TITLE: Simple
AUTHOR: Susanne Barringer
EMAIL: sbarringer@usa.net
ARCHIVE: Anywhere okay with these headers attached.
CLASSIFICATION: V
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully UST
SPOILERS: The Unnatural
RATING: G
SUMMARY: Post-ep for "The Unnatural." Short.
DISCLAIMER: Characters and scenario borrowed from David
Duchovny, Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox. No infringement intended.
This one is for Suzanne Schramm with endless thanks for your
wisdom and enthusiasm, which never fail to make my writing
better.
________
Simple
by Susanne Barringer
Tonight you gave me an invaluable gift. You shared a piece of your
life with me, your private life, something important to you. You let
me see a part of you that is usually separate from us, and then you
shared it with me and turned it into ours. For that, I love you.
I loved your gift. I loved the moment when I was in it. It is only
while looking back that I become unsure. It scares me. Not the
physical closeness so much, although that is certainly scary for its
own reasons, but us, together, laughing, forgetting about
conspiracies and X-Files and expensive suede coats and everything
else that makes up our lives. Just us, you and me, outside, alive,
hitting balls across an empty field and into the night sky. An
adorable Cupid, hired at ten dollars an hour, loaded baseballs
instead of arrows and worked his magic on us in a park empty of
spectators but full of silent angels.
Like I said, scary. Utterly and totally terrifying. But only after the
fact. At the time, it was simply the difference, the unusualness, the
absolute abandon of a single moment wrapped up in warm arms
around me and hot breath against my ear and a tight shared grip on
a bat. Sharing the swing, the motion, the power, hips before hands,
making contact, sharing.
Now, later, the fear sets in. What was that? What has happened to
us that we can stand there, so close, so in tune with each other, and
not only love it but indulge in it, without fear, without doubt,
without consequences? I sit here now and marvel at how simple it
was, how it took no thought, no decision, it just was. We just
were.
We have never been that simple. Never. Not even in the first
moment we met, the psychological baggage we each carried already
lined up by the door in neat rows. My science, your beliefs--an
inevitable conflict that has never disappeared, although it has
certainly grown and sprouted and changed direction a million times
since that first confrontation. "Do you believe in the existence of
extraterrestrials?" I can still hear you as though it were yesterday.
Our conflict was a primal one, compromise seemingly impossible.
But we have come to manage it, to work our differences into one
whole. One bat. One ball. Hitting together over and over if only
to see how far it will go, how close to the stars we can reach.
Tonight was simple. Simple needs, simple love. Simple us.
Simpler than we have ever been. Wood against leather, the tight
crack of the union, the echo of it drifting through the air, rumbling
up my spine, vibrating between our bodies. The scent of fresh-cut
grass, of you. The large comfort of your arms around me, the
edges of your hands against mine on the cool wood, the warmth of
you taking me into your world. Our power and movement joined
together as one, sending baseballs out into the depths of the night,
an endless dark curtain behind the lights of the field. The stars
beckoned the two of us as they have always beckoned you. How
could we suddenly become so simple?
Complexity becomes simplicity and now there is only curious fear.
Where do we go from here?
END
__________
feedback always cherished: sbarringer@usa.net
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