TITLE: "Trade"

AUTHOR: Aiobheann

PAIRING: John/D'Argo

RATING: R Harsh language, implied m/m sexual activity.

SUMMARY: Hurt/comfort, First Time, Romance. Sometimes love is like breathing.

NOTES: It occurred to me that I hadn't read any D'Argo!Owwies in the Farscape fandom. This one is for Donovan, because he missed our favorite space studs.

DISCLAIMER: John and D'Argo don't belong to me, but I have a pair of exact copies living in the Muse closet under my stairs. Does that make them the Muses Under the Stairs? Henson owns the originals, and no copyright infringement is intended by their use here. Only the words themselves are copyright Aiobheann, 2000.

ARCHIVE: FSA & WWOMB. All others, please ask.

FEEDBACK: Please, may I have some? diva@sonoratx.net

By Aiobheann

The how and the why of it was not important. Suffice to say that it had been there, a possible -- no, /probable/ -- end, from the very moment he was born.

Luxan warriors do not often die old and in their sleep. They do not often die peacefully.

He could feel the blood flowing from his wound, feel the toxicity sending tendrils of poison through him like a fine gossamer lace, and he lay in the place he had fallen, thankfully out of sight of the others -- strange, he had come to care so much for them that he was glad they would not see him die -- and waited.

His wait for the warrior's death that was his birthright, his /destiny/, was interrupted by a blur of heat and color and noise flung across his body, a blur made up of hands and warm skin and breath skating across his face and a voice that shook as it chanted, "Oh shit oh shit, you're bleeding, jesus god why the /fuck/ are you doing this to me?"

He tried to say /because I'm supposed to, it's what I am/, but he couldn't because John was there, stealing all of the air around him, making the pain double and treble as he pounded at the wound, stimulating the bleeding to clear it of the lacy web of poison spreading through his veins. The pain was upsetting, not because it was agony to bear it -- although it was -- but because it meant John was going to stay right there, make himself a target, perhaps end up sharing a death with him. He had seen John bleed before, and he had no desire to see John's bright red blood mingled with his own if he could help it.

"Don't," he said, and John refused to listen, just kept on hitting him, and when he tried to take another breath to repeat it, shushed him.

"Don't be stupid, D'Argo. /Don't/, my ass. You aren't gonna die. You just /aren't/, because I said so. Now shut up and quit dying, okay? I've already had a bad enough day, don't die on me, too."

He wanted to laugh, but that was beyond him now. He felt his hearts stuttering in his chest, heard his own raspy breathing become ever more labored, and John stopped pounding at him and slipped a hand under the back of his neck. John's hand was warm, and soothing, and D'Argo looked up at him, wanting to tell him so, noting with increasing detachment that there were tears streaming down John's face and smearing the stripe of dark black blood that had ended up painted across one cheekbone.

The hand under his neck tilted his head back. "D'Argo? You still with me? Shit." John's other hand moved to cup the underside of his chin, fingers wrapping gently around. He lifted D'Argo's face up, lowered his own face down, pressed his mouth to D'Argo's. The noise and screams of the battle just on the other side of the crumbling wall they hid behind faded, and nothing was left to D'Argo but the warm lips on his own and the blessedly welcome air being given to him -- was this some human ritual of death? To give some of John's own life to D'Argo like a totem to carry with him into the next world?

If so, he loved John for it, and wished that he could tell him so. Abruptly, John withdrew from him and pressed shaking fingers on D'Argo's throat -- D'Argo was disappointed to find that he could no longer feel the warmth from John's skin as he did this, as if he had been thrust suddenly into shade after basking in the heat of a sun, and the agonizing breaths tearing themselves from his lungs made it impossible to say /thank you/ for the fleeting heat and comfort John had been able to give him.

Still crying, mumbling under his breath, John pushed D'Argo's tunic open farther, put his hands on D'Argo's chest. He wondered distantly if John was laying his hands on him to pray for him as he died, but John searched blindly over D'Argo's chest with his hands, muttering, "Frelling Red Cross never covered Luxan physiology. Where the fuck is your heart -- hearts -- whatever -- god, this isn't gonna work, I don't know what I'm doing -- " John's shoulders bunched, muscles standing out in sharp relief on his forearms, and instead of chanting or praying D'Argo's soul into the next realm, he pushed down, sharply, again and again. He did speak, but only to count tersely as he pressed his palms down hard and drew back up.

" -- fourteen, fifteen -- "

Two more breaths, and the world grayed out. When it resolved itself again, John was still counting, the sweat of exertion joining the tears on his cheeks.

" -- nine, ten, eleven, godammit, thirteen -- "

Again, grayness.

" -- /fifteen/, c'mon, /breathe/, you son of a -- "

Drowning grayness, and then this time the world did not simply coalesce into being but /burst/ into his consciousness, filled with the ragged gasping sound of the first breath he had taken that was not John's in several microts, with John's shout of triumph. "/Yes/, come on, breathe, I /said/ you weren't gonna die, but do you ever listen to me, stubborn asshole -- "

"Not -- stubborn," D'Argo grated out, and John smiled at him, face sheened with moisture, flushed and red.

"You /are/ an asshole. I said so."

"Takes one to -- know -- " D'Argo's voice trailed off into a wrenching cough, and John shushed him, probing at the wound to keep it running clear.

"To know one, yeah, yeah, next you'll be saying you're rubber and I'm glue. Shut up and keep breathing. Aeryn's got it covered, we'll get you out of here and in the transport and then we can trade schoolyard taunts back on Moya, okay?"

"Okay."

The world went away again, but it was not the suffocating grayness of before, just a comfortable dark in which he was still aware of John's voice and of the air, given to him like an unexpected and generous gift, circulating in his lungs, there because of John. John's breath, in his body. Had he ever lived simply because someone else wished him to that badly? Never, before he had lived simply because he /had/ to, no matter what his injuries or how close death had passed -- now his breath was John's breath, and that was fine with him, it was a good thing to dwell on as the others' voices joined John's and other hands lifted him, rocking him deeper into healing sleep.

* * *

The comfortable blackness persisted -- his body's way of marshaling all of his energy and directing it toward healing his wound. He was aware, at times, of the background lull of Moya's biomechanoid engine, like the purr of a great hunting beast in his ears, and of hands touching him to change the dressing over the hole in his shoulder, to lift his head and give him water or thinned, coppery-tasting nutrients.

John's voice was there often, more than any of the others. John talked, unconcerned that D'Argo wasn't able to answer him -- told stories about the time he and his friend DK had tried to build a plane out of wood and old tent fabric and a discarded lawnmower engine, about starting up the smoking, stuttering engine and pushing the rickety plane off the roof of his father's garage, and how he and DK had both ended up with matching broken arms when the whole thing crashed to the ground. About his mother, and how when she died it almost killed him, too, and about playing football, and about his first shuttle flight and the scary joy of being /out there/, in /space/, just like he had always dreamed of as a boy.

He was aware of the others speaking to him, of course -- Zhaan's calming lilt, and Chiana and Aeryn talking to him, too, taking John's place when they managed to force John to sleep or to eat -- but while their voices were welcome, it was John's voice that he craved, more for the sound of it than the words themselves. Even when he recovered enough to speak, to get up and walk haltingly from the maintenance bay to his cell, and back, John's voice was, more often than not, by his side, John jollying him along and teasing him and putting warm, supporting hands on his arm when he faltered.

"D'Argo?"

"Hmmm?" D'Argo said absently, concentrating on watching his feet, putting each one down with great deliberation. He was only now beginning to feel strong again, but his balance still failed him sometimes, and he was so tired, wanting only to make it back to his cell and fall asleep with that voice telling him something, anything at all.

"Why aren't you talking to me?"

"I like listening to you talk," D'Argo said without thinking. Once it was out, an admission he would never have dreamed of making before John breathed into him and /made/ him live, he realized that he didn't much feel like denying it.

"D'Argo likes listening to me talk. Whoa, stop the presses. Are you sure you aren't brain damaged or something?"

"Maybe."

"Huh. If I'd known bringing you back from the dead would improve your disposition, I'd've killed you myself a long time ago."

"Maybe you should have," D'Argo agreed, and then said, "Why did you?"

"What? Save your life? I would have done it for anybody, for Aeryn, /maybe/ Rygel, if I was in a good mood, or Zhaan -- although I'm not sure if CPR would work on a /plant/. Shit, I wasn't sure it would work on you. I had to do chest compressions to force blood through your heart, and I didn't even know where it was -- they, I mean, you have two of 'em -- but I guess I found them after all, didn't I?"

They had reached D'Argo's cell, and John was standing with him beside his bed, steadying him with an arm around his shoulders. He turned under the mantle of John's arm, weaving a little on his feet, and John caught him by the upper arms, looking up into his face worriedly. "Jesus, sit down. If you fall over I can't pick you up. Come on, sit."

D'Argo sat, pulling John with him so that they sat facing each other on the edge of the bed. John was looking at him still, his gaze tracking over D'Argo's face and down to his chest, checking the bandage over the healing wound high up on his shoulder, back up to his face, and D'Argo was struck by the real concern -- the worried /love/ -- he saw in those eyes. How could he never have seen it before?

He pushed that thought away as unimportant -- it didn't matter that he hadn't seen it before, he was seeing it /now/, and John's breath flowing through his lungs gave him the chance -- the life and the time -- to see it.

"You okay?" John asked.

"You found them," D'Argo said, and John looked puzzled for a moment before something that D'Argo couldn't easily identify flitted across his expression before being ruthlessly squashed. D'Argo could /see/ it happening, and before he could think better of it, think that maybe he was wrong and that it had not been comprehension and hope in John's eyes after all, he leaned forward, close enough that he could feel John's breath on his face, and said, "My hearts. You found them." He took one of John's hands and laid it against his own chest, over the twinned beat beneath the skin and muscle.

"There?" John glanced down, at his hand against D'Argo's chest, pale and pink against golden skin that was crisscrossed with tattoos and old scars, centered between the old, long-healed wound that held the holo-capsule of Lo'laan and Jothee's images, and the new wound, still fresh and covered with a bandage. He flexed his fingers, gently and experimentally, as if wishing to learn the texture of this skin he was touching but not quite daring to.

"Yes. Where is yours?" /Please understand me, John/, D'Argo thought. /I can't ask any other way, so you have to understand me now/.

"You know where it is," John answered casually, too casually, and D'Argo dared to hope that John /did/ understand the words behind their words.

D'Argo lifted his hand, hesitated, and then placed it on John's chest, feeling the quick beat of a single heart under John's T-shirt.

"See?" John said softly, and his hand stroked over D'Argo's chest, lightly, gently, careful to avoid the bandage and the wound beneath. "Been there for a long, long time. Didn't think you'd ever find it." John leaned forward, his lips almost, but not quite, touching D'Argo's. "Want to trade? I mean, if that's what you were looking for."

"It was. It is."

"Sounds fair to me," John said, and leaned forward, kissing D'Argo tentatively, breathing his breath into D'Argo's mouth again, and D'Argo felt his hearts settle solidly into strong, capable hands.

END
"Trade"