[fic] A Very Special Episode (Supreme Power, R)
Title: A Very Special Episode
Media: Supreme Power
Summary: These days, Mark watches whatever he wants.
Spoilers: Through #17
Rating: R for uncomfortable subject matter and several varieties of sexuality
Disclaimer: JMS & Marvel, not I.
Warnings/Notes: Mark grew up was reared in the 1980s. Many of his prejudices are...specific to, founded in, that time.
In other words, this was both hard as hell and all too easy to write, and it makes *me* deeply uncomfortable, so...hm. Enjoy?
Thanks to petronelle for first sharing SP with me and thenotoriousg for holding my hand against the tides of Anglo guilt.
As a child, Mark watched --. No.
Mark *was shown* a lot of TV.
He understands, now, that what he saw was selected, vetted, *regulated* by an unseen team of psychological technicians and mid-ranked military men.
That explains a lot, actually. He'd wanted to watch What's Happening? and 227, because he liked the maid who'd been on The Jeffersons. He'd pleaded to see them, and also that show where the kid said, "Dy-NO-mite!" a lot, but he wasn't allowed. He *was* shown Cosby, but it wasn't very funny -- except when the dad snuck junk food into the house.
The other shows looked better. Stranger, maybe, but that was their appeal.
He had asked very nicely.
They said no.
Mark had blamed his -- the people who raised him. They explained that those shows were on past his bedtime, they weren't appropriate for children, Daddy had football-golf-baseball to watch and didn't he want to watch baseball, it's a wonderful sport?
(They played catch once, but his return throw was hard enough to rip through his father's glove and sprain his wrist.)
He'd blamed them, but there were others at fault. He knows that now.
On TV, he saw a lot of faces -- organisms -- that looked, generally, like him. They lived in small towns or out in the country, like he did, though they *worked* those farms and his fam--his people did not. Like him, all those faces wore pale skin. Some had freckles. Occasionally, Lucy's husband would say something in another language, but otherwise, unless they were Nazis or other villains, most of the faces all spoke flat, unaccented English.
He first saw a Black person the day he tried to go to school. He knew *what* a Black was, of course, because he was allowed to watch -- he was shown -- the news. Black people had crackbabies and made rap music whose samples violated copyright, just like gay people had AIDS and were very artistic. He was fairly glad he didn't know any of either group. He did like that boy, Ryan White, who had AIDS but it wasn't his fault. Ryan wasn't allowed to go to school, either.
Mark remembers writing him a letter.
He suspects -- he *knows* -- now that the letter never made it past the gate.
What all this means now, when he hasn't watched television in years, is -- debatable.
Casey was Black. He said Mark was red, white, and blue through and through. Mark decided that soldiers were olive-drab through and through.
He looks through skin all the time now. Everyone has red blood, white bones, blue lungs like grapes. Everyone has the face of death, the same, below their individual expressions.
*
The difference between then and now is that he's not *shown* anything.
He watches -- and hears -- whatever he wants.
He's still looking for people like him. That's still the same.
Zarda has no skull beneath her skin, though he's *felt* it with his lips, his hands. Inside, she's a whirling maw, all hunger, black and *deep*. He has felt that hunger, too, around his penis and in his mouth.
Ledger's eyes are blank and his blood is not red, not any more. A few stray platelets still spin through it, but it isn't even liquid any longer. It's blank and bright as his eyes, moving faster than -- than Mark himself, than Stanley.
Richmond could be the grown son of General Casey.
"We all look alike to you, is that it? Prick."
It's not that, as a matter of fact. In addition to their long, handsome faces, the two men share a certain kind of stiff, *deliberate* dignity, as well as a hatred for Mark that is --.
It's refreshing.
Richmond is not a nice man. He never smiles, and when he's not out on the streets, he is alone in his sterile penthouse. Except when he calls -- Mark believes the term is "escort agencies".
Recently, Mark has begun to hypothesize that sex is something human beings do, just as they kill, not simply to survive, but because it -- helps them feel less alone. He thinks he may share that in common with the species. Even with Zarda, the terror of her hunger is something *beautiful*, if only because it means he can touch her. Be touched by her.
It is the same, Mark believes, for Richmond. Richmond usually orders White women with red or black hair; infrequently, he allows an Asian woman inside. He takes them from behind, one hand on the curve of their hip, the other tangled in their hair. He doesn't like to hear them speak. Three times -- the first the night after he met Stanley at a fundraiser -- Richmond has called a different number and ordered a man. Always White, usually blond. He enters the men, too, from behind. He always keeps his eyes closed.
Mark could watch what Richmond does from anywhere on Earth, from low orbit. He doesn't *have* to be here, two blocks away, dressed in his old black costume.
But with Richmond, more than with anyone else, Mark prefers to be close. To keep a close eye on things.
Richmond is --
"Alien. Motherfucking Wonder-Bread-chompin', stringy-hair wearin', cracker-faced *alien*." Richmond turns on his heel as his left hand cuts like a sword through the air, shattering an ornate crystal vase. "You don't think that's a *coincidence*?"
"What, you think it's a *conspiracy*?" Stan asks.
Richmond paces. "I --. Answer the damn question."
Stan's hands twitch, and he hides them behind his back. "I think he's --"
"Blue-eyed, All-American dev--*alien*!" Richmond shouts.
"Our friend," Stan says. Quietly.
Richmond is in Stan's face, shoving him against the wall, punching through the wall. Plaster dust in Stan's (soft -- "Nappy, my mama could never tame it down" -- so soft) hair.
Richmond says, "I don't have friends."
Mark floats a little closer. Half a block, reminding himself he doesn't *need* to, but --. He wants to. So he does, then closer yet. He watches Stan's eyes widen as they always do, just before he runs.
But he remains where he is, bracketed by Richmond's arms -- in the left ulna, a black seam, an old fracture, long mended -- and wets his lower lip. "You don't, no."
Richmond shakes his head. "No."
"What is this?" Mark asked when they were on Redmond's trail. "Why...?
And Richmond had sneered, his elegant face twisting, dark eyes narrowing, just as he's doing now in front of Stan. "You're useful."
That, at least, Mark could understand. If any of the $400-an-hour escorts could ask Richmond, he'd probably tell them the same thing. Sex, like killing, like food, is...useful.
Zarda would agree. Ledger would as well, though utility, for him, is both dictated by the government and...alien.
Stanley, however, returns Richmond's stare and *smiles*. His long fingers slide down Richmond's hips and tighten. "So what's this, then?"
"Not friends," Richmond says evenly.
Outside the window, Mark laughs. Three pigeons on the next roof startle and fly away at the sound. Their wings beat irregularly against the Chicago night.
Mark doesn't laugh much. Stanley laughs frequently, in several registers, giggles and chortles and chuckles. He has as many laughs as he has smiles, and this one -- this smile, this low purring chuckle, is a private one.
"Have it your way," Stan murmurs, and his motion is -- graceful, almost liquid, as he slips down to his knees and presses his mouth against Richmond's belly. The muscles there twist and tighten as Richmond closes his eyes. Teeth in his lower lip, fingers curling around the edge of the hole in the wall, and Stanley --.
In the air, Mark crosses his legs. Left over right, then right over left, and the warmth against his face has nothing to do with the night air, everything to do with --. Stanley's *mouth*, smiling and opening, so widely, and the tip of his dark pink tongue tracing the tight whorls of Richmond's pubic hair.
Mark watches everything. "Hey, your tan goes all the way down!" Reuben Lipshitz, quarterback on the Hammer Falls High football team, told Stanley under the bleachers when he got his pants off. "Dumbass," Stan had added, fondly, chuckling, when he told Mark the story.
Stanley runs, and smiles, and *moves*, not because he has to. Not, really, simply because he wants to -- want is greed and greed, unrestrained, is merely brute power -- but because he enjoys it.
"Look at me, bro," Stan murmurs. Richmond's penis is dark -- purple, eggplant, *strange* as all genitalia still, always, is to Mark's eyes -- in his fingers and Mark holds his breath.
Black men call each other brother. It's something cultural; Mark knows this, so when Stanley called *him* that --.
He did not know how to reply. He looked away, Stan punched his arm, and after a moment or two, another subject came up.
Richmond's lashes flutter for a second, too fast for anyone but Stanley -- and Mark -- to see, and then he *does* open his eyes, *does* cup the back of Stan's head, *does* roll his hips forward.
Mark realizes he's smiling. Like Richmond, like Stanley, as he flattens his palm against Richmond's spotless window.
He does not touch himself. He *watches* the muscles in Stanley's face and throat move, slide together, and he watches Richmond throw his head back and push. He watches, and does not understand, but --.
He will, and that's something like expectation, shading into hope, that he hasn't felt since --. That he hasn't felt for a very long time.
For the moment, he just watches -- desire that's divorced from hunger, and grace in small motions, and the alien becoming the familiar -- and enjoys.
*
Later, Mark puts his hand on Stanley's face. Stan had been jittering, jogging in place, wearing a rueful-apologetic grin that fades when Mark touches him.
He is so used to seeing only his hand, blotting out whatever it touches, promising destruction, that for a moment Mark freezes. But Stan grins, ducks his head so Mark's hand slides into the woolly *heat* of his hair -- "Damn retro natural, son. What're you *thinking*?" Richmond said that night -- and then Mark sees --.
Something else. Sees what he holds, the coppery curve of Stan's smiling cheek against his own pale thumb.
"Bro," Mark whispers, testing the sound of it. Grinning, Stan slaps his arm.
"Race you," he says, dropping into a crouch, springing forward, and Mark gives chase across the Southeast.
[end]
Media: Supreme Power
Summary: These days, Mark watches whatever he wants.
Spoilers: Through #17
Rating: R for uncomfortable subject matter and several varieties of sexuality
Disclaimer: JMS & Marvel, not I.
Warnings/Notes: Mark grew up was reared in the 1980s. Many of his prejudices are...specific to, founded in, that time.
In other words, this was both hard as hell and all too easy to write, and it makes *me* deeply uncomfortable, so...hm. Enjoy?
Thanks to petronelle for first sharing SP with me and thenotoriousg for holding my hand against the tides of Anglo guilt.
As a child, Mark watched --. No.
Mark *was shown* a lot of TV.
He understands, now, that what he saw was selected, vetted, *regulated* by an unseen team of psychological technicians and mid-ranked military men.
That explains a lot, actually. He'd wanted to watch What's Happening? and 227, because he liked the maid who'd been on The Jeffersons. He'd pleaded to see them, and also that show where the kid said, "Dy-NO-mite!" a lot, but he wasn't allowed. He *was* shown Cosby, but it wasn't very funny -- except when the dad snuck junk food into the house.
The other shows looked better. Stranger, maybe, but that was their appeal.
He had asked very nicely.
They said no.
Mark had blamed his -- the people who raised him. They explained that those shows were on past his bedtime, they weren't appropriate for children, Daddy had football-golf-baseball to watch and didn't he want to watch baseball, it's a wonderful sport?
(They played catch once, but his return throw was hard enough to rip through his father's glove and sprain his wrist.)
He'd blamed them, but there were others at fault. He knows that now.
On TV, he saw a lot of faces -- organisms -- that looked, generally, like him. They lived in small towns or out in the country, like he did, though they *worked* those farms and his fam--his people did not. Like him, all those faces wore pale skin. Some had freckles. Occasionally, Lucy's husband would say something in another language, but otherwise, unless they were Nazis or other villains, most of the faces all spoke flat, unaccented English.
He first saw a Black person the day he tried to go to school. He knew *what* a Black was, of course, because he was allowed to watch -- he was shown -- the news. Black people had crackbabies and made rap music whose samples violated copyright, just like gay people had AIDS and were very artistic. He was fairly glad he didn't know any of either group. He did like that boy, Ryan White, who had AIDS but it wasn't his fault. Ryan wasn't allowed to go to school, either.
Mark remembers writing him a letter.
He suspects -- he *knows* -- now that the letter never made it past the gate.
What all this means now, when he hasn't watched television in years, is -- debatable.
Casey was Black. He said Mark was red, white, and blue through and through. Mark decided that soldiers were olive-drab through and through.
He looks through skin all the time now. Everyone has red blood, white bones, blue lungs like grapes. Everyone has the face of death, the same, below their individual expressions.
*
The difference between then and now is that he's not *shown* anything.
He watches -- and hears -- whatever he wants.
He's still looking for people like him. That's still the same.
Zarda has no skull beneath her skin, though he's *felt* it with his lips, his hands. Inside, she's a whirling maw, all hunger, black and *deep*. He has felt that hunger, too, around his penis and in his mouth.
Ledger's eyes are blank and his blood is not red, not any more. A few stray platelets still spin through it, but it isn't even liquid any longer. It's blank and bright as his eyes, moving faster than -- than Mark himself, than Stanley.
Richmond could be the grown son of General Casey.
"We all look alike to you, is that it? Prick."
It's not that, as a matter of fact. In addition to their long, handsome faces, the two men share a certain kind of stiff, *deliberate* dignity, as well as a hatred for Mark that is --.
It's refreshing.
Richmond is not a nice man. He never smiles, and when he's not out on the streets, he is alone in his sterile penthouse. Except when he calls -- Mark believes the term is "escort agencies".
Recently, Mark has begun to hypothesize that sex is something human beings do, just as they kill, not simply to survive, but because it -- helps them feel less alone. He thinks he may share that in common with the species. Even with Zarda, the terror of her hunger is something *beautiful*, if only because it means he can touch her. Be touched by her.
It is the same, Mark believes, for Richmond. Richmond usually orders White women with red or black hair; infrequently, he allows an Asian woman inside. He takes them from behind, one hand on the curve of their hip, the other tangled in their hair. He doesn't like to hear them speak. Three times -- the first the night after he met Stanley at a fundraiser -- Richmond has called a different number and ordered a man. Always White, usually blond. He enters the men, too, from behind. He always keeps his eyes closed.
Mark could watch what Richmond does from anywhere on Earth, from low orbit. He doesn't *have* to be here, two blocks away, dressed in his old black costume.
But with Richmond, more than with anyone else, Mark prefers to be close. To keep a close eye on things.
Richmond is --
"Alien. Motherfucking Wonder-Bread-chompin', stringy-hair wearin', cracker-faced *alien*." Richmond turns on his heel as his left hand cuts like a sword through the air, shattering an ornate crystal vase. "You don't think that's a *coincidence*?"
"What, you think it's a *conspiracy*?" Stan asks.
Richmond paces. "I --. Answer the damn question."
Stan's hands twitch, and he hides them behind his back. "I think he's --"
"Blue-eyed, All-American dev--*alien*!" Richmond shouts.
"Our friend," Stan says. Quietly.
Richmond is in Stan's face, shoving him against the wall, punching through the wall. Plaster dust in Stan's (soft -- "Nappy, my mama could never tame it down" -- so soft) hair.
Richmond says, "I don't have friends."
Mark floats a little closer. Half a block, reminding himself he doesn't *need* to, but --. He wants to. So he does, then closer yet. He watches Stan's eyes widen as they always do, just before he runs.
But he remains where he is, bracketed by Richmond's arms -- in the left ulna, a black seam, an old fracture, long mended -- and wets his lower lip. "You don't, no."
Richmond shakes his head. "No."
"What is this?" Mark asked when they were on Redmond's trail. "Why...?
And Richmond had sneered, his elegant face twisting, dark eyes narrowing, just as he's doing now in front of Stan. "You're useful."
That, at least, Mark could understand. If any of the $400-an-hour escorts could ask Richmond, he'd probably tell them the same thing. Sex, like killing, like food, is...useful.
Zarda would agree. Ledger would as well, though utility, for him, is both dictated by the government and...alien.
Stanley, however, returns Richmond's stare and *smiles*. His long fingers slide down Richmond's hips and tighten. "So what's this, then?"
"Not friends," Richmond says evenly.
Outside the window, Mark laughs. Three pigeons on the next roof startle and fly away at the sound. Their wings beat irregularly against the Chicago night.
Mark doesn't laugh much. Stanley laughs frequently, in several registers, giggles and chortles and chuckles. He has as many laughs as he has smiles, and this one -- this smile, this low purring chuckle, is a private one.
"Have it your way," Stan murmurs, and his motion is -- graceful, almost liquid, as he slips down to his knees and presses his mouth against Richmond's belly. The muscles there twist and tighten as Richmond closes his eyes. Teeth in his lower lip, fingers curling around the edge of the hole in the wall, and Stanley --.
In the air, Mark crosses his legs. Left over right, then right over left, and the warmth against his face has nothing to do with the night air, everything to do with --. Stanley's *mouth*, smiling and opening, so widely, and the tip of his dark pink tongue tracing the tight whorls of Richmond's pubic hair.
Mark watches everything. "Hey, your tan goes all the way down!" Reuben Lipshitz, quarterback on the Hammer Falls High football team, told Stanley under the bleachers when he got his pants off. "Dumbass," Stan had added, fondly, chuckling, when he told Mark the story.
Stanley runs, and smiles, and *moves*, not because he has to. Not, really, simply because he wants to -- want is greed and greed, unrestrained, is merely brute power -- but because he enjoys it.
"Look at me, bro," Stan murmurs. Richmond's penis is dark -- purple, eggplant, *strange* as all genitalia still, always, is to Mark's eyes -- in his fingers and Mark holds his breath.
Black men call each other brother. It's something cultural; Mark knows this, so when Stanley called *him* that --.
He did not know how to reply. He looked away, Stan punched his arm, and after a moment or two, another subject came up.
Richmond's lashes flutter for a second, too fast for anyone but Stanley -- and Mark -- to see, and then he *does* open his eyes, *does* cup the back of Stan's head, *does* roll his hips forward.
Mark realizes he's smiling. Like Richmond, like Stanley, as he flattens his palm against Richmond's spotless window.
He does not touch himself. He *watches* the muscles in Stanley's face and throat move, slide together, and he watches Richmond throw his head back and push. He watches, and does not understand, but --.
He will, and that's something like expectation, shading into hope, that he hasn't felt since --. That he hasn't felt for a very long time.
For the moment, he just watches -- desire that's divorced from hunger, and grace in small motions, and the alien becoming the familiar -- and enjoys.
*
Later, Mark puts his hand on Stanley's face. Stan had been jittering, jogging in place, wearing a rueful-apologetic grin that fades when Mark touches him.
He is so used to seeing only his hand, blotting out whatever it touches, promising destruction, that for a moment Mark freezes. But Stan grins, ducks his head so Mark's hand slides into the woolly *heat* of his hair -- "Damn retro natural, son. What're you *thinking*?" Richmond said that night -- and then Mark sees --.
Something else. Sees what he holds, the coppery curve of Stan's smiling cheek against his own pale thumb.
"Bro," Mark whispers, testing the sound of it. Grinning, Stan slaps his arm.
"Race you," he says, dropping into a crouch, springing forward, and Mark gives chase across the Southeast.
[end]