John sat at his chess set, chin resting in the space between thumb and forefinger and pretended not to watch Aeryn stow her belongings in the space he had made for her on his shelf. She moved slowly, deliberately, as though trying not to let any of her stuff touch his. As though trying not to touch anything of his herself. They had been back aboard Moya enough days now for John to have heard bits and pieces of Aeryn's grieving process, the days right after her lover's death, the days spent on Valldon. She had returned to Talyn cold and competent and in full command of herself but, as even Crais would admit, it is was a far cry from any improvement.
She finished laying out a neat stack of clothes. Trousers, undergarments, shirts. John watched her straighten but she did not turn around. His chess ruse was forgotten as he watched her back, stiff and straight, her head held in military revue stance, as a hand seemed to reach out with a will of its own and brush over his own clothes as they lay piled next to hers, though not nearly as neatly. Just a casual brush, the hand moving as though coming up to touch the bulkhead and his clothes had simply gotten in the way of its path.
He suddenly felt guilty. He shouldn't be here. She shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be forcing her to relive a dream for the sake of his own fantasy. He looked at his hand. Lucky thirteen my ass, he thought.
He watched Aeryn do a brief survey of the room. "I'll take the floor," she said.
"I don't think so," he answered, the words coming out before any gray matter could intercede. She tilted her head in his direction, but still would not look at him. "I'll take the floor."
"I believe I am used to less than optimal accommodations more so than you are. I will take the floor." She started to spread out a bedroll in the far corner of the room.
"Aeryn, quit the PK crap. There's a comfortable bed, use it. Camping out a night or two isn't going to kill me." John stood up, ready to take the blanket out of her hands. It was irrational, really, but suddenly it seemed the most important point in the universe that Aeryn Sun was warm and comfortable, tucked into his bed and not curled up like a dog on the floor.
"Don't be unreasonable, John. The cold will only aggravate your shoulder injury. If you're concerned with comfort, then I will be much more comfortable down here than you will be." She still hadn't looked at him, and her voice, previously toneless and reasonable was starting to creep towards irritated.
John wondered how she knew about the shoulder that had first been dislocated in a motorcycle accident, and then by Crais in Maldis' castle. Well, there was a no brainer. He wondered what else she knew about him. If they ever could get their dren together, would she just find him old and redundant? He mentally shrugged, worry about that when…if…we come to it. It would be worth finding out.
"Ok, fine. Then we'll both sleep in the bed." This got her full attention, and he ended up looking at the floor rather than weather her gaze.
"I don't think so, John." Her voice was thin, tight, a hairs breadth away from pulling a weapon.
"I know, I know. I don't mean it like that. God, I don't ever mean it like that. No, I got an idea." John jumped into action, rooting through his shelves like a child who suddenly realizes he's mislaid his favorite toy.
Aeryn watched him, trying to find that place in herself again where nothing mattered, but at a glance John thought he saw amusement find its way to her face anyway.
John held up a coil of filament with a victory cry, then leaped onto his bed and began examining the bulkhead.
"What are you doing?" Aeryn asked, the bed roll momentarily forgotten.
"I was never a good sleeper. Back home. I couldn't sleep, always too much going on up here," he pointed at his head and shrugged, "not that you'd know that these days. Y'know, I'd just doze off and some damn computation would jump into my head and there I was, wide awake again scribbling notes."
John found an appropriate crevice in Moya's internal skin and threaded the wire through. He dropped the remaining line onto the bed as he tried to secure it over his head.
"Thank God for late night TV. Around two in the morning they would start running all these old black and white movies, after Letterman and Carson and whoever else," he knew he was talking too much, but she hadn't told him to shut up yet and it felt good just to have her ear, "and there was this one with, oh, what's his name? Clark Gable. Cary Grant. Y'know, out here it doesn't make much of a difference who it was anymore, huh?" He wound the line like a twist tie on a bag of bread and jumped off the bed, stringing the remaining line out along the length of the room so it was divided neatly in half.
Aeryn had moved back towards the shelf, leaning against it with her arms pressed behind herself, supporting her. Occasionally she squinted out of her left eye, as though the suture irritated her. Or perhaps it was just his inane babble. John looked up, dropping the line again to drag a chair over so he could reach the same space he had used to secure the thin cable on the far side of the room.
Barely keeping himself balanced on his toes, he continued his story, anxiety and hope in equal parts giving his voice a near manic quality.
"So, this guy and this girl had to share a room back in a time when it was really not acceptable for an unmarried couple to be sharing a room together."
"Yet another example of how backwards your species is," she interjected.
"Yeah, well, you've never given us high marks for brains." John finished his work and checked the tension in the line. It satisfied him with a sound like a badly tuned guitar. Still perched on the chair, he reached for the bed roll. "Hand me that, would you?"
She looked at the bed roll then back at him like he had just asked for something in a language her microbes couldn't hope to interpret.
"Trust me." Her face tightened into a frown at the words but she finally bent over and retrieved the blanket from the floor. John tried not to appreciate the view too much. Clearing his throat nervously, he jumped off the chair and climbed back onto the bed, stringing the blanket over the line so that it neatly partitioned the bed, creating two separate but identical halves, with the utmost privacy between. John stood back and surveyed his handiwork.
"And that's supposed to make everything alright?" Aeryn asked acidly from behind him. He tried not to smile. Leave it to his girl to play her part on cue. His girl. She wasn't his now, if she ever had been. Something gnawed at him just under his sternum and he tried to ignore how painful this was becoming.
He gestured towards the makeshift wall with a flourish, like a game show host. "Behold, the Walls of Jericho."
She still stood at the back of the room, one hand resting on her belt buckle, the other on her weapon. John turned back to the bed, talking now as much to mask his own anxiety as to impart on her any cultural information about his home world.
"Yeah, well, I know it doesn't look very impressive, but in some religion, some Earth mythology, the Walls of Jericho stood thousands upon thousands of years until Joshua blew them down with a trumpet."
"They couldn't have been that sturdy if a man could destroy them with a musical instrument."
John sighed. "It's an allegory Aeryn. Joshua had the power of God with him. It took the power of God to do away with the Walls of Jericho."
"So what does this have to do with a man and woman sharing quarters?"
John rested his hand against his brow. He never recalled it ever being this difficult explaining a movie before.
"Look…Just…" John sighed. "My side, your side. Now lay down on the goddamn bed and get some sleep. It would take Joshua himself with a frelling trumpet to come in here and blow revelie before one of us violates this frelling barrier. Got it?" He hadn't meant to lose his temper, but he felt like if he didn't yell he was just going to break down in tears and that just wouldn't do at all.
Aeryn stood back and considered the bed for a moment more before moving around to the right side and lying down, hair braided, boots on and all. John sighed. It was a start. He sat on his side of the bed and stared out the open door as he unlaced his boots. The gnawing became deeper, harder, like an animal scratching and clawing at his rib cage. He unhitched his holster and lay it on the floor next to his bed. Carefully lying back against the pillows so as not to disturb the blanket that hung between himself and the woman he so desperately loved, he almost wished he had died instead of the Other, just so she could be with him now. That little emotional parasite took a deep bite and swallowed greedily as John realized she had naturally gravitated to the other side of the bed. Her side. Whenever he had shared a bed with a woman he always took the right side, and she invariably ended up on the left. It was a throwback to days when his sisters crowded into bed with him and they all slept like gerbils, his back pressed against the wall, someone's hair in his face. Aeryn had known her side. They lay, left and right, as natural as night and day. If he were allowed, he knew they would wake nestled together like spoons, one arm draped over her thin belly, the other framing her head, his hand buried in a thick nest of hair. But not tonight. Anything like that would get him shot, most likely. And if I never get the chance, he thought, I might just as well shoot myself.
He fell asleep with one arm flung over his eyes, trying to ignore the uneven breathing and restless twitching of Aeryn's body so close to his. Beware what you wish for, he thought before falling into a dream about waxen wings and angels with trumpets.
John and D'Argo were sitting in John's quarters, a flagon of liquor between them and a plate of what John would say passed for bread and cheese. He didn't really want to know what it was, in some things ignorance was bliss.
"So," D'Argo said casually, "how did it go last night?"
"I still have all my 'pieces' attached, so better than expected, I guess." John shrugged, taking another long draw off the flagon. "Hey, do you really think it's wise to mix alcohol with all that super snot out there?"
"I don't see how it could make things any worse," D'Argo answered, holding his hand out for the flask.
"Good point. How's Casanova?" John looked over towards the bed, where Aeryn's body still lay in outline on his bed cover.
"Who? Crais?" D'Argo growled a reply that John's microbes were unable to translate.
"That bad?"
"He sounds like a rutting bovine when he sleeps."
John laughed. It was a hard sound. Humorless. "You got the rutting part right. But then again, so do you."
"John, do you really think it's healthy for you two to be sharing quarters?"
"D'Argo, it's not like they wrote the etiquette book for what to do when your double dies. Nothing around here is healthy. Aeryn and I being on the same ship isn't healthy, but I am at such a loss right now it seems like the least of all evils. Maybe, somehow, we can at least come to an understanding."
"You shouldn't force it, John. Your relationship before she left Moya was tenuous at best. And now…" D'Argo didn't have the words to complete the thought.
"Y'know, my other said the same thing. And mentally I know it's the truth, but emotionally I just can't seem to reach that place. I mean, it's killing me to know she's capable of loving me…"
"Ah, but," D'Argo lowered his voice, "you are dead to her now. It is painful, I know, friend, but of all obstacles death is the hardest to overcome. Although," D'Argo raised the bottle in toast, "if anyone can overcome that it's you two."
"How long did it take you to get over losing your wife?" John asked, looking at his large friend from under a bent head.
"You never get over it, my friend," D'Argo replied, "you learn to live with it. I at least had hatred to end my grieving. You do not have that luxury." The Luxan's voice had gone painfully cold. He and John sat in silence for several moments after, simply passing the drink back and forth.
Trying to change the subject, John watched a DRD trundle through his quarters and push back the gelatinous goo that slipped and oozed along the corridor outside. "So I see the girls were successful getting through to Pilot."
D'Argo snorted. "I would ONLY send the girls. If you are male, he wants nothing to do with you, and if you are female it behooves you stand out of grabbing distance."
"Excuse me? Pilot?" John couldn't help but me amused. "Mr. All-that's-missing-is-the-bowler-and-tea- at-four Pilot?"
"He's acting like Rygel. Or at least he's acting like Rygel would act if he had four arms." D'Argo didn't bother to mask the disgust in his voice.
John grimaced at the mental picture. Who would have thought Pilot had a lecherous bone in his body?
"Do you have a plan yet?" D'Argo asked as short time later. He shook the empty bottle and frowned.
"Right now?" John stood up and walked over to the bed, laying a hand on the impression of Aeryn's body. "Just get through the day without breaking my neck either intentionally or otherwise."
D'Argo stood up and paused at the door. "Good plan," he said, starting the long slide towards the central chamber.
