TITLE: No Prince Charming
AUTHOR: Susanne Barringer
EMAIL: sbarringer@usa.net
ARCHIVE: Anywhere okay with these headers attached.
CATEGORY: V
KEYWORDS: Mulder/Scully UST
SUMMARY: Sometimes perfection isn't all it's cracked up to be.
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: Nothing specific
DISCLAIMER: Not my characters. Just borrowed from Chris
Carter, 1013, and Fox. No infringement intended.
Thank you to Sue and Alanna for beta-reading.
________
No Prince Charming
by Susanne Barringer
He's no Prince Charming. It would be absurd to love a man who is
so flawed. I mean really flawed. Not just leaving the toilet seat up
or biting his fingernails. I mean flaws that run so deep they're
indistinguishable from the soul. Flaws that are mirrored in every
word, every action, every decision the man makes.
He certainly doesn't have a reputation for being perfect. I wonder if
people realize how far away from it he truly is. Enough to drive me
insane. Disappearing without a word, slamming the door when he's
angry, acting like a spoiled child when things don't go his way. And
so much more. The man is a walking nightmare of psychotic
insecurity and obsessive overconfidence, a true paradox. He makes
no sense. No sense at all.
One day I think he loves me. He looks at me with a torrent of
tenderness and passion, like some kind of romantic hero out of an
adolescent flight of fancy. Add a white steed or a loincloth and he'd
be every woman's fantasy. The perfect man. The promise of the
perfect lover. Next day he's ditching me to pursue some crazy
dream. Monsters or ghosts or beings from the stars. Nothing's
more important than evidence, experience, anything to prove that
he's right. A personified oxymoron, this man. Never consistent,
never predictable. Flawed. Beautiful.
Women watch him, follow him with their eyes. Their desire stakes
a claim on him, wishing for his attention, hoping to turn his head.
His tunnel vision bypasses every one of them every time. I see in
their eyes what they think of him. They imagine him perfect--
perfect in their world, perfect in their bed, making them come
perfectly over and over again. Even I know better than that,
though not from experience. Can't they see the flaws? I face them
everyday, every minute, coping with the craziness, the obsession,
the fabulous wonder of it all.
I envy those women who can look him over, molest him with their
eyes in a way that I never can. The glass slipper never fits. He is
flawed. He is not my Prince Charming. I have tried to convince
myself of that since the first day I laid eyes on him. It was easier
then, when his lunacy and paranoia dominated my perception of
him. When I hadn't learned to dig deep beneath the self-assurance
and arrogance to find the small child, the man barely alive, carefully
concealed under the surface of perfect insanity. I have since come
to understand that, despite my denials, he must be my fated Prince,
flaws and all. If that makes me cursed, so be it. I'll swim and dive
and romp in the curse. To love the less than perfect man can only
be the truest kind of love. He passed imperfect a long time ago. I
passed idealism right about the same time.
The man is obsessive about work, about his X-Files, about record
keeping. He is sloppy about everything else. His suits never quite
fit right. There's always that slight sag in the rear, the shoulders a
bit too broad, the hem that never falls where it should. His
apartment is some kind of organized whirlwind of memories and
newspaper clippings and empty sunflower-seed shells. He can't
remember a birthday or holiday to save his life, but he knows
practically every X-File by heart. Some would say his priorities are
in the wrong place, but I have never found that to be true. He has a
heart of gold when it comes right down to it, opening it up to those
who are most persecuted, most vulnerable. Perhaps he sees himself
in them, tormented and so incredibly defenseless. Still the twelve-
year-old boy who lost everything in one tragic night and has spent a
lifetime trying to get at least some of it back. He is driven by the
hope of recapturing the infinitely lost, trying to recover the past,
thinking that Samantha is still waiting for him to rescue her. That is
the flaw that most envelops him, the one that can never be repaired.
It is, in the end, what is least resistible.
And so, my resistance fades by the month, the year. No Prince
Charming, but somehow mine. I am drawn to him by the promise
of what could be but has yet to come. There is no shining armor or
lavish castle with this man. His brand of love brings much less, yet
so much more. True faith and trust, loyalty, connection. I have
nothing concrete to show for it, not a thing, yet I would give up all
I have for just a little more of it, for just the smallest taste of the
happily ever after that is owed to us. Our enemies vanquished, the
dragons slain, the wicked stepmother dead and buried. That is
what we live for, he and I, no more, no less. As far as fairy tales
go, we have hardly begun.
END
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