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AUTHOR: Suture
RATING: R
CATEGORY: Post-ep for "The
Truth." V, A
FEEDBACK: Oh yes. Please.
SPOILERS: No specific
spoilers.
SUMMARY: A snapshot of what early
to middle period Mulder and Scully on the lam may look like. The
Hardboiled Fairy made me do it.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own these
characters, and I'm not sure anybody wants to own this
version.
ARCHIVE: Anywhere and let me know
if possible.
There's nothing between us but sex anymore.
The little man responsible for editing my
thoughts takes his red pen and writes "Overwrought" in
the margins. The femme fatale I seem to be channeling twenty-four
seven these days picks up one of her fuck-me stiletto heels and
cold-cocks him.
At least he makes the voyage into la-la land
with a smile on his face.
Mulder and I hurtle down another long, flat
interstate highway in a pickup truck that smells too much of him
and me and Wendy's SuperValue meals. He drives as if we're very
late for an important date. He drives as if he wants to get away
from me.
I lick my lips and try to figure out whether
I'm tasting salt leftover from my lunchtime french fries or my
post-lunchtime blowjob. Then I decide it's not a very important
distinction and close my eyes against the never-changing brown
fields.
On the radio, some French woman croons about
Bonnie and Clyde the way the French always seem to do.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I used to think we belonged to the realm of
epic, Mulder and me. He was Odysseus, wily and resilient in the
face of calamitous fortune. Aeneas forced to carry the weight of
his family's sins on his broad, broad shoulders. I was a Penelope
for the postmodern, postfeminist twenty-first century. Pro-active
and able to take a bad-guy out with a clean shot between the eyes
from twenty yards away.
Fast forward to the present. In the
aftermath of abductions, resurrections, pregnancy, and
separations, we act like characters from a pulp novel or a
monotonous on-the-road porn film. Against the wall. Over the
bathroom counter. On the floor. Anywhere but in bed where we keep
to our respective sides and twitch in our own private nightmares.
Tonight, I'm bent over a cheap,
walnut-stained dresser, trying hard not to look at the shuttered
woman in the mirror. Mulder moves me behind me, silent and
relentless. I throw my head back and see the tendons in my neck
stand out as if in agony.
Nobody ever told me ecstasy looks so much
like pain.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Late at night, I watch Mulder sleep and
think things that would make Freud faint. Mulder has William's
fine, brown eyebrows, his too-large mouth, his gawky, skewed nose.
Mulder sleeps like William does, limbs sprawled in abandon. The
curve of his jaw is William's.
Somebody once said that family resemblances
are ghostly. Look at any family photo and you can see the same
eye-colors, nose-shapes, cheekbones and expressions appear and
disappear like phantoms. Inheritance is an uncanny game of
hide-and-seek and, when the game's gone on too long and you're the
only "it" left, what you reap is sorrow and pain.
I keep looking for the son in the father
anyways, even as I straddle Mulder's hips and rock myself into
oblivion at a deserted rest-stop. He stares at me intently with
those chameleon graygreenbrowngold eyes and for a moment I wonder
to myself who put those stranger's eyes in William's face.
Outside our pick-up cabin, the heat rises in
unforgiving waves. Sweat trickles down the slope of my breasts and
Mulder bends his head to lick it away. His tongue rasps sandpaper
rough against my skin. He takes a swollen nipple into his mouth
and I realize he makes the same dove-soft grunts William used to
make.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
When I think about sex now, I think about it
in the crude, vapid language of Penthouse fantasies and 1-900
numbers.
Cock. Suck. Fuck. Clit. Baby.
As if he can read my mind, Mulder never
calls me by name anymore when he comes. He sinks his teeth into my
shoulder, the side of my neck, my breast and muffles his groans.
Sometimes I moan, but it sounds too much like a dirge to my ears.
So, if pressed, I babble a stream of "yes's" and toss my
head from side to side. Or, I try for safe, neutral words.
Hot. Wet. Hard. There. More.
I don't think this distance between us is
permanent. A fatal crack in a relationship supposedly forged from
unbreakable steel. I'm not a melodramatic teenager or some
hard-bitten gangster's moll in a cut-rate Humphrey Bogart film.
Someday, I'll look across the table in some greasy fast-food
restaurant and see the man I love again in his own, singular
beauty. Maybe, someday I'll even be able to look at family photos
of Mulder, William, and me and watch as we change over the course
of years.
In the meantime, I press my lips against
Mulder's thigh and tongue at the soft skin. If I listen hard
enough, I can hear an echo of the things we used to say to each
other.
Please. Scully. Mulder. Love.
Author's Notes: This
vignette came out of an email exchange where I was ranting about
how "The Truth" seemed to have summarily shut off my MSR
creative juices. I loved the poorly lit passionate kiss as much as
the next good fan, but that scene gave me severe MSR writer's
block. So, I tried to work it out in the paragraphs above.
Apologies to anyone who's tired of the angst. |