sab

TITLE: In bed, I am an Astronaut
AUTHOR: Sabine (sabine101@juno.com)
PAIRINGS: John/Chiana
RATING: R
SPOILERS: Through "Fractures"
SUMMARY: Once upon a time.
DISCLAIMER: Courtesy O'Bannon, Kemper, Nine Network, Henson.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: For Kernezelda, who requested John and Chi in the Farscape Ficathon. Thanks to Shaye and Punk for beta.

In bed, I am an Astronaut

Oh, little grey girl.

You showed up in my room at the usual time. You were crying. I think I was too. I think I was cleaning my gun. I think I was wearing PK track suit pants and nothing else; I think you were more tired than I'd ever seen you.

"Hu- Hu- Hubero..." you said, and you crouched on the floor with your floppy pale hair spilling over your hands. "I heard the shot, John, I saw- I saw it."

"I know, Pip," I said. I put Winona down, next to Stark's mask.

"You really gonna go take on Scorpius?" You looked up. "Gonna leave me here all alone?"

The last time we had sex, we didn't know it was going to be the last time we'd have sex. The last time we had sex, it was already well past time.

You stood up, came to crawl in beside me on the bed. You put your chin on my shoulder and nipped at my ear, and I wrapped both arms around you. You purred when I kissed the top of your head.

Harvey leaned back on his chair and propped his feet on an upturned Rubbermaid trash can. I scooted over on the bed to make more room for you. Harvey switched on the TV, pay cable, All Alien Porn All The Time. Next to him on the thrift-store endtable, a coke-can ashtray overflowed with cigarettes.

"I have to go, it's what I do," I said. "I'm the bumbling hero."

"Maybe he was the hero," you whispered, and you moved so you were crouched above me, knees straddling my hips. Your mouth was very close to my ear. "Maybe he was, and you don't have to be the hero anymore. I mean, look where it got him."

"Yes, John," said Harvey, grimacing in the dim tenement lighting. "Look where it got him." On TV, a Peacekeeper commander whipped a Drezani and the Drezani licked her lips and begged for more.

"Gotta do it," I said.

"Because of Aeryn?" you asked.

"Because of him," I said.

We had sex twice the night Talyn left. You showed up in my room at the usual time, and neither of us was crying. I wore nothing and you wore gloves, and you fucked me, and we didn't talk about anything but Zhaan.

"It's my fault," I said, and I meant Zhaan.

"Don't beat yourself up, Crichton," you said. "She made her own choices." And you meant Zhaan too.

"I miss her," I said, and I meant Zhaan.

"I know you do," you'd said, and you curled your gloved hands around the back of my skull and kissed me and wrapped your slinky little grey body around me and you fucked me up against the wall.

You fell asleep on my bed and I let you sleep for an arn before I woke you up. "Chi, bedtime," I said, shaking you. "Time to sneak out and leave money on the nightstand."

You'd gone back to your quarters in nothing but gloves, because after two cycles doing this, you never once spent the night.

"Come on now, John," Harvey said, thumbing the remote to the Nebari channel. There was a tangle of androgynous grey bodies, gloves and bare grey asses, grey loomas and lips. I looked up at you.

"You were a little bit in love with her?"

You cocked your head to the side. "Hubero?"

"Yeah."

"How the frell should I know, Crichton, I only knew her about twelve arns!"

"Yeah," I say. "That there's a good point, little girl."

You slid your hands up my chest, your fingers parting around my nipples, giving them a little twang. "Ah, come on, Crichton. Can't we just frell?"

Your eyes were big and desperate and sad, and I kissed you. Harvey ate popcorn from an enormous metal bowl, placed strategically on his lap to cover his rubber hand slipping into his rubber codpiece. I closed my eyes and I kissed you and I reached my hands around to flick open the magnetic clasps on your bustier. The leather slid down your gloves and landed floppy on my lap and I threw it on the floor. Your nipples were small and hard and black.

"Yeah, Crichton, that's it," you said, and I lifted my ass off the bed so you could shimmy my sweats down to where I could kick them off. Harvey changed the channel. John Crichton and Aeryn Sun with goggles on, making love on the hot white sand of Dam-ba-da.

"That is so tasteless," I said, taking the remote from him, turning back to the Saints game.

"It's what you want to watch, John," Harvey said. "You want to know."

"I don't wanna know!" I said. "And get your hand outta your suit, you perverted freeze-dried freakazoid."

Harvey held up the bowl. "Popcorn?"

You kicked off your boot, then your other boot, and Stark's mask clattered to the floor. You leaned in to kiss me, and you looked so damned young.

"Chi – Chiana, wait."

"I don't wanna wait," you said. "I had a really hard day, Crichton, I just wanna forget, I just wanna --"

I wrapped my arms around you, and you lay on top of me, your head on my chest. "Shhh."

The last time we'd had sex, we didn't know it would be the last time we'd have sex. I'd just returned from LoMo, cranky and horny and out of my skin. We fucked in the maintenance bay, in Pilot's chamber, in command, in bed. Did it in bed last, same place we'd done it first, and so many nights in between. You came to my room at the usual time, and we laughed and cursed D'Argo and made fun of Jool. Your mouth around my cock, you practiced all the Human words you knew. "Glowjog," you said, laughing. "Blowjob, yes, no, I am an astronaut." And we cursed, and came, and you went back to your room afterward and I lay in bed and didn't feel any better.

I could feel you crying again and your tears soaked through my t-shirt. "Oh, little grey girl," I said, and I stroked your back. "I love you, you know that?"

"Yeah," you muttered into my ribs. "Love you too, Crichton."

The first time we had sex it was the first night you came on board Moya. Half asleep, later, when you were dragging on your clothes in the dark, I'd called out to you. "Hey, grey girl."

"Yeah, Human?"

"Did you kill Salis?"

The room resonated with the pause. "Probably," you'd said, and then you left.

"Shh," I said again, and I reached an arm free to pull the blanket up over both of us. You rolled to the side and I slipped in behind you and you fit just right against the curve of my chest and my neck and my knee.

"I don't like it, seeing what's gonna happen," you murmured. "I couldn't save Hubero. I can't save anyone."

"It's not your fault that she died," I said.

"It's not your fault he did," you said, and Harvey didn't say a word.

And I just held you, then, and I kissed your head, and after a while you fell asleep in my arms. After a while, I fell asleep too, and we stayed that way, all wrapped up together in my bed until morning.

*
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