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sga_flashficOh, God, well, *somebody* had to do the kilt story, didn’t they?
Title: Regimental
Author: Hth
Summary: Um. Kilt. Also, some Robert Burns. Look, don’t hassle me, okay?
Pairing: Ford/Beckett
Rating: R
Timeline: generic Season One
Wordcount: 2700, give or take
“Got anything on under there?” Ford asks, waggling his eyebrows. His smile is brighter than the red of the tartan – nearly as bright as the spots of color on Carson’s cheeks.
“There’s *tradition* to consider,” he says, and hopes to leave it at that.
“Mmm, *tradition,*” Ford says, inflecting the word as though it were gloriously pornographic. He splays a hand over Carson’s buttocks and draws him closer, and for one mad moment (mad, but utterly predictable – predictable, then, full stop), Carson doesn’t give a toss about the banquet, or tradition, or the honor of the Dal Riada. He only cares about that smile.
He puts a hand on Ford’s shoulder to steady himself, and the smile fades as the lad leans into him with that grim expression that he reserves for engagements of love and war, the only two sorts of affair that matter to him at all. They’ll never...leave quarters at this...let alone reach...banquet....
“The Scots,” he hears himself saying, “make up less than one half of one percent of the world’s population, and yet have received eleven percent of all Nobel Prizes ever awarded.”
“Really?” Ford says, and Carson gasps at the feeling of his generous mouth sunbursting forth into another smile just *there,* just barely touching Carson’s own mouth. Good Lord. He’s forty-one years old; his poor heart shouldn’t be expected to take this sort of strain. “My people play an awful lot of NBA ball.”
Carson is a little shocked by that, but Ford laughs and pulls him closer still, nuzzling the side of Carson’s face. “People are allowed to make jokes about themselves,” Ford informs him indulgently. “I bet you know some good Scottish jokes.”
“Oh...aye,” he says. Does he? Comedy is not one of Carson’s talents; he was a shy lad, he enjoyed Sherlock Holmes and birdwatching and gardening with his mum. He’s never been one to catch on quickly to a joke. Everything always seemed to matter so much to him, so much that he’s not often capable of shirking his duty or drowning his fears or....
He’s never been a one to carry on a mad affair with a high-spirited lad like this one, so quick to dive into danger, so quick to smile and tease and, dear God, so quick to laugh. He’s known many people like Lieutenant Ford, but none of them had ever evidenced any interest in seducing him. And didn’t the Pegasus galaxy make strange bedfellows? Somewhere, Carson knows, there’s a joke in this, and he only hopes it isn’t at his expense. “I know one about a hospital,” he offers tentatively.
“A Scottish joke *and* a doctor joke – triple-word score! Hit me.”
Carson turns his head against Ford’s shoulder. His dress uniform is of a much scratchier material than the BDUs that have already been worn thin from long days in the field and a great deal of adventurous wear-and-tear. He’s never seen Ford in this uniform before. By the same token, Ford has never seen him in his great kilt; formal occasions are hard to come by in a galaxy where most of the locals are used to doing without luxuries and most of the visitors are...scientists. “Well, then,” he says. “Well, it seems there’s a...a hospital, in Scotland, and an English doctor comes visiting and takes the grand tour. It’s all ordinary enough, until they reach the final ward.” Carson hasn’t noticed himself spreading his legs wider apart, but sure and he has at that, and Ford bends his leg so that his thigh presses between them, rubbing the tartan against Carson’s inner thighs, against his...traditional...bits.
“Mhm,” Ford murmurs. “What ward is that?”
“Well, ah. Ah. It...it appears quite ordinary at first, and the English doctor can’t see what the trouble is with the patients in it. So he goes to examine the nearest patient, and the man...ah... Aiden, love...are you sure you want me to– ?”
“Finish,” he orders, in almost the same sharp tone he uses when they’re in dire danger of some sort, but he breathes out on the end of it, and his voice is soft when he says, “I want to hear it. I want to hear your joke.”
Carson licks his lips and, not entirely coincidentally, the tip of his tongue brushes Ford’s collarbone. He shivers hard, but doesn’t say anything, and Carson folds under the silence, slipping his hands into the small of Ford’s back and letting him have his way. “The English doctor goes to examine the nearest patient, and the man sits bolt upright in his bed and says, Some hae meat and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it, but we hae meat and we can eat, and sae the Lord be thankit.”
He’s a wee bit chagrined when Ford begins to laugh, because he’s not reached the punch-line yet. But it’s certainly far beyond him to try stifling that happy laugh; when he hears it, he can close his eyes and fancy that Ford has never seen a Wraith, never lost a friend, never walked hand-in-hand with Death. The laughter dies down, and Ford’s strong hands hike Carson further up along his thigh; he has to grope at Ford’s leg with one hand to steady himself, and his fingers curl around the upper strap of the holster there. “God, your accent,” Ford gasps, shoving forward harder now, pressing Carson against his erection and grinding. “Don’t stop, don’t stop. Keep talking.”
Keep talking? Dear Lord. But he canna let Ford down gently, canna let him down at all. It simply isn’t in him. “The doctor is...most taken aback,” he says breathlessly. “And all over again when he goes to examine the next patient, who sits up in bed and says...and says to him...Wee sleekit, cow’rin, timorous beastie– “
“Yes, fuck, yes, *fuck!*” Ford chants softly, over and over again. Carson feels a drop of sweat smear between them as Ford’s temple slides, smooth and feverishly hot, against his forehead. His strong hands have the kilt rucked up nearly around Carson’s waist now, and he hangs on for dear life, one hand on the holster, the other arm crooked around Ford’s neck. It doesn’t seem physiologically possible, but close as they’re pressed together, Ford has worked a hand between them, and – he agrees with the sentiments, agrees entirely – *yes, fuck, yes...fuck...Aiden....*
“Finish!” Ford raps out, and the tone of command very nearly makes Carson finish *something* right there on the spot, but he’s quite sure it won’t be the hospital joke. “Tell me,” Ford urges – begs? It’s something like begging, a kissing cousin of begging, and that’s one more thing Ford has never been afraid to do. Not like Carson, who still can’t quite believe that he won’t be made to feel the fool, somewhere down the road – the daft old fool who really believed he could have this just by wishing for it, just by wanting it so terribly, terribly badly. “Tell me – say – call me, call me, c’mon, Carson, baby, say it.”
He slides his hand hard across Ford’s back and rocks against him. He’s far from certain what he’s meant to say, but he does the job as best he can, ignoring the clenching of his throat, his heart, of every muscle in his body, all telling him to run and hide from looming danger. “Aiden, Aiden. Love. Oh, Aiden, oh – Aiden.”
Between the two of them, they’re in no state for supper after that.
Privately, Carson thinks he’ll be in no state for anything at all, not for a good long while. His body simply will not relax, the aftershocks rendering him impossibly weak and uncoordinated as they hit him again and again, full-body memories of coming with Aiden’s fist wrapped tight around him, Aiden’s mouth sucking hard just beneath his ear. It’s minutes before Carson even realizes that he’s lying on his bed, looking up at the ceiling. He wonders how late they’ll be for the banquet and what they’ll tell everyone, but he can’t bring himself to suggest that they move. He caresses the arm that Aiden has flung over his stomach. They’ll need to wash up. Diagnose the damage....
He may never move again.
“I don’t get it,” Ford murmurs in his ear, puzzled but deeply content. “The joke is that all the patients are Scottish?”
“Of course they’re Scottish. The *hospital* is Scottish. The joke is – there’s rather more wee beastie and a bit of great chieftian o’ the puddin’-race, and the Englishman says, ‘But I thought we’d already visited the psychiatric ward?’ and the Scottish doctor says, ‘Psychiatric ward? Nay, this is the Serious Burns Unit.’ And.... That’s the joke. It, as I said, it goes on a bit there in the middle, but I feel a bit done-in just now, and the truth is that under the best of circumstances I’m not so much of a one for– “
But Ford laughs. He snuffles at first, then giggles, and then he tilts his head back and laughs and laughs, and Carson knows in all likelihood he’s laughing more at the way he muffed the joke than at the joke itself, and there’s no doubt a degree of post-coital euphoria involved as well, but he’s pleased enough anyhow, because Ford is. It’s not that it’s so terribly difficult to make Ford happy; nearly everything and everyone does, it sometimes seems. It’s only that it’s such a worthy cause. Carson won’t take his power for granted. The Ancient gene is certainly rare, and he’s got nothing but inconvenience from *that.* This, the power to make Aiden Ford happy – it needn’t be rare to be *wonderful.*
“Do I have an accent?” Ford murmurs. He sounds unfortunately sleepy, and Carson tries to make his rounded body especially pointy and uncomfortable; it’s quite the wrong moment for dozing off, more’s the pity. “I mean – do I sound to you like I have an accent?”
“Of course you do. A lovely accent.”
“Weird,” he says. “I’m just from Chicago.”
“Well, there you are, then. Chicago.” The name rolls easily off his tongue, a smooth, foreign-sounding blend of soft consonants and hard.
“Where are you from?”
“Kirriemuir,” he says, and Ford *trembles* and clutches at his shoulder. Carson smiles and kisses his forehead, this soldier, this foreign man with the advertisement smile and the darling accent and the absolutely inappropriate timing in regard to sexual interludes, who’s never in his life heard of Kirriemuir but likes the sound of it in Carson’s voice. “Up, love,” he says. “We’ve a deal of work to do before we’re fit to be seen.”
Ford yawns and says, “I’m a US Marine. We won’t be late.” Carson doesn’t know what that means, quite, but it sounds reassuring.
His fingers are still tangled up in the folds of Carson’s kilt, a heavy weight resting at his hip. He knows a joke or two about kilts, all of which he’d be too embarrassed to repeat out loud, even in front of the man who just reenacted at least one of them. Carson doesn’t have the knack for telling a joke, but he does have a keen memory. He remembers a fair lot of Robbie Burns from his school days.
Gently, he shifts Ford against him, pulls him up so that he’s resting half his weight on Carson’s body. He tucks his cheek down on Carson’s chest, looking sweet and innocent as a lamb even though Carson knows better. “O, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad,” he sings, and it’s low and blurry to hide the fact that he’s all but forgotten the tune. Burns is nearly music as it is, though, and he murmurs the cadences of it and lets the tune find its way. “O, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad, Though father and mither shall baith gae mad, O, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad....”
“God, Carson,” he breathes, pulling the fabric of the kilt taut as his grip tightens. Carson rubs his arm softly, soothingly. Ford’s eyes are closed, a wee furrow between his eyebrows, as if all this will disappear if he should forget and open his eyes.
Not bloody likely.
“Sing some more,” he demands, and Carson is entirely helpless, not for the first time, nor he’s sure for the last.
“At kirk or at market, whene’er ye meet me– “ He’s fairly sure he’s skipped a verse or two, but this is the one that’s coming to him, and he refuses to consider why that is; he won’t spoil this evening if he can manage it. “Gang by me as though that ye cared nae a flie, But steal me a blink o’ your bonnie black ee, Yet look as ye were na lookin’ at me. O, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad....”
Ford runs his fingertips over Carson’s lips, stilling him all at once. “I have to– I’m good at that, aren’t I?” he says, and it should please him to be good at something, but not this. “Yet look as if you weren’t looking at me....”
“It’s not – I don’t mind.”
“I do,” he says, surprisingly fierce. “It sucks, and it’s *stupid.* We’ve come all the way out here, we have aliens and, and spaceships and Ancient technology, and this shouldn’t matter anymore. Out of all the things we have to watch our backs for, there should be this one goddamn thing that we don’t.”
The idealism of the young. Carson puts his hand behind Ford’s head and brushes a kiss across the top of it. “Give it a bit of time, love. I think people will come to see it your way before long. Dr. Weir is already calling us a colony, and with no ties left to Earth, any number of things will change. I expect, people being what they are, fraternization rules will be nearly first to go.”
Ford turns his head so that his chin is propped on Carson’s chest. “You think?” he says.
“Aye,” Carson says. He doesn’t add that he might be mad as a hatter. He believes what he needs to believe to carry him through, and if Ford can learn the same trick of it, so much the better for everyone. “Aye, I do think. Always assuming I can keep stitching you lot of heroes back together after these little off-world holidays of yours...”
Ford sits up, smiling again. “Are you kidding me? I could get bitten in half by a – galactic space hippo, and you’d save my life with a syringe of adrenaline, an electric toothbrush, and one latex glove. Scotland is *full* of geniuses, you know.”
So is Atlantis. Carson is due to have dinner with a number of them any moment now, more’s the pity. “A Scot invented decimal notation, you know,” he says. “The adhesive postage stamp, as well.”
Ford laughs and squeezes his thigh under the kilt. “Come on, William Wallace. We better grab a shower.”
“I think we shouldn’t be considering what the look in your eyes tells me you’re considering. Certain...conditions are nearly impossible to conceal under a kilt.”
“What, an old guy like you, what *conditions* could you possibly have to worry about?” Carson hrumphs, and Ford takes him by the hands and helps pull him up to his feet. He kisses Carson’s cheek, just a wee peck, and then spoils the effect by whispering in his ear, “Maybe I *like* knowing for sure what you got under there.”
“Cardiac arrest,” he says weakly. “If you’re keeping a list of possible conditions, you might worry about that one.”
“You’re not going to die,” Ford says with blithe confidence. “At least not at the banquet; no guy wants to kick the bucket before the blowjob.”
“Indeed not.”
He’s lost and he knows it. All he can do is pray that Aidan doesn’t choose any (very many) inappropriate (*too* inappropriate) moments to whistle.
Title: Regimental
Author: Hth
Summary: Um. Kilt. Also, some Robert Burns. Look, don’t hassle me, okay?
Pairing: Ford/Beckett
Rating: R
Timeline: generic Season One
Wordcount: 2700, give or take
“Got anything on under there?” Ford asks, waggling his eyebrows. His smile is brighter than the red of the tartan – nearly as bright as the spots of color on Carson’s cheeks.
“There’s *tradition* to consider,” he says, and hopes to leave it at that.
“Mmm, *tradition,*” Ford says, inflecting the word as though it were gloriously pornographic. He splays a hand over Carson’s buttocks and draws him closer, and for one mad moment (mad, but utterly predictable – predictable, then, full stop), Carson doesn’t give a toss about the banquet, or tradition, or the honor of the Dal Riada. He only cares about that smile.
He puts a hand on Ford’s shoulder to steady himself, and the smile fades as the lad leans into him with that grim expression that he reserves for engagements of love and war, the only two sorts of affair that matter to him at all. They’ll never...leave quarters at this...let alone reach...banquet....
“The Scots,” he hears himself saying, “make up less than one half of one percent of the world’s population, and yet have received eleven percent of all Nobel Prizes ever awarded.”
“Really?” Ford says, and Carson gasps at the feeling of his generous mouth sunbursting forth into another smile just *there,* just barely touching Carson’s own mouth. Good Lord. He’s forty-one years old; his poor heart shouldn’t be expected to take this sort of strain. “My people play an awful lot of NBA ball.”
Carson is a little shocked by that, but Ford laughs and pulls him closer still, nuzzling the side of Carson’s face. “People are allowed to make jokes about themselves,” Ford informs him indulgently. “I bet you know some good Scottish jokes.”
“Oh...aye,” he says. Does he? Comedy is not one of Carson’s talents; he was a shy lad, he enjoyed Sherlock Holmes and birdwatching and gardening with his mum. He’s never been one to catch on quickly to a joke. Everything always seemed to matter so much to him, so much that he’s not often capable of shirking his duty or drowning his fears or....
He’s never been a one to carry on a mad affair with a high-spirited lad like this one, so quick to dive into danger, so quick to smile and tease and, dear God, so quick to laugh. He’s known many people like Lieutenant Ford, but none of them had ever evidenced any interest in seducing him. And didn’t the Pegasus galaxy make strange bedfellows? Somewhere, Carson knows, there’s a joke in this, and he only hopes it isn’t at his expense. “I know one about a hospital,” he offers tentatively.
“A Scottish joke *and* a doctor joke – triple-word score! Hit me.”
Carson turns his head against Ford’s shoulder. His dress uniform is of a much scratchier material than the BDUs that have already been worn thin from long days in the field and a great deal of adventurous wear-and-tear. He’s never seen Ford in this uniform before. By the same token, Ford has never seen him in his great kilt; formal occasions are hard to come by in a galaxy where most of the locals are used to doing without luxuries and most of the visitors are...scientists. “Well, then,” he says. “Well, it seems there’s a...a hospital, in Scotland, and an English doctor comes visiting and takes the grand tour. It’s all ordinary enough, until they reach the final ward.” Carson hasn’t noticed himself spreading his legs wider apart, but sure and he has at that, and Ford bends his leg so that his thigh presses between them, rubbing the tartan against Carson’s inner thighs, against his...traditional...bits.
“Mhm,” Ford murmurs. “What ward is that?”
“Well, ah. Ah. It...it appears quite ordinary at first, and the English doctor can’t see what the trouble is with the patients in it. So he goes to examine the nearest patient, and the man...ah... Aiden, love...are you sure you want me to– ?”
“Finish,” he orders, in almost the same sharp tone he uses when they’re in dire danger of some sort, but he breathes out on the end of it, and his voice is soft when he says, “I want to hear it. I want to hear your joke.”
Carson licks his lips and, not entirely coincidentally, the tip of his tongue brushes Ford’s collarbone. He shivers hard, but doesn’t say anything, and Carson folds under the silence, slipping his hands into the small of Ford’s back and letting him have his way. “The English doctor goes to examine the nearest patient, and the man sits bolt upright in his bed and says, Some hae meat and canna eat, and some wad eat that want it, but we hae meat and we can eat, and sae the Lord be thankit.”
He’s a wee bit chagrined when Ford begins to laugh, because he’s not reached the punch-line yet. But it’s certainly far beyond him to try stifling that happy laugh; when he hears it, he can close his eyes and fancy that Ford has never seen a Wraith, never lost a friend, never walked hand-in-hand with Death. The laughter dies down, and Ford’s strong hands hike Carson further up along his thigh; he has to grope at Ford’s leg with one hand to steady himself, and his fingers curl around the upper strap of the holster there. “God, your accent,” Ford gasps, shoving forward harder now, pressing Carson against his erection and grinding. “Don’t stop, don’t stop. Keep talking.”
Keep talking? Dear Lord. But he canna let Ford down gently, canna let him down at all. It simply isn’t in him. “The doctor is...most taken aback,” he says breathlessly. “And all over again when he goes to examine the next patient, who sits up in bed and says...and says to him...Wee sleekit, cow’rin, timorous beastie– “
“Yes, fuck, yes, *fuck!*” Ford chants softly, over and over again. Carson feels a drop of sweat smear between them as Ford’s temple slides, smooth and feverishly hot, against his forehead. His strong hands have the kilt rucked up nearly around Carson’s waist now, and he hangs on for dear life, one hand on the holster, the other arm crooked around Ford’s neck. It doesn’t seem physiologically possible, but close as they’re pressed together, Ford has worked a hand between them, and – he agrees with the sentiments, agrees entirely – *yes, fuck, yes...fuck...Aiden....*
“Finish!” Ford raps out, and the tone of command very nearly makes Carson finish *something* right there on the spot, but he’s quite sure it won’t be the hospital joke. “Tell me,” Ford urges – begs? It’s something like begging, a kissing cousin of begging, and that’s one more thing Ford has never been afraid to do. Not like Carson, who still can’t quite believe that he won’t be made to feel the fool, somewhere down the road – the daft old fool who really believed he could have this just by wishing for it, just by wanting it so terribly, terribly badly. “Tell me – say – call me, call me, c’mon, Carson, baby, say it.”
He slides his hand hard across Ford’s back and rocks against him. He’s far from certain what he’s meant to say, but he does the job as best he can, ignoring the clenching of his throat, his heart, of every muscle in his body, all telling him to run and hide from looming danger. “Aiden, Aiden. Love. Oh, Aiden, oh – Aiden.”
Between the two of them, they’re in no state for supper after that.
Privately, Carson thinks he’ll be in no state for anything at all, not for a good long while. His body simply will not relax, the aftershocks rendering him impossibly weak and uncoordinated as they hit him again and again, full-body memories of coming with Aiden’s fist wrapped tight around him, Aiden’s mouth sucking hard just beneath his ear. It’s minutes before Carson even realizes that he’s lying on his bed, looking up at the ceiling. He wonders how late they’ll be for the banquet and what they’ll tell everyone, but he can’t bring himself to suggest that they move. He caresses the arm that Aiden has flung over his stomach. They’ll need to wash up. Diagnose the damage....
He may never move again.
“I don’t get it,” Ford murmurs in his ear, puzzled but deeply content. “The joke is that all the patients are Scottish?”
“Of course they’re Scottish. The *hospital* is Scottish. The joke is – there’s rather more wee beastie and a bit of great chieftian o’ the puddin’-race, and the Englishman says, ‘But I thought we’d already visited the psychiatric ward?’ and the Scottish doctor says, ‘Psychiatric ward? Nay, this is the Serious Burns Unit.’ And.... That’s the joke. It, as I said, it goes on a bit there in the middle, but I feel a bit done-in just now, and the truth is that under the best of circumstances I’m not so much of a one for– “
But Ford laughs. He snuffles at first, then giggles, and then he tilts his head back and laughs and laughs, and Carson knows in all likelihood he’s laughing more at the way he muffed the joke than at the joke itself, and there’s no doubt a degree of post-coital euphoria involved as well, but he’s pleased enough anyhow, because Ford is. It’s not that it’s so terribly difficult to make Ford happy; nearly everything and everyone does, it sometimes seems. It’s only that it’s such a worthy cause. Carson won’t take his power for granted. The Ancient gene is certainly rare, and he’s got nothing but inconvenience from *that.* This, the power to make Aiden Ford happy – it needn’t be rare to be *wonderful.*
“Do I have an accent?” Ford murmurs. He sounds unfortunately sleepy, and Carson tries to make his rounded body especially pointy and uncomfortable; it’s quite the wrong moment for dozing off, more’s the pity. “I mean – do I sound to you like I have an accent?”
“Of course you do. A lovely accent.”
“Weird,” he says. “I’m just from Chicago.”
“Well, there you are, then. Chicago.” The name rolls easily off his tongue, a smooth, foreign-sounding blend of soft consonants and hard.
“Where are you from?”
“Kirriemuir,” he says, and Ford *trembles* and clutches at his shoulder. Carson smiles and kisses his forehead, this soldier, this foreign man with the advertisement smile and the darling accent and the absolutely inappropriate timing in regard to sexual interludes, who’s never in his life heard of Kirriemuir but likes the sound of it in Carson’s voice. “Up, love,” he says. “We’ve a deal of work to do before we’re fit to be seen.”
Ford yawns and says, “I’m a US Marine. We won’t be late.” Carson doesn’t know what that means, quite, but it sounds reassuring.
His fingers are still tangled up in the folds of Carson’s kilt, a heavy weight resting at his hip. He knows a joke or two about kilts, all of which he’d be too embarrassed to repeat out loud, even in front of the man who just reenacted at least one of them. Carson doesn’t have the knack for telling a joke, but he does have a keen memory. He remembers a fair lot of Robbie Burns from his school days.
Gently, he shifts Ford against him, pulls him up so that he’s resting half his weight on Carson’s body. He tucks his cheek down on Carson’s chest, looking sweet and innocent as a lamb even though Carson knows better. “O, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad,” he sings, and it’s low and blurry to hide the fact that he’s all but forgotten the tune. Burns is nearly music as it is, though, and he murmurs the cadences of it and lets the tune find its way. “O, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad, Though father and mither shall baith gae mad, O, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad....”
“God, Carson,” he breathes, pulling the fabric of the kilt taut as his grip tightens. Carson rubs his arm softly, soothingly. Ford’s eyes are closed, a wee furrow between his eyebrows, as if all this will disappear if he should forget and open his eyes.
Not bloody likely.
“Sing some more,” he demands, and Carson is entirely helpless, not for the first time, nor he’s sure for the last.
“At kirk or at market, whene’er ye meet me– “ He’s fairly sure he’s skipped a verse or two, but this is the one that’s coming to him, and he refuses to consider why that is; he won’t spoil this evening if he can manage it. “Gang by me as though that ye cared nae a flie, But steal me a blink o’ your bonnie black ee, Yet look as ye were na lookin’ at me. O, whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad....”
Ford runs his fingertips over Carson’s lips, stilling him all at once. “I have to– I’m good at that, aren’t I?” he says, and it should please him to be good at something, but not this. “Yet look as if you weren’t looking at me....”
“It’s not – I don’t mind.”
“I do,” he says, surprisingly fierce. “It sucks, and it’s *stupid.* We’ve come all the way out here, we have aliens and, and spaceships and Ancient technology, and this shouldn’t matter anymore. Out of all the things we have to watch our backs for, there should be this one goddamn thing that we don’t.”
The idealism of the young. Carson puts his hand behind Ford’s head and brushes a kiss across the top of it. “Give it a bit of time, love. I think people will come to see it your way before long. Dr. Weir is already calling us a colony, and with no ties left to Earth, any number of things will change. I expect, people being what they are, fraternization rules will be nearly first to go.”
Ford turns his head so that his chin is propped on Carson’s chest. “You think?” he says.
“Aye,” Carson says. He doesn’t add that he might be mad as a hatter. He believes what he needs to believe to carry him through, and if Ford can learn the same trick of it, so much the better for everyone. “Aye, I do think. Always assuming I can keep stitching you lot of heroes back together after these little off-world holidays of yours...”
Ford sits up, smiling again. “Are you kidding me? I could get bitten in half by a – galactic space hippo, and you’d save my life with a syringe of adrenaline, an electric toothbrush, and one latex glove. Scotland is *full* of geniuses, you know.”
So is Atlantis. Carson is due to have dinner with a number of them any moment now, more’s the pity. “A Scot invented decimal notation, you know,” he says. “The adhesive postage stamp, as well.”
Ford laughs and squeezes his thigh under the kilt. “Come on, William Wallace. We better grab a shower.”
“I think we shouldn’t be considering what the look in your eyes tells me you’re considering. Certain...conditions are nearly impossible to conceal under a kilt.”
“What, an old guy like you, what *conditions* could you possibly have to worry about?” Carson hrumphs, and Ford takes him by the hands and helps pull him up to his feet. He kisses Carson’s cheek, just a wee peck, and then spoils the effect by whispering in his ear, “Maybe I *like* knowing for sure what you got under there.”
“Cardiac arrest,” he says weakly. “If you’re keeping a list of possible conditions, you might worry about that one.”
“You’re not going to die,” Ford says with blithe confidence. “At least not at the banquet; no guy wants to kick the bucket before the blowjob.”
“Indeed not.”
He’s lost and he knows it. All he can do is pray that Aidan doesn’t choose any (very many) inappropriate (*too* inappropriate) moments to whistle.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 12:29 pm (UTC)It took me three episodes of SGA to reconcile me to Beckett's hammy Scots accent, but this makes me love it. And Ford! Happy Ford! Great voices, is what I'm trying to say.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 12:56 pm (UTC)Wonderfully done!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 01:04 pm (UTC)Just lovely. Thank you for writing the kilt story!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 01:21 pm (UTC)You've written some of my favorite stories in quite a few fandoms and I'm delighted to see that you're writing SGA. I'm looking forward to reading more.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 01:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 01:52 pm (UTC)This was wonderful, particularly how you made Ford so multi-dimensional in so small a space.
I will be re-reading it often, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 01:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 01:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 02:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 03:21 pm (UTC)what a wonderful Ford story - his voice here feels spot-on, and while the pairing surprised me at first, you write them together so believably. by the end I was totally convinced they belonged together.
I'll be rereading this often.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 04:08 pm (UTC)Mmm, this was nice Carson, and I liked the characterization of him:
Comedy is not one of Carson’s talents; he was a shy lad, he enjoyed Sherlock Holmes and birdwatching and gardening with his mum. He’s never been one to catch on quickly to a joke. Everything always seemed to matter so much to him, so much that he’s not often capable of shirking his duty or drowning his fears or....
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 04:09 pm (UTC)the lad leans into him with that grim expression that he reserves for engagements of love and war, the only two sorts of affair that matter to him at all.
That's not just a perfect description of Ford - it's a perfect description of how Carson would see Ford. And that impresses me immensely.
And "Serious Burns Unit!" BWAH!!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 04:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 06:26 pm (UTC)Sorry about that,i've been waiting for this forever, so thanks so much!!!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 06:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 07:56 pm (UTC)I looked at the pairing and went, Huh, well, but it's Hth, she'll get something worthwhile out of it. And then I started reading and was internally making little squeaky sounds over the story itself -- oh, the voices, the voices are so perfect and Carson's voice is so hard --
and then at some point I stopped cooing over the story and started cooing over the people. That Ford is, always and at the same time, both a soldier and a "high-spirited lad." That Carson is studious and solitary and can't tell a joke very well. That they're both so sweetly alien to each other, and thus in a position to see each other more clearly than others can.
Beautiful.
<--- one-eighth Scots and already knew both the song and the joke!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 08:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-13 08:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 09:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-13 08:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-11 11:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-13 08:28 am (UTC)Well, hey. You can still hang around, as long as you keep saying nice things like this about my stories. *g* Seriously, though, it's always cool to have a good response from someone who isn't already inclined to be generous toward your characters.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-13 11:30 pm (UTC)Seriously, I like Rainbow just fine. He seems like a smart, cool guy. I just think they never quite found something for Ford to do through first season. I'm actually pleased with his Wraith addict story line because he's got something to do, even if he's not on screen every week.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-12 02:53 am (UTC)Thanks very much for this!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-13 08:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-13 02:38 pm (UTC)Yay!! I'm so glad to hear it. As potential inspiration, I offer this cap from Hot Zone...
http://www.stargatecaps.com/sga/s1/113/html/bscap449.html
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-12 07:11 am (UTC)Great in character voices and loved Beckett's description of Ford. Loved Ford getting turned on by Carson's accent.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-13 08:20 am (UTC)Glad you stopped by for the story, and liked it!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-12 06:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-13 08:17 am (UTC)Regimental
Date: 2005-08-13 11:09 pm (UTC)I'm a big Aiden fan and a huge rare pairing fan (I have written many stories featuring both) so this was right up my alley. I've never done an Aiden/Carson pairing but I find this pairing very appealing--especially when there's such a great story to tease my imagination.
I look forward to seeing more of these two from you.
Jalabert
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-11 11:13 pm (UTC)