A/N: Hey there! As promised, this is the beginning of a new collection of oneshots featuring R/F. Most of them are written as gift-fics for my friends, but the setting and plot are pretty consistent. They will be published in a chronological order, so as to make them easier to place. As a warning, due to their nature, some of them may be OOC and most of them will involve adult-oriented scene (come on, R/F needs it!) and all of them were written for fun, so don't judge too harshly. As always, enjoy!
DISCLAIMER: not mine.
The adventures of Riddick and Fry at the North Pole
- In which Riddick learns of a totally different side of Carolyn's -
Fry ever so slightly reached for the knife tucked safely away in her utility belt – something she could not find within herself to part with, even in her Hunter years – and slashed with lightning fast speed at the foggy surroundings. The pale Captain had always wondered if you could actually cut a fog this thick with a blade.
You could.
She grimaced at the slice in the décor, a silver gushing wound that healed itself right back up. Closer to Furya's northern pole, the weather conditions had turned defiantly less welcoming. Not that the rest of it was a paradise ready to be populated. It was an arid wasteland of radioactive trash. But the terra-forming crew was already taking care of that. D'Jai Lya was head of that gruesomely boring operation. And somehow the quirky alien still managed to make it sound easy and fun-going. She had designed patterns of flourishing gardens with the help of inebriated closet-Furyans that thought all of it was a colossal joke. Little did they know…
But it had made them happy, the poor declawed kittens, children of a slaughtered generation. And it had made the ones in which the prowling beast sluggishly opened its eyes on occasion smile and carry on polishing their weapons of choice. Those were the ones she sometimes worried about. Worried if they would snap against her – and the Predator she represented – and severely be vacated of soul or against Riddick – and his animal ways – and quickly be dispatched to one form of hell or another. They cocked their heads warily nonetheless and let her be. Most of the times they didn't even see her, for Fry had reverted to wearing the cloak while on the ship that carried them to Furya. The sight of her gruesome scarring made them uncomfortable and she did not want to bear with their confusion on matters of pity and respect.
Naturally, they just adored Riddick and even in their fear of the great man they would busy themselves around him, from the tittering old to the stupidly young. It had taken him time to adjust, but Riddick was by nature a social creature. Sociopathic would be another word for it, Fry often joked with him. And as long as there were people around that would quell his sadistic need for amusement, he was content.
And, of course, there were the children.
That doted on his every move.
From the brown haired Ziza and her endless demand of stories to other boys and girls of Furyan descent that would grow up on heroic tales of Richard B. Riddick (most of which were recounted by Jack, God help them all!).
Nothing of what he did – however normal or mundane – could be anything less than fucking badass. He ate coal, he pissed gold. And shat diamonds on memorable occasions.
It infuriated her how easy he made people like him, despite themselves and despite who he really was.
Richard B. Riddick. Escaped convict. Murderer.
They were drawn to him like matter in a black hole.
It made her feel slightly…out of place. Like the humanity she still clung to was again something so puny and little in comparison with their natural prowess that it was bordering the ridicule. She felt pointless. And no amount of physical loving from Riddick (an aspect of their relationship he frequently indulged in) could shake the feeling of misplacement.
She missed her half-life with the Yautja. There were no strings attached with the bulky aliens. There was no staying of the weapon if they got her all riled up. They died. She lived on to hunt and slay the next hot topic, with no heed paid to pain. Yes. That was what she had been. Paid to pain. Here, back on Riddick's homeplanet, it was required of her to simply live, let live and – she highly suspected – give life. Like it was that simple.
The weary Captain sighed and watched her breath foam in front of her and then pierce the veil of fog in so many icicles. So it was going to snow after all. And possibly a storm was brewing in the distance. She felt it in her bones. Old bones that had seen too much of life in this Universe in too short a time. It was time to head back to the iso-tent she and Riddick had set up earlier in the whatever you called the timeline so far up north. She fumbled with her coms to check on Riddick.
Yes.
She knew.
Bad habit.
"Riddick, I've gone as far as the weather permits it. There's nothing here. No life forms 'cept some ice worms in the crevices up ahead. Thermal supplies, I figure. If we could come up with something to catch them with and not get third degree burns, that is. All around, everything's pretty still. I'm coming back to camp. Where you at?"
It took as long as her heart needed to hammer viciously against her chest for Riddick's voice to come rugged and disrupted over the small communicator in her ear.
"Caught…"
Heart stopped.
"…storm…'re way…meet ya…cam…'me in…."
Static.
Her heart protested to the rhythm her running body had imposed. Running to Riddick's last know location before their check-in a couple of hours ago. Her lithe body – a product of years of some form of deprivation or another – had pretty sharp angles with which to penetrate through the thick fog. Because, she had recently discovered, you could actually cut through fog. Or at least attempt to before skidding to a rather abrupt halt due to severe pain in the right ear.
Static.
Something Riddick's gravel like voice was most definitely not.
"Carolyn!"
Get up. Get going. His voice sounds close.
"Ca-ro-lyn!"
Keep moving. He must be close by. You can get to him in time.
"CAROLYN!"
"What?"
The woman yelled in the snowed up nothingness.
"Get that ass moving to camp…NOW!"
It was touching he liked her ass well enough to know it was safe back in the iso-tent but her frustration defeated that point.
"You will tell me where you are this instant!"
Her voice resonated unhindered by distance, temperature or howling wind. She willed him to hear her screaming madly in his ears – literally, she meant for a miniature Fry surgically inserted in his hearing cavity to box away at his eardrums. He had worse things done to himself. She wished for better lungs too, cause her own were obviously malfunctioning at the worst of times. Even at the best, if you counted her rather hushed sexual rituals. But Riddick was working on that.
"Where…are…you?"
Damn that man! Couldn't he stay out of trouble in his own freaking back yard?
"Breathe!"
"Bite me!" Lame comeback, she knew.
"I will. Once I get back to camp. We're you'll be. Get it?"
"Fuck you!"
"That too. Now move!"
Damn this planet and its fucked up weather and its fucked up people.
Damn her – what was it again? – strong survival instincts. Like, wasn't it enough?
Damn her stupid attempts at saving Riddick's life. Like, wasn't that enough too?
Damn her feeling so fucking trapped. So fucking needy. So fucking, bloody, freakin', noxiously in love with the man.
Because the root of the problem lay therein.
She loved him.
Basically.
Basically hard.
Yeah, that's right. Heart-stopping, hot-nail-through-the-head, stomach-twister, shiv-sharp-pain-in-your-vein love. She was as struck by the thought as the next person.
The mere idea of love in this day and age had been inconceivable for the once young pilot in training. Then nothing but a joke you laughed at with your crewmen once you were wasted enough to bring it up and lie about it comfortably. And then came the Great Obsession. And they lived through the end of the world, her and Riddick. And the only revelation she'd ever got – except the time she almost died for the rat-bastard, willingly! at that – out of the whole mess was that they could be dead-tired – or just simply dead – and still have great sex. Or whatever it was they were making these days.
Love.
Babies. Possibly. Eventually.
God! The horror!
She fumbled with the opening to the tent only to be greeted by what was Riddick's fuming stance. She was shoved – unreasonably – inside the warm tent.
"Were you taking a fucking stroll?" the large man, clad in a woolen jumper and furred boots, asked impatiently and, Carolyn sighed at the reprimand, quite rhetorically.
"I was waiting to catch a glimpse of Santa…" she mocked grinned. "Instead I ran into the Grinch…"
"What?"
Riddick stared her down like she had gone off a very deep end.
Figures he wouldn't know, the blond woman shook her head in resignation. It was a surprise she even remembered the stories her folks had told her. Stories that belonged to children of other times and other planets in other systems.
Sol…Tales of the Old Earth. It was old and forgotten magic.
This was not the North Pole of ancient fables.
Looking up at him, Carolyn saw he wasn't wearing his goggles, blast the damn things. They reminded her of another man that looked just like him, one with a shiv up her throat. One with a smart mouth. Bare-eyed Riddick was usually hanging limply in her arms as far as memories were concerned. She had become comfortable with his eerie shined eyes.
It was just the two of them, stripped naked of all that made them so feared. No compliments.
And then the oddest thing happened. It sprung from her head – that head, on her shoulders, under a mop of slightly damp curls – and traveled to her mouth and rolled of her tongue. It tasted an awful lot like peppermint schnapps. Heady, yet refreshing at the same time:
"Richard…"
Someone had obviously taken the time of naming him properly. Given him a strong good name like Richard – a name fit for kings. It was a part of him, one he must have some form of attachment to, or else he would have foregone it for the more commonly known Riddick. But he always introduced himself by his full name and she never took the time to figure out why.
"You really are crazy, Crazy Carolyn." He rumbled.
Carolyn ambled herself towards him, reached out and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her frosty face in his shoulder, nuzzling the bit of skin his jumper did not cover.
She wasn't tall enough, and with a defeated sigh, Riddick lifted her up, so she could drool and drip all over him during whatever crisis she was currently undergoing. At least he got to play in her hair and not get swatted for it. He rocked her from side to side, wondering where his legendary badass-ness had run off to and when had it been replaced by this simple content at having a slip of a nutty blonde tucked safely in his arms, while she was chanting his name and sobbing and sniffling and running her fingers down his sides and under his many layers of clothing and on his skin and down…hello there!
Crazy Carolyn was hitting on him. Hard. Off went his clothes, down went his pants, back went his body. Mercifully, it landed on the campaign bed, not somewhere…chilly. Not that he'd mind or notice. He was so hard, his brains seemed to have liquefied and traveled the length of his body with the stream of rushing blood. She was thin and frail and scarred all over. Her eyes were huge on her pale face, the blonde bangs curling and twisting in impossible patterns. But he couldn't see that. All he could see was an elfish looking woman-child that loved him with all she was worth. His crazy little Carolyn running small hands up and down his body, gently, oh so gently, as if he were the one to break. He watched her take his hands and place them on her hips as she engulfed his throbbing organ, slowly working her muscles against him. The smell of her arousal was riding the breath going between them as his hands set the pace for her almost weightless body. She was painfully tight around him, and yet her movements were silken smooth, building pleasure in him like waves teasingly lapping at a never reachable shore. She arched her back, pushing her chest forward, clasping her hands over his own at her thighs, nimble fingers rubbing against darker, longer ones. He would have liked nothing more than to reach out and take a pert nipple in his mouth, let it grow harder, like a small pebble and run his tongue over it to feel its tangy taste. But the pleasure-pain was coiling tight in his chest and deep in his loins and instead, he thrust forward, almost lifting Carolyn off the bed. She let out a repressed aaahhh, her inner muscles clenching tighter around him for support. She opened eyes she did not remember closing and locked them with his shined vision. And the word came again, softly whispered, barely audible for the rustle of their intertwined bodies:
"Richard…"
He almost came, then and there. But he surfed the tidal wave of his own orgasm, focusing his gaze on the movements of the woman's body, tense and little, working against his much larger one, harboring within it his engrossed manhood. To him, she was beautiful. It took every bit of his will power to partially stand up and kiss her fiercely on her pretty mouth. When their chests connected, sparks flew from the friction. Both of them came violently, she squeezing his worth inside of her, he filling her up with all his might.
They collapsed on the bead, a heap of tangled limbs and sweating bodies.
Riddick palmed the marks on her back, while Carolyn lay in a blessed state of numbness on top of him.
"It's annoying how much I love you…' he heard her say all of a sudden.
"Tell me about it."
"Hmph." Yup, Riddick, the Romantic.
"No, really, tell me about it."
In a flash she was up, staring at him like he sprouted another head, or turned furry and green.
He was serious. He just didn't know it himself. Didn't hope to know it. In Riddick's homeworld people did not love the Riddick. Carolyn did not love Riddick. Fucked him, yes. But love? There was lust, there had always been. And obsession, and sacrifice and longing. And now there was time. Time in which she could call him Richard and he could learn to like it. He already liked it.
And he'd always liked her. Always.
But he needed to know if she was for real, not just some Crazy Carolyn stunt. Like the one she was pulling on him now, grinning broadly and whispering against his lips.
"Richard and Carolyn sittin' in a tree.
K-i-s-s-i-n-g!
First comes love,
Then comes marriage,
Then comes Richard with a baby carriage!"
"You know, I've gutted people for less…" he whispered back, rather begrudgingly.
"Hey, you wanted me to tell you. There you go!"
There he had it. Between manic fits of laughter and sex like he couldn't believe, Crazy Carolyn loved Richard B. Riddick.
Hey, worse things had happened to him.
A/N: If you've reached this far, you must review:)
…please?
