Title: II: Twelve Inches Author: Dust E-mail: okonak@city-net.com Rating: R [John likes cussin' cuz it's manly.] Category: S/D UT (You can decide whether or not the UT is sexual.) Spoilers: Season 8 Keywords: S/D Disclaimer: I love these characters -- but they are not mine. They are the collective property of Chris Carter/1013 & Fox. Feedback: Bring it on. Summary: In trying to understand his own feelings about women and relationships, Doggett inadvertently helps Scully understand Mulder. Author's Note: Twelve Inches overlaps with The Light from Corners and then picks up where it left off. JD's POV. For the purposes of this series: Mulder is still gone & Scully has miscarried. Acknowledgements: This one's for my Master Betas, Kate & Mischa, who have big brains and bigger hearts. And Kabbie, my very favorite Barkeep. * This is life's sorrow: That one can be happy only where two are; And that our hearts are drawn to stars Which want us not. -- from "Herbert Marshall" (E.L. Masters' Spoon River Anthology) * John Doggett knows he's no dummy. Yeah -- maybe he's never really understood Oscar Wilde, but these days he wonders if Wilde understood himself. Doggett read Wilde in college, when his friends called him, by turns, Cactus and Bullet. His friends had names like T-Bone and Stick. They drank a lot of beer and watched a lot of stars from the beds of pickup trucks that smelled like red clay. They saw The Deer Hunter six times. And then Stick told Doggett he looked like Christopher Walken, and Doggett kicked his ass. The college thing -- it wasn't his scene. Especially the lit classes. He had this one lady professor named Margaret. Students were wait-listed for her classes, because Margaret had really great legs. That was her hook. Maybe her only hook, because who gives a rat's ass about nineteenth-century British literature, right? All those fainting women and starving orphans and purple prose. The death scenes were seventeen pages long -- on average. He still wonders if Margaret's classes emptied out when she started to wrinkle. Margaret loved Oscar Wilde, and one day, when she was talking about the abuses he suffered at the hands of prison wardens, she started to cry. Just a little, but everybody knows that a teacher only has to cry a little to make a class nervous. Someone's chair creaked, and then it was three o'clock, and the class dissolved into overzealous chatting and flirting. That night, Doggett skipped the beer and went to the library. No shit. He read about Oscar Wilde until the place shut down. Well -- until he fell asleep on a stack of books. Oscar Wilde -- the dude was gay. But more importantly, he was a liar. And Margaret thought he was just the damnedest thing since sliced bread. And that's when John Doggett began to cultivate his home- grown philosophies about women and love. Women, he decided, love the guys who can't love them back. Margaret was in love with Oscar Wilde, who was a self-consumed fat fruity lying S.O.B. And dead. * Doggett is painfully aware of his own compulsive neatness, a by-product of boot camp. (The total institution is the most effective re-socialization agent -- that's what his wife used to say.) He slides the book -- The United States Marine Corps Workout -- into its slot, between The Vietnam Experience and Amphibious Operations. His books are organized alphabetically by author. He considers reorganizing them -- perhaps they should be sorted alphabetically by category. And then alphabetically by author within those categories. Maybe he needs to label the shelves. He has 732 books. But he can also run seven miles in combat boots -- with a loaded weapon and a full pack. He needs to remind himself of this. Are you still a man, he wonders, if you use a feather duster? He thinks about Wilde's ruffled shirt cuffs - - then drops to the floor and does one-arm push-ups until he's too tired to remember how to count. * It is an aggressively spring day -- the air trips over itself with green excitement; the world fidgets. But if there are birds and lawn mowers he does not hear them. He hears bad brakes and the low moan of planes. And behind it, the white noise of loneliness -- the black hole buzz of extra rooms and household appliances. Sunday never felt like sorrow when he had a family. He remembers waking up for hash and Texas toast -- grilled with salted butter. He remembers strong coffee, bare feet, laundry, and lots of dramatic yawning. And later, Turtle Wax and baked pavement, the hose water catching rainbows while he washed the truck. He remembers that Sunday seemed to roll itself out in all directions. In his head, it was always spring and sixty-five degrees. Sunday was possibility. * He was on the brink of sleep -- falling into that hazy half-dream place--when his wife's delicate tremors shook him awake. "Are you cold?" he asked. "No," she said. Her voice seemed to crack open and his blood began to pound in time with her shaking. "What is it?" he managed. "It's everyday. It's not knowing if you'll make it home." He was surprised to hear her play the cop's wife. She was a fatalist and an adrenaline addict. "I don't fear death," she said. "But I fear loss -- I fear more of it." This wasn't about him; it was about Luke. "Didn't anyone tell you?" he said. "I'm bulletproof." She laughed a little. Sniffled twice. But she kept her back to him. They divorced -- quietly -- within the month. He understood her reasons. If she let him go, no one could take him away. * He remembers the space between her shoulder blades, but he has nearly forgotten her face. * The way he sees it, he and Agent Scully interact on two levels. They watch themselves talk to the badly- acted surface versions of themselves -- the cold scientist and the tough cop, the stuff of bad jokes and worse sitcoms. He scoffs and swears, she clucks and huffs, they butt heads and go home. But there is something else -- something subterranean. The infrequent but mutual glances -- the skittish moments when their old pains betray them. * He is the kind of lonely that leads to breaking things. First glass and then bone. * Some smart-ass profiler he worked with back in New York used to go off about his "research" -- men, he said, have suicidal fantasies more often than women, and their fantasies are statistically more violent. Blah blah blah. No shit, Sherlock. Doggett imagines impaling himself on something unconventional, like a giant post-modern sculpture of a clothespin. He imagines doing it in front of Agent Scully. Christ Almighty. The more he thinks about it -- that profiler looked like a hamster in a suit coat. With a face like frogskin. * Every morning, he gets her a brown coffee in a brown cup. She never drinks it. But she has yet to toss it in his face. Usually he keeps low and sets it on the corner of her desk. But this morning -- she reaches out to take the cup. Impossible? Her fingers touch his. And the light in the room gets warmer; her desk is ground zero. At 10:07 am she cracks a joke. It's a dumb joke about a lawyer and the Pope and Bill Gates and she tells it badly, but they laugh together -- nervously, at first, both of them pretending that the walls are terribly interesting. But then the laughter tumbleweeds, gets round and full, and she hiccups, and neither of them can stop. It's the punchy laughter of relief and exhaustion, the laughter of two people who have died and come back but still don't believe in that sort of thing. For different reasons, of course. * At 12:13 pm he catches her trying to balance a pencil on its chalky eraser. He wonders about the space between her shoulder blades. He thinks about the notches in her spine, the comet-tail scar at the base of her neck, the snake compassing her tailbone. He could cover the diameter of her waist if he fanned his hand out. His fingers tingle. "Hey," he says. "Let's get lunch." * It is the first time they have shared an unnecessary meal. They gravitate to the small deli a few blocks away, because parking is a bitch, government tags or no. John Doggett wishes it were dinner, because the place has some great beer. Beer so good he's getting buzzed just thinking about it. Margaret, who spent too much time in Europe, used to ask her afternoon classes if they were sleepy with wine. "It isn't depraved to drink before noon," she'd laugh, "as long as you're not drinking alone." "Or straight from the bottle," he'd added one day. She'd seemed to enjoy that. He pours a generous amount of hot sauce on his sweet potato fries. Scully raises an eyebrow -- it's a reflex. "They have mints here, right?" A cresent-moon smile. He smirks. "You like Oscar Wilde?" he says. *Shit.* He didn't really mean to ask. Scully stops assaulting her salad, sets her fork down -- surprised."Oscar Wilde? As in nineteenth century writer and renegade aesthete?" "That's what I said." "I have no idea where this is going, Agent Doggett. But I'll bite." She pauses. "I'm intrigued by -- if dubious about -- the idea that life imitates art. I think Wilde had to believe that -- I think it was more than a philosophically indulgent thought. I think he had to believe that he could write a safe world for himself -- since there was no place for homosexuals in the real one." "Okay -- but do you like his stuff?" "His characters are rarely *emotionally* engaging, but his writing is remarkably clever." "Agent Scully, this ain't no thesis defense. I'm asking: do you like the man's work?" "It's been a while. But yes. Yes -- I think I do. Why?" It's his turn to pause. He decides to spill. To hell with the calculated bullshit. "I took this Victorian lit class in college," he begins. "To fulfill a general req. Anyway. I had this lady teacher -- she was fascinating. She loved Oscar Wilde. I mean, this lady had a serious preoccupation with the guy. But she liked him *too* much. He didn't make any sense to me, because she couldn't explain him honestly, you know? Couldn't teach him with any objectivity. So one night I went to the library and read about the man. I stayed up all night thinking about him. I dreamed about the bastard. And the next day, it's like everything was different." "In what way?" "I guess you'd call it disillusionment or something. But I started believing that people -- smart people, capable people -- get transfixed by their own ideas, and that the ideas get in the way of living. And in Margaret's case, her ability to teach -- to do her job. This woman -- she wasn't much older than me. She had her PhD. A smart cookie. And real good-looking. But she was lonely, because she couldn't get outta her own head. She spent all her time convincing herself that Wilde was infallible. Thinking about that, I got cynical -- about people. About women. Relationships, y'know?" "Agent Doggett -- that's remarkable." "What?" "Not to trivialize your epiphany -- but it's great story. You've just told me a poignant coming- of-age narrative that's not about cars or baseball or masturbation." "Yeah, well." His embarrassment catches him. "You got a story like that?" "Like yours?" "Yeah." "No -- all of my stories are about cars and baseball and masturbation." Deadpan. "C'mon, Agent." He grabs the check. "I'm buying. But it'll cost you a story." She leans back in her chair, crosses her arms. "Alright. It's about smoking." "Pot?" he asks. "Cigarettes." * They take the long way back because she wants to see the cherry blossoms. "The trees," she says, "were a turn-of-the-century gift from Japan. I think." Her voice seems to lift above car horns and mufflers. She's looking up, not watching traffic. He watches for her. They stop outside of headquarters, a hulking mess of pointless bureaucratic geometry. "Wilde," she says, "is Mulder." She speaks the words directly after processing them. Doggett can tell, because she's using her slightly stunned hypothesis voice -- flat and urgent. "When Wilde was on trial for his...indiscretions, he couldn't bring himself to respect the legal process. He was flip and ironic until death. He could have saved himself -- he could have played along. But -- what did he say? When he was under oath?" "What didn't he say, right?" She continues. "I can't remember exactly. But I think Wilde would have argued that we have the ability, not just to construct, but to consume and destroy one another with words, ideas, images, ideologies. Wilde himself was, in a sense, first enjoyed and then destroyed by others' inventions of him. Wilde was an individual -- but he got lost behind the cruelty and stereotype of his critics. I don't think it's too much to say that he was crucified in a collective and paranoid effort to maintain a constructed reality about deviance and normalcy. But I don't think it's too much to say that he could have -- should have -- given in. Just a little. Enough to buy his life back. I can't imagine that artistic politics matter when you're dead." "That's a goddamn mouthful, professor. And I wish I could tell you you're right, but I didn't -- don't -- know Mulder." She smiles at his knees. "Hey," he says. "Thanks." "For what?" "Making sense of Wilde. Or trying to. You lost me at the end -- that stuff about crucifixion." "I should have left the religious iconography out of it." She squints away the pink May sun and shifts her weight. She's hesitant, indecisive. He waits -- it feels like a high-stakes poker game. Or maybe just a staring contest. "Thank *you*," she finally says, "for making sense of *Mulder*. For finding him." "I didn't --" "Be gracious. Just say 'you're welcome.'" "You're welcome." They stand facing one another. They are separated by a foot of spring air. Twelve inches -- it's not much.