Jeremiad

Notes: What can I say? While this was not on my agenda of things to do, it has been floating around in some incarnation for a while. At least in my head. And while I never intended to write it, it just appeared full blown. So for some strange, unknown reason, here it is. People who’ve peeked at this thought it would work well as part of my longer something else, but as that is finished, at least in my mind, I chose to break this out as a stand alone.

My gratitude and props to Eva for beta duty above and beyond the call and to Kaz, for all the encouragement, enthusiasm, and everything else.   As always, all mistakes remain mine.
Warnings: Read and heed. Sex: Yes. Violence: No. Language: Yep. There are some bad words. Dark, adult themes: Yep. There are a number of them here. This is harsh!fic and it is very dark, and it carries a warning label as such. Anyone disturbed by any of the above, please click back now. Caveat lector.
Rating: NC-17
Setting: TF
Spoilers: Through TF
Disclaimers: Definitely not mine. They belong to Henson, et. al. No copyright infringement intended. There is definitely no money being made.

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He panted and pumped, heart pounding in time with the bassline pulse in his temple. He was primed and it was all smooth, slick friction. An angry buzzing in his head hummed along his wires, fired through his veins and suddenly there it was.

Forearms stiffened and locked, tendons corded in his neck as he slammed into her one last time, then froze in the rictus of orgasm.

He pulled out and pushed away, breathing harshly as he flopped like a fish out of water onto his back. Cool air ghosted along his sweat soaked body sending small shivers chasing the small post-fuck aftershocks.

Her hand curled around his, dragged it over her thigh and down between her legs. He jerked it loose, pulled it back to himself, wrapped his fingers around the base of his deflated cock and began peeling back slicked latex.

He rolled off the condom, rolled off the bed, grunting softly as he stagger stepped on weak knees. His head was spinning as his eyes searched the stream of moonlight pooled just beneath the window. He found what he was looking for and tossed the crumpled condom into the wire mesh wastebasket at the side of the bed.

“Where are you going?”

He didn’t answer, just kept moving, stepping over the scattered trail of pants and panties, boxers, bra, and shirts, the discarded debris of their earlier stumbling march to the bed. Pushing open the bathroom door, he slipped through and closed it behind him.

Flipping on the switch, white light stabbed his eyes. Blinking, he stepped to the stall, slid open the door and aimed the shower head toward the far wall. He turned on the water, adjusted the temperature and stepped back to the sink on still jelly legs.

He didn’t recognize the stranger staring back at him from the bloodshot eyes in the mirror. His hands were shaking as they came up to roughly scrub at his face and he wondered why he couldn’t feel anything. He wanted to feel even less and wondered why he just couldn’t just be numb.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried. He just hadn’t had enough to drink. Hadn’t had enough to make it better. His stomach rolled, flooding his mouth with the taste of acid and bile, shots and her.

Check.

He’d laid her open slit to clit. She’d tasted…wrong, beneath his tongue. Felt wrong, beneath his hands.

Wrong smell. Wrong feel. Wrong sound.

He’d closed his eyes and buried a finger and his tongue as he’d tried to bury himself, glad when her thighs clamped like a vise around his head, glad when she was finished.

He knew he hadn’t had enough to drink. The taste of her was still on his lips, in his mouth.

Steam billowed from the shower as he reached for the toothbrush, laid a line of toothpaste down and shoved it in his mouth. He began to scrub as he listened to the white noise thrumming in his head.

Wrenching the water on, he rinsed and spit the taste of her down the drain and wondered when he’d gotten so old.

“John?”

He didn’t answer, just slid the shower door open and shivered as the warmth wrapped around him. Stepping under the spray, he leaned forward and rested his head on folded arms, let the water splash over his head and knotted shoulders and sluice down his back.

Turning, he shook his head, sending rivulets flying and reached blindly for the soap. Sliding the bar over slicked skin and matted hair, he lathered up his chest and under his arms, scrubbing methodically up and down, over and over before sliding down to lather the tight plane of his abdomen.

His hand slid further and wrapped his cock as he scrubbed down the length and back, along the join of his thigh and hip as it slipped its soapy way to cup his balls, carefully working a trail of lather.

He’d scrubbed on Arnessk too.

Check.

He’d fucked her mouth. Her lips had wrapped around his dick and worked their way tip to base as she’d sucked him off and swallowed him down. He remembered being grateful.

At least she wasn’t making noise then, not with a mouthful of dick.

He shivered as a breath of cold air blew across him and he slid his gaze after the escaping tendrils of steam that slipped through the open door. She stood there smiling, her body radiating well-fucked satisfaction, just-out-of-bed hair framing dancing over bare shoulders.

Wrong hair.

“Care for some company?”

He hadn’t made a sound, not even when he’d exploded like a horny teenager coming way too fast from a blowjob in the front seat as he drove around in dad’s car on a hot Saturday night.

He pressed his hand against the glass, began sliding the door shut. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

Check.

He’d gone balls deep, her knees draped over his shoulders as he’d listened to himself slapping her ass as he’d tapped it.

It hadn’t been enough. It should have made things better. It was supposed to make things better. He wondered why it didn’t.

He turned and wrenched the handle to the left, felt the sting of fiery needles pelt his skin as he scrubbed harder.

********************

The room was a solid wall of steam as he stepped out, snagged a towel and rubbed roughly at his hair. He swiped the towel across the mirror, watched his image waver and fade as it fogged over again. Exhaling harshly, he draped the wet towel over the bar and ran his hand over the wall switch.

He stood still in the sudden darkness, letting his eyes adjust before opening the door to the bedroom. Three long steps took him to the foot of the bed.

There it was, outlined in the pool of pale moonlight, languidly splayed on the rumpled sheets. Alien landscape, alien space. That was it, he thought.

Earth minus Aeryn.

He picked up his boxers, slipped a leg through.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

He snagged his jeans from the floor.

“Come back to bed.”

“Don’t you think that if I wanted to I would have?” Long fingers pulled his jeans up over his hips, worked the zipper, closed the button, tapped at the comforting shape of the bulb in the front pocket.

He was broken and he couldn’t fix himself. Couldn’t suture the holes or find a big enough bandage.

But that’s what she did, wasn’t it? And she wasn’t here to pick him up, put him back together, to keep him from slicing himself to shreds on the pieces of himself.

She hadn’t been there last time either, on Arnessk, to keep him from bleeding out. She’d been busy somewhere else stitching herself back together.

Her voice floated soft and dangerous in the stillness. “What is this?”

“I thought we both knew what this is.”

“We’ve always been able to talk.”

“No. We’ve always been able to get drunk and fuck.”

“So that’s what this is?”

He rooted around the pile of clothes on the floor, found his tee shirt. “That’s never been a problem for you before.”

“This is what you said you wanted.”

“Wasn’t it good for you?” He flipped his shirt right side out, yanked it over his head. “Or am I supposed to think you sat around waiting four years for a booty call?”

“I want to go home in the morning.”

“We can leave whenever you’re ready.”

He turned and three long steps had him out the door.

********************

Night sounds filled the soft evening air, cicadas and crickets and the sound of waves gently lapping at the shore. The lake gleamed silver in a splash of moonlight, its surface calm and placid.

He breathed deep and let his eyes adjust to the pale darkness as he stepped out onto the deck and dropped into a lounge chair. His feet swung up and around and he stretched out, blanketed by an ivory black and lulled by the living lullaby of the night.

Earth minus Aeryn.

Long fingers slid below his belt and burrowed deep into his front pocket, curled tightly around the comforting shape they found there and pulled out.

He wanted to go home.

He brought the bulb up to one nostril, the thumb on his free hand pressed tightly against the other side of his nose and snorted. The jolt of the hit scorched passageways, burned along pathways, fired and flared deep in his brain. He settled and zoned and let the images play.

Aeryn.