blackholesandrevelations

Current Music: 1812 - the 1812 overture duh

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It's a rare moment on Moya these days, when the crew gathers together for dinner. But, schedules seemed to have aligned and there they sit, all of them.

D'Argo and Chiana bicker halfheartedly over a dish that, to John, looks a lot like a pile of leaves covered in mayo, but he's not the best to gauge what's what on the menu. Rygel, like usual, is stuffing his face with whatever he can get his grubby little hands on; Grandma seems more interested in mixing things together and spitting on them than eating.

Even Scorpy and Sikozu are at the table, though neither is eating much, and looking at them is definitely setting John's stomach to "vomit".

Aeryn sits across from him, her foot against his under the table. Secret, comforting. Can't let Scorpy know.

As for John himself, he's barely picking at his meal. Wormholes and equations flit through his brain, punctuated by flashes of Harvey uttering nonsense to him in a nauseous whirl that has him grimacing down at his plate.

"John," D'Argo sighs when the astronaut stands from the table suddenly. "What's wrong--"

He doesn't answer, just waves him off, stopping only to grab 1812 off the floor, tucking the DRD under his arm (who flails his little flashlight eyes and beeps indignantly at him). When he reaches his room he sets 1812 down and whistles the first few bars of the overture, indicating that the DRD should continue. Which he does, as always.

His hand shakes a little as he grabs his pen, flipping through his journal for a blank page. Something just clicked, at the dinner table, something he'd been missing about wormholes. He's got to get this down. Food can wait, his body can wait, right now he has to get this out.

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She knows that look. They all know that look.

The one that makes John's gaze turns hazy and utterly fixated all at once. Where it's like he's looking through anything that happens to be in front of him at the moment. Where sometimes he fidgets, or his hands twitch. She can start a near-perfect countdown on the microts before he loses that fight.

She can't say anything. Can't reach out (not that she would in company, but the can't makes it weigh more). Can't do more than look up as he's disorientedly sweeping up from the table (without looking at her, too) with anything more than a pinched and pointed disinterest that edges on annoyed disregard. She's a soldier. She mastered that resolute coolness before her first rank.

It doesn't change that she wants to look over toward the door he vanishes through.
Doesn't change the sudden absence of him that makes her wants to shift her boot.

Doesn't change the way she returns to finish her food with a cool detachment from the unending clamor of everyone else at the table. That she makes herself not eat any faster, and tries not to count how many microts since, even though she's already listing out for herself the most likely places he went.

That she'll follow.

And she does.

After she's done. After her plate is away.
She slips off down the corridors at a quiet even clip.

She'd rather faster, but they have to be careful. Scorpius is watching. Listening.

He's still writing when she finds him. His journal held close, hand flying, the pressure of it worrying, like it might rip the page, and even if she can't see it from the doorway, she knows it's all in that endless equation she wouldn't understand even if she were a tech. Rathere than sound an alarm for the comm to focus on her, them just yet --

Aeryn reached out and rapped her knuckles on the edge of the doorway.

His mouth opened, jaw working, creaking from side to side as he forced the grinding pressure of gritting his teeth together to release. He's just got to get this one last thought out, this one last stroke of pen to paper before he can look at her, before he can interrupt the crazy train of thought roaring through his head.

1812 stopped whistling his song, backing up and peering at Aeryn for a moment before deciding to ram himself into John's leg. The journal jostled and the alien symbol he'd been drawing gets an extra long tail. "C'mon, boy," he hissed, almost no heat in his words, just exhaustion. "Two microts."

The DRD was insistent, backing up to ram John again, but John's hand flashed out, holding 1812 between the eyestalks, keeping him at arm's length. "Fine," his voice was hoarse as he uncurled his legs, forcing himself to stand up from the cramped position on the floor, shoving his journal in his back pocket, his pen behind his ear.

It wasn't safe here. Not for him to talk to Aeryn freely, and God all he wants is to talk to her freely. To be without Scorpius breathing down his frelling neck all the frelling time.

His knees creaked as he moved toward the doorway, his hand sliding against Aeryn's waist as he passed her, fingers curling at the inch of skin showing between shirt and leather pants. "Pilot's den?" He whispered, his face close enough to breathe in the scent of her hair, her neck. It nearly chased all of the wormhole equations out of his brain--something he'd be grateful for right now. "Safer there."

Her heart still stutters, back straightening, with a small tremor, when he crowds in.

Past all the empty air, and cycles of ghosts, until his breath breaks against her skin and for a single moment, and one she'd never admit, all her famous focus skips. It's just him. It's only him. The weight of his breath. The low, nearness of his voice. The hand that touches her skin with more ease than they've spoken for so long.

Until now.

It's another of her own breaths, still and quiet, pulled in only through her nose, to manage that disarray, that sudden and total shift that fixated only on him. The one she fought for so long, and doesn't have to now. Except that she does. For a whole new reason. That makes her press her lips and nod, giving the faintest mmhm only, instead of a single word even.

She wishes the space behind him relegated to anything like safety. An inkling of longing there hooks just momentarily, too. A space that looks private, comfortable, and isn't. But they take what they get, and Pilot has always been accommodating, even not under these circumstances. Even cycles and cycles ago when none of this was even what it is, and isn't, and is again, now.

There's a nod of her head for them to go, even when what she really wants to do is lean into the sudden undeniable cloud of him. To reach up and even just be able to tug him, playfully, in the direction they're going. But there's no joke in the fact a few words could betray everything. That he's protecting himself. Her. The baby.

Aeryn stepped back, with a look, expecting him to follow,
even as her skin felt cold, tighter for simple invasion of a few feet.

His hands itched without her skin under them. His breath felt choked without her scent in his nose, even just feet away from her, even as he followed her down the corridor.

But--one pleasant thing about following Aeryn from behind: the sway of her hips, the strength in her legs, never failed to send thrills down his spine, clench his heart like a hand wrapped around it, squeezing tight.

Goddammit, he loved her. So much it was painful. So much that it terrified him--he knew the horrors that he could do, the things his own hands had done to her and the others onboard Moya that he loved and cherished. And Harvey, incessant and annoying and constantly frelling there, he could make that all happen again. No. No. He wouldn't let him.

Pilot acknowledged them softly as they enter, aware and up to date on the reasoning of this cycle's need of his den. He never asked many questions when it came to needing a quiet space, as long as it wasn't for fighting (and the second John and D'Argo started even barely sniping at each other, they were thrown out).

John slipped ahead of Aeryn, nestling himself in a corner of the den, out of Pilot's view and way, first tossing his coat down on the ground as a vague cushion. He reached his hand out for her before groaning and giving her a finger, indicating one microt please.

He jerked the journal out of his pocket, squished and uncomfortable to sit on, tossing it onto his coat along with the pen and reached for Aeryn again. "C'mere, baby."

Even though it isn't a release, there is something like it to entering Pilot's Den. A part of her, perhaps, forever altered by her own hand, and her own fear, that found this great, cavernous space almost comforting in and of itself. That gravitated to it, and made her want to stretch the time in here. That made her regard Pilot quietly, a solemnity, when she could catch his gaze and be glad that it maybe wasn't just the two of them.

They all made a beginning,

though it was hard to tell where it was heading now.

In whatever direction least gave Scorpius what wanted.

Aeryn watched him, her mouth twitching at a corner as John waved her off and then did whatever he felt he needed, as though it might change the ground itself. Still the edges of her mouth stayed softer, while he pulled out the journal and tossed it to his side -- the third part of them, or maybe she was -- but there was no hesitation in reaching out for his hands and folding down into the space he'd left for her.

"You figured something new out?"

It's more serious and more official than anything beating an unslowed touch faster in her heart still, but it's the only opening she really knows how to start with right now, and she knows it's, also, important. Even when it's all jibberish and he can't even make sense of what he's just written either.

He took the time to fold his arms around her, one around her waist, the other over her shoulder so his hand rests on her collarbone, thumb idly dragging across the ridge. Behind her, John made a face, half grimace, half tongue sticking out.

"Something new," he murmured into her hair, the dark strands catching on his lips. "Not sure what it all means just yet. Just another squiggly line in a strand of wingdings."

The roaring noise of wormholes, of Harvey and death and destruction that plagued him at the dinner table quieted down here, with her in his embrace. He felt more like John again and less like the weapon Scorpius was trying to build him into.

"Missed you," he whispered, his head dropping so his lips were close to her ear. "It's worse, almost, havin' you right there in front of me. I never had a lot of control to begin with, we both know that. Next planet we stop at--let's check in to some hotel and just...tell Scorpius to frell off, huh?"

She settles back, shifting inside the ring of his arms, her shoulders and back pressed against his chest, knees left up, but she lays her hand and arm over the one he has at her middle, and more of the stiffness than she can eve account for smooths at all of the contact. Her thumb brushed slow across his arms, at the words in her hair.

It's not as though she would understand it all that much even if he had, but she knew how much it frustrated him. That the knowledge was there, somewhere inside him, but forever just a little further out of reach than he could go. For now. Even if the better and worse nature of her doubts played on both those potentials.

Aeryn shivered, just barely, when his head dropped closer, and she left out a breath through her nose that shook her chest just the once. It was something, not-quite-soundlessly like a laugh. Even if humor was in short supply these days, too. She turned her head toward head, toward him. Her nose brushing his cheek just briefly, though not stopping until she could find his eyes.

"You managed well enough so far." It's lightly put, almost like remonstration as much as a reminder. Managed is the wrong word. Managed would be an outright lie in almost anyone else's mouth. But he has -- they have -- survived it, all of it, so far. Whether it was Scorpius, or the Peacekeepers, or even just her distance, and every wrong step she seemed to take getting here again, or his choosing to forget.

He'd managed. He could.

(Which, somewhere under it, she knows. Just because she can, too,
doesn't mean she wants to either. Even when she has to.)

He watches her for a long moment, eyes searching hers, his hand sliding from her collarbone to her neck, fingers a whisper against her jawline to tilt her head back so he can kiss her.

It's calm and thrill all at once. He feels like home, here against her lips, and he feels like he might fly apart. He can never just kiss her, softly, sweetly. Even when he tries, the feel of her takes him over, rips him apart more than wormholes or Scorpius could ever hope to.

His Achilles' heel, in his arms, against his lips. He opens his mouth, breathing in sharply through his nose, desperate to fill his senses and lungs with her. Around them, the hum of Moya, the beeps of DRDs, they fade into nothingness, leaving only him

and Aeryn.

The way it's meant to be, he thinks.

She knows it's coming, but it's always coming now.

Somewhere beyond the imposing wall of Scorpius and lies they need.

Since that moment in the hallway where he proved she was wrong about his being absolutely farbotzed, and everything, impossibly, slid into the right place. Shifted entirely with a single, cold, voice playing on the comms over them. Shifted entirely as they said everything was over. As his fingers, his voice, his eyes -- these eyes, these blue, blue eyes, half-wild and half-pleading, burned into whatever the center of her is -- said everything the words couldn't. That it wasn't. Still.

There's nothing left in her to resist. She burned through the will for it. With each of the days behind them. She doesn't want to know if she could have kept going. She doesn't have to. She can just close her eyes, twisting into his kiss, his mouth, free hand-raising from covering his arms, to find the side of his head, slipping fingertips into his short hair, even if it presses her alternate shoulder awkwardly into his chest.

He hates that he can't do this in the privacy of his quarters, or hers, or--even better--combining their things into one room and calling it theirs. But it's a pipe dream while Scorpius is on board. He'd take Aeryn, twist John into doing horrible things, just to keep her safe.

And he would. He would do every single horrible thing Scorpius asks of him, if it kept Aeryn from harm.

He wishes he could push her to the floor, cover her body with his, drag his lips down the column of her neck, but he resists, fights against his physical desires, out of respect for Pilot (and the DRDs he's vaguely aware are just...watching them).

But he does shift, turning her in his arms so shes leaning into him, her shoulder free of his sternum (it doesn't make it easier to breathe--), his hands cupping her face, pushing her hair back and holding her in the perfect position to nearly devour her.

When he pulls back, desperately gasping for air, his forehead boring into hers, as if he could push his thoughts into hers, he murmurs her name, a quiet huff of air on her cheek. His thumbs stroke her skin, his eyes wild and dark, desperate for her. "God," he whispers, dragging his mouth across her cheek, "I love you."

Aeryn turns, with him, into him, and she remembers this. So well. Too well. Gone, and not gone, and it's not a war she can fight with herself anymore. She lost that one long ago. She loves John Critchon. She always will. Even if she keeps forgettinf and relearning that part in the most brutal ways. Against the shape of his mouth, and the taste of him. The hand against her skin, hard and heavy, hungry and yet, so tender all once.

The same with his breathing. That rush, hard and heavy, the edge of another controlled collapse that can't be. She brushes her forehead against his, resisting the urge already brilliant and bright under her own skin. That once this door was finally battered down it was just gone. It was just him. The warmth of his skin.

The way her eyes have to focus on his at those words, and it makes her pull in a breath. Have to swallow. Makes her have to raise a finger and press it against his lips, with a small shake of her head that can't tell entirely if she means to stop him, because it there are things they still need to control that's the biggest one, and the one they've never been great at reigning in, or that she can't even be surprised somehow they've found themselves here again.

It only turns into the softest whisper of, "Shh," before kissing him again.
The one of them to hold some moducum of control, even here still. Especially now.

Even as those word rattled in her. Echoed in her ears, dusted with clinging warmth on her cheek, and she felt them pressing up against her ribs even from the inside even. Those were the words that left her world devastated once, and they were ones, spoken almost only in fits of desperation and anger, thrown as their own weapons at each other, that plagued her for cycles afterward, and now. Now, they might be the best reason she has for still being alive, the single one for how she managed to make it this far.

His hands slide to her waist, fingers twitching in a half-formed grab. He groans--always the noisier one--into her mouth, pulling her closer, impossibly closer. He's losing his balance against one of Moya's bumpy bulkheads and he turns, hauling Aeryn with him until her back is against his jacket on the floor.

He won't disrespect Pilot, never, even as the alien shoos the DRDs away and busies himself at his console. But he can't not touch the skin showing at Aeryn's midriff, where her shirt rides up above her leathers. His hand presses against her waist, his skin hot against hers, fingers sliding up under her shirt, caressing the first of her ribs he can reach.

Control isn't a word he knows, when it comes to her, in this safe space. In this bubble he's created with him leaning over her, his weight held off of her on a shaking forearm as he kisses her again and again, desperate to never know the loss of her warmth again. At least, when they're not here, he'll have this memory to think on later.

His fingers drag down her side, grabbing at her thigh, pulling himself away to rest his forehead against the bridge of her nose, his heart seized and breath stolen from his chest. Eyes squeezed shut as he tries so hard to regain the illusion of the control that eludes him.

Crichtons don't cry, he tells himself, dumbly aware that tears well up behind his closed eyes. He feels stupid, alive, amazing, all at once. She does this to him, every time.

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