Phil spent the first few years of the millennium acing high school chemistry and biology and physics, drawing pencil renderings of Daft Punk in robot helmets, and himself with no face. He liked the idea that the drugs were killing his brain. He did his best not to go to college, not to think about the ideas and patterns that leapt into his mind with intense certainty – things like universal constants, the conditions required for cold fusion, the permeable nature of the speed of light. The thoughts grabbed him like a hand around his neck, squeezing, and he never really slept.

He wrote his theories anonymously on the internet, hoping someone else, some desperate post-grad somewhere, would discover them and take them away from him.

Instead, an air force officer called him. She talked about space travel.

Jerusalem :)

Elizabeth was young when she studied in Jerusalem, part of her year of intensive Arabic studies. The religious significance was lost on her, emotionally. The white stone buildings were beautiful, and she was impressed by the tangible remnants of ancient history, but to her it was a project, an example of how deeply humans could hate each other. For her family, church had always been a social obligation. None of the Weirs would ever have considered making a pilgrimage anywhere except the Rose Bowl.

She learned Arabic, and conversational Hebrew, enough to read street maps and order falafel. She'd need more, if this became her geographical specialty in her conflict resolution studies, but she was drawn north, to the Balkans, the former Eastern Bloc, Russia.

Her roommate insisted she see the religious sites in her last week there. "This is the most sacred place in the universe," she told Elizabeth, without a hint of doubt in her voice.

Elizabeth felt empty when she considered that, so she tried to put that thought away.

Ariel

She spends more and more of her time at the winter castle. It's inland, four hours by carriage from the sea. She learns to ride a horse, and spends time in the woods, trying to feel at ease. The horse doesn't talk, or if he does, she doesn't speak his language. She tries to be kind to him anyway, feeding him extra carrots, and feeling again like she has lost her voice.

Eric builds her a stable, and lavishes jewelry on her, and gardens, and time. She doesn't feel empty when he's there, not the way she does when he's conducting affairs of state and she's left at their summer castle by the water, watching the governess teach her children to swim.

cinnamon

John goes to great lengths to get cinnamon bears for the kids. In the city, Athosian children are mixed in with Ford's daughter Kamala and Doctor Wheatley's boys and Linskaya's son (who's too young for solid food regardless) and the remaining four toddlers from Atlantis's first baby boom. He bribes the pilot of the Daedalus for a candy store run for enough sugar for all the kids, but he's most worried about the Earth-parented ones. Candy is their birthright.

Elizabeth makes some halfhearted arguments, more for the sake of making conversation. He argues back more widely - we're stunting their emotional growth! it's not like they can become addicts out here anyway! they're not even your kids!

When he's mid-tirade, he sees her grinning at him, that same "got you!" smile that Kamala has.

"They're kind of my kids," she points out, still smiling.

"So you would deprive them of candy?"

Elizabeth rolls her eyes. "Of course not."

"I knew you were a sucker."

This time, Elizabeth laughs out loud.

*points at icon*

Shiny

Doctor Keller doesn't know how she landed nursery school detail for the day. She volunteered, maybe? Because she loves children? Especially the Atlantis young kids, who are so bright and creative (and healthy!) and funny?

All she knows is that she's been a princess, a Wraith, a patient (they haven't got tired of testing each other's reflexes or borrowing her stethescope), and the sole member of the Art Experiment Cleanup Brigade.

Arit, the two-year-old Athosian boy who runs off so often she decided to just carry him around the rest of the day, likes her stethescope best. He uses it on her nose, her ear, various points of her head ("hear you think!"), and once, when she looked away for a split-second, most of the way inside of his mouth.

"Shiny!" he announces, listening to her throat with the stethescope. It's not his favorite word (that would be no with a side of no way), but he uses it as a generic adjective for anything exciting to the senses – cold is shiny, and funny sounds, and the weird grain cereal that fizzes like pop rocks.

She checks the time. Almost 1800, when she'll be free for the day to return to the infirmary and either finish analyzing cell cultures or fall asleep on a diagnostic bed. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Kamala and Carlos tugging a book in two different directions and before she can get a word out, the book is torn in half and Carlos is crying.

"Shiny?" she murmurs to Arit, a little brain-dead, and at a loss for other words.

"No," Arit corrects. "Messy."

"Messy," she agrees, and heads over to the troublemakers to lay down the law.

kissing :)

She expects it to feel like stage kissing – no tongue, no organic emotion, thinking about other people.

When he kisses her in the backseat of Jason's SUV it would look terrible on camera – no lighting. No motivation, besides alcohol, and something emotional in him that has made him rage around their fun evening like the world's on fire.

He uses tongue, and she's not thinking about anyone else.

It's unexplained, but goes on for minute. The others are outside arguing about where to go next and who's too drunk to drive, and Torri's grateful she didn't put a seatbelt on yet as she slides down the chair to make room for his hands and his body, pushing against hers.

She gasps out a word, intending it to be more, and it comes out stop. He does, and she wants to take it back, because when he was kissing her, they weren't thinking. It was just the two of them. No lives, no rules. No script.

He doesn't meet her eyes, and he's breathing so heavily she can see his chest heaving, even in the dark of the car. "I had to see," he says, like it's an explanation.

They ignore each other the rest of the night, and drink far too much. They go home separately. She thinks she might have imagined it – she's imagined it before, but in a two-dimensional way, like they're kissing on the set.

It isn't until she gets home, Rachel having bought her a cab and given the driver directions, that she starts shaking, like the inside of her chest is coming apart under seismic stress.

Her phone rings, Joe on the caller ID, like he's the only Joe she knows. She answers it, lying down on her living room carpet.

"I had to see," he says again.

She's quiet, because it doesn't sound like he's saying goodbye, but the words seem like that's what they should mean. Ending something that never started, shared coffee every day, running lines, talking on the phone when they're too tired to sleep, touching when they don't have to.

He says, "I think I want to be with you."

The way his unexpected expected kiss set her on fire surges through her again, and she thinks yes, now, get a cab. Then we can never take it back.

"We'll forget it in the morning," she argues.

He hangs up. Not angrily, just the way they do – always hanging up without saying goodbye, calling back the next time someone thinks of something to say. He calls back a minute later to say good night, and she advises him to drink water.

In the morning, she's hungover, regretting drinking and going out and thinking of him, but she doesn't forget.

brother


(And actually, yes, give me a word in return! Because, although the writing comes slowly with me, and I could never do a whole page like this, I still feel like doing some randomosity at the moment!)

Curiousity. :)

Metal.

tapping

Blankets.

Heart.

Give me one too and I'll see if I can play the game as well as you.

Sicily.

Tumble.

Sister. ;-)

Hee! Oh, what about “book.” :)

Hm....how about "cerulean".

And give me a word, too, and specify a fandom!