Thanks: Once again to Vinegardog for the beta.
Disclaimer: I'm very, very sad that this is not mine, although I'm pretty much indifferent to the lack of money being made here. I don't get paid to watch the show, either.
Something Else (G)
"Get your kicks… on route… ninety eight!" John crooned enthusiastically as he piloted their open-topped ground transport southwards. Aeryn turned to watch him, allowing an indulgent smile to play across her face. She drew comfort from knowing her expression would be obscured by the screen of hair which the wind of their passage was whipping around her face. She wouldn't allow him to see her smile: she didn't want to encourage him further. He was far happier than he had any right to be, under the circumstances. John was too easily distracted, not sufficiently inclined to take the dangers which surrounded them seriously enough. If he grew too comfortable with their situation she knew that he might also turn careless and that might further compromise their safety. After all, they were no longer simply on the run. In coming to the United States from Australia it was understood that they were going looking for trouble.
They had been on his home continent for three solar days now and, as far as she could tell, were no closer to locating either D'Argo or their ships. Yet, in spite of their lack of progress towards their key objective, John was clearly in much better spirits. Despite her best efforts and against her better judgment and all logic she found that she was too. Perhaps his groundless optimism was rubbing off on her? Or perhaps it was some strange mood-altering substance in the chocolate or the ice cream? She had learnt during recent days and monens that stranger things could happen than she could ever have dreamt of. She, Officer Aeryn Sun, Icarion Company, Pleisar Regiment, previously a follower of the Peacekeeper hard-line, had deserted her post and was recreating with an alien. Nothing would surprise her anymore.
Not only was she irreversibly contaminated, she was beginning to quite like being so.
Once she was confident that she was in control and her face would not betray her emotions, she gathered her hair together and fastened it loosely behind her head with a large, ornate metal clip. The crocodile, as she had heard it called, was something which John had picked up for her whilst they had been on Earth. Despite its indulgent ostentation, she had to admit that it was an effective solution to swiftly controlling longer hair such as hers.
Mission accomplished, she lowered one hand to her lap and allowed the other to play around the edge of the windshield. As she did, she noticed that the music on the radio had changed and a different song was playing now.
"There comes that girl again," John turned his head for a microt and grinned at her as he sang along. "Wanted to date her since I don't know when."
"Concentrate on the road, John!" Aeryn chided him, strumming her fingernails on the edge of the glass to accentuate her irritation. She really didn't want for them to have an accident. Apart from the obvious risks of physical injury or death, such an event would surely attract the attention of the local law enforcement authorities, which was something they really could not afford to happen
"Keep your eyes on the driving, keep your hands on the wheel, and keep your snoopy eyes on the road ahead!" John sang back, laughing now, his shoulders dancing along to the words, which, oddly, now bore no relationship to the tune coming from the radio.
Aeryn huffed, crossed her arms and turned her head to stare out of the side window. John's hand fell on her knee and gave it a comforting squeeze, lifting her mood slightly. Crazy human, she allowed herself to think. My crazy human, she corrected herself with a satisfied smile. She glanced briefly his way before turning her face back to the flat countryside flashing by beside the car. Her attention was suddenly caught by the abrupt take-off of a small cluster of dark avians a quarter of a metra away. They flew, parallel to the road, in tight formation, reminding her of a flight of well-drilled prowlers. The comparison made her wistful. She swallowed down the feeling along with the accompanying lump in her throat.
"Hey, darlin', fancy some breakfast?" John's unanticipated question cut across her reverie.
"What? Hmm?" She turned slightly, processing the question. Her stomach rumbled, as if on cue, reminding her that it was early and that they had set off from their latest motel-for-the-night without taking first meal. "Fine," she replied with a nod before turning her head forwards to look vaguely at the road ahead.
"I know this great diner," John drawled back, his manner and tone casual yet betraying what she took to be a degree of pride in his local knowledge and excitement at the prospect of sharing it with her.
The flock of birds turned slightly, no longer travelling parallel to the road, and started flying away, still in their tight formation. She watched them fade away with a slight pang of sadness whilst, to her other side, John enthusiastically recounted the many alleged virtues of their breakfast destination.
'~'
Aeryn picked at the remains of her oversized breakfast, separating out the last of her bacon and eggs, sorting out the bits of food she wanted to eat from those she had decided to leave. She had to admit, John had not been wrong, all of those monens that he had spent waxing lyrical about the food on his home planet. The variety and options available were, or at least so she imagined, beyond the wildest dreams of even the most high-ranking of Peacekeeper officers. The waste inherent in the portion sizes was simply incomprehensible to her.
"John, why are we here?" she asked before tucking a forkful of wonderfully tasty, aromatic animal protein into her mouth.
John looked at her, an amused smile spreading from the corners of his mouth up towards his eyes. "For breakfast, babe." He winked and swirled the coffee around his cup before tapping the lip with one finger and then lifting it to swallow a mouthful.
"No, not like that." She concentrated hard on scraping her cutlery around her plate whilst she marshalled the words to express her thoughts. "Here, on this road," She tapped her fork onto an empty region of her plate to punctuate her point. "Heading wherever it is we are heading." She paused for a microt and then another thought occurred. "And where is it, exactly, that we are heading?"
"Ah well you see…. Hmmm" The human was obviously dissembling and doing it badly, avoiding returning her gaze or giving her an actual reply. She secured her more pleasant emotions: affection, contentment and so on, ready to do battle with him should she not like what he had to say next.
"What are you hiding from me, Crichton?" Aeryn demanded, her temper starting to flare up to match her sudden pang of suspicion.
"I'm not hiding anything, hon. Honest." He raised his hands in that gesture of strange, defensive protest which she had come to regard as so characteristically John Crichton. The fire of her anger ebbed a little as she was reminded of all of the times that he had used that gesture to placate either herself or D'Argo when one of them had grown unfairly short-tempered with him. Nevertheless, this time she was sure that even if he was not actively hiding something, he was at least not including her in whatever plan was hatching in his pretty, oversized head. She arched an eyebrow to communicate her scepticism.
"It's more that I wasn't quite sure myself." John continued, nodding his head strangely from side to side but at least now managing to express a coherent train of thought.
"Sure of what?" Aeryn probed, determined not to allow him to get away with more obfuscation.
"Well, if we're going to find our way out of here, we're going to need help," John ventured slowly. He was watching her carefully as he spoke. Probably, she suspected, looking for clues in case she reacted badly and he decided to change tack.
"Help? Hmm." She paused for a couple of microts whilst she considered what that might mean. Unable to come to a satisfactory answer, she elected to come out and ask him what he meant. "Exactly what sort of help did you have in mind?"
"Remember my dad said they were taking D'Argo to a base in Utah?"
"Mmm hmm. So, let us make our way to this you-tar and…" John's growing smirk caused Aeryn to pause. "What?" she demanded with a frown born of irritation and frustration.
"It's a mighty big place, Aeryn. We need more to go on. First we need someone to find out where in Utah…."
"Surely that cannot be so hard? Then we break into wherever they are holding…"
"One does not simply walk into…. Mordor," he interrupted her with a wink.
"More. Door? So, you know where…?"
"Just a saying, Aeryn," He sighed. She glared at him, angry now. Why did everything have to be a riddle of frelling Crichtonisms with him?
"So, you don't know where this… this Moor place is?" she tried to clarify, drawing back from him by leaning into her chair-back and scowling.
"No, Aeryn. I don't. We'll need help." He tried to reach out for her hand but she pulled it back. She felt one of his feet advancing on hers beneath the table, so she pulled her legs back under the seat. Frelled if she was going to let him get around her that easily.
"Fine." She snapped back. "Who?"
"Well, I'm pretty sure we can trust my sister, but…." He let out a big sigh. "There's not much she could do for us. We need more... DK, my dad, maybe."
"Are you farhrbot Crichton?" Aeryn nearly exploded. John waved his hands in a downwards flapping motion, darted his eyes around the room, obviously worried that her outburst had attracted attention from other diners or staff, and quickly put a finger across his lips. Aeryn took the hint and leant forwards conspiratorially, lowering her voice to a dangerous hiss. "It's too frelling dangerous! They will be under surveillance!"
"I'm not so sure. I mean, they don't know we're over here. They think we're in Oz. Maybe they'll have dad's phone tapped and all, but men in black following him everywhere?" He shook his head to indicate that he thought that possibility to be unlikely.
"And what will we do if there are people watching him, people like Wilson?" Aeryn demanded, far from placated by his trite reassurances.
"We'll just have to take it nice and slow, check out the lie of the land before we do anything."
"One of us… both of us… might get killed, John. You know I will not let them take me alive."
Her thoughts went back a couple of days to when they had passed through airport security, on first landing in John's country. They had stood in the long queue to have their papers inspected whilst she had grown steadily more tense. Then had come the moment of truth. Aeryn watched carefully, warily, barely daring to breathe as she watched John go first. The uniformed officer looked at the transit document, looked at John, looked at his computer, typed a bit….. Then wordlessly handed John back his document and looked aside to wave Aeryn forward. She had stood before the man, had been ready to fight, ready to die. It hadn't come to that - just a few microts in front of the bored officer and he had grunted for her to walk on, too. Everything had, as John would say, been fine, dandy, but it could so easily have gone the other way. John did not seem to see it, did not seem to understand how badly things might have gone. And he did not seem to see how badly things might go now with this new plan of his.
"Hell, Aeryn, if we hang around in this diner for long enough, knowing our luck, some dude is going to bust in here looking for a fight or to steal something. Then you'd have to kick their asses into next Tuesday and then the cops…" John rambled on, attempting either to make light of the situation or to point out how much trouble they usually attracted just by going about their lives. Maybe both. Aeryn was still too furious to tell which.
"… Besides, I love you too much to take unnecessary risks." John's right hand lifted and his fingers gently touched her chin then her cheek before he, somewhat unnecessarily in her opinion, moved a strand of her hair aside. She had been so distracted by her thoughts that she had not seen it coming, had not taking avoiding measures. Yet her breath caught as her anger dissolved somewhat and, although she frowned at his use of the L-bomb, she did not resist his caresses.
"Your father could be hurt. Killed, even, do you want that?" She persisted. Now, for some reason, she found that she was much less angry, much less inclined to argue.
"No, of course not, Aeryn. Please, just…." He continued. His voice was maddeningly calm and he had that look in his eye, the one that she found difficult to return, the one that in their early days had set off her temper but which now more often than not made her ache with wanting him.
"Then why suggest such a frelled-up plan?" she interrupted, uncertain as to the extent to which her remaining anger was directed towards him or to herself and her own treacherous emotions.
"Wherever we go, shit happens." He shrugged and gave a sad, resigned little smile, as though that explained everything, was justification enough for what he was now suggesting.
"This is true. And?"
"All I'm sayin' is we shouldn't just sit around waiting for it to come to us." He reached out his left hand and cupped it over her right hand. Then his right hand joined in, sliding underneath. He fixed his blue eyes on hers. Aeryn's breath caught in her throat. She wanted to look away from the intensity of his feelings, to hide from or deny the intensity of her own.
"I meant what I said just now. You mean too much to me for me to just sit around, waiting for them to catch us." He spoke softly, squeezing her hand between his. It was too much. She flushed and pulled her hand away, casting her eyes down to stare at the remains of her meal. "And too much to take stupid risks with your safety, too. But we need help to do what we've gotta do…"
She took two long breaths, just as she had been taught to do once in Peacekeeper training, in order to regain her composure. Her mind informed her that he was still speaking.
"… and I know I should have talked to you about this before, but I wasn't even sure about it myself. I've just been driving us around, trying to work out how the hell we can find out where they've taken D'Argo and our ships. And as to how to access them…" He blew out a breath. Aeryn listened in silence. She had to admit, she didn't have any ideas as to how to go about such things either. Rationally, their chances of infiltrating any secret military bases without inside help would surely be little more than zero. And they had to find out where to go first before they even got to think about that.
"Suppose we do this?" she asked, looking up to meet his gaze once again, but struggling to control her voice. "Then what would your plan be?"
"What… umm?" John verbally stumbled. Aeryn was slightly relieved that John seemed almost as discomforted by the intensity of what had passed between them as she had been. Or maybe he really hadn't thought things through at all? She decided to take it one thing at a time.
"Who did you have in mind? To contact? And how?"
"Oh, yeah…" He picked up his cup and toyed with it for a moment, as though thinking things through for the first time. Then she realised that he was pausing because the waitress was fussing around nearby. After a couple of microts the woman left the potential eavesdropping zone, heading back towards the kitchen. "Well, it's gotta be my dad. Hell, DK doesn't even know I'm alive, or about you. And he hasn't got the same sort of friends in high places. Can't trust most anyone else."
Aeryn nodded, conceding those points. "So, how do we contact him without the authorities knowing?"
"We can't go to his house or call him - he'll be bugged for sure. Every week he goes to mom's grave."
"Won't they follow him there?" Aeryn enquired, struggling to be business like, to explore the worst case scenarios.
"I doubt it - Like I said earlier, they don't know we're here. Just wouldn't be worth having a 24 hour tail on him - surveillance will be all electronic, I reckon. But we can be careful, make sure he's not followed, just in case."
Aeryn thought carefully for several long moments and finally nodded her consent. "Very well." She stated curtly.
"You sure you're OK with this?" John asked.
"Actually, no. But I don't see what other options we have, other than…" A sudden reference from a movie he had made her watch sprang into her head. "Unless we retire to Bolivia?" She dragged up the best smile that she could manage, under the circumstances.
John grinned like a maniac at her reply and leaned across the table to kiss her cheek. "Love you," he whispered in her ear before settling back into his seat. The frisson from the combination of his gesture and his words caused her to shudder, but she thought that otherwise, this time, she had dealt with his affections well. "I hear the weather is wonderful at this time of year. But I'm not ready to retire yet."
They sat staring into each others eyes, growing more uncomfortable as the microts passed. After what seemed like an age she looked down as John contrived to cough before looking away as well.
"You done?" John asked, indicating the congealing remains of their meal. She nodded in the affirmative. John waved at the waitress, fussing with crockery behind the bar. The young woman looked their way and smiled. "Cheque, please!" John called out, flashing her back one of his most charming smiles.