Author's notes:

Sometimes, the story drags. It could be all hawt sex, but that'd lose it's meaning. I love action films, but my favourite ones are ones that have theme and plot, motivation and logic behind all the bullet-ballet and flowering fireballs.

One of my all-time favourite actioners is the second Alien film, Aliens. It has great characters, a decent plot (survive!) and some fantastic one-liners.

It also plays with the concept of motherhood. One of the scenes that never made it off the original script was to have Ripley's own daughter live and die during her time in hypersleep. Thus, her bonding with Newt is not just a whim, but a bilateral surrogacy.

And the epic battle between Ripley and the Alien Queen is also about fighting not just for survival, not just for revenge, but for one's children. And an excuse to blow things up.

As much as I would love to write sex scene after sex scene (or, more accurately, afterglow scenes, aftercare scenes, aftermath scenes, see a trend?) I would rather they have some emotional heft.

And besides, it's fun. :)

(Those of you just joining here, start with Callan and Sian 1)



Sian held Evander close, hand to hand, eye to eye, heart to heart. Her bedsheet was pooled by her folded legs.

"'Vander, listen to me. I know you love me. I love you, too--"

"--Just not that way. I've heard it so much." Evander shifted on the bed, trying to keep his eyes off her body, to keep them on her eyes.

"No, will you please listen to me? That wasn't what I was going to say, okay? I love you, and because of that love, I don't want you hurt. Do you think you can handle Marc?"

"Can you?"


"Not yet. No, not yet. But, there's something about Cal that makes me think I will; that, if I stick with him, I will. We will."

"'We,' as in you and Cal, hun? What ever happened to 'us,' you know, you and me?"

"'Us' is still here, 'Vander." She gave his hands a squeeze, and his eyes jumped there. "Feel it? I do love you. That's why this is so hard. Love won't solve this. And, as much as you hate to hear it, 'us' can't, either. I'm not even sure Cal and I can deal with it."

"Why not let me help? Won't the three of us be better than just the two of you?"

"What can you do?"

"A lot!" He clutched her hands.

"You couldn't even make me cum without his help!" She threw off his hands, gathering the sheet over her chest. A silence froze the room. "You were good for me, 'Vander. Good to me, too. And I know you tried so very hard..."

Evander got up, walked away from the bed. His words floated from the window. "Go ahead, Sian. Say it."

She pulled the sheets over her shoulders and huddled in their warmth, their scents. "...so I faked them. Hun, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I wanted so much for you to feel good about yourself. About us."

He sighed. "I ain't 'hun' no more, Si. Remember?" He let his head fall against the plate glass. "There ain't an 'us' anymore."

"I never said that. I just said that I didn't want you in danger."

"You don't need to lie anymore, Si. You don't want me in the way. That's what you mean. You don't want to save me again. Like at middle school." The base of his fist thumped against the window. "No more lies, okay? If there's one thing I want to walk away with, it's your promise that you stop lying to me."

"I wasn't lying to you, Evander! I was lying to Marc! I was lying for you! Don't you get it?"

He whirl around. "No, after that. If Cal hadn't checked you on it, would you have just let me walk out?"

"What?" She stopped huddling in the bedclothes and whirled to face the window, to face him.

"'One last day,' you said, back at the IHOP. I believed you. I thought last night and today was it. If Cal hadn't said anything, would you have told me it was all a lie? Or let me believe it, and walk out of here 'for my own good?' What would you have really done, Si?"

"I don't... know. I don't know, all right? I feel bad getting you mixed up in this. I mean, I couldn't think of anyone else to help me get my stuff. And I was really glad you were with me to find Cal. And then you picked me up after... you know, when he told me what Marc wanted. And what he wanted. But yesterday at the restaurant, I realized how deep I was in, and how I dragged you along."

"Si, oh God, Si. You didn't drag me. Even if I wasn't part of this at first, you know I'd want in. After all, who's going to keep you safe, hm?"

She couldn't keep her fury burning at his lopsided puppy-smile. "Dammit, 'Vander! You and that grin! Stop it, will you? This is serious!" In spite of it all, she dissolved into giggles, arms outstretched.

From beside the window, he took the three strides to her in a heartbeat. One arm wrapped around her as he received her embrace. The other he slipped between them, but, before Sian could protest, he lifted the bedsheet between them.

"It's better this way, Si. Keeps it simple, right?"

She kissed him on the chin. "It's never simple with you, dammit. It's never been simple, and it never will be." Her legs unfolded from beneath the folds and wrapped around him. "Evander, I..." She stopped, words and movement, her eyes filled with hope, with fear.

He looked deep into her emerald pools. He sipped from them, then looked away and sighed. "I'll go get Cal, hun."

As his hand touched doorknob, he heard a faint, choked sob. "I ain't 'hun' no more, 'Vander."

===

"You know how this makes me feel, Cal?"

"I suspect more than you think I know."

"Huh?" She looked up from the now-translucent sheets clinging to her knees.

"You feel cast aside, worthless. You wonder what is your purpose. You are seized by doubt, wondering why your most precious gift was spruned twice."

"Uh, that's pretty much it. And hurt. Lots of hurt."

Callan shifted, seating himself fully on the bed beside her, not just perched on its edge. His hands encompassed her, and she shuddered at his touch. She wanted to shrug him off, to reject his pity. If it were only pity, that is. It wasn't, and she knew it wasn't. His eyes mirrored hers, not just empathy, but with depths of memories all their own.

"He declined your offer for the simplest of reasons. Love."

"I told him it was never simple. It's never simple with him."

"In this case, it is. He loves you enough to give you what you need, not what you want."

"And you, too?"

"No, my reasons for declining you are different. You're wielding power, but doing so without awareness, and without thought of consequences."

"What consequences? I climax, you drink up. Lather, rinse, repeat, until I'm a drooling mess again."

"As tempting as that sounds, pet, that's not all there is to it. Is that what you want to be in my eyes? A fucktoy?"

She reeled. She snapped her head toward him, but no words could capture what roiled inside. Confusion warred with anger wrestled with shame. Shame won out, and her eyes lost some of their fire.

"Marcarius wanted you as just that - a trull, to be used and cast aside when no longer able to satisfy him. I see much more in you, and need you to see it too. Until you do, Marcarius will still live on in you. I will just be a veneer over him."

She blinked.

"So, power. You have the power of allure. You know that. You've always had it, and you've always let it flow from you. You like to play the part of prey, then to spring the trap on the predator. You want him to think he has the all of you, and find out you've only let him in so far, wholly by your leave. You love that look of surprise in his eyes. Many men, the same look."

She nodded, eyes wide.

"Now you find yourself in a far deeper game, so you are falling back on that power. You are no longer sure of yourself, but you want to know you still have that edge. Young Evander may not know how to verbalize this, but even he is aware of this. I've long learned this lesson. So, the only person left to learn is you."

"You were eavesdropping?"

"Stars, no. That would be antithetical to this whole point. Evander found me in the lobby and said with words simply that you needed me. What he said with his eyes was far more important." He pulled her into his lap with surprising ease. "He may not be able to express it, but he knew the axiom, the one single truth of the human condition."

She looked up at him. Her mouth formed the word "what," but no sound emerged.

"You must love yourself before you can truly love anyone; before you allow anyone to truly love you."