From: I12blv2@cs.com Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2000 05:19:24 GMT Subject: NEW: Haptics by Pam Gamble (1/1) MSR, V NEW: Haptics (1/1) MSR, V by Pam Gamble I12blv2@cs.com summary: another interpretation of the En Ami aftermath Haptics: Information conveyed through the sense of touch AUTHORS NOTE: not exactly timely, but this has been camped out on my hard drive for a while, thought I'd take it out for a drive XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx Her voice was like caramel so early in the morning. Stretched out and warm, melting and dripping over him. Words sticking together, his mind taffy-pulling them into coherent sentences. "Whatimezitmuller?" "Early. Go back to sleep." He wished he could make his voice sound sleepier. He wanted to relax. To believe in her full and solid weight against him. He didn't want her to feel the exhausted tension in his body. Every time he'd let down his guard, his arms had betrayed him, spasming around her tiny body. He who believed in almost anything, couldn't believe she was actually there. She was back. She hadn't left him forever. Not forever. And he would take deep breaths, forcing oxygen to the muscles and assuring them and himself again, until they would allow him to sleep for another fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. Andy Warhol said everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. If she had died, would she be famous? Would it make the news? Or would she be part of an anonymous headline buried somewhere in the metro section. Buried. Dead. Not dead. His arms betrayed his fear, once again surprised by her solidity. Several times during the night he'd imagined her a ghost. A vision. His own vision of her had changed over time. Through a frustrated artists' eye, he'd first seen her in chalks, light and insubstantial, easily washed away. Years later he had seen her in charcoals, strong lines in shades of grey he'd never seen before. After they'd crossed this line, her heart and her passion and her love bled through in brilliant watercolors. Soft and blurry, yet made even bolder with tears. He had absorbed her as she bled onto the blankness inside him. He know she wouldn't want him to think in terms of belonging. But-- mine. It was a quality of Dana Scully now. He half-expected it to be listed on her drivers' license. She was 5'2", had red hair, and belonged to Fox Mulder. *If found please return to...* Mine. As much a possession as a part of him. Possession is 9/10 of the law. Possessed. He *was* possessed, both owned and haunted. It was this hazy sleep-deprived state that had often brought him brilliant insights, allowed him to make connections others did not see. His mind was a funhouse mirror, distorted but somehow all the more true. A professional bonus to his chronic insomnia. He felt her head tilt beneath his chin. She was awake. Thinking. Trying to read his mind, he was sure. Or maybe read his body, as he was hers. She had the easier job. She was 14 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica, he was the Cliff Notes. He kissed the top of her head, felt her settle back into him. She turned within her tunnel of crisp white sheets. It took his breath away each time he saw her body from a new angle. "You haven't slept." Her voice held accusation, her eyes regret. "I tried." He held her tighter. "He did this because of us. Because of this." The timing was just too much to be a coincidence. They knew. They must have known. "No." He had known she wouldn't want to admit it. It was why he hadn't mentioned it the day before. Why he tried not to look at her. He hadn't wanted to feel guilty for loving her. "But you're here." A question and a reassurance. "If this wasn't his sick idea of a warning, then...." "Maybe I'm supposed to be." She turned to face him. "Maybe *you're* not." She swallowed hard. "I thought of that. Too late, I thought of it on the way back from the cabin. I thought that with me gone, they had come after you. That it was all a way to distract me." One tear worked its way free, magnifying each freckle it passed over. "When Langly answered your phone, I thought for sure you were dead." Death would have been never holding her again. He couldn`t convince his brain of the material difference. Emotionally, it didn`t matter. Dead was dead was dead. A rose is a rose is a rose. A rose by any other name can still wither and die. He pictured himself, wasting away, doctors unable to make a diagnosis. Maybe he would have tried to tell them, muttered the word `without'. Maybe not. Unshaven, his cheek rasped against the pillow, tugging on the cotton casing. "You were worried about me? I thought you were dead, and you were worried about me." She was. He could feel the tension in her body. "I was, once I had time to stop and think." Her voice was so sad. He felt the tremor of half-forgotten fear travel under her skin. He remembered the treble of her voice, when she`d called to let him know she was on her way back. He`d thought it was a bad connection. Thought the relief he heard was in response to her release, not his existence. There would not be a next time. She didn`t have to say that, he just knew. This had been a test of the professional and personal boundaries of their relationship, and they had both failed miserably. Or maybe it was the test that had failed. Because there was nothing left to test. "I don't know what his motivations were. Maybe he doesn't even know anymore. Maybe he just does things because he can. But he doesn`t know about us." No, she was wrong about that. He was too sure. It had to be because of them. To separate them, pull her away from him. His arms, sensing this thought, melted into her warm skin. Mine. "How do you know?" "Something he said." He listened to her heartbeat, to the steadiness of her voice, and knew she believed what she was saying. Not the desperate, high voice, reaching for some plausibility to her claim. She believed this. And so, he believed her. THE END