FIC: Fireworks
Title: Fireworks
Author: Amy (alexia@innergeekdom.net)
Website: http://www.innergeekdom.net
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy/Stargate: Atlantis. Yeah, I don't know either.
Ship: A tiny bit of Laura Cadman/George O'Malley, but it's mostly gen.
Spoilers: pre-series for both.
Rating: PG? PG-13, maybe?
Archive: Anyone who wants it. Just let me know.
Summary: Everyone needs a best friend, sometimes.
Notes: mimesere's fault, totally. Props to many people- including thenewhope, scrunchy, xanphibian, and nolivingman- for hand-holding.
1,666 words.
When they were six, and they played together in kindergarten because Laura didn't want to play with any of the girls and none of the boys wanted to play with George, she asked if he wanted to be her best friend, and he'd never had a best friend before so he said okay.
His parents let him go play at her house one night, and his brothers teased him about having a girlfriend, but it was worth it. She had lots of dolls, and he thought they were going to play house, but instead she took him to the back yard, attached a Barbie to the kind of rocket you assemble at home, and set it off.
Barbie had third degree burns, and George had to wrap her arm in gauze. For the next few weeks, every time he came over, he and Laura would check to see if Barbie had had an amazing recovery. She hadn't, but Laura said that even just not dying was really impressive, and George should be a doctor when he grew up.
George grinned. That was so much cooler than driving a truck.
***
When they were eight, Mr. Cadman got Laura all three Star Wars movies on tape for her birthday, and she and George watched them one after the other for three hundred and seventy-nine beautiful minutes.
It was a life-changing experience for both of them.
"I want to go into space," Laura said.
"I want to marry Princess Leia," George said, even though he knew that Leia got Han Solo and he was always going to be Luke.
"And I want to blow stuff up," Laura said. "Like the Death Star. I totally want to do that."
George nodded thoughtfully. "I want to be best friends with a Wookie."
***
Laura was eleven when she got her first kiss. Dan was one of the guys on the football team, at a party that George hadn't been invited to because he was geeky and smart and shy but she had because she was really pretty and everyone was starting to notice she had breasts. She called George that night, overflowing with details of what happened, and he didn't know what to say, because he hadn't been kissed, ever, and she wasn't supposed to be this far ahead of him on the curve. But he was supportive and nice because she needed that and that's just who he was, even if he got that tight feeling in his stomach that he got whenever his brother and dad were doing something and he was left behind.
Six days later, she found out that she wasn't going to be dating Dan when she found him kissing another girl behind the big tree on the edge of the playground. She punched him in the stomach, then in the face, then in the groin, and then walked off as if nothing had happened. She got suspended for three days, and even though she didn't tell him what happened he heard from five other kids, because this was big enough news that even he got the gossip, even if it was mostly in the form of "Did you hear about your freak friend?"
She waited for George after school, and they walked home together.
"Guys suck," she said, and he got that tight feeling in his stomach again.
"Yeah," he said lamely, and awkwardly put his arm around her shoulder, and they walked quietly for a while.
"Thanks," she said when they were almost at her house.
"For what?" he asked stupidly.
"For not being a guy. For being George." And she kissed him on the cheek.
He knew he was blushing, and also about two seconds from her noticing his really obvious erection, so he said "Hey, do you want to maybe go blow stuff up or something?"
So they went to her backyard and blew the head off of an expensive baby doll she'd gotten from her grandmother, and then she had tap lessons and he had to go home to do his homework, but afterwards they both felt a lot better, and George considered it a day well spent.
***
George was thirteen when he got his first kiss, when they played Spin the Bottle at Laura's fourteenth birthday party. He expected it to be more exciting than it was.
The girl was pretty, but all he could think of was that she was a cheerleader who'd never talked to him, and in the science fair last year she'd made a display about different scents of perfume and how they attracted guys.
And he didn't think she'd wait for him through college and med school and internships and stuff.
Also, he was kind of freaked out by her nose ring.
***
The summer before high school, Laura decided her whole outlook was too one-sided. She started running a few miles a day to get toned, hitchhiked to Washington for an impromptu march on women's rights, and refused to answer to her first name, which she deemed too girly. Most people just rolled their eyes and laughed, but George adopted it almost immediately, and by the time they started their freshman year, he'd almost forgotten she'd ever been called anything else.
She said she wanted to join the army. George asked if that meant she'd have to cut her hair, and she laughed and agreed that no matter what she did, no one could make her do anything to ruin that.
***
In tenth grade they started the Dungeons and Dragons Club at school, because they were hoping to find people to play besides them, because two people can't actually play D+D, especially when one dungeon master seems to give a lot of explosions and the other has an awful lot of tiny woodland creatures who need bandages and splints. George came up with the idea during chem lab, when they had finished early and he'd put away his half of the supplies and Cadman was trying to figure out how to steal a few chemicals with hers, and they got into a heated discussion that ended with the teacher suggesting they start a club for whatever they were complaining about so that no one else had to hear it.
So they did.
They started it during Cadman's goth phase, which lasted six weeks, and George thought she looked stupid but didn't say anything until three months later when she said "I looked like an idiot" and he said "Yeah, you did, a little" and she laughed instead of hitting him. She sat there, in her black shirt and black jeans, arms crossed over her chest ("Why does everyone always look there?") and he tugged at the collar of his shirt and they waited but no one showed up, so she named herself president and vice president, and he got to be secretary and treasurer.
They didn't have anyone to be the new dungeon master, but they did have another extra-curricular for college applications, and this way it didn't take any time that they could use for dance classes or science club or dates with cute girls.
Not that George had any. But he could dream.
***
Cadman ended up valedictorian of their class, which shocked no one, and George squeaked by into the top ten, which surprised many people, but not Cadman, because she had heard his "grades get you college, college gets you med school, and med school gets you out of the white trash circus" self-pep talk more than enough times.
Cadman got into a small East Coast liberal arts school, and George ended up at a big university in the Midwest. and both of them were vaguely appalled that they wouldn't see each other every day, but the kind of appalled where it was okay, even good, that they'd go to college and meet other people who were like them and when they would go home for breaks they might even bring a dungeon master who could balance what both of them wanted.
They emailed each other every day at first, and then three times a week, and eventually twice a month.
Freshman year, Cadman got a boyfriend who they first called The Wunderkind, and then The Doctor, and then Jack, and finally That Dick Who Never Deserved You Anyway.
That summer, George lost his virginity when they got drunk and slept together, and it was fine, except that both he and Cadman had issues thinking of each other like that because no matter how cute they both were, they'd once set Barbies on fire together, and they decided to never do it again.
The next year George started dating a redhead, who was just as smart as Cadman but majoring in geology instead of chemistry, who didn't mind playing D+D and letting him spend half an hour putting a splint on a dwarf. The year after that, Cadman emailed to tell him that she was seeing a pre-med student who believed in reincarnation and faster-than-light travel, and also that she got recruited by the military and they would be paying for her to go to a top-rate grad school as long as she was still interested in playing with chemicals and fire, which (she assured him) she was. Senior year, George applied to six med schools, and got rejected from all but the Oregon Health and Science University. He framed his acceptance letter and bought four school shirts.
The summer after graduation, they both went home and spent the summer together, killing time before jobs and careers and med school. On the fourth of July, Cadman procured fireworks, and they drove to the lakefront to set them off. She got a burn from the next-to-last one she had in the box, and he wrapped it and treated it the way he knew how. Then he set the last one off, just for her.
The sky was brilliant in electric blue and pink and green, and each explosion sent a shiver down George's spine.
Author: Amy (alexia@innergeekdom.net)
Website: http://www.innergeekdom.net
Fandom: Grey's Anatomy/Stargate: Atlantis. Yeah, I don't know either.
Ship: A tiny bit of Laura Cadman/George O'Malley, but it's mostly gen.
Spoilers: pre-series for both.
Rating: PG? PG-13, maybe?
Archive: Anyone who wants it. Just let me know.
Summary: Everyone needs a best friend, sometimes.
Notes: mimesere's fault, totally. Props to many people- including thenewhope, scrunchy, xanphibian, and nolivingman- for hand-holding.
1,666 words.
When they were six, and they played together in kindergarten because Laura didn't want to play with any of the girls and none of the boys wanted to play with George, she asked if he wanted to be her best friend, and he'd never had a best friend before so he said okay.
His parents let him go play at her house one night, and his brothers teased him about having a girlfriend, but it was worth it. She had lots of dolls, and he thought they were going to play house, but instead she took him to the back yard, attached a Barbie to the kind of rocket you assemble at home, and set it off.
Barbie had third degree burns, and George had to wrap her arm in gauze. For the next few weeks, every time he came over, he and Laura would check to see if Barbie had had an amazing recovery. She hadn't, but Laura said that even just not dying was really impressive, and George should be a doctor when he grew up.
George grinned. That was so much cooler than driving a truck.
***
When they were eight, Mr. Cadman got Laura all three Star Wars movies on tape for her birthday, and she and George watched them one after the other for three hundred and seventy-nine beautiful minutes.
It was a life-changing experience for both of them.
"I want to go into space," Laura said.
"I want to marry Princess Leia," George said, even though he knew that Leia got Han Solo and he was always going to be Luke.
"And I want to blow stuff up," Laura said. "Like the Death Star. I totally want to do that."
George nodded thoughtfully. "I want to be best friends with a Wookie."
***
Laura was eleven when she got her first kiss. Dan was one of the guys on the football team, at a party that George hadn't been invited to because he was geeky and smart and shy but she had because she was really pretty and everyone was starting to notice she had breasts. She called George that night, overflowing with details of what happened, and he didn't know what to say, because he hadn't been kissed, ever, and she wasn't supposed to be this far ahead of him on the curve. But he was supportive and nice because she needed that and that's just who he was, even if he got that tight feeling in his stomach that he got whenever his brother and dad were doing something and he was left behind.
Six days later, she found out that she wasn't going to be dating Dan when she found him kissing another girl behind the big tree on the edge of the playground. She punched him in the stomach, then in the face, then in the groin, and then walked off as if nothing had happened. She got suspended for three days, and even though she didn't tell him what happened he heard from five other kids, because this was big enough news that even he got the gossip, even if it was mostly in the form of "Did you hear about your freak friend?"
She waited for George after school, and they walked home together.
"Guys suck," she said, and he got that tight feeling in his stomach again.
"Yeah," he said lamely, and awkwardly put his arm around her shoulder, and they walked quietly for a while.
"Thanks," she said when they were almost at her house.
"For what?" he asked stupidly.
"For not being a guy. For being George." And she kissed him on the cheek.
He knew he was blushing, and also about two seconds from her noticing his really obvious erection, so he said "Hey, do you want to maybe go blow stuff up or something?"
So they went to her backyard and blew the head off of an expensive baby doll she'd gotten from her grandmother, and then she had tap lessons and he had to go home to do his homework, but afterwards they both felt a lot better, and George considered it a day well spent.
***
George was thirteen when he got his first kiss, when they played Spin the Bottle at Laura's fourteenth birthday party. He expected it to be more exciting than it was.
The girl was pretty, but all he could think of was that she was a cheerleader who'd never talked to him, and in the science fair last year she'd made a display about different scents of perfume and how they attracted guys.
And he didn't think she'd wait for him through college and med school and internships and stuff.
Also, he was kind of freaked out by her nose ring.
***
The summer before high school, Laura decided her whole outlook was too one-sided. She started running a few miles a day to get toned, hitchhiked to Washington for an impromptu march on women's rights, and refused to answer to her first name, which she deemed too girly. Most people just rolled their eyes and laughed, but George adopted it almost immediately, and by the time they started their freshman year, he'd almost forgotten she'd ever been called anything else.
She said she wanted to join the army. George asked if that meant she'd have to cut her hair, and she laughed and agreed that no matter what she did, no one could make her do anything to ruin that.
***
In tenth grade they started the Dungeons and Dragons Club at school, because they were hoping to find people to play besides them, because two people can't actually play D+D, especially when one dungeon master seems to give a lot of explosions and the other has an awful lot of tiny woodland creatures who need bandages and splints. George came up with the idea during chem lab, when they had finished early and he'd put away his half of the supplies and Cadman was trying to figure out how to steal a few chemicals with hers, and they got into a heated discussion that ended with the teacher suggesting they start a club for whatever they were complaining about so that no one else had to hear it.
So they did.
They started it during Cadman's goth phase, which lasted six weeks, and George thought she looked stupid but didn't say anything until three months later when she said "I looked like an idiot" and he said "Yeah, you did, a little" and she laughed instead of hitting him. She sat there, in her black shirt and black jeans, arms crossed over her chest ("Why does everyone always look there?") and he tugged at the collar of his shirt and they waited but no one showed up, so she named herself president and vice president, and he got to be secretary and treasurer.
They didn't have anyone to be the new dungeon master, but they did have another extra-curricular for college applications, and this way it didn't take any time that they could use for dance classes or science club or dates with cute girls.
Not that George had any. But he could dream.
***
Cadman ended up valedictorian of their class, which shocked no one, and George squeaked by into the top ten, which surprised many people, but not Cadman, because she had heard his "grades get you college, college gets you med school, and med school gets you out of the white trash circus" self-pep talk more than enough times.
Cadman got into a small East Coast liberal arts school, and George ended up at a big university in the Midwest. and both of them were vaguely appalled that they wouldn't see each other every day, but the kind of appalled where it was okay, even good, that they'd go to college and meet other people who were like them and when they would go home for breaks they might even bring a dungeon master who could balance what both of them wanted.
They emailed each other every day at first, and then three times a week, and eventually twice a month.
Freshman year, Cadman got a boyfriend who they first called The Wunderkind, and then The Doctor, and then Jack, and finally That Dick Who Never Deserved You Anyway.
That summer, George lost his virginity when they got drunk and slept together, and it was fine, except that both he and Cadman had issues thinking of each other like that because no matter how cute they both were, they'd once set Barbies on fire together, and they decided to never do it again.
The next year George started dating a redhead, who was just as smart as Cadman but majoring in geology instead of chemistry, who didn't mind playing D+D and letting him spend half an hour putting a splint on a dwarf. The year after that, Cadman emailed to tell him that she was seeing a pre-med student who believed in reincarnation and faster-than-light travel, and also that she got recruited by the military and they would be paying for her to go to a top-rate grad school as long as she was still interested in playing with chemicals and fire, which (she assured him) she was. Senior year, George applied to six med schools, and got rejected from all but the Oregon Health and Science University. He framed his acceptance letter and bought four school shirts.
The summer after graduation, they both went home and spent the summer together, killing time before jobs and careers and med school. On the fourth of July, Cadman procured fireworks, and they drove to the lakefront to set them off. She got a burn from the next-to-last one she had in the box, and he wrapped it and treated it the way he knew how. Then he set the last one off, just for her.
The sky was brilliant in electric blue and pink and green, and each explosion sent a shiver down George's spine.