Title: "Ever After"
Author: Mala
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com
Fandom: "Alias"
Rating/Classification: PG, Vaughn POV, V/S, angst.
Disclaimer: J.J. Abrams, etc.
Summary: Angst is dripping from those furrowed brows again...and possibly for the last time.
You've pictured it a thousand times.
A chance encounter in a bar. Your eyes would meet and lock, startled. You'd both blush, feign a lack of familiarity, as you raised a stein to your lips. You wouldn't taste the Guinness as you choked on it, of course. You wouldn't feel your friends slapping you on the back or hear them asking you who the babe is. You'd just stare...as if the sheer force of your gaze could pull her towards you.
But then she snaps back, sharply, and disappears...as if she's on an invisible bungee cord.
And you remember that your life is not some mushy Rob Reiner movie. More like fast-paced action thriller meets C-Span. And you're not going to run into Sydney Bristow at a bar or a club or accidentally have dinner with her and a mutual friend who's trying to set you up.
No. Your dalliances are reserved for blood drive vans and air vents and dimly lit warehouses. And the set-up...the set-up is decidedly without romantic intentions.
She doesn't wear perfume. No haunting, lingering, traces of her hang in the air. Spies cannot afford to leave behind such signatures. But after she hurries away into the darkness, you're left with the hollow echo of a blue-black bruise on her pale cheekbone or the whisper-rose feel of her fingers pressing into your wrist as she tries to make an urgent case for finding her mother.
These little things are what take the place of the goodnight kiss on a first date you've never had.
Because you don't feign surprise when you see her.
You don't elbow your friends and tell them to "can it".
You don't buy her a drink and pretend...pretend for once you're a normal guy just out on the town and seeing the right girl across a crowded room.
Because you can't. Because there are no chance encounters.
Because there are no chances.
And, because, when you look at her worried, chapped, lower lip and read the distance in her guilt-ridden brown doe eyes, you know she slept with Noah Hicks.
You've pictured it a thousand times.
Fast-paced action thriller meets C-Span meets soap opera.
You wonder if they were startled when they recognized each other. If their eyes met and they forgot how to breathe. If they took that opportunity ...real world and mission be damned... just to be a little close, to feel everything they'd been denying themselves for so long. You wonder and you know.
They did.
Because you can't.
Because there are no chances.
You've pictured it a thousand times.
You picture it a thousand and one as the water claims you...as the fluid fills your lungs and you choke on the exquisite pain of it as you float backwards from the door...blinded by your last vision of her face...
Your eyes meet and you forget to breathe.
Fast-paced action thriller meets C-Span meets soap opera.
Cue the unwitting hero's death scene.
And you drown.
For her.
This...you can do.
--end--
May 18, 2002.
Author: Mala
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com
Fandom: "Alias"
Rating/Classification: PG, Vaughn POV, V/S, angst.
Disclaimer: J.J. Abrams, etc.
Summary: Angst is dripping from those furrowed brows again...and possibly for the last time.
You've pictured it a thousand times.
A chance encounter in a bar. Your eyes would meet and lock, startled. You'd both blush, feign a lack of familiarity, as you raised a stein to your lips. You wouldn't taste the Guinness as you choked on it, of course. You wouldn't feel your friends slapping you on the back or hear them asking you who the babe is. You'd just stare...as if the sheer force of your gaze could pull her towards you.
But then she snaps back, sharply, and disappears...as if she's on an invisible bungee cord.
And you remember that your life is not some mushy Rob Reiner movie. More like fast-paced action thriller meets C-Span. And you're not going to run into Sydney Bristow at a bar or a club or accidentally have dinner with her and a mutual friend who's trying to set you up.
No. Your dalliances are reserved for blood drive vans and air vents and dimly lit warehouses. And the set-up...the set-up is decidedly without romantic intentions.
She doesn't wear perfume. No haunting, lingering, traces of her hang in the air. Spies cannot afford to leave behind such signatures. But after she hurries away into the darkness, you're left with the hollow echo of a blue-black bruise on her pale cheekbone or the whisper-rose feel of her fingers pressing into your wrist as she tries to make an urgent case for finding her mother.
These little things are what take the place of the goodnight kiss on a first date you've never had.
Because you don't feign surprise when you see her.
You don't elbow your friends and tell them to "can it".
You don't buy her a drink and pretend...pretend for once you're a normal guy just out on the town and seeing the right girl across a crowded room.
Because you can't. Because there are no chance encounters.
Because there are no chances.
And, because, when you look at her worried, chapped, lower lip and read the distance in her guilt-ridden brown doe eyes, you know she slept with Noah Hicks.
You've pictured it a thousand times.
Fast-paced action thriller meets C-Span meets soap opera.
You wonder if they were startled when they recognized each other. If their eyes met and they forgot how to breathe. If they took that opportunity ...real world and mission be damned... just to be a little close, to feel everything they'd been denying themselves for so long. You wonder and you know.
They did.
Because you can't.
Because there are no chances.
You've pictured it a thousand times.
You picture it a thousand and one as the water claims you...as the fluid fills your lungs and you choke on the exquisite pain of it as you float backwards from the door...blinded by your last vision of her face...
Your eyes meet and you forget to breathe.
Fast-paced action thriller meets C-Span meets soap opera.
Cue the unwitting hero's death scene.
And you drown.
For her.
This...you can do.
May 18, 2002.