by Shrift
Rating: PG-13...got some language in there...innuendo
Spoilers: Rhapsody In Blue, basically
Summary: Coda to RIB
*****
“It was, uh...well...” The corner of Crichton’s mouth
kicked up, his fingers kneading the back of his neck.
His blue eyes darted up towards the stars.
“What was unity like?” Aeryn repeated. She stood on
the veranda, shoulders back, feet evenly spaced. One
hand rested on her pulse rifle.
“It was...amazing, Aeryn,” he replied haltingly, hands
dropping to his sides. Crichton risked a glance at
her strong features. “Amazing. Mind-blowingly
intense. And freaky.”
“Freaky.”
Crichton chuckled at the acid in her tone, his eyes
searching the sky. “Yeah, freaky. Strange. Weird.
Just...different.” The echo of his voice faded into
silence.
Like ten years of really great sex, he thought. But
unity was somehow more than that. And less, without
touch being involved...
“Why did you do it?”
Crichton’s head jerked down and he stared at her, his
lips parted. He searched her face for some emotion,
some sign for how he should proceed. Her expression
was carefully blank.
C’mon, Aeryn, he thought. It wasn’t like I was out to
get lucky with a crazed Delvian female. With a nasty
case of Pink Eye.
“Zhaan needed me.” He shoved his hands into his
pockets.
“It might have killed you.”
“Yeah, Aeryn, I know,” he said. “But it didn’t. She didn’t.”
Aeryn adjusted her stance, making a soft sound that,
had she been human, Crichton would have taken as a
sigh.
“So,” he said. “What did Tahleen and her groupies
distract you with?”
Aeryn’s lips twisted. “My pulse rifle. They made me
believe it was in pieces.”
“Your rifle. Of course,” Crichton mused, nodded
absently.
“And you?”
You need to learn when to keep your big, human yap
shut, Crichton told himself.
“Lorana appeared to me as my ex-girlfriend.”
Aeryn stared back with incomprehension shading her
dark eyes. “A past lover,” she ventured.
It was Crichton’s turn to shift uncomfortably. “She
messed with my memories. Made me believe that we had
actually gotten married.”
“And you had not.”
“No,” Crichton said, feeling the familiar tang of
disappointment settle in the back of his throat. What
Lorana and Tahleen had done to him made his memories
seem tainted. Untrustworthy.
“Why didn’t you?”
Crichton blinked at her, startled out of his thoughts.
“Why didn’t we get married? I wanted to, but
Alex...well, she wasn’t ready.” He angled his body to
face her, impatient. “Listen, Aeryn, didn’t it make
you feel violated? With that Delvian mind-fu --
mind-frell?”
“You mean when the Delvians interfered with my
perceptions?” Aeryn asked, her fingers tightening on
her rifle.
“Or that,” Crichton nodded, a little, ironic smile
playing on his lips.
“Not particularly, no,” she answered after a moment.
Crichton turned away and scuffed his boot on the brown
floor, beginning to wander towards the lighted exit of
the veranda. “Yeah, well, it bothered me.”
“John.”
“Yeah, Aeryn?” He turned on his heel, head cocked,
mulish expression fully in place.
“They’re not the same.”
His boots echoed across the deck as he came back.
“What isn’t the same?”
Aeryn’s dark eyebrows drew together as she struggled
to communicate. “What the Delvians did to you and
what they did to me, they’re not the same.” At his
silence, she continued. “They simply altered my
perception of reality for a few arns, John. Zhaan
told me what they did to you was much,” her eyes
flicked up, “deeper.”
Crichton folded his arms across his chest, the fingers
on one hand playing with his lower lip. “You talked
to Zhaan.”
“Yes.”
“So you already know all this,” he said.
“Essentially, yes.” A smile flickered across her face
and was gone before his synapses could fire.
Crichton reached out and squeezed her leather clad
shoulder, his callused thumb skimming over the smooth
skin of her neck. He trailed his fingers down her
bicep as he backed away. “Thanks, Aeryn.”
He felt her eyes on his back as he walked from her.
And then another echo of footsteps joined in a
dissonant chorus with his own.
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