Archive of Our Own ^beta

Not mine. Don't bother to sue me. All you'll get is a cat so big he scares off the neighborhood dogs.

Just a little quickie. No, not that kind of quickie! Get your mind out of the gutter! Oh. Right. That's pretty much why we're here, huh? Not betaed, any and all mistakes are mine since I occasionally choose to ignore the grammar checker.

Later, Jim would wonder whether there were really six moments in time, or only one. Whether six or one, the result was the same. His and Blair's lives were changed forever, on an ordinary camping trip, on an ordinary mountain, in an ordinary clearing, in six moments in time.

The first moment in time was when the platinum-white light of a waxing gibbous moon slipped over the top of a shagbark hickory tree and lit Blair's face, like falling angel-kisses, clear and pale and pure. Jim thought he had never seen anything so beautiful, in that first moment in time.

In the second moment, Jim cradled Blair's cheek in his palm, and marveled at the soft-rough feel of Blair's skin against his own. The butter-soft slide of Blair's warm golden cheek under his fingertips and the rough stubble of beard rasping against the tender skin of the inside of his wrist, Blair's pulse beating softly against Jim's palm. Jim wondered how he had lived so long without this, in the second moment in time.

The third moment seemed to last forever. As Blair slowly leaned into Jim's caress, his eyes curious and full of fond amusement, or maybe it was love, Jim wondered how many millions of hearts were beating the pulse of the earth. He wondered how many others' lives would go on unchanged as he and Blair took this first step together. Jim wondered how many stars were born in the heavens as he stood there in that timeless instant, in that platinum-white light, and caressed Blair's sweet face, in this third moment in time.

In the fourth moment in time, Blair smiled, and the incandescence of it lit Jim's heart. To Jim, the Earth seemed to still in her movement, to stop the thousands of miles per second of hurtling through space that had been her fate since time was born, to cease the thousand miles per hour of spinning on her axis that creates the passage of day and night, to hold her breath, in this fourth moment in time.

When Blair pressed his warm palm against the center of Jim's chest, in the fifth moment in time, Jim wondered about all the lives begun and ended, lovers lost and found, friends made and secrets kept and promises whispered in the dark, in that luminous eternity while Blair tipped his face up toward Jim's and offered his mouth to be kissed, in that fifth moment in time.

In the sixth moment, Jim brushed his mouth against Blair's and said, "I love you," on that ordinary camping trip, on that ordinary mountain, in that ordinary clearing. When Blair threw his arms around Jim, pulled him close and kissed him back with a gasp of joy, his heart thundering against Jim's chest, Jim knew their lives were changed forever, and he heard the autumn-dry leaves of the shagbark hickory tree rustle faintly as he kissed Blair's luscious mouth under the platinum-white light of a waxing gibbous moon, in the sixth moment in time.

End Six Moments In Time by Pink Dragon: [email protected]

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