Breakable by mosylu

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There wasn't a thing left in camp to fix.

John stood in the shadow of the Transrover, tool belt in hand, looking around in disbelief. For once, every machine they had was running as sweet as honey, without a single cough or catch. There wasn't a loose bolt or a sticky hinge to be found. Absolutely nothing. What were the odds?

Actually, considering he'd been going over everything mechanical with a fine-toothed comb for the past three months, the odds were pretty damn good.

"Hey. Man. You okay?"

He looked around to see Alonzo "Yeah," he said automatically. "Sure. Why?"

"Nothing, you’ve just been standing there for a solid minute."

Had he? "I’m okay, I’m just--You want to play cards?"

Alonzo blinked. "What?"

"You want to play cards?" he repeated.

"It’s after sunset. We got a long day tomorrow--"

"They’re all long days. Come on. Poker, blackjack, old maid. Whatever."

From the look on the pilot’s face, ‘Lonz thought he was losing it pretty quick. But the other man shrugged and said, "Okay. Okay, fine. Poker. One game."

"I’ll get the deck," he said, and started for his tent. Just inside the flap, he paused and dragged his hands over his face, letting out his breath with a whoosh.

‘Lonz was right.

The stronger Devon got, the more unbalanced he got. It didn’t make sense. Somehow, he’d been better able to deal when she was wobbly on her pins than now, when her strength had returned. It was just too damn good to be true. He kept thinking he’d wake up and she’d be in the cold-sleep tube again . . . or worse. Everything and everyone told him that she was back, but he had lost too many people in his life to trust in miracles.

He’d just found the deck when a voice from outside stopped him cold. "Danziger?"

Well, hell. He dragged open the tent flap and glared down at Devon. "What."

She didn’t even blanch. "Can I come in?"

"What do you want?"

"To come in. I need to talk to you."

"Just say it here."

"I could do that. But you probably wouldn’t want me to." She looked over her shoulder at the rest of the crew, some of whom were already turning around, their profiles lit orange by the flickering fire.

He considered shutting the tent flap in her face--not as much fun as slamming a door, but he had to work with what he had here. Then again, she was perfectly capable of standing outside and yelling whatever it was she wanted to say at the top of her lungs.

"Well?" she said.

He rolled his eyes and stepped back to allow her in. Around the fire circle, eyebrows shot up and heads bent together. The Fight Scale was probably getting a whole new workout. He glared at them and yanked the flap shut before turning to Devon. "Well?" he echoed.

"First of all, I wanted to let you know that True’s in my tent. She and Uly are playing VR games."

"Is that it? Because she told me where she was going." He knew he was being a horse’s ass, but he wanted her out. He couldn’t deal with her right now, not standing right in front of him with her chin tipped up and her eyes challenging.

"No, that’s not it." She paused then, frowning at nothing as if she were searching for words.

When she didn’t go on, he crossed his arms over his chest. "Adair, what’s this all about?"

She spread her hands. "I don’t know. The Hokey Pokey? You tell me."

He squinted at her for a baffled moment. "I’m getting Julia. You’re delirious."

She darted between him and the flap. "Oh, no, you’re not. See, that’s just one thing that needs to stop." She poked him in the chest, and he fell back a step. "I know now--in gruesome detail--just how sick I was. But I’m not that bad anymore, and I’m not going to be, so you just stop."

"Fine," he barked. "Go ahead, drive yourself into the ground for all I care. Just don’t expect me to pick up your slack again."

It was a low blow--he knew that before he said it, and the hurt in her eyes confirmed it. She turned away, hugging her elbows. For a moment he thought he’d done it, that she was going to leave him alone now, and the thought terrified him.

He’d actually opened his mouth to apologize when her spine straightened and she turned around again. "We both know I didn’t deserve that," she said coolly. "You’re just trying to drive me away, and it’s not going to happen."

"Well, look who’s the goddamn expert on me now," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "I wouldn’t presume to fathom the way your mind works." She stepped closer, and her voice became gentle. "I know you’ve lost people in your life, John."

He missed the sarcasm desperately. "What do you know?"

"I know about your dad. And your mom. And Elle."

It felt like someone had just run the Transrover into his chest. When he got his breath back, he snarled, "Christ on a fucking crutch! Isn’t anything private around this place?"

Her voice rose, overlapping his words. "I asked Yale about Elle a long time ago. And Uly told me about your parents today. Don’t be angry with them."

He tried to glare at her and found he couldn’t even look her in the face. He turned to fiddle with the lumalight hanging from the center pole, twisting it all the way up to full, hoping to banish the too-intimate shadows in the tent. He felt like a bug on a tabletop, exposed and vulnerable. "Fine. So you know my sob story. What do you want to do now, give me a hug?"

Her words sounded as if they came through gritted teeth. "Right now, I want to slap you silly."

Thank God.

"My point is, I know that you’ve lost people, and that in all those cases, it’s been sudden and--and brutal, and for whatever reason, you had to keep going. And what happened to me is so similar that if you’re having problems--"

The laugh nearly cracked his teeth. "If, she says. If it’s bothering me. Jesus."

"--I’m not surprised, but there’s one thing I want to point out, John. One thing." She grabbed his shoulder and yanked. More out of surprise than anything else, he turned to find her bare inches away. She curled one hand in the front of his shirt, glaring up at him. "I’m here."

He waited, sure there was more.

"I’m here," she repeated. "Maybe they’re not, but I am. I’m alive."

"Think I don’t know that?"

"I wonder. I really do." She let go of his shirt. "The Fight Scale’s been on hiatus for three months, did you know that?"

"Yeah, so what? I was gonna go back and argue with a cold-sleep tube, is that it? Or maybe we were supposed get into it while you were flat on your back."

"I’ve been on my feet for awhile, and you’re still treating me like I’m going to break or something. I didn’t break, and I won’t. John, you need to--"

"I held you when you died."

She stopped talking.

He paced around the tent a couple of times. He had to move. He couldn’t stand there looking at her, just couldn’t. "Sounds like something out of a bad movie, doesn’t it?" he asked rhetorically. "Nothing like a movie, I can tell you that. Do you know what it feels like when a person dies?" He held up a hand. "I know you know what it feels like from the inside, but from the outside, have you ever felt that?"

Silently, she shook her head.

"There’s this moment when it just changes and you know that everything that made this person a person is gone and all you’ve got now is a corpse." He realized belatedly that she might not appreciate hearing this about herself and looked around. "So. Yeah. Maybe I am having a little trouble with it."

"I never thought of it that way," she said.

"I know." He rubbed one hand over his face. "You were gone for thirty hours," he said into his palm. "I was--we started to think you were gone for good."

"You don’t get rid of me that easily," she said.

As if in a dream, he saw her reach down for his free hand. She took in her own--warm. Her hands were warm. They hadn’t been warm when--and pulled it up between them. He tried to pull away. "Devon, what--"

Her grip tightened. "You need to touch me again, John." She settled his hand against the side of her neck, gently shackling his wrist with her own hand to make sure he wouldn’t pull away.

He would’ve told her not to bother, but he couldn’t speak. Deep inside, something that had been broken for a long time was finally slipping his hold and falling into pieces. He gritted his teeth, trying to keep it together. Keep himself together. He had to concentrate on breathing or he might forget how.

His pinky rested along the arch of her collarbone, and his thumb on the hinge of her jaw. Under his index, middle, and ring fingers, he could feel the strong, sure beat of her heart.

He’d held the tips of two fingers to her neck back there, back in the ship, feeling it slow, stutter, stop like a long-distance runner giving up mid-race--

But here it was again.

His other hand shook as he reached up to brush her hair back out of her eyes. She turned her face into the palm of his hand, letting it rest there a moment. That one tiny movement tipped him off--She needs this too.

Just like that, he stopped fighting, let go, let himself gather her closer, wrapping her in both arms. She was so thin, and for half a second he worried that his grip was too tight. But then her arms came around him, just as tight, holding on so hard that his ribs hurt.

You push, I push back. When you’re a jerk, I’m not afraid to be a bitch back. You yell, I yell twice as loud. No matter what, you’re never going to break me.

His body shuddered, and he buried his face in her hair. She kissed his throat and stroked his back, for all the world as if he were the one that needed fixing.

They stood holding onto each other, rocking a little. She was real. She was strong and alive and there in his arms, and for this moment, she wasn’t just part of reality, she was all of it for him.

In the rare moments when he’d considered the possibility of falling in love again, it had been with someone a lot like Elle--earthy, bawdy, practical. Instead, the universe had handed him Devon Adair. Somebody upstairs had a really screwed-up sense of humor.

He hadn’t meant this to happen. He’d resisted it like hell, but the woman was a force of nature. Hell, forces of nature could learn a little something from her. She couldn’t be resisted, she couldn’t be ignored, and she could not be beaten.

Afterwards, he’d never be able to decide who turned their head so that their lips touched. For the first several seconds, it was chaste and oddly sweet, then her mouth opened hungrily under his. He slid one hand into her hair, cradling the base of her skull, and kissed her as if he could draw her into himself, as if it could satisfy the deep, raw hunger he’d been carrying around. But it couldn’t; he knew it couldn’t.

He didn’t just want sex, he wanted her. And she moved against him, soft and female, saying, "Please, John, please," into his mouth.

There were a hundred good reasons to stop this right here and now. Hell, a million.

Still kissing her, he reached down to fumble at the hem of her shirt.

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