The Night Out (R)

Setting and Warning: About 4 decades post PKW. There is some graphic sex. However, this is not a happy fic. No character death, but extreme angst. A good old fashioned Character Death might have been somewhat more cheerful. Definitely no fluffy bunnies. I didn't want to write this fic – this isn't the sort of thing I enjoy reading. But insistent voices were raised, so here it is.

Thanks: Vinegardog for beta-ing

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Word count: 1400

The Night Out (R)

"Yes! Yes! YES! Now John!" Aeryn keened, as she arched her back and balled her fist into the short-cropped hair of the man who she had just spent the last half arn frantically frelling. Her climax was long and slow, in marked contrast to his: one short, shuddering explosion and he was done. He ground himself into her, trying to wring out an extra few mircots of pleasure before he was finally spent.

The recent, forceful rocking of his hips dwindled to nothing, although he did not pull away from her quite yet. Aeryn felt his hand come up and stroke her hair, still long, dark and lustrous after four decades of marriage and as many children. His ragged breath tickled across the sensitive skin below her ear like a gentle, planetside breeze. Aeryn squeezed her eyes closed, just tightly enough to let her imagination prevail.

"That's nice, John," she sighed, smiling. Part of her, although she wouldn't have liked to have thought about which part, was sufficiently tuned into the wider Universe to notice that he had stopped caressing her. "Please. Don't stop." Aeryn whispered, hoping that he would continue.

Slowly, steadily, her mind began to emerge from the sleep of reason. As sense began to return to her, she tried to hold the truth back for just a little longer by running her hands across the full, taut muscles of his upper arms and shoulders. There was nothing quite like the feel of smooth, young skin stretched tight across a well-toned physique. She breathed in deeply, savouring the aroma of an aroused man – a man aroused by her. Finally, with more than a little reluctance, she opened her eyes and met his.

Despite having just had his fill of her, despite him still filling her in the most intimate of ways, he was scowling at her, his anger and resentment so badly hidden. She knew why. She didn't need him to explain.

He was upset, hurt that she had called out John's name as she had climaxed, then whispered it again afterwards. Well, frell him! What did she care? He'd had a good time, of that she was sure, and it would do him good to learn that in this life you didn't always get everything you wanted. Or deserved.

Aeryn always picked someone new for her recreation sessions. Always someone she didn't know, would never know. Someone she didn't care about and never would. It was just sex. Fluid level reduction. Attending to the physical needs of Moya's Captain, to help keep her functioning at optimum efficiency. It was never anything else. She didn't want it to be, wouldn't let it be. Couldn't let it be.

The young Peacekeeper Captain's face was angry with resentment as he disengaged himself from her and disappeared towards the sanitary alcove. Tomorrow they would be rendezvousing with his next ship and he would be leaving Moya. That suited Aeryn just fine.

'~'

The unused cell was just as she had left it when she had prepared it earlier that day, a change of clothes laid out and waiting. This wasn't the first time she had done this. Everything she needed was there. Well, almost everything. Aeryn entered the cell, stripped, and began to shower.

She stood beneath the cool water, so like rain, rinsing all physical trace of her latest partner off of her skin. She knew that she could clean off the physical signs, but there were some things that no amount of water would wash away.

Many things could render a man sexually impotent. Accident. Illness. Or, in the case of a human, simply the passage of a mere 47 cycles since they had first met. John was now elderly and frail whilst Aeryn was still in the prime of her life. It was last, cruellest and most relentless of all the tricks that time, fate and the universe had played on them.

There was no question in Aeryn's mind that she still loved John Crichton with a painful, burning need. The only problem was that there was more than one type of pain, and she had other burning needs which had been met with less and less frequency as the cycles and decades had rolled by. So, six cycles ago on a solo two-night resupply run, driven by frustration and raslak, she had sought out her first quick, meaningless frell in many, many cycles.

Afterwards, and every time since, she had hated herself for what she had done. She felt gripped by self-loathing, by the feeling that she had betrayed John. The sexual relief was always short lived and it left her feeling empty and dirty. She had hoped that the improvement in her efficiency and the respite of 'scratching the itch', as John might have termed it, would be more beneficial than it was. She had hoped that it might weigh more heavily in the balance against the reduction in her efficiency caused by her hatred of what she had done and the worry about how much it might hurt John should he ever find out.

The first time that she had done it on Moya was two cycles later. Pilot had been angry with her for weekens afterwards. Eventually, though, he had come to accept it. Aeryn thought that was probably because he had come to realise that his own anger was as nothing compared to her own self-loathing. That and the dread which she had confided to Pilot at the thought of what it might do to John, poor, fragile John, should he find out. Not that she wasn't suspicious that John hadn't somehow learnt about her nights out. Something about his manner had subtly changed. It had happened about six monens ago, right after she had returned from one of her assignations. He was even more infuriatingly….. nice than usual. Apologetic, almost. It seemed to her as though he understood what she was doing and why and felt guilty because he was no longer able to be everything she needed him to be. She had no idea what he might have found out or how. She really didn't want to ask, afraid of what she might discover.

Aeryn turned off the water and began to dry herself.

A couple of hundred microts later she was dressed again in the fresh clothes which she had laid out earlier that day and was slipping back through the darkened, familiar corridors of Moya towards the cell she shared with her husband.

'~'

"Hey, babe," John greeted her from under the sheets. He flicked on his bedside light. It provided just enough illumination for them to see each other, but not enough to read anything, at least not properly, so you could tell what they might be thinking.

"Hey," Aeryn replied, struggling not to let the word stick in her throat.

"Hey," he responded, watching her strip by the faint night light. She turned slightly so that he could not see her face, even in the dim light of their bedchamber. She was still a master at hiding her emotions, but John was still a master at reading them. Without answering, she slipped under the cold sheets. She knew she had broken the rules of their game by not responding, but she didn't trust herself to answer.

The silence drifted on for a few microts as she fidgeted to get comfortable. When it was clear she would not answer, John turned out the light and spoke again.

"You get done what you needed to get done?" he whispered. She was grateful that he had turned the light out. The merciful darkness meant that she didn't have to look into his impossibly blue eyes. That didn't stop her picturing how painfully full of understanding and forgiveness they might be.

"Yes," her voice was flat, on the verge of breaking. Even she could hear it.

"Good." There was a long silence, punctuated only by his bony fingers stealing across and finding her hand, gripping it tightly. "Love you," he said at last, his voice quiet and quavering. Was it his age that caused his voice to falter, or something else?

"Love you too," she breathed, fighting back the urge to cry, to scream. To confess…

Only you. Only ever you, John Crichton, Aeryn thought to herself as she gripped John's fragile hand as tightly as she dared.

End