Disclaimer: I'm sure David Maples had not intended this, but if I promise to keep his characters as true to form as possible, hopefully he'll not cringe too much.

Author's Note: Because Marshall had something to say about Neither Dream Noir Reality, and because he thinks considerably more than Mary – who acts on gut reaction in the moment.

Reviews are very much appreciated.

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My Three Sins

Lao Tzu had once said, The unnamable is the eternally real… Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Would he ever realize the mystery again?

Marshall cast a wary glance at Mary; she was off tonight. He knew his Mary.

His Mary. But she wasn't his; she was Raphael's. If anyone could ever actually possess Mary, that is. Semantics aside, Marshall knew his Mary, and her aura was off tonight.

Night enveloped them, here in the adobe guest room of southwestern Arizona. Dying embers offered a warm peripheral glow across her expressionless face; sporadic snaps of pale lightening outside the blithely open terrace doors caught the tension in her eyes. Mary lay before him, to his right, citing a sigh and half-hearted 'Whew!' in her effort of casualness.

This forced air had begun downstairs in the hotel bar. Tequila she'd barely touched, more liquid finding its way on the coaster napkin than to her lips. But hampered reaction time and nonchalance befitting intoxication was the camouflage she'd chosen to don, and he'd not called her on it. He was… curious. Concerned. Unsettled.

Mary didn't do pretend. Not with him, at least. So who was she trying to fool with this act of unbalance? There'd been no medication, no stressor to incite deviation of behavior…

Perhaps it was herself whom she was trying to deceive?

Witnesses delivered, it was only them sauntering lazily to her room near midnight, Mary's unnecessary request for assistance nagging deeper recesses in him. An odd sensation darted through his progressively clenching stomach, apprehension born of this soft, friendly side his partner was granting him. It was a luring suggestion, but one promising heartache. He needed her to be Mary, to keep him at a distance for his own sake and sanity.

A warm, humid night, his cloaking jacket had been discarded just past the door to her room. No one to witness the Glock 19 holstered at his side, but for the one person he didn't have to hide before. Well, with all but for one truth, first of his three sins.

He was in love with his partner. He was in love with his best friend.

"Hey… let's talk," she managed, a lopsided smile in her relaxed voice. Grasping his hand, she pulled him down to sit beside her prone body, there in the room void of light to ease her migraine. Mary didn't get migraines. The new intimacy suddenly unnerved him.

He was always the honorable one. God, there were times he hated that. But he was his mother's son, and honor came second nature from her nurture. She'd taught him scholarly curiosity, responsibility of trust, compassion by rights, and sanctity of the badge. But she'd failed to teach him the moral code that would save him, this night most among many.

"Was there a specific topic of discussion you had in mind?" he asked stoically as the silence stretched.

Uncomfortable.

"No," the half-laugh came, her usual hint of derision absent. "But I'm sure you've got some store of inane, trivial bullshit in that cabeza of yours that'll clear my head of today's craps-shooting ignoramus and stripteaser gal-pal. C'mon, Marshall; spout me some irrelevant facts so I can sleep." She still held his palm, fingers barely moving within it, unconsciously.

His throat constricted.

Nervous.

Even in the dark, he could not look at her. Eyes focused directly in front of him, to above the headboard left of her golden hair, tresses splayed haphazardly across the over-standard-sized pillow. A jaw muscle tensed.

"What would you have me recite?" Fire would be less dangerous an endeavor to play with. Sitting straight-backed with his side to her, Marshall knew she felt the tension he couldn't shake. Sin Number Two prevented a quick and easy façade; or, all else failing, his immediate retreat.

His heart had been given to her so irrevocably, without permission. Without receipt.

She didn't answer at first, seeming to ponder the question with undue sincerity. Or had he touched some nerve Mary never left exposed? But then her voice was found, and she sounded exasperated, normal. Unlike how he felt.

"Honestly, Marshall; you could recite the damned alphabet in Ukrainian, for all I care. Just distract me, will you?"

The waspishness was half-hearted. God, this was precarious ground, and his footing was shaky at best.

Quips of just such menial knowledge whipped by in his mind, his conscious searching for the most chaste of tidbits, when she moved. Perhaps it was truly just the innocent reaction to an irritation of nerve endings, or subconscious connection to the body's desire of physical agitation after a lengthy day of travel and work and… work. Regardless the instigation, she moved. Her hand, still latched in a bored-like manner to his, darted to her lower sternum to scratch irritably through cotton damp with light perspiration.

And thus established the last in a triad of sins: the Manifestation. How had he let it get this far?

He knew well without sight the place that had commanded her attention, knew without words that it both pained her still in flesh, but even more so in symbolism. She dropped his hand in the effort, and he left it so, palm open and down, calm and light just to the right of her scratch. Then her hand quieted. And his breath held. Eyes closed in painful resignation for what he knew he would later regret.

Deep, shaky breath in through the nose. Hold. Slow release. Had his heart stopped for a beat?

Fingers twitched in light caress. Haphazard at first, as though spasm of muscle and not years of longing drove their movements. But Mary had stilled, a sense of anticipation hanging in her lack of motion rather than one of shock and betrayal.

Each flick of finger grew with each passing, an awakening in groggy sluggishness, soon transpiring to a coherent study of caresses, circles light and sweeping across her diaphragm. With dexterity inherent of a feline, soft kneading bunched the tank up, flicked aside the button-down just below her breasts.

Baryshnikov grace found him on one knee between her legs, the other stretched behind in balance, nothing in thought but the sculpture of idolized art beneath his fingers, his lips. Gently they soothed the radiating flesh beneath. A sense of awe kept him a hair's breadth from contact at most points. Gliding fingers and palms hovered over her sides, tracing in heat the slight ridges of ribs beneath. Each shallow exhalation drew them in deeper relief.

His breath… steady by design, but pulse erratic and resounding and responding.

Barely he registered when her arms moved from at-side to above her head, draping the pillow she lay on. Giving him access free and clear to her.

Trailing down the central meridian, from Heart to Navel to Central Chakras, their silent blessing held ritual adoration and reverence.

The scar was plump and soft, distinguishable in its flaws, and yet more the beautiful for its very existence. It was beautiful; she was beautiful. Confident in all things, yet never realizing the appeal of the woman she was beneath the masques of sarcasm and defenses. Words would fall upon deaf ears; his lips must find a different path of communication. His tongue sought to punctuate their wordless commentary. Teeth dotted the i's.

She shivered and tensed and convulsed, and it woke in him the spark of a fire he demanded himself keep banked and hidden. Allowing himself moments more, his speech made its way nearly to navel, gesturing respect and begging forgiveness in each fleck of touch. Each wisp of air between them.

Scent indefinable. Mesmerizing. A comfort in recollection of a less complicated past with the one he could be most honest with. In all things but one. And in that one, his damned honor won out.

Abruptly he stopped, a weeping weariness overshadowing the strained control. He bowed his forehead, nearly wilting upon her belly in submission to the inevitable. He was honor-bound; this had to stop.

There was a fourth sin, he realized absentmindedly, as he braced and leaned across to whisper in her ear, effort steadying his voice.

"Get some rest, Mary." Lithely he regained footing and padded softly across the room. He'd broken the Cardinal Rule and had shown his hand. That could never be taken back, never excused as their quirky tête-à-têtes. He'd admitted his feelings thoroughly and irrevocably.

But tomorrow they'd pretend this never happened. That was Mary; something she couldn't process, something deep and personal, and it became a nonentity, some esoterical theory. But not real. This didn't happen. For her, this wasn't the Unnamable.

Snatching up his jacket as he eased silently through the door, a thought struck Marshall, and as the gentle, soft click of the latch sounded behind him, he smiled wanly.

Lao Tzu, the Old Sage, had also once said, Express yourself completely, then keep quiet.

He was silent in his retreat down the hallway. He'd said his piece.