Lost City ficlet for llorelei, April 7, 2006
She wondered through the entire drive what, exactly, she was going to say to him. It's not like there was etiquette for this sort of thing, a nice little book that listed appropriate conversation topics in case of impending mental override by alien imprintation. There was always what she wanted to say—but that was out of the question, for more reasons than she cared to think about.
Besides, she was never really sure if he would want to hear it. And if he didn't, well…she couldn't have faced that.
But it was a nice sort of fantasy that she entertained, where he would open the door and look at her and know and that finally, something could be said or done to fill the ache echoing in her chest.
Even if it was too late to make much of a difference, it would have been something to hang onto once whatever happened…happened.
When he answered the door and stared at her in surprise, she knew that it really had been a fantasy—when it came down to it, neither one of them seemed to be brave enough to deal with the elephant in the room. Left only with platitudes and awkward conversation, Sam wondered if there had ever been something there at all.
And then his hand brushed her back casually, in passing, and she realized the truth—it wasn't because there was nothing there that they didn't talk about it. It was because what was there was bigger than either of them knew how to handle.