Well as you've all probably guessed by now The Bunnies were talking off board about "The Locket" and the muses struck all at once... Blame AerynCrichton, she started it
IMLOCO2 and I had the same idea... and I think frelledbyfate did too... we'll wait and see.
The question came up as to whether or not John might have had an "affair" if you will with another woman during his years on the favored planet with Aeryn.
Some of us seemed to think it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. John isn't a celibate saint and Aeryn might well encourage him to find female companionship of his own age... and even marry and have children. She loved him, and would want the best for him.
So we could see him having an affair or two... he'd feel guilty about it and it wouldn't be a real serious thing... but he might well do it.
imloco2 caught John on a bad day... and it made for a great story... I caught him on a better one and I hope mine's half as good as hers.
So here you go, I hope you enjoy... and for those of you who loved Scrubschick's May/December series... I'm happy to tell you that she's working on some more.
Thanks to the usual Bunny suspects for hammering this one out of me and helping me fine tune it and AerynCrichton for her usual refining of my horrible grasp of English Grammer. I wouldn't be able to do any of this without them.
*And yes the title was inspired by the Meatloaf song
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Title: Two out of three.
Rating: PG
Time Frame: About 23 years after John landed on the Favored Planet in "The Locket" I've got him somewhere in his late 50's here. And I made a guestimate about Sebecean ages... suggesting that someone 98 might be the Sebecean equivelent of a human in thier late 50's.
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He'd always loved the rain. Or rather he'd always loved the memories that rainy days conjured up. Some of his life's most important moments had happened while it was raining.
It made him think of shivering with cold, his clothes stuck to his eight year old body and his mother chastising him for not coming home before the downpour started. The smell of homemade soup making his stomach growl and the sound of his sisters watching, "That Girl", on the television set in the living room.
Cathy Margolis had given him her virginity one rainy night his freshman year of college. He'd paid $30.00 for the hotel room after the homecoming dance. The rain had slicked down the window and made the neon welcome sign outside look like stained glass and he'd marveled, as she'd looked up at him with that odd mixture of longing and fear, that she'd actually liked him enough to give him such a gift.
It had been raining the day DK had come racing in with the news that the Farscape project funds had come through. They'd driven around until they'd found a lone open bar on a beach in Canaveral and gotten drunk while the waves made foam out of the sand and the angry clouds had marched across the sky.
It had been raining the day his mother died. He could hear it drumming a tattoo on the windowsill, between the ever-increasing intervals of the beep of her heart monitor. He had run out in it before they had stopped completely and let natures tears hide his own.
And it had been raining that day on the false earth. She had tasted of rain he remembered. Warm beer and cool autumn rain. The feel of her skin had been smooth beneath his fingers and her voice was harsh in his ear.
It was raining now. And he was grateful. A good storm meant a days respite from work. Time spent indoors and out of the hot sun. No gardening or building or tending to animals.
He almost laughed at the thought. John Crichton a farmer. As a child he'd had trouble being responsible for his dogs and the only dirt he'd put his fingers in had been the samples he'd tested for chemistry class. John Crichton a farmer. If it weren't so desperately sad it would have made a good joke.
But farm was all they did here. Farm and tend livestock and trade crafts day after boring day. He would have gone crazy if crazy would have helped. But he'd still be stuck here whether he was crazy or not.
And then there was Aeryn, keeping him sane.
He sighed and turned his head to stare out of the window at the forest outside. Let the words to "Over the River and Through the Woods" flit through his head, and stared at his reflection in the glass. He'd been so young then and to be fair she'd warned him not to come. Begged him even. Tried to sneak back without him but with the bull- headedness that was typical of youth he hadn't listened.
Or rather he had, but hadn't paid attention to what she'd been saying. And how could he? She'd left him less than a solar day before a hard nosed PK soldier and returned to him an old woman with some wild story about marriage and dead children and a center halo.
And so he'd taken a transport pod and come against her wishes. To try to fix it, to try to fix her because even then, although he would have never admitted it at the time, he'd loved her. "You go, I go," Dicaprio had said and although he'd thought it a trite statement said to make the girls cry when he'd heard it at the movies, he'd found the sentiment behind the words had proven true over time.
He sighed and turned his eyes to the ceiling again. It did better not to think about it. The futility of the situation only made him angry even after all this time. And anger was senseless. Nothing changed, nothing could and he'd have to learn to live with it.
A slight shift in the weight on his chest and a warm puff of breath pulled him from his reverie and he reached down instinctively to run a hand through long tresses.
He closed his eyes before she moved and felt Tamzin's body slide over his, her thighs coming to rest against his and her tongue licking lightly against the hard edge of his teeth until he opened his mouth to let it duel with his.
He kept his eyes closed. He always did. It was easier when he couldn't see her.
"What are you thinking?" She whispered into his ear and he knew if he opened his eyes she would be staring at him with that satiated predatory look that always, in spite of himself, made him smile. Like the cat that swallowed the canary and got away with it.
"Nothing."
"Liar." She ran a hand through what after 23 cycles had become salt and pepper hair and then swatted playfully at his head. "You're always thinking about something. It's what you do."
He shook his head, even though she was right. He was a liar and always thinking. It was his downfall, the reason why after more than two decades here on this cursed planet he still wasn't fitting in.
"I was just enjoying the rain."
He heard her laugh, a rich sound made all the more pleasurable by the fact that he seldom got to hear it. A widow of 98 wasn't supposed to laugh. She was supposed to be hardworking and virtuous until someone deemed her worthy enough to marry again. And she'd resisted that by staying single after her husband had died. It had made people talk. After all in Sebecean years they were about the same age, and John Crichton had resisted all the advances of all the younger women who had looked his way. So why weren't the two of them married?
She never told them it was because of him.
He opened his eyes then because he knew how it bothered her--the way he kept them closed, not just while they were making love but after. It played on her middle- aged insecurities. And he wanted to tell her that it wasn't her. Because he knew she thought it was. That he was closing his eyes against the skin that wasn't as firm and taut as it had been in youth, hair that was starting to show more silver than black and crows feet at the edges of eyes and mouth. That in some way what they were doing disgusted him.
But it wasn't that. She was beautiful, and although she was always telling him that he was still handsome enough to pull one of the "young girls" he was fully aware that he wasn't a kid anymore either. It wasn't her, it was him. He closed his eyes because he didn't want her to see his shame. Because not looking at her made him feel like less of a bastard.
He reached up and pulled her head down to kiss him again. And the thought came to him before he did, that her eyes were clear and in them he could still see traces of the young girl she'd once been. And it struck him that sometimes time could be crueler than fate. It aged your body but left your mind to remember better times. Better places. And all the things that could have been.
"I have to go," he told her softly.
She stiffened against him and he cursed himself for the millionth time for hurting her again. He never meant to, always told himself they should put a stop to this. It wasn't what he wanted, it wasn't what she wanted but somehow---when he was with her, it always led to this.
"Why?" Her voice was cold and raspy and she rolled off of him and turned her body against the wall.
He reached out to touch her but pulled back. It wouldn't ease her pain and it wouldn't dull the truth.
"It's late."
She sniffed. "It's not so late, just past sunset."
"It's late enough."
She turned to him and pressed a hand against his cheek and it was all he could do not to turn away from the desperation in her eyes. "Are you afraid someone will catch us? That they'll think this is wrong? That you'll ruin my reputation? I don't care anymore, John. I just want to be with you."
He sighed and placed his hand over hers. It went like this every time; it had almost become a routine. He really should break it, but like some kind of junkie he couldn't.
"It isn't wrong and you know it. We aren't bound to anyone else you and I. And if the rules state that we shouldn't keep company like this because we are unmarried then I say that rules were meant to be broken."
Her lip trembled a bit but she did not cry. "Then why are you leaving?"
"Because what you want I can't give you."
"Then why do you come in the first place?"
He paused at that. The answer was complex. He came because she was attractive and she made him laugh and he was still young enough to need physical intimacy with a woman in a way that Aeryn claimed she had no interest in anymore. He came because if he wasn't in love with another woman he might have been able to love her. He came because his life with Aeryn was a strange balance between what might have been and what never would be and taking an afternoon to forget about it all somehow helped keep him grounded.
But she didn't want to hear that. She wanted a simple answer. So he gave her one.
"Because what I want I can't have."
Her lips twisted into a parody of a smile. "So I guess we're both frelled, yeah?"
He smiled back and pulled a stray hair back behind her ear. "Yeah, but it's so much more fun when we do it together."
She didn't answer, just turned away from him and pulled her body into a tight little ball. He got out of bed and put his clothes on in the methodical order that he'd gotten used to in over two decades on a place where things never changed.
He paused when he got to the door and looked back at the hunched figure under the covers. "Tamzin?"
She didn't reply.
"I wish things could be different. But I can't help who I am. I want you,---need you even. But as for love---I told you at the beginning that we needed to keep things--- simple. That my heart---"
"Ultimately belongs to her. I know." She cut him off and rolled back to face him again. She'd let the tears fall but had managed to dredge up a small smile from somewhere. "Well--you want me and you need me. That's two out of three. As odds go it's not bad."
He kissed her once more and then closed the door and headed back through the forest. The sun was down now and Aeryn would have dinner waiting. If he hurried he'd get there before she sent Ennix or one of her great- grandchildren out looking for him.
He would eat the stew and bread she'd prepared and he'd make bad jokes about how she was better with a pulse rifle than a stew cauldron and she'd rebut with how her eyesight might be bad but her aim was still good enough to bash him over the head if he didn't shut up. They'd talk and they'd joke about anything except where he'd been all afternoon. She knew. He knew she did even though she'd never said a word. She'd been the first to say something after Tamzin's husband had died in that farming accident a cycle ago. Said the widow Maltsby would make him a good wife if he wouldn't be too stubborn to take her. But he'd refused to talk about it then and they wouldn't talk about it now. And he was glad because then he could pretend he'd just been out for a walk or having a drink down at the public house. And some of the self- imposed guilt would disappear.
After dinner they'd plan for the next day's work, or reminisce about Moya. Or maybe they wouldn't talk at all. Maybe they'd just sit by the fire and he'd coax her head onto his shoulder and her hand into his. And he'd stare at the flames and listen to the rain and pretend that the years had melted away from them both and that it would be O.K. to turn her mouth to his and make love to her the way he'd made love to the woman he'd just left.
It wasn't fair he thought as he broke into the small clearing and stared at the familiar little cottage. Tamzin would move on in time, find a man whose children were grown and gone like hers but still wanted the companionship and care of a good woman.
But fate had denied him even that option; the years between he and Aeryn loomed like some insurmountable gap. And no amount of dreaming or wishing could change that. Because although she'd agreed to be his friend when he'd first gotten stuck on this forsaken rock with her, she'd made it very clear that that's was all they'd ever be. She was too old she said, to be dealing with the difficulties of a man on a romantic level. She'd buried all her men and she was done with that and she wasn't going to have it on her conscience that she'd forced John Crichton to be a eunuch and denied him the comforts of a wife and family. She'd been so adamant about it that he hadn't argued the point even though he'd been tempted to. She loved him, she'd said. She wanted his presence in her life, but as for the rest---.
Well, "Two out of three ain't bad."
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