TITLE:  Nine Seconds
2/26/99
AUTHOR:  Laine
EMAIL: loislane@bright.net
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Sure, go ahead. But I would love to know where
so I can visit, OK?
SPOILER WARNING: None. Well, maybe a teensy FTF spoiler, but really, you
wouldn't know it's there...
CONTENT WARNING: MSR ahoy.
RATING: I'm going to give this an 'R' rating for what I'm attempting to
do to your imaginations. If you have no imagination then consider it
PG-13, I guess. ; )
CLASSIFICATION: V
SUMMARY: A lot can happen in Nine Seconds.
DISCLAIMER:Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013 Productions and David
Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, without whose talents the characters
wouldn't exist. I'm borrowing, I'm getting no money, and I'm not wanting
sued.
COMMENTS:  This is, as always, and most especially, for my eviltwin,
Lana, who gets to sleep with Mulder every night and who gave me the BEST
news Sunday!!  But, you'll have to ask *her* about all of that.It is
also for those of you who know the value of good feedback. Ahem.
FEEDBACK: yes, please - I write back! loislane@bright.net This is a
little different from any of my previous humble fanfic attempts, so I'd
just love to know what you think! Constructive criticism is always
appreciated, but flames just go up in smoke.

OK, here we go!
Nine Seconds 1/1

The lights are dim; just a dusting of incandescence across her face
adding to the dreamlike quality already supplied by his brain and
willing imagination. Can't be happening, but it is.

Trail of fire left by the slightest, most reverent touch of sandy,
soft-tipped fingers, feather-light across the altar of her face. Cream.
Honey. Alabaster and porcelain, warmed to burning by the kiln of his
breath.

Diamond eyes locked in a sea of swirling blue, connected, linked. He is
drowning there, drowning in questions, drowning in desire as they
swallow him whole, torment, torture and salvation. There is no breath
for him until she restores his life as she breathes his name,
prayer-like. His soul groans without sound and shudders in response.

Impossibly close, her pulse quickens and leaps at the nearness of him,
the nearness of them. So close, with a fathomless distance still to
bridge. A gap forged by the glacial ice of what could be, should be, is
yet to come. An imposed separation so colossal, six years have still not
built the bridge. She fills her lungs with air, her soul with him, and
waits, eyes drooping slightly with the weight of redemption.

Clumsy hands, shaking under a quake of emotion, reach blindly for the
cover of her hair. Silken. Fire. Alive, the ropes and tresses take
possession of his willowy fingers, capturing them, holding them hostage
along with his soul. Slow. So slow.  A question forms in the very core
of him. He watches, helpless, as the same is reflected back through the
endless pools of her liquid eyes.

A distant memory brands her brain, searing hot. Flash of  fatigue,
desperation, he moved in close before the flash of pain then darkness
swallowed her consciousness. Sweet, sweet breath catches in an unwilling
throat at the thought, the memory, and untamed sensation begins its
assault. Relentless, his eyes shred her spirit, even as his heartbeat
rebuilds it.

An unruly hand laps eagerly at the slight curve of flesh below the bone
of her rib. It means to destroy him, it means to pull her unbearably
closer. It means to finish what unnamed circumstance put him in this
holy place. Burning blood pushing at his veins, throbbing through his
heart, stabbing right and wrong until they are both dead, left decaying
in the mine-field of his psyche.

They glisten a million shades of flesh, slightly wet, all heat and want
and need. So easy, just to push forward, just a bit more. So necessary,
and she does not begin to comprehend how or when or why. Serum pulses
through her veins and cannot offer as much life as one taste, one small,
ineffectual taste surely would. Lips. The word is sigh in her mind, a
whisper in her soul, an oasis within her grasp. And still, she breathes
in the scent that assures her this is real, this is him. Can't be
happening, but it is, and the blood continues to pound out an erratic,
speeding rhythm on tissue, muscle and bone.

They gravitate toward nothingness, toward everything and eventualities
and fate. Heat rises unmercifully from a deceptively soft blush in her
skin. Her skin. Unworthy thumb tirelessly caresses the consecrated
elegance of her cheek. Polished. Marble. Aching and inflamed, her breath
serves to oxidize the flames lapping at his restraint.

Need. It becomes a palpable presence, twisting through her like a
demonic lover, pooling at her core, melting, thick. Her pulse is
centered where Need travels, spiraling first downward, then outward,
then everywhere and nowhere at once. An ache, a desperation that feeds
off itself, off his presence, off her desire. Nerves dance and sing and
slaughter themselves under the pressure of the Need.

He will combust under the furnace of her touch. Cool and hot and
soothing and unbearable on the cord of his neck. She may have said his
name. He can no longer fight the animal roaring through his ears for
dominance. He can hear nothing but their breath. Tiny, hot puffs
mingling in the minimal space between. Fighting, resisting no more the
urgent notion that he must breathe the air that gives her life, inhale
her soul.

Trembling now, in the infrastructure of the nucleus that has become her
life. Centered, focused on the expanse of satin skin beneath the pads of
her fingers. Feeling the pulsating cadence carrying life inside him.
Hypnotic. Captivating. Velvet over titanium. Liquid over fire. Steam.

Tight, impossibly tight. His skin no longer fits the expansion of his
body as the pressure builds within, without. Breathing becomes annoying
necessity, thought becomes secondary to the process of the pull. The
endless pull toward the lush expanse of peach and nectar brushed on the
canvass of her face. A pull that overrides fear, that permanent resident
staking claim on the boundaries of his being for so long, so long this
last closure was deemed impossible. He pushes himself along the
invisible cord, dipping first left, then right, leaning in, so near, so
near, bursting through and reverently locking on.

Explosion of light, and her soul flutters about on a thousand pair of
butterfly wings inside her chest. A chest that no longer rises and falls
of its own accord, but with the gentle stroke of perfection against her
mouth. The softest caress, barely there. Building a craving never to be
squelched or fulfilled.

Sugary tang of her lips, velvet and supple and burning against his own,
inferior orifice. Time is frozen, suspended. Internal functions grind to
a halt. No movement, just feeling. Heaven's very gate is here, now, in
this moment of union and redemption. Damp, slick, impossible. His mind
reels, his core gasps and the colors rejoice beneath lids fallen in
supplication.

Movement. She must move, is drawn and ordered to do so by the frantic
rhythm of a weakening heart. Slight, so slight. An easy, slow nuzzle
against the truth of his lips. Lips. Pressed against hers delicately,
poised and willing. Begging for exploration. Need coils and coils in her
belly. A second shadowy caress and he begins to move with her, so
gentle. A sigh incarnate in the precarious connection of selves.

Infuriating desire rages in the place of blood through his heart, his
chest, his groin. A taste leaves him wanting, needing, demanding more.
Heady narcotic of her mouth beckoning, the entrance parts easily under
electric contact of tongue against lip. A groan of sheerest pleasure
dies from sensory overload before escaping the prison of his constricted
throat. Moist. Sheathing, protective cavern. Milk of life. A perjury of
cool sensation fanning flames raging beyond control.

Hot stab of desire strokes the folds of her mouth. Gentle, firm,
pulsing. Silky and rough, wet, heat and light. Chocolate. Sinful,
decadent. Dark and smoky and demanding and reverent. She responds and
plunders his own willing secrets, fingers dancing lightly around the
short hairs of his neck, barely noticing a pattern matching the one
within, winding slowly, slowly down until lips merely hang from one
another, suspending time in the vortex of waiting and frozen sensation
again.

Cells separate, bodies cry out in withdrawal and are instantly fused
together. His face afire, it seeks the comfort of her hair. He feels her
buried within his chest, their breathing matching in an erratic beat of
desire. His hands are restless, alternately stroking the strong expanse
of her back and laying claim to what remains neglected of her hair and
neck. She is still, so still. Just waiting for the final forging of
their souls to finish, before moving with him again, toward the
precipice of pleasure still building within, without.

And the lights are dim, dusting the the coalescence of their conjoined
forms with a spattering of incandescence that pales against the heat,
the light, of them. Adding to the dreamlike quality of a moment six
years in the making, a lifetime in the lasting, even as mere seconds
tick by.

end