f o r . s t i l l . t e m p t a t i o n . f o l l o w s

For Still Temptation Follows
[by victoria p.]

Rating: PG-13

Summary: For still temptation follows where thou art.

Spoilers: Minor ones through Jefferson Lives

Notes: Thanks to Jen, Pete/Melissa, Dot, and Meg. Written for Voleuse for Project Ficlet. Her words were "sonnet, twist, startle."

Date: October 21, 2003

Getting back together with Amy shouldn't feel like cheating on Donna. He and Donna have never been involved, never will be. Not while he's her boss, anyway.

But every touch, every kiss with Amy makes his conscience squirm.

Donna seems happy for them. He wonders if it's misdirection still, or if Joey was wrong. Or maybe Donna's feelings for him have faded and the time to act on them has passed. Maybe it passed the moment she met Cliff Calley a second time, knowing who he was, who he worked for.

Every day, they slip into the easy rhythm of their work routine -- the banter he finds almost as necessary to life as breathing, the light touches that don't mean anything, that are simple punctuation to the complicated dance of their shared language. Words are their currency, skipping lightly over the meaning of their actions, which have already spoken louder than either of them is comfortable with.

He sometimes daydreams of writing sonnets on her fair skin with his tongue, translating all their quick and clever words into kisses; the flow of their voices stilled, replaced by the thrust of his body into hers as she twists beneath him.

Each night, for the few hours he spends away from the office, he falls into Amy's arms and lets her scent and voice wash over him.

But when he wakes in the morning, he's always startled to see dark hair instead of blonde against his pillow, to hear Donna's voice across the phone line rather than feeling it vibrate on his skin from her lips pressed to his throat.

Amy's hands caress his chest, fingernails wine dark against the faded pink of his scar -- her fumbling attempt at comfort. It looks wrong, feels wrong. He remembers the long, slow days of his recovery, Donna's hands -- nails cut short, never painted - gentle, sure and pale against the angry red gashes that took so long to heal.

Donna's hands, holding him tight in the ER after he put his hand through the window. Donna's arm linked through his as they joined the crowd praying for Zoey's safe return.

Donna has proved her value time and again; their connection runs deeper than the words they trade so effortlessly.

Yet it's Amy he embraces in the dark heart of the night, not Donna. And it never will be.

end

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SONNET 41
Those petty wrongs that liberty commits,
When I am sometime absent from thy heart,
Thy beauty and thy years full well befits,
For still temptation follows where thou art.
Gentle thou art and therefore to be won,
Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assailed;
And when a woman woos, what woman's son
Will sourly leave her till she have prevailed?
Ay me! but yet thou mightest my seat forbear,
And chide try beauty and thy straying youth,
Who lead thee in their riot even there
Where thou art forced to break a twofold truth,
Hers by thy beauty tempting her to thee,
Thine, by thy beauty being false to me.
~William Shakespeare

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