Fic: Steady On (Sheppard/Mitchell) NC17

[idyll]

Title: Steady On
Rating: NC17
Pairing: John Sheppard/Cameron Mitchell
Written For: The John-Cam thing-a-thon over at sg_flyboys for omglawdork who asked for one of the following: back at the Academy; Sheppard stuck temporarily Earthside; or drunken shenanigans

Summary: "I've got it," John says into his mouth. "I've got it."

Comments

[flaming_muse]

No, it does make sense! These guys have to be able to compartmentalize, otherwise they couldn't kill people and still have relatively meaningful bonds with their friends/team-mates. Okay, maybe that their friends are pretty much only their team-mates shows that it's not an easy compartmentalization, but these guys still manage. John and Cam (and Jack and Ford and Ronon and everyone else military) are good guys as well as cold-blooded killers when they have to be. They're both ready to jump into battle at a moment's notice and also sometimes called upon not to jump at all but to charm the natives with a winning smile. They have to be able to separate parts of themselves. I think that's true of pretty much everyone who is career military (or police, for that matter), especially when they get into the higher, more grey-shaded levels of things.

I digress. My point is that these guys are great at compartmentalizing because they have to be (and because they're all at least slightly fucked up and probably know it), but it's much more realistic in your story that while they are great at it in some ways it isn't a perfect on/off switch and that sometimes the different parts of themselves bleed through even when the guys know they shouldn't. They're people in there, not attribute to be split up into neat little boxes. That's a very cool, interesting, compelling, real thing, and it makes me happy that you spun it that way.

[idyll]

*nods* Exactly. And I think that they would recognize the spill over in each other, be able to recognize it and know it for what it is, without necessarily acknowledging it. It's par for the course, and they know it, and the most they can do is keep on trucking on.