Work Text:
“Yes Nic, I’m shutting the phone off now. I’ll check back in with you, in no sooner than 26 hours. Bye!”
I turned my phone off, slipped it into the desk drawer, and smiled. Then sighed. I really am getting better at making the best of my doctor’s suggestions, though at the same time...well, you could never accuse Alex Reagan of wanting the simple life.
I turned to take a sip of the wine that had already been poured out before the call. I guess in a way, I’m really starting to look forward to these 24 hour electronic fasts. “You know,” murmured my annoying doctor, when I first balked at the idea of a weekly fast, “many observant Jews do this every week on the Sabbath. It’s a way to reconnect with the non-digital world. Read a book, eat a good meal, spend hours around a dinner table. You will find that you’ll sleep better - you may even get into the habit of naps. Let’s try it for two months.” So now, on Saturday nights (it’s the slowest day of my work week) the phone gets shut off after leaving my laptop at the office, I drink some wine, and enjoy a period film (it was a compromise after I pointed out that watching Elizabeth or another film with lush costumes on the television was hardly the same as surfing the net), while enjoying take-out and whatever dessert I picked up earlier that day. The first Saturday night and Sunday were...pleasant enough. I’d even managed a bit of a snooze while watching a few episodes of Poldark. It just seemed a ridiculous and archaic request, and by the end of the day, the stress of wondering about missed phone calls began to have the opposite effect that the doctor was seeking for me.
I said as much to Strand the next day, and was surprised that he didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand immediately. Rituals have power, he explained, they work on our psyche, bring communities together and have an impact, he said, not because of an imaginary deity, but because of the behavior that results - in this case, the enforced cessation of work and avoidance of outside distractions with the internet, television, telephones ensure people interact with each other face to face, meaning that social and familial bonds are strengthened on a weekly basis, and….
“So you don’t think it’s a ridiculous idea, Richard? I’m surprised.”
“Not at all. And in your case, it certainly can’t hurt. Tell you what - why don’t you come over this Saturday? We could both use an enforced break from research, and Sunday we can meet up, anywhere you like.”
So Strand, unlike myself, has taken to these like a duck to water. The first week, he orders pizza and the next day, walk around a lake local to my place. The second week, we met at my apartment where I provided Chinese and both Elizabeth films, and do brunch the following day at a tiny place away from both our homes. He talks about his Sunday afternoons filled with books that had been gathering dust when we work together during the week, finding these breaks not only restful, but beneficial for his neglected love of early 20th century academic writings. He thanks me for including him. I’m not feeling as replenished.
The third week is hell.
I’d realized several things:
I am sexually frustrated, and this isn’t helping, because contrary to popular belief, I actually do not sleep with the people I’m working with. Even if I want to.
I’m not distracted enough to let go of the telephone stress. I’m lonely enough on Sunday that I obsess over missed calls and emails. With the exception of my sabbatical, I work 7 days a week, usually.
Richard is interested in me, and isn’t going to do anything, for the same reasons I won’t.
I’m rained in at Richard’s. I’m trapped at least until morning.
Like I said, Hell.
I’d just made the weekly “I’m shutting my phone off” call to Nic, dropped said phone on the end table, and stomped into the kitchen to grab a beer and think, only to find Strand at the sink, arms crossed, staring at me. I stopped short, staring back, and decided to just push past him to grab that beer. After I did, his hand darted out and grabs me. “Wait. We have to talk. This,” he says, gesturing between us, “needs to be dealt with. We’re both adults. Can we please sit down and do this, now.” He moved around me and sat at the table, where he’d already had an open bottle of his own waiting.
Well, fuck.
I’ve only got two choices, and since I love to complicate my life, I sit.
And we talked.
We talked for hours, through the night. At some point, we’d heated cans of chicken soup, and ate them as we spoke. We discussed the issues with getting involved, because there were ethical and moral issues - after all, I am the journalist working on a long term story where he is the subject, and as he pointed out, I’ve already had my integrity questioned by my friend and producer; not good. We’ve both got baggage around religion, though it’s very different, and it will cause friction - he is an absolute atheist, and I come from a religious family, and while agnostic, I do fear the demons I investigate. He has no desire for marriage or long term monogamy as he has already done that. Neither one of us expects forever, so we needed to be clear about whether any risk was worth it for this being right, right now. What we did know was that we were about to implode, at best, or explode, at worst, and the latter could impact all of PNWS. We also knew that the current situation could not continue as it was. It was too much.
We were too much.
Our age was never a concern - twenty years is nothing when I’m closer to 40 than 30, and he’s closer to 50 than 60. We also set clear rules - never at the office, never while travelling for work. Never while around anything that vaguely hints at work. We can have these “sabbaths” as it were. The occasional weeknight at one of our homes, if work allowed. Most importantly, no one could ever know. We’ve crashed at each other’s places often enough that no one would raise an eyebrow; an entire weekend away would be harder to explain.
That was two weeks ago.
Now, from Saturday night until Sunday night, we are each other’s alone. Our phones are off, my car keys are put away, and we get to indulge with no distractions, to touch, taste, and to fuck if we want, freely, with no one to answer to. Tonight, he started “North and South” while I finished up my call, and has some snacks on the coffee table to get us through the four hour series. Richard takes off my shoes, making sure to massage each foot in turn. He places me on the floor between his knees, after I’ve changed into a tank top, kneading my shoulders while Margaret and John work through a relationship even more fucked than ours. Twisting my hair into a bun,he decides to play with the fine hair at the back of my neck, allowing his fingers to dance and drag their way down my arms, teasing the hair he finds, watching it stand on end. “You aren’t wearing any perfume, are you?” he asks as he runs his nose along the pulse in my neck. “I could drown in the scent of you,” he tells me as he begins to nip his way up towards my ear, kiss the nape of my neck, and nuzzle the other side of my throat. He pulls me into his lap and stands with me, legs wrapped around his waist. As he lays me against the couch, we kiss as if trying to climb inside one another, a hint of blood flavoring the kiss - we’ve split our lips open with our teeth. As pants are pushed off with feet, condoms ripped open, and items kicked off of end tables, there is an edge of desperation that leaves me breathless. As I’m about to flip him over, he stops, and takes a deep breath. Resting his head against my shoulder, he tells me that he wants to make love in his bed, please.
Richard doesn’t look me in the eye as he asks.
His bedroom has become this sacred space where we leave the outside world behind, where after sex we both speak out loud those fears that usually live within, unspoken; neither one of us was expecting the intimacy of also exposing those parts of our souls too vulnerable to show to others. Richard likes to light candles and linger on all those body parts that make us feel uncomfortable - those stretch marks we first got on our thighs in college, the dimples and valleys from weight gained and lost too quickly.
It’s a sin, my mother told me, to worship anything but God. That’s the lesson of the Golden Calf, she reminds me one Sunday, after a sermon. To allow yourself to place money and other things on such a level that you would give up worship. I look down at Richard as his head is between my legs, working me towards the edge of orgasm, backing away, coming again. Is that what we are doing, here, in this space? I flip Richard over and lick the sweat from his chest, working my way down his body. I kiss his feet as I used to kiss the crucifix at Mass long ago on Good Friday. Swapping places yet again, Richard murmurs against my stomach, telling me I’m beautiful. He calls me a goddess. I laugh and ask him which one. He tells me I’m Freyja, goddess of sex and death, because the pace will eventually kill him. I place a condom on him with my lips and climb on, riding him slowly, until we both come. Afterwards, as we both have a glass of wine and as I lean against his chest, he’ll wrap his arms around me, and tell me that he understands that I’ll never be able to be with him completely. I cry in his arms as the sun comes up. I’d expected the mind-blowing sex after all of the frustration. I’d even expected attachments, because friends who fuck feel something, or they wouldn’t be fucking. I hadn’t expected this: the guilt, the flutter in my stomach when I looked at him at work, him crying as he showed me baby pictures of his daughter an hour ago. He tells me to sleep for now, that we’ll sort it out in the morning. “You wouldn’t be the woman you are if you didn’t worry,” he tells me as he tucks me in besides him. Our eyelids grow heavy from sex and wine, and I tell him I’m worried he’s placed me on a pedestal of some kind, despite our professional arguments.
North and South is still playing, and Margaret Hale is speaking in the background. “I wish I could tell you how lonely I am. How cold and harsh it is here. Everywhere there is conflict and unkindness. I think God has forsaken this place. I believe I have seen hell and it's white, it's snow-white.”
It feels like a premonition of some kind.
Richard wakes me up the next morning, breakfast in bed, and manages to distract me from the worries of the night before. We exist in an odd little bubble of bliss until evening, when we start to bitch at each other over insignificant things as night falls - glasses left unwashed, a shoe left in a path, burned pizza. We finally scream at each other his alarm clock goes off, telling us the fast is over. I don’t know what finally pushed us over the edge, but we went from his calling me a selfish bitch to a haze of angry make-up sex, the kind that just skirts the edge of pain and pleasure. We never make it to the bed, instead, we fuck against the living room wall, my legs wrapped around his back, his jeans leaving me sore where they rubbed against me, having just undone his pants enough to climb onto him, my skirt lifted and panties barely pushed aside, a hand behind my head when he hears a thump. We both come hard and fast, and collapse straight to the floor after.
Somehow, we make our way to the sofa. We’re both sore. Seems fitting after the emotional pain we’ve caused each other.
I encourage Richard to place his head on my lap, apologizing for my words. I stroke his hair, humming “Poison and Wine” as his eyes close, both of us crying quietly. Because I am a coward, I leave when he falls asleep after, worn from sex and drained emotionally. I grab my phone from the desk, kiss him gently, and step into my car, the pain between my legs a reminder of what I refused to deal with. I refuse to turn my phone back on, though. I’m not ready to face the actions of my consequences. I drive home on automatic, the route so well known that I don’t have to think about it.
I contemplate another sabbatical.
I wonder if we can salvage what we have, whatever it is.
I wonder if we will implode.
I wonder if I’m destined to be alone.
I try to ignore the voice coming from the dark, empty interior of my car telling me that I’ll never be alone, because they’ll always be with me.
I smile.