turning to their food.
"The grapevine it is... full of juicy today."
"It's full of 'juicy'? Why is it full of 'juicy'?"
"Vell... you disappear whole day –"
"- nobody is seen you until morning – "
"- the Sergeant, he is not seen until coming from your room very early – "
"- now, both are looking better."
"Ve are scientists, Sgt Markham. Ve deal in logic only."
That false assumption was precisely the reason he'd chosen to sit with them rather than the rest of the marines five tables over. Abruptly, he realised he wasn't hungry.
---
If he had to explain one more time that he'd fallen asleep on Markham's floor because he'd been so exhausted, and no, nothing illicit had happened whatsoever, he was going to shoot someone in the goddamn foot. Almost a day's sleep had been nice, yes, but it didn't make up for all the hours he'd already missed.
The darkness seemed eerier now than it had even when they'd first arrived; creepier than the mysterious intelligence that seemed to activate every single thing they discovered or used within the city. There was an emptiness in the dark. A heart-stopping desolation, like the moment he'd thought he'd been stranded alone at the beach at eight years old – convinced his parents had gone home and forgotten him.
He really would have preferred a few more hours sleep, but he was afraid that if he disappeared from the view of the rest of the city and Markham had also done so, the rumours would spiral out of all proportion.
So he did the sensible thing. He kicked off his boots and stretched out on the couch in the non-comms' rec room, and tried for a nap before he was disturbed.
---
The last thing Jamie remembered was pulling his pillow over his head and scrunching his eyes closed. It was something of a shock, therefore, to wake to the sound of amused whispering, curled up in a chair in the rec room.
He heaved himself upright and squinted around to see six of his fellow marines huddled in the doorway, and a confused and bleary-eyed Stackhouse just waking on the sofa nearby.
"Markham?"
"How'd I get here?"
"Do I look like I know?"
"Hey, guys – look, they're having a tiff already!"
There was something about their simultaneous order to "Shut the fuck up, Parker!" which proved highly effective.
---
Some time around 2am, Adam gave up trying to sleep. He hauled himself out of bed and shuffled back to the rec room, as he'd had more luck there. He suspected it was something to do with it being a public area. He wasn't closed in or entirely alone – regardless of the time of day or night people would pass through the corridors outside and marines on various shifts would stop by when they took breaks or finished for the day. At this time in the morning, however, it should be quiet enough for some rest.
When he arrived to find Markham slumped, half catatonic, at one end of the couch he wasn't particularly surprised. Sighing with resignation, he lifted the other marine's feet, shoved them out of the way and sat down.
"You gotta quit stalking me, man..." he murmured, settling into a more comfortable position.
"Fuck off. I got here first. And I wasn't the one who slept in your room without asking..."
"Didn't do that on purpose..." Adam told him, lifting his head to look over at him, and finding Markham squinting back at him attentively. "I think... I think I kinda got scared of the dark. Hanging out in your quarters I wasn't by myself, so I could sleep. Something like that, anyway..."
"If that's all you got, think yourself lucky... I feel like those particle things we're made up of are tearing apart from my skin... like I'm falling apart one itty bitty piece at a time..."
"Go to Heightmeyer."
"You go to Heightmeyer!"
"Go to sleep."
"I would if you'd shut up."
---
When he next woke, it was to Stackhouse slapping at his shins and hissing his name. He peered around at the empty rec room and demanded, "What?"
He'd been enjoying the rest and wasn't pleased to have been woken up.
Stackhouse silently took Jamie's own arm and raised it so his wristwatch was directly in front of his face.
It was lunchtime. The door was closed. And someone had thrown a blanket over them.
---
For the next few hours, Adam did his best to avoid Markham. It was becoming extremely embarrassing that people kept finding them together like that. However, at around ten that evening, just as he was considering going to find the other marine because he was starting to feel isolated – even with the lights on – there was a knock at his door and Markham walked in.
"I been thinking," he announced, without preamble, "and I think... I don't know about science, much, but... I think something got mixed up in the wormhole."
"No shit."
"Well, y'know – we ain't supposed to be in there all that time... what if bits of us drifted around and... kinda ended up in the wrong place?"
Adam's heart skipped a beat. "That can't happen..." he said, before pausing to consider this concept and adding less certainly, "I don't think that can happen."
"Well, maybe it can't if you're just in there a while... but we got stuck in there a hell of a long time, Stack... It ain't supposed to work like that."
"Doc Beckett would've known. We'd be in isolation if that was possible."
"Not if they don't know. Maybe it never happened before. Maybe we're like... the first."
"Wait – there was that guy from the SGC... he got stuck for days."
"By himself! There ain't much to get mixed up with if you're by yourself!"
Adam was afraid he might have a point.
---
"We can't just go and tell Beckett that!"
"Why not?" Jamie demanded, rolling over on Stackhouse's narrow bunk and almost falling off as he tried to prop himself up on his elbows. "It's true!"
"Because it sounds stupid! And what if it's not true? It makes us sound... weird."
"Stack, I can only sleep when I'm right by you. You can only sleep when I'm right by you. It is weird. And it's gonna have to stop... People are talking."
"Yeah. I noticed."
"Well, don't you think that getting a real reason from the doc is gonna look better than keep making excuses no one's believing?"
"But what if he says it's not the reason?"
"Well, what the hell other reason can you think of?!"
Jamie couldn't help notice the way Stackhouse blushed.
---
Adam didn't sleep at all, that night. Markham returned to his own quarters and stayed there, leaving him to gaze into the darkness, growing more and more tired and more and more lonely.
He told himself it was just homesickness catching up with him, after a busy few weeks. That finally the knowledge that he was stuck lightyears away from home had sunk in. But that didn't explain why he didn't fall asleep in Thompson's lap watching Apocalypse Now two days after it happened. And yet, every time he was within feet of Markham he'd happily curl up and drift off. For hours. And hours. And also: hours.
He slid onto the bench beside him at breakfast the next morning. Markham's plate was pushed aside and his face was buried in his folded arms.
"Well rested, huh?"
"Get bent."
Adam rolled his eyes and chewed idly on his toast. "Why bother? Thanks to you, everyone thinks I am, anyway..."
Markham drowsily raised his middle finger in response.
There was a long silence until finally Adam suggested, as nonchalantly as he could, "After breakfast, you want to go for a nap?"
A moment later Markham was on his feet. "Forget breakfast."
---
When they arrived at the rec room, Jamie was dismayed to find the whole of the fourth recon team lounging around – their mission for the day cancelled due to the inclement weather at their assigned planet.
"No rest for the wicked, huh?"
"No rest my ass," Stackhouse muttered, setting off back down the corridor and dragging Jamie with him by a fistful of shirt. "C'mon."
"Stack, where are we going? 'Cause this is looking bad enough already..."
"We're going to get a sick note."
---
Beckett rubbed at his forehead when they walked in and attempted to explain their predicament, looking utterly perplexed.
"I should really bring in Dr McKay," he said. "This is... well. I've no bloody idea what to do, to be honest. I'm a geneticist – not a physicist. Are yeh quite sure that's what happened – because I've never heard of something like this... And if yeh don't mind me saying – neither o'yous are experts, neither."
"Doc. It feels like bits of me are falling off. It itches. When I try to sleep, I wake up thinking I'm vaporising!"
"And it's like I'm missing bits."
"What bits?!"
Stackhouse spread his palms, "Just bits! Not those bits. Don't you think I'd have come by sooner if it was important bits?"
"He didn't want to come at all," Markham agreed. "It's not those bits."
"But when you're together you feel alright?"
"Well, if you don't include just about everyone thinking it's suspect..."
"And having to sleep in the rec room to try to stop everyone thinking it's suspect..."
"Doc – we can't sleep. People go crazy without enough sleep! You've gotta fix us!"
Beckett scratched his head and waved them over to the end of the room. "Go and get forty winks up there, the pair o'yous... I'll go have a word with McKay."
He ambled out of the room, muttering to himself.
---
"Stack?"
"What?"
"I can't sleep."
"Markham?"
"What?"
"Neither can I, if you won't shut the fuck up!"
There was a pause. "It's... I think it's because you're all the way over there."
"I'm not rearranging Beckett's furniture."
"Fine." There was a quiet rattling of the metal gurney across from Adam's own. "If I'm gonna lay awake staring at the ceiling, I'm going to do it in the comfort of my own bed. See ya."
---
"Wondered how long it'd take you..." Markham mumbled, his face half buried in one pillow while he fumbled blindly around on the floor for another and tossed it to Adam as he stood in the doorway. "Now shut the goddamn door."
Adam stepped out of the door sensor's range, so it slipped shut behind him, and walked over to the end of the bed.
"Don't just stand there – if you're staying, get comfortable... just... personal space, right?"
"Personal space?! Markham, it's a single bunk! And... I can't get in bed with a guy... that's..."
Markham's voice took on a tearfully frustrated tone, "Then sleep on the goddamn floor, will ya? I just wanna sleep... please, God, let me sleep..."
Giving a deep sigh, Adam sat on the edge of the mattress and threw his pillow at Markham's head. "Quit whining and move over."
---
Jamie woke up with a violent sneeze that prompted an exclamation of disgust from someone who raised a hand and smacked him awkwardly in the face. He raised his own hand to sooth the now stinging cheek and realised he'd just withdrawn it from being tucked around someone's torso.
"Christ!" He sat up abruptly and shifted away. "Stack... man... I'm sorry!"
"Never happened."
"Damn... how long this have I been asleep this time?"
Stackhouse lifted his wrist to show him over his shoulder, then rubbed at his neck. "Go back to sleep. And don't sneeze on me again."
---
For the first time in days, Adam woke up slowly, drifting contentedly back into consciousness with and nuzzling into the squishy, comfortable mass wrapped around him – and opened his eyes to find himself nose-to-nose with a still half asleep Markham. A Markham who tightened his arms and nuzzled closer, murmuring incoherently.
For a moment, Adam considered closing his eyes and going back to sleep, but Markham suddenly jolted awake and launched himself backward so hard that he thumped his head on the cabinet beside his bed.
"OW!"
"That had to hurt."
"Y'think?" Markham snapped, sitting up and looking back down at him. "Wait... were we just...?"
"Uh... you kinda make it hard to pretend things didn't happen when you back them up with... snuggling."
"I was not snuggling."
"Whatever. I'm going to get food."
---
"We can't go in there together."
Stackhouse rolled his eyes, "Okay. I'm going in now. I'll see you when you're hungry."
Jamie huffed irritably and followed him to the serving queue. He hadn't eaten a full meal in days.
They'd just sat down when Beckett rushed over looking relieved. "There you are! Good God, you gave me a fright..."
"Couldn't sleep on the gurneys," Stackhouse said shortly, and started on his food.
"Where did you go?"
"Doc. Really. Don't go there."
"The only place you're going, lad, is back to that infirmary. Chop chop."
"Oh no. No, I'm gonna sit right here and eat this – then I'll go wherever you want me," Jamie assured him, picking his fork up pointedly.
"Seconded."
"Then you'd better make it bloody quick, son – we've got to get you sorted out before bits really do start falling off!"
---
All Adam could think of, as he sat on the gurney with Drs McKay and Zelenka attaching probes and taking readings and ruining his personal space, was his hurriedly abandoned dinner.
"You look like something off TV!" Markham snickered from across the isle.
"Really? That's funny, 'cause you look like a moron."
"Fuck you! I'm gonna laugh my ass off when you get those little sticky things ripped off your nipple wig."
"Don't worry, Markham – when you grow up you won't look like someone waxed GI Joe, either."
"GENTLEMEN!" McKay snapped, "Would you please stop pulling each other's pigtails for five minutes while I deal with these readings because I assure you I would take great pleasure in leaving you to snuggle up like fluffy little puppies while your extremities fall off."
After a short silence Markham grumbled, "It wasn't snuggling."
---
"The best I say, is we make them stay together for time being."
"Well, thank you, Galen."
"Are yous sure that'll work?"
"About as sure as we are that there's a God, this isn't all someone else's dream and Maj Sheppard isn't really an oversized twelve year old who learned his trade through the flight simulator at the local arcade, yes."
"Is our only choice until we find cure."
"Well, why can't we just stick them back through the gate?"
"Oh yes, and the next person who comes in having downed a gallon of industrial bleach should be told to stick their fingers down their throat! Because everything can be fixed if you just do it backwards!"
"I only asked."
"Do I honestly need to say 'don't'? Really? Hm?"
"Can I ask? Who is to tell Bates? He is the man in charge of accommodation, yes?"
If Adam had been Beckett, he would have paled, too.
---
Adam tossed his things down on his new bed irritably. He liked having his personal space; he did not like the merry song and dance that we being made of his and Markham's move into shared quarters. They'd been given strict orders never to venture too far from each other, and assigned a new, twin room whose only redeeming feature was its proximity to the mess hall.
"Least now we can both sleep without you accusing me of snuggling."
"At least when we were snuggling I got something out of being stuck with you."
Markham paused in unpacking his things and tossing them on the floor, and gazed at him in surprise.
Adam smirked and shrugged. "Ammunition."
---
It may not have been fun for Stackhouse or Markham to have been ordered to spend every waking, sleeping and eating hour in each other's company, but it was hilarious by everyone else's standards.
By the time they headed out for breakfast the next day, news had spread to every single member or the expedition. Someone had raided all the holepunches in the city and scattered a confetti of little circles all over them as they arrived. Parker offered his congratulations and told them PX1785-t would make a great destination for a honeymoon, this time of year.
Parker accordingly received the back of Stackhouse's hand to his forehead soon after; which was nothing, considering the retribution they dealt out to Watts for bringing them Athosian baby blankets for their firstborn.
He wouldn't be drinking milk again for a while...
But all it took was forty-eight hours of taunting before they'd quietly decided not to even bother venturing out.
---
"What do we do if they can't fix us?" Markham asked, around the dogtags Adam had discovered he had an infuriating habit of putting in his mouth, as he removed his boots for bed.
"Redecorate."
"Shut up. I'm serious."
"No, you're not. You're seriously annoying, though..."
"Look who's talking! Have you heard yourself snore?"
"No... because generally, if I'm snoring I'm, y'know... asleep."
Markham gave an irritable sigh and folded his arms. "Seriously, Stack..."
"They'll fix us," Adam assured him, shoving his toothbrush in his mouth.
"But if they don't...?"
"If they don't... you'd better get used to my snoring."
---
It was the early hours of the next morning that Adam was woken by an hysterical babbling from the next bed. He jabbed at the lamp, leaping up and crossing to Markham's bunk, half afraid of what he'd find.
"Hey. Hey – Markham. Wake up, man. Wake up – you're dreaming."
Markham sat up in a manner eerily similar to reanimated corpses in horror movies, and clutched for Adam desperately in obviously overwhelming panic.
"Don't go – don't go!"
"I'm not going anywhere. What's up?"
"God... God – it was the nightmare – the old nightmare..."
"What – the one that stopped you sleeping? That old nightmare?"
"Yeah. Fuck. You can't leave me, Stack – I feel sick, I can't sleep if I'm going to keep having that nightmare! I can't..."
"But I'm just over there..."
"It's... it's not..." Markham ran a hand through his hair, eyes wild and face flushed.
"It's not enough?" Adam finished for him.
Silently, with a shade of embarrassment, Markham shook his head.
---
"Imagine every cell, or whatever they are, pulling apart one by one... watching yourself disintegrate or something... and then waking up, and your skin itches and burns like they're still trying to..."
"Sounds fun."
"It ain't."
"Yeah, well... I kind of figured that from the fact you woke up hysterical."
Jamie raised his eyes to the marine laying flat on the bed beside him, arms folded across his chest; "Don't you get the same thing?"
"No. I just feel like every time the light goes out I'm missing something. Or... like I'm the one missing. Completely alone."
"But that stopped when you started sleeping with me? Completely?"
"Well, until now. And I'm not 'sleeping with you'. Please don't go telling people I'm sleeping with you..."
"Not like it matters, now... They all think we are anyway...."
"Yeah, well... that doesn't make it a cue..."
"Hmm..." Jamie mumbled, huddling closer and closing his eyes.
---
For a long time after Markham drifted off, Adam remained awake, gazing into the darkness above them. It didn't feel isolated, anymore, but that was probably because he had a marine half-laying on him.
Markham was sleeping like a baby, just as he had when they'd first taken to sleeping in each other's presence. His chin was pressing slightly painfully in Adam's shoulder, his hands were both knotted in the material of his t-shirt.
Adam tried to ignore how comfortable it was, despite the chin, and assured himself that if it wasn't for Markham apparently carrying half his molecular structure, that wouldn't be the case. But as Markham gave a disconcerted burble in his sleep, Adam still found himself shifting to wrap a comforting arm around him – allowing Markham to bury his face in the side of his chest, instead of his shoulder – and wondered what the hell his father would say if he could see him now.
---
Part Two