#leaving a mark

[grassmoncher]

Im gonna be real honest for a sec…

I wanna chew on someone.

[bookworm-returning]

Once, in my father's bookshop, I heard a regular customer say that few things leave a deeper mark on a reader than the first book that finds its way into his heart. Those first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or later - no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how much we learn or forget - we will return.

The shadow of the wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón

[littlepawz]

It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you leave your mark

[dracohoudini-blog]

More drawing on the chalkboard in my apartment building. I like to leave a mark.

[frangipanidownunder]

Tiny fic prompt: A kiss between M&S that starts innocently but turns into more, but doesn't begin a relationship for them (can be pre or post millennium, your choice).

Leaving a Mark: fic

Post Field Trip. Thanks for the prompt, gorgeous. This turned out much longer than I anticipated.

Quarantine over, Scully luxuriated in her own bath. She still felt a little weird, light-headed, as though the fungus was still in her system, squeezing reality from her brain cells and replacing it with vague fantasy. In one, she kissed Mulder. Or maybe he kissed her. It didn’t matter much, but the feeling was so intense that she had to stick her face in the freezer compartment to snap back to the now.

Lavender oil permeated the air, an aromatic replacement for the brackish, earthy scent that seemed to be trapped in her nasal memory. She pressed her nose into her shoulder and inhaled. When she lifted her face away, there was a flash of oozing yellow and she blinked back Mulder’s face, so close to hers she could see the diamond flecks in his eyes, the tiny charcoal dots of his whiskers. The mirage faded as quickly as it came. She walked to the kitchen, pulling the ties of her robes tighter, musing about calling Mulder to see if the hallucinations were still lingering for him.

Their minds must have still been connected because he knocked at her door and before she could grasp what was happening, he was leaning against her countertop, brooding in a black leather jacket and dark denim jeans.

“Are you…are you still feeling a little off, Scully?” His fingers drummed on the laminate and she couldn’t extract her gaze from his slender digits. The rhythm he made was hypnotic. She couldn’t think what to say to him, just rubbed at her temple. “Scully? Scully? Are you okay?”

His voice drifted back and forth around her. His hands braced her shoulders and she breathed in his cologne, concentrating on ridding herself of the rotten scent of that cave that filled her nostrils. Gradually, her vision focused. There was his face, as close as in her hallucination, his lips glistening, his broad nose flaring out, his eyes revealing concern for her.

“I’m fine,” she said, but he clearly didn’t believe her. He manoeuvred her round and leant her against the bench. The drawer handle dug into the small of her back. His spot. She opened her mouth to complain but he was no longer in front of her. In her mind, she saw the yellow slime dripping, tasted the salty, sulphurous gunge. She coughed it away.

Then Mulder was back, holding a glass of water for her. “Thank you.” It tasted eggy and she gagged, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. “I think the effects of the hallucinogen might last longer than predicted.”

“I’ve been having very vivid…um…dreams, I guess you’d call them.” He blushed slightly, and looked away.

“I think, as we discovered, that the…uh…hallucinations we shared…came from the deepest recesses of our subconscious and we cannot…uh…read too much into them.” Surely, she didn’t just want to be right all the time? And yes, Mulder wanted aliens to be real, but he was so much more than that. “If your…dreams…are of a…um, sensual, nature…perhaps it’s your brain replaying some of your…um video collection?”

He chuckled. “I’m the psychologist in this team, Scully, and I get it. I do. But they’re not wild porn fantasies. I’d like to think I’m deeper than just my video collection. No, they’ve been…um…dreams that strike closer to home.”

Oh. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. I mean, I’ve been imagining…seeing…familiar faces in the brief moments when I’ve been tired or…it’s to be expected. We were subjected to…”

“By familiar faces,” he said, edging closer to her, “do you mean me?” He rubbed at his nose. “Because I’ve been seeing nothing but your face and you and I…are…um…”

The downward tilt of his face caused an opposite and equal reaction in hers and their lips were millimetres apart, his nose skimming her cheek. “Kissing,” she said for him, but the word was pushed directly into his mouth and swallowed.

His hands clasped around her waist, pulling her close enough to feel the zipper of jacket through the fabric of her robe. She knew it would leave a mark, but maybe that would make it real.

His feet knocked against hers as he dipped lower. Her neck and shoulders strained as she reached up towards him. Her mouth opened, seeking more of his warmth, his tongue, his urgency. She couldn’t breathe, his nose pressed against hers, she tapped his chest with the heel of her hand and he sensed her need, because he shifted his face slightly, and she inhaled, clear, clean oxygen. Her breasts rose as she took in air and Mulder moaned, the reverberations sending sparks down her spine. His thumb traced her jawline and his fingers cupped the back of her head, under her hair. The weight of him, leaning over her, tasting her, was almost too much and her legs began to tremble. Again, he sensed her struggle and slowly, painfully, let her go, pressing one last gentle kiss against her. A full stop

“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” He was smiling as he muttered the words to her. “Um, that was…wow, okay.”

“Yes. Exactly. Wow. That was…that was,” she touched the bones under her neck, swallowed, aware of the taste of him still. “That was like my…”

“Hallucination? Mine too.” He stepped back, rolled his bottom lip under his teeth. “This can’t be real, Scully. We can’t…we aren’t…Are we still underground? Being digested?”

Her guts turned to ice. “Maybe. But the quarantine? Fourteen days. We’d be dead by now. Wouldn’t we?”

He shrugged. “You’re the doctor. Maybe this is heaven. I mean, that kiss…”

She dipped her head to smile at her feet. It was a pretty good kiss. Surpassed her hopes. “We should call Skinner.”

“Why? So he can feed into our delusions? No. We can’t involve anybody else. This is our problem.”

“Is it a problem?” She was struck by fear again. They shouldn’t have done it. They were partners, for God’s sake.

“No! No…of course not, that’s not what I meant, Scully. I wanted to kiss you. Very much. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, if I’m being honest. And I thought that you did…”

“Yes,” she cut in quickly. “Yes, I do. I did. Very much. But…”

“It’s complicated.” He fiddled with the ends of his jacket, pulling the tag up the zipper. “It was always going to be complicated.”

“The caught in a landslide, no escape from reality type of complicated?”

“I think so,” he chuckled, moving towards the door. “I should get going. I only came here to check on you.”

Yes. He had. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Are you fine?”

He grinned as his hand turned the knob. “I’m very fine, Scully. Very, very fine.”

“And tomorrow?”

His eyebrows rose. “Maybe it’ll be like it never happened?”

“Right.” Is that what she wanted? She didn’t know. 

“But, our subconscious will remember it, so that if we ever find ourselves in the position of kissing once more, we’ll know exactly what to do.”

She nodded. “The position of kissing.”

He dropped a small kiss on her cheek before walking out the door. She listened to his footsteps until they disappeared before heading back into the living room, where she found herself dialling his number, hooking the phone under her ear, eager to hear his voice.

“We’re not still underground, are we Mulder?” she asked him, his engine turning over in the background. “We’re not dead.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

He was back at the door before she knew what was happening and he took her face in both hands, kissing her deeply, before inching lower and running his tongue under her ear, down the line of her neck, over her hyoid, until he found a sweet spot along her collar bone. There he nipped, nuzzled and sucked until her nipples tightened and her head lolled back.

The mark bloomed dark red, broken capillaries flowering out. She pressed a pad of her finger to it, feeling it warm under her touch as blood pooled there. She was alive. They were alive. She laid back on her bed smiling until she fell asleep.

Tomorrow in her mind, it might be like it never happened, but her skin would tell a different story.

[todd--chavez]

Bojack acts like it’s not relevant.

[rustbeltjessie]

On Old Route 66, driving toward Joshua Tree. East of Amboy, California, we passed a railroad berm that’s been decorated by people passing through. Most of them wrote or drew things with rocks: RAY WUZ HERE, I LUV U MOM, GO BLUE, ☮. Others left things: I saw a lawn chair underneath a beach umbrella, both faded from the sun; a Chinese guardian lion. All these names, messages, symbols, ephemera.Oh, humans, I thought. All of us want to leave a mark—even if all that amounts to is our name written in rocks in the desert, or a zine that only a handful of people will read. We all just want to say “I was here, I was here, I was here.”

Jessie Lynn McMains, from Reckless Chants #24: Snapshots of Ghosts