Out of Their Clothes

[lifeonqueen]

"Out of Their Clothes"

Season Two, Post-ep for "Out of Their Minds," which frankly could describe the author as well

Rating: NC-17, dude.
Thanks to the Beta Twins, cretkid and thassalia both of whom have likely skipped out of the office early for the Fourth tomorrow. Thanks for the help and Happy Independence Day, mates.

Soundtrack: Section One, "Zion" - Fluke; Section Two, "You Make Me Feel" - Anima; Section Three, "Red Dirt Girl" - Emmylou Harris.

---

“Oh, gimme a break,” Crichton muttered.

The girls had walked in on his little get-to-know-you session with Aeryn’s body and the memory stung. He could feel his ears pinking under her expectant, clear-eyed scrutiny.

“No, it’s okay,” she said, surprising him. Aeryn didn’t forget and she wasn’t too hot on forgiving, either; he’d more than half expected her to come at him with a Pantak jab or even a good, solid, ubiquitous right cross.

“It’s okay,” she repeated and shrugged, dismissing it.

“You were in my shoes,” she said casually, as she stood, “I was in your pants...”

He was sure he had misheard her. “Excuse me?”

But there was no mistaking Aeryn’s grin when she turned to look back at him or the way she bit down coyly on her bottom lip, waiting for him to react: she was baiting him.

The realization sank through Crichton’s understanding like a happy little bomb detonating a marauding grin across his face.

“Why you-“ he growled and charged her, fifteen again and roughhousing with his sisters.

Aeryn yelped and let him chase her down the corridor. She faked left at the junction above the galley but Momma Crichton’s Baby Boy hadn’t been All State for nothing. He caught her going right and tackled her, sending them both careening into one of Moya’s ribs, laughing breathlessly. He trapped her against the bulkhead with an arm on either side of her head and leaned in close.

“Now,” he said when they were nose to nose, “What was that about my pants?”

Aeryn’s only answer was a quirk of the eyebrow and a superior smile as she hooked his legs and yanked them out from under him. The smile should have warned him, should have and didn’t. Crichton managed to grab onto an arm and pulled her down with him. They collapsed softly onto the decking in a tangle of arms and legs.

“This is nice.”

Crichton looked up at Aeryn who had landed more or less on top of him.

“Very nice,” she agreed, sliding her lower body more fully over his.

“Comfortable?” he asked.

“Um-hhhmmmm.”

“So, you were going to tell me about my pants,” he drawled, his voice going as soft as his consonants, while he slid his hands down her sides.

“Tell you?” Aeryn asked, skimming her mouth over his, almost but not quite touching. “Maybe I should show you?”

“Well-“ his hands grazed her waist, settled firmly on her buttocks and pulled her hips in tight against his, “Turn about is fair play.”

“But I don’t play fair,” and she rocked sinuously against the hard-on they could both feel growing behind his fly, “I play to win.”

And then she leaned that extra breath closer and took his mouth in a long, deep, thorough kiss.

Crichton’s fingers dug into the flesh of her ass, holding her tight as he gave himself up to the lust roiling between them.

Aeryn Sun was hotter and faster than the ship she flew and her scent, her weight, her breath, the warmth from her body flowed like mercury over and around him. She scared the hell out of him. She made him bone-hard and aching and brainless faster than any woman he’d known. He wanted to fuck her blind; he wanted to crawl inside her; he wanted to hold her until the end of the world.

Instead, he twined a leg over her hip, anchoring her fast against him and slid the other between her thighs. They rocked together on the floor and he clawed at the tie-down to the ever-present holster on her leg with one hand while the other reached for the band holding back her hair.

An officer and a gentleman was meant to scruple about screwing a woman on the floor of a public hallway. He didn’t care: Aeryn Sun was kissing him and her hands were under his shirt and in his pants. His better angels were as horny as the rest of him.

They’d done this before—out of despair, in search of comfort—but not yet because they were too turned on to stop. Lust was a new flavour of her and Crichton drank it in, got drunk on it, and let it override his judgement: she could break his heart as easily as she could break his neck and he was more than half in love with her already. But, as her dark hair fell around them, he didn’t care about that either.

The tie-down finally parted under his fumbling. His hands traced the circumference of her belt to the buckle intent on disposing of this barrier to his goal of having Aeryn Sun, clothed or unclothed, very soon. But she brushed his hands away and sat back on his thighs. Crichton sat up with her, reluctant to give up touching her in any way. His arms curled around her waist, still holding her tightly against him.

“We can’t do this,” Aeryn said. She quickly pulled her hair back into a ponytail.

His arms fell away from her.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said hoarsely. Leaning back, he watched her stand and swiftly refasten her holster, anger and disappointment sloshing around the pit of his stomach.

She jerked him to his feet.

“Not here,” she said quietly, pushing him behind her, “Your quarters, 300 microts.”

“What’s going on?” Rygel demanded. He hovered in centre of the junction, studying them suspiciously, no doubt taking in their flushed skin, erratic breathing and the way Crichton was standing behind Aeryn somewhat hunched over.

She’d heard the whisper of the thronesled’s impellers coming up the opposite corridor, he realized. Chalk one up to ‘superior’ Sebacean physiology—the only thing that kept them from becoming the main act in Rygel’s private sex show.

“What are you two doing?” Rygel demanded again.

“Crichton fell,” Aeryn said.

He dismissed that fiction with a snort.

“Of course he did. I do hope he didn’t hurt himself too badly,” Rygel said insincerely, “It would be a shame if he were too…incapacitated to, ah, function.”

Crichton felt his ears go pink again; “Thanks Sparky, I’m touched.”

“Don't mention it.”

“If you’re all right then, Crichton, I’ll see you later. Rygel.”

Aeryn walked briskly past Rygel, shoving the thronesled out of her way, and turned down the corridor towards her quarters. Rygel watched her go.

“Heh, pathetic. The both of you: you’re not fooling anyone, y’know.”

“Jealous?” Crichton leaned back against the ribbed bulkhead, crossing his legs together and hoping that he wasn’t flashing the Hynerian a major boner.

Rygel hooted, “Of a gangling flesh-bag like you? Never.

“You body-breeders are all alike,” he continued, “Always thinking with your mivonks and not your brains.”

“You should try it some time,” Crichton snapped back.

“I have, remember? Hardly very impressive, all things considered.” With that set-down wafting in the air, Rygel turned grandly and floated away.

Crichton grimaced at the image Rygel’s comment conjured up.

“Gawd, what the hell have people been doing with my body?” he muttered.


He’s holding his shirt in his hands and staring at it when she arrives at his quarters in her nightclothes, a pair of exercise shorts and a singlet. There’s a momentary sense of something like double vision as she watches him unobserved: he’s attractive, well proportioned and thickly muscled across the arms, chest and shoulders; he is slightly hairy where Sebacean males are smooth-skinned. It marks him as different. The differences between John Crichton and the other males she’s recreated with go beyond the psychological, even though she’ll never tell him and it hasn’t occurred to him to ask. The differences, all of them, are exciting. It doesn’t matter that she’s been trained all her life to hate those differences or that his muscle and bone mass to strength ratio is pitifully weak by Sebacean standards: John Crichton looks strong and feels strong against her—indomitable, indefatigable.

And yet so very vulnerable and alone, standing barefoot in the middle of a prison cell staring down at that shirt like it held answer to the riddle of the universe: the dichotomy confuses her, frustrates her, keeps her from finding his range. She never knows whether she wants to choke him, frell him or lock him away from the universe for his own good and he is constantly in apposition to her expectations. And desires.

Like now: she’d expected him to greet her naked in bed with a grin and one of his moronic aphorisms. But of course it couldn’t be that easy with him. For a heart-stopping, heartbreaking instant, Aeryn’s sure he’s changed his mind about this and she’s within a synaptic impulse of slinking away from his door as quietly as she arrived when he turns his head and catches her watching.

“Hey,” his voice is still soft and easy; she can hear the slide of his English consonants under the translator microbes. It’s his eyes though, his blue, transparent eyes that cut through her like she’s made of nothing. She has to swallow against the thickness in her throat before she can answer him.

“Credit for your thoughts?” she asks, equally softly.

He shrugs his head and tosses the shirt aside—“’Fraid they’re not worth that much.” But he doesn’t move any closer and he doesn’t invite her in.

She takes the initiative—it’s what she’s good at after all: in battle or in bed, she’s never had a problem leading the way—and steps inside, waving her hand over the sensor to close the gates. His eyes are heavy on the skin of her back as she loosens the privacy drape across the entrance and lowers the lights. He’s still watching her when she turns around again. What is he thinking? She almost asks him.

He catches her slip because Crichton is a positive frelling genius for noticing things like that: “What?”

She shakes her head and dismisses her uncertainty.

She tells him it’s nothing. His lips quirk like maybe he wants to dispute her statement but instead he looks away, rubbing his thumb thoughtfully across his lower lip. That gesture tugs something inside of her. She’s across the room taking his hand in hers, kissing the pad of his thumb, his palm, biting gently into the fleshy ball of his hand, before she knows it.

He pulls gently away, replacing his hand with his kiss. He kisses her, framing her face with his hands. He kisses her like no one else ever has, with so much restraint that it’s almost asexual even as it liquefies her legs and sends trembling waves through her stomach. She clasps his shoulders and draws him down to the bed on top of her before her legs start to shake because it’s been too long and she can’t wait any longer.

But Crichton’s suddenly found patience. He whispers her name against her lips as he tangles his fingers in her hair and kisses her endlessly. He’s heavy and solid where he lies on top of her and everywhere he touches her sensation shudders through her body. And it’s killing her. She moans impatiently and undoes the snap of his pants, insinuating a hand under his waistband and a thigh between his legs, rubbing her pubis against his erection.

That gets Crichton’s attention.

“Wait-“

“No.” She shakes her head and uses both hands to push aside, push down, push away his pants and underwear, exposing John Crichton’s very hard, very thick erect penis. She caresses him, rubbing her fingers through his crinkly, slightly reddish hair where Sebacean males are virtually naked. And John gets very still and very tense over her and he closes his eyes and bites his lip and moans: “Aeryn. Christ. God. Fuck.”

She pulls her hand up the length of his penis, brushing a thumb across the head where he’s already wet for her. John moans her name again and she shudders to hear it. He tears aside her shorts and she guides him into her, working as a team because they’ve always been good at this.

There’s a stretchy burn as his erection slides inside her, a counterpoint that only heightens the swelling joy of it. She hooks a leg around his hips to pull them closer, faster, and sink him deep inside her.

There’s a moment where she wonders why the frell they don’t do this more often before thought falls before instinct. The unholy pleasure of frelling John Crichton fills her entire existence. They move together fiercely, coming hard and deep against each other then drawing back, perfectly sync. John’s a noisy lover. Aeryn bites on her lips to keep silent and presses her face into the hollow of his shoulder, digs her fingers into his back as the pleasurable pressure builds inside her.

“Aeryn.” He says her name insistently. He’s holding his weight on one arm and the other reaches for her hair. His hand fists in it, pulling her head back, forcing her face up. “Aeryn.”

She opens her eyes and looks at him, is still looking at him as he comes inside her, as she feels the shocking heat of his ejaculate, as his blue, transparent eyes shatter her into a million pieces in his arms.


Aeryn woke up sweaty and hot and sticky. Crichton had wrapped himself and a quilt around them, trapping her next to his furnace-like body heat. She slid out of his arms and from under the covers, nearly tripping herself on her shorts when she tried to stand. They were scrunched up and tangled around her knees. She was still wearing her shirt. Crichton’s pants lay on the floor by her feet but she remembered shoving them carelessly down his thighs with the heel of her foot as they frelled.

She had never- She had always- Aeryn stood up and yanked her pants into place, unfathomably bothered by the fact that she’d frelled Crichton like a tralk on a timetable. She wasn’t a child or a virgin and he was definitely not the first man she’d ever recreated with. Still….

She left him asleep, wheezing quietly in time to Moya’s heartbeat.

He found her in the galley chamber an arn or so later, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chin, literally staring into space.

“You were gone when I woke up,” he said from the doorway. He spoke with a careful absence of inflection that accused without accusing.

“I was thirsty,” Aeryn answered without looking from the viewport. She waved a nearly full bottle of Frellip Nectar in the air to illustrate her word.

Crichton grabbed it and helped himself to a swig. He sat down beside her.

He passed it back; “Whatcha you looking at?”

Aeryn took a drink and grimaced at the Frellip’s warmed-up taste; “The stars.”

“Huh.”

“I was eight cycles old the first time I saw stars. On my first EVA training cycle.”

“You’re kidding.”

She shook her head: “There are no viewports on the enlisted or cadet levels of a Command Carrier. But at eight cycles, cadets are streamed into assault, support and tech brigades for advanced training. Each cadet has to complete an EVA before they’re assigned to brigade.”

She took another sip and passed him the bottle.

“That’s pretty young isn’t it?”

“Depends on how you look at it. On a Command Carrier, unarmed and weapons combat training begins at three. By eight I was probably better trained than most of human soldiers.”

“Probably,” he agreed solemnly, “Helluva way to spend a childhood though.”

“I wouldn’t know: it was the only one I had.”

She heard Crichton shift beside her. He tapped her hand with the bottle and she took it back from him.

“What was it like?” he asked, breaking the uneasy silence. “I always loved going EVA, it was like being Superman.”

“I was terrified. I nearly washed out.”

“The Officer Sun? Wash out? I find that hard to believe.”

She turned to look at him. He was smiling at her sympathetically, with his kind face and his kind eyes and he was so entirely clueless.

“I’d spent my entire life on the Command Carrier. I’d never been in a space larger than 500 cubic motras before. And suddenly I was floating in the middle of nothing, nothing for as far as I could see. I felt powerless. Completely out of control. I hated it.”

“But you got over it, right? You became a deep space pilot, so you had to get over it.”

“I got through it,” she corrected him, “Because I had to, not because I liked it. I wanted to be a pilot more than I was afraid of being left out there.”

“So it worked out,” he said, “In the end.”

Crichton laid a hand on her shoulder. Aeryn shrugged it off.

She looked into the endless field of stars outside Moya and lowered her chin to rest on her knees.

“I suppose,” she said, “In the end.”

fin