Hugely Important Author's Note: This story is a sequel to my story "All the King's Horses." I highly recommend reading that story first. :-)
Disclaimer: Any and all Pitch Black references do not belong to me. However, all of my original characters and references DO belong to me and may not be used without my express permission, as I do use them in some of my original work. Thank you.
Once upon a time a wanted criminal named Richard B. Riddick, escaped convict, murderer, crash landed on a planet with no name, just a designation. That planet was known as T2, and the ship was the Hunter Grazner. Riddick wasn't an evil man. He was, however, entirely selfish.
Richard B. Riddick, escaped convict, murderer, died on T2 when a girl called him back to the only light shining in an unending darkness.
Many years passed, and now Riddick introduces himself as Richard B. Riddick, security consultant, husband, father.
How things have changed... a cynical part of his mind whispered.
Riddick glanced up at his reflection in the mirror over the sink, and for just a second he glimpsed the image of a young man with fierce silver eyes. His chest clinched painfully with something between fear and exhilaration. Then, the image faded, replaced by the visage of an older man. The same caramel skin remained taunt across a sturdy jaw and the smooth planes of his cheeks, but tiny lines marked the passage of time at the corners of his eyes. The once fierce silver of his eyes had returned to their native hazel-brown.
He looked away from the glass, clearing his throat and straightening his collar. Yes, things certainly had changed.
Now if only he could learn to fix his own damn tie...
"Jack?" he called in the general direction of the master bedroom.
No answer.
Riddick walked out of the bathroom, his shoes clicking on the tile until he stepped onto the off-white carpet of the room he shared with his wife. He didn't find her standing there getting dressed, so odds were he'd find her in the kitchen, making breakfast for him and the kids.
Sure enough, he found her in the kitchen, slaving away in the loosest sense of the term. His approach didn't startle her. Even though he could stalk her without making a sound, Jack always seemed to sense him.
"Morning, hon," she called over her shoulder, deftly catching on a plate the two pieces of toast that flew out at her from a toaster their oldest son Cam had built for her in an elementary electronics class. She popped two more in before turning, catching him staring at her.
He smiled, placing a hand on the counter behind him and leaning on it. "Have I told you yet today that you're gorgeous?"
One of Jack's eyebrows rose, a smile threatened at the corner of her mouth. He could see the delicate muscles of her face struggle to keep her lips in a straight line. "Tie problems?" she asked, the suppressed smile bleeding into her voice.
His grin grew even bigger. "Because you are—absolutely—beautiful."
She relented, smiling in return at their familiar joke, and crossed the room to stand in front of him. Her deft fingers made quick work of the knot. "One more month," she said, marveling. "In four weeks we'll have been married over twenty years. I don't think even Imam would've thought we'd last so long."
When she turned those stunning green eyes, lined in black with long thick lashes, up to look at him, Riddick felt his heart hitch in his chest. He couldn't disagree. Not even Imam-the-eternal-optimist would've dared predict such astounding success for the marriage of a teenage runaway and an ex-convict. Jack wouldn't have fucked it up, either. It would've been all him. Twenty years and no deal-breaking blunders on his part. Maybe God liked him after all.
Then again, what could he possibly do to drive Jack away? She'd seen the worst of him, and yet a connection had always existed between them. In Jack's youth it was easy banter, the commonality of a crappy upbringing. Somewhere along the way it became something far more substantial; stronger than any chain, and more delicate than a silk thread. A stolen kiss, quick hug, or even lovemaking came so easily to both of them, but Riddick rarely allowed himself truly tender moments, even with Jack--moments where they did nothing but feel along that connection and find each other at the other end.
Riddick's large hands rose from his sides to lightly touch Jack's shoulders, his palms rubbing small circles while he lowered his forehead to touch hers. Jack's beautiful eyes fell shut and she leaned into him, taking a deep breath through her nose that whistled a little on the way out. After drifting off to sleep to that sound for so many years, he found quiet comfort in hearing it. The need to feel more of her led to his hands gently squeezing her thin but firm biceps, bringing her closer so her front pressed against his. Riddick found her face and cupped it in his palm, the pad of his thumb stroking gently over her cheek bone. Out of habit his lips began to seek hers before he restrained himself, swallowing hard and gritting his teeth behind closed lips. His heart started double timing its rhythm, and his breath tried to catch in his lungs. He didn't know how she did this to him, but his chest felt too small for the feelings trying to press up and out of him to the point of physical pain. Feelings that burned with such intensity that sometimes they scared the hell out of him.
Thoughts of carrying her back to their bedroom and ripping her clothes off paraded across his inner eye, but he kept them to himself. It took such careful control to hold her close without acting on those impulses, but he welcomed the challenge.
"We worked hard and built something nice for ourselves, Jackie-girl," Riddick said when he got better control of his lung function, his voice falling impossibly low. He'd lost the thread of their previous conversation and had to guess at what words would make an appropriate response. "Twenty or thirty more years of uncomfortable clothes and we might actually get to enjoy it."
She laughed softly, grabbing him by his freshly knotted tie and pulling him down for a short kiss, releasing him from their poignant moment. Just then the second round of toast flew out of the toaster and onto the counter top. Jack turned to get it, but Riddick held onto her wrist and snapped her back to him, looking smug.
"The kids ain't even up yet," he said, smoothing her hair back with a large open palm before he kissed her again, much more deeply this time. He literally felt everything melt out of her until she became boneless in his arms, sharing that kiss.
"Stop it, stop it right now!" screamed Rachel, their middle child and token teenage daughter. Apparently she'd just rushed into the room, because everything about her stood in atypical disarray; from her tangled shoulder-length hair, to the rumpled light pink pajamas she wore. Her fair cheeks had turned red under her sprinkling of freckles. "No more children out of you two! Not until I move out of the house! Kyle is the devil!"
Jack's eyes flickered open when Riddick's lips left hers. He wondered if her whole body tingled the way his did after one of their world-about-to-end over-the-top kisses. Judging by the fact that he still supported a decent percentage of her weight, he suspected she definitely felt something of that nature.
Riddick gave Jack a look of mocking confusion. "Kyle, Kyle? Do we know a Kyle, Jack?"
She returned the look before glancing over at her daughter. "I don't know. Who's Kyle, sweetheart? Is he a boy at school? You know what we've said about dating. You have to wait until you're sixteen, just like Cameron did."
Rachel's lightly freckled face turned bright red with fury and she let out a wail of frustration. "You know damn well who I'm talking about! Your demon spawn. Oh my God, I swear I was adopted!"
Just then Cameron Riddick--tall and handsome with a perpetual dark tan--made his entrance, immediately bee-lining for the toast. "Hey, what's all the yelling about?" he asked, looking and sounding far too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the son Riddick knew.
Not far behind him came their youngest. A four-year-old who stood a little more than three and a half feet tall, weighed forty pounds, and had a shock of dirty blond hair that contrasted sharply with both Rachel's head of strawberry brown hair and Cameron's brown/black locks. Kyle constantly ran around the house with his arms straight up in the air in imitation of an alien or monster.
Today, he was pretending to be a monster. He zoomed into the kitchen faster than lightening yelling, "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" His arms were up, his left palm open, his right clutching a tube of red lipstick. Lipstick that he'd used to paint warrior stripes all over his face and arms.
Riddick immediately recognized the tube as Rachel's favorite color of dark red. She'd nagged him to buy it until he'd caved just three days earlier.
Now it was blood-colored war paint on his son's small body.
Kyle stopped in his tracks, his face turning hard. He jerked his hands down and crossed his arms over his chest. He eyed them suspiciously. "Me great fighter, Bambini. You bow and worship or I karate chop you!"
Riddick could feel Jack's body begin to shake with suppressed laughter.
Rachel's top blew. "You little brat! You are so dead!" she screamed, her eyes bugging.
Kyle's look turned to one of horror and he screamed for real, running as fast as he could to the closest sanctuary, which just happened to be behind his big brother. He collapsed to a sitting position, bear hugging Cameron's knees and looking out at the girl intent on murdering him.
"Move!" she shrieked at her older sibling, hands clenching into fists at her sides.
The oldest Riddick child only smiled at her, chewing on a piece of plain toast. "Oh, come on, Rach. He's only a baby. Besides, I'm sure he's sorry. Aren't you, Squirt?" he said, looking down at the boy peeking out from between his knees.
Kyle shook his head furiously.
Cam shrugged, still smiling. "Then again, maybe he's not sorry. I'm still not going to let you kill him. At least not with mom and dad watching," he said conspiratorially, using his head to motion in their direction.
Rachel growled, her eyes narrowing at both her brothers. "Oh, I know where you guys sleep! Don't you forget that when you go to bed tonight!" With that last jab she turned on her heel and marched stiffly out of the room.
Laughter attempted to burst from Jack's lungs, but she covered it with a well faked cough. She busied her hands with brushing the lint from Riddick's shirt, the smile returning to her face every time she glanced at their two sons.
Kyle still hadn't released his hold on Cam's shins.
"What's so funny?" Riddick finally asked. He could guess, but it was better to share the joke with her.
Jack shook her head. "I don't know if it's a good sign or not, but from the looks of things, Kyle's already got himself behind bars."
Riddick looked over himself. Sure enough, until Cam wrestled the kid off of him, Kyle looked like a prisoner gazing out at the rest of the world from between his brother's knees.
He snickered when Cam swooped the little monster up into his arms and started to fly him around like an airplane before letting his weight come to rest on one hip. Cam gave the boy his breakfast to gobble down.
"Who's a bad boy? Yes, you're a bad boy, Kyle. You're the best little brother in the world, you devious little fiend. Now go get dressed so I can drive you to daycare," Cam told him, putting the boy on his feet and giving him a swat on the backside for encouragement.
Kyle ran off, singing at the top of his lungs with a large chunk of bread stuck in his cheek. "Dun na na duh na! The day I was born! The nurse all gather round! They could tell right away! I was bad to the bone! I make old women lust! I make young girls squeal! I'm bad to the bone! Dun na na duh na!"
Jack and Riddick both stared at Cam, using their best guilt-assigning stares. Cam sighed mightily and shook his head, using one hand to brush back his unruly dark brown bangs from his eyes. "No matter how I try, he still never gets the words quite right to that particular classic. Well, better go get the car warmed up," he said, before making a quick exit.
Riddick looked at Jack and she at him. "What I can't figure out," she finally said, "is which one of our boys is acting as a bad influence on the other."
He winked, smiling. "At least they're getting along." A quick glance at his watch told him it was time to go.
"You'd better hit the road, or you'll miss your flight," Jack said, echoing his thoughts. She'd gotten way too good at reading his mind over the years. Sometimes it irked him when she picked thoughts out of his head. Riddick couldn't help wondering if someday she'd figure out that he still had some pretty fucked up stuff running around his brain.
He smiled, kissing her one last time. "Yeah, yeah, you just can't wait to get rid of me so you can run off to work. I hate how much you love your job, Jackie," he teased.
She grinned, letting her hand come to rest on his chest. "It's not like us criminal profilers get paid to visit lunar casinos."
She kissed him before he could retort, but that was probably for the best. He wasn't sure he could top her on that argument.