This was written back right after Cloak... I mean, come on, who couldn't resist a little Tiva fic after that one? Just a little drabble I finally decided to put out there.
Reviews are welcomed and loved indiscriminately. :)
Weakness is being forced to give in to whatever you devoted yourself to deny. Insanity is forgetting why you never embraced it in the first place. And subsequently doing so.
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A split second was all it took to react -- speeding back toward the door on the side of the hallway and ducking inside. It took that simple twist of the plan to make her run head-on and trap herself in something she hadn't wanted to think of. Hadn't wanted to acknowledge.
Because it only took a moment for her to unconsciously lean closer and drop her treacherous eyes down to his slightly parted lips.
She knew he saw her blatant gaze as the footsteps sounded just outside. She didn't care. The closet seemed to be utterly filled with his presence and scent, her senses made edgy and sensitive to a fault by the adrenaline rushing through her. At least he'd stopped the ragged breaths since they'd settled in the room... but instead of feeling warm blows flying across her skin, she now had the chance to feel everything else... the trepidation... the sensation of his body against hers. It was a wildfire that she, at one point, would have vehemently doused with bitter reality... but not this time. This time she let herself slip - just this once, she assured herself - to feel what it was like to touch forbidden fruit. She was fully aware of her actions, the consequences...
It wasn't until later that she admitted that very acceptance was what made her all the more insane.
What was she thinking? She hadn't been.
She'd been feeling.
At least that occurrence seemed to be shared. A pang, unbidden, ripped through her.
The ranting in the elevator later had caught her off-balance. Everything around was awkwardly askew, patience running thin, tensions running sky-high and sending logic for a loop. The snap of her own steel should never have happened -- and especially not with him. He was right, of course: instinct had violently taken over. She knew very well that once a punch was thrown, the battle lasted until the status quo shifted... he'd had no choice but to back her up.
And then the shot...
It had been the second time in the day that her brain had left her heart in charge. The second time she'd let it. The third time was a failure waiting to happen on that very trip downstairs. She'd defended herself... and she may as well have confessed she'd gone on to defend him and no one else. It was then that she knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that it was impossible to hold it in any longer; she'd meant it when she said she wanted to stop pretending too. She'd understood what he was trying to say.
Hadn't she?
What if she hadn't?
His final words as he left the elevator only fed her nagging suspicions, urging them to grow and spread like cancerous doubt. Emotion had leaked out of her far too many times that day. She cursed the weakness that had made it slip. They were both off-key.
You probably worsened it by bringing that up.
His anger over secrets had fueled her. The frenzied green of his enraged eyes only amplified the desperation of her own. Still, they hid something in their midst; something that had already begun to spill out and pushed at the end of its confines.
Something dangerous.
But what else was expected from a pair of stress-taut partners? Even if he wasn't talking about... She bit her lip suddenly at her implication, insides trembling at having said too much; at not having said enough as the elevator doors resolutely closed. Regardless of their differences, she was still shaken to her core. They were both fighting battles against the onslaught of confusion to preserve their last bits of sanity. She knew it was a war that would only leave one left standing.
She also knew that they were losing it.