TITLE: Confirmation
AUTHOR: Bonetree
CATEGORY: Vignette, missing scene
RATING: NC-17
DISCLAIMER: These are not my characters. No 
profit is being made and no infringement is 
intended.
SUMMARY: Choices, wings and all things.

For Lilydale. Because she asked for it. 

*****

The Buddha did not smile. What she'd seen on 
the face of the Buddha in the temple, a 
thin veil of smoke in what felt like a red 
hazed room was nothing like that. She thought 
of this and remembered the slight rocking, the 
cadence of her body as her breath had 
pulled in and pushed out, sweat beading her.

Even then, she was making love to him, though 
she didn't know it then. Even then her 
body was moving as it was now moving, Mulder 
inside her, the slight rocking, a red 
hazed air buzzing around her in the dark, the 
moonlight coming through the window and 
hanging like smoke around them. 

Mulder did not smile. He was balanced on the 
palms of his hands, one placed on either 
side of her head, his body sloped over hers. 
His eyes were closed, his face turned slightly 
to the side, but she did not feel, as she had 
with some men, that she was somehow less 
present in front of his closed lids. She could 
tell from the way he moved, the way he 
responded to every hitch in her breath, every 
quiet sound, that he was acutely aware that 
it was HER with him, beneath him. He looked, 
alternately and in some bars of the light, 
ageless and like a child.

She had heard the word "sacred" her entire 
life. She had never understood it. She'd 
worn a cross as if to say she did, as if it 
were that simple to understand things that 
transcend. She'd rubbed the black beads of her 
grandmother's rosary and raised a brow 
at her sister's crystalline necklaces, her 
pendulums made of quartz. She'd sat before an 
intricate sculpture of a man dying on a cross 
in a hundred cathedrals, breathed in stained 
glass air. At her Confirmation, she'd waited 
for the feeling of wings descending upon her 
as the priest had pressed on her crown and 
felt...

Nothing.

Why had it taken a Buddhist temple to show her 
this, she thought, her hands moving from 
Mulder's shoulder blades, strained like wings 
against the skin of his back -- his breath 
catching in him, a low sound like a note coming 
from his throat -- down to his ribs, a play 
of muscle beneath a sheen of sweat. She gripped 
his waist, her fingers on the small of his 
back, muscles taut. Why had she not felt 
herself lift away in all this time, her back 
pressing into the mattress beneath her but 
something in her rising, moving out of herself, 
through Mulder's body, now one with hers, and 
up toward the glass? 

She felt like a great tattered moth or an 
angel. She felt like the pleasure moving inside 
her body - she could not separate from his 
pleasure, etched on his face - was the feeling 
she'd waited for, the building toward something 
like flight. 

It would never happen again. She knew this as 
she stared up into his face and saw his 
eyes open. He was flushed, his face shining. 
Her mouth quirked in a small smile as she 
took in what she saw there.

He was serene, replete and filled with regret. 

"Don't," she whispered, though it was difficult 
to say even the one word as his hips 
surged, pressing into her. She bit her lip and 
turned her face into the pillow, fluttering 
inside. For an instant, she was filled with 
wings. 

He said nothing as he came, growing still. The 
sheets had slipped off his hips and he 
seemed to glow as the light brushed his skin. 
Then he lay down on top of her, her breasts 
pressing against him, her arms curling around 
his neck. His breath was warm against her 
throat, lips brushing against her. He murmured 
something she couldn't quite hear and 
couldn't understand.

There in the temple she'd felt this, something 
turning, a piece clicking into place. 
Somewhere in Mulder's talk before she'd fallen 
asleep, about all the choices leading to a 
moment like a stone in a stream, before she'd 
woken and gone to him, she'd understood. 

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to say that 
what she'd seen on the dying man's face 
on the cross -- the knowing about choices, his 
choice that was never a choice - was the 
same as the expression on the statue of the 
Buddha, serene in his red smoke room, hidden 
in his dark, golden recess. 

It was what she'd seen on Mulder's face as he'd 
looked at her from the bed, the look he'd 
held her with as she'd stood beside him, 
silent, and undressed. 


END