Semper Fi

By Ann3

Writer's Note: Okay, for all you Carson/ Laura shippers, and HyperCaz especially, who'd like some serious squee, and the happy ending for our favourite couple which TPTB have chosen to deny us...? Awwww, look at all those waving handies...!

This story is set immediately after Phantoms, so there's some angsty stuff for them both to get through first. I thought that Carson would do some serious soul searching after that eppie, and... well, just see where that soul searching leads him...!

As always, I hope you enjoy !!

Chapter One

Demons At Dawn

She couldn't identify it at first. Couldn't place an unsettling sense that something wasn't quite right.

Gradually, though, small discrepancies made their way from fumbling fingertips to sleep-addled mind. Unoccupied, smoothly cool sheets. Empty space, where a warm and cuddly body should have been. Silence, instead of a gently ka-thumping heartbeat. The absence of strong arms wrapped around her.

From the luxury of a deep, revitalizing sleep, Laura Cadman's eyes suddenly snapped open – a discovery that seemed to be happening a hell of a lot at the moment causing her to wince in dismay.

She was alone. She was making subconscious love to a cold, inanimate pillow instead of warm, living strength. Just as she'd found it yesterday morning, and the morning before that, his side of the bed was empty.

Carson wasn't there.

It wasn't unusual, of course. He was the CMO after all, the living cliché of his chosen profession. As he'd so often wryly lamented, there was 'nae such bloody thing, lass, as an off duty doctor...'

And, as Laura had learned just as ruefully, living so close to the Infirmary had its definite downsides. It was a long running joke between them, that Carson was tuned to its demands with his very own aeriel – that he could hear its doors open long before the call for his presence came through his headset.

Listening carefully, though, trying to do the same, Laura couldn't hear any telltale sounds of mayhem. There was no gurney hurtling along the corridor outside their now unofficially shared quarters. No howls of hypochondriac suffering from Rodney McKay.

There was no reason, other than his beloved research, for Carson to be anywhere except in his bed.

Yet he wasn't there. And Kate Buchanan's quietly despairing plea from two days earlier only served to heighten Laura's concern

'I dinnae care how ye do it, lass... slip him a Mickey Finn, use a bloody stunner on him, if ye must... but for the sake of his health, an' my sanity, will ye please get the stubborn bugger to sleep...?'

Luckily for a thoroughly wired CMO, Laura knew a far more enjoyable way to make him relax. Even the heaviest of burdens could be lifted from his mind by the gentleness of soft, skilled hands. And nothing sent him into his dreams quite so sweetly as being softly stroked and soothed to sleep

She'd sent him there tonight too, just holding him, stroking him, until exhausted eyes finally closed.

Now the warm body that had held and cocooned and cradled hers so snugly in return was gone – a cool breeze through narrowly slatted blinds giving her another clue as to that errant body's whereabouts.

The room was slightly lighter too now, heralding the arrival of Carson's favourite time of day.

Sunrise. Another day of fresh challenges for him to face, a day of new discoveries for him to make. And, when he had a lot on his mind, the best time to go out on his balcony and try and lessen its load.

Wrapping herself in the snug warmth of their quilt, Laura climbed out of bed and padded outside – the discovery she made there filling her with equal measures of relief, concern and weary exasperation

Sure enough, there he was, huddled against its rail in one of their spare duvets, staring out at the ocean. The same gentle breeze which had tugged Laura from her sleep was doing the same to Carson's hair – lifting it into as many adorably tousled tufts as the waves which lapped gently against the city's piers.

Lost in thought, transfixed by scudding clouds above him, he seemed oblivious to its bracing coolness. Rather more worryingly, in Laura's eyes at least, he seemed equally unaware of her presence too. So it was with an odd combination of relief and surprise that she now watched him turn around – his reaction reminding her, as if such reminders were needed, why she loved him so much.

"Laura...! Och, crap, love, did – did I wake ye...? An' there ye were, so tired and needin' your sleep... I – I didnae think ye would hear me, an'... I'm sorry, lass, I – I really thought I'd been quiet enough..."

Knowing, from wry experience, that if she didn't get a word in now she never would, Laura just smiled – a gentle hand across his mouth, the deep kiss which took its place, working its usual silencing charms.

The spellbound expression it left behind, though, still wasn't quite genuine enough for Laura's liking – prompting an instinctive tightening of her arms around him, the very softest of prompting questions.

"You want to talk about it...?"

Yesterday, and last night, she'd asked the same question. She'd met with stricken silence each time. Now, though, to her open relief, the tight-lipped silence was followed by a shaky nod of concession.