Title: In Praise of Regular Maintenance

Author: H. Nonny Nonny

Fandom: Farscape

Pairing: John Crichton, Ka D'Argo, Zhaan

Rating: R

Status: New, Complete

Archive: Yes, go ahead. Anywhere you like.

Sequel: No. Series: Not at this time.

Disclaimer: The sitch is mine. The characters are totally stolen property and belong to someone else entirely.

Summary: another complication of Moya's pregnancy. Alien biology runs amok.

Spoiler Warning: Season One-ish. I haven't seen Season Two, so don't tell me if I've gone off-canon.

WARNING WARNING: bad words and sex! Oh, no!

Feedback: Sure!

Thanks: This was written specially for Bodybreeder.

by H Nonny Nonny

"Pilot's pet!" Chiana, outraged, screams the words after John Crichton as he staggers away from the cell he's locked her in, clutching his torn shirt and completely flummoxed. He refuses to look back, but somehow he knows she's got her arms stretched through the crossed bars, reaching as he rounds the bend in the corridor. Out of sight, and he wishes he could put her out of mind as well.

Or even out of earshot. "Don't they have fun where you come from, human?"

Fun. Yeah. She's torn more than his shirt. Clawmarks down his chest and his handlink's in pieces. He ought to go back and steal Chiana's link, but that'd mean another scene. Or more of the same. Not worth it. Especially since somehow he came out of the whole tussle with an erection.

It's been too damn long, he guesses, as he tries splicing the link back together.

"Pilot--"

"I'm afraid I'm rather busy at the moment, John." The voice comes through thready and full of static.

"Just tell me--where's Aeryn?"

"In her prowler."

"What, you mean off the ship?"

"Officer Sun is still aboard."

"You okay? We got a situation?"

"Everything's fine," Pilot says, and that's it, the link dies.

"Great," John says. "Everything's fine." He throws the link away, moves to another tier and finds three DRD's doing a dipsy doodle around each other, sweeping circles back and forth. He has to hopscotch around them, nearly gets his ankle winged. "Fine. Sure."

Aeryn's in her prowler, as advertised, suited up for a flight and unmoving. John climbs up close, peers through the glass. She's watching her instruments, face expressionless.

He has to raise his voice so she can hear him through the barrier. So close and so far. Story of his life. "Going somewhere?"

She shakes her head.

"What the frell is going on?"

"Nothing."

"Don't give me that, Aeryn. We got DRDs doing square dance, we got Rygel rolling in food cubes--he's makin' a noise like somebody needs to give him a new muffler and a lube job. And Chiana--"

"Chiana what?" Interest flickers--barely--over her face.

He leans closer, his breath hazing the cockpit. "Let's just say it's Wild Kingdom out here. And you know why, right?"

"What makes you think that?" The indifferent tone.

"Because you are in there." He taps the glass of the prowler meaningfully.

She flicks the controls on her console for a minute, as if she's going to fly away after all, and her gaze keeps wandering to one particular readout. It's a screen, he can tell--TV light flickers on her face. Internal ship monitors? Something the DRD's are watching? He can't see what it is, doesn't bother to interrupt, just waits her out.

Finally she says: "It's something that happens to pregnant Leviathans."

"Moya's... the pregnancy's over, remember? Big fella, came with guns, speaks Peacekeeper? Name of Talen?"

"The pregnancy's over." A familiar contempt in her voice. "You really are the male of your species, aren't you?"

"Just tell me, Aeryn. Please?"

She studies her monitor, bites her lip. "Quite soon after giving birth, female leviathans seek out a mate. Contact with a male leviathan lowers their hormone levels."

"Contact--sexual contact?"

"What else?"

"But Moya didn't find a mate. We've been kinda occupied."

"When mating is impossible, the leviathan eventually has to regulate her body chemistry manually."

"Manually--" The ship chooses right then to shudder under him, vibrating against his still-hard groin, and he almost falls off his perch. "Aeryn. Are you trying to tell me Moya is masturbating?"

She dips her head in a curt nod.

He frowns at his torn shirt. "Moya's getting off, and as a result we all go Triple-X Love Boat?"

"I don't know what that means, John, but the atmosphere's flooded with pheromones."

He knocks on the glass, forcing her to glance up, meet his eyes. "You gotta let me in there."

"I'm not contaminating my air."

"Put your helmet on."

"You put yours on."

"It's inside your damned prowler."

"Improvise something. Go get your spacesuit. Or climb into that ridiculous pod of yours and wait until it's over."

"Aeryn..."

"I said no. Go away, John, I'm not unsealing."

"Fine," John says, hopping down.

"Where are you going?"

"Cold shower," he mutters. Then he shouts a more appropriate answer over his shoulder. "I better check on the others."

"Good idea," she hollers after him. He's halfway across the ship before it occurs to him to be surprised.

Was that praise?

***

For some reason he assumed that Zhaan, being a plant, would be unaffected. But when he gets to her quarters she's bathed in brilliant, baking light. The door's open and two DRDs are quivering at the threshold. Inside, it's both of them, her and D'Argo, standing about a meter apart and staring at each other.

"Guys?" They're so wrapped up in each other they don't seem to hear. John steps over the DRD and starts to sweat almost immediately. It's hot in here. Zhaan's thin shift is almost invisible in the brightness--he can see every contour of her body. Fibers that aren't muscles, nevertheless shaped in ways that make him warm and uncomfortable at once.

"You're bleeding, John," she murmurs. D'Argo still hasn't moved.

"S'okay," he says. The edges of his vision are tingling, and parts of his mind are waking up, remembering when he and she shared unity. That whole-body sensation of pleasure, every single neuron firing at once, total meltdown. He's tried to recapture that feeling a couple times, late at night when he was jerking off, but it always slid away, like a dream. Now, here it is again, just a sliver. He clenches his jaw. Hormones in the air, he reminds himself. Stay cool.

Then Zhaan trails a hand down his chest, spreading the edges of the torn shirt, trickling her fingers over the dried lines Chiana left in his skin. She inhales deeply.

"Listen," John says. "Um. Something's... going on. Going on with Moya."

She gives him an impish, suggestive grin. "Yes. We know."

"The DRDs are watching."

A blue-shouldered shrug.

Okay. Obviously the thing to do is get D'Argo out of here and ride this thing out. With an effort of will, John turns away from Zhaan's spellbinding gaze. "Big guy?" He reaches up and over for the orange-suited shoulder, but Moya gives another heave and he ends up with a tentacle instead. It's warm, electric. He's touched the things before, but they never felt like this. The skin has taken on a nipple softness, and for some reason he smells apples.

D'Argo hisses faintly. The noise is clearly appreciative, and John finds himself giving the tentacle a pinch, just to see. The alien throws his head back. Zhaan's fingers are still on his scratched up chest, trailing up and down, each stroke longer--higher at the top, lower at the bottom.

"Harder," D'Argo says, and John squeezes the tentacle, opens his hand wide and grabs two more. The aliens close in on him, one on each side. Zhaan's finger brushes his lips and then slides down, past his navel, pausing to tease open his belt buckle. With her free hand she's unsuiting D'Argo, peeling them both out of their clothes.

They're in a triangle or circle now, all very close together. D'Argo's hand is between his shoulderblades. He and Zhaan kiss, pulling their heads together as he tears John's shredded shirt away, as she tugs down his pants. There's the familiar sensation of cloth puddling around his still socked ankles. On a whim, he slips one of the tentacles into his mouth, runs his tongue around it. D'Argo makes a strangled noise and Zhaan giggles. She's determined to have them all nude--she pulls away from the kiss to slip out of her own shift, bends to the task of extricating every last garment. D' Argo's hand slides down to John's cock, fingers tracing it out delicately, as if the shape is foreign. Feathery tingle-touches. He clenches his fist, crushing the tentacles with his fingers, and grinds against D'Argo's hand.

The message gets through--D'Argo cups him, presses.

The floor shifts and bucks beneath them, giving them an excuse to give up on standing, which is obviously utterly pointless. Zhaan on her knees with his pants in her hands is the weirdest beautiful thing he's ever seen. Her breasts--if that's what you call them, his science brain corrects--have silver and blue-green veins around them, a lattice like vines that traces down to her hips, terminating in a human-looking cleft. D'Argo is still holding John' s cock, giving it tentative pulls. Down between the alien's legs are tentacles, some as narrow as human hair, others finger-sized, still more that are as big as any cock John's ever seen. Almost translucent, they're engorged with different hues of D'Argo's blood, reaching for him and Zhaan.

Now Zhaan's kissing John. Her hand is entwined in D'Argo's crotch, almost invisible in the forest of tentacles. He's stroking John with one hand and caressing the priestess's body with the other. The telepathic contact with Zhaan has expanded to include both of them, and there's an instinctive sense of what works and what doesn't--John quashes an urge to tug on the vestigal tail tucked under D'Argo's ass, knows he shouldn't even try to french-kiss Zhaan even though he isn't sure why.

They're lost in groping for a long time, happy, exploring. Getting more and more excited, never quite bringing each other to an explosion. Seeking out new life, and new civilizations, John thinks at one point, dreamily. No wonder Captain Kirk was such a slut. He sucks on as many of D'Argo's tentacles as he can get into his mouth. White drops drizzle from their tips, drenching his face, and Zhaan licks him clean.

"I think--" D'Argo finally says.

"Oh yeah," John agrees. Endgame's coming--things are getting urgent, and they can all sense it. "So how--"

"Shhh," Zhaan says. She glances at D'Argo, seems to be confirming something. Then she rolls onto her back, pulls John toward and onto and very close to her. She pulls his cock into her and it's a very human fit, though inside her body things are effervescent and cool instead of warm. It feels great--he moves against her as D'Argo slides in behind them, his many digits caressing John's balls from behind, stroking his ass, squeezing the base of his cock. One long narrow tentacle prods and then enters John's ass, slides deep and then begins to thicken, pulsing without thrusting, hot and mind-numbingly pleasurable. The rings that pierce D'Argo's collarbones are warm from the lights as they settle on John's shoulderblades.

John moves to an alien rhythm, his hips pumping back and forth, pressing out and back to squeeze D'Argo, pressing in and into Zhaan.

Rocking together furiously, their cries in his ears, the faint echo of his own pleasure reflected in their minds, he feels how completely locked he is into a circuit with his two shipmates. Zhaan's the one at the switch, holding them together, forcing the passion in their bodies to rise at the same rate. Excitement to the ninetieth degree, unbelievable that he hasn't come yet, and D'Argo's tongue is stretched out, circling one side of John's throat, teasing at Zhann's ear. Her blue head is nestled against John's arm, suckling. Her saliva is dissolving his flesh, she's licking off layers of his skin, leaving him blistered and red. It is strangely painful and yet intensely good.

Up and up they spiral, three people almost become one, while the ship shudders around them. And finally they can't rise any higher, and Zhaan's control breaks. They cry out with one voice. D'Argo's long arms compress them into a crushing embrace and Zhaan bites into John's arm as he comes, as she comes, as D'Argo comes too. The white lights brighten and then dim; they all roll apart and out of each other, end up with John between them.

"You need to know one thing," John says to Zhaan as soon as they can draw breath, as their minds begin to separate, become three again.

"What's that, John?"

It's D'Argo who answers, giving voice to one last intermingled thought as he traces his fingers over the blistered skin on John's arms, as he presses his fingers against the freely bleeding bite-mark. "You are never ever--"

"And I do mean ever!" John interposes.

"Going down on him," D'Argo says. "Whatever that means."

With that, the giggling begins.

***

Elsewhere on Moya, a still fuming Chiana settles into a fretful, petulant doze while Rygel, covered in melted dessert cubes, sails off--imperiously, but supremely pleased with himself--in search of a shower. And in a Prowler cockpit whose windows are slick with condensation, a flushed Aeryn Sun shuts off the console monitor with sticky fingers and begins to straighten her uniform.

=30=