Fic: "Long Live the Queen," Aliens, Ripley/Hicks, R.
I haven't actually seen Aliens in a while, though I did watch Alien last month when I was home with my folks! So, all research of details is from the Intarwebz and all mistakes are my own!
Title: "Long Live the Queen" 1/1
Author: monimala
Fandom: "Aliens"
Rating/Classification: R for a few dirty words, mild adult content, Ripley/Hicks, post-movie, AU
Disclaimer: What do you mean Alien 3 and 4 happened? Nuh-uh. I'm in denial. Also? I don't own these characters and am making no profit from their use.
Summary: 1700 words. For anr's prompt "Ripley/Hicks: post-movie; still alive and together" in the Fall Fandom Free-For-All.
After they're out of hypersleep, they're bustled into quarantine. Poked and prodded and scanned to make sure none of them are gestating… or perhaps to make sure *all* of them are gestating. And then the debriefings begin. One after the other, until the hours stretch by and Ripley is restless in her hospital bed and sweating in the paper-thin gown. They won't let her see Newt; in fact, they tell her, "in light of the trauma you've suffered, it appears you're trying to replace your own lost daughter with Rebecca."
"Of course I'm fucking traumatized!" she hears herself wail with fury, sounding so much like the alien queen that it's almost eerie. "Now let me see her!" She suddenly understands, all too viscerally, how it must have felt. Seeing its children burned at her hands. All that loss. Amanda is gone, and she'll be damned if they take Newt from her, too. She knocks the metal lunch tray from the table they pushed up to her bed and almost launches out of the bed, tubes and wires and all, to strangle the needle-dick pencil pusher who thinks he knows what's going on inside her head.
It takes two Marines to hold her down, and then she's sedated… sent into the realm of nightmares where she sees airlocks and loaders and can't breathe because of the face-hugger that's clamped down around her head.
Hicks hears about it, of course. *Everybody* hears about it. And he wheels into her room long after the Weyland brass and the jarheads have gone. His smile is gentle, his bruises mottled and bandages stark and white against his skin. He didn't heal during sleep. She thinks maybe none of them did.
"Hey, Lieutenant," he chides with that same easygoing nature that set him apart from the rest of his unit on the Sulaco. "I thought I was the muscle around here."
Her laugh is rusty, and she reaches out for his hand. He promises her that they're all going to get through this. And for a minute or two, she actually believes him.
**
They remain "guests" of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation for three months, finally released when the threat of litigation has passed. Ellen expects to go back to cramped quarters and a solitary existence, trying to put her life back together after nearly six decades away. But the company, still cautious, still hoping to avoid lawsuits (Newt has taken to whispering it loudly whenever someone official walks by), winds up ensconcing them, en masse, in a three-bedroom suite in a high-rise. The tacit understanding is that they're still under surveillance, and any whisper of press involvement or them going public with the debacle on LV-426 will result in the military clamping down.
Unsurprisingly, Newt is the first one of them to bounce back. Children are remarkably resilient. She sleeps through the night, not plagued by the nightmarish visions that regularly awaken Ellen with a scream lodged in her throat. Sometimes, Hicks --"Dwayne, remember?"-- is there, at her bedside, grasping her arms to jostle her from the dream, reminding her, "We're okay. We're safe." She doesn't believe him; he knows she doesn't believe him. So he climbs under the covers with her and pulls her back against his chest. She breathes in his familiar, human scent and manages to catch a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep. He's always gone in the morning. And when she questions him about his own nocturnal habits, he smiles, reaches for the coffee, and murmurs, "I don't dream." Only the clench of his jaw gives away the lie.
He gets work as a desk jockey for the Marines, and if anybody remarks on the dark circles under his eyes, he doesn't come home and talk about it. Ellen has no desire to go back to work for Weyland… and they have no inclination to *offer* her a position, so it works out quite nicely. Except for the part where she is at loose ends, not knowing how an ex-warrant officer who knows how to use an exosuit loader and blow aliens to smithereens can fit back into any semblance of normal society.
Newt accepts their odd little family as is, even starts going to school. Classes bore her, but she sits at the kitchen table diligently night after night, demanding Ellen and Hicks help her with her homework. She started calling Ellen "Mom," in quarantine, making the transition to daughter faster than Ripley and Hicks get used to being her parents, to living with each other. They pass each other in the hallway like strangers, en route to their separate bedrooms and trade awkward smiles when they both reach for the same serving spoon at dinner. Their relationship to each other seems harder to define without the desperate need for survival looming over their heads.
Until one night, when Newt is telling Hicks a story about Billy from her History of Earth class, who doesn't believe she survived alone on a planet full of aliens. "I bet he wouldn't live five minutes," she scoffs. "Boys are so dumb, Dad."
Dad. So casual. And yet Ellen meets Hicks' eyes across the table and knows it's huge. He's stunned, but the only outward sign is the slight curl of his fingers into the tabletop. "Boys are very, very dumb," he agrees, with perhaps the barest catch in his voice. "Which is why I'm glad I've got two smart women like you and your mom looking out for me."
Newt beams at the praise, before gathering up her schoolwork and racing off to bed. Afterward, Dwayne's eyes brighten with the sheen of tears. "Wow," he gasps out, like he's been punched in the stomach. "Oh, wow. *Dad*. I'm… somebody's dad."
"Watch out," she teases, to give him a chance to recover his composure. "This means you get to start threatening her boyfriends in a few years." She never got that chance with Amanda. Never watched her grow up, marry, and find her first grey hairs. And suddenly it's *her* composure that wavers.
"I…" He swallows hard, grateful for the opportunity to turn it into a chuckle. "I was planning to do that anyway. Can you imagine if she brought someone like Hudson home?"
They both laugh, only to have guilt chase the sound. Hudson won't be dating anyone's daughter anymore. Ellen slumps in her chair, rubbing the back of her neck. The Marines, some of them were just kids. Even Hicks --*Dwayne*, she reminds herself with a curse. He'd look like a fresh-faced boy, if he didn't have the horror of war in his eyes. But then she stares at him for a moment longer, cataloguing the harsh lines of his face and the power of his shoulders, and realizes she's wrong. Maybe she just *feels* old, because of how much time has passed. Because of everything she's seen and done. Corporal Dwayne Hicks is a man. A man who has been in bed with her almost every night for the last month.
The awareness makes her break out in goosebumps. All of a sudden the mood in the room changes; the air grows heavy and charged and she shifts in her seat. She recalls how it feels to have his arms around her, and her breath catches and her pulse quickens. It's been a long, long time for her. Sixty years, if you want to look at it that way. Long enough that when he put his hands over hers and taught her how to lock and load down in Operations, it was like foreplay.
"Ellen?" He says her name like he's tasting it, lingering on every letter. Their fingertips are inches apart on the tabletop. One movement will lead to a touch. What's so simple and easy between them in the dark of her room feels entirely too complicated here. Maybe that's why she rises and gestures for him to follow her out of the kitchen.
They detour to his room, not hers, and she's unsurprised to find it as Spartan as hers. Not one single personal memento, no clothes on the floor. As if he could leave any time without missing anything essential. Sometimes, she thinks that if it weren't for Newt, they'd both be poised to run. To go back out there. Hitch a ride on the first mining ship. She doesn't belong on solid ground anymore. Maybe one of those bugs *did* deposit something deep inside her, something feral that cries out for space. But right now that's not the call she's interested in answering. No. So she turns to Hicks, whispers, "Dwayne," and kisses him.
He kisses her back like he's afraid she might break, and she quickly disabuses him of that notion. She's stronger than anyone would ever give her credit for. Capable of Herculean feats. Like pulling his T-shirt from his waistband and then ripping it in two. Shoving him backwards until his legs hit the edge of the bed. Devouring him, consuming him, breathing him in. The first time, they're still standing. Pants tangled around their ankles, all awkward thrusts and fumbling hands. But they don't want to wait for it to be graceful, to be perfect; they've already waited far too long. Ellen has had fevered fantasies of fucking Hicks on LV-426 with death on all sides. There is no hive queen at the door here, just them. And the second time, some of the urgency fades.
They learn what they already know about each other: that they're kind and patient, until tested, and then they are fierce survivors. Her knees dig into the points of his hips. He winds his fingers in the kinks of her hair. They kiss and laugh and use their "inside" voices so that their daughter doesn't get the brilliant idea to check on them thinking that something's wrong. *Their* daughter. *Their* life. Ellen could get used to it.
And somewhere in the middle of making love to Hicks for the third time, Ellen realizes she already has. She strokes his face, memorizing his wry smile and sharp jaw. This is her mate. This is her collective, her family. And she'll fight for it to the death.
--end--
September 20, 2009
Title: "Long Live the Queen" 1/1
Author: monimala
Fandom: "Aliens"
Rating/Classification: R for a few dirty words, mild adult content, Ripley/Hicks, post-movie, AU
Disclaimer: What do you mean Alien 3 and 4 happened? Nuh-uh. I'm in denial. Also? I don't own these characters and am making no profit from their use.
Summary: 1700 words. For anr's prompt "Ripley/Hicks: post-movie; still alive and together" in the Fall Fandom Free-For-All.
After they're out of hypersleep, they're bustled into quarantine. Poked and prodded and scanned to make sure none of them are gestating… or perhaps to make sure *all* of them are gestating. And then the debriefings begin. One after the other, until the hours stretch by and Ripley is restless in her hospital bed and sweating in the paper-thin gown. They won't let her see Newt; in fact, they tell her, "in light of the trauma you've suffered, it appears you're trying to replace your own lost daughter with Rebecca."
"Of course I'm fucking traumatized!" she hears herself wail with fury, sounding so much like the alien queen that it's almost eerie. "Now let me see her!" She suddenly understands, all too viscerally, how it must have felt. Seeing its children burned at her hands. All that loss. Amanda is gone, and she'll be damned if they take Newt from her, too. She knocks the metal lunch tray from the table they pushed up to her bed and almost launches out of the bed, tubes and wires and all, to strangle the needle-dick pencil pusher who thinks he knows what's going on inside her head.
It takes two Marines to hold her down, and then she's sedated… sent into the realm of nightmares where she sees airlocks and loaders and can't breathe because of the face-hugger that's clamped down around her head.
Hicks hears about it, of course. *Everybody* hears about it. And he wheels into her room long after the Weyland brass and the jarheads have gone. His smile is gentle, his bruises mottled and bandages stark and white against his skin. He didn't heal during sleep. She thinks maybe none of them did.
"Hey, Lieutenant," he chides with that same easygoing nature that set him apart from the rest of his unit on the Sulaco. "I thought I was the muscle around here."
Her laugh is rusty, and she reaches out for his hand. He promises her that they're all going to get through this. And for a minute or two, she actually believes him.
**
They remain "guests" of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation for three months, finally released when the threat of litigation has passed. Ellen expects to go back to cramped quarters and a solitary existence, trying to put her life back together after nearly six decades away. But the company, still cautious, still hoping to avoid lawsuits (Newt has taken to whispering it loudly whenever someone official walks by), winds up ensconcing them, en masse, in a three-bedroom suite in a high-rise. The tacit understanding is that they're still under surveillance, and any whisper of press involvement or them going public with the debacle on LV-426 will result in the military clamping down.
Unsurprisingly, Newt is the first one of them to bounce back. Children are remarkably resilient. She sleeps through the night, not plagued by the nightmarish visions that regularly awaken Ellen with a scream lodged in her throat. Sometimes, Hicks --"Dwayne, remember?"-- is there, at her bedside, grasping her arms to jostle her from the dream, reminding her, "We're okay. We're safe." She doesn't believe him; he knows she doesn't believe him. So he climbs under the covers with her and pulls her back against his chest. She breathes in his familiar, human scent and manages to catch a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep. He's always gone in the morning. And when she questions him about his own nocturnal habits, he smiles, reaches for the coffee, and murmurs, "I don't dream." Only the clench of his jaw gives away the lie.
He gets work as a desk jockey for the Marines, and if anybody remarks on the dark circles under his eyes, he doesn't come home and talk about it. Ellen has no desire to go back to work for Weyland… and they have no inclination to *offer* her a position, so it works out quite nicely. Except for the part where she is at loose ends, not knowing how an ex-warrant officer who knows how to use an exosuit loader and blow aliens to smithereens can fit back into any semblance of normal society.
Newt accepts their odd little family as is, even starts going to school. Classes bore her, but she sits at the kitchen table diligently night after night, demanding Ellen and Hicks help her with her homework. She started calling Ellen "Mom," in quarantine, making the transition to daughter faster than Ripley and Hicks get used to being her parents, to living with each other. They pass each other in the hallway like strangers, en route to their separate bedrooms and trade awkward smiles when they both reach for the same serving spoon at dinner. Their relationship to each other seems harder to define without the desperate need for survival looming over their heads.
Until one night, when Newt is telling Hicks a story about Billy from her History of Earth class, who doesn't believe she survived alone on a planet full of aliens. "I bet he wouldn't live five minutes," she scoffs. "Boys are so dumb, Dad."
Dad. So casual. And yet Ellen meets Hicks' eyes across the table and knows it's huge. He's stunned, but the only outward sign is the slight curl of his fingers into the tabletop. "Boys are very, very dumb," he agrees, with perhaps the barest catch in his voice. "Which is why I'm glad I've got two smart women like you and your mom looking out for me."
Newt beams at the praise, before gathering up her schoolwork and racing off to bed. Afterward, Dwayne's eyes brighten with the sheen of tears. "Wow," he gasps out, like he's been punched in the stomach. "Oh, wow. *Dad*. I'm… somebody's dad."
"Watch out," she teases, to give him a chance to recover his composure. "This means you get to start threatening her boyfriends in a few years." She never got that chance with Amanda. Never watched her grow up, marry, and find her first grey hairs. And suddenly it's *her* composure that wavers.
"I…" He swallows hard, grateful for the opportunity to turn it into a chuckle. "I was planning to do that anyway. Can you imagine if she brought someone like Hudson home?"
They both laugh, only to have guilt chase the sound. Hudson won't be dating anyone's daughter anymore. Ellen slumps in her chair, rubbing the back of her neck. The Marines, some of them were just kids. Even Hicks --*Dwayne*, she reminds herself with a curse. He'd look like a fresh-faced boy, if he didn't have the horror of war in his eyes. But then she stares at him for a moment longer, cataloguing the harsh lines of his face and the power of his shoulders, and realizes she's wrong. Maybe she just *feels* old, because of how much time has passed. Because of everything she's seen and done. Corporal Dwayne Hicks is a man. A man who has been in bed with her almost every night for the last month.
The awareness makes her break out in goosebumps. All of a sudden the mood in the room changes; the air grows heavy and charged and she shifts in her seat. She recalls how it feels to have his arms around her, and her breath catches and her pulse quickens. It's been a long, long time for her. Sixty years, if you want to look at it that way. Long enough that when he put his hands over hers and taught her how to lock and load down in Operations, it was like foreplay.
"Ellen?" He says her name like he's tasting it, lingering on every letter. Their fingertips are inches apart on the tabletop. One movement will lead to a touch. What's so simple and easy between them in the dark of her room feels entirely too complicated here. Maybe that's why she rises and gestures for him to follow her out of the kitchen.
They detour to his room, not hers, and she's unsurprised to find it as Spartan as hers. Not one single personal memento, no clothes on the floor. As if he could leave any time without missing anything essential. Sometimes, she thinks that if it weren't for Newt, they'd both be poised to run. To go back out there. Hitch a ride on the first mining ship. She doesn't belong on solid ground anymore. Maybe one of those bugs *did* deposit something deep inside her, something feral that cries out for space. But right now that's not the call she's interested in answering. No. So she turns to Hicks, whispers, "Dwayne," and kisses him.
He kisses her back like he's afraid she might break, and she quickly disabuses him of that notion. She's stronger than anyone would ever give her credit for. Capable of Herculean feats. Like pulling his T-shirt from his waistband and then ripping it in two. Shoving him backwards until his legs hit the edge of the bed. Devouring him, consuming him, breathing him in. The first time, they're still standing. Pants tangled around their ankles, all awkward thrusts and fumbling hands. But they don't want to wait for it to be graceful, to be perfect; they've already waited far too long. Ellen has had fevered fantasies of fucking Hicks on LV-426 with death on all sides. There is no hive queen at the door here, just them. And the second time, some of the urgency fades.
They learn what they already know about each other: that they're kind and patient, until tested, and then they are fierce survivors. Her knees dig into the points of his hips. He winds his fingers in the kinks of her hair. They kiss and laugh and use their "inside" voices so that their daughter doesn't get the brilliant idea to check on them thinking that something's wrong. *Their* daughter. *Their* life. Ellen could get used to it.
And somewhere in the middle of making love to Hicks for the third time, Ellen realizes she already has. She strokes his face, memorizing his wry smile and sharp jaw. This is her mate. This is her collective, her family. And she'll fight for it to the death.
--end--
September 20, 2009