Title: Featured At Dawn

Author: ScullyAsTrinity

Rating: Uh, whatever's PG-13

Thanks: Sheila, Karen, Morgan and Matthew.


She never liked making love in the morning. It had nothing to do with morning breath, or being tired. It was the light, the stark whiteness of it. So bright, so unforgiving. Everything was frighteningly visible in the light of the morning, every scar, every tear track, every slight mar. In the morning light, she was laid bare.

When she woke, slowly in the morning, he was already looking at her with sleepy eyes, gorgeous to no one in the world but her. He was her image to keep, to turn over and over in her head. And she's always remember how he looked that morning, ruffled and rosy, from a night spent consummating years of hidden passion.

Amazing, how her body screamed when she moved, her muscles remembering the exertion of the night before.

They'd fallen asleep, a jumble of limbs, neither having the energy to untangle themselves and leave. And that was fine, neither really wanted the other to leave, but they would have let the other go if they'd asked.

She hadn't felt him pull away from her that morning, disentangle himself from her sticky body to stare at her, for something that seemed like an awfully long time.

Sara wanted to burrow under the covers, or go on pretending like she was asleep. It irked her, the way his eyes had an unobstucted view of her body, to scrutinize it. To catalogue her body like a specimen perhaps, to research her.

Stilling her thoughts for a moment, she attempted to keep her breathing slow and even. Her eyes were cracked just a fraction, just so she could make out his form, his broad chest, and the hand that came out to brush a piece of hair away from her face. It took all of the strength in her not to flinch.

His index finger traced gently over her cheekbone, abandoned her face entirely and jumped to her collarbone, lingering there, tracing over a bite he had left in a moment of surprise. The light that was cast there, on her neck undisturbed by shadow, and he marveled at the way the freckles jumped out at him.

He had never noticed them before, and if he'd been in the mood he might have played connect the dots with them. But he was just too busy looking at her, all of her.

Sara trembled inside, wondering what he was seeing. Thoughts ran through her mind unbidden, did he find her repulsive? Perhaps a reminder of the reasons that being together was so very wrong. Was her skin, then, so foreign to him, when the night before it was a map he seemed to have traveled along before. She had to stop him, stop him from seeing her.

"Griss?" She cracked an eye open, and to her delight, he smiled, slowly. Sweetly.

"Hmm?" His finger was braver then, tracing delicately along her chin, but this more pressure. "Good morning." His voice, something akin to silk, to thick, dark chocolate, reaching out to caress her scathed skin, even as he thought to soothe her mind.

"Why were you staring at me?"

Before words were spoken, he leaned in to kiss her forehead, her lips, her neck. "I can't believe I'm allowed to touch you like this."

And then they were making love again, in the light, in the sun and she hid nothing.


"We're touching faces in the dark. Feeling pretty is so hard."The Wallflowers, 'Invisible City'