Two Birds, Two Stones
Chapter 9
Forbidden Bodies
He can't understand his wife.
Feels like he's on some 1950s serial where the guy drops his suitcase and jacket at the door as his doting wife waits with his slippers, the newspaper, and a martini—supper ready in an hour, the kids knowing not to make eye contact.
Let's be honest, he never really understood his wife.
Sure he knows the basics, the glares, the elbowing, the grunts—man, does he have the grunts down—knows why she acts the way she does because he knows all about her Peacekeeper indoctrination.
What he doesn't know is how she's feeling.
How she did feel after the baby, the college cramming style sleepless nights? They never talked about how it felt for her to lose her mother, because, hey, that wasn't with him, so he doesn't have to deal with it—right? It's not that he doesn't care, but by the time she came to him with that baggage, she was already done talking about it, so he left that suitcase right at the front door where it belonged— for her to get rid of.
Maybe this is why the other him was so much better.
She fell for him—from what he can tell, fell for other him pretty hard considering her status as a previously Ludovico'd space fascist who felt weak when she admitted to loving. When she came back she wouldn't look at him, talk with him, acknowledge his existence, until it became necessary for survival.
When Crais and Talyn died, she didn't react—at least not with him—bounced back to sacrifice being natural, that hive mind theory, the deaths piling up behind them necessary for the adventure in front. He never asked how it felt to lose them—a close friend, a surrogate child that she named with honor after another fallen member of her family.
He doesn't ask, and at first he didn't because he was afraid that she would withdraw more from him—that the basic dialogue they'd reconstructed would crumble back to nothing. Then he didn't ask out of habit.
Why she left?
Where she went?
Was she an assassin?
How did Scorpy scoop her up from the middle of nowhere and slap her back onto Moya?
All the questions she refused to answer in full.
Got her back from Katratzi and he asked the same slew of questions.
What happened?
Was she okay?
What did they do to her?—she was tortured, that much he knows, and he hates—but there were higher stakes because the baby—
Jesus, the whole baby thing.
Not telling him.
Not knowing who the daddy is like a year long episode of the Maury Povich show.
To be fair, she never asked him once if he wanted to be the daddy to a kid that might not be his. Even if he was his—and that's another reason he doesn't ask questions because Deke is his flesh and blood, his firstborn, the son that will carry on his name in the universe—or a hyphenated version of it—but he knows that Deke had a different daddy, and as much as he'd argue that point until he's red in the face if someone accused him of it—it's the reason he can't handle the midnight heavy metal screamo sessions with a month old son. The reason he tries to dodge diaper duty and feeding him that gross green sludge from a Capri Sun pack.
Even if Deke is flesh and blood, it's hard to bond with a kid that's not his.
Even if he can see his wife's tired eyes, and his dad's big ears, and his own stupid, lopsided grin when the kid—when his son—actually smiles—it still stings that he wasn't the Crichton to help make him out of love.
All of this Aeryn has figured out and called him on, and he's argued until he was red in the face, until she actually relented from being so exhausted—with stuff maybe or maybe not happening to her body—from the pregnancy, from the hormones—because they only had one quick layover with the Diagnosian, and it was to get Deke inoculated. Didn't even have time for the translator microbes before they had to starburst away, because even after the treaty, the peace hangs heavy like an albatross around Moya's neck.
Translator microbes are a problem now too.
If he didn't know what his wife was feeling before, he sure as hell has no clue what she's feeling now. Aeryn's poker face could win them millions of credits if put to good use, but when he's trying to figure out if she's healthy or not, if she's tripping into heat delirium or not, if being blinked into a whole other galaxy where one on of the main players is a beady-eyed classicist who keeps ogling her has upset anything in her system—which is only a month out from birthing their son—it doesn't hold up well.
Can't fall back on being physical.
Their relationship was physical first. Her thighs strapped tight around his neck, them cramped together in the little pit of his module or lost in a different alternate reality where they dissected Sparky and she undulated on top of him while a rainstorm slapped at the window.
What he knows about her now, is that she's shimmied all the way to the other side of the Queen-sized bed the army hooked them up with, that her legs have cycled the sheets and blankets passed her ankles and she's still cycling. If it wasn't for the heat, he would assume that it was a bad dream, but he can't remember the last time she's had one, or the last time he was there for one, or that she told him about one—maybe she's started keeping those to herself too.
Her tank top is riding up her back with the constant cycling, and her skin almost glows in the dark by how covered in sweat she is. With a final kick, she shoots the sheets and blankets off the bed—halfway off him—and onto the ground. The mattress bounces as she sits up on the edge for a few minutes, before standing, rounding the bed soundlessly, aiming towards the bathroom.
He turns towards the opposite wall tracing her movements in the dark, listening to the door creak shut, and watching the sliver of light flicker on. There's running water and after that he falls asleep. He'll ask her about it in the morning—
At least that's what he wants to do, because that's what he's used to doing.
Leaving the suitcase at the door for her to take care of.
Leaving their son in a soiled diaper while he ducks out into another endless Moya corridor to hang out in the command room and talk to ghosts.
If he asks her what's wrong, she's not going to answer him. Mainly because she's refused to speak to him in English since her ice bath, but she doesn't want him concerned with it, just like he is overly concerned with every single thing she does because someone has to be.
But she's still sitting on the edge of the bed, so he asks her anyway.
"Aeryn?" His voice comes out groggier than he means, and he realizes this is the first full night of sleep they've gotten since Deke was born, well, she's gotten—he was sort of out of commission for the first week.
She doesn't answer him, just rounds the end of the bed, heading towards the bathroom.
So he shuffles up in bed, sits with just a flat sheet over his lap and bent knees, and leans over to the side table, clicking on the lamp. "Are you okay?"
She recoils at the sudden blast of light—the same way he does—but it makes her stop her trek to the bathroom. When she doesn't say a word, he calls out to her again, because maybe she's used to waking up in weird places—but maybe she's not. "Aeryn?"
Her answer is a scoff, and words in Sebacean—the choking inhales and sudden screeches—before she rolls her eyes and takes another two steps.
"Baby," he sighs and rubs a hand across his face, trying to clear the sleep from his eyes. "You gotta work with me here."
The Sebacean keeps pouring from her mouth, but he's a guy and he can pick up on the pissed off intonations she's using whether she wants him to or not.
"This isn't going to work."
And the words he doesn't know just keep pouring out.
"You can't be against every single person here."
Backwards Ts and sibilant Ss.
"Do you really think that's going to get us back to Deke any quicker!"
They're argument—their multilingual argument crescendos beautifully in him yelling about her piss poor plan to ironically alienate everyone around her, while she throat screams. Then she stops, and he stops, and they stare at each other for a second and if he was a betting man—knowing her poker face—he would place money on that bathroom door being slammed in less than a minute.
But he's not a betting man. He's a family man—sort of—trying to be.
"I'm sorry I never learned Sebacean." Starts off talking to her, but his eyes scroll down to the crisp starched sheet tented at his knees. "I'm sorry about a lot of things."
Surprisingly, she keeps her stance.
"I'm sorry that I never asked you how you were—after—well everything. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you and Deke for that first week—or since—kinda. I'm sorry the temperature here is making you sick, and that you're worried about our son, and that I'm not sharing in the panic as much." Wants to add that he's pretty sure she knows why he's not panicking, but there's only so much self-flagellation that he can take this early in the morning, under a mountain, in a different galaxy. But it's getting to him, not the apologizing, because she deserves it, but admitting out loud to all the things he's been screwing up on lately. With a softer voice, almost just a tired whisper, he adds. "I'm sorry you went through all the trouble of learning English for him, but that I never thought to learn Sebacean for you."
The mattress depresses again, and when he glances up from his lap, she's perched on his side of the bed this time, her hand cups over one of his knees, and being this close to her, is like sitting in a campfire.
"He didn't learn Sebacean either."
Doesn't know if it's her broken English, or if it's her accent—but the words slipping from her mouth and to his ears make him relax more than any night of full rest ever could. He sets his hand over hers, jostling his knee a bit, careful not to linger to long because he thinks she's approaching the first step of heat delirium again.
But when his eyes catch hers, and they're the same color as their son's, month old baby boy Crichton galaxies away, helpless because they're not there—sure he's got the Moya gang—but he's practically a newborn, hell, the kid probably already has a bounty on his head—his stomach sinks, the exhaustion bleeds from his face, the stinging from his eyes, and for a second he thinks he's gonna puke.
He knows how she feels, because now he feels it too. Their son is out there, maybe among family, maybe not. Maybe still on that command room table they left him on, and they can't do a damn thing about it from here.
He smiles weakly at her, seeing the same tears in her eyes that he has, seeing the same relief that they finally might be on an even battlefield, and that maybe they should start fighting the actual enemy instead of each other.
"Can you teach me how to speak Sebacean?"
It's a true request—also a joke meant to lighten the mood—but the way her lips break into a full smile, her eyes gleaming along with her sweaty cheeks and forehead, he knows that she sees the sincerity in the question. Only nods with a tight grin, before pulling him into a hug, and shaking—maybe sobbing—against the top of his head as he wraps his arms around her drenched back.
Enjoys the embrace until the count of five, that's what he gives himself, his nose tickling the side of her neck, dragging from her collarbone to nuzzle at her ear as she flinches and laughs. He gets a kiss—one kiss—that restores all the fantasies of sleeping feet apart from her on that tiny stupid bed. Her lips relax him, her fingers at his cheek, her taste so familiar—she tastes hot.
"Okay." Smacks a kiss onto her cheek and taps her ass, which is almost in his lap, almost able to sense why the sheet would be tented for different reasons. He shimmies his legs as a distraction and to get her to stand. When she does, he juts a thumb to the bathroom. "Ice bath, let's go."
"John—" her fingers pet through his hair, flutter to behind his ear "—you don't have to come with—"
"Yeah." Retrieves said hand, and plants a kiss on her extended palm. "Yeah, I do."
He wakes up semi-hard for the first time since he can remember. Doesn't know why, except he knows exactly why, because the dream he was having, one he was far too into because—it was a good thing he woke up when he did.
Takes a second to place himself, the cold air circulating through the room helping to distract him as he shifts on the squeaky, God awful bed. Thought he wasn't alone, because in the dream he definitely wasn't—his hand smacks the small empty space beside him, and he finds whatever is passing as the mattress cold too, which is weird because he thought—
A gurgle interrupts him slowly piecing memories together: stones, another galaxy, doppelgangers, a living ship. A wail reminds him of the baby, that is kinda cute when he finally stops screaming, and—
"Oh, there is no need to cry."
Vala.
She's a few feet away from him, her back not completely to him, more like on a slant as she stands from the floor, hiking the kid up with her. The baby stops his crying, like he can understand her, or maybe because she's entertaining him, lifting him a little above her head, and then bringing him close to her face to touch her nose against his.
"There you are, my Darling." It's a whisper that's so genuine, someone might actually confuse her for his mom. Her rubbing noses with the kid doesn't help.
He doesn't really care because as long as she's taking care of the baby, he doesn't have to. It also keeps her out of trouble, as in, she'll be less likely to stumble off raised walkways, or be force fed goo if she's preoccupied.
Plus every time she lifts the kid, the black t-shirt she's changed into raises a bit from where it meets the leather pants hugging the curve of her ass. The sliver of skin grows until it bares her hips, then her navel and, despite his best efforts and the cold air, he finds something stirring within him again because in his dream her body looked exactly the same.
"Let's get rid of your little present before Uncle Colonel wakes up and has words with us." The little guy fits into the crook of her arm as she stoops and snatches something she's rolled into a ball. He closes his eyes, not so that she won't find out he's playing opossum but her squatting only accentuates the hug of that leather.
She strolls by the bed, baby talking to their not-son and he gets a great whiff of rank diaper—which is enough to snuff out any lingering fantasies. She stops at the wall, and through his barely open eyes, she hits a panel revealing a garbage chute or something because she tosses the diaper in and closes it up again.
The kid makes another gurgle, a deeper one that evolves into an unhappy whine, and she pokes at his stomach underneath a new onesie she must have changed him into. How does she already know where everything is, they've been here a day and a half? How the hell is she taking care of this kid so well when the Vala he knows breaks into level five security clearance computer files, and then jail breaks out of the holding cell she's placed in as punishment. He's seen her swipe five different things in just as many minutes. He knows for a fact that she has three of Jackson's credit card numbers, one of his, and had one of Sam's but gave it back for her birthday.
"Someone is a hungry boy." Has a bright grin on her face as she strides away from him again, picking up a silver pack on one of the tables, rounding the pile of clothes still in the middle of the room.
And he realizes he loves seeing her with the baby.
Not just because he knows the kid is a fail-safe and it lets him relax, and not just because she seems happier and more carefree. Knows it does something inside of him, flickers something on that certain dreams stem off of, watching her be maternal, watching her snuggle and protect someone so small. It shows a different side of her, one that's just as hot as the dips of her hips.
"Perhaps Colonel Uncle will stop pretending he's asleep and allow us to use the bed for your feeding?" She singsongs her words until reaching the end of her sentence where she becomes very blunt.
"That's Uncle Colonel." He groans, trying to play it cool under her watchful eye, because of course she knew he was sneaking peeks. This is Vala, she knows where every security measure is, and knows when someone has eyes on her.
As he shoves an arm underneath him, pushing himself up to sit, she approaches smelling different, cleaner, and he realizes she had another shower when he hasn't even gotten one yet. She hands him the silver pack, which looks just like a juice pouch—it even has a straw thing to shove into an opening, but the end of it looks like a bottle so the baby can nurse.
The kid whimpers again, and she whispers hushes at him, bouncing him up to rest on her shoulder. Her t-shirt rides up, and those leather pants are slanted and—
"Mitchell?" She's staring at him, and he actually flinches this time because she caught him red-handed.
"What?" He ducks his head back down, screwing the feeding straw into the juice pouch.
Quirks her lips to the side and then stands beside the bed, her knee nudging his, telling him to shove down so she can sit. "I asked if you saw something you liked, but now I'm not so sure it wasn't the food pouch."
"I just noticed that you had another shower." Tightens the nursing straw until he's sure if he tightens it anymore he'll rip the bag clear in half.
"Yes." She takes the pouch from him and nudges the end against the baby's mouth. He's just starting to cry, the redness creeping into his wrinkled face. She didn't swaddle him, so his little fists are pumping. "I needed one after I woke."
The baby doesn't seem interested in the food at all, and now his legs are starting to kick in the air. Thinks that maybe she's done in, and even though she's the one who's showered and cleaned and probably eaten, there's a weird voice in his head that wants to offer to try to feed the kid—but just before he opens his mouth, the baby opens his to scream and she shoves the end right on in.
At first the kid seems offended, his eyes wide and his wispy eyebrows furrowed, but then he starts to suck, and she uses one hand to cradle his body and one to slowly squeeze out the contents of the pouch.
"You're staring again." She doesn't draw her eyes away from the baby but uses the same knowing singsong voice as before.
Wants to tell her it's because she looks gorgeous. Her skin is glowing a bit, and there's a soft curl in her hair, and he can see the way her eyelashes spread when she blinks down at the baby in her arms. How the back of her shirt has inched up.
Thinks that if he told her all that, and then maybe about the dream that got him more aroused than any porn in his computer search history has, that she would actually be into it. She would probably finish feeding the baby, and then curl up next to him and let him run his hands over her hips and her navel—and that's why he can't. Eventually, they're going to go back to the SGC, and if he starts something here with her, he's going to have to bring it back there, and as sneaky as she is when she's stealing shit—sometimes his shit, sometimes from right in front of him—he knows that her big mouth wouldn't keep it a secret. Hell, she would probably brag about it to Jackson to make him jealous.
So instead he falls back on the stern colonel character, the commanding officer routine, like he's done so many times before, like when they were in Auburn and she was in his bed, and he was on the couch staring at the ceiling, thinking about her in his bed. "I was just hoping you were eventually going to share some information about this place, like how to tell the time, or where I can get a shower."
"Well ask, and you shall receive, Darling." She sits up straighter, squeezing a bit more from of the top of the pouch, directing all the food inside downwards. "The shower is called a 'refresher' and it's around the corner, the third door on the left."
The baby—Deke, now he remembers—is suckling loudly, greedily. One of his fists raising and brushing against her fingers holding the pouch. After another suckle, his fingers spread and wrap around hers, and her reaction is beautiful, the sass and the sarcasm slipping away for a genuine warm grin make him want to stay, make him want to enjoy this with her. "Maybe I'll just wait, and you can show me when he's done eating."
And it's like she can sense what he's thinking—not the sexual things—but how he's admiring her for caring, because she snaps right out of it, sliding her fingers back to the top of the pouch and rolling it down like a tube of toothpaste.
"And maybe you'll do us a favor by going now." She reaches over and tugs on the sleeve of his fatigues, which are more than dirty. "If my time telling is correct, you've been in those fatigues for almost fifty hours and you're not smelling so lovely."
"Yeah I get it." Rolls his eyes and groans as he pushes up from the bed, his thigh a little rusty.
"Make sure you take in new clothes with you." Deke starts to tire in her arms, the little guy must have a full belly, because his hand slowly drops from the air and his mouth stops sucking. Amazingly, when Vala, tugs the pouch from his mouth, the baby doesn't make a sound, even as she adjusts him back against her chest for burping. "Do you have a shirt under that?"
He screws his eyes a bit, trying to understand her insinuation. "Yeah—"
"Good, give it here. I need a burping cloth."
"You're not using my shirt as a burp cloth."
"Mitchell, he has a full tummy and if he—"
"You're not using it Vala!"
"Then you'd better find a suitable replacement." The hand not supporting Deke is gesturing wildly around the room. "Because if he vomits on me, I'm going to be back in the showers, whether you're there or not."
He's never wished a kid would throw up so much in his life.
But after a few minutes of standing underneath the stream of water, he realizes that his undershirt probably did the trick. The rest of his fatigues lay across a bench a few feet away along with his new clothes, a simple black t-shirt and leather pants, just like hers.
When he complained about the leather, asking why this galaxy seemed not to know the comfy fashion of sweats or jeans, she shrugged while burping the baby and said that leather is best worn in phases, then sighed, leaning her cheek against the top of Deke's head, his once white, now gray undershirt laying over her shoulder, and said she was done her phase when she stayed at the SGC.
He scrubs a hand over his hair, and then washes one over his face. Wonders what she did before she got to the SGC. What planet is she from exactly? They've worked together for a while now, and he doesn't know anything about her except that she worked in thieving and cons. She doesn't talk much about it, and whenever anyone brings it up, it seems to upset her in the same way that him catching that smile did, so he tries to let it go.
She's brought it up before on missions, how she can get whatever they need for the right price, and Jackson goes into the same prodding that leaves her pulling sardonic remarks out of her ass until someone steps in and changes the subject. She obviously didn't like who she was back then, so why bring it up if it makes her feel bad? She's changed a lot, proven herself to them. She's earned it.
She's changed a lot all right, and he tries to steer his mind away from the dream and how good her skin felt under his, around his. That gap of skin that's going to drive him crazy all day. When she was in Auburn and had on her Daisy Duke's he never asked her to change, because it was her vacation too, and she needed to have fun to—can he order her to change?—he definitely can't order her to change because if she doesn't tear him a new one, Chiana definitely will.
His one-track mind tries to steer him back to pumping out what he needs too because of hips dips and navel plains, but thankfully before his hands skip to the danger zone, he remembers that he's on a living ship and it is definitely not appropriate.
He keeps his hands to himself, in the most literal way, and steps out of the shower, towards the towel he hung off the bench beside his clothes. He doesn't know what the water is made out of, or where it's coming from, just made sure not to think about it and not to get any in his eyes and mouth. If he ever has the pleasure of meeting Crichton, he's gotta ask him how he's lasted over four years on this ship—what is the appropriate conduct with the ship? Should he talk to her? They talk to the baby who can't understand them, and he's talked to jets he's flown before, but knowing it could hear and understand is kind of freaky.
Also, there's no way that guy went long without knocking one out because just the stress and the pressure from space has been revving him up and it's hardly been two days.
He tosses the towel back to the bench and tries to navigate his new outfit. The shirt is no problem, the underwear are boxer briefs and he's more than glad for that, but the pants. He tugs the shirt on, and the undies and then gets to work.
Someone pounds on the door once he gets his first leg in.
"Mitchell—" Vala's voice carries over the empty room and there's a pause where he hears Deke cry.
"Gimme a sec—" Yanks o the other leg and as he tries to pull them up they crease against his thighs.
There's another bang on the door—at least she gave him that second—and he shimmies up the pants while he walks towards the door, listening to her spout out words from the other side, which isn't upsetting him the way it would if they were back at the SGC. If he was in the showers there, slipping on his favorite pair of fatigues, and she harshed his calm by slamming her hand into the door this many times—especially with a screaming baby—he would probably come out all red-faced and tear into her until she got that glassy look in her eyes that makes him feel like shit.
Realizes that this Crichton guy didn't last on this ship. He has a kid, he has a wife, and he wonders how long it actually took before he gave in, because apparently his wife looks exactly like Vala, and he needs to know what record he has to beat.
Or when it's okay to give in.
As he buttons up the pants, still surprised that he didn't have to suck in his stomach to get them on, he pushes the button to open the door, and finds her pacing outside the room, bouncing the baby and looking a little worried.
Takes his hands away from his belt, and steps to intercept her. Placing and hand on her bicep. He doesn't think before he does it, it just seemed natural, like comforting her means more than breaking the rules he gave himself. "Hey, what's going on?"
"Noranti—that old woman—"
His hand drops from her arm as he stiffens, his back straight, his eyes scanning the hallway searching for her. "What did she do?"
Vala narrows her eyes, and tilts her head, observing him. "Nothing."
And he doesn't know if this is the that thing she does where she sacrifices herself in order to keep him safe—where she doesn't tell if something is hurting her, because it will get in the way. His hand rests on her shoulder, drawing her eyes away from calming the baby, to him. "If she—"
"She didn't do anything, Mitchell."
"Then what?—"
"She thinks she knows where we can find the stones."