Titles: Tuneful in the dark
Author: FreeWrite
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate Atlantis, nor do I own any of the songs mentioned in this fic.
Summary: It's late and they can't sleep. Who or what keeps them company?
Authors Note: I blame Trish, she just had to ask the question on the Atlantica Board about what type of music our intrepid hero's listened to and this little plot bunny bit me in the Mik'ta and won't leave me alone.
The person at the beginning and the end has no name, I guess we'll have to call him random expedition member 1.
It was late and he was tired.
No…
Tired was the wrong word for it, he was exhausted, worn out, shattered, bushed and dead weary all at once and wanted nothing more than to get to his quarters and go to sleep.
Finally making it he didn't bother to turn on the lights but merely stripped down to his boxers and lay down on his bed.
45 minutes later he was still awake, his mind still going over the events of the day. It hadn't been a particularly trying day. No one had died, there hadn't been any attacks by aliens nor had anyone or thing attempted to infiltrate their city. It had been a plain and simple and if he was honest a little bit boring kind of day.
So why couldn't he sleep?
Sighing he gave up on any pretence of actual rest he got up and pulled on a pair of sweat pants and a t-shirt and left his quarters.
Maybe he could find someone else who couldn't sleep.
Rodney believed that it was fairly safe at the moment, it was now one am and as there was no actual emergency currently in progress he had the lab all to himself. Zelenka had been the last to leave not long ago and the silence was getting to him. Reaching over to his computer he quickly opened iTunes and hit the play button knowing that it would automatically play a song at random. He wasn't particularly fussy about what came on, as it was all music he knew and liked and more importantly wouldn't distract him with bothersome lyrics.
Letting out a small sigh as the strains of Vanessa May filtered through the speakers Rodney turned back to the…
Well he wasn't quite sure what it was yet but he would work it out eventually.
Not quite able to focus on the… thing in front of him Rodney closed his eyes and let the music take over him. If he tried hard enough then he could feel the vibration of the Violin string beneath his fingers and smell the resin as the horse string bow flew up and down over the metal.
The sound of the backing instruments came to the fore front and he wished it could have been him sitting there fingers flying back and fourth over the black and ivory of the piano keys. Making that beautiful, beautiful music.
He may have chosen science but somewhere deep inside him still beat the heart of a little boy who wanted to be a musician.
Deciding that enough was enough Elizabeth closed her laptop and stood stretching. It was late and she couldn't concentrate anymore. He vision was starting to blur a little from staring at the computer screen for to long. Standing, she left her desk as it was, knowing that she would be back here before anyone else in the morning and made her way through a nearly silent Atlantis to her quarters.
Once there Elizabeth discovered that she was still wide awake. After a year of living here in Atlantis her sleeping patterns were totally screwed. Even if there was nothing going on she still didn't need more than three or four hours of sleep, if she went to sleep now she would be awake by five am and she hated being awake that early, for some reason she found early morning Atlantis a little bit creepy.
She always had been more the type of person to roll out of bed and out of the house in as little time as possible and still manage to look like (she hoped) she had spent hours on her appearance.
Her sister hated her for it all through high school, but it was a talent that had served her well over the years of college, diplomacy and finally Atlantis.
Stripping down and throwing her clothes in the general vicinity of her bed she headed towards the bathroom and the shower.
Ten minutes later she emerged dressed in her nightclothes and felt considerably more relaxed.
Grabbing the mp3 player she had brought with her from earth Elizabeth settled down in the far corner of her room in front of the 5000 piece puzzle that had some how ended up in the things brought from earth but wasn't among any of the teams personal items (it was amazing what you could hide in with the requisition forms). She had started it three weeks after they had arrived in Atlantis and now nearly a year later she had not quite a quarter of it finished.
Hitting play Jewel immediately came through the earphones and without realising it Elizabeth started to sing along.
We'll fight, not out of spite
For someone must stand up for what's right
'Cause where there's a man who has no voice
There ours shall go singing
He slept.
While John occasionally had trouble going to sleep especially on the really really bad days here in Atlantis today had not been one of them. So unlike other members of the expedition he was currently lying sprawled out on his bed snoring loudly, but if you listened hard enough you would be able to hear the quiet strains of Johnny Cash playing in the background.
Not many people in Atlantis knew that this particular expedition member had music playing in his quarters every night. After years of living on military bases he could no longer stand any type of silence and had taken to sleeping with a set of ear phones in at night or when he could get away with it soft music playing in the background.
So the first thing he set up in his quarters here was a surround sound system. John had stayed up half the night trying to work it out. Even though he was sure that someone could have helped him out it was something he wanted to do for himself. Atlantis itself was never quiet, the constant thrum of the living city in the background. People going on or coming off duty or those like Elizabeth and Rodney who never seemed to sleep, but there was something reassuring about the music, a constant companion throughout his years in the Air Force. No matter where he was or what he was doing, he always had Johnny to keep him company.
Lieutenant Aiden Ford would never admit to any of the other expedition members that he had Leanne Rimes and Brittany Spears songs in his collection, he had decided after discovering he still had 20 gig of space left on his 40 gig iPod that he would try to get any and every conceivable type of music he could on there. Just in case, because you never knew when you would run into someone who wanted to listen to it. However in his currant situation he didn't mind pulling them, and, some of the other equally embarrassing songs out to help Teyla with her ongoing education on earth culture.
It had started earlier on in the evening when Teyla had heard two of the other Marines debating over the merits of Blue Grass versus straight Country and Ford had been the first member of her team that she had come across.
They had spent the last several hours locked in his quarters playing every piece of music he had with him. She asked the inevitable questions about earth music and he tried his best to explain it to her (even though Ford had never really understood Pink Floyds 'The Wall' he did his best).
"Maybe you would be better off asking one of the ladies about this artist"
Tom Jones really wasn't his thing.
"This is one of my favourites"
He would never tire of Live's 'Run to the water'
"There are some really angry people on earth, although after living here I don't think they have anything to complain about"
He really wished Eminem would stop singing about how bad life was and actually do something to make it better.
"My Grandma loves The Supremes"
He could almost smell the meatloaf.
It was the nights like these that he felt it the worse. The homesickness. Nothing was happening, there were no patients to attend to and he wasn't even on duty tonight. If he had been back home in Scotland Carson would have spent the evening with his mother. Chatting about the going on's of the small village he had grown up in, her favourite music playing in the background.
Ever since he could remember his mother had played show tunes in the evening, Gilbert and Sulllivan, Rogers and Hammerstein, Noel Coward and in more recent years Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice. Having them play as he wrote in the journal of life in the city he promised himself he would keep made him feel closer to home than anything else ever could.
'Remember what people do and how they make you feel, not what they want you to hear and how they want you to see them'
His father had said that to him not long before he died. If he closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough he could still hear his father's baritone singing along with Rex Harrison.
The rain in Spain stays mainly on the Plains.
He might not be home but if he tried hard enough Carson could pretend he was.
For once the corridors were silent.
He didn't want to disturb the guys on duty in the command centre so after spending an hour wandering around by himself he went back to his quarters and lay down in bed once more.
Reaching over he flicked the play button on his CD player and settled in for a long night in the dark.
At least he had his music to keep him company.