"Dreaming My Way Deep," DVD Commentary
Title: "Dreaming My Way Deep"
Pairing: Allen Iverson/Melo, and some light Eddie/Melo
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 1781
Summary and A/N: This is kind of a deleted scene from "All Stars and Crashed Cars," only from Melo's POV. Part of it takes place during the 2004 Olympic Games. Many thanks, as always, to horizon_greene for the beta, and also to a_bit_surreal for asking me about the dynamics of the AI/Melo pairing, which prompted me to write this.
Dreaming My Way Deep
My fandom was Buffy, in that I wrote fic and I posted it to the yahoo lists and I even went to writercon, but my first fandom obsession was the 2004 Olympics. Everyone has probably heard this story before, but here it is again just for fun.
I had graduated with my MA in history in June and hadn't found a job and wasn't really looking very hard for one over that summer. One of my professors sent me to Berkeley to sit around (all expenses paid) and read for a couple of weeks, and I made enough money to go to Vegas with it in August. I had lost a lot of weight, lost a long term girlfriend who had also been married and a bunch of good friends who all bailed on this mean, conservative shitpit of a town after graduation, and I was by turns euphoric about finishing two degrees in record time and having nothing to do for a summer, and ... having nothing to do. Then the Olympics came along. And I loved everything about them. I loved the gymnastics and the track and field and then, THEN, I saw the swimming and I literally fell apart.
When I got myself back together, I started writing and it was the best work I'd ever done.
Once the Olympics ended, I got a shitty job as a sub, moved out of my parents' house, and then got a shitty job as an Aardvark. So, the Olympics are all entangled with this last summer that I was really a kid and all the angst and heat and sundowns that went with it.
Basketball represents my first Grown Up fandom -- not that I treat it much differently than other fandoms I found since 2004, but I certainly do treat it differently than SwimSlash. With SwimSlash, I poured everything that I was experiencing and everything that I was feeling into those fics. It was cathartic and euphoric all at once. Basketball and the characters I write about in basketball couldn't be more removed from my experience, and therefore I don't overlay as many of my own issues onto my basketball stories -- the character of Steve excepted; although, he certainly represents the new phase of my life. The basketball stories are about the sport and the characters and their lives and not mine.
This doesn't mean that I haven't been desperate to find a way to revisit the 2004 Olympics, and it always seemed perfectly logical to do so with basketball, since the players were there, making fools out of themselves. So, this is my way of bringing basketball and everything that's happened in the last three years (a lot of getting older -- I won't quite say growing up; a lot the pain of independence and a lot of the frustrations too) back to the younger, softer, more hopeful work that I did when I was writing SwimSlash,
In the dream, Melo’s home in Baltimore, alone. Everything’s familiar, from the bed he’s laying in to the old Mets jersey he’s wearing. His house smells like his mom’s coffee and waffles, and if he opens his eyes, he’ll see the window that overlooks the basketball court and next to that, his shelf of trophies.
Smothering heat, a slight sense of seasickness and his dry, swollen tongue start to splinter the illusion. The knifing pain behind his right eye and the feeling of rough carpet underneath him and warm, damp skin behind him, shatter it. He’s not home; he’s half-awake, half-hung over and half-naked on the floor of T-Mac’s suite. He’s on a fucking boat, outside of Athens, and he’s supposed to be playing USA Basketball. And that -- that used to mean the Dream Team, right? But Melo’s already heard the press call him and Allen and LeBron and T-Mac and everyone else the Nightmare Team.
I'd been talking a lot of shit about the Melo/AI pairing since the AI trade was finalized and the two of them started groping each other. The problem was, I couldn't work out the history and the dynamics of it in my head. I didn't want to write the epic that I felt was required to explain their history if I wrote the fic in the current verse, and I didn't think that I could get away with a short, one shot with a complex AI-on-top dynamic and no back story.
The solution came to me while I was really, really hungry and on the third draft of this (which looked nothing like this and actually had Melo reading a newspaper of all things). I thought, OMG, flashback. Of course, then I had to deal with the fact that I HATE flashbacks in fic and so had to work it in a way that was organic to the fic and the verse.
I also like the disorienting way this begins. Beginnings being vital to me.
Speaking of, someone shifts behind him and an arm slithers over his waist. It takes effort for Melo to force his eyes open and then there’s a few seconds where he has to think about focusing, but then he can see and he wishes he hadn’t bothered. Arms can be fairly anonymous until you start inking enormous black panthers across them. Melo figures that Allen must still be asleep, though, or mostly, and thinking that Melo’s one of the girls he had last night.
There's a story about the tattoo. Apparently, he used to have a grim reaper tattoo there and then covered with the black panther.
Or not.
Allen’s softly -- so softly that if Melo were really asleep he wouldn’t wake up for this -- dancing his fingers over Melo’s stomach and down to the waistband of his shorts, and then he stops, moves a little so his body is pressed flush with Melo’s, and palms Melo’s cock.
Melo chokes on the heavy, wet air, gagging on the salty smell of the ocean.
Tension rolls off of Allen in waves, sparking in all the places he’s touching Melo, and Melo twitches, trying to breathe, wondering if you can die from something like heat suffocation.
I love those two lines. I think it describes them both and their relationship in this moment perfectly (also, the choking on the salty smell? Hehe. Subtle.) Fire, air and water.
“Don’t move,” Allen mumbles, into Melo’s back, and Melo does nothing but reach for the ornate, metal leg of the table in front of him, hoping to ground himself by holding on to something sharp and solid. He wonders how Allen is holding so still -- just using his fingers, tracing the shape of Melo’s hard-on through his shorts and then down to his balls, rolling them and squeezing them gently -- because the thing that defines Allen, aside from his unpredictable and viscous mood swings, is his energy.
The lightning/storm thing I've got going continues: grounding, energy, etc.
Gripping the table leg tighter, Melo focuses on the pinching pain and lets Allen move him -- angled this way, an inch to the left -- as he pulls Melo’s shorts over his hips to the top of his thighs. Then, a little farther down.
Drifting into dubcon here. I wonder if I should have warned for it, or if everyone who reads me, especially my basketball stuff, expects some line-fuzzing/gray area stuff in regard to consent? It isn't gratuitous. AI is who his is here, and who he was at the time was a screwed up guy that had been accused of chasing his naked wife out of his house and then going after her with a gun, among numerous other things. The comment that always resonated most for me in regard to Melo and these Olympics was what a profoundly bad in influence AI was on him. So, that's where I was going with this bit.
“You were watching me,” Allen says, still talking into Melo’s back, barely getting the words out, slurring the sounds together until Melo isn’t sure what he’s saying. “Watching me fuck,” Allen finishes, and he gets that last word out clearly.
Melo takes a long breath and arches back into Allen’s body. “Don’t remember,” he lies, seeing Allen bent over the balcony railing, bent over a girl and hiding her body with his. Melo fixated on the jump-slide of the muscles in his back, distorting the Fame and the Realist above his shoulders, and making all the little stars between them dance.
The detail about the stars makes me happy.
“Whatever,” Allen says, and Melo feels something hard and wet against the back of his leg at the same time Allen starts jacking him off.
“No, don’t --” Melo starts, not sure what he’s asking Allen not to do exactly, but convinced it’s gone too far already.
“I’m not,” Allen says, “not that.” And he pulls Melo’s legs apart, just enough, and starts to move between them, sliding easy, quick. The friction is electric; fire centered at the base of Melo’s neck where Allen’s dragging his teeth over the bumps of Melo’s spine until he latches on and bites down.
Melo’s hand, sweaty and sore now, slips off of the table leg, catching on one of the metal spikes, cutting the heel of his palm -- not deep, just enough to bleed -- and he sucks at it, gagging himself as he comes over Allen’s hand, white and wet on top of black lines and swirls.
It takes several long, hot minutes for Allen to come and Melo thinks that this might be the dream; it has that almost desperate, edgy feeling to it that you get right after you realize that you’ve gone blind and right before you wake up.
The come on Melo’s stomach and then, in a minute, on his legs, is real and sticky, and he wants to shower like he’s never wanted anything ever, but Allen’s telling him no, to leave it. And, yeah, Allen’s in a fucked up place right now, Melo knows, with the guns and the assault thing last year and the gambling problem and pissing in public, but Melo prays like he hasn’t since he was a kid that Allen doesn’t want to drag him down with him.
Because he could.
If he does shit like this, he can get to the one place Melo’s never let anyone else, and he’s already got a fingernail in the crack of Melo’s defenses because of who he is -- he’s Allen fucking Iverson and he’s hardcore. He’s been in prison. And he’s everything Melo’s mom tried to keep him away from, including Melo’s own brother.
And he’s right here.
I don't know if I resolve the consent issue. It's open for interpretation. AI is older and an idol of Melo's, but Melo is obviously bigger and stronger. What happens is more of a mind-fuck than anything physical, but the damage (and there is damage) is just as long lasting.
*
“Did you guys do anything else?” Eddie asks, startling Melo out of the heat of his memories and back into the cold.
“Nah,” he says. “I mean, not then. Not in Greece.”
Eddie looks down at him from where he’s propped up and back against the headboard. “You were, what? Twenty?” His eyes are wide and almost sad, and Melo’s never seen him look like that before. He rubs at his palm, finding the tiny ridge of scar tissue.
It doesn't bother Melo (never did, consciously), and yet it does. He hasn't said anything after all this time with Eddie because it didn't seem relevant, but maybe it is now?
“Just,” he answers. “He was twenty nine? Thirty, maybe?”
“Damn,” Eddie scoots closer and pulls on one of Melo’s braids. “It all went to shit after that.” Not asking.
Melo shrugs. He’s not sure what Eddie means.
“The weed in the backpack thing and the bar brawl and the DVD?” Eddie rubs at his eyes. “All right after the Olympics. He fucked you up.”
Now I'm tying up loose ends and opening up future plot lines (because I will NEVER abandon this verse). My Melo isn't a bad guy, or stupid as is sometimes alleged (even by me). He just has issues because of what AI did to him.
“No. I mean, maybe I was just --” Melo’s not sure how to say that he was confused more than anything else, because that sounds like he’d be admitting to something about himself that he and Eddie understand but don’t ever talk about. “I don’t know. He was this big, big thing that happened to me, all of me, and I didn’t know how to deal.” That sounds better. “I wanted his life. His cars, like the Rover. But -- oh.” He grins at Eddie. “He drives a Mercedes kind of like yours.”
I like this because it's the first time, aside from a sarcastic (and awkwardly written on my part) moment in "Through Broken Glass" where Melo himself addresses his sexuality. Also, it is a lovely coincidence that canon AI drives the same Mercedes that fictional Eddie does.
“Yeah,” Eddie smiles back, lopsided and tired. “I’m not him, though.”
I get really excited about the future possibilities opened up by that line.
“I know that,” Melo almost snaps, still drawn tight and hot from reliving it. “Anyway, I wanted his body and his hair, but not so much him, I guess. And --” he stops Eddie from interrupting. “I don’t know what he wanted from me. Wants,” he corrects himself.
“Still?” Eddie asks, pushing his hair back, face neutral.
Melo just sits and stares back. He can’t fight with Eddie right now. Not over this and not with JR asleep in the next room. Finally, “You haven’t wanted me in a while, man. Not ‘til tonight.”
“I’m not mad,” Eddie says and then mutters to himself in Spanish. “Do you fuck?” he asks, a minute later, and there’s suddenly distance between him and Melo.
“Once,” Melo says, feeling stripped. Honesty is all he has left. “He likes me to suck him.”
“Because you give good head,” Eddie says, a little forced, and then he’s on top of Melo again, pushing him into the bed. “How did you do it? Did you get to --”
“What do you think?” Melo puts his lips on Eddie’s. It’s not quite a kiss, but it brings them closer again.
“I think that the new, dedicated, family-oriented, team-leader and good citizen AI should let you fuck him. As, like, as show of good faith. Or something.”
“Right. Do you want it to stop?” Melo is genuinely curious. He’s never sure where the line is with Eddie, and what, or who, it takes to cross it.
Perfect. One sentence, finally to get across everything I was trying to in "Freedom and Fame."
“Kind of,” Eddie rolls over and stretches, popping his knuckles -- two rows of joints -- in quick succession. And then he kisses Melo back, gently, hands on either side of Melo’s face and thumbs pressing into his jaw.
Melo sinks back and sinks into it, glancing at the frost covered windows and shivering thankfully, glad for the cold and for the slow, quiet way Eddie moves over him.
The transition here from the heat of the Olympics to the Colorado cold, and from AI to Eddie is effective, I think.
*
“Narcissism,” Eddie tells Melo later. “I think Allen has a thing for you because you’re just a bigger version of him.”
That makes no sense to Melo, so he just blinks at Eddie and watches him make tea. JR should be up in a minute and Melo wants to be done with this conversation by then.
“You’re like a mirror,” Eddie says, tossing Melo an orange. “A bright, shiny mirror into his past. Or, like, a possible past, where he didn’t get arrested when he was seventeen and where he never had to live in a place with no heat and no water and shit on the floors, and he got to grow up without having to fight so hard.”
Peeling the orange, Melo thinks about it, breaks it down, and starts to get frustrated.
“So he fucks me because I remind of him of being young, somehow, and you fuck me to stay young?”
Eddie turns to him and cocks an eyebrow.
“You told that to Steve once. I heard you.”
“Not exactly. But the thing is, you have this -- ability. This way of seducing people into believing in you, whether it’s that you can soothe their souls, or heal their bodies, or -- “ and Eddie turns to the kitchen door, “make them into superstars. Like you.”
This could be too much exposition. I've gone over all of this before, for the most part, in other fics, and said it better. Except for the narcissism bit. I like that.
JR’s there, looking tired and wary, but he sits, dodging an orange peel that Melo flicks at him.
Melo’s not sure whether Eddie just complimented him or made fun of him, somehow, but that’s Eddie, and Eddie’s making him waffles now, and he’s willing to take that as a sign that, either way, they’re going to be okay.
And ... I bring it back into the context of "All Stars and Crashed Cars" with the appearance of JR and the orange peel. I think it's a decent transition. Not the most creative, and not the most compelling ending either, but functional.
End.
Pairing: Allen Iverson/Melo, and some light Eddie/Melo
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 1781
Summary and A/N: This is kind of a deleted scene from "All Stars and Crashed Cars," only from Melo's POV. Part of it takes place during the 2004 Olympic Games. Many thanks, as always, to horizon_greene for the beta, and also to a_bit_surreal for asking me about the dynamics of the AI/Melo pairing, which prompted me to write this.
Dreaming My Way Deep
My fandom was Buffy, in that I wrote fic and I posted it to the yahoo lists and I even went to writercon, but my first fandom obsession was the 2004 Olympics. Everyone has probably heard this story before, but here it is again just for fun.
I had graduated with my MA in history in June and hadn't found a job and wasn't really looking very hard for one over that summer. One of my professors sent me to Berkeley to sit around (all expenses paid) and read for a couple of weeks, and I made enough money to go to Vegas with it in August. I had lost a lot of weight, lost a long term girlfriend who had also been married and a bunch of good friends who all bailed on this mean, conservative shitpit of a town after graduation, and I was by turns euphoric about finishing two degrees in record time and having nothing to do for a summer, and ... having nothing to do. Then the Olympics came along. And I loved everything about them. I loved the gymnastics and the track and field and then, THEN, I saw the swimming and I literally fell apart.
When I got myself back together, I started writing and it was the best work I'd ever done.
Once the Olympics ended, I got a shitty job as a sub, moved out of my parents' house, and then got a shitty job as an Aardvark. So, the Olympics are all entangled with this last summer that I was really a kid and all the angst and heat and sundowns that went with it.
Basketball represents my first Grown Up fandom -- not that I treat it much differently than other fandoms I found since 2004, but I certainly do treat it differently than SwimSlash. With SwimSlash, I poured everything that I was experiencing and everything that I was feeling into those fics. It was cathartic and euphoric all at once. Basketball and the characters I write about in basketball couldn't be more removed from my experience, and therefore I don't overlay as many of my own issues onto my basketball stories -- the character of Steve excepted; although, he certainly represents the new phase of my life. The basketball stories are about the sport and the characters and their lives and not mine.
This doesn't mean that I haven't been desperate to find a way to revisit the 2004 Olympics, and it always seemed perfectly logical to do so with basketball, since the players were there, making fools out of themselves. So, this is my way of bringing basketball and everything that's happened in the last three years (a lot of getting older -- I won't quite say growing up; a lot the pain of independence and a lot of the frustrations too) back to the younger, softer, more hopeful work that I did when I was writing SwimSlash,
In the dream, Melo’s home in Baltimore, alone. Everything’s familiar, from the bed he’s laying in to the old Mets jersey he’s wearing. His house smells like his mom’s coffee and waffles, and if he opens his eyes, he’ll see the window that overlooks the basketball court and next to that, his shelf of trophies.
Smothering heat, a slight sense of seasickness and his dry, swollen tongue start to splinter the illusion. The knifing pain behind his right eye and the feeling of rough carpet underneath him and warm, damp skin behind him, shatter it. He’s not home; he’s half-awake, half-hung over and half-naked on the floor of T-Mac’s suite. He’s on a fucking boat, outside of Athens, and he’s supposed to be playing USA Basketball. And that -- that used to mean the Dream Team, right? But Melo’s already heard the press call him and Allen and LeBron and T-Mac and everyone else the Nightmare Team.
I'd been talking a lot of shit about the Melo/AI pairing since the AI trade was finalized and the two of them started groping each other. The problem was, I couldn't work out the history and the dynamics of it in my head. I didn't want to write the epic that I felt was required to explain their history if I wrote the fic in the current verse, and I didn't think that I could get away with a short, one shot with a complex AI-on-top dynamic and no back story.
The solution came to me while I was really, really hungry and on the third draft of this (which looked nothing like this and actually had Melo reading a newspaper of all things). I thought, OMG, flashback. Of course, then I had to deal with the fact that I HATE flashbacks in fic and so had to work it in a way that was organic to the fic and the verse.
I also like the disorienting way this begins. Beginnings being vital to me.
Speaking of, someone shifts behind him and an arm slithers over his waist. It takes effort for Melo to force his eyes open and then there’s a few seconds where he has to think about focusing, but then he can see and he wishes he hadn’t bothered. Arms can be fairly anonymous until you start inking enormous black panthers across them. Melo figures that Allen must still be asleep, though, or mostly, and thinking that Melo’s one of the girls he had last night.
There's a story about the tattoo. Apparently, he used to have a grim reaper tattoo there and then covered with the black panther.
Or not.
Allen’s softly -- so softly that if Melo were really asleep he wouldn’t wake up for this -- dancing his fingers over Melo’s stomach and down to the waistband of his shorts, and then he stops, moves a little so his body is pressed flush with Melo’s, and palms Melo’s cock.
Melo chokes on the heavy, wet air, gagging on the salty smell of the ocean.
Tension rolls off of Allen in waves, sparking in all the places he’s touching Melo, and Melo twitches, trying to breathe, wondering if you can die from something like heat suffocation.
I love those two lines. I think it describes them both and their relationship in this moment perfectly (also, the choking on the salty smell? Hehe. Subtle.) Fire, air and water.
“Don’t move,” Allen mumbles, into Melo’s back, and Melo does nothing but reach for the ornate, metal leg of the table in front of him, hoping to ground himself by holding on to something sharp and solid. He wonders how Allen is holding so still -- just using his fingers, tracing the shape of Melo’s hard-on through his shorts and then down to his balls, rolling them and squeezing them gently -- because the thing that defines Allen, aside from his unpredictable and viscous mood swings, is his energy.
The lightning/storm thing I've got going continues: grounding, energy, etc.
Gripping the table leg tighter, Melo focuses on the pinching pain and lets Allen move him -- angled this way, an inch to the left -- as he pulls Melo’s shorts over his hips to the top of his thighs. Then, a little farther down.
Drifting into dubcon here. I wonder if I should have warned for it, or if everyone who reads me, especially my basketball stuff, expects some line-fuzzing/gray area stuff in regard to consent? It isn't gratuitous. AI is who his is here, and who he was at the time was a screwed up guy that had been accused of chasing his naked wife out of his house and then going after her with a gun, among numerous other things. The comment that always resonated most for me in regard to Melo and these Olympics was what a profoundly bad in influence AI was on him. So, that's where I was going with this bit.
“You were watching me,” Allen says, still talking into Melo’s back, barely getting the words out, slurring the sounds together until Melo isn’t sure what he’s saying. “Watching me fuck,” Allen finishes, and he gets that last word out clearly.
Melo takes a long breath and arches back into Allen’s body. “Don’t remember,” he lies, seeing Allen bent over the balcony railing, bent over a girl and hiding her body with his. Melo fixated on the jump-slide of the muscles in his back, distorting the Fame and the Realist above his shoulders, and making all the little stars between them dance.
The detail about the stars makes me happy.
“Whatever,” Allen says, and Melo feels something hard and wet against the back of his leg at the same time Allen starts jacking him off.
“No, don’t --” Melo starts, not sure what he’s asking Allen not to do exactly, but convinced it’s gone too far already.
“I’m not,” Allen says, “not that.” And he pulls Melo’s legs apart, just enough, and starts to move between them, sliding easy, quick. The friction is electric; fire centered at the base of Melo’s neck where Allen’s dragging his teeth over the bumps of Melo’s spine until he latches on and bites down.
Melo’s hand, sweaty and sore now, slips off of the table leg, catching on one of the metal spikes, cutting the heel of his palm -- not deep, just enough to bleed -- and he sucks at it, gagging himself as he comes over Allen’s hand, white and wet on top of black lines and swirls.
It takes several long, hot minutes for Allen to come and Melo thinks that this might be the dream; it has that almost desperate, edgy feeling to it that you get right after you realize that you’ve gone blind and right before you wake up.
The come on Melo’s stomach and then, in a minute, on his legs, is real and sticky, and he wants to shower like he’s never wanted anything ever, but Allen’s telling him no, to leave it. And, yeah, Allen’s in a fucked up place right now, Melo knows, with the guns and the assault thing last year and the gambling problem and pissing in public, but Melo prays like he hasn’t since he was a kid that Allen doesn’t want to drag him down with him.
Because he could.
If he does shit like this, he can get to the one place Melo’s never let anyone else, and he’s already got a fingernail in the crack of Melo’s defenses because of who he is -- he’s Allen fucking Iverson and he’s hardcore. He’s been in prison. And he’s everything Melo’s mom tried to keep him away from, including Melo’s own brother.
And he’s right here.
I don't know if I resolve the consent issue. It's open for interpretation. AI is older and an idol of Melo's, but Melo is obviously bigger and stronger. What happens is more of a mind-fuck than anything physical, but the damage (and there is damage) is just as long lasting.
*
“Did you guys do anything else?” Eddie asks, startling Melo out of the heat of his memories and back into the cold.
“Nah,” he says. “I mean, not then. Not in Greece.”
Eddie looks down at him from where he’s propped up and back against the headboard. “You were, what? Twenty?” His eyes are wide and almost sad, and Melo’s never seen him look like that before. He rubs at his palm, finding the tiny ridge of scar tissue.
It doesn't bother Melo (never did, consciously), and yet it does. He hasn't said anything after all this time with Eddie because it didn't seem relevant, but maybe it is now?
“Just,” he answers. “He was twenty nine? Thirty, maybe?”
“Damn,” Eddie scoots closer and pulls on one of Melo’s braids. “It all went to shit after that.” Not asking.
Melo shrugs. He’s not sure what Eddie means.
“The weed in the backpack thing and the bar brawl and the DVD?” Eddie rubs at his eyes. “All right after the Olympics. He fucked you up.”
Now I'm tying up loose ends and opening up future plot lines (because I will NEVER abandon this verse). My Melo isn't a bad guy, or stupid as is sometimes alleged (even by me). He just has issues because of what AI did to him.
“No. I mean, maybe I was just --” Melo’s not sure how to say that he was confused more than anything else, because that sounds like he’d be admitting to something about himself that he and Eddie understand but don’t ever talk about. “I don’t know. He was this big, big thing that happened to me, all of me, and I didn’t know how to deal.” That sounds better. “I wanted his life. His cars, like the Rover. But -- oh.” He grins at Eddie. “He drives a Mercedes kind of like yours.”
I like this because it's the first time, aside from a sarcastic (and awkwardly written on my part) moment in "Through Broken Glass" where Melo himself addresses his sexuality. Also, it is a lovely coincidence that canon AI drives the same Mercedes that fictional Eddie does.
“Yeah,” Eddie smiles back, lopsided and tired. “I’m not him, though.”
I get really excited about the future possibilities opened up by that line.
“I know that,” Melo almost snaps, still drawn tight and hot from reliving it. “Anyway, I wanted his body and his hair, but not so much him, I guess. And --” he stops Eddie from interrupting. “I don’t know what he wanted from me. Wants,” he corrects himself.
“Still?” Eddie asks, pushing his hair back, face neutral.
Melo just sits and stares back. He can’t fight with Eddie right now. Not over this and not with JR asleep in the next room. Finally, “You haven’t wanted me in a while, man. Not ‘til tonight.”
“I’m not mad,” Eddie says and then mutters to himself in Spanish. “Do you fuck?” he asks, a minute later, and there’s suddenly distance between him and Melo.
“Once,” Melo says, feeling stripped. Honesty is all he has left. “He likes me to suck him.”
“Because you give good head,” Eddie says, a little forced, and then he’s on top of Melo again, pushing him into the bed. “How did you do it? Did you get to --”
“What do you think?” Melo puts his lips on Eddie’s. It’s not quite a kiss, but it brings them closer again.
“I think that the new, dedicated, family-oriented, team-leader and good citizen AI should let you fuck him. As, like, as show of good faith. Or something.”
“Right. Do you want it to stop?” Melo is genuinely curious. He’s never sure where the line is with Eddie, and what, or who, it takes to cross it.
Perfect. One sentence, finally to get across everything I was trying to in "Freedom and Fame."
“Kind of,” Eddie rolls over and stretches, popping his knuckles -- two rows of joints -- in quick succession. And then he kisses Melo back, gently, hands on either side of Melo’s face and thumbs pressing into his jaw.
Melo sinks back and sinks into it, glancing at the frost covered windows and shivering thankfully, glad for the cold and for the slow, quiet way Eddie moves over him.
The transition here from the heat of the Olympics to the Colorado cold, and from AI to Eddie is effective, I think.
*
“Narcissism,” Eddie tells Melo later. “I think Allen has a thing for you because you’re just a bigger version of him.”
That makes no sense to Melo, so he just blinks at Eddie and watches him make tea. JR should be up in a minute and Melo wants to be done with this conversation by then.
“You’re like a mirror,” Eddie says, tossing Melo an orange. “A bright, shiny mirror into his past. Or, like, a possible past, where he didn’t get arrested when he was seventeen and where he never had to live in a place with no heat and no water and shit on the floors, and he got to grow up without having to fight so hard.”
Peeling the orange, Melo thinks about it, breaks it down, and starts to get frustrated.
“So he fucks me because I remind of him of being young, somehow, and you fuck me to stay young?”
Eddie turns to him and cocks an eyebrow.
“You told that to Steve once. I heard you.”
“Not exactly. But the thing is, you have this -- ability. This way of seducing people into believing in you, whether it’s that you can soothe their souls, or heal their bodies, or -- “ and Eddie turns to the kitchen door, “make them into superstars. Like you.”
This could be too much exposition. I've gone over all of this before, for the most part, in other fics, and said it better. Except for the narcissism bit. I like that.
JR’s there, looking tired and wary, but he sits, dodging an orange peel that Melo flicks at him.
Melo’s not sure whether Eddie just complimented him or made fun of him, somehow, but that’s Eddie, and Eddie’s making him waffles now, and he’s willing to take that as a sign that, either way, they’re going to be okay.
And ... I bring it back into the context of "All Stars and Crashed Cars" with the appearance of JR and the orange peel. I think it's a decent transition. Not the most creative, and not the most compelling ending either, but functional.
End.