Fic: 16 Proofs of Love, #11 Stammering: When will you kiss me?
Title: All the Boys You Sent Away
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: het
Summary: It's a quiet night at Milwaukee Fire Department's Engine 12 fire house. Time for confessions and another Springsteen ballad.
A/N: Honestly? I loved writing this one. I have a thing for late night conversations and for slow dancing, and I guess it was only a question of time until I go and combine the two, yet again. Also, this was supposed to be the last part in the firefighters!AU but then things (namely: bunnies) happened and it became a four parter and then other things happened and yeah no, for the time being, this is going to stay a four parter. But yeah, one day far in the future, I might tell mackenziesmomma to release that Ronon/Keller bunny that assaulted me two nights ago and you'll get that one, too. Anyway. Here you go!
PS.: You can see the other finished stories here.
( I've Tried So Hard, Baby )
( Badlands Start Treating Us Good )
All the Boys You Sent Away
“And I know you’re lonely
For words that I ain’t spoken
But tonight we’ll be free
All the promises’ll be broken
There were ghosts in the eyes
Of all the boys you sent away”
Bruce Springsteen, “Thunder Road”
It’s a slow night. Hard to believe, after weeks of people apparently having gone off the rails or finally lost all resemblance of common sense in the station’s neighborhood. But there hasn’t been a call tonight since a simple fender bender at West Euclid and 26th they didn’t even need to get out the heavy equipment for about three hours ago, so the entire house is finally starting to let themselves relax a little. He uses it to catch up on paperwork that doesn’t need any catching up in truth.
The alternative would be sitting in the common room and have everyone trying to gauge how things are currently between Laura and him. It’s no alternative at all.
So. Paperwork it is. Sure, he could just pack up his incident reports from the last four weeks and put them on Sheppard’s desk, post-it on it saying “Would have put your signature on them, too, if that wouldn’t get me thrown into jail”, his usual none too subtle reminder for Sheppard to do his own damn paperwork. Shep’s been his captain for four years, former Air Force himself, and he’s near ready putting all his money on “never turning in his paperwork on time just out of spite” as the mysterious reason why a helo pilot would have to completely retrain after being thrown out of the Air Force. Must have been something big that got him discredited so thoroughly that he placed his chances of ever finding a job flying rotary wing or any other aircraft below zero and went in a completely new direction. The Air Force is that anal about turning in your reports on time.
Anyway, he could have just done that and gone to bed, or maybe go into the kitchen, see if there’s any of that stew left that Laura and Keller prepared, never quite getting rid of the habit of cooking for the rest of the watch, despite neither of them being a rookie anymore. He could have done that, and he opted for paperwork. Maybe his sister was right every time she called him an idiot when they were kids. Still does, occasionally, come to think of it.
Wait, where was… “And people keep asking me why I won’t even consider taking the lieutenant test at some unspecified day in the far off future.”
“Huh?” Damn. It’s out before he can get his surprise under wraps, and it makes him sound exactly like the idiot his sister still thinks he is sometimes.
Laura just grins and gestures into the general direction of his desk with her chin. “All that paperwork. Would just about kill me.”
She’s standing in his doorway, leaning against the jamb with her shoulder, legs crossed at the ankles, arms crossed in front of her chest. Weirdly enough, she still looks more relaxed than he has seen her in a long time. Been a week since she finally got back on duty, and he’s glad that it’s obviously doing her good. He’s not sure if he could have taken even one more day of all that frustrated, nervous energy wafting off her whenever he met her. He’d really tried telling himself that there’s no reason that it’s affecting him if she can’t get back on duty, do what she loves, what she is, but yeah, it was. Badly.
He leans back and something surprising leaves his mouth before he can think better of it. “You’d make a good one, though.” It’s her turn to give him a “Huh?” look and he feels himself compelled to add, “Lieutenant, I mean. You’d make a pretty decent lieutenant.”
Now she rolls her eyes and gives him a deadpan expression. “Good or pretty decent? Make up your mind, Air Force.”
Yeah, well. He probably should discipline her for that or at least give her a warning but then again, it’s not like she’s completely wrong. Also, he does understand her way of trying to deflect praise because it embarrasses her without being too obvious about it. He grimaces. “You know what I mean.”
He half expects her to stick out her tongue or something because she never believed in that whole “You’re in your late twenties, not a teenager anymore. Act your age.” thing but in the end, she just rolls her eyes and then gestures towards the papers on his desk again. “So, anything exciting in there?”
Sadly, no. Maybe that was why he opted for paperwork in the first place. He shakes his head. “Nope. Just run-of-the-mill incident reports.”
She nods and for a moment it looks like she’s going to give him the old “well then, I gotta go do stuff” spiel and leave but then something really weird happens. Right out of the blue, he hears her say, “I used to be married.”
It takes him at least a minute or so to come up with an answer, and because he’s still in somewhat of a daze after that confession, it’s only a meager and slightly confused, “What?”
Her first answer is to shrug and hunch her shoulders and stick her hands in the pockets of her uniform trousers. Her second is, “I used to be married,” sounding like she’s trying really hard to keep sounding casual, “Got divorced four years ago.” Actually, she isn’t doing too bad on the whole casual thing. Well, all until the next sentence. “And to be honest, I have no idea why I’m telling you this. I think I should just…”
He should let her leave. Should let her keep what’s left of her dignity because that sudden admission clearly confused her at least as much as it confused him. And yet that’s not what he does, instead asks, his voice way too quiet for his taste, “Why didn’t you? Tell me, I mean.”
She nearly leaves anyway, he can see that in her entire posture, like a cornered animal torn between fight or flight. But then she just shrugs and rubs her neck and it tells him everything he needs to know. “I don’t know. It just… never came up, did it?”
Strangely enough, she is right. In the eight months they were not-really-together together, they never really talked about any ex-partners. To be honest, they didn’t talk much at all. Not about the stuff that mattered, anyway. He takes a deep breath before saying, “If you mean I could have asked…”
“No, oh God, that wasn’t what I was insinuating, I just…”
“…you’re right.” That kind of surprised himself as well. Mostly because it’s the truth. Of course she could, maybe even should have told him about something as important as a divorce but it’s not that he never asked because he never had the opportunity. Never asking about ex-partners was a deliberate choice he - both of them, really - made and he’s slowly starting to realize that maybe it wasn’t really a good choice.
She blinks and needs a moment to come up with an answer. “What?”
It’s his turn to shrug, try to cover up the embarrassment about having to admit that maybe he wasn’t exactly without fault concerning the break-up, either. “I could have asked. I never did.”
Slowly, she shakes her head. “No. We never… talked about that kind of stuff.”
“No.” He’s starting to think they should have. He’s starting to think that they should have talked about a lot of things, not just ex-partners. He’s starting to think that maybe that could have spared them a lot of pain and heartbreak. He makes another conscious choice, right here, right now. One he should have made a long time ago. “You want to talk about it now?”
She still looks uncomfortable, all hunched shoulders and still kind of ready to bolt at any moment, so it surprises him a little when she says, “Not really but I got nothing else to do. You?”
“Only this.” He gestures to the paper on his desk, shrugging.
It makes her, of all things, grin and then apparently accept her fate because most of the nervousness and tension seems to leak out of her. Probably leaving her feeling a little tired. Maybe he should tell her to go to… “Meaning you’re bored to death.” Weird how, despite never really talking about the important stuff, the deep stuff, they still know each other scarily well. He was bored to death, and she’s probably the only one who ever caught on to paperwork more often than not being a kind of excuse to closet himself away and get some peace and quiet in this ever busy station instead of some kind of hobby, like the rest of the station probably still thinks. She changes her posture once more, standing up a little straighter, squaring her shoulders, as if she’s about to walk into battle. “Alright. Come on, ask me. Anything you want, free for all, only tonight.”
So. She must have made a conscious choice, too, then. He takes a moment to consider what to ask her, how to go about it, how careful he wants to tread, but in the end, he moves around a little, hopes she recognizes the invitation to come in and sit down on his bed for what it is. He goes for the most obvious question. “Who was he?”
She takes her time but in the end, moves away from the door and sits down on his bed, like he invited her to. She doesn’t do it like she used to, flopping down smack dab in the middle, like she owned it but instead goes for sitting down at the edge, a little awkwardly with one of her legs on the bed and the other dangling down. Still not fully at ease with being back in his office. He pretends he’s not at least a little hurt by that.
When she made herself at least semi-comfortable, she answers his question. “Rodney McKay. Canadian. Professor at the college I got my degree from. Thought he was God’s gift to science.” She doesn’t look at him, her face changing from casual to a little grin and he tries not to feel jealous of her ex-husband. It does help that the next thing she does is grimace and roll her eyes, adding, “Bit of a jerk, actually.”
It doesn’t really surprise him. It’s not that he thinks that Laura likes to go for assholes who treat her like shit - because she doesn’t, never would - just that she seems to like guys who challenge her, who can stand up to her whirlwind personality and her slightly volatile temper. He kind of hopes at least that’s what she saw in him. And of course he just has to ask, “Is that why you got divorced?”
At that, she shakes her head, still not looking at him, just in the general direction of his office window, frowning. “No, we just… it just didn’t work out.” His gaze falls on her hands, and he sees those long, slender fingers with the calluses people stupidly keep being surprised by fiddling with the hem of the trouser leg that’s up on the bed. “It was just… Well. All water under the bridge now, anyway.”
There’s more to it, clearly but really, even if she really means it and tonight will be the only time she’s ever going to talk about it, he’s not going to push it. That new thing that they have, with the oh so slow process of re-getting to know each other, is too precious to him to jeopardize it just to satisfy his curiosity. He leans forward, his elbow on his knees and carefully says, “Four years is a long time.”
She nods, obviously trying to stop with the fiddling and not fully succeeding. But at least she looks at him again. “Yeah.”
He considers releasing her, changing the topic like they used to do whenever things seemed to get too personal when they were still sleeping with each other but then again, that was probably what got them in this mess in the first place, so he instead says gently, “You still talk to each other?”
“Yeah.” That does surprise him and yeah, it’s not like he isn’t a least a little bit jealous but then again, an ex-husband is an ex-husband for a good reason, just like ex-boyfriends are what they are for a reason. “It wasn’t a messy divorce or anything, we just don’t have much in common is all.” Was that what got between them, too? That they don’t have much in common? He wishes he wouldn’t circle back to those terrible two or three months after she dumped him when he kept wrecking his head about it maybe having been something he said or did but yeah, for a very short moment, it’s all back. He’s almost grateful that she keeps talking, adds, “I mean, he still thinks I’m wasting my “potential” here, and I still think that grad school would drive me crazy, so. You know.”
He’s pretty sure it wasn’t just that but yeah, given what he knows about her - how she considers firefighting the one thing she is, and how not knowing whether she could go back to it nearly destroyed her and how, let’s be honest, just plain good she is at it when she isn’t falling through ceilings due to no fault of her own - he doesn’t doubt that repeatedly being told that she was wasting her potential was a major turn-off. He nods. “Yeah.”
There is, unfortunately, silence between them yet again and unfortunately, it’s turning into awkward again, too and that’s why he nearly bursts out laughing when the radio he’d had playing on low volume in the background suddenly goes all, “She’ll let you in her house, if you come knockin’ late at night.” It would be an exaggeration if he said that lately, every time something important between them happened, Springsteen was there, too, like some kind of specter to remind them of something but yeah, lately, Springsteen seems to be fucking everywhere. Especially everywhere he meets Laura.
He nearly moves to shut off the damn radio but then he hears her say quietly, “I always liked that song.”
It makes him turn back to her, raise his eyebrow. “Secret Garden?”
She shrugs, looking a little embarrassed. “Yeah. Always kinda wanted to dance to it at my wedding.” That’s… new to him. He knew that she liked Springsteen, of course he knew that. But he always thought it where the pounding rock numbers, the loud, accusing, make a stand pieces like “Murder Incorporated” and “Death To My Hometown” she liked, and stuff like “Born In The USA” that you can sing along to at the top of your voice. The ballads? Not so much. “Only, you know, I never got to.”
His first thought is that well, “Secret Garden” isn’t exactly a wedding dance song in the first place, and maybe Rodney “God’s Gift to Science” McKay didn’t like it as much as she did but then something else comes to his mind. “No wedding dance?”
“Nope.” She tries so very hard not to sound regretful about that. So hard that he’s pretty sure she did want a wedding dance; a real one, with everyone watching and her new husband leading her across the dance floor and whispering jokes about the audience to her and making her laugh. The one he’d have given her, if he had had the chance.
Good thing she’s still concentrating too hard on trying to look like she never really cared for a wedding dance because whoa, that last thought. That was bad. Really bad. Feeling like someone twisted a knife around in his guts a few times bad. “Just a quick courtroom wedding, and then it was back to pack lists and updating my will. One of those “I’m getting deployed, and I want to put you on my next of kin list” things. You know how that goes.”
He does. Nearly had one of those himself before his last deployment. Good thing they reconsidered because it wouldn’t have worked out, either. He knows two or three guys where it did but it really wouldn’t have for him. Not with that girl, and it’s good they never went through with it. She went on to marry a carpenter while he served in Bosnia, and he was the first one to congratulate her. Still sometimes talks to her.
And then he realizes something. It’s weird, and it seems to be kind of out of the blue but well. It’s as if some things click into place, now that he knows about the ex-husband and the courtroom deployment-induced wedding. About how it never worked out.
The one thing that never stopped confusing him was the question of why Laura would terminate their relationship when they were finally free to call it that. When they could well and truly be together without having to make it look like they weren’t much more than friends with benefits, that there weren’t real feelings involved. When that was probably exactly why Laura dumped him when he was just about to tell her that he wanted something real with her, something deep, something official. Because she didn’t want it to become official. Because she was afraid that making it official would make it end.
Apparently, that divorce fucked her up more than she’d ever care to admit and he’s tempted to tell her so, call her out on it, gently but firmly because that’s not “having nothing in common with each other”. That’s not “irreconcilable differences”. That’s something they could actually fix, and oh God, does he still want to fix it so fucking bad.
But then Springsteen croons, “She’ll let you into the parts of herself… that’ll bring you down,” and he decides that calling her out on it would be a really stupid thing to do. And instead does something that’s probably even more stupid: he stands up, extending his hand towards her, raising his eyebrow in what he hopes she recognizes as a questioning manner.
Of course, she has to be all Laura Cadman about it, though, asking, “What?” in a slightly annoyed voice, just because she can.
Just because she’s probably afraid of his answer. He’s past the point of no return, though, probably has been ever since “Secret Garden” started to play, ever since he started helping her get back on her feet in the weight room, ever since he stood outside of her hospital room and tried not to care about her nearly having died that day. He’s too far gone not to utter quietly, “I know it’s not a wedding but that doesn’t mean we can’t dance.”
She gets up, even takes a step towards him. Doesn’t take his hand, though. “We never did. Dance with each other, I mean.”
“No, we didn’t.” It’s true, that. First annual first responder dance event after she came to the station, they were too worried about people reading too much into the tension between them to be seen together on the dance floor. Second time around, they couldn’t even be in the same room with each other without everyone’s conversations turning into whispered gossip and assumptions. He still hates to think back to that particular evening.
There’s still Springsteen singing the song she wanted to dance to at her wedding on, though, and he’s not in the mood to waste that opportunity. Which is probably why it comes out a little gruffer than he wanted when he asks her, “So, you game or not?”
He can see that she considers telling him no but at, “Into her secret garden, don’t think twice,” she takes that final step, takes his hand, lets him put the other one on her waist and gets so close to him that he can hear her whisper, “Just shut up and dance, Blues,” as clear as if she’d have said it out loud.
And he does. Shuts up and leads her in a slow dance in his office, two sets of feet in work boots shuffling along the linoleum, her head on his shoulder because of course she’s just the right height to be able to do that and his cheek against her hair because he couldn’t resist doing it if his life depended on it.
He’s about to close his eyes when he spots a figure across the dorm room. Big hulking Ronon Dex, just looking at him. Them. Nothing menacing or warning in his eyes and posture. Laura Cadman doesn’t need or tolerate that kind of someone big brothering her and they both know it. Just a moment of a calculating gaze and then a nod because maybe Laura would never accept being patronized like that but Dex is still her lieutenant and LTs, the good ones, they look out for their people. He doesn’t actually need Dex’s approval for anything but it’s good to have it, anyway.
Even if this will never lead to anything.
It’s not going to, he keeps telling himself while he holds her and dances with her to the song she always wanted to dance to at her wedding but right now, right here, that’s not important, anyway. It’s never going to lead to anything but he’s gonna take that one little scrap he’s been given and make the most of it, and from the way she’s moving with him, he thinks he can tell that she’s doing the same. That’s all they can do, all they need to do, and he’s okay with that. So he just closes his eyes, in the end, and smiles. Paperwork can wait just a couple more minutes, anyway.
Fandom: Stargate
Rating: T
Genres: het
Summary: It's a quiet night at Milwaukee Fire Department's Engine 12 fire house. Time for confessions and another Springsteen ballad.
A/N: Honestly? I loved writing this one. I have a thing for late night conversations and for slow dancing, and I guess it was only a question of time until I go and combine the two, yet again. Also, this was supposed to be the last part in the firefighters!AU but then things (namely: bunnies) happened and it became a four parter and then other things happened and yeah no, for the time being, this is going to stay a four parter. But yeah, one day far in the future, I might tell mackenziesmomma to release that Ronon/Keller bunny that assaulted me two nights ago and you'll get that one, too. Anyway. Here you go!
PS.: You can see the other finished stories here.
( I've Tried So Hard, Baby )
( Badlands Start Treating Us Good )
All the Boys You Sent Away
“And I know you’re lonely
For words that I ain’t spoken
But tonight we’ll be free
All the promises’ll be broken
There were ghosts in the eyes
Of all the boys you sent away”
Bruce Springsteen, “Thunder Road”
It’s a slow night. Hard to believe, after weeks of people apparently having gone off the rails or finally lost all resemblance of common sense in the station’s neighborhood. But there hasn’t been a call tonight since a simple fender bender at West Euclid and 26th they didn’t even need to get out the heavy equipment for about three hours ago, so the entire house is finally starting to let themselves relax a little. He uses it to catch up on paperwork that doesn’t need any catching up in truth.
The alternative would be sitting in the common room and have everyone trying to gauge how things are currently between Laura and him. It’s no alternative at all.
So. Paperwork it is. Sure, he could just pack up his incident reports from the last four weeks and put them on Sheppard’s desk, post-it on it saying “Would have put your signature on them, too, if that wouldn’t get me thrown into jail”, his usual none too subtle reminder for Sheppard to do his own damn paperwork. Shep’s been his captain for four years, former Air Force himself, and he’s near ready putting all his money on “never turning in his paperwork on time just out of spite” as the mysterious reason why a helo pilot would have to completely retrain after being thrown out of the Air Force. Must have been something big that got him discredited so thoroughly that he placed his chances of ever finding a job flying rotary wing or any other aircraft below zero and went in a completely new direction. The Air Force is that anal about turning in your reports on time.
Anyway, he could have just done that and gone to bed, or maybe go into the kitchen, see if there’s any of that stew left that Laura and Keller prepared, never quite getting rid of the habit of cooking for the rest of the watch, despite neither of them being a rookie anymore. He could have done that, and he opted for paperwork. Maybe his sister was right every time she called him an idiot when they were kids. Still does, occasionally, come to think of it.
Wait, where was… “And people keep asking me why I won’t even consider taking the lieutenant test at some unspecified day in the far off future.”
“Huh?” Damn. It’s out before he can get his surprise under wraps, and it makes him sound exactly like the idiot his sister still thinks he is sometimes.
Laura just grins and gestures into the general direction of his desk with her chin. “All that paperwork. Would just about kill me.”
She’s standing in his doorway, leaning against the jamb with her shoulder, legs crossed at the ankles, arms crossed in front of her chest. Weirdly enough, she still looks more relaxed than he has seen her in a long time. Been a week since she finally got back on duty, and he’s glad that it’s obviously doing her good. He’s not sure if he could have taken even one more day of all that frustrated, nervous energy wafting off her whenever he met her. He’d really tried telling himself that there’s no reason that it’s affecting him if she can’t get back on duty, do what she loves, what she is, but yeah, it was. Badly.
He leans back and something surprising leaves his mouth before he can think better of it. “You’d make a good one, though.” It’s her turn to give him a “Huh?” look and he feels himself compelled to add, “Lieutenant, I mean. You’d make a pretty decent lieutenant.”
Now she rolls her eyes and gives him a deadpan expression. “Good or pretty decent? Make up your mind, Air Force.”
Yeah, well. He probably should discipline her for that or at least give her a warning but then again, it’s not like she’s completely wrong. Also, he does understand her way of trying to deflect praise because it embarrasses her without being too obvious about it. He grimaces. “You know what I mean.”
He half expects her to stick out her tongue or something because she never believed in that whole “You’re in your late twenties, not a teenager anymore. Act your age.” thing but in the end, she just rolls her eyes and then gestures towards the papers on his desk again. “So, anything exciting in there?”
Sadly, no. Maybe that was why he opted for paperwork in the first place. He shakes his head. “Nope. Just run-of-the-mill incident reports.”
She nods and for a moment it looks like she’s going to give him the old “well then, I gotta go do stuff” spiel and leave but then something really weird happens. Right out of the blue, he hears her say, “I used to be married.”
It takes him at least a minute or so to come up with an answer, and because he’s still in somewhat of a daze after that confession, it’s only a meager and slightly confused, “What?”
Her first answer is to shrug and hunch her shoulders and stick her hands in the pockets of her uniform trousers. Her second is, “I used to be married,” sounding like she’s trying really hard to keep sounding casual, “Got divorced four years ago.” Actually, she isn’t doing too bad on the whole casual thing. Well, all until the next sentence. “And to be honest, I have no idea why I’m telling you this. I think I should just…”
He should let her leave. Should let her keep what’s left of her dignity because that sudden admission clearly confused her at least as much as it confused him. And yet that’s not what he does, instead asks, his voice way too quiet for his taste, “Why didn’t you? Tell me, I mean.”
She nearly leaves anyway, he can see that in her entire posture, like a cornered animal torn between fight or flight. But then she just shrugs and rubs her neck and it tells him everything he needs to know. “I don’t know. It just… never came up, did it?”
Strangely enough, she is right. In the eight months they were not-really-together together, they never really talked about any ex-partners. To be honest, they didn’t talk much at all. Not about the stuff that mattered, anyway. He takes a deep breath before saying, “If you mean I could have asked…”
“No, oh God, that wasn’t what I was insinuating, I just…”
“…you’re right.” That kind of surprised himself as well. Mostly because it’s the truth. Of course she could, maybe even should have told him about something as important as a divorce but it’s not that he never asked because he never had the opportunity. Never asking about ex-partners was a deliberate choice he - both of them, really - made and he’s slowly starting to realize that maybe it wasn’t really a good choice.
She blinks and needs a moment to come up with an answer. “What?”
It’s his turn to shrug, try to cover up the embarrassment about having to admit that maybe he wasn’t exactly without fault concerning the break-up, either. “I could have asked. I never did.”
Slowly, she shakes her head. “No. We never… talked about that kind of stuff.”
“No.” He’s starting to think they should have. He’s starting to think that they should have talked about a lot of things, not just ex-partners. He’s starting to think that maybe that could have spared them a lot of pain and heartbreak. He makes another conscious choice, right here, right now. One he should have made a long time ago. “You want to talk about it now?”
She still looks uncomfortable, all hunched shoulders and still kind of ready to bolt at any moment, so it surprises him a little when she says, “Not really but I got nothing else to do. You?”
“Only this.” He gestures to the paper on his desk, shrugging.
It makes her, of all things, grin and then apparently accept her fate because most of the nervousness and tension seems to leak out of her. Probably leaving her feeling a little tired. Maybe he should tell her to go to… “Meaning you’re bored to death.” Weird how, despite never really talking about the important stuff, the deep stuff, they still know each other scarily well. He was bored to death, and she’s probably the only one who ever caught on to paperwork more often than not being a kind of excuse to closet himself away and get some peace and quiet in this ever busy station instead of some kind of hobby, like the rest of the station probably still thinks. She changes her posture once more, standing up a little straighter, squaring her shoulders, as if she’s about to walk into battle. “Alright. Come on, ask me. Anything you want, free for all, only tonight.”
So. She must have made a conscious choice, too, then. He takes a moment to consider what to ask her, how to go about it, how careful he wants to tread, but in the end, he moves around a little, hopes she recognizes the invitation to come in and sit down on his bed for what it is. He goes for the most obvious question. “Who was he?”
She takes her time but in the end, moves away from the door and sits down on his bed, like he invited her to. She doesn’t do it like she used to, flopping down smack dab in the middle, like she owned it but instead goes for sitting down at the edge, a little awkwardly with one of her legs on the bed and the other dangling down. Still not fully at ease with being back in his office. He pretends he’s not at least a little hurt by that.
When she made herself at least semi-comfortable, she answers his question. “Rodney McKay. Canadian. Professor at the college I got my degree from. Thought he was God’s gift to science.” She doesn’t look at him, her face changing from casual to a little grin and he tries not to feel jealous of her ex-husband. It does help that the next thing she does is grimace and roll her eyes, adding, “Bit of a jerk, actually.”
It doesn’t really surprise him. It’s not that he thinks that Laura likes to go for assholes who treat her like shit - because she doesn’t, never would - just that she seems to like guys who challenge her, who can stand up to her whirlwind personality and her slightly volatile temper. He kind of hopes at least that’s what she saw in him. And of course he just has to ask, “Is that why you got divorced?”
At that, she shakes her head, still not looking at him, just in the general direction of his office window, frowning. “No, we just… it just didn’t work out.” His gaze falls on her hands, and he sees those long, slender fingers with the calluses people stupidly keep being surprised by fiddling with the hem of the trouser leg that’s up on the bed. “It was just… Well. All water under the bridge now, anyway.”
There’s more to it, clearly but really, even if she really means it and tonight will be the only time she’s ever going to talk about it, he’s not going to push it. That new thing that they have, with the oh so slow process of re-getting to know each other, is too precious to him to jeopardize it just to satisfy his curiosity. He leans forward, his elbow on his knees and carefully says, “Four years is a long time.”
She nods, obviously trying to stop with the fiddling and not fully succeeding. But at least she looks at him again. “Yeah.”
He considers releasing her, changing the topic like they used to do whenever things seemed to get too personal when they were still sleeping with each other but then again, that was probably what got them in this mess in the first place, so he instead says gently, “You still talk to each other?”
“Yeah.” That does surprise him and yeah, it’s not like he isn’t a least a little bit jealous but then again, an ex-husband is an ex-husband for a good reason, just like ex-boyfriends are what they are for a reason. “It wasn’t a messy divorce or anything, we just don’t have much in common is all.” Was that what got between them, too? That they don’t have much in common? He wishes he wouldn’t circle back to those terrible two or three months after she dumped him when he kept wrecking his head about it maybe having been something he said or did but yeah, for a very short moment, it’s all back. He’s almost grateful that she keeps talking, adds, “I mean, he still thinks I’m wasting my “potential” here, and I still think that grad school would drive me crazy, so. You know.”
He’s pretty sure it wasn’t just that but yeah, given what he knows about her - how she considers firefighting the one thing she is, and how not knowing whether she could go back to it nearly destroyed her and how, let’s be honest, just plain good she is at it when she isn’t falling through ceilings due to no fault of her own - he doesn’t doubt that repeatedly being told that she was wasting her potential was a major turn-off. He nods. “Yeah.”
There is, unfortunately, silence between them yet again and unfortunately, it’s turning into awkward again, too and that’s why he nearly bursts out laughing when the radio he’d had playing on low volume in the background suddenly goes all, “She’ll let you in her house, if you come knockin’ late at night.” It would be an exaggeration if he said that lately, every time something important between them happened, Springsteen was there, too, like some kind of specter to remind them of something but yeah, lately, Springsteen seems to be fucking everywhere. Especially everywhere he meets Laura.
He nearly moves to shut off the damn radio but then he hears her say quietly, “I always liked that song.”
It makes him turn back to her, raise his eyebrow. “Secret Garden?”
She shrugs, looking a little embarrassed. “Yeah. Always kinda wanted to dance to it at my wedding.” That’s… new to him. He knew that she liked Springsteen, of course he knew that. But he always thought it where the pounding rock numbers, the loud, accusing, make a stand pieces like “Murder Incorporated” and “Death To My Hometown” she liked, and stuff like “Born In The USA” that you can sing along to at the top of your voice. The ballads? Not so much. “Only, you know, I never got to.”
His first thought is that well, “Secret Garden” isn’t exactly a wedding dance song in the first place, and maybe Rodney “God’s Gift to Science” McKay didn’t like it as much as she did but then something else comes to his mind. “No wedding dance?”
“Nope.” She tries so very hard not to sound regretful about that. So hard that he’s pretty sure she did want a wedding dance; a real one, with everyone watching and her new husband leading her across the dance floor and whispering jokes about the audience to her and making her laugh. The one he’d have given her, if he had had the chance.
Good thing she’s still concentrating too hard on trying to look like she never really cared for a wedding dance because whoa, that last thought. That was bad. Really bad. Feeling like someone twisted a knife around in his guts a few times bad. “Just a quick courtroom wedding, and then it was back to pack lists and updating my will. One of those “I’m getting deployed, and I want to put you on my next of kin list” things. You know how that goes.”
He does. Nearly had one of those himself before his last deployment. Good thing they reconsidered because it wouldn’t have worked out, either. He knows two or three guys where it did but it really wouldn’t have for him. Not with that girl, and it’s good they never went through with it. She went on to marry a carpenter while he served in Bosnia, and he was the first one to congratulate her. Still sometimes talks to her.
And then he realizes something. It’s weird, and it seems to be kind of out of the blue but well. It’s as if some things click into place, now that he knows about the ex-husband and the courtroom deployment-induced wedding. About how it never worked out.
The one thing that never stopped confusing him was the question of why Laura would terminate their relationship when they were finally free to call it that. When they could well and truly be together without having to make it look like they weren’t much more than friends with benefits, that there weren’t real feelings involved. When that was probably exactly why Laura dumped him when he was just about to tell her that he wanted something real with her, something deep, something official. Because she didn’t want it to become official. Because she was afraid that making it official would make it end.
Apparently, that divorce fucked her up more than she’d ever care to admit and he’s tempted to tell her so, call her out on it, gently but firmly because that’s not “having nothing in common with each other”. That’s not “irreconcilable differences”. That’s something they could actually fix, and oh God, does he still want to fix it so fucking bad.
But then Springsteen croons, “She’ll let you into the parts of herself… that’ll bring you down,” and he decides that calling her out on it would be a really stupid thing to do. And instead does something that’s probably even more stupid: he stands up, extending his hand towards her, raising his eyebrow in what he hopes she recognizes as a questioning manner.
Of course, she has to be all Laura Cadman about it, though, asking, “What?” in a slightly annoyed voice, just because she can.
Just because she’s probably afraid of his answer. He’s past the point of no return, though, probably has been ever since “Secret Garden” started to play, ever since he started helping her get back on her feet in the weight room, ever since he stood outside of her hospital room and tried not to care about her nearly having died that day. He’s too far gone not to utter quietly, “I know it’s not a wedding but that doesn’t mean we can’t dance.”
She gets up, even takes a step towards him. Doesn’t take his hand, though. “We never did. Dance with each other, I mean.”
“No, we didn’t.” It’s true, that. First annual first responder dance event after she came to the station, they were too worried about people reading too much into the tension between them to be seen together on the dance floor. Second time around, they couldn’t even be in the same room with each other without everyone’s conversations turning into whispered gossip and assumptions. He still hates to think back to that particular evening.
There’s still Springsteen singing the song she wanted to dance to at her wedding on, though, and he’s not in the mood to waste that opportunity. Which is probably why it comes out a little gruffer than he wanted when he asks her, “So, you game or not?”
He can see that she considers telling him no but at, “Into her secret garden, don’t think twice,” she takes that final step, takes his hand, lets him put the other one on her waist and gets so close to him that he can hear her whisper, “Just shut up and dance, Blues,” as clear as if she’d have said it out loud.
And he does. Shuts up and leads her in a slow dance in his office, two sets of feet in work boots shuffling along the linoleum, her head on his shoulder because of course she’s just the right height to be able to do that and his cheek against her hair because he couldn’t resist doing it if his life depended on it.
He’s about to close his eyes when he spots a figure across the dorm room. Big hulking Ronon Dex, just looking at him. Them. Nothing menacing or warning in his eyes and posture. Laura Cadman doesn’t need or tolerate that kind of someone big brothering her and they both know it. Just a moment of a calculating gaze and then a nod because maybe Laura would never accept being patronized like that but Dex is still her lieutenant and LTs, the good ones, they look out for their people. He doesn’t actually need Dex’s approval for anything but it’s good to have it, anyway.
Even if this will never lead to anything.
It’s not going to, he keeps telling himself while he holds her and dances with her to the song she always wanted to dance to at her wedding but right now, right here, that’s not important, anyway. It’s never going to lead to anything but he’s gonna take that one little scrap he’s been given and make the most of it, and from the way she’s moving with him, he thinks he can tell that she’s doing the same. That’s all they can do, all they need to do, and he’s okay with that. So he just closes his eyes, in the end, and smiles. Paperwork can wait just a couple more minutes, anyway.