Title: You Scream, I Scream
Author: SabaceanBabe
Rating: PG
Word count: 601
Characters/pairings: John, Chiana, Rygel
Spoilers: kinda sorta for Won’t Get Fooled Again, but only because that’s the timeframe for the fic (as in mere minutes before the ep begins)
Author's note: A really late, unbetaed birthday present for
vipersweb.
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Activity swirled around them, noisy and brash. No one knew who they were, no one cared. It was nice to not have to look over his shoulder, even if he knew it wouldn’t last, might not even last more than an hour or two.
“Hey, Crichton!”
Chiana darted past an opaline-skinned woman and came straight for John.
“‘S up, Pip?” he asked as she bounded to a stop right in front of him and held out a dish of something green and slimy.
“Look what Ryg found!” She thrust the dish at him, grinning, black eyes dancing. “He said to tell you it’s... it’s...” She bounced on one foot, frowning. “Eye-cez kreem.” She cocked her head to one side. “Take it. Ryg said it’s that... that thing from Erp that you wanted a while back.”
John just stared at the slimy green mess, wondering how Rygel would even have a clue. “Don’t you want it, Crichton?” Chiana sounded a little disappointed. “You’re supposed to... to eat it.”
Eye-cez kreem? Whatever it was, it appeared to be melting. And then it hit him. “Ice cream!” He looked at Pip again. “Ice cream?” She nodded and offered the dish to him again. “Why the hell not?” John laughed and took the dish from her.
He eyed it dubiously, because there was no way it was ice cream, but it did kind of look and act like it. Bringing the dish closer to his face, he gave it a sniff. Banana? He scooped a bit of it with one finger and gave it a taste. Not banana, exactly, but it was cold and it was sweet and it was the closest thing to ice cream he’d tasted in a good two years.
Chiana watched him with great anticipation, rocking back and forth from one foot to the other. “How is it, Crichton?” she asked, her voice a little breathless, as he sucked a largish bite off the spoon.
Suddenly suspicious of her motives, he swallowed too quickly, nearly choking as the cold of it attacked his nerve endings, seemingly all at once.
“Crichton?” Pip’s tone was worried and the anticipatory bounce stopped as she reached to take the bowl away from him. “Are you… poisoned?”
He looked into black, black eyes, opened wide with surprise and concern, and he couldn’t resist playing with her a little. “GAH!” he gasped, clutching his head with one hand and staggering to the side for effect, all the while keeping the “ice cream” out of her hands. Playing with Chiana’s head didn’t call for giving up his treat, after all.
“Crichton!” she squeaked, and then, “RYGEL!” The panic in her voice did him in.
“Pip! I’m okay.” He straightened and took a step toward her. “It’s okay. I’m not poisoned.”
Her eyes narrowed as she glared at him, arms akimbo, and he laughed, though he knew it was a little dangerous to do so just then. Chiana launched herself at him, pounding him good a couple of times before he was able to catch her and pull her in, holding her tight against his chest with one arm as Rygel floated in to the whir of his thronesled’s engine.
The Hynerian raised one shaggy brow and raked his gaze over them, stopping at the dish in Crichton’s hand, miraculously saved from the violence of Chiana’s attack. “I see you received your eye-cez kreem. Good.” With that pronouncement, he whirled away, leaving them standing at the edge of the market crowd.
None of them noticed the Scarran in the shadows of an alley, his eyes fixed on John Crichton….