i read gossip once about Crowe shouting 'go, russ, go!' during sex...but i'd still hit it!

[zeldadestry]

Title: Blooms in the Desert
Fandom: L.A. Confidential (movie version)
Character, Pairings: Ed Exley, Bud/Ed, Bud/Lynn and Ed/Lynn implied
Rating: non-explicit sexuality, cussin'
Disclaimer: not my characters
Notes: written for the yuletide New Year's Resolution challenge



Blooms in the Desert

Ed arrived in Bisbee on the third of July, just as the sun was beginning to set on a scorching day. The citizens, who had sought relief inside during the afternoon, took to the streets to enjoy a slight reprieve from the earlier heat. Children ran past him on their way to the ice cream parlor. Men sat on stoops with beer bottles in hand, listening to baseball games on their radios. Women stood on the sidewalks in front of their houses, some with babies on their hips, sharing gossip’s potent mix of speculation and exaggeration with their neighbors.

In his breast pocket he carried a letter he had received only a week ago.

Dear Ed,

Lynn passed away at the end of March.

I thought you would want to know.

Bud White

In front of the small cinderblock building at 426 Garden Avenue several teenage girls had gathered, gazing with longing at the dresses displayed in the shop’s window. “Hasn’t been open for weeks,” one whined. He rang the doorbell and they all looked him over, curious. “You’re not gonna get an answer, Mister,” a tall redhead said. Ed didn’t respond. He walked down the block until he reached the dingy apartment building on the corner, and then he headed around to the back of it, following a slap slap slap he recognized as fists against a speed bag. He wasn’t prepared for the sight that appeared before him; he’d imagined Bud as he’d last seen him. Bud had lost weight, and it was most noticeable in his face. He looked drawn, hollows under his cheeks, but the strength and power of his body were still evident. His eyes were still fierce as they momentarily fixed on Ed. His head jerked, but that was the only indication he gave of having noticed the appearance of his friend. He continued to hit the bag. Left, left, right, left, left, right, left, left, right, and then he suddenly stopped, strode to the side of a shed and ripped off the tape that had been covering his knuckles. Ed stood still, his bag in his hands, unwilling to approach.

When Bud finally turned around and walked towards him, he kept his eyes on the horizon beyond Ed. “What are you doing here?”

“I got your letter.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to pay my respects.” Bud flinched, and Ed’s heart seized in sympathy. “I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

Bud snorted. “I’m alright.”

“I had to see it for myself.”

Bud brought his eyes to Ed’s, then, flashed a smile and put out his hand to shake. His grip was strong as ever. “Here I am.”

“Good to see you in one piece.”

“Likewise.”

They stood in silence, and Ed shifted his bag back and forth between his hands. “Have you had dinner?” he finally said. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“You hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on.” He followed Bud up the rickety back stairs to the second story porch. The screen door was unlocked, and Bud tapped it with his toe to send it open, hinges whining. It was stifling inside, though the kitchen walls were painted a pale blue that echoed the sky above the Pacific. The signposts of Lynn were everywhere and it was only the varied points of disarray, dusty boots on the floor, a stack of newspapers on the kitchen table, a pile of dishes in the sink, a dirty shirt slung over the back of a chair, that showed this was a man’s home, a man who had no one to look after him and couldn’t be bothered to look after himself. He stood there, in the doorway, clutching the handle of his bag, afraid that he had absolutely nothing more to say. What was he trying to salvage? Who was he hoping to rescue? Bud was looking in the refrigerator; he brought out eggs, bread and butter, a side of bacon. He took the food over to the counter, deposited it there and then grabbed Ed’s bag from his hands and began walking through the apartment. “I’ll show you the spare room,” he called back over his shoulder. Ed, who hadn’t been sure he’d be asked to stay, followed, grateful. The guest room was small, and the walls were yellow. The bedspread was white and embroidered with flowers on its edge. Bud placed his bag at the foot of the bed. “Bathroom’s down the hall. I’m going to get dinner started.”

“Thanks,” Ed said, and tried to meet his eyes, but Bud kept them averted as he left the room.

It was a simple meal, but he was hungry and it was what he needed, the salt and grease of the bacon on his fingertips, and while he carefully wiped his hands on his napkin, Bud sucked the juice right off his own thumb. Ed noticed red welts on his hands. “What happened?” he asked, and insisted on touching the scabs with his fingertips, though he expected Bud to pull away.

“Dog attacked Lynn’s cat. I got in the middle, but it was too late.”

“You have a cat?”

Bud gave him a ‘just how fucking stupid are you?’ glare. “Not anymore.”

“Oh.” He ended up being the one to draw back. “I’m sorry.”

“You ever have a pet?”

“A puppy, once.”

“Yeah? How’d that go?”

“He got hit by a car when I was twelve. I came home from school and he was dead at the side of the road not far from our house.”

“It never gets easier.” Bud stood and gathered the dishes from the table.

“I can wash them.”

“Later. Let’s go get drunk.”

Back from the bar, they said good night and retreated to their respective rooms. Ed went through the guest room methodically, as though it were a crime scene, though with crime scenes he didn’t need to take such care to place everything back exactly where it had been. The masochist in him wanted the proof of what he already knew. They’d had each other. He’d been alone and unable to take comfort from either of them.

The photographs had been shoved into the bottom drawer of the dresser, covered by an unfinished knit blanket.

He had seen them once in the intervening years. Lynn first, she’d been waiting for him in the lobby of their hotel. Called out his name and approached, voice eager and eyes sparkling, but movements graceful, as they had always been. No one could make her hurry, she was still the star, more beautiful than Lana Turner, and he almost dropped his eyes, unworthy to look at her. “It’s so good to see you,” she cooed, and he awkwardly accepted her hug. The tulle of her skirt crushed against his legs, her hair smelled of lavender, and her lips, red and full, pressed against the corner of his mouth. She held him at arm’s length to take him in, let go of his waist to smooth his collar, comb his hair back with her fingers. “You haven’t found anyone,” she murmured, her ministering hand coming to rest against his upper arm. “You look tired.”

“Don’t get a whole lot of sleep. It’s just part of the job.”

And then there was Bud, prowling down the stairs, pausing for the briefest of moments when he saw them together, and then charging towards them. They shook hands, and Ed was stunned by his relief at seeing him, seeing that he had healed. There were scars, yes, his cheek, his throat, but it was the same man, in no way diminished, and Ed’s legs were suddenly wobbly beneath him, his hands seemed to shake at his sides, as though they were back at the Victory motel and he was not sure whether they would live or die, sure of nothing but that they were in it together.

Bud had spoken little as they shared dinner. Ed and Lynn had carried the conversation, and he could see, from Bud’s relaxed reaction, that he’d never had a chance with her, that Bud in no way considered him a threat. Of course he’d let himself imagine that Lynn had felt something for him when she’d spoken to him outside the courthouse, just before getting into the car and driving away. He’d let himself imagine that she could have loved him, just as she loved Bud, just as he loved Bud.

When he said goodbye to them, he lingered, turned around to watch them walk away, together, just as he’d once watched them drive away from him. They held hands, swayed towards each other as they moved, Bud bending his head down towards Lynn and she beaming up at him. Her laughter carried all the way back to Ed, clenching his jaw. Had he really hoped they were as unhappy and lonely as he? God damn pathetic.

In the photographs Lynn’s arms were always wrapped around Bud.

He and Bud had brought down Dudley. Some might have said that they won. And yet he still had flashbacks of Vincennes, of that smarmy grin paired with weary eyes. Jack had always come off as jaded, but he was also obviously rundown, which only proved that he’d once had a dream and been disillusioned.

Sometimes, unbidden, he wondered if Vincennes was supposed to be alive, and he was the one who belonged in the ground.

He had killed Dudley because he thought that Dudley had killed Bud. He knew it. The arguments Dudley had used, the questions he’d asked, both when Ed had first joined the force and during their final confrontation, that rhetoric had always been intended to prove to Ed that he was indeed the rational, ‘political’, animal Dudley claimed. But there had been no thought that bid him squeeze the trigger. If there had been any discussion in his mind, it was obliterated by the knowledge of the body that lay on the floor of the building behind him, the puddles of blood pooling on the filthy, worn wooden boards beneath the body. And his grief over Bud’s death was not only because Bud had saved his life, it was also simply because the man was gone. Blood pounding in his head, his heart, his groin, at that very moment, so much adrenaline, because he was alive, he had survived, making him feel so acutely the rip in his heart because Bud had not.

Dudley fell like the sacrifice he was and wasn’t.

It should not have been so easy to shoot a man in the back.

The last photo was of Bud as a boy. Ed could see in the child the man who was yet to come, but he could not have looked at Bud and guessed at this boy: this smiling, happy child, baseball bat in hand, young woman standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders. Mother. Bud’s mother. He could guess what had happened to her, guess at the source of Bud’s rage, his fevered need to protect women and hurt those who preyed on them.

Suddenly ashamed at his snooping, he put the pictures back in place and covered them with the blanket. It hurt him to reflect that Lynn hadn’t been given enough time to finish it.

He lay on top of the bed, turned on his side and touched his hand to the wall, wondered if Bud were awake or asleep, wondered at what his thoughts might be, or his dreams. Did he dream of Lynn, dressed in yellow, for she brought the sun with her wherever she went? Did he dream of his mother? Bud, he wanted to whisper, we both lost our fathers. We can never be the men we ought to have been. Revenge made us.

And if only there could have been an oracle to tell us when our violence was justified.

Still awake after midnight, he went slowly down the hall, ostensibly moving towards the bathroom. He paused by Bud’s room. The door was half open. He stayed there, just waiting, wanting, breath or movement. When he heard shifting on the bed, the creak of springs, he took a step forward. A board whined beneath the ball of his foot. “Exley?” Bud said.

“Yeah.” He stood there, paralyzed. There was the slap of Bud’s feet coming towards the door, and then the man appeared and lounged against the door frame. He wore an A-shirt and boxer shorts, and Ed felt absurdly childish in his blue pajamas.

“Trouble sleeping?” Bud drawled. “Bed too hard for you, princess?”

“Bed’s fine. What about you?”

“Been a while since I slept good.” The reason why hung between them.

“I’m sorry.”

Bud sagged. “Don’t,” he hissed.

It roared up in him again, the long recognizable urge to say something to piss Bud off, make him mad and stand in his way and hope to fight him tooth and nail. If fighting were the only way to have Bud’s hands on him, he’d take it. And if he stood there any longer, he’d have to touch him, he couldn’t help it. Whether to comfort him or anger him, he’d have to reach out, do anything to distract him from his pain. “I just needed a glass of water,” he lied, backing up towards the kitchen. “Good night.”

“Night,” Bud said, and when Ed heard his door close behind him, he knocked the heels of his palms against his forehead, throat strained and tight like trying to yell while someone was choking him.

The whole town, everyone, was outside, drinking, barbecuing, celebrating the holiday. Sometimes a firecracker would go off, and Ed jumped a little the first time he heard one. Bud shook his head at him. Ed had never gotten used to gun fire, or what sounded like it, not completely, and for a man in his line of work it was a grievous weakness. Sometimes someone set off a firework, and they both watched its explosion of color and light against the dark sky. Adolescent couples passed by, holding hands, scurrying towards private corners where they could kiss and grope without being bothered. He envied them. He wanted to take Bud to a dark room of his own, lick the sweat from the top of his lip, taste his mouth, and his own mouth watered in need.

They ended up sitting side by side at a picnic table, watching people dance. “That girl,” Bud said, between sips of beer, pointing in the direction of a blonde in a red dress.

“What about her?” She was standing nearby, swaying to the music and sending glances in their direction.

“She wants you to ask her to dance.”

“Maybe she wants to dance with you.”

“I know her. She’s not interested in a man like me, but she’d like you.” Ed wondered what Bud meant by that. What did he consider the differences between them? He called out to her and beckoned with his hand. “Carlene.” She hurried over.

“Hi!” she said, blushing. “Hi, Bud.”

“This is Captain Exley.”

“Hello, Captain Exley,” she said, putting out her hand as though she expected him to kiss it.

He shook her hand. “Call me Ed.”

He danced with her and made small talk with her and she was a pretty girl, young and sweet. She did absolutely nothing for him. Lynn wasn’t the first woman he’d slept with, but he could count them all on his fingers. She was still the only woman he’d ever craved, though he was able to admit he would never know how much of that desire depended on her connection with Bud. Carlene said she wanted to go to L.A. someday, make it in pictures, and he told her it wasn’t anything like it looked from the outside. He told her it was harsher and harder than she knew. He hoped to hell she’d stay here, so that she wouldn’t end up as Lynn had. Pierce Patchett was dead, but the industry that had made him rich thrived more than ever. Nothing was as lucrative as selling sex, despite the fact that, in his personal experience, nothing was less satisfying than having to buy it.

He had looked for a man like Bud, but there were no men like Bud. There was only Bud himself.

Bud who was watching him, Bud who was staring at him.

“Oh, honey,” breathed Carlene, soft moan when she felt his hard-on press against her, and he never took his eyes off Bud.

When they returned to the apartment, Bud let Ed lead him into the spare room, lead him over to the bed. “Raise your arms,” he said and quickly drew off Bud’s t-shirt. This was Bud’s body, and grief left its mark not only in spirit, but in flesh. Grief bowed the head and sunk the chest, grief could slowly eat a man down to his bones. “I saw you, once…with Lynn.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Bud snapped his head up, his chest thrust forward, and Ed’s skin prickled at the sudden energy.

“We had our eyes on you, Jack and I, when we thought Patchett was trying to set you up. We thought she was seeing you on his orders.”

“You’re the one she fucked on his orders.”

“I know,” Ed admitted, brushing the back of his hand across Bud’s chest, dropping his face down so lips and teeth could circle a tightening nipple, felt goose bumps break out across Bud’s skin and across his own in harmony. “When I saw you touch her…when I saw how you touched her.” He pressed his ear against the junction of Bud’s ribs to hear his heart.

“How did I touch her?”

“Slow. Soft.” Heavy hands moving so tenderly up the curve of Lynn’s calf. He knew his own body was weak compared to Bud’s, knew Bud could break him, hurt him. He’d earned Bud’s fists before, and he didn’t want to be that low again. He didn’t know if he deserved Bud’s caress, but he wanted it, and he was still selfish enough to try and get whatever it was he wanted. He dragged his mouth back up Bud’s body, his tongue stopping along the way to trace the dip between his collar bones, taste the side of his throat where the jugular pulsed. Bud sighed, and his hands came to rest at Ed’s hips, fingers stroking at his lower back, the top of his ass. His arms gathered Bud closer, his hands drew Bud’s face down to his, because he dared to look him in the eye when he murmured, “I wanted you…I want you.”

Bud’s hands stopped moving. “You want me to touch you like I touched Lynn?”

“Yes.”

Bud shoved Ed away from him and retreated to face the window, his hands gripping the ledge as though he were trying to rip it off. “I can’t…I loved her,” he rasped.

It might have hurt, but Ed understood. He was stupid, before. He’d said ‘Thanks for the push’, but he’d never been able to understand why Bud had done it. It had been another part of the man’s mystery. What had Ed really understood about loyalty? He’d only ever been loyal to his father’s memory. It was Bud who had taught him about loyalty, through his uncompromising demonstration of it. Ed followed, wrapped his arms around Bud’s waist. He just stood there, closed his eyes and leaned against Bud’s back, held on tight, like he’d finally found it and would die before he’d let it go. He smiled when Bud’s hand came to rest on his own. “She would understand,” he whispered. “She would want you to have this. She wouldn’t want either of us to be alone.”

“Feels like hell.”

“Bud. I promise you. It’s going to be alright.”

They visited the grave the next morning. It broke Bud to be there, Ed knew, but there was no protection possible. All women died. Bud could shoot every rapist and murderer in this world, and death would still come. There was nothing he could have done, and at least he had been able to give her happy years before the end. But he knew Bud must blame himself all the same. Ed shared some of that hurt. What Bud had hoped to do with his fists, Ed had once hoped to do with his ideals, with what he had - what a fucking laugh, such a fucking babe in the woods fool - considered his virtues. Fine, upstanding young man. All that bullshit.

He stood beside Bud in front of the grave and wondered which of them would be the first to go. He didn’t think he’d be able to stand surviving Bud twice, but the idea of Bud alone at his own grave was just as hateful.

When Bud was ready to go, they returned to the car, but he didn’t start it. “I’m glad,” Bud said, hands squeezing the hell out of the steering wheel. “I’m glad you were with her.”

“Why?” said Ed. He had wished to take it back, especially whenever he remembered Lynn’s bruises and the regret he had heard in her voice.

“Because if you were with her, and I was with her…” Bud ground a fist against Ed’s shoulder. “And if you,” he pointed at Ed without looking at him, “and me. We’re here.”

And Ed thought that he understood. When they were together, she was with both of them, remembered and loved. “Come back to L.A. with me.” His heart was thudding against his ribs.

“No.” Heart lurched into stillness. “Not yet.” Raced again.

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sooner or later?”

“Soon.”

“I would stay longer, if I could.”

“Duty calls.”

“You ever miss it?”

“No more orders. No one’s ever pulling my strings again.”

“What if I promised you could play the good cop?”

Bud smiled, devilish defiance returned. “Not even for you. No one ever believes you as the bad cop, anyway.”

“But you will come back?”

“I told you I would. Take me at my word or fuck off.”

“Don’t take too long.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Why not? I know you won’t do anything just because I say so.”

“You sure about that?”

When Bud finally arrived at his house, Ed had his favorite whiskey out on the counter. “Nice touch,” Bud sneered. “Want me to feel at home?”

“I’ve told you what I want.”

“And what’s that?”

“You.”

“Jesus Christ, Exley. This is why I hate you.”

“Why?”

“You.” Bud slapped both his hands against the sides of Ed’s face and held tight, fingernails scratching at his cheeks. “You get under my fucking skin.” He let go and stepped back, shaking his head. “Can’t fucking get rid of you.”

Ed turned around and faced the bar to give Bud a moment, give himself one, too, replace the masks of composure. They’d end up killing each other if they weren’t careful. He opened the bottle, poured into two glasses. “The feeling’s more than mutual.”

Bud stalked up behind him and Ed froze, like the willing prey he’d always been. His breath caught when Bud pulled back his collar to nuzzle his neck, and he groaned and pressed back against him when Bud ran a hand up the inside of his thigh. “You just beg for it, don’t you? Bitch in heat. Always knew you wanted it.”

“You wanted it just as bad,” Ed countered. By his very nature, Bud had probably wanted it more. “Didn’t you?” Bud ignored him, nipped at his throat in warning. “Go ahead. Plead the god damn Fifth.”

“Shut the fuck up.” He clamped his hand over Ed’s mouth. “Smug son of a bitch.”

Ed ran his tongue across as much of the arch of Bud’s palm that he could reach, tried to turn around to face him, kiss him, but Bud wouldn’t give him the room to maneuver. Bud wrapped one arm tightly around Ed’s torso, trapping him, and reached his other hand towards the liquor. He picked up the glass, but put it back down just as quickly. He let go of Ed, grabbed the bottle and started laughing. “What?” Ed said, facing him again and infuriated by this return to who he’d been, college boy who wasn’t allowed to be in on the joke. “What’s so funny?” Bud only laughed harder at his indignation. “What’s so fucking funny?”

Bud leaned back in. “You don’t put it in the freezer, you idiot. You never serve it cold. We can’t drink it now.”

“It’ll still get us drunk,” Ed insisted, downing his.

“Won’t taste as good,” Bud countered. “Let’s wait for it.”

They took each other down to the floor, missed the carpet and never stopped long enough to move there. By the time they’d finished each other off their knees were aching and the whiskey had warmed. It was smooth going down.