On Masculinity
title: On Masculinity
author: elapses
rating: pg-13 for slight language and sexual references (don't get your hopes up, guys, this isn't that kind of a story).
prompt: for severuslovesme, David and Gillian practicing for/filming Arcadia.
summary: “You can’t understand this,” he said. “A pink polo shirt is like, the very definition of being whipped.”
“You know, they don’t tell you that this business is essentially a war on masculinity.”
It was really just fitting that the one night this week they’d finished working at a reasonable hour was the night David would decide to have an insecure breakdown in her trailer.
“David,” she mumbled, “it’s a shirt.”
“It’s a pink shirt.”
“Real men wear pink,” she offered, pushing at her temples.
“That is a lie,” he insisted.
“Haven’t you worn ruffles in a photoshoot?”
“It was a suit!” he said defensively.
“Do you really think that somehow negates the ruffles?” she said wryly.
“It was creative wardrobing.”
“Call it what you want, but really, that was you, destroying the very vestiges of the manhood you now so vehemently claim,” she said matter-of-factly. He spun at that, interrupting his pacing (the man was going to fall through her floor if he kept wearing at it like this) to stare down at her. She wondered what he’d do if she gave him a Scully eyebrow.
“I have hair and makeup people,” he informed her.
“You know, I know that, and I know you know I know that, so abruptly informing me that you do, in fact, have a whole team of hair and makeup girls assigned to you when you know I already know that is sort of, you know, not the move I’d expect from someone who seems to want to affirm their masculinity.”
“They didn’t say I’d have my own hair and makeup people someday,” he continued, ignoring her. “I thought I’d just get by on my rugged good looks and dashing charm.”
“How adorably naïve of you.”
“Did you just call me adorable?”
“I think I did,” she affirmed.
“I’m not adorable,” he said, falling back into the chair across from her to punctuate his assertion.
“Okay,” she shrugged.
“Rugged good looks.”
“If you say so.”
“Really!”
“I’m just...” she began, and he shot her a look, “...wondering. Where you’re getting rugged from.”
“I read it in a magazine,” he said dismissively.
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“Well, who needs real masculinity when you’ve got magazine writers making up things about you?” she sighed.
“Making up things?”
“David, if you’re rugged, I’m built like a supermodel.”
“You’re small,” he said, as if this defended the position that she was, in fact, built like a supermodel.
“About a foot too small, actually,” she said.
“6’3” is kind of freakishly tall, though,” he mumbled, “Most of the girls in the Victoria’s Secret shows are more, 5’9”ish.”
“It’s called hyperbole, Princeton boy,” she said sarcastically.
“Exaggeration.”
“That’s an A+, right there.”
“How,” he said softly, dragging his eyes off the floor to meet hers, “am I not rugged?”
“You want me to call you Princeton boy again?”
“No,” he said. “I’d like a slightly less derisive answer.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’re not Chuck Norris.”
“I know I’m not Chuck Norris,” he said, bewildered.
“You’re also not especially reminiscent of Chuck Norris,” she continued.
“This is a bad thing?”
“It is if you’re attached to the idea of having rugged good looks,” she said.
“I’m not anymore,” he said, sounding a little revolted.
“Okay,” she said. “Good. Then maybe we should talk a little about you taking offhand comments in a magazine as fact.”
“It seemed like a nice compliment,” he mumbled.
“You get a lot of nice compliments,” she said. “You’re a good-looking man.”
“Yeah?” he said probingly.
“I’ve already called you adorable and good-looking, you’re not getting any more out of me.”
“Damn,” he mumbled.
“But, see, that’s the payoff for ruffles and hair and makeup, isn’t it? Women fawning at your feet, praising your oversized nose?”
“Oversized nose?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” she grinned.
“You’re just being cruel now,” he said with mock moroseness.
“You get enough ego-stroking for seven men,” she told him.
“Yeah,” he said distractedly.
“Which is why you shouldn’t be whining about pink polo shirts,” she said. “Especially to a woman who’s just been handed more than one sweater-set.”
“You look nice in sweater-sets,” he told her.
“I really don’t.”
“You can’t understand this,” he said. “A pink polo shirt is like, the very definition of being whipped.”
“This is your job,” she said, exasperated. “This isn’t you walking down the street in one, Mulder is choosing to wear the pink polo under unusual circumstances!”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this episode.”
“You know, it seems to me like you liked this episode fine before the wardrobe department handed you a pink polo shirt,” she mumbled conversationally.
“I did,” he said off-hand, “it’s funny.”
“Mm,” she said.
“You don’t think it’s funny?”
“I think it’s funny,” she said.
“It’s a good script,” he said defensively, eyeing her.
“It is,” she agreed.
“But you still don’t like it.”
“That’s not really it,” she said softly.
“Then what is?”
“I don’t think this episode adequately represents the emotional place of my character,” she said after a moment.
He paused, watching her, before quipping, “Seriously, you need to spend a lot less time with the PR people, because your phrasing...”
“She’s not here, David!” she interrupted. “I don’t know where she is, but she’s not ready for witty repartee, or a made-up sham of a marriage or even him, 24 hours a day. She’s... she’s hurt, I know her, and he said...”
“I know what he said,” David said quietly, and Gillian’s eyes fell to the floor, suddenly aware of how silly she’d just sounded.
“It’s funny how you love them, isn’t it?” he said after a moment, and she smiled at the floor. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that he thinks these things at least as much as she does, that insomuch as she preoccupies herself with Dana Scully, he’s doing the same with Fox Mulder. He’s the only one who can really understand the relationship she has with this lovely, fictional woman, because he’s got his fictional man.
“You know,” David said carefully, after a long beat, “they should have had sex.”
“What?”
“Mulder and Scully,” he asserted “They should have had sex a long time ago. The second season, maybe?”
“What does this have to do with anything?” she exhaled (clearly she spoke too soon about him understanding).
“I was just... considering.”
“That Mulder and Scully should have had sex.”
“A long time ago.”
“Right.”
“It’s... overwrought, now,” he told her.
“What?”
“Overwrought,” he reasserted. “Emotionally. If they had sex now, it would be emotionally overwrought.”
“The hell?” she said after a moment.
“They’ve got shitloads of baggage! They’ve been making ga-ga eyes at each other for years now, and they’re so crazy for each other that they’ve put sex on this pedestal. It shouldn’t be like that,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sex could suck.”
“So what I’m hearing you say is that you don’t think Mulder could get Scully off,” she said after a moment.
“What... no! Mulder would absolutely be able to get Scully off in the event of sex.”
“So he’s not very well-endowed, then?” she said, her eyes falling downward.
“What?” he said, placing his hand between his crotch area and her line of sight. “Stop it!”
“You know, I’ve heard that sometimes men with smaller penises - ”
“Gillian!”
“I’m just saying!”
“Mulder doesn’t have anything to worry about!” he insisted. “Not in that area!”
“I mean, it’s perfectly normal to - ”
“Can we please stop talking about my dick?” David said wearily.
“I thought we were talking about Mulder’s dick?”
“They are one and the same,” he said. “Mulder and I have this thing where we’re physically identical.”
“No wonder you’re so sensitive,” she smiled loftily.
“I hate this conversation,” he told her.
“Seems like you started it,” she said.
He paused, then, and she wondered if it was the clock or the dark sky outside her window or even her face that tipped him off, but he caught something in his scrutiny that made it necessary to ask: “You want to go home now, don’t you?”
“I really do.”
“Am I bothering you?”
“You’re kind of... rambling, and you’re the last thing standing between me and my car, tonight, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say bothering, necessarily.”
“Because, you know, in an odd sort of way, I enjoy these discussions,” he said, and the way his eyes slipped away from hers indicate that this is, for him, the most vulnerable moment of the night.
“You find me stimulating,” she smiled.
“I do a little,” he said, pulling his eyes from the floor to grin back at her.
“If your goal is to keep me here to stimulate you a little more, you should really say ‘a lot’. It’s more, uh, complimentary and infinitely more persuasive.”
“No, no, you should go home. You have a daughter.”
“You should go home too,” she said softly, rising.
“Yeah, I, uh, might talk to wardrobe about the pink polo first. You know, I think I’d look nice in baby blue.”
“That right there? That’s masculinity. Baby blue.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“No.”
“So you were really just making fun of me there.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to go home now,” she informed him.
“Okay. Okay, good night,” he said, making no move to get up from his perched position on her chair.
“Good night.”
“Sleep well.”
“I’ll try.”
“See you tomorrow,” he said, absentmindedly drawing his fingers across the arm of her chair.
“Did you want to walk out with me?” she said, gesturing to the door.
“No, I’m fine,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
She kept still, waiting for it to hit him.
“This is your trailer, isn’t it?”
“The flowers and the pantyhose balled up in that corner over there didn’t tip you off?”
“No, I have those too.”
“Self-deprecation. You’re kinda funny,” she smiled at him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that my ‘quit whining, you’re funnier when you acknowledge that Hollywood has desecrated your manhood’ speech?”
“That was me saying you said something funny.”
“Okay,” he said, liltingly smiling at her.
“You wanna walk out with me?” she asked, tilting her head, and when he tilted his head inquiringly back at her, she said, carefully, “Your parking space is next to mine.”
“Yeah,” he said, standing. “Yeah, let’s go.”
It feels sort of wrong to post both of my stories at once (I have funny preconceived notions about these things!) so it'll be, you know, later. And I can read other posted things between postings, so, that's a nice thing.
author: elapses
rating: pg-13 for slight language and sexual references (don't get your hopes up, guys, this isn't that kind of a story).
prompt: for severuslovesme, David and Gillian practicing for/filming Arcadia.
summary: “You can’t understand this,” he said. “A pink polo shirt is like, the very definition of being whipped.”
“You know, they don’t tell you that this business is essentially a war on masculinity.”
It was really just fitting that the one night this week they’d finished working at a reasonable hour was the night David would decide to have an insecure breakdown in her trailer.
“David,” she mumbled, “it’s a shirt.”
“It’s a pink shirt.”
“Real men wear pink,” she offered, pushing at her temples.
“That is a lie,” he insisted.
“Haven’t you worn ruffles in a photoshoot?”
“It was a suit!” he said defensively.
“Do you really think that somehow negates the ruffles?” she said wryly.
“It was creative wardrobing.”
“Call it what you want, but really, that was you, destroying the very vestiges of the manhood you now so vehemently claim,” she said matter-of-factly. He spun at that, interrupting his pacing (the man was going to fall through her floor if he kept wearing at it like this) to stare down at her. She wondered what he’d do if she gave him a Scully eyebrow.
“I have hair and makeup people,” he informed her.
“You know, I know that, and I know you know I know that, so abruptly informing me that you do, in fact, have a whole team of hair and makeup girls assigned to you when you know I already know that is sort of, you know, not the move I’d expect from someone who seems to want to affirm their masculinity.”
“They didn’t say I’d have my own hair and makeup people someday,” he continued, ignoring her. “I thought I’d just get by on my rugged good looks and dashing charm.”
“How adorably naïve of you.”
“Did you just call me adorable?”
“I think I did,” she affirmed.
“I’m not adorable,” he said, falling back into the chair across from her to punctuate his assertion.
“Okay,” she shrugged.
“Rugged good looks.”
“If you say so.”
“Really!”
“I’m just...” she began, and he shot her a look, “...wondering. Where you’re getting rugged from.”
“I read it in a magazine,” he said dismissively.
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“Well, who needs real masculinity when you’ve got magazine writers making up things about you?” she sighed.
“Making up things?”
“David, if you’re rugged, I’m built like a supermodel.”
“You’re small,” he said, as if this defended the position that she was, in fact, built like a supermodel.
“About a foot too small, actually,” she said.
“6’3” is kind of freakishly tall, though,” he mumbled, “Most of the girls in the Victoria’s Secret shows are more, 5’9”ish.”
“It’s called hyperbole, Princeton boy,” she said sarcastically.
“Exaggeration.”
“That’s an A+, right there.”
“How,” he said softly, dragging his eyes off the floor to meet hers, “am I not rugged?”
“You want me to call you Princeton boy again?”
“No,” he said. “I’d like a slightly less derisive answer.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’re not Chuck Norris.”
“I know I’m not Chuck Norris,” he said, bewildered.
“You’re also not especially reminiscent of Chuck Norris,” she continued.
“This is a bad thing?”
“It is if you’re attached to the idea of having rugged good looks,” she said.
“I’m not anymore,” he said, sounding a little revolted.
“Okay,” she said. “Good. Then maybe we should talk a little about you taking offhand comments in a magazine as fact.”
“It seemed like a nice compliment,” he mumbled.
“You get a lot of nice compliments,” she said. “You’re a good-looking man.”
“Yeah?” he said probingly.
“I’ve already called you adorable and good-looking, you’re not getting any more out of me.”
“Damn,” he mumbled.
“But, see, that’s the payoff for ruffles and hair and makeup, isn’t it? Women fawning at your feet, praising your oversized nose?”
“Oversized nose?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know,” she grinned.
“You’re just being cruel now,” he said with mock moroseness.
“You get enough ego-stroking for seven men,” she told him.
“Yeah,” he said distractedly.
“Which is why you shouldn’t be whining about pink polo shirts,” she said. “Especially to a woman who’s just been handed more than one sweater-set.”
“You look nice in sweater-sets,” he told her.
“I really don’t.”
“You can’t understand this,” he said. “A pink polo shirt is like, the very definition of being whipped.”
“This is your job,” she said, exasperated. “This isn’t you walking down the street in one, Mulder is choosing to wear the pink polo under unusual circumstances!”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this episode.”
“You know, it seems to me like you liked this episode fine before the wardrobe department handed you a pink polo shirt,” she mumbled conversationally.
“I did,” he said off-hand, “it’s funny.”
“Mm,” she said.
“You don’t think it’s funny?”
“I think it’s funny,” she said.
“It’s a good script,” he said defensively, eyeing her.
“It is,” she agreed.
“But you still don’t like it.”
“That’s not really it,” she said softly.
“Then what is?”
“I don’t think this episode adequately represents the emotional place of my character,” she said after a moment.
He paused, watching her, before quipping, “Seriously, you need to spend a lot less time with the PR people, because your phrasing...”
“She’s not here, David!” she interrupted. “I don’t know where she is, but she’s not ready for witty repartee, or a made-up sham of a marriage or even him, 24 hours a day. She’s... she’s hurt, I know her, and he said...”
“I know what he said,” David said quietly, and Gillian’s eyes fell to the floor, suddenly aware of how silly she’d just sounded.
“It’s funny how you love them, isn’t it?” he said after a moment, and she smiled at the floor. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that he thinks these things at least as much as she does, that insomuch as she preoccupies herself with Dana Scully, he’s doing the same with Fox Mulder. He’s the only one who can really understand the relationship she has with this lovely, fictional woman, because he’s got his fictional man.
“You know,” David said carefully, after a long beat, “they should have had sex.”
“What?”
“Mulder and Scully,” he asserted “They should have had sex a long time ago. The second season, maybe?”
“What does this have to do with anything?” she exhaled (clearly she spoke too soon about him understanding).
“I was just... considering.”
“That Mulder and Scully should have had sex.”
“A long time ago.”
“Right.”
“It’s... overwrought, now,” he told her.
“What?”
“Overwrought,” he reasserted. “Emotionally. If they had sex now, it would be emotionally overwrought.”
“The hell?” she said after a moment.
“They’ve got shitloads of baggage! They’ve been making ga-ga eyes at each other for years now, and they’re so crazy for each other that they’ve put sex on this pedestal. It shouldn’t be like that,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sex could suck.”
“So what I’m hearing you say is that you don’t think Mulder could get Scully off,” she said after a moment.
“What... no! Mulder would absolutely be able to get Scully off in the event of sex.”
“So he’s not very well-endowed, then?” she said, her eyes falling downward.
“What?” he said, placing his hand between his crotch area and her line of sight. “Stop it!”
“You know, I’ve heard that sometimes men with smaller penises - ”
“Gillian!”
“I’m just saying!”
“Mulder doesn’t have anything to worry about!” he insisted. “Not in that area!”
“I mean, it’s perfectly normal to - ”
“Can we please stop talking about my dick?” David said wearily.
“I thought we were talking about Mulder’s dick?”
“They are one and the same,” he said. “Mulder and I have this thing where we’re physically identical.”
“No wonder you’re so sensitive,” she smiled loftily.
“I hate this conversation,” he told her.
“Seems like you started it,” she said.
He paused, then, and she wondered if it was the clock or the dark sky outside her window or even her face that tipped him off, but he caught something in his scrutiny that made it necessary to ask: “You want to go home now, don’t you?”
“I really do.”
“Am I bothering you?”
“You’re kind of... rambling, and you’re the last thing standing between me and my car, tonight, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say bothering, necessarily.”
“Because, you know, in an odd sort of way, I enjoy these discussions,” he said, and the way his eyes slipped away from hers indicate that this is, for him, the most vulnerable moment of the night.
“You find me stimulating,” she smiled.
“I do a little,” he said, pulling his eyes from the floor to grin back at her.
“If your goal is to keep me here to stimulate you a little more, you should really say ‘a lot’. It’s more, uh, complimentary and infinitely more persuasive.”
“No, no, you should go home. You have a daughter.”
“You should go home too,” she said softly, rising.
“Yeah, I, uh, might talk to wardrobe about the pink polo first. You know, I think I’d look nice in baby blue.”
“That right there? That’s masculinity. Baby blue.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“No.”
“So you were really just making fun of me there.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to go home now,” she informed him.
“Okay. Okay, good night,” he said, making no move to get up from his perched position on her chair.
“Good night.”
“Sleep well.”
“I’ll try.”
“See you tomorrow,” he said, absentmindedly drawing his fingers across the arm of her chair.
“Did you want to walk out with me?” she said, gesturing to the door.
“No, I’m fine,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
She kept still, waiting for it to hit him.
“This is your trailer, isn’t it?”
“The flowers and the pantyhose balled up in that corner over there didn’t tip you off?”
“No, I have those too.”
“Self-deprecation. You’re kinda funny,” she smiled at him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Is that my ‘quit whining, you’re funnier when you acknowledge that Hollywood has desecrated your manhood’ speech?”
“That was me saying you said something funny.”
“Okay,” he said, liltingly smiling at her.
“You wanna walk out with me?” she asked, tilting her head, and when he tilted his head inquiringly back at her, she said, carefully, “Your parking space is next to mine.”
“Yeah,” he said, standing. “Yeah, let’s go.”
It feels sort of wrong to post both of my stories at once (I have funny preconceived notions about these things!) so it'll be, you know, later. And I can read other posted things between postings, so, that's a nice thing.