Moment in between

Another ending to Duet

by Mareen

Rated PG for slight m/m.

Disclaimer: Clayton Webb and Harmon Rabb don't belong to me. What a shame. They belong to CBS and probably will be
forever because NBC was just too stupid to keep them. I do not intend any infringement. I'd wish I could make money with my writing, but I don't.

Feedback addy: syad.nms@gmx.net

This is for Gail, a romantic.


Moment In Between
by Mareen

When I look down at him, he is one of the most beautiful things I have seen for a long time.

Lost in the sight of it, I just watch little pearls of sweat running down his face and vanishing into his hair, dropping down onto
the pillow or making their way over his throat. Falling...slowly moving...like they are listening to their own kind of music and moving with it.

His breath comes deep and reassuring, his chest is raising and falling with every slow breath he takes.

He isn't fully asleep yet. He seems to just relish the moments between fulfillment and sleep, those precious moments when everything seems to be so perfectly still and peaceful, blissful moments before reality makes its way back into our minds.

I have never seen him like this before, perfectly at ease.Whenever we are together, there is always such a kind of hardness on his face, as if he tries to hold back. I suppose that's exactly what he is doing most of the time, holding back, trying to keep himself from me...trying to protect himself from me, from all of my little half-lies.

I don't want to hurt him. I never wanted to hurt him. He is my conscience. How could I ever want to hurt him? I try to push him away, try to get over him...but I can't hurt him.

Slowly, I lift my hand off the mattress and let it hover over his closed eyes. I just keep my hand there, nearly touching him, but
never doing it...unable to come that near to him. I am able to sleep with him, but I can't touch him like that. Touching someone's face after sex is such an intimate gesture.

I just keep my hand there and it is shaking a bit, as if it is still trying to decide what to do now...as if it is still fighting me...trying to get a life of its own. But I won't allow it to do what it wants to do...touching that bit of sweaty hair..the soft face...the hand is nearly there...nearly there...it can even feel the heat radiating off of his body...but I keep it still...unmoved.

I hear my own deep and slow breathing, mixing with his. I feel him shift in the bed, nearer to sleep now. I feel the warmth of his
naked body. I'm tired, too. I am warm and safe and tired, but I don't want to sleep, because I'm afraid that when I wake up, everything will be back to how it was.

My hand comes up now, touching my own face and I hiss when the pain hits me. I still hurt from where his fist hit me earlier.
That is what real life feels like.

I don't know why I didn't drive home, why I followed him home when he left JAG Headquarters. He just looked at me when I pulled my car into the parking lot behind him, when he went inside, when I followed him and when he let me in his apartment.
No word was spoken. And after he had closed the door behind both of us, I could suddenly only hold on to him while we kissed.

We have always just ravished each other, most in anger hardly held back. But this was different. Slowly and carefully and warmly...just kissing for a long while...feeling each other.

He was the one again who started it. He pulled me down onto his bed and that fact alone was a surprise. We have never made it into a bed. The floor and my couch. Never a bed. But he pulled me down on his bed and we went on with keeping it slow...even lazy somehow. And it was wonderful and unreal. Just a wordless touching and kissing and caressing of one another...my climax took me by surprise, just as the little shout I let go. I took him with me then, pulling him after me into orgasm...like a dance, we did it together.

And this is how that moment left us, in a frightening peace with one another...in silence and half-darkness and with me looking down at him, watching him falling asleep and moving now and then, and I wonder how this could have happened, and I wonder what is going to happen tomorrow...or in just a few hours, when we will get out of the bed to put on our clothes again and by that become ourselves again...when we will be different from how we are now.

I wonder if we will scream at each other again or hit each other...or maybe just ignore each other, something that would be maybe the worst thing of all.

Again, I lift my hand and I let it hover over him. My fingers are moving a little, unsure if they will touch or not. Finally, I let them linger on his brow lightly.

In his half-sleep, he sighs and I want to take away my hand, but he suddenly grabs it and holds it.

"Go to sleep, Clay," he whispers softly without opening his eyes. He pulls my hand around his body, keeping it close to himself, and I allow my fingers to brush softly over his skin.

He smiles.

I let my head sink back on the pillow beside him and let the peace embrace me, too.

And I finally close my eyes.


END