Current

They walked together through the parking lot, so close their sleeves brushed- but not their hands. Their heat-signatures may have mingled, but never their flesh. It was better that way. Safer. Safer for her, anyway. She doubted he would notice if her knuckles grazed his. But she would. Like a completed circuit, his energy would arc into her, giving her non-fatal electric shock, causing a nauseating ache deep in her bones. If he ever kissed her, it would probably stop her heart.

No, it was better not to touch, no matter how much she might long to. It was enough to know that he was there bringing light to the darkness of her days.

She stopped when he did, and they sat with their backs against a winter-bare tree, staring up through the branches at the wind-whipped sky. Here and there sunlight fought to pierce the scuttling gray clouds, but it was a losing battle and she could tell that the storm would hit soon.

She liked it when the sky was like this- wild and fierce and reminding the creatures below that it was once worshiped as a god in its own right, Father to all of Mother Earth's children. She thought people got too comfortable with the benevolence of a sunny day, and that it did them good to remember what it meant to be at the mercy of something greater than themselves.

She shied away from that thought, from the thought of forces greater than one's self. Like electricity. Or love. She closed her eyes against them all, sinking deeper within the carefully insulated core of herself.

(Right Place Right Time)