Star Crossed by Phaedrus2401

"From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife."


Halley lay across him, her face on his chest, wrapped in his warmth, her whole world shrunken to just the two of them. She held his dogtags in her hand. The metal was warm, heated by them and their exertion. She wiggled up closer to his face and kissed him, hard and deep.
Afterwards she sighed and lay against him again, feeling his hands caress her, taking in his masculine scent. "So..." she said, reaching up to touch his jaw, "Do you still..." She didn't say "love me" - she wasn't sure she could.
John looked down at her, his brow furrowing as he spoke. "Of course," he said, running his fingers through her hair, "Why would you think otherwise?"
"Well," Halley said mockingly, "I've noticed you looking at some of those marine girls a bit much lately. Am I not pretty enough for you?"
John grinned, an expression that looked slightly out of place on his scarred features. "Oh, stop fishing for compliments, monkey-face; you do alright." Then: "Ow! Hey! Careful, I've only got two of those!"
"You'll have one if you keep being such a wise-ass," she said with a grin. They laughed, quietly, always quiet.
Halley traced his scars with her finger, feeling them. She wasn't the type of girl to get off on scars - she wasn't any type of girl - but she felt they gave him an air of something...
Vulnerability, that's it. He's not just a big, mean, green fighting macine. He's human.
"Tau Ceti, huh?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said calmly, but with a slight overtone of disgust. "Tau Ceti. They figure the asteroid mines might still be salvageable. Thinking to use them for a counter attack."
"Stupid. They'll be crawling with Covenant, we'll have to take them one by one."
"I know."
They lay side by side, talking of war and politics, of fights, of jokes, but never of each other and their feelings. They couldn't. If one were to die before they met again, they'd shrug their shoulders, and maybe shed a single tear, but they couldn't afford to be broken - humanity needed them. They needed humanity.
Halley thought of this last as they lay together, slowly falling toward sleep. We're just a couple of star-cross'd lovers, aren't we?, she thought sleepily. Then more awake: No. We're one up on Romeo and Juliet.
We've crossed stars.
The thought placated her, but one small niggle remained in her mind. The next day they'd be shipped to different parts of the galaxy, not to see each other again for months, years, maybe never.
She shivered, and moved against him, the lightning crackling again in her thighs.
John grunted, and spoke: "Again?"
"Again."