Fic: along latitudes and satellites; John/Cam
along latitudes and satellites
one-shot
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate SG1 or any of its characters or plots. I mean no infringement, this is for personal benefit only.
Fandom: SGA/SG1
Pairing: John/Cam
Word count: 1,580
Rating: PG-98, because that’s how old you should have to be before dealing with death
Summary: Cam needs to stop going out into the field. He’s mostly retired, now, only on Atlantis because that’s where the rest of him is.
Warnings: Death of minor characters
Prompt: I’d love John/Cam, if you feel comfortable with it, else I’d also enjoy John/Evan. Some h/c mission gone wrong stuff would be awesome.
Author’s Notes:
- Okay, so this probably isn’t allowed but rules are for eschewing (right?), so this is for lears_daughter for somehowunbroken for the Queensland flood auction.
*****
“Chanders!” Cam screams. “Get down!” But it’s too late, and Cam watches as the lieutenant is flung back into a tree. He hears a snap and Devin’s head lulls to the side in a way that Cam knows is nothing if not unnatural.
“Mitchell!”
Cam snaps his head to the side where he can see Major Lorne making his way to him, laying down gunfire. These Wraith don’t seem at all interested in them as food as much as they’re interested in them dead. Cam’s already figured out that they have some kind of personal vendetta against the Atlantis crew and, Cam, well, he’s just along for the ride. “Over here!” he yells back.
Their radios are dead, and Cam’s pretty sure that the Jumper they came in is busted, which means it’s about twenty clicks back to the gate on foot.
Lorne comes up on his side and there’s blood trickling down his temple, a grim look on his face. “I lost Coughlin,” he says. The news is hard to heard, but it must be harder to say, because Cam knows that Lorne’s been with Coughlin since he first arrived on Atlantis three years ago.
Cam’s been on Lorne’s team since he arrived on Atlantis, six months ago.
“I lost Chanders.”
Chanders has been with them for a couple of weeks while Reed is on shore leave. Cam didn’t know him well, but he liked the kid well enough. Coughlin’s death hurts just a little more, but it all stings hard and sharp, and Cam knows he’s gonna lose sleep over both of them.
For now, though, he and Lorne have to get out of this mess, and there’s no way in hell that Cam is leaving Coughlin’s and Chanders’s bodies for the Wraith to tear apart, so they’re going to have to figure that out, too.
“This was supposed to be simple recon,” Lorne says, swiping a hand across his brow. It smears the blood on his temple and makes Cam notice that there’s pain in Lorne’s eyes, telling him that the major is hurt somewhere other than where Cam can see.
Cam fires the last of his P-90 rounds and reaches for his .9mm. “I’m out of ammo.”
“I ran out about ten minutes ago,” Lorne confesses. “I’m on my last clip, too.”
“How many did you count?”
“Three,” Lorne answers. “Grumpy, Dopey, and Doc.”
“Well, I got Sleepy and Sneezy,” Cam adds. “But I think I took out Sleepy.”
“Grumpy and Dopey are down for the count.”
“Which leaves--”
“Sneezy and Doc,” Lorne finishes. “How many bullets do you have left?”
Cam grimaces. “Four. You?”
“Two.”
Cam nods. “Best make them count.”
“Yes, sir,” Lorne agrees.
“You go left, I’ll go right, we’ll meet in the middle?”
Lorne nods sharply and Cam takes a deep breath, checks to make sure his k-bar is still in place, and then gets to his feet. They brush shoulders before they take off in their own directions.
When they meet in the middle, Cam is limping and bleeding all over, Lorne is clutching his arm to his chest, and it’s bent in a way that Cam knows means broken, broken, broken. His knife is dripping with blood and his gun chamber is empty, but Sneezy is in pieces and Cam’s still here.
By silent agreement they go to get Coughlin’s body. Lorne has one good arm and Cam has one good leg, but they make it work. Cam ignores what might be tears on Lorne’s face and Lorne ignores the hiccups in Cam’s breathing. They lay Coughlin down next to Chanders and fuck it hurts just to look at them. Both younger than Cam, younger than Lorne even.
Just that morning, Coughlin had bounced around the mess hall because Reed is on his way back on the Daedalus. Cam doesn’t even want to think about the look that’s going to be on Reed’s face when he arrives. He’s glad, for once, that he’s just some weird adjunct to Lorne’s team, that this is still Lorne’s team, and that it’s not Cam’s job anymore to tell people the bad news.
“Hour until check-in,” Lorne says.
So they stay put because Cam knows better than anyone that at five after the hour, John will be here.
-0-
He showers slowly, methodically, and each time water hits a new cut, Cam holds back a hiss. He watches blankly as the blood drips down his arm and swirls around the funny Atlantis drains before it hits some kind of weird force field thing and dissolves.
Cam needs to stop going out into the field. He’s mostly retired, now, only on Atlantis because that’s where the rest of him is. But he got bored after a few weeks, so John shoved him at Lorne and Lorne let him tag along whenever John’s team didn’t. Until Cam stopped tagging along with John and all but joined Lorne’s team. John would laugh about that at night, about how Cam prefers Lorne, but really, Cam got tired of seeing John out in the field, almost dying, every other mission. Conflict of interest, or something like that--conflict of heart.
Wet arms settle around Cam’s waist and he forces himself to wait a minute before he leans back against John’s chest. “They took us by surprise,” Cam says, his drawl a little looser than normal.
“They usually do,” John agrees.
“I think Evan’s out of commission for a while.”
“I think his whole team is out of commission for a while,” John counters.
“What’s left of them.”
The water’s so hot that Cam’s skin is red and flushed. He knows that John can’t stand it that hot, or he can stand it, but doesn’t like it, but John doesn’t say anything, just stands there with him, burning a little bit.
Cam lets John towel him off and he’s grateful that John doesn’t treat him as though he’s fragile, as though he’s about to break. Cam’s been through a lot and he can take this, too. Eventually.
John curls up behind him in bed, and this isn’t anything different than they do every night. This is normal, no kind of nod to the day Cam’s had, and while, yeah, most of the time Cam’s the one wrapped around John, this still isn’t out of the ordinary. It’s not.
John’s hand rests low on Cam’s stomach, and it’s comforting and warm. Occasionally it moves up and swipes at Cam’s cheek, and Cam still hasn’t figured out how John knows, but he does, he always does.
“They’re always so young,” Cam says finally.
“Yeah.”
“I must be twice Chanders age.”
“Don’t,” John warns. “Cam, don’t go down that path.”
“I shoulda just been a homemaker like my momma told me to.”
John snorts. “Tell me how that works out for you.”
“What? You think I’d make a bad housewife?”
“I think I’ve tasted your pancakes.”
Cam chokes out a laugh, because it’s true, he’s terrible at cooking. He turns around in John’s arms and lets himself have a minute to burrow into John, stealing his warmth and his strength and his love.
John’s breath catches and Cam’s reminded that John lost men today, too, they weren’t just Cam’s. And John had known them longer. John and Coughlin had been friends, enough that Coughlin called John John and John had called him Tim.
Cam hates missions like today. Missions that are so FUBAR that the glue that holds Cam together cracks a little.
Dry lips press against Cam’s forehead while a hand strokes his back. John makes a quiet humming noise that’s too slow to be anything Cash, so Cam assumes it’s something out of his music library instead. He wants to say things like we should be better and we should have been faster and we need to be the best of someone better if we want to survive, but it’s not as though John doesn’t know that already, it’s not as though John doesn’t wake up saying that to himself everyday.
John pulls him in tighter, until Cam can feel John hum as much as he can hear him. His world narrows until all there is is the feeling of skin and some nameless melody. And John.
“I love you,” John says, lips brushing Cam’s forehead with every word.
It hurts to hear that tonight. Tonight when Cam is bruised and hurting and doesn’t feel close to worthy of the words, not when Chanders and Coughlin were carried back to Atlantis. John’s never going to go a day without saying the words, though, not like Cam who’s so much more reserved with them than John is. Which, that isn’t the way anyone expects things between them to be, but in private it’s John who’s more open and Cam who can barely say them most of the time.
Cam wraps himself in the words, anyway, and brushes his thumb over John’s hip in a mix of apology and gratefulness.
“Cameron,” John breathes. “S’okay.”
And they both know that okay doesn’t mean okay, not here, not on Atlantis. It usually means everything but okay, except with John, Cam’s beginning to think it means something more like I’m still here and I’ll fight for you and I won’t ever stop.
Cam closes his eyes and says a mental prayer for Chanders and Coughlin, and for Reed, Lorne, and Parrish. Then he adds another one on for his parents. “Amen,” Cam whispers.
“Amen,” John echoes.
-0-