Under the Boardwalk, by Kiara Sayre
Title: Under the Boardwalk
Author: Kiara Sayre
Rating: Eh. A ten-year-old could read it.
Pairing: Gen, could be read as--bear with me--Ford/Heightmeyer
Challenge: Explore/Rooms of Atlantis
Summary: It's summer on Atlantis, and Ford isn't the only one taking a walk.
Notes: Okay, so it isn't a boardwalk and they aren't under it, but I couldn't think of a better title. I got the idea for Ford and Heightmeyer after reading a very excellent fic by danvers (Surrender--seriously, check it out, it's pretty awesome), and this isn't so much ship as those characters interacting at all.
It was a warm night, with an even warmer breeze. Some of the Marines claimed it was summer in Atlantis, though the scientists were quick to point out that Atlantis was in a temperate zone near the equatorial region of the planet, and thus there were no seasons at all.
Naturally, they were ignored, and it was summer in Atlantis.
Lieutenant Ford knew he wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the breathtakingly beautiful weather, especially since it was twilight and the pink tinge of the sky played over the ocean as well, which was why he stayed to the less-explored regions of the city. He enjoyed walking along the balconies, with their railings and perfect views. The ocean lapped gently against the cold metal of the city, but if he closed his eyes and let his mind skip over the salt in the air, he could almost make himself believe he was at his grandparents’ summer home in Milton, by the lake.
The balcony merged back into an enclosed hallway for a bit, and Ford followed it since there was no where else to go. He just hoped nobody else-
“Lieutenant Ford?”
-had the same idea as he did.
“Doctor Heightmeyer,” Ford said, nodding in greeting.
Doctor Kate Heightmeyer shifted her weight, somewhat uncomfortably.
“Taking a walk?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Ford said, shrugging. “It’s kinda nice to just, y’know, get away.”
Heightmeyer nodded fervently. “I know how you feel."
Ford nodded, still uncomfortable. “No offense, Doc, but I don’t really wanna talk or anything-”
“I understand,” Heightmeyer said earnestly. “Believe me, I do. I’d rather not go back just yet, though, so is it okay if we just walk? Quietly?”
Something about the way she said ‘quietly’ made Ford think that maybe a lot of people were forgetting that Heightmeyer was a person who was a therapist, not the other way around.
“Sure,” he said, motioning for her to go first. “After you.”
They walked in silence for a while, which was nice-Ford had almost forgotten there was such a thing. The last time he went on a ‘quiet’ mission, six scientists had ended up dying painfully, believing they were being assaulted by an unseen foe, and he had nearly ended up the exact same way. And he had lost it in front of Carson and Rodney. And Zelenka had teased him.
So yeah, not such a quiet mission.
“Why is it,” Heightmeyer said quietly after about ten minutes, “that everyone thinks I’m a vending machine for advice?”
Ford half-smiled at that, barely noticing the break in the silence. “Because you’re a therapist. People see you and think, oh, there’s Doctor Heightmeyer and such-and-such wants to use me in a study on probability just because I don’t know prime numbers, so I may as well tell her about it.”
Heightmeyer looked wryly at him. “Speaking from experience?”
Ford blushed. He hadn’t mentioned that bit to anyone. “Maybe. It doesn’t matter. But if you ever wanna, y’know, talk to anyone…” He shrugged. “I mean, it seems to me like a professional listener might want someone to listen to them sometimes.”
Heightmeyer looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged. They continued in silence for another two minutes.
“My sister plays in an oldies cover band,” she said suddenly. “‘The Old Kids On the Block.’ They play an awesome ‘La Bamba’.”
Ford grinned. “Los Lobos, right?”
“Right,” Heightmeyer agreed. “And now it’s your turn.”
“To tell you something random and probably embarrassing about my life back on Earth?” Ford asked, laughing slightly. Heightmeyer grinned and nodded. “All right, but remember doctor-patient confidentiality, ‘kay?” He bit his lip heavily, pretending to think, before grinning. “My sister-she’s three years younger than me-we went to the same school, and she’d be in plays and musicals and just about anything that has to do with drama.”
“That’s your obscure and quite possibly embarrassing fact about your life?” Heightmeyer asked, smiling.
“No, my obscure and embarrassing fact is that since my sister did the plays, I was a techie.”
“A techie?” Heightmeyer asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Yep. You know the ones-wore all black, built sets, hung lights, messed with the wiring for the soundboard, congregated together and talked about paint colors and power tools.”
“Oh, those techies,” Heightmeyer said, a wicked glint in her eyes.
“But it’s your turn now, Doctor,” Ford said quickly.
“Kate,” she corrected. “I’m off-duty.”
“Kate,” amended Ford. “Then I’m Aiden.”
“All right, Aiden,” Kate said, smiling. “I guess…to this day, I cry every time I hear the Epilogue to Les Miserables. You know, the part where Valjean is dying-”
“‘On this page, I write my last confession…?’”
“Exactly, though I don’t think I want to know how you know that.”
“My sister, I swear.”
“Riiight.”
“Anyway,” Ford said firmly as Kate smothered a laugh. “Back at the SGC, I’m known as ‘Lazarus 3.0’.”
“What?” asked Kate, frowning.
“It’s a system they worked out,” Ford began to explain. “A lot of people on SG-teams die, and don’t stay dead, so they do it by team designation, and since I was on SG-3 oh my god is that a dock?” Kate turned to look and immediately smiled.
It was, indeed, a dock. A long rectangle of whatever material comprised Atlantis jutted out into the water, and as Kate and Ford walked along it, lights turned on, illuminating the water and giving it a greenish glow.
“This is awesome,” Ford said quietly, looking out over the ocean. The sun wasn’t entirely set, but the color was fading out of the sky.
“Wow,” Kate said, just as quietly. She jumped a bit as Ford all but collapsed into a sitting position and immediately began pulling off his boots. “What are you doing?”
“My grandparents had a summer house on a lake,” he said. “With a dock. I can’t help it, it’s genetically hardwired into my system or something, I simply can’t go past an empty dock without putting my feet in the water.”
“That’s a horrible ailment,” Heightmeyer said, letting herself fall down next to him. “Is there really no cure?” she added as she began to unlace her own shoes.
“Not as far as I know. It’s really quite terrible.” Ford said, pulling off his left sock.
The sky faded to black and the stars began to sparkle, but Ford and Kate sat on the edge of the dock, their ankles disturbing the water as they traded secrets and generally felt like five year olds. Ford harbored a secret love for Spanish pop music (“only the good kind, though, and it’s really all Monroe’s fault-well, her maiden name was Gomez, and she made me listen to it a few times-”), and the thing Kate missed most about Earth wasn’t her family, or her friends, but Law and Order (“not Criminal Intent, but Special Victims Unit and the original kind-Criminal Intent is so clichéd, especially with all that ‘ripped from the headlines’ stuff-”). Ford was a Red Sox fan (“come on, Aiden, that doesn’t count, you’re wearing a Sox hat-”) and had specifically (and anonymously) given his tenth-grade chemistry teacher a Sox hat, even though he was a Yankees fan, while Kate really didn’t care for baseball but harbored a secret love of curling (“it all started with that Paul Gross movie, Men With Brooms, and, well, if you saw him in that jacket on the ice, you’d get interested in curling, too!”)
“McKay’ll want to know about this,” Ford said during a lull in their conversation.
“Why?” Heightmeyer asked.
“McKay thinks this is his city. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t memorized every inch of explored city so far.” Ford shrugged. “I’m not exactly in a rush to tell him about this, though.”
“It’s nice out here,” Kate said, breathing in the warm air. “God, it feels just like Rehoboth in the summer.”
“It reminds me of my grandparents’ summer home,” Ford said, swishing his ankles around and listening to the sloshing of the water. “It’s nice to just…relax.”
“Mmm,” Kate agreed. “Since we got here, everyone’s been so…busy.”
“Reminds me of Earth,” Ford said, slightly grimly. “If anyone ever tells you being on a single-digit SG team is fun, they’re lying. My team-” He stopped himself, before continuing. “My old team got into a lot of trouble, especially with natives. We didn’t usually go on first contact missions, usually recovery or as backup, sometimes with scientists on scientific reasons. A lot of them seemed surprised when I knew the difference between alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.”
“Aren’t you a weapons expert?” Kate asked, smiling slightly. “And don’t some weapons involve radiation?”
“Yeah, but I really just had an awesome chemistry teacher,” Ford said, shrugging. He looked up at the sky and blinked a few times. “Uh, what time is it?”
Kate glanced at her watch (which she had bribed Zelenka into reconfiguring for Atlantean time) and started. “Crap, it’s almost midnight.”
Ford groaned. “I’m signed up to lead a five o’clock run,” he said, pulling his feet out of the water and standing. Kate began to do the same, and Ford held out a hand to help her up. “Thanks, though.”
“For what? Talking?” Kate asked, hunting for her sock, which Ford quickly found and supplied her with.
“For not making any car-seat or pacifier jokes,” Ford said, smiling self-deprecatingly. “Anyway, if you ever want to do this again-”
“I’d like to,” Kate said, while her inner therapist muttered darkly about personal involvement with patients. It lost out, however, to her curiosity about Spanish pop music.
“I’ll walk you back to your room,” Ford said, offering his arm like a Victorian-era gentlemen. Kate blushed through her smile and took it.
As they left the docks, the galaxy splashed across the sky and the summer breeze continued to blow.
Author: Kiara Sayre
Rating: Eh. A ten-year-old could read it.
Pairing: Gen, could be read as--bear with me--Ford/Heightmeyer
Challenge: Explore/Rooms of Atlantis
Summary: It's summer on Atlantis, and Ford isn't the only one taking a walk.
Notes: Okay, so it isn't a boardwalk and they aren't under it, but I couldn't think of a better title. I got the idea for Ford and Heightmeyer after reading a very excellent fic by danvers (Surrender--seriously, check it out, it's pretty awesome), and this isn't so much ship as those characters interacting at all.
It was a warm night, with an even warmer breeze. Some of the Marines claimed it was summer in Atlantis, though the scientists were quick to point out that Atlantis was in a temperate zone near the equatorial region of the planet, and thus there were no seasons at all.
Naturally, they were ignored, and it was summer in Atlantis.
Lieutenant Ford knew he wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the breathtakingly beautiful weather, especially since it was twilight and the pink tinge of the sky played over the ocean as well, which was why he stayed to the less-explored regions of the city. He enjoyed walking along the balconies, with their railings and perfect views. The ocean lapped gently against the cold metal of the city, but if he closed his eyes and let his mind skip over the salt in the air, he could almost make himself believe he was at his grandparents’ summer home in Milton, by the lake.
The balcony merged back into an enclosed hallway for a bit, and Ford followed it since there was no where else to go. He just hoped nobody else-
“Lieutenant Ford?”
-had the same idea as he did.
“Doctor Heightmeyer,” Ford said, nodding in greeting.
Doctor Kate Heightmeyer shifted her weight, somewhat uncomfortably.
“Taking a walk?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Ford said, shrugging. “It’s kinda nice to just, y’know, get away.”
Heightmeyer nodded fervently. “I know how you feel."
Ford nodded, still uncomfortable. “No offense, Doc, but I don’t really wanna talk or anything-”
“I understand,” Heightmeyer said earnestly. “Believe me, I do. I’d rather not go back just yet, though, so is it okay if we just walk? Quietly?”
Something about the way she said ‘quietly’ made Ford think that maybe a lot of people were forgetting that Heightmeyer was a person who was a therapist, not the other way around.
“Sure,” he said, motioning for her to go first. “After you.”
They walked in silence for a while, which was nice-Ford had almost forgotten there was such a thing. The last time he went on a ‘quiet’ mission, six scientists had ended up dying painfully, believing they were being assaulted by an unseen foe, and he had nearly ended up the exact same way. And he had lost it in front of Carson and Rodney. And Zelenka had teased him.
So yeah, not such a quiet mission.
“Why is it,” Heightmeyer said quietly after about ten minutes, “that everyone thinks I’m a vending machine for advice?”
Ford half-smiled at that, barely noticing the break in the silence. “Because you’re a therapist. People see you and think, oh, there’s Doctor Heightmeyer and such-and-such wants to use me in a study on probability just because I don’t know prime numbers, so I may as well tell her about it.”
Heightmeyer looked wryly at him. “Speaking from experience?”
Ford blushed. He hadn’t mentioned that bit to anyone. “Maybe. It doesn’t matter. But if you ever wanna, y’know, talk to anyone…” He shrugged. “I mean, it seems to me like a professional listener might want someone to listen to them sometimes.”
Heightmeyer looked at him for a long moment, then shrugged. They continued in silence for another two minutes.
“My sister plays in an oldies cover band,” she said suddenly. “‘The Old Kids On the Block.’ They play an awesome ‘La Bamba’.”
Ford grinned. “Los Lobos, right?”
“Right,” Heightmeyer agreed. “And now it’s your turn.”
“To tell you something random and probably embarrassing about my life back on Earth?” Ford asked, laughing slightly. Heightmeyer grinned and nodded. “All right, but remember doctor-patient confidentiality, ‘kay?” He bit his lip heavily, pretending to think, before grinning. “My sister-she’s three years younger than me-we went to the same school, and she’d be in plays and musicals and just about anything that has to do with drama.”
“That’s your obscure and quite possibly embarrassing fact about your life?” Heightmeyer asked, smiling.
“No, my obscure and embarrassing fact is that since my sister did the plays, I was a techie.”
“A techie?” Heightmeyer asked, raising her eyebrows.
“Yep. You know the ones-wore all black, built sets, hung lights, messed with the wiring for the soundboard, congregated together and talked about paint colors and power tools.”
“Oh, those techies,” Heightmeyer said, a wicked glint in her eyes.
“But it’s your turn now, Doctor,” Ford said quickly.
“Kate,” she corrected. “I’m off-duty.”
“Kate,” amended Ford. “Then I’m Aiden.”
“All right, Aiden,” Kate said, smiling. “I guess…to this day, I cry every time I hear the Epilogue to Les Miserables. You know, the part where Valjean is dying-”
“‘On this page, I write my last confession…?’”
“Exactly, though I don’t think I want to know how you know that.”
“My sister, I swear.”
“Riiight.”
“Anyway,” Ford said firmly as Kate smothered a laugh. “Back at the SGC, I’m known as ‘Lazarus 3.0’.”
“What?” asked Kate, frowning.
“It’s a system they worked out,” Ford began to explain. “A lot of people on SG-teams die, and don’t stay dead, so they do it by team designation, and since I was on SG-3 oh my god is that a dock?” Kate turned to look and immediately smiled.
It was, indeed, a dock. A long rectangle of whatever material comprised Atlantis jutted out into the water, and as Kate and Ford walked along it, lights turned on, illuminating the water and giving it a greenish glow.
“This is awesome,” Ford said quietly, looking out over the ocean. The sun wasn’t entirely set, but the color was fading out of the sky.
“Wow,” Kate said, just as quietly. She jumped a bit as Ford all but collapsed into a sitting position and immediately began pulling off his boots. “What are you doing?”
“My grandparents had a summer house on a lake,” he said. “With a dock. I can’t help it, it’s genetically hardwired into my system or something, I simply can’t go past an empty dock without putting my feet in the water.”
“That’s a horrible ailment,” Heightmeyer said, letting herself fall down next to him. “Is there really no cure?” she added as she began to unlace her own shoes.
“Not as far as I know. It’s really quite terrible.” Ford said, pulling off his left sock.
The sky faded to black and the stars began to sparkle, but Ford and Kate sat on the edge of the dock, their ankles disturbing the water as they traded secrets and generally felt like five year olds. Ford harbored a secret love for Spanish pop music (“only the good kind, though, and it’s really all Monroe’s fault-well, her maiden name was Gomez, and she made me listen to it a few times-”), and the thing Kate missed most about Earth wasn’t her family, or her friends, but Law and Order (“not Criminal Intent, but Special Victims Unit and the original kind-Criminal Intent is so clichéd, especially with all that ‘ripped from the headlines’ stuff-”). Ford was a Red Sox fan (“come on, Aiden, that doesn’t count, you’re wearing a Sox hat-”) and had specifically (and anonymously) given his tenth-grade chemistry teacher a Sox hat, even though he was a Yankees fan, while Kate really didn’t care for baseball but harbored a secret love of curling (“it all started with that Paul Gross movie, Men With Brooms, and, well, if you saw him in that jacket on the ice, you’d get interested in curling, too!”)
“McKay’ll want to know about this,” Ford said during a lull in their conversation.
“Why?” Heightmeyer asked.
“McKay thinks this is his city. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t memorized every inch of explored city so far.” Ford shrugged. “I’m not exactly in a rush to tell him about this, though.”
“It’s nice out here,” Kate said, breathing in the warm air. “God, it feels just like Rehoboth in the summer.”
“It reminds me of my grandparents’ summer home,” Ford said, swishing his ankles around and listening to the sloshing of the water. “It’s nice to just…relax.”
“Mmm,” Kate agreed. “Since we got here, everyone’s been so…busy.”
“Reminds me of Earth,” Ford said, slightly grimly. “If anyone ever tells you being on a single-digit SG team is fun, they’re lying. My team-” He stopped himself, before continuing. “My old team got into a lot of trouble, especially with natives. We didn’t usually go on first contact missions, usually recovery or as backup, sometimes with scientists on scientific reasons. A lot of them seemed surprised when I knew the difference between alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.”
“Aren’t you a weapons expert?” Kate asked, smiling slightly. “And don’t some weapons involve radiation?”
“Yeah, but I really just had an awesome chemistry teacher,” Ford said, shrugging. He looked up at the sky and blinked a few times. “Uh, what time is it?”
Kate glanced at her watch (which she had bribed Zelenka into reconfiguring for Atlantean time) and started. “Crap, it’s almost midnight.”
Ford groaned. “I’m signed up to lead a five o’clock run,” he said, pulling his feet out of the water and standing. Kate began to do the same, and Ford held out a hand to help her up. “Thanks, though.”
“For what? Talking?” Kate asked, hunting for her sock, which Ford quickly found and supplied her with.
“For not making any car-seat or pacifier jokes,” Ford said, smiling self-deprecatingly. “Anyway, if you ever want to do this again-”
“I’d like to,” Kate said, while her inner therapist muttered darkly about personal involvement with patients. It lost out, however, to her curiosity about Spanish pop music.
“I’ll walk you back to your room,” Ford said, offering his arm like a Victorian-era gentlemen. Kate blushed through her smile and took it.
As they left the docks, the galaxy splashed across the sky and the summer breeze continued to blow.