Arctic Light

This is one of the "hard" ficathon stories that I mentioned, in that it's quite different from the sort of thing that I normally write (although, ultimately, it ended up ... not so much). Unlike my normal stories, this one is not gen -- it is het, and the pairing is Zelenka/Teyla. However, it's very mild het, with much more friendship than anything else ... it came out very gen-ish. *grin*

Title is from an REM song.


Title: Night Swimming
Characters: Radek, Teyla, hints of the others
Word count: about 7900
Season/spoilers: Late Season 2 or early season 3. Reference to 03x15 "The Game", more confusing than spoilery if you haven't seen the episode.
Summary: She was sunshine and shadow, lightning and sky; she was earth and deep water, roses and ice; she was the cold perfection of mathematics, and the mellow glory of cathedral bells on a December afternoon. She was all that he wanted, and all that he feared.

( Night Swimming )

We're up to 2x04 now. (And it turned out that iTunes had season 2, so it's actually legit. More on that farther down...)

Husband: "You know, I'm not sure about all the soap opera stuff this season."
Me: "Chicks dig that. Shut up."

( Dean needs a hug. )

About the legitimacy thing that I mentioned above ... despite not having cable or broadcast TV, I really do *try* to get the legit versions of the shows I watch when it's a) possible, b) affordable and c) relatively easy. So I've been downloading these off iTunes. And here's where it gets hilarious (and sad), because it's turned out that playing the "official" versions of the files is a goddawful pain in the butt compared to unlicensed AVI's. In fact, it's SUCH a pain that I'm halfway tempted to download the AVIs despite having already bought the episodes legitimately. Our entertainment system is a Frankensystem that's all hooked up to a ceiling-mounted projector which broadcasts the Winchesters onto a king-sized bedsheet on the wall. The Mac where I download the files (which can run them beautifully) doesn't have a VGA port so it can't be hooked up to the projector. The files have to be copied to a Windows XP machine and that's where things go screwy, because the AVI's can be played in a happy little free Linux media player, but the only thing we've found so far that can play the M4V's successfully is the Windows version of Quicktime, and it can't be full-screened, not to mention that it stutters and lags every time the antivirus software (which refuses to be disabled) kicks on.

Wouldn't you think that the version you pay for would work better than the version you don't? Ah, in a sane and perfect world that might be true ...