fic: Eight Minutes 1/10
READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTE: Cancer and its treatments are written fictitiously in this story. Although I was a biology major for the past two years, and although the technicalities of cancer can be easy to read on and understand, I want to make it clear that I know absolutely nothing on what it is really like to be a victim of the disease. I do not wish to offend anyone if my writing understates it.
Also, as mentioned, this is a complete work of fiction. I made it up in my spare time to fill in the blanks of my lonesome mind. Nothing is based on reality: the scenes are imagined and the emotion simulated. Needless to say, I own none of the characters, just the ideas driving them.
Please do review as much as you can, I will greatly appreciate it. You can also talk to me for whatever reason. I promise I will respond.
Updates should be weekly, bi-weekly at most.
Sincerest apologies to the readers of Hide and Seek and Closest I Get. They will be updated by June, I swear.
Prologue
"Do you know what they say will happen if the sun dies?" she asked me once, her lithe frame spread over the pale green quilt of her bed. I looked up from the sentence I was writing - She's got a cat that would put Garfield to shame - to see her golden hair haloed around her head, her beautifully clear blue eyes smiling at me gently. I closed my notebook slowly, dropping it onto the floor.
"When," I corrected, in lieu of an actual response. She rolled her eyes, her lips quirking into a faint smile, the barest creases of her dimples appearing on her cheeks.
"Sorry, professor," she grinned cutely as she sat up, moving closer to where I was seated on the opposite edge of the mattress. "Do you know what they say will happen when the sun dies?"
I shrugged, already smiling back like an idiot, rolling my pen between my index and middle fingers. For a moment, she followed the motion with her eyes, like every little thing I did was beyond fascinating, and consequently deserved a moment of uninterrupted attention.
When I cleared my throat in a subtle way to tell her to get on with it, she grinned again and scooted even closer, until she was sitting in an identical Indian position beside me. "Well," she began, plucking the pen out of my hand and imitating the trick to perfection, "we won't actually know the sun died, for approximately eight minutes."
"Oh, really?" I asked, raising an eyebrow in feigned interest. She nodded earnestly, and I smirked. "I'm assuming you know why, Miss Smarty-Pants Know-It-All."
Her cheeks flushed slightly as she dropped her gaze and nodded. It was her way of telling me that she appreciated my comment. While many others would have found the terms offensive, I'd learned early on that reminding her of her own intelligence only made her feel respected.
"Tell me." I murmured, suddenly feeling more interested than I'd originally been. She gently slid my pen back into my hand, grazing her fingers back and forth over the hollow between my thumb and forefinger. I could feel the motion reverberating throughout my entire body, like her fingers were stroking a fire in the core of my being. When she lifted her gaze back to meet mine, I remembering thinking to myself, I can almost see through her eyes, they're so blue.
"We wouldn't know the sun died for eight minutes," she was whispering now, her warm breath brushing against my lips, "because that's how long it takes for the sunlight to reach us."
I made a small sound deep in my throat - in acknowledgement or for ambiguous reasons, I couldn't tell. She smiled again, soft and happy, and the sight made me feel like I had light gushing out of my heart and pooling in my body. And all the while, she just looked at me, like there wasn't anything else in the world that she ever wanted to look at again.
She leaned forward slowly, closing the distance between us with aching slowness. I felt myself inching towards her, the light inside turning brighter and brighter, until it was almost too bright, too warm, too much to take-
Brittany kissed me for the first time that day, slow and calm. The way she kissed me - her soft lips sliding smoothly against mine, her warm breath filling my mouth, her long fingers splayed out across the expanse of my cheek - made me feel, for the first time, like I had all the time in the world to spare. I felt unhurried and unpressured, as though her mouth on mine was enough to drain away the rest of the world away, taking along with it the unpleasant thoughts of my cancer and the bitter awareness of my prognosis.
Her eyes were indescribably tender when she pulled away, her breathing still even and steady. She just looked at me, looking without searching, looking without questioning; looking and seeing, completely. It was terrifying, somehow, to have her gaze staring at me so openly and unabashedly. But more than the terror was the exhilaration: the elation of being seen and felt and recognized.
She looked for a moment longer, before something shifted in her eyes, breaking the spell. Her eyebrows creased ever so slightly, and she took a deep breath. "Santana," she began delicately, running her fingers down the side of my face.
"Yes?"
She swallowed audibly, and visibly, and gazed at me seriously for a moment. Suddenly I felt afraid, worried about what it was she was going to say - I can't ever kiss you again, That was wrong, I'm not gay, You taste funny. Then her smile returned slowly and she continued, "Did you know that kissing requires a total of 34 facial muscles?"
The air rushed out of my body in a huff, and I lifted my right hand to smack her tamely on her shoulder. She chuckled and rolled her shoulder, and I released a relieved laugh, the fire in my blood reduced to a peaceful smolder, keeping me lit and warm inside without burning me. "Nerd." I declared. "You're such an unbelievable, insufferable little nerd."
She laughed then, the sound clear and powerful, flooding into my ears and soaring into my heart.
Neither of us ever said anything more about the sun dying, but it's only now when I look back that I completely understand what she meant. When the sun dies, the sunlight lingers on for eight minutes - and if people had as much sense as they claim to have, they've got to do their best to make those eight minutes extend as long as they can.
They've got to extend those eight minutes, somehow, into forever.