RPF: Not a mistake, but a goodbye
Title: Not a mistake, but a goodbye
Characters: Wentworth Miller III, Sarah Wayne Callies
Word Count: Really short, again. Written at work, again. With absolutely no remorse, again.
Rating: PG
Author's Note: This picks up where Slow Burn left off, this time in Sarah's POV. Also, I'm ahead in the time zone -- so ahead that I'm early by a DAY, LOL, but I know she won't mind -- Happy birthday, chapter_stork!
She is not resisting as much as a married woman should. She can feel the buttons of his shirt flat against her palm; such is the lightness she could sense from him that the tiniest pressure from her, she knows, would be enough to set him firmly and properly back -- back to the right side of the line that he has chosen now, of all days, to cross. Later, she will think of many reasons to appease her guilt: she was enraged, she was being gentle, she was tired and not thinking straight. Enraged that she was caught off-guard, worried about the door being unlocked, distracted by the sharp edge of the table against her hip -- yet all the while aware, as though on auto-pilot, that when this small sudden episode is over she should be kind, maybe even flippant, treat it as the inconsequential moment of weakness that should never be mentioned again. But that is much later, at half past midnight with a glass of wine; right now, after close to twelve hours on the set and a week of frayed nerves for reasons far too many and far too real for the space in which they both now breathe, it is all too much to process, and so her hand does not rise as fast as it should, and her rebuke, so slow in coming, loses much of its sting between thought and speech.
So she lets him kiss her, and as she rides out the storm in her mind a thought finally rises fast and true. After four years of being a good girl, what else could she be to him but a fortress that would not yield? To him, the danger for weakness has long since passed; now there is only room for impulse.
The kiss is not a mistake but a goodbye.
When it is over he steps back so quickly that her hand, suddenly bereft of its anchor, falls heavily between them, an axe cleaving through air. Outside, the world is a mess of sound, a blend of chatter and traffic and laughter, and slowly the trail of static deserts her body, leaving it heavy as though sodden with rain. She looks at him and for the life of her cannot tell what he's thinking, only that he is looking back at her with neither disappointment nor expectation. A disconcerting, almost frightening, blankness.
So, I'll see you, he says. Or she thinks he says. Whatever else follows is brief and noncommittal, and soon he is stepping outside, the commotion beyond rising and falling rapidly as he crosses the threshold. Then the door is closing like so many times before, yet she is falling back, catching her breath, fighting back tears, grasping, stalling, spinning on that one single thing that she could never ask.
Characters: Wentworth Miller III, Sarah Wayne Callies
Word Count: Really short, again. Written at work, again. With absolutely no remorse, again.
Rating: PG
Author's Note: This picks up where Slow Burn left off, this time in Sarah's POV. Also, I'm ahead in the time zone -- so ahead that I'm early by a DAY, LOL, but I know she won't mind -- Happy birthday, chapter_stork!
She is not resisting as much as a married woman should. She can feel the buttons of his shirt flat against her palm; such is the lightness she could sense from him that the tiniest pressure from her, she knows, would be enough to set him firmly and properly back -- back to the right side of the line that he has chosen now, of all days, to cross. Later, she will think of many reasons to appease her guilt: she was enraged, she was being gentle, she was tired and not thinking straight. Enraged that she was caught off-guard, worried about the door being unlocked, distracted by the sharp edge of the table against her hip -- yet all the while aware, as though on auto-pilot, that when this small sudden episode is over she should be kind, maybe even flippant, treat it as the inconsequential moment of weakness that should never be mentioned again. But that is much later, at half past midnight with a glass of wine; right now, after close to twelve hours on the set and a week of frayed nerves for reasons far too many and far too real for the space in which they both now breathe, it is all too much to process, and so her hand does not rise as fast as it should, and her rebuke, so slow in coming, loses much of its sting between thought and speech.
So she lets him kiss her, and as she rides out the storm in her mind a thought finally rises fast and true. After four years of being a good girl, what else could she be to him but a fortress that would not yield? To him, the danger for weakness has long since passed; now there is only room for impulse.
The kiss is not a mistake but a goodbye.
When it is over he steps back so quickly that her hand, suddenly bereft of its anchor, falls heavily between them, an axe cleaving through air. Outside, the world is a mess of sound, a blend of chatter and traffic and laughter, and slowly the trail of static deserts her body, leaving it heavy as though sodden with rain. She looks at him and for the life of her cannot tell what he's thinking, only that he is looking back at her with neither disappointment nor expectation. A disconcerting, almost frightening, blankness.
So, I'll see you, he says. Or she thinks he says. Whatever else follows is brief and noncommittal, and soon he is stepping outside, the commotion beyond rising and falling rapidly as he crosses the threshold. Then the door is closing like so many times before, yet she is falling back, catching her breath, fighting back tears, grasping, stalling, spinning on that one single thing that she could never ask.