Fanfiction: "Back In Line"
I shouldn’t be doing this, she thinks, while her hands give their best to loosen Everett Young’s belt and his almost desperate moan nearly makes her forget all her misgivings and feelings of guilt… and most of all the nearly oppressive knowledge that what they’re doing here is just all kinds of wrong.
“TJ… God…” God, she thinks with the part of her brain that hasn’t surrendered to its baser functions yet, God has nothing to do with this. In fact, God’s been gone from her life since so long ago…
She can’t hold back an appreciative growl when she has freed him from his belt and feels him pressing her against the storage room’s wall more forcefully. Damn… stop this, stop this, stop this… You know you have to!
Guilt and shame race through her body, along with desire and want, as he kisses her shoulders and his panting becomes more erratic with every time she touches him with her hands, her lips, her whole body. And even more guilt because it just feels so damn good.
Married… he’s married, she nearly frantically tells herself, always her last resort when she falls into the destructive and shameful routine of sleeping with her CO again. But ever since they came to the Destiny… it ceased working for good. Even the last bit of effect was taken from it the moment they realized they were billions of light years away from home and it was highly unlikely they would ever return to it.
Fuck, fuck, fuck… “Huh, what do you think I’m doing here?” Dammit! She didn’t just say that aloud, did she? But when she looks up and briefly meets his eyes the almost amused little grin that he flashes at her tells her differently.
Jeez, she feels her knees go weak at the sight of that grin and feels an unwilling smile of her own come up. “Dunno. What are you doing here?” That causes him to chuckle and then growl and push her against the wall with renewed vigor.
“Minx,” is all he says before he grins at her again and moves to grab her wrists to pin her arms against the wall above her head and kiss her roughly - hungrily - on the lips. Sometimes, in those rare quiet moments filled with brooding and anxiety and self-punishment, she wonders if that is how he used to do it with his wife and if she’s merely a surrogate, a vessel to fulfill his needs when he has to vent off steam. But right now he makes her feel like she’s exactly who and what he needs and wants and…
“Sir?” Crap. Holy fucking sodding bloody crap. She knows someone should say or do something but for some reason all three of them - Johanson, Young, Greer - are frozen in momentarily shock. Unfortunately, they’re all frozen long enough that the moment where Greer could simply have turned around and pretended that he saw nothing extraordinary going on is gone.
So instead of simply turning around, immediately, he stares at them and when realization finally hits him, the look of utter confusion and disappointment and a strange kind of anger - as if someone just betrayed him - that appears in his eyes is almost painful to her.
It brings the hot shame she had been able to contain until now back with a vengeance. She feels the accusation in his eyes down to her very bones and for a moment it looks like this is her final breaking point. Until now, she somehow had been able to go through everything - the realization she would never get home again, the injuries she couldn’t heal properly, the deaths she couldn’t prevent - with gritting her teeth and soldiering on, just like they had taught her at the Academy, but somehow this one second where Greer’s eyes told her unmistakably that he had lost every respect he had for her nearly brings her to tears.
In the end it’s Greer who breaks the silence with saying, “Lieutenant Scott wanted to talk to you and asked me to find you since you didn’t answer your radio, sir.” And his face tells them point blank that he’d love to add a sneer and, “At least now we know why,” but he keeps it to himself, anyway… and she’s grateful for that.
Young, somehow able to magically keep up a minimum of dignity to his bearing despite all that happened, only nods and says, “I’ll radio the Lieutenant ASAP. Thanks for telling me Sergeant.” Is she the only one or does anyone else feel almost overwhelmed by the absurdity of the whole situation, she wonders.
Greer, however, has his inscrutable Marine face back on now and simply nods at Young, having understood the dismissal full well. Then he turns to go… and did she imagine it or did he just throw her a look that could be described as something close to disgusted?
It’s this moment she decides to end this, once and for all. She’s almost positive that Greer will keep this to himself, simply because he’s not the gossiping kind of guy, but she never wants to see what she saw in his eyes again. The thought of seeing it in Mat’s eyes or Chloe’s eyes or Eli’s… it breaks her heart, more than anything because it mirrors how lowly she already thinks of herself, deep down.
Without another word, she starts dressing again, not even looking at Young. She can hear him rummaging around and suddenly she feels very conscious of every little bit of exposed skin so she moves extra fast to cover herself in clothes. When she’s done, she wants to leave as fast as she can but suddenly she hears him addressing her almost hesitatingly, “TJ…”
No. No more “TJ” or “Tamara” or “Tam” or anything of that kind. Clenching her hands into fists, she turns around. “With all due respect, sir… it’s Lieutenant Johanson.” She manages to hold his gaze for a second longer; just long enough to see realization dawning up on his face before she finally turns to go, pretending that the only thing she feels about this is relief and that the tears threatening to spill over have nothing to do with that dredged L-word she always forbade herself to use in connection with Colonel Everett Young.