Nonlinear

It was hard, trying to sort memory from vision. Happened and mayhap tangled and twisted through his mind like insidious worms, harbingers of impending dementia. Crawford ran his tongue along teeth as if seeking evidence.

Distressing, distracting, almost as much as the man himself. Crawford turned away from the computer, away from the ghosts that twisted and writhed somewhere in the margin of every open document.

It had happened, or was going to.

If he could just figure out which was which…he could deny it or derail. The course of action had to be set in stone, set with determination without a single crack that Schuldig could wriggle into with his damning smirk.

That damn knowing smirk. -Blue eyes all but eclipsed by pupil. Framed with hair gone slightly curly with sweat, spread across plain sheets, Crawford’s fingers gripping tangles like reins-

Schuldig’s smirk dissolved when assaulted collapsed and split when met by tooth and tongue.

Would dissolve. Had dissolved.

Crawford snarled.









It was a dodgy situation, trying to secure ones sanity as well as stretch psychic abilities. Crawford had grown used to pushing his precognition, leaning on it like a metaphysical crutch. Not that he would ever use those terms or even brush along the edge of acknowledging that fact. His brain was caught in being prepared, at whatever cost. He needed the advantage.

He didn’t need to feel the world slipping and tilting under him.

Reality had gone from a constant to a tentative association. His precognition had slipped its leash.

Either that or it had never been properly leashed in the first place.

Crawford’s need to be on top –the feel of Schuldig’s stomach against his, the demanding little growls as Schuldig arched upwards into him- kept him from even considering the instability of his situation.

Rather it lurked, flickering through the eyes of his companions as they watched him slide from future to past, rarely settling in the present.

Time had become irrelevant.









-Schuldig’s lips were rough.-

Crawford would have assumed them to be soft. He should have remembered every soft angle Schuldig presented was an act. The man was hedonistic, that couldn’t be argued. But he could never be described as soft. He was a skillful act, a means to an end...

Schuldig stared at Crawford, waiting for pale eyes to focus back on the task at hand.









It might have happened.

-Schuldig smelled of soap and tasted clean. Crawford almost missed the hint of salt that usually met his tongue as he traced the curve of Schuldig’s neck-

It might have happened on its own.

But it was an odd juxtaposition, one bit of psionic instability blending with another. Telepathy twined with precognition and Crawford backed Schuldig into a wall, hands tracing paths they might have previously but definitely would in the future. Probability was derailed with every one of Schuldig’s ragged breaths.

Their personalities formed a poisonous union, but their powers seemed tailor made to gestalt.







Schuldig provided a fascinatingly stable anchor. Who he was never seemed to settle. But the when was static. Schuldig was a creature of habit, his own tactic to wrestle with the insidious worms in his brain. Crawford caught that regularity with symbiotic enthusiasm.

The torturous string of might be and could have been settled into a loop of sensation centered on the gleam in blue eyes. It was never discussed, their team turned a blind eye and closed ear towards the new association their leader and loose canon seemed to have developed. They were more efficient when they didn’t have to wait for Crawford to catch up or come back. There was a lethal precision in a Schuldig with something to lose.







Crawford ran a tongue along lips that felt swollen, studying the computer screen. Schuldig lounged in the room’s only other chair, hair down and more than a little mussed. Shortly Schuldig would leave to dredge through the fridge for something suitable for an afternoon snack.

It was 2:26pm. Crawford had meetings to schedule, and later a dinner to attend.

And Schuldig would be waiting for him when he got back, in the pattern recently established and stabilized. Crawford looked forward to the gleam in Schuldig’s eyes, the tantalizing hint of submission in his posture. Precognition curled through his mind, and Crawford smirked.

Schuldig would have to remember to wear a collared shirt tomorrow.