"Angles"

Author: Kate Wilkening

Category: Original Work

Rating: PG (language alert!)



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"Angles"

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Nine seconds.



I timed it.



Subconsciously, of course. Counting out loud during

a kiss like that could lead to some serious

conflicts in judgement.



Nine seconds.



Oh, God. Help me get away from myself.



He was so fucking perfect. So much like the diluted

fantasies I've often found myself indulging

in.



His lips.

On mine.

For a full nine seconds.

I could feel his heartbeat through

that thin gray tee-shirt of his, feel the

warmth of his skin. I wanted to splay my

fingers across his chest, to bury myself into

him and never back away.



He tasted like sweet liquor.

Intoxicating.

Numbing.

So dangerously perfect.



I relented only a moment. I don't know what

I was afraid of. But he was right: the world

didn't end. It actually got sweeter.



Now I can't tear him from my mind. As we

exited the hospital, his arm draped around my

shoulder, I contemplated what I had just done.



What *we* had done. We had ignited a flame

that now burns brightly. I'm afraid to let my

life be illuminated by this light. Afraid that

I'll lose him. And yet I know I never will. He

plays on my dampened heartstrings like a

concert violinist, the vibrations shaking me

to my very center. We are now irrevocably tied

together. Every shared word, every mere touch

is a chord striking a resonant note within me.



Christ, I feel like a sixteen-year-old again.

Sensing the world for the very first time.



Testing my feeble wings in the pounding

rainstorm. Now, I find, it's a storm I'd like

to stay in.



I know we'll both bury this. We won't speak

of it. It will be filed away within our minds,

an ancient relic that once glittered- now left

to collect dust.Just like the hallway. Like a

jaded idol I turn it over in my mind.God, I

had been ready then, too. Ready to loose

myself. I lay awake so many nights after

Mulder and I returned from Antarctica,

contemplating what "could have been".



"What could have been" now is.



All my years of studying the human body

couldn't have prepared me for the exhilaration

I felt rush like a current of white-hot

electricity when his lips brushed mine. I felt

it strike my very center with a firm

reckoning. I resisted the urge to deepen the

kiss, to tangle my fingers in those mahogany

tresses of his, to let my fingers dance

erratic patterns across his bare skin.



Nine seconds.



Nine seconds that exist now.only in my

memory.



.Finis.