Abbot And Costello Meet The Rainbow Coalition
It isn't like he and D'Argo have a choice about whether they want to head down to LoMo for a little R and R. Once they reach an inhabited system, Pilot boots them off Moya so fast that John's head is still spinning like a merry-go-round, and if he can't sit and sulk at home, he's damn well finding himself a bar so he can tie one on while he sulks there.
Just like all good Southern boys do when they get jilted by the love of their lives.
Not that he's been jilted, exactly. Except he has been. Or maybe his sneaky bastard of a twin has stolen her, not that Aeryn can be stolen if she doesn't want to be.
Whatever. His life is way too complicated for him not to be drinking right now.
"Bar," John says as soon as he lands the transport pod. D'Argo just grunts, and he takes that to be a sign. A big, neon sign that says, 'Beer me before I kill you.'
Since they don't have a choice about being here for ten solar days, John figures they should have a plan. The plan is simple. One even could say it's almost elegant.
It's a great plan. John feels a certain measure of pride for coming up with it, because it's totally unlike any of his other plans. His other, incredibly disastrous plans.
The plan? To do absolutely nothing.
Lately, doing anything at all has been backfiring on him like he's a lawmaker whose last name is Murphy, and that isn't something John considers fun. Or entertaining. Or particularly restful.
Doing anything has left a trail of dead bodies behind him. And this probably has something to do with the fact that John wants to get extremely shit-faced tonight while he has the free time and the moolah to finance it. And this is probably why Chiana and Jool have abandoned them for more entertaining and less grumpy pastures.
Right now, though, he's barely buzzing, and that means he has to drink a lot more before the whole situation will stop sucking giant hoo-ha. John's straw gurgles, and he signals to the waitress. "What are you drinking?"
D'Argo holds up his glass and squints at it. A strobe light flashes over his broad shoulder. "Something green."
"We have a winner," John says, smacking his palm on the table. He nods at the waitress. "I'll have what he's having."
John is sipping at his new drink when D'Argo leans over and says, "It's your fault that we're down here."
"No, it isn't," he says incredulously.
D'Argo glares while he sucks at his straw. "Yes, it is."
John pokes him in the chest, and it's like stubbing his finger into a cinderblock. "No. It. Isn't."
"Listen to me, mellett-brain, this is your fault."
"Like hell it is!"
They've been doing this a lot lately. Bickering. Bickering over who gets to fly the transport pod, over whose turn it is to stock up on food cubes, even over whether Stevie Ray Vaughn could make a shilquen wail like a banshee, and John has to admit that last one was pretty stupid considering that D'Argo doesn't even know what an electric guitar or a banshee sounds like.
Apparently, they've been bickering so much that they've successfully driven Pilot insane. So when the rainbow coalition walks up to their table and asks if he and D'Argo are a couple, John isn't particularly surprised by the question. Even though they both deny it, it sure feels like he's married to the big, tentacled jerk these days.
Whatever. The rainbow girls are pretty, even if they are green and blue and feathered, so he and D'Argo both stand up to dance with them when they ask.
He's happy and loose from the booze when he gets up, the floor still steady beneath his feet, but the air feels smoother than it did when he walked in the door. The music pounds in his head and behind his sternum, and the fruity-flavored drinks are cool and sliding easily down his throat. And the girls wave pretty little bottles of something under his nose, but it doesn't kill him, so he keeps dancing. And drinking.
It must be a lot of drinking, because one minute John's getting his groove on with one of the rainbow girls, and the next, he's hanging onto D'Argo's shoulder while the world tilts around his eyeballs, and saying, "Dude, I am so hammered."
D'Argo tosses his head back and howls. "So am I!"
And damn, John hasn't felt like this since college, when he used to get trashed and smoke a little wacky weed. D.K. took pictures a couple of times, and the developed photographs had been pretty compelling evidence that, at some point, John had actually proposed marriage to a leather couch.
But it had been a sweet couch, man.
"Hey, where're we goin'?" John says as the rainbow girls lead them out of the bar by the hand. Her fingers feel cool and hard, like blunted talons. D'Argo's arm bumps against his shoulder as they stumble down a hallway that seems pretty freaking endless.
"A place," green girl says.
"Where we can be alone," blue girl says.
"Together," they both finish.
John thinks about it for a second, and then shrugs. "Hokay."
D'Argo laughs and pounds his shoulder. "Excellent!"
Something nags at the back of his mind when the girls steer them into a room and start tugging at his clothes. The jacket goes and so does his shirt before John remembers that he and alien girls don't mix so well.
Oh, okay, they mix well, but John isn't so fond of the part where they always try to kill him afterwards, and a little afternoon delight really isn't worth getting the crap kicked out of him.
"Hey --" he says, and then realizes that the girls are standing in front of him and that there's a hand on his ass. John looks over his shoulder. "Yo, D?"
"Yes, John?"
"That you grabbing my ass?"
D'Argo looks down at his hand as if surprised to see what it's doing, gives John's butt a squeeze, and then totally fails to look apologetic. "Well, it's a very nice ass."
"Thanks, I'm attached to it," John says.
"Attached!" And that sparks off a round of hysterical laughter, D'Argo pressing his face into John's shoulder, his beard and braids tickling John's skin.
John shakes his head, and the room wobbles. "I am on Candid Camera. That must be it. It would explain so much."
The girls shove him, and John stumbles back against D'Argo, and then there's some tilting and windmilling followed closely by some falling, until they're both sprawled on the window-seat-thing in a swirl of feathers. His face is smashed against D'Argo's chest, and the blue ink of a rough tattoo looks weirdly magnified.
"Hey, big guy," John grunts, trying to untangle himself without smashing any of D'Argo's tentacles or other important parts. "I thought you left your Qualta Blade up on Moya. Either that, or you, my friend, are packing some serious heat."
D'Argo just hoots some more, and John has to join in when the dude wheezes, "Watch the mivonks!"
"I love you, man," John says, patting D'Argo's chest. "My bastard twin got my girl and he got my gun, but at least he didn't get my best friend."
His head is buzzing and his lips feel numb, and there's this tingle underneath his skin even though his arms and legs don't seem like they're connected to the rest of him anymore. Except something seems to be tugging him off the window seat, and his feet are cold, so his legs have to be attached, right?
"Hey, where am I goin'?" John says. "C'mon, big guy, help me out, here."
"John," D'Argo says sincerely, hugging John to keep him in place, "they're taking off your pants."
He twists around in D'Argo's arms in time to see the rainbow girls peeling off his leathers. "Why am I the only one getting naked? That's not fair. Don't they have equal-opportunity nudity in the UTs?"
Green girl and blue girl smile at him, and then it's a really weird mirror image as they both bend down and roll off one of their thigh-high stockings from their long legs, and the strangeness reminds him of an Alice in Wonderland porno he once saw. Blue girl tosses her stocking at him and it flutters down to land on his head. "Put them on," she says.
"For us," green girl finishes, and another stocking drifts down.
It doesn't occur to him to say no until he already has one halfway up his leg. "Rocky Horror Picture John," he mutters, tugging the other one up. They feel weird. Tight in a way he isn't used to, the fishnet catching and pulling on his hair. He's dressed up like a woman a couple of times for Halloween, but he's never bothered with nylons because the bras are bad enough.
John sneezes when a feather tickles his nose. Blue girl scratches her fingers down John's shin and her smile just turns wrong somehow. Not dangerous, but, well, not much of a leer, either. No, it definitely isn't a leer until she looks at green girl and licks the lobe of her ear.
Green girl slides her arms around blue girl and they shimmy together before turning to look at him and D'Argo. "Are you sure --"
"You aren't a couple? We --"
"Like to watch," green girl says.
"Uh," John says, watching the girls kiss each other hungrily, blue hands moving in slow circles on green breasts. He licks his lips and the room goes hot, and no matter how much he blinks, his eyes won't focus right. Behind him, D'Argo growls, his chest rumbling all along John's back, and it... feels pretty good, actually. "What do you mean, 'watch'?"
"I think they mean this," D'Argo says, and presses his hand against John's crotch.
Big hand, hot, heel of his palm rubbing against John's cock, and "Whoa whoa whoa!"
"Is something the matter, John?" D'Argo asks, his voice a deep growl in John's ear.
"You are groping me, man!" he says, grabbing D'Argo's thick forearm.
D'Argo keeps rubbing him. "Well, you did ask me to be your best man, once."
The laugh chokes in his throat, and he can't help pushing into D'Argo's hand. "Oh, we are having definite culture-clash here."
"Do you want me to stop?" D'Argo asks, hooking his arm around John's chest and yanking him back until he's trapped between D'Argo's thighs. His body feels like a big, warm blanket with muscles, and he smells like how pickled ginger tastes.
"Um," John says, trying to think -- trying to figure out how they got here, but his brains are mush. And then D'Argo pushes his hand down the front of John's shorts, and holy shit, that feels good. "Oh, god."
"Do you want me to stop?"
His brain screams yes and his body shouts no, so John comprises with, "I plead the Fifth?"
"What fifth?" D'Argo hisses in his ear.
Blue girl moans in front of him, green girl's fingers curled between her legs, and John is not up for explaining the Constitution right now. "Never mind," he says.
"John," D'Argo says, squeezing him.
"Fine, okay? Don't stop. Just don't --"
D'Argo closes his hand around John's cock and jerks him hard, his gloves just rough enough to hurt so good, and his breath like a furnace kicking on in John's ear. The girls make soft sex sounds, and he can see their feathery bodies undulating in flashes as he opens and closes his eyes, his hands gripping D'Argo's legs above the knee.
D'Argo runs his hand along the inside of John's thigh, the fishnets tugging painfully at the hair on his legs, but John's cock doesn't seem to mind. John pushes up with his hips into D'Argo's hand, and then pushes back, and D'Argo is hard behind him, and this whole situation is just too frelling weird to be happening.
Whatever D'Argo's got down there, it feels like a trident of tentacles -- rippling tentacles -- and now John knows exactly why Chiana always screams the house down when she and D'Argo are knocking boots.
"You smell --" D'Argo says, and then buries his face in John's neck, breathing deeply. And then he's licking John's neck, his tongue strong and almost coarse on John's skin.
He's sweating, breathing hard, screwing his cock into D'Argo's hand. Behind him, John can feel D'Argo jerking himself off, his gloved knuckles scraping up and down the small of John's back. John's vision flickers in and out like a bad TV signal, snow whiting out his eyes. One of the girls cries out, her voice a high trill, and his vision fades in for a moment to show a hollow-cheeked blue girl sucking hard at green girl's nipple.
"Fuck," John says, the consonant thick on his tongue. D'Argo hisses in his ear and squeezes hard -- almost too hard -- around John's cock, and he comes, the world rolling behind his eyes. His body makes like a wet noodle while D'Argo stiffens and howls, coming behind John's back. The pickled ginger smell grows stronger.
His eyelids keep dropping down over his eyeballs, and the tingle underneath his skin has only gotten worse. Can't feel his nose, can't feel his lips, his toes. He and D'Argo slide backward like tectonic plates.
The last thing he remembers is the rainbow girls staring at them in the dim light, their heads angled together.
Entwined, eyes gleaming.