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Unfinished Business
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2010
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Character/Pairing: Sarah/Derek
Rating: R for sexual references.
Spoilers: To 2x19 This Is The Day Part II.
Summary: It occurs to him that Sarah will never tell him about
all the good that could come from what happened to Riley.
Sometimes her persistent angst about their rising body count gets
on his nerves, but not tonight.
Disclaimer: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
Feedback: deslea at deslea dot com.
More fic: http://fiction.deslea.com
Author's Note: This fic has been sitting half-written for close
to a year. Then I stumbled across two old meta posts - href='http://roxybisquaint.livejournal.com/54214.html'>one by
roxybisquaint about Sarah the warrior versus Sarah the waitress,
and another about Derek by beccatoria. And I realised that they
were the missing pieces. So this one's for them.
When he gets back, the house is empty.
He's too relieved to care much where everyone is. His soldier's
senses note and archive the fact that Sarah and Cameron are
arguing in the garage, but there is little thought in between.
John is nowhere to be seen, but if they aren't worried, he
guesses he isn't either.
He feels dirty, and not in the good way, not like good hard
work or like honest sweaty sex. More like morning breath and
grease. He's never felt that way after Jesse and he doesn't know
why.
It started when she said something good could come of what
happened to Riley. At least, he thinks that's when it started.
Maybe that's just when the combined forces of a thousand things
broke through his love-crazy, sex-addled mind. All he knows is, a
dark voice rose up: "That's not your Jesse." And he ignored it,
he stayed and made love to her like she was his bright beautiful
Jesse and not this dark unknowable thing she'd become, but now he
feels all wrong.
He acknowledges the hypocrisy. Of course he does. Not so long
ago, he killed his best friend in an abortive bid to save the
world. But he learned firsthand that no good can come of such
things. It is a lesson written on his heart in Billy Wisher's
blood. It is his guiding light now, crying out when he brushes
too close to the darkness. He doesn't always listen to it, but he
always hears.
And he hears it when he's with her.
He steps in the shower and flicks the water on full.
It doesn't help.
When he finally comes out of the bathroom, he slips into the
tiny nursery that passes for his room. Changes his clothes,
draping his old shirt over the cot. Wishes for the first time
that he had a bed so he could rest. Had he really been so crazed
with Jesse that he couldn't be bothered to buy himself a bed?
Hell, he didn't even have to do that - he could have moved one of
the sofas up here. What the hell is wrong with him?
He turns on his heel and heads downstairs. Goes to the darkened
kitchen and gets himself a beer. Considers grabbing a Tylenol
while he's at it, but figures the two might not mix.
"Get me one, too," Sarah's voice drifts in tonelessly.
"Please."
He does it. Gets her a beer and follows the sound of her voice
out onto the verandah.
She stands there in the dark at the top of the steps, hugging
herself in the moonlight. Takes the beer from him wordlessly. He
can't see her face, but he hears little hitching breaths in the
dark.
"You okay?" he says.
She doesn't even try to fake it. He likes this Sarah, honest in
the dark. This is Sarah the waitress rather than Sarah the
warrior. He doesn't see her much.
"No, I'm really not. That poor dumb kid - Jesus, Derek,
*everyone* is going to die very very soon. Why the hell does it
even bother me so much? She probably got off easy."
"Because she was a nice kid? Because she died hard and it
wasn't fair? You're allowed to be human, Sarah."
It occurs to him that Sarah will never tell him about all the
good that could come from what happened to Riley. Sometimes her
persistent angst about their rising body count gets on his
nerves, but not tonight.
She shrugs. "I guess. I just wish I hadn't had to be so mean to
her, you know? She was just a silly messed-up girl. She was sweet
and dumb and I'm so *sick* of having to be mean to people to keep
them alive. And I can't even seem to manage that."
He moves closer to her. Standing with his shoulders hunched and
his hands in his pockets, just barely touching her. "Don't. I
liked her too."
She lets her weight shift against his. Just a little. "She
reminded me of me. Before. You know. All this."
Yes, he thinks. His face contorts a little in the dark. That's
why this is messing with both their heads almost as much as
John's.
"Me too," he admits. Looks at her sidelong. He can see the
skyline through the trees behind her. The city lights cast a dim
palette of yellows and reds and blues across her hair.
She looks away, a little awkward, but she doesn't break away or
apologise or try to cover her damp cheeks. They've seen each
other so many times, naked and wounded, and it isn't in either of
them to pretend at being fine. They'll push each other around and
away, they'll snap and spit and snipe at each other like a pair
of highly-strung cats, but they don't pretend.
He thinks that he and Jesse pretend a lot.
"Hey," he says. "Sarah."
She turns her face to look at him, holding his gaze as a sigh
ripples through her shoulders. The lines of her jaw are soft and
unguarded; her eyes are pensive. It's a look he's never seen on
her face before and it takes him a moment to place it. Then he
realises that she is simply sad.
He's mildly surprised that she lets him see it, but then, she
lets him in at the oddest moments. Will she let him so much as
help her walk with a gunshot wound inflicted by an agent of the
forthcoming apocalyse? Hell no. But she'll open up sitting in a
cafe outside City Hall casually plotting to blow the thing up.
And she'll let him see her sadness in the dark on some
middle-class Van Nuys woman's patio as she waxes philosophical
about how shitty it is to have to be mean.
She shakes her head a little. Looks away from him again, out
over the night sky. "I'm all right, Derek. I just feel like
*someone* should grieve for her. Her foster parents are never
going to know what happened to her. John had foster parents like
that - perfectly nice people who did their best for him. They
don't know what happened to him, either." The ones that lived to
wonder, anyway.
"Yeah."
"She liked you too," she says presently, a little smile forming
curves at the corners of her mouth. "I could tell."
"Yeah?" He is oddly gratified.
"The school counsellor didn't think so," she adds grimly. "She
hinted that it wasn't a good idea to have a single man in the
house with a troubled girl around."
That hits him like a punch in the gut. "You don't think-"
"No. She was just fishing. Something about her left a bad taste
in my mouth. I wanted to scratch her eyes out."
He's been on the receiving end of Sarah's wrath and she fought
like a man. He wouldn't have picked her for the catfight type.
"Well, thank you for wanting to defend my honour."
"It wasn't just that, but you're welcome anyway."
They fall silent again for a while. He's suddenly aware of her
closeness, the way they're side by side and touching from
shoulder to thigh, and he wonders if he should pull away. He
doesn't. Doesn't want to make her aware of the closeness, because
then whatever is holding her here like this, whatever makes her
jaw soften and her eyes pensive and her voice low and thoughtful
and unguarded, it might disappear, and he doesn't want this Sarah
to leave.
"I'm glad you're here, Reese."
The name catches on a little tripwire in his mind. Not enough
to make him pull away, but enough for him to stiffen. It stings
him, when she does it, and he's always been a little reluctant to
analyse exactly why. He isn't stupid; he knows it's Kyle and
maybe some of it - he doesn't know how much - is Sarah herself
too. But it doesn't lend itself to a neat formula and life's
complicated enough.
She feels it. Turns to face him again. "You've never understood
about that name. It doesn't always mean what you think it means."
"Why don't you tell me, then?"
She doesn't answer at first, but then, her gaze sliding away
from him, she says softly, "It does mean Kyle - sometimes. I feel
him close to me when death is close, too." She looks at him
again. Eyes gleaming and fixed on his. "I don't know if he's
waiting for me or just trying to stop me, for John, but that's
when I feel him."
He nods. He gets that.
"Other times, it's you," she says simply. She's still looking
up at him, and her brow puckers a little and then her gaze falls
on his mouth with sudden, unmistakable wonder. Making a decision,
and surprising herself by making it.
The moment is like a microcosm. A universe of its own. A
universe where he can already feel her thumb on his lips. A
universe where he's already inside her.
Oh, shit, one part of him thinks. The other part is already
pounding with sudden, leaping, crazy desire.
She leans in, so slightly that he could ignore it if he wanted
to.
He doesn't want to.
He leans in and takes her face in his palm. She's never been
willing or able to let him in this far before and he can't step
back and let it pass. He suddenly realises that he's been waiting
a year for her to do it.
*Jesse,* one part of him whispers. The part that's sliding his
hand into her hair and hooking his arm around her waist, still
holding his beer, whispers back. *Not my Jesse.*
"God, woman," he murmurs against her, "why now?"
Her hand is on his neck and her beer is cold against his throat
and she says softly, "Analyse it, or make love to me, Derek. You
can't have both because I don't know why. So take your pick."
That phrase, make love, surprises him. But then, she did love
Kyle and Charley, dyed-in-the-wool romantics both. Maybe under
the hard edges she's still got a soft side after all. He doesn't
say so because he loves the feel of her like this, and he likes
his jaw intact as well.
"Sarah," he says, tilting her chin so that she looks at him,
eyes impossibly wide and shining in the moonlight. The more he
looks at those eyes, the less he cares why.
"Call it unfinished business." Pulling back a little, she
shakes her hair off her face, looking at him resolutely in the
moonlight. He thinks that the answer is really just that she's
decided impetuously that it's time, and for Sarah, that is reason
enough. She finds his arm, the one that's round her waist, and
grips him, hard. "Shut up and *touch* me."
Oh, Jesus, this Sarah gets under his skin, talking about making
love in one breath and giving orders in the next. He doesn't want
to fuck her, doesn't even want to make love to her. He wants to
possess her. It's a primal urge, blurring love and ownership and
she'd probably rip his balls off if she knew, but he's a man,
dammit, and he doesn't just want to take her, he wants to *have*
her.
He realises that the word "love" has slipped much too easily
into his vocabulary, and that he's in more trouble than he knew.
"Oh, *hell*," he groans, and he leans in again, and this time
his lips find hers, parting them in a single movement. She balls
up his jacket in her fist and uses it to pull herself closer,
breathing him in with a shiver. Warmth and softness opens up
beneath him, and he can taste beer and need and he can taste her
under them both. He presses her hard against him, feels her arch
her spine against his beer bottle in the small of her back. He is
conscious of it, and of hers against his chest, and wants them
gone, wants hands free to touch and to hold.
He pulls back, just a fraction, gazing down between them as he
takes her beer from her. Nudges her backwards. She leads him
until they're beside the wicker couch. He leans past her to set
the bottles on the ledge.
He's on the couch before their first kiss is done. By the
second, she's struggling with too-tight jeans. By the third,
she's straddling him, and his hand is wedged between fabric and
*her*. It's difficult and they could be seen and Cameron can
probably hear them and it's hotter than hell.
"Reese," she chokes out as he threads insistent fingers through
her hair, and her eyes are wide and she knows who she's talking
to, and he feels a wound inside him close.
When it ends, when they're dressed and they're drinking
companionably side by side, he asks her, "Sarah, are we starting
something here?"
"I don't know," she says idly into her beer. There's warmth in
her voice. He thinks that's a good sign.
He nods. "There's something I need to tell you."
"Yes?"
There's no easy way to say it, so he says it straight. "There's
someone else."
There is a wry little smile on her face. "I wondered. You don't
sleep here much. What have you told her?"
"Nothing," he says, quite truthfully. He doesn't mention that
she knows far too much from her own sources (and it suddenly
occurs to him that he has no idea what those sources are). "But
it's gone all wrong. I don't feel like I know her anymore, if I
ever did."
She frowns. Not commenting. Waiting for him to say whatever
he's going to say.
Abruptly, he comes to a decision. "I'll end it," he says. "I
want to be here."
She smiles faintly in the dark. "I'm never going to be your
best bet, Derek. I'm messy and I'm hard to live with."
"You know who I am," he counters.
"Yeah, I do." She leans over and gives him a softly chaste kiss
on the lips. Warm lips melding with stubble in the dark.
Out the corner of his eye, he sees light winding up the
driveway. John. They break apart and put a little distance
between them as the van pulls up at the bottom of the stairs. By
the time John gets up onto the patio, he and Sarah are drinking
their beers in silence.
The kid looks like he's been to hell and back.
"I need to talk to you," he says, and Derek realises he's
talking to him.
Sarah speaks, getting to her feet. "Not so fast. I want to talk
to you, too. About Tin Miss in there."
"Derek first. We'll be back soon." He doesn't wait for a reply,
but returns to the van and switches on the engine to idle.
They watch him leave, and he and Sarah glance sidelong at each
other.
"I'll end it," he says again.
She nods.
He leaves her to meet John in the dark.
END