Fic: The Last Familiar Outpost
Title: The Last Familiar Outpost
Word Count: 340
Rated: PG
Fandom: Farscape
Setting: S4
Characters: John Crichton, Chiana
Disclaimer: Farscape and its characters belong to the Jim Henson Co. and not to me.
The Last Familiar Outpost
John’s tucked beneath the belly of his module when Chiana sidles up and crouches down, her body held at an impossible angle. She peers at him in silence, a piece of sweet and sour catifoli caught between her fingers. The fruit is a disturbing shade of green, lime Kool-Aid gone nuclear, gone alien; but John’s mind strays towards an adolescent memory of candy corn and licorice skulls, Karen Shaw’s red stockings and patent leather shoes.
He blinks at Chiana and she blinks back, her hair brushing against the floor of the maintenance bay. He says, “I thought you were gonna go with D’Argo.”
“Me too.” She pops the fruit into her mouth and licks her palm. “I said we should ditch the others and h-have - have some fun. He said he couldn’t deal with my dren.”
John doubts that’s the whole truth, but he can hear the hurt in her voice, brittle beneath the anger she’s worn for months. “You okay, Pip?”
Her face disappears from view as she settles on the floor, one knee held under her chin, one hand sifting through a tray of spare nuts and bolts and wires. “I can’t frelling breathe today, Crichton. You - you know?”
He does. There are days when he smiles and sings, when he sleeps without Grayza’s whisper in his ear and wakes without her scent in his nose; and there are days when he doesn’t, when every inch of him is raw, every breath black with resentment.
John puts his tools down. Stretches to tug on the scuffed toe of her boot. “Come here.”
Chiana doesn’t respond; he counts the seconds until she does. Twelve mippippippi, thirteen mippippippi, four and she curls small and sharp against his side, her fruit-stained fingers fitted between his ribs, her hair a wild halo against the dark backdrop of his shirt.
John curves his fingers around her wrist, toys with the thought of moving her hand down to the bulb of lakka nestled in his pants.
Instead he moves it up, over his heart.