FanFic100: #073 Light
It’s 0100 and he’s just back from a mission, walking through a very quiet Atlantis that has settled in for the night, content with himself and the world. Just for once he brought his team back whole - no one was injured, no one had been captured, no freak accidents… it borders on the miraculous, actually.
He is, however, not really tired yet and so he decides to pay one of the piers a visit, somehow not in the mood for the brightly lit mess hall. He’s deep in thought as he enters the West Pier and so at first he doesn’t register that on the far end there’s already sitting someone. Someone… he hasn’t exactly tried to evade the last week but who he doesn’t really know how to react to anymore.
So when he finally realizes he isn’t alone on the pier because Captain Laura Cadman came here first his first impulse is to turn around and leave, to avoid any situation where he might embarrass himself. Unfortunately she must have heard him approaching because she has already turned around. In the light from the stars and the city, he can first see something like embarrassment and then slight surprise… like when she’d realized who’d been sitting beside her bed for two weeks when she could neither see nor hear.
For a moment, neither of them says anything and suddenly… his ease is gone, having yielded to the strange edginess and clumsiness that has started to engulf him whenever he’d been in her vicinity the last few days. A little forlornly, he rubs his neck, almost ready to go when she slightly bends her head and a faint smile can be seen. “Evening, sir.”
Well… now that he’s here… he could as well stay, couldn’t he? “Evening, Captain.” Still a little tense, he sits down beside her, letting his feet dangle over the edge of the pier, while she still keeps her knees drawn up and her arms around them. For a while, they just sit there, looking out on the sea and up at the stars.
He really doesn’t want to but he just can’t help sneaking a look or two while they sit there in silence. She’d been on light duty the whole last week since her discharge, even though every injury she received when she saved his life has healed nicely. He had met her a couple of times in the mess hall or in corridors, tried to keep up the usual casual non-committal act, smiling at her grumbling about not being allowed back on duty… tried to keep from staring at the hand he held for two weeks whenever he was at her side.
And of course he can’t help but stare at the hand again now. It’s lying on her knees… in fact; it’s the only part of her that’s visibly moving. The fingers can’t keep still, if only in very small movements. In the two weeks at her bedside… he had learned that her hands always betray Cadman in the end. She can try to look like nothing disturbs her and she has everything under control, but the energy inside of her always has to go somewhere and for some reason with her it’s her hands. Okay… something is making her nervous and he really hopes it’s not him.
He clears his throat. “So… some special reason you’re here tonight, Captain?”
To his surprise she jumps a little - that’s not like her, is it? - and clears her throat as well. “Nah… not really. Couldn’t sleep… thought I’d try something new beside the mess hall.” Couldn’t sleep? Before he gets to ask her, though, she continues with pushing attention away from her, “What about you, sir?”
Yeah, what about him? “The same, mostly.” And back to silence. With the fingers still moving. Great. She’s still uncomfortable and all he wants to do is take that hand again, squeeze it and communicate to her that there’s nothing she has to be nervous about, like he always did when something was distressing her back in the infirmary. In a way, he reflects, that had been so much easier than now… where she can see him and has every possibility to tell him to get lost and leave her alone.
Which she still hasn’t done and that confuses the hell out of him. Another look, again at the fingers. Alright. He just has to do something about this. Either he leaves now and just forgets about everything that happened ever since she saved his life… or he gets his act together and makes up his mind about what he actually wants. He clears his throat again. “Are you okay, Cadman?”
She takes a breath, wants to say something - he assumes it’s something along the lines of “Yeah, sure.” - but closes her mouth again. After a few more moments, she makes a face that’s just a little resigned and says, “Yeah, I’m okay. Or I will be, in another week or so.” He wants to say something, tell her that she can be honest with him and trust him, but again she beats him to it. “Really, sir. It’s gonna be okay. Shrink told me I’ll stop having trouble sleeping eventually and that I can get back to duty in two or three days.”
She makes it sound like it’s just a scratch and she’ll get over whatever is troubling her as soon as she can gear up and go off-world again but something - probably the fact that he has become very accustomed to her body language during the time she couldn’t communicate with them via her voice because she had no way of knowing if she was saying it the right way or if someone would respond to it at all - tells him that there’s more to her not sleeping well than just restlessness from being under-worked. “If you say so…”
Dammit, he really wishes he could just go back to sitting down beside her and make her troubles go away with simply touching her. Comforting someone with words never was his forte and he doesn’t know how long he can just sit here and watch her wrestling with something that’s disturbing her. Actually… actually it would suffice if he knew what’s keeping her from sleeping.
He barely keeps from sighing. It used to be so easy to talk to her when she was still just one of his soldiers. As a superior he never had a problem getting his soldiers to talk to him and figuring out what’s bothering them. Somewhere along the way, though, Laura Cadman turned into something else for him… something more. Maybe it’s because he got to see a side of her rarely anyone - maybe not even Carson Beckett - has seen of her. And maybe it’s because this side… touched something inside of him, draws him to her, stronger than he should be drawn to any of his soldiers.
“You know, sir… I never actually said thank you.” He looks up again. She has her face turned to him, her head laid down on her knees. He finds himself smiling back a little insecure.
“Whatever for?” She turns her head again, puts her hands down on the ground and leans back on them slightly, to look out on the sea again… as if she’s too embarrassed with the answer to look right at him.
“For not leaving me alone in the dark.” And finally it hits him, almost out of nothing. That’s what keeps her from sleeping. She’s afraid of darkness… of closing her eyes and waking up with everything dark around her again. That’s why she sits out here on the pier, far away enough from everyone who might run into her but still with the city and the stars and the two moons lighting up the night so that she can reassure herself that she hasn’t gone back to being blind.
Okay, he thinks, it’s now or never. Without even looking for it, he finally reaches out for her hand, puts his own on it, looks at her as her face turns back to him and says, “Anytime… Laura.” After a moment of confusion that nearly makes him leave, she smiles back at him and he feels her fingers curl around his, while she stretches out her legs until they dangle over the edge just as his and moves closer to him.
She doesn’t say anything, but she doesn’t have to anyway because the feeling of their shoulders and thighs touching and the sight of their fingers entwined is all it takes to tell him that whatever had been wrong tonight or in the last few weeks is going to be right again.
~*~
TBC in Easy Touch.