Title: Determination is the wake-up call to the human will
Title: Determination is the wake-up call to the human will
Author: kaitlia777
Author's e-mail/website: kaitlia777@yahoo.com
Fandom: V 2009
Summary: Follow up to A Cruel Thing is War
Type / Pairings: Jack/Erica
Main characters: Erica Evans, Jack Landry
Rating: PG
Warnings: NA
Spoilers: Through 2x06
Beta: N/A
Disclaimer: Don’t own any of the recognizable character, just taking them out to play!
Author's Notes:
When your first coherent thought of the day was ‘Ow!’, you could usually assume it was going to be one of those days. Erica fought her way back to consciousness through a haze of muscle aches and the sting of stitched wounds.
The second thing that registered was the fact that she wasn’t alone. A split second of panic hit before she remembered asking Jack to stay and his timid capitulation to her wish.
Lying there in the early morning light, Erica reflected on the absurdity of things. Here she was, curled up in bed with a priest (he was more or less fully clothed, but still!), a man with whom she shared a mutual attraction and affection. Her son had packed his bags and moved to an alien spaceship as soon as his father died (a result of something the aliens did), because apparently he didn’t consider her enough of a family for him. He preferred his girlfriend (whom Erica could admit was a lovely girl) and her secretly evil mother.
That wasn’t even mentioning the perfect storm of irony that was her professional life. She was the head of the FBI’s Fifth Column Task Force, assigned to hunt down the terrorists…and also head of the Fifth Column here on Earth.
You know what? It was barely 7am. Her ex-husband (who she still cared for) had died in her arms the day before. She was not ready to deal with anything just yet.
Nope. She was going to lie in bed for a while. Jack’s arms were reassuring, wrapped around her and his chest was warm against her back. One of his denim clad thighs had wound up between her bare legs as they slept and she was surprised by how soft the fabric felt.
The hair on the back of her neck stirred under his slow, even breath and she allowed herself to enjoy the sensation. It was a little thing, but one she found oddly intimate. Probably because you had to be in a fairly intimate position in order to achieve the proper angle….
Usually, her thought process was more collected, but between the physical and emotional trauma of the previous day and the fact that they’d crawled into bed less than four hours ago…yeah, she was feeling a little scattered.
Deciding she’d earned a little indulgence, she shifted slightly, tucking herself closer to Jack’s frame. It might be a cliché, but it was very nice to be held.
Behind her, Jack reacted to her movement, arms tightening as though assuring his sleeping mind that she wasn’t leaving. He let out a sleepy, snuffling noise that made her smile and draw a breath as he buried his face in his hair.
She was about to drift back to sleep when she heard a phone ringing. It wasn’t her ring tone though and she was momentarily confused. Then Jack groaned and muttered, “Sorry.”
When he disentangled their bodies, she lay there mourning the loss of his embrace and warmth. Rolling onto her side, she watched him fish his cell phone out of a jacket pocket.
“Molly, hey.”
Molly? Who was Molly?
“I know, I know, I should have called…Oh. You spoke to Father Travis?…Things got busy yesterday…Are you still at St. Josephine’s?…Could you go back in and grab my things from my office?…Thanks…Your place? I’m with a friend…Molly Marie!…I’ll call you later…Stop glaring at him…Bye.”
He hung up and dropped the phone back down onto the chair before turning back to face Erica. He looked a bit sheepish as he said, “Sorry about that.”
Curious, she asked, “Who’s Molly?”
Best build up to the harder questions, like why was Molly taking his things to her place? Erica knew she had no real grounds for jealousy, but there it was, The Green Eyed Monster, rearing its ugly head.
“My niece,” Jack replied fondly, slaying the monster without even realizing he’d done so. “We meet to go for a run at 6 and I wasn’t there, so she dropped by the rectory to check up on me. I wasn’t there, so she called.”
That made sense. She nodded and worried her lip for a moment before asking, “And…the other stuff?”
Jack let out a sigh and dropped his head and she was struck by the sight of him, so achingly human and present in a sleep rumpled t-shirt and jeans, barefoot, standing in the warm golden sunlight that filtered in through the drapes.
She wanted to tell him to forget everything else and climb back into bed with her. Just for a while, they could pretend their crazy lives didn’t exist. Just for a while they could take comfort in each other as though they were unaware of the impending war.
But he was who he was. A priest. Sure, he’d slept beside her, held her through the night, but that was one thing and what she wished they could do was another thing all together.
It didn’t matter that she was pretty sure he shared her wish.
“Before I saw the news about the hostage situation, I’d packed because…” He paused to take a deep breath and scrub a hand over his face before looking up and meeting her eyes. “I received word yesterday morning that I’d been laicized. Travis gave me till the end of the week to be out of the rectory, but I figured why prolong things…..”
His voice broke a little and it was clear that he was trying to pretend like he was all right with this turn of events. She knew better.
“Oh, Jack,” she said, kicking her legs free of the comforter -- Wow, that bruise on her knee was turning out to bee pretty impressive --, she rose from the bed and circled around to pull him into a hug. One hand cupping the back of his neck, she let her cheek rest on his shoulder as she asked, “Are you okay?”
Careful so as not to aggravate any of her injuries, he returned the embrace and let his cheek rest against her head. “I was fairly well prepared for it,” he said slowly. “They’d made the church’s position clear and I defied orders, so I knew there’d be consequences.”
“But are you okay?” He’d given an answer, but it had been impersonal. She wanted to know how he was feeling.
“A little bit at a loss, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” he replied, pulling back enough to look at her. “I still have my faith and I’m doing something that I know is right, so I feel a sense of purpose.”
Erica had the feeling he wasn’t really ready to discuss his feelings about being laicized just yet -- heck, he probably wouldn’t have mentioned it if his niece hadn’t called --, so she didn’t push him on it any more. “We need you,” she assured him, biting her lips to keep from saying I need you.
He still knew what she meant. “It’s not like I never thought about leaving the church,” he mused, reaching up to brush her hair off her face and peer at the stitched gash on her right cheekbone. “After Iraq, I never stopped questioning myself. It’s why I was reluctant to get involved with the rebellion initially. I wanted to avoid conflict, and then there was….”
His voice trailed off an she felt the rough pads of his fingers graze her skin, gently probing the wound. It was a strange sensation, both pleasant and a little painful, like a deep tissue massage, but he was barely using any pressure. “And then there was what?”
She couldn’t help but ask that question.
“Temptation,” he replied softly, cheeks tingeing pink as he looked away, clearly bashful about admitting that.
This was so not the time to be doing this. She was emotionally thrown by Joe’s death and Tyler’s abandonment and Jack was dealing with being stripped of his priesthood. Not exactly a stable time for either of them. But they were living in a world where there might not be a tomorrow for either of them.
It was nice to feel needed, wanted. She was sure he agreed. Turning her head, she turned her cheek to rest the side of her face in his palm and he gently touched his brow to hers, careful of her various cuts and bruises.
At that moment, she didn’t give a damn about her aches and pains, but her body was making something else very clear. Though she really didn’t want to say anything, she had no choice. “Jack,” she said softly, taking a breath as his nose brushed hers in the softest way. “I hate to say this, but…I really have to use the bathroom.”
She felt his smile bloom and the chuckle rumble through his chest. “Me too,” he admitted, smiling as he released her somewhat reluctantly. “I think we were both too tired to worry about that last night.”
Nodding, she waved her hand. “You can use the one off the hall, while I use mine…but come back after. Four hours of sleep is nowhere near enough.”
She knew that might have been a bit babbly, but it seemed to get her point across.
After finishing in the bathroom, she looked at he reflection and cringed. The bruises had really bloomed over night, littering her face in patches of blues, purples and reds. There was still some blood crusted around her right nostril and her unbruised skin was ghostly pale. It always amazed her how her hair could become such a rats nest, even when she wasn’t tossing and turning.
Yeah, she wasn’t exactly at her best and, after splashing water on her face, brushing her teeth and tugging a brush through her hair, she decided it was as good as it was going to get. She shucked her sweatshirt, which was feeling hot and icky from being worn to bed. A knee length, soft cotton tank style nightgown was hanging on the back of the door and, after using some baby wipes to feel cleaner, she slid it on.
Opening the bathroom door, she found Jack had already made his way back from the other bathroom. He was sitting on the far edge of the bed, slightly hunched over with his elbows on his knees. His white t-shirt was pulled tight across his broad shoulders and hit had bunched up slightly, revealing a strip of lightly tanned skin above the waist of his jeans.
The jeans. She wished she had something else to give him to wear. Offering him a pair of Tyler’s sweatpants….no, that would be all kinds of weird and wrong.
Hell, he probably had on boxers but was just too shy to ditch the heavy denim. She’d have to broach the subject.
When she settled down on her side of the bed, he turned to face her, eyes tracking to the newly revealed bruises on her arms. Before she lost her nerve, she said, “It can’t be comfortable sleeping in those jeans. We’re both adults. You can take them off.”
Whatever he’d been expecting her to say, that had not been it. His eyes popped wide and he looked so startled that she quickly added, “You don’t have too! I was just thinking that I hate sleeping in jeans, but if you’re okay….”
He nodded a little and said, “No, you’re right. I just…I’ll do that.”
Standing, he stepped toward the chair, hands going to his waist. He turned, peering at her over his shoulder and she could see he’d gone pink again. Then she realized she was sitting there, staring at him as he prepared to take his pants off. That was clearly unnerving him.
“Sorry,” she said, averting her eyes. She hadn’t meant to stare…it had just seemed to happen.
The sound of the zipper was loud in the quiet room and she heard the denim rustle, then his footsteps back to the bed, which dipped as he sat on the other side.
She was startled by the gentle fingers ghosting across her shoulder and down her arm. She turned to meet his concerned gaze. “We really should ice some of these bruises,” he said, thumb brushing the unblemished crook of her elbow and she shivered, a combination of sensation and the thought of ice.
“Later,” she agreed, scooting down to lie facing him and he did the same, pulling the sheet and comforter up over them.
It should have been strange, sharing a bed with him now that she was feeling more centered and less desperate to know he was close by, but it wasn’t. Sure, there was a little awkwardness, but that was mostly due to the priest issue. Not that it applied anymore…or did it? She really didn’t know how that worked.
Having Jack with her seemed right. In a world of complexity, it was a simple truth. They’d been inextricably linked since that first night on a cold rooftop, before they’d even know each other, they’d had a connection. She didn’t know how she’d have managed if he hadn’t shown up outside her office after hearing the V’s were being allowed to visit Earth, deciding he couldn’t avoid the fight.
It had only been a few months ago and yet it seemed like ages had passed.
If you counted time in terms of major life events, she supposed ages had passed.
Her expression must have mirrored her less than happy thoughts, because Jack chose to gather her in his arms and stroke her back soothingly. She grasped his shoulders, holding him tight and letting her legs tangle with his.
In the early morning light, there was a little peace for each of them, before reality would set in again.
Comments, pretty please?
Author: kaitlia777
Author's e-mail/website: kaitlia777@yahoo.com
Fandom: V 2009
Summary: Follow up to A Cruel Thing is War
Type / Pairings: Jack/Erica
Main characters: Erica Evans, Jack Landry
Rating: PG
Warnings: NA
Spoilers: Through 2x06
Beta: N/A
Disclaimer: Don’t own any of the recognizable character, just taking them out to play!
Author's Notes:
When your first coherent thought of the day was ‘Ow!’, you could usually assume it was going to be one of those days. Erica fought her way back to consciousness through a haze of muscle aches and the sting of stitched wounds.
The second thing that registered was the fact that she wasn’t alone. A split second of panic hit before she remembered asking Jack to stay and his timid capitulation to her wish.
Lying there in the early morning light, Erica reflected on the absurdity of things. Here she was, curled up in bed with a priest (he was more or less fully clothed, but still!), a man with whom she shared a mutual attraction and affection. Her son had packed his bags and moved to an alien spaceship as soon as his father died (a result of something the aliens did), because apparently he didn’t consider her enough of a family for him. He preferred his girlfriend (whom Erica could admit was a lovely girl) and her secretly evil mother.
That wasn’t even mentioning the perfect storm of irony that was her professional life. She was the head of the FBI’s Fifth Column Task Force, assigned to hunt down the terrorists…and also head of the Fifth Column here on Earth.
You know what? It was barely 7am. Her ex-husband (who she still cared for) had died in her arms the day before. She was not ready to deal with anything just yet.
Nope. She was going to lie in bed for a while. Jack’s arms were reassuring, wrapped around her and his chest was warm against her back. One of his denim clad thighs had wound up between her bare legs as they slept and she was surprised by how soft the fabric felt.
The hair on the back of her neck stirred under his slow, even breath and she allowed herself to enjoy the sensation. It was a little thing, but one she found oddly intimate. Probably because you had to be in a fairly intimate position in order to achieve the proper angle….
Usually, her thought process was more collected, but between the physical and emotional trauma of the previous day and the fact that they’d crawled into bed less than four hours ago…yeah, she was feeling a little scattered.
Deciding she’d earned a little indulgence, she shifted slightly, tucking herself closer to Jack’s frame. It might be a cliché, but it was very nice to be held.
Behind her, Jack reacted to her movement, arms tightening as though assuring his sleeping mind that she wasn’t leaving. He let out a sleepy, snuffling noise that made her smile and draw a breath as he buried his face in his hair.
She was about to drift back to sleep when she heard a phone ringing. It wasn’t her ring tone though and she was momentarily confused. Then Jack groaned and muttered, “Sorry.”
When he disentangled their bodies, she lay there mourning the loss of his embrace and warmth. Rolling onto her side, she watched him fish his cell phone out of a jacket pocket.
“Molly, hey.”
Molly? Who was Molly?
“I know, I know, I should have called…Oh. You spoke to Father Travis?…Things got busy yesterday…Are you still at St. Josephine’s?…Could you go back in and grab my things from my office?…Thanks…Your place? I’m with a friend…Molly Marie!…I’ll call you later…Stop glaring at him…Bye.”
He hung up and dropped the phone back down onto the chair before turning back to face Erica. He looked a bit sheepish as he said, “Sorry about that.”
Curious, she asked, “Who’s Molly?”
Best build up to the harder questions, like why was Molly taking his things to her place? Erica knew she had no real grounds for jealousy, but there it was, The Green Eyed Monster, rearing its ugly head.
“My niece,” Jack replied fondly, slaying the monster without even realizing he’d done so. “We meet to go for a run at 6 and I wasn’t there, so she dropped by the rectory to check up on me. I wasn’t there, so she called.”
That made sense. She nodded and worried her lip for a moment before asking, “And…the other stuff?”
Jack let out a sigh and dropped his head and she was struck by the sight of him, so achingly human and present in a sleep rumpled t-shirt and jeans, barefoot, standing in the warm golden sunlight that filtered in through the drapes.
She wanted to tell him to forget everything else and climb back into bed with her. Just for a while, they could pretend their crazy lives didn’t exist. Just for a while they could take comfort in each other as though they were unaware of the impending war.
But he was who he was. A priest. Sure, he’d slept beside her, held her through the night, but that was one thing and what she wished they could do was another thing all together.
It didn’t matter that she was pretty sure he shared her wish.
“Before I saw the news about the hostage situation, I’d packed because…” He paused to take a deep breath and scrub a hand over his face before looking up and meeting her eyes. “I received word yesterday morning that I’d been laicized. Travis gave me till the end of the week to be out of the rectory, but I figured why prolong things…..”
His voice broke a little and it was clear that he was trying to pretend like he was all right with this turn of events. She knew better.
“Oh, Jack,” she said, kicking her legs free of the comforter -- Wow, that bruise on her knee was turning out to bee pretty impressive --, she rose from the bed and circled around to pull him into a hug. One hand cupping the back of his neck, she let her cheek rest on his shoulder as she asked, “Are you okay?”
Careful so as not to aggravate any of her injuries, he returned the embrace and let his cheek rest against her head. “I was fairly well prepared for it,” he said slowly. “They’d made the church’s position clear and I defied orders, so I knew there’d be consequences.”
“But are you okay?” He’d given an answer, but it had been impersonal. She wanted to know how he was feeling.
“A little bit at a loss, but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” he replied, pulling back enough to look at her. “I still have my faith and I’m doing something that I know is right, so I feel a sense of purpose.”
Erica had the feeling he wasn’t really ready to discuss his feelings about being laicized just yet -- heck, he probably wouldn’t have mentioned it if his niece hadn’t called --, so she didn’t push him on it any more. “We need you,” she assured him, biting her lips to keep from saying I need you.
He still knew what she meant. “It’s not like I never thought about leaving the church,” he mused, reaching up to brush her hair off her face and peer at the stitched gash on her right cheekbone. “After Iraq, I never stopped questioning myself. It’s why I was reluctant to get involved with the rebellion initially. I wanted to avoid conflict, and then there was….”
His voice trailed off an she felt the rough pads of his fingers graze her skin, gently probing the wound. It was a strange sensation, both pleasant and a little painful, like a deep tissue massage, but he was barely using any pressure. “And then there was what?”
She couldn’t help but ask that question.
“Temptation,” he replied softly, cheeks tingeing pink as he looked away, clearly bashful about admitting that.
This was so not the time to be doing this. She was emotionally thrown by Joe’s death and Tyler’s abandonment and Jack was dealing with being stripped of his priesthood. Not exactly a stable time for either of them. But they were living in a world where there might not be a tomorrow for either of them.
It was nice to feel needed, wanted. She was sure he agreed. Turning her head, she turned her cheek to rest the side of her face in his palm and he gently touched his brow to hers, careful of her various cuts and bruises.
At that moment, she didn’t give a damn about her aches and pains, but her body was making something else very clear. Though she really didn’t want to say anything, she had no choice. “Jack,” she said softly, taking a breath as his nose brushed hers in the softest way. “I hate to say this, but…I really have to use the bathroom.”
She felt his smile bloom and the chuckle rumble through his chest. “Me too,” he admitted, smiling as he released her somewhat reluctantly. “I think we were both too tired to worry about that last night.”
Nodding, she waved her hand. “You can use the one off the hall, while I use mine…but come back after. Four hours of sleep is nowhere near enough.”
She knew that might have been a bit babbly, but it seemed to get her point across.
After finishing in the bathroom, she looked at he reflection and cringed. The bruises had really bloomed over night, littering her face in patches of blues, purples and reds. There was still some blood crusted around her right nostril and her unbruised skin was ghostly pale. It always amazed her how her hair could become such a rats nest, even when she wasn’t tossing and turning.
Yeah, she wasn’t exactly at her best and, after splashing water on her face, brushing her teeth and tugging a brush through her hair, she decided it was as good as it was going to get. She shucked her sweatshirt, which was feeling hot and icky from being worn to bed. A knee length, soft cotton tank style nightgown was hanging on the back of the door and, after using some baby wipes to feel cleaner, she slid it on.
Opening the bathroom door, she found Jack had already made his way back from the other bathroom. He was sitting on the far edge of the bed, slightly hunched over with his elbows on his knees. His white t-shirt was pulled tight across his broad shoulders and hit had bunched up slightly, revealing a strip of lightly tanned skin above the waist of his jeans.
The jeans. She wished she had something else to give him to wear. Offering him a pair of Tyler’s sweatpants….no, that would be all kinds of weird and wrong.
Hell, he probably had on boxers but was just too shy to ditch the heavy denim. She’d have to broach the subject.
When she settled down on her side of the bed, he turned to face her, eyes tracking to the newly revealed bruises on her arms. Before she lost her nerve, she said, “It can’t be comfortable sleeping in those jeans. We’re both adults. You can take them off.”
Whatever he’d been expecting her to say, that had not been it. His eyes popped wide and he looked so startled that she quickly added, “You don’t have too! I was just thinking that I hate sleeping in jeans, but if you’re okay….”
He nodded a little and said, “No, you’re right. I just…I’ll do that.”
Standing, he stepped toward the chair, hands going to his waist. He turned, peering at her over his shoulder and she could see he’d gone pink again. Then she realized she was sitting there, staring at him as he prepared to take his pants off. That was clearly unnerving him.
“Sorry,” she said, averting her eyes. She hadn’t meant to stare…it had just seemed to happen.
The sound of the zipper was loud in the quiet room and she heard the denim rustle, then his footsteps back to the bed, which dipped as he sat on the other side.
She was startled by the gentle fingers ghosting across her shoulder and down her arm. She turned to meet his concerned gaze. “We really should ice some of these bruises,” he said, thumb brushing the unblemished crook of her elbow and she shivered, a combination of sensation and the thought of ice.
“Later,” she agreed, scooting down to lie facing him and he did the same, pulling the sheet and comforter up over them.
It should have been strange, sharing a bed with him now that she was feeling more centered and less desperate to know he was close by, but it wasn’t. Sure, there was a little awkwardness, but that was mostly due to the priest issue. Not that it applied anymore…or did it? She really didn’t know how that worked.
Having Jack with her seemed right. In a world of complexity, it was a simple truth. They’d been inextricably linked since that first night on a cold rooftop, before they’d even know each other, they’d had a connection. She didn’t know how she’d have managed if he hadn’t shown up outside her office after hearing the V’s were being allowed to visit Earth, deciding he couldn’t avoid the fight.
It had only been a few months ago and yet it seemed like ages had passed.
If you counted time in terms of major life events, she supposed ages had passed.
Her expression must have mirrored her less than happy thoughts, because Jack chose to gather her in his arms and stroke her back soothingly. She grasped his shoulders, holding him tight and letting her legs tangle with his.
In the early morning light, there was a little peace for each of them, before reality would set in again.
Comments, pretty please?