Phobic, by wisdomeagle

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

Rec Category: McKay/Weir
Pairing: McKay/Weir
Category: Atlantis,
Warning: Het, R-rated
Author on LJ: wisdomeagle
Author's Website: n/a
Link: http://www.livejournal.com/users/wisdomeagle/472028.html

Why This Must Be Read: For me, what makes or breaks a story is character voice. Can you imagine the character acting like this, and is this how they would speak/think? I'll forgive poor plotting, Mary-sues, and to some extent even bad grammar and spelling if the author can get the character voice right.

Luckily, for this story, I don't have to give up any of the above. Ari's McKay is McKay, with his insecurities, his babbling, his brains, and his complete lack of social skills. And her Elizabeth is also excellent, with her calmness, her amusement at McKay's babbling, and her subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, refocusing of his attentions.

Also, who could pass up a story that starts like this: McKay ruminates on the sad fact that it's never an appropriate time to mention that he's extremely claustrophobic. There are the times when he's not currently trapped in an enclosed space, when it doesn't usually occur to him to mention his laundry list of phobias, and when it does, he's found most people tend to wander away somewhere around atelophobia (fear of imperfection) and so he doesn't get a chance to explain exactly why he's absolutely terrified of enclosed spaces.