SquidgeWorld Archive

"Let me," said John Cricthon, "Your way and mine." His hands agreeable on her waist. His breath, rich with alien enzymes and exotic sugars, headier than distilled wine.

She laughed, leisurely. Tilted her pelvis forward and found him disarmingly, basically, bipedally male.

He made a small sound in his throat.

She did it again, and his hands tightened against her and he put his mouth to the corner of hers. Breathing his gorgeous breath.

He was smiling against her skin when she said, "Do. Your way."

"Zhaan," with the intonation that presaged a glut of Crichton-babble.

Her thumb had the intended effect. She had surprised him.

His mouth gentled beneath her touch, firmed around the tip of her thumb. There was the barest hint of moisture. She felt the smooth plane of his teeth. He smiled, his lips gently sealed around the plump tip of her thumb. He had an overbite. She felt it in the kiss. The smallest and most leisurely of kisses.

"Walk with," Zhaan said, offering him her hand.

His shoulder brushing hers the entire way, his fingers tangling with hers, he did.

*****************

John Crichton had simple skin. Pale hued, even in color, except when she touched him. Then an intriguing flush infused the path left by her fingers, hands, lips, tongue. Its texture by turns soft and pliant, soft and resistant, dry, coarse, hairy, moist. Its color changing from pale to delicate reds at her touch and his own arousal.

"Picture'll last longer," John murmured.

Zhaan looked up from the nest of possibility between his legs.

His sculpted arms were linked behind his head. His gaze lazy. Her overshift pillowing his head.

She made a tiny circle at the juncture of his upturned leg and pelvis, lay her finger against a blue vein that pulsed in the shallow dip of flesh above his thigh, where he was only a little like her. That and his mouth.

His lips parted.

The thin ring of color around his enormous pupils vanished.

She brushed the smooth flat of her nail in the dip of tendon above his thigh. Paused.

He waited as he had been waiting since their first, human unity, content to her perusal. The scents rising from him invasive, delicious. The veins beneath his skin, the weave of his muscles and richesse of fat, making what she'd thought his pure even color the subtlest of visual feasts.

The finger that touched him was joined by her hand, circled out over lean cup of his hip, traced the masculine slant between his torso and legs, slid over his hip and onto the mattress.

The side of his mouth twitched. Delight stretched both sides of her own.

She leaned forward, letting her arm take her weight, the sound of her hand on him, much quieter than the beating of her heart. She pressed her other hand below his navel, stroked up and out to his ribs with her palm, and onto the bed. She leaned forward again, licked her lips, brushed her closed moist mouth over the slightly hairy terrain of his chest, felt the pounding of his heart within his breast. Heard his breathing, as ragged, for him. Advanced, stroke by slow stroke, letting her breast touch him as she stretched over him until her nose was level with his and her thighs lay between his own.

He nudged her with his raised thigh. Pulled his arms from behind his head, trailed her over shift across her shoulders. The delicate weave exquisite against her sensitized skin. Not photic, but close enough and she moaned her appreciation for his benefit.

He smiled.

His lips and gums were a lighter, earthier tint than the charming scattering of pigment on his shoulder blades and forearms he called 'freckles'. He gripped the base of her neck and enveloped her mouth with his own. The slick and pebbled wet of him amazing. His eyes staring into hers even as she flung herself into the sensation of his kiss, and received him into her body as she opened the gates of her mind.

Beautiful, gentle the clutching of his limbs. Beautiful and gentle he found her. His eyes staring into hers even as she flung herself into the sensation of his kiss, and received him into her body and through the gates of her mind.

Familiar blue-tinged unity where she re-experienced herself through his kind, exacting, optmistic eyes. Re-experienced encounters between him and her since he'd met her, since, since she'd purchased his freedom with her peace of mind, since he'd been lost from Moya, and found.

The changes in her since his liberation had made her less fearsome to him, but more distressing. But beyond that distress, beyond that fear (always there), was the steady flame of his regard. Smooth, soft in color, unchanging, like the inside of a shell turned in upon itself, containing the song, soft and fierce as that of the captured ocean's, of his belief in her strength of will, her desire for good.

That she was above all things gentle, beautiful, strong. Gentle. Beautiful. Strong. He spelled it out silently, slowly, quickly, hard, struggling to hold his thoughts together as his body ground the lightening of his thoughts. She returned the gift to him, endlessly, drew him into her with all she'd had as a female of her species and a former Pa-u. Tilting and turning around him minutely and controlled, wringing the sweetest of sounds from his guileless frame with the greatest economy of movement. Display to him the treasure that she, and Moya and the crew had in him, the Crichton.

The only Human of Earth in the known universe. Crichton, lover of life, hater of pain, resourceful, brave and also gentle. beautiful. Strong. She wrote onto his skin, fired it across synapses until his body twitched with it, his heart beat to it, his blood flowed to it. And something happened, something wonderful, unity of depth she had not experienced in so long, too long. Their individual biochemistries and consciousness obliterating the differences between them they existed solely in the context of him in her and her in him and . . . perfect.

Zhaan opened her eyes to see the sculpted curve of Crichton's back. Her hands clutching him. Realized she rested on an incline. Crichton's arms bracketing her head, his hands braced against the floor. The pallet having slipped off its frame and almost completely onto the floor.

"Oh," Crichton groaned into her neck. "I am going to hurt tommorow."

Zhaan laughed, and hugged his sides. Clasped her legs around his hips and jerked a little, pulling her and Crichton, pallet and all, completely onto the floor.

"Ow."

"Are you injured? Perhaps we've overused some of your muscles."

He raised his head, his bleary expression was smug and tender. "Oh, yeah. Gimme a minute, babe, we'll strain some more," squeezing a handy portion of her anatomy. His head dropped back to her breast. She massaged his neck. He gave a thankful groan.

Perhaps she should not have taken the physical lead. For all his strangeness, Crichton was basically, bipedally, disarmingly male, of the same genus of the so very conservative and inflexible Sebaceans. The pallet had not been designed to support two, and Crichton's compact body was denser than it looked. She thought he might be sleeping when he said, "Whoah."

"Is something the matter?"

"You're Zhaan. Ex-Delvian priest. Blue. Everywhere. Almost, everywhere."

His pulse only a little faster than usual.

His respiration normal. Physically, fine. Perhaps her madness had infected him. She hoped not.

"We had sex," he said.

"Yes." Explorative. Abundant. Very pleasant, "We had sex."

His stirred against her stomach.

He snorted. Tried to speak, only laughter kept getting in the way. "Holy," he chortled, "freakin Captain Kirk."

Which of course, made no sense, but he was Crichton. And he was not to be encouraged in that way. So she resisted the urge to ask him what in Hezmana was he babbling about.

"We need to talk," he said. Lay quietly on her for a moment and said, "Yeah, definitely." And lifted himself off her with his arms. He shook his head, dizziness perhaps. She held his shoulder to steady him as he sat up, he held her hand there. "Talk about a rush," and looked at her, his eyes red-rimmed, his face tense with exhaustion but radiant.

She held his head between her hands, tilted his head towards the light, his pupils still dilated, contracted into thin dots.

"I'm fine, Zhaan. Great. Mind's never been clearer."

She folded her hands in her lap.

"You didn't damage me." His face took on an expression of singular loveliness.

"We need to talk?"

"I finally figured out why it's taken me so long to, uh, take you up on your, uh, invitation."

"Invitation?"

"On that planet with the roots that was really a peace- keeper power supply? You and me, sleeping in the room next door to D'argo. You naked, next to me?"

They had been sleeping.

"You had your hand on my, y'know."

"Yino'?"

"My crotch."

She cupped said genitals, "Like this?" Stroked the length of him, "or like this."

"Whoah, babe," he caught her hands, "I'm still a little beat."

Beat. When he said it, she wondered if it meant what he thought it meant. He was hardening and lengthening as she watched.

"My back is killing me and my spleen feels like it's got the hiccups. And I don't even think I still have a spleen."

Another word the translator microbes couldn't handle.

"Good sex is good sex. Unity is ten years of great sex. Unity and Delvian-Human sex.." His thumbs rubbed her palms. "This could be addictive, Zhaan. Your way and mine."

"Your way is very like you."

"How's that?"

Crude but effective. Simple but profound. Sublime and direct. Familiar and strange.

"Indescribable? Incredible? Fanfreakingtastic? Feed my ego, here, Zhaan. I thought nothing could top Unity."

800 cycles of existence hadn't equipped her vocabulary for the reality of John Crichton. She kissed him. Tenderly, quietly, smilingly, the way he liked. "But you are still a little afraid of me."

"And part of you hates me for what it cost you to save me."

"You are Crichton. I am Zhaan."

He was shaking his head. Wonderment and lust, affection and satisfaction radiating from his body and, if she concentrated, from his emotions as well.

"Before I forgot, before, well this fades and you start wondering why you let me touch you, or get back into your mind,"

"And vice versa perhaps?"

He shrugged. Crossed his legs. "You're the most like me on Moya, y'know. At least, at first I thought you were. Your values, your demeanour. How you treat people. Patient even with Spanky."

"Not of late."

"Yeah, but see, I knew, just like I did that even if all my hopes for extra-terrestrial contact had been met with you, cause you had all the best characteristics of a Vulcans and Deltans ..."

She had not heard of either those species.

" -you were going to surprise me. There are things you do, choices you make that I can't, won't agree with, and sometimes when I'm with you, its painfully, unavoidably obvious that I'm living my wildest dreams, and sometimes, that dream I'm stuck in a nightmare."

Pilot's arm had been an acceptable sacrifice. Just as losing control over the madness, the darkness within her that had been waiting to devour her for hundreds of cycles had been an acceptable sacrifice.

"Am I making any sense here?"

"You rarely do."

"I've seen you thinking it, but I've never heard you say it."

"Forgive me, John, I don't know what came over me."

"It's called intimacy. Go with it."

"This is part of you embracing your fear?"

"Exactly. And when I do that,"

"You're embracing yourself."

He tugged her forward onto his lap. "C'mere, self. Scare me s'more."

"Your spleen's hiccups."

"Good hard scare's the only cure." He held her head between his hands, stared into her eyes. "Come back in here, darlin. Walk into my eyes."

Zhaan touched her forhead to that of the strangely sweet Terran. His eyes were red-rimmed, which meant exhaustion. "You should sleep, Crichton."

"I'll sleep when I'm dead."