That woman is my Dulcinea
Title: That woman is my Dulcinea
Pairing: M2
Spoilers: none… except for a nickname and I can’t remember the episode L
Rating: PG for language and the suggestion of sex without any purple prose
Genre: Angst
Disclaimer: I own nothing. USA Network, Mary McCormack... Fred are all just wonderful tools for my insanely active imagination.
Summary: Marshall's thinking about Mary. Gets a girlfriend. Isn’t happy. Shocking no?
Author's Note: Each section is a separate Marshall moment over the course of almost a year. This story looks at Mary/Marshall at their worst: denial. The title is a reference to Don Quixote’s unrequited and imaginary love, Dulcinea, because Mary’s got Marshall chasing windmills in his mind. However Dulcinea also translates from the Spanish as “sweetheart” so… Mary is Marshall’s sweetheart. A point I firmly believe.
Kellys Brew Pub, May 29th at six in the afternoon
Marshall thinks of Mary as a desert flower: rare, because of the hostile environment, but not necessarily beautiful. He squints in the New Mexico sun, following her as she storms toward the bar. Her hair is corn yellow and flying in the dusty wind. She fills a pair of jeans easy, like water in a tall glass, except she’s vodka straight up. Mary isn’t pretty with her brass-tacks and bare knuckle approach to life, but the way she fights is breathtakingly close. The whip of yellow against his reddening skin…
“Move it Marshmallow!”
…And he knows that he’s buying, because she will forget to tip. He looks across the sand to see Mary, quite contrary, arms crossed. Waiting at the barroom door for her partner with eyes dark and sharp as flint, skin flushed and freckled like a burn. Marshall sighs inwardly. She will never grow in a garden when her anger flares hot and fast, like flash fires in the brush, on a daily basis.
Marshall’s apartment, June 16th
One hung-over Saturday morning, she refuses to leave his apartment. Finishes his favorite cereal while reviewing case notes; Mary mumbles her opinion every two words. Babbling incessantly, demanding coffee as he watches her mind work its way out of the tangle, milk on her pink lips slipping into a frown. Adorable. When she lifts her head, yelling at him to call Stan, her hair bobbing like a sunflower in the light, Marshall is done.
While he calls, she’s in his bathroom borrowing his toothpaste, deodorant and a clean vest. The older brother she can abuse the way she is by mother and sister. Marshall clears her bowl and checks her list. Carefully avoids the fact that she’s stripped to her bra only feet away. He’s the harmless friend who folds his spare sheets and finds her aviators. Nothing more.
Marshall’s apartment, July 24, eleven o’clock at night
The way she looks, Danielle, not Mary, with her dark hair curling around her neck like a scarf, her Indian skin and the knowing touch; it scorches him with a guilt he should not feel. Danielle’s slim fingers play across his inseam as they chatter about philosophy and literature, because she’s a grad student and all about learning. Just like him. Marshall suffers a flutter of nervous energy when she kisses him. It fades when her tongue, murmuring Navajo like a prayer, invites his secret confidences in French. He can do this, he thinks, with his hand pulling at black brown strands until she gasps in delighted pain.
“Do you know…” she begins lazily, and just like that Marshall is calm. Aware that Danielle will never mock him for his inane trivia. She explains the pleasure-pain principle with her nails scratching down his back, bringing to his bed all the oddities he thought he had to escape in order to be loved.
WITSEC office, August 15th, nine o’clock in the morning
It does not change the essentials. Marshall loves Mary. But he sleeps with Danielle, now Dani, and refuses to actually pine for what he wants. Work becomes work, not his whole life, where Stan spills coffee and Mary continues to give him the third degree about the mysterious girlfriend he won’t let her meet. She leans into him, perspiration and sand and Ivory soap, with an angry pout, because they’re friends damn it.
He laughs into her swinging hair with a drawl that is all pain and pretending he couldn’t care less about her hurt feelings.
Mary’s Camaro, September 12th, ten o’ clock at night
“I’m not leaving you,” he reassures her softly.
Mary favors him with a wild eyed look of incredulity that tells Marshall he’s hit the mark. He resists the urge to stroke her cheek when her pout turns mutinous with rage and a scalding retort. With him, she is all little girl gone wrong: poor impulse control and want want want. The seven-year-old girl in pigtails and pink that she never got to be, the one she’s convinced herself she never wished to be at all.
Marshall’s apartment, October 19th
Three am on a Sunday morning, Marshall wakes to a pounding knock at his front door and reaches for his gun before registering the sound. He groans inwardly, looks to see that Dani is still sleeping before getting up to answer it. His feet are silent on the cool wooden floor of his living room as she pounds again, punctuating it with a slap. Mary…
Marshall unlocks the door with dread to see a tumbling tipsy woman, holding a fifth of Jack: her only love. Mary stands on his front step. The moonlight gilds her hair, a white gold halo of dancing yellow light; a vision of angel innocence with her eyes wet and heavy-lidded in the cool autumn air.
“She isn’t me,” Mary declares drunkenly, catching herself before she falls. Marshall swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He can’t say the truth to Mary even inches apart, because their distance is made of all the fears collected behind her eyes. She’s the exact opposite of petite, wise Dani. Who sleeps and speaks and smiles like she’s made of sunshine. Bright and fearless and what he needs at night: the last thing he wants.
A listless shake of blonde hair against pale skin damp with alcohol and anguish, and it reminds him of other nights where he let her in, no matter the cost to his heart. Mary reaches for his cheek and she shudders into his long-limbed embrace. The smell of her envelops him, sandy sweet, the desert flower after midnight.
The only one he loves and can’t give up.
Pairing: M2
Spoilers: none… except for a nickname and I can’t remember the episode L
Rating: PG for language and the suggestion of sex without any purple prose
Genre: Angst
Disclaimer: I own nothing. USA Network, Mary McCormack... Fred are all just wonderful tools for my insanely active imagination.
Summary: Marshall's thinking about Mary. Gets a girlfriend. Isn’t happy. Shocking no?
Author's Note: Each section is a separate Marshall moment over the course of almost a year. This story looks at Mary/Marshall at their worst: denial. The title is a reference to Don Quixote’s unrequited and imaginary love, Dulcinea, because Mary’s got Marshall chasing windmills in his mind. However Dulcinea also translates from the Spanish as “sweetheart” so… Mary is Marshall’s sweetheart. A point I firmly believe.
Kellys Brew Pub, May 29th at six in the afternoon
Marshall thinks of Mary as a desert flower: rare, because of the hostile environment, but not necessarily beautiful. He squints in the New Mexico sun, following her as she storms toward the bar. Her hair is corn yellow and flying in the dusty wind. She fills a pair of jeans easy, like water in a tall glass, except she’s vodka straight up. Mary isn’t pretty with her brass-tacks and bare knuckle approach to life, but the way she fights is breathtakingly close. The whip of yellow against his reddening skin…
“Move it Marshmallow!”
…And he knows that he’s buying, because she will forget to tip. He looks across the sand to see Mary, quite contrary, arms crossed. Waiting at the barroom door for her partner with eyes dark and sharp as flint, skin flushed and freckled like a burn. Marshall sighs inwardly. She will never grow in a garden when her anger flares hot and fast, like flash fires in the brush, on a daily basis.
Marshall’s apartment, June 16th
One hung-over Saturday morning, she refuses to leave his apartment. Finishes his favorite cereal while reviewing case notes; Mary mumbles her opinion every two words. Babbling incessantly, demanding coffee as he watches her mind work its way out of the tangle, milk on her pink lips slipping into a frown. Adorable. When she lifts her head, yelling at him to call Stan, her hair bobbing like a sunflower in the light, Marshall is done.
While he calls, she’s in his bathroom borrowing his toothpaste, deodorant and a clean vest. The older brother she can abuse the way she is by mother and sister. Marshall clears her bowl and checks her list. Carefully avoids the fact that she’s stripped to her bra only feet away. He’s the harmless friend who folds his spare sheets and finds her aviators. Nothing more.
Marshall’s apartment, July 24, eleven o’clock at night
The way she looks, Danielle, not Mary, with her dark hair curling around her neck like a scarf, her Indian skin and the knowing touch; it scorches him with a guilt he should not feel. Danielle’s slim fingers play across his inseam as they chatter about philosophy and literature, because she’s a grad student and all about learning. Just like him. Marshall suffers a flutter of nervous energy when she kisses him. It fades when her tongue, murmuring Navajo like a prayer, invites his secret confidences in French. He can do this, he thinks, with his hand pulling at black brown strands until she gasps in delighted pain.
“Do you know…” she begins lazily, and just like that Marshall is calm. Aware that Danielle will never mock him for his inane trivia. She explains the pleasure-pain principle with her nails scratching down his back, bringing to his bed all the oddities he thought he had to escape in order to be loved.
WITSEC office, August 15th, nine o’clock in the morning
It does not change the essentials. Marshall loves Mary. But he sleeps with Danielle, now Dani, and refuses to actually pine for what he wants. Work becomes work, not his whole life, where Stan spills coffee and Mary continues to give him the third degree about the mysterious girlfriend he won’t let her meet. She leans into him, perspiration and sand and Ivory soap, with an angry pout, because they’re friends damn it.
He laughs into her swinging hair with a drawl that is all pain and pretending he couldn’t care less about her hurt feelings.
Mary’s Camaro, September 12th, ten o’ clock at night
“I’m not leaving you,” he reassures her softly.
Mary favors him with a wild eyed look of incredulity that tells Marshall he’s hit the mark. He resists the urge to stroke her cheek when her pout turns mutinous with rage and a scalding retort. With him, she is all little girl gone wrong: poor impulse control and want want want. The seven-year-old girl in pigtails and pink that she never got to be, the one she’s convinced herself she never wished to be at all.
Marshall’s apartment, October 19th
Three am on a Sunday morning, Marshall wakes to a pounding knock at his front door and reaches for his gun before registering the sound. He groans inwardly, looks to see that Dani is still sleeping before getting up to answer it. His feet are silent on the cool wooden floor of his living room as she pounds again, punctuating it with a slap. Mary…
Marshall unlocks the door with dread to see a tumbling tipsy woman, holding a fifth of Jack: her only love. Mary stands on his front step. The moonlight gilds her hair, a white gold halo of dancing yellow light; a vision of angel innocence with her eyes wet and heavy-lidded in the cool autumn air.
“She isn’t me,” Mary declares drunkenly, catching herself before she falls. Marshall swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He can’t say the truth to Mary even inches apart, because their distance is made of all the fears collected behind her eyes. She’s the exact opposite of petite, wise Dani. Who sleeps and speaks and smiles like she’s made of sunshine. Bright and fearless and what he needs at night: the last thing he wants.
A listless shake of blonde hair against pale skin damp with alcohol and anguish, and it reminds him of other nights where he let her in, no matter the cost to his heart. Mary reaches for his cheek and she shudders into his long-limbed embrace. The smell of her envelops him, sandy sweet, the desert flower after midnight.
The only one he loves and can’t give up.