DISCLAIMER: Law & Order: Trial By Jury & Law & Order and all their characters are
property of NBC and Dick Wolf.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: First and last lines of all the ficlets written by the ever brilliant flying_peanuts. My eternal thanks. These are all of the vignettes of Serena Southerlyn and Tracey Kibre that I wrote for even_angels_. They are little glimpses of an ongoing life, set in between, or after, or at the same time as my Between Bombay series featuring the same two. Take your pick. Except Breathe Me, which really should be part of the series, say as part number six, but gets ahead of itself. Oh, well. Enjoy. I don't know that anyone will even care to read these, but I was encouraged by racethewind10 and since I have nagged and threatened her all week, it seemed only fair.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
Redemisti
By Fewthistle
My name on your lips is a benediction. A whispered blessing that ruffles my hair like a soft summer breeze. A redemption from the hollowness of other nights, of other beds. It slips from between your parted lips, from a mouth dry from the shuddering gasps that have wracked your body. Your skin is damp, flushed with a heat that radiates from somewhere deep inside you, from the friction of our bodies.
I raise my head, gazing down into eyes unfocused with passion, pupils wide with desire. A hundred small moments flash across my mind like streaks of heat lightening, momentarily blinding as they strike along the horizon of my memory. And in the dark, empty spaces between them, I catch a glimpse of all the moments that never were, the everyday intimacies, the pedestrian landscapes we never visited.
I wonder if the sanctity, the inviolability of this present moment would be the same if it were merely another sunrise in a lifetime of sunrises. If we weren't instead on the dark side of the moon, with only the faint suggestion of light along the curve of this solitary satellite to give us faith in the possibility of the sun.
Words battle inside my head, bicker like recalcitrant children as I try to sort them out, find just the right ones. Discard the ones with dirty hands, unwashed faces, hints of scars as yet unseen. Find the ones with wet hair, parted just right, shirts tucked in, shoes tied. All the neat, tidy ones. The ones I think that you want to hear. That I hope you want to hear. The words to tell you that, in this moment, I am happy.
The words to tell you that the feel of your skin, slick and silken beneath my hands, the taste of your mouth, hot and yielding under mine, the sound of your voice, breathless and hoarse, are the only truths that I possess, the only realities that I own.
The words to say that, if I believed in such things, I would love you.
Strange to find words, my usual weapons of choice, to be my undoing; yet I find the irony somehow fitting. The best that I can offer is the gentle brush of my lips along your cheek, the teasing trail of my fingers across the tender flesh of your stomach, the reverent slip of my hand between the warm silk of your thighs. The unspoken answer to your benediction. Redemisti.
And your body holds my silence.
The End