DVD Commentary meme part 2

[bluflamingo]

From Change Unchanging:

“Yeah, yeah.” Nate turns the TV on, mutes the volume. He doesn’t recognize the city in the background behind the reporter, but it’s not in the desert, so he doesn’t care.

“Brad’s back soon,” Mike says, like he’s trying to be casual.

Poor Mike. He loves Nate dearly, but God, sometimes he wants to hit him over the head with a clue.

“How d’you hear that?” Nate asks. “You’ve been in the country less than a day.”

“I got ears everywhere,” Mike says. Does Mike say ‘got’ like this? No idea. I probably contradicted myself later, but I wrote that line thinking that Mike had actually spoken to Brad before he spoke to Nate, which is how he knows. And also partly why he’s trying to drag Nate to him – Brad’s worried about Nate, and so now Mike is as well.

“So get him to come help with the painting,” Nate suggests.

There’s a pause, then Mike says, “Figured he’d be busy visiting you.” And that would be the maybe contradiction. Though maybe Mike’s just trying to get the conversation going.

“Nope,” Nate says. It doesn’t come out as lightly as he intends, but he can’t have this conversation with Mike, no matter how good friends they are. Even in the months since Nate left the corps, Mike’s never said a word about how Nate doesn’t have a girl, and Nate’s quite happy to keep it that way. He’s definitely not up for discussing Brad’s love life, or his place in it. Poor Nate, too. He’s so isolated in this story – he doesn’t want to be friends with the other ex-military people, doesn’t want the reminder, or indeed the risk if something does happen with him and Brad, and yet he can’t make it work with the civilians either, because they’re too different. He hardly talks to anyone in this story, he’s mostly physically alone, and he’s got literally no-one he feels comfortable talking to about his relationship with Brad.

“Nate,” Mike says, concern and warning all mixed up together. The vast majority of which Mike is well aware of, because Nate of course isn’t his first officer.

“Everything’s fine,” Nate says firmly.

“And that’s why you called me at one in the morning,” Mike says dryly.

“I knew you’d be up,” Nate says. “Wanted to say welcome back.” There’s very little description of how Nate says stuff, or what he’s thinking when he says it in this bit – is he lying? Telling the truth? Both? I don’t think he’s ready to admit that this is mostly a lie, that he wanted Mike, who supported him in Iraq and advised him, to do so again, when he’s getting closer and closer to breaking point with Brad.

“I wrangle officers for a living, Nate.”

Nate grits his teeth, closes his eyes. He survived Iraq and everything that came with it. This should not be the hard part. “I’m fine. Brad, to the best of my knowledge, is fine. Everything’s fine.”

“You need to work on your delivery if you want to be convincing,” Mike advises him. “And I didn’t ask about Brad.” Oops. Way to make it obvious, Nate.

Nate doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t want to be thinking about Brad, or Sean, or what he could tell Mike without saying something he’ll regret. Because God forbid he let it be simple for once. Nate’s biggest virtue and problem – he thinks too much.

“You should come stay for a few days,” Mike says firmly, sounding a little too much like Nate’s dad for Nate to be entirely comfortable.

“I’m not good company,” Nate says.

“No kidding,” Mike says, laughing at him. Nate joins in, a little.

“Sorry. It’s nothing, seriously. Nothing major, anyway. Don’t worry about it.”

“Someone’s got to,” Mike says, suddenly serious. “Might as well be me.”

“I’m the last person anyone needs to worry about,” Nate says. Which he does say in complete sincerity, because he’s not being shot at, he’s not on the front line, as though everyone has a finite amount of worry to give.

“Never let that stop me before,” Mike says. But he has Mike, who’ll totally call him on it, because Nate’s still his in the same way that the platoon are still Nate’s.



From Dandelion Clock:

I have a very long document on my computer of ideas for stories I might one day write, one of which was basically this fic, which only turned into an actual fic when I got the picture prompt and went ‘oh! That.’ Which is actually how a lot of my fic ideas get turned into actual fic.

John can’t quite look away again, lets his gaze slide slightly out of focus. This feels close enough to familiar that he can’t quite relax yet. It’s been a year, but he can still replay in perfect clarity the evening that Rodney stood in John’s room and told him that Jennifer Keller had asked him for a drink, and that he couldn’t keep sleeping with John if he went with her. It had been such a clear goodbye that John had barely needed to nod, letting Rodney off the hook. He might be over Rodney now, but the memory still hurts.

Well of course it hurts! John thinks of it as a friends with benefits relationship, because he can’t let himself think of it as being in love, because then it *really* hurts.

“Hey,” Ronon says. He shakes John’s arm till John looks back at him. “I’m not McKay.”

I love Ronon as the guy who looks at the situation and sees the stuff you don’t want seen. I know it’s a bit of a fic cliché, but it’s a cliché cos it could be true – he was a runner for seven years, he knows how to look.

John feels his face warm, humiliated. He doesn’t need anyone to know how he stupidly believed it meant something when Rodney came to him after he broke things off with Katie Brown.

And poor John, who got hurt and doesn’t want anyone to know. I think that’s when Ronon figured it out, because John was much happier for a while, then much less so, but trying to pretend he was, and Rodney was dating Keller. And for John, the only way he can still be Rodney’s friend is to not let himself think about how Rodney was leading him on – not that Rodney ever said it was forever, but he let John think that, maybe cos it suited him, maybe cos he just didn’t realise – and it’s the age old problem of falling for your best friend: they’re the person you want to tell, and you can’t.

“John,” Ronon says, very softly. His other hand comes up to cup John’s cheek, fingers settling into John’s hair. John’s eyes slide closed, and he tilts his head into Ronon’s warm palm. He’s glad he can’t see his own face, feels off-balance, tired. Uncertain at the prospect of actually getting what he wants, still not quite ready to believe it. “John,” Ronon says again.

Tired is one of those adjectives I seem to use a lot for John, and for Cam, as a kind of synonym for sad or unhappy or just at that point where everything is too much to deal with, except none of those are really words they’d use for themselves. Also because John always looks like he needs about three hours a night more sleep than he’s actually getting.

Also – I, like most of fandom, have a huge thing for people calling John by his first name. He has a nice sounding name, and it’s a nice shorthand for ‘don’t freak out, I might love you.’



From First Day Of School:

Season 2 fic, early stuff :o) From before I got into the habit of writing John and Lorne as knowing each other already, or being good friends. Also (I think) my first try at writing Lorne point of view.

It’s easy to tell the Marines who came through the gate the first time from the new ones, who came through for the siege and on the Daedalus with Lorne, and not just because the new ones still have the same air of combined intimidation and awe at Atlantis. Wow, that’s a clunky sentence. What was wrong, self, with ‘first wave’ and ‘second wave’? Other than sounding like an essay on feminism. Most of the Marines who came on the Daedalus have the gene – too precious a resource to risk in a fight they weren’t sure they’d win – but so do a good portion of the original Marines. It’s more than that. Because it’s not about Atlantis, it’s about Sheppard.

The old Marines take everything to Sheppard, catching him in the corridors and the mess hall, bypassing Lorne and the two captains left from the siege completely. I just love the idea that Sheppard trained them, without meaning to, into this casual command style. They’ve got no problem following a direct order, and they’re polite, helpful, even friendly, up to a point, but they’re definitely Sheppard’s Marines. Lorne guesses it comes from a year being trapped with no way home and the prospect of imminent death constantly hanging over them, but still… Sheppard shot their commanding officer and stepped into his place when he was only ever meant to be there to turn things on, and Lorne has no idea how he won them over; Sheppard’s brand of laid-back charm doesn’t seem like it would work on the USMC.

I know how-they needed a leader, and Sheppard was what they had, and Atlantis is scary and dangerous and their CO was killed on the first day, but there’s Sheppard, who’s supposed to be nothing, stepping up. Any port in a storm, and as it happens, Sheppard’s good at it.



From Almost, But Not Quite:

Unlike Keller, this Mitchell is exactly like the Mitchell Evan knows in his own world, stable and reassuring and always knowing the right thing to say. If we’re in ‘Sheppard, Lorne and Mitchell are close’ territory, which we are in this fic, my standard is: Sheppard gets it but usually can’t help, Mitchell may not get it, but knows how to help anyway, and Lorne does his best from a position of not enough power to do as much as he wants. This is the guy who propped Evan up for three days while Sheppard was taking back Atlantis See? It’s a ‘they’re close’ fic. In my head, real-Sheppard and real-Mitchell are sleeping together, which is all kinds of awkward when Sheppard realises real-Lorne and alternate-Mitchell are as well and they all thought he was going to be killed, the guy who took Evan and Sheppard and Ronon for a beer when they went back to Earth with Carson’s body No idea what the other three were doing, mind., the guy who sends football games in the databurst and corn chips on the Daedalus, and the fact that this isn’t him at all doesn’t make it any less true.

Ah, the joys of ‘meeting our au counterparts’ fic: all those questions about how much what you feel for someone is about them and how much is about the other version of them. Because this Cam is very definitely not the same as SG1 Cam, and yet to Lorne, he is.



From Never As Bad As Anticipated:

I usually write pretty much from beginning to end in sequential order, for various reasons (most commonly that I don’t actually know what’s going to be happening in a few scenes) but this scene, and the one before where Rodney comes on to John were the exceptions – I wrote them before I even knew how John and Cam were going to wind up together.

"And we kissed," John added, cutting him off in a rush. "He said – it doesn't matter what he said. He kissed me, and I didn't stop him."

"Okay," Cam said again, glad that John couldn't see his face. He wasn't blind, he'd seen the way John looked at McKay. Apparently he'd been kidding himself when he thought the looking had stopped lately. He wondered if he ought to move his hands, but John was still leaning against him. He really wished John had said that first, that he wanted to take the thing he'd waited years to be offered.

Cam’s pretty observant in this, but he somehow fails to notice the big clue to what John’s trying to tell him, which is – John’s still touching him, and John doesn’t really touch.

"I'm sorry," John said quietly. "I don't know what I was – I wasn't thinking. It was just a kiss, really, it didn't go any further. I mean, he wanted to, but I –" John's breath caught and he sounded utterly miserable. Cam realized suddenly that this wasn't John breaking up with him; this was John expecting to be tossed out, bracing himself for rejection. That John had come to break up with him first, out of some bizarre desire to spare him whatever it was that John thought he was going to suffer.

I think the narration in that bit got added in after beta-reading, because one of my betas pointed out that Cam was too forgiving, too easily, when John just went and confessed, as he did in the original.

He bit his lip, hard, against the urge to laugh, fairly sure that would send John running. "It's okay," he said. "Not that I'm all that keen on you kissing people other than me, but, you know, these things happen." He didn't point out that John had been in love with McKay since long before he and Cam started working together, was probably still in love with him, a bit.

I wish, now, that I’d done something else with the fact that Cam knows how John feels about Rodney, earlier in the story, because it only comes up in this bit, where really it should be part of what affects how Cam acts towards Rodney. Too late now.

John lifted his head, his face utterly blank as he looked at Cam for a long minute, and then something in him seemed to loosen. When he twisted up and kissed Cam this time, it was more like his usual kisses, soft and affectionate.

Cam ignored the faint taste of gratitude under it all. It was, he supposed, one way to avoid the relationship/monogamy conversation.



From Gray Skies Surround Me:

Mitchell’s hand is on his arm, thumb rubbing softly against the grain of the hairs there. John doesn’t remember him putting it there, wants to twitch out from under it. Forces himself not to, to let the reassurance soak into his skin instead. One of my things about Vegas-John was that no-one ever touches him unless they want something, usually sex or violence. So Cam, who’s physically affectionate, is a weird, nice thing. “No,” he says, because maybe he needs it to be out loud, where he can’t take it back. “I don’t want to go.”

And my other thing was the whole Atlantis yes or no question, and what John owes to the program for what he perceives as saving him, even if they pretty much put him in that position to begin with. And I like the idea of the decision only being real when he’s said it to someone.

Mitchell smiles, smooth and easy, and says, “So don’t. Stay with me. Us.” When I was imagining this scene, it was before I realized that they weren’t actually going to get together in the story, and I thought I’d end up cutting this line. Though it ended up working as a sign that John’s not the only one with an attraction.

John shakes his head, unsure what he means. “You shouldn’t…” Trust me. Want me. Be my friend.

“Shouldn’t what?” Mitchell asks. His hand is still on John’s arm. Maybe this is more than just a regular bar, because no-one’s even looked at them.

“You saved me,” John says. It’s worse than the end of what he started, but it’s what he *can* say, drawn out like lies when it’s true. “The air strike – the Wraith was getting ready to feed on me, he saw the planes and…”

For me, that’s the big thing John does for Cam in this story – tell him that he’s not to blame for what happened to John – even though John at least probably doesn’t realize how much it matters.

Blood, and pain creeping up faster than the numbness, and how much worse could it be to be fed on? If it meant the end came faster, except the Wraith would be stronger, do more damage, and it would have been for nothing, just like everything else. And the roar of the planes, like something out of a movie, and John remembers trying to run for help, doesn’t remember why he tried. Remembers wanting to live, and lying looking up at the sky and feeling a strange sense of peace, with the trailer burning, knowing he wasn’t going to see anything else, ever.

Vegas-John just breaks my heart, this mix of duty and wanting to be recognised and be better than he has been, with the fatalistic maybe it’s better to die thing. Also, I thought the end of the episode was so unclear about whether he wanted to die or not, I wanted to explain my position.

Mitchell’s hand tightens on his arm, and John comes back with a gasp. One thing to love about drug-laced sleep: no flashbacks, no dreams. I think Vegas-John being on the edge of a drinking problem as a coping mechanism is probably a fandom wide interpretation of him, but it makes a lot of sense, to me, after he’s thrown out of the air force and the people he went to save die. And now he’s drinking Coke, which is his sort of nod to wanting to feel better.

“Did you read my record?” he asks. One more thing he didn’t mean to say. He wants to be drinking, so he could blame it on the alcohol. Thinks if anything’s to blame it’s the way he can feel something coming, the urge to slam on the brakes. He’s not ready. “Afghanistan, what happened out there, the people who died. Who I got killed. And other stuff. There’s been – other stuff, since I got discharged, things that – that I shouldn’t –“

Except the truth is, he’ll never be ready, and he’s not sure how much longer he can go on waiting for a day that’s never coming. He’s always been better at action, and maybe he just needs to find a speck of trust and jump.

I have a huge thing for people saying, or demonstrating, that they trust someone they’re close to, and I think Vegas-John needs someone to trust in as much as he needs someone who trusts in him, both of which he gets with Cam.

“You must be really desperate to want me,” he says, low to the table, and wonders if Mitchell will hear the real meaning: I need you to tell me why you do.

“I’m not desperate,” Mitchell says, just as low. “And I read your file, the real version. The Air Force one and the Vegas PD one. Look at me.” John forces his eyes up, sees nothing but open blue eyes. Mitchell won’t lie to him; he trusts that, at least.