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AUTHOR: Suture
RATING: NC-17 lite
CATEGORY: Post-ep for "Never Again."
S/O. Angst.
FEEDBACK: Pretty please?
DISCLAIMER: Mulder, Scully, Melissa, and Ed
Jerse don't belong to me. The title "Two Characters in Search
of a Country Song" comes from a Magnetic Fields song of the
same name. It can be found on the fabulous album "The Charm
of the Highway Strip."
You were just like me,
You were one big
bruise,
In the game of life
we were playing to lose.
You were Jesse James.
I was William Tell.
You
were Daniel Webster. I was the Devil himself.
Two characters in search of a country song,
Just make believe we're so in love.
Two characters been listening
all night long
To voices from Nashville above.
The Magnetic Fields
xxxxxxxxxx
1. She used to love the in-between time just after sex and
right before sleep. Senses thrumming, she sometimes whispered
snatches of poetry. Verweile doch, du bist so schon: a command to
the present moment to stand still. Once, punch-drunk on bliss and
the rub of flannel sheets against her skin, she'd warbled her way
through "I Get a Kick Out of You." Even with a relative
stranger, the moments after had always pulsed with sheer intimacy.
Tonight, though, the presence of foreign bodies in the bed and
in her own body conspired to keep her nerves taut. Her limbs
arranged like good soldiers in parade formation, she lay still and
tried to will herself to sleep. She tried not to think about death
hissing its way through her blood. She tried not to think about
which part of whose body was responsible for the wet spot near her
knee. She tried not to think about the cause-and- effect linking
wet spots and traitorous bodies. Next to her, her partner in crime
turned in his sleep, brushed a hand against her hip, and mumbled
"Cindy" before starting to snore again.
She wasn't offended. If a beam of light can sear itself onto
the eye as an afterimage, surely marriage must leave a
longer-lasting mark on the psyche. Judging by the
cigarette-mutilated picture, the drinking, and the brash tattoo,
Ed was a recent and reluctant divorcee. Besides, she would have
looked frantically around this darkened room for a third party if
he had called her "Dana."
"Cindy," he rasped and kicked against the sheets like
a baby struggling against too-tight swaddling clothes. She
resisted the urge to hum a lullaby. After all, it had only been
half an hour since they'd performed acts on each other that were
still on the law-books in some states.
"Shh, it's okay," she whispered. "It's okay.
Ed." His name felt clipped and awkward in her mouth. She was
too used to "Mulder" with its liquid "l" and
swallowed "r." Apparently marriage and beams of light
were not the only phenomena that could leave a lasting impression.
"Go back to sleep Ed. Everything's fine." He settled
back into a peaceful sleep. She lay awake wondering when sleep
would finally claim her.
2.
Despite the racy bravado of its name, the Hard Eight was a
seriously schizoid place. At the bar, two sad-sack barflies
slumped on their stools and nursed yet another round. A ragged
phalanx of mugs and shot glasses stood in front of them,
casualties of the war against life's hard knocks. A trio of punks
held court in a corner booth like exiled princes waiting for the
seventies' second coming. Two women who obviously worshipped at
the altar of eighties' excess split their time between flirting
with the bartender and giving Ed the once-over.
She sipped at a valiant impersonation of a Daiquiri, wondering
where she and Ed fit in this anthropological madhouse. A bead of
condensation made its way down the stem of her glass. Ed fixed her
with the indiscriminately appreciative glance peculiar to the
truly smashed.
In the background, two voices warbled in off-kilter
counterpoint, "No harsh chords on the car radio."
Someone had to say something soon.
"So what makes this a good place to go when you're feeling
down?"
"Oh, it's kind of. . .Everyone here looks like their
problems are worse than mine. Makes me feel good about
myself," he said. On another night she would have found his
self-pity irritating. She would have measured his vague, halting
words against the well-turned paragraphs that poured out of
Mulder's mouth. She would have smiled politely and said, " I
had a nice time" but not "Let's do this again."
Tonight, however, she found herself chewing her straw and telling
stories about fathers and thirteen-year olds` attempts at
rebellion.
Ed leaned in closer. "I want things more like a straight
line, and I don't ever want to go backward," he confided.
"That's why I got the tattoo I deserve. Marked the moment,
the feeling ... memorial of something that I never want to have
happen again." His heat and his vodka-scented breath made her
head spin.
"I want to see it," she told him and discovered that
she wanted to feel the starch of his shirt and the smooth skin
underneath.
Dark eyes moist and earnest, he said, "You know, Dana,
just 'cause I marked the moment wanting to go forward doesn't mean
that it worked." The sadness in his voice hurt her. She could
recognize the ballad of thirty something bewilderment running
underneath his words. It was a song she knew all too well. After
all, she was the proud owner of the extended
Mutants/Abduction/Conspiracy/Cancer remix.
In an attempt to brush away the sudden melancholy, she reached
for him. "I want to see it." Her voice sounded too loud
and artificial in her ears. Flirting, it seemed, was not like
riding a bike.
He grabbed her hand and said in a raw-silk voice, "You're
so curious. Get your own."
Something gave in the pit of her stomach.
3.
The last time she had been in a tattoo parlor her mouth had
been filled with the aftertaste of bad tequila and her right
nipple had felt as if it were on fire. Missy stood next to her
giggling and shrieking, "Oh my God Dana! I can't believe
you're actually doing this!" As the tattooist-cum-piercist
slipped a small gold stud in place, Missy yelped, "Shit Dana.
You're crushing my fingers!" Outside in the street they had
linked arms and belted every Jimmy Buffett song they could
remember. Missy had just gotten back from Nepal and she had just
finished her final year of med school.
She wanted someone to hold her hand as the needle buzzed and
bit into her skin. Ed stood in front of her, eyes locked with
hers. He had lost his furtive, little-boy lost look and the air
between them shimmered pheromone-heavy.
"She wants the same red. Like mine," he had said. She
felt comforted. Unlike a piercing that closed up in concession to
an older lover's request, the brightness of this red would never
fade. Before she got too thin, she would wear a tummy-baring tank
top so everybody could see her tattoo. She arched her back a
little and felt her nipples harden. The pleasure/ pain border is
never easy to demarcate, serious, intense Max told her when she
was nineteen and so sore after nights with him.
Desire hit her so hard she started shaking.
4.
She couldn't stop touching the tiny swell of stomach that
signaled the beginning of a paunch. She had bypassed long legs and
arms, soft skin, and a smooth chest for a belly. Ed smiled in
embarrassment and tried to divert her attention elsewhere. "I
spend all day sitting at a desk," he told her, pinning her
beneath him so he could nuzzle between her breasts. "I should
start running again, otherwise I'll be forty with a big beer-
gut."
She wanted to tell him why she fixated on that fold of flesh.
Ed didn't have to keep his body combat-ready the way she and
Mulder did. Ever since the Pfaster case, she made it a point to
put in an hour at the gym every day of the week. She knew Mulder
ran at least a mile a day, swam, played basketball, and lifted
weights. They were both probably in the best shape of their lives.
Yet, sometimes when she caught their reflection in a storefront
window, she couldn't admire their sculpted bodies. Where a
stranger would see good muscle tone and superb cardiovascular
fitness, she only saw the feral tenseness of a strung-out grunt or
the terrible asceticism of a mad monk. The things she and Mulder
had confronted precluded the possibility of any middle-age spread.
So she was glad for the soft innocence of Ed's stomach the way she
was glad for a baby's dimpled knee. Sliding out his grasp, she
pressed a kiss against his stomach.
Ed hissed softly and his penis twitched in response to her
proximity. "Unless you want this to be over in a few minutes,
I think you'd better let me kiss you instead," he told her in
a choked voice.
She came back into his arms without further argument. His
mouth, she was glad to discover, had no distinctive taste. She
could feel skilled lips and a questing tongue, but could not taste
a trace of vodka or cigarettes or any flavor that would remind her
of him tomorrow. She threaded her fingers through his hair and
tried to lose herself deeper in his mouth as a long-forgotten
wetness pooled between her legs.
"How do you want to do this, Dana?" he moaned against
her ear. Tuning out the strangeness of hearing her name, she
pushed up onto her hands and knees and looked back at him.
Judging from the way his eyes glazed over, she doubted he had
any complaints.
He slid into her fast and hard, grabbing her hips in a grip
that would leave bruises tomorrow. She tried to meet him thrust
for thrust despite her limited mobility. It took her a moment to
realize that she was making that strange keening noise. She was so
close now, but he couldn't tell. She slid three fingers into her
folds and started to pump, bracing herself as best she could on
one arm. Lost in his own impending orgasm, Ed growled and bit her
shoulder. That was enough to send her over the edge in a short,
sharp spurt of pleasure. Ed shuddered and collapsed on top of her.
After a minute, he felt too heavy and she moved away to curl up
on her side.
5.
When she finally did fall asleep, she dreamt that she was back
in the tattoo parlor with Mulder. Someone was tattooing her notes
from the Pudovkin case on her back. Line by line. Word for word.
Pain coursed through her and she kept protesting, "But there
is no case." Mulder stood next to her, hand outstretched,
face wracked with grief.
"Take my hand Scully," he begged. "Please."
Anger welled in her. "Not everything is about you,
Mulder," she told him and watched as his tears started to
fall.
She woke up to the taste of her own tears. |