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xf_is_loveAs one of the last posters, I feel it is my duty to say that April 2009 has turned out to be one of the best months ever thanks to this community. Great job, everyone!
Now, I present Part I of II of my entries dedicated to "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man", which, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated episodes of Season 4. (Part II will come later in the form of an episode cap, like what we *used* to do on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
the_caps_files.)
TITLE: Lies We Tell
AUTHOR:![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
baltic_beauty
CHARACTER/PAIRING: CSM
RATING: PG
WORD COUNT: 689
DISCLAIMER: If I owned them, I wouldn’t be up to my eyeballs in college loans. So. Yeah.
SUMMARY: A set of three “drabbles” (I prefer to call them “character profiles”) about the Cigarette-Smoking Man (CSM). Although not exactly missing scenes, they are based strongly on the events of “Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man”.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, tomemories_child, for the absolute best beta ever. Beth, without you, the finished product would be nowhere near as polished as it turned out to be. I owe you about seven drinks when you come to the States. And ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
riddledfate, thank you so much for the read-through and subsequent confidence boost. You are my constant.
“I’m going to the movies at the Texas Theatre,” he says to Lee. “It’s only 90 cents. I love the movies.”
This was a lie, of course. A set of sentences that left his mouth dry and his pulse irregular.
I’d rather read the worst novel ever written than sit through the best movie ever made.
Lee wasn’t Mulder, so he couldn’t call his bluff. And yet he wondered whether Lee could see the way he bent his head in quiet shame and understand how deep the lie really was.
Later, he gazes half-heartedly at the movie screen when the police come in to take Lee away.
Goodbye.
He lights up for the first time and thinks to himself: maybe books are overrated.
***
Jack Colquitt sat alone in his apartment at Christmas. He believed in sacrifice... Yet, some nights, he longed for a second chance. He stared at the place where the Christmas tree should have been. He imagined the grandchildren who would have been underneath that tree, ripping the paper off the expensive toys he would have ordered from the finest shops in Europe. He could almost see a little granddaughter shrieking in delight, jumping up and running to him. “Grandpa!” she would yell, and she would climb up into his lap and kiss him on the cheek –
“Damn,” he said loudly, and shook his head.
It was unusual for him to break his own concentration like this. When he wrote he fell into the deepest of stupors; when he stopped, it was like waking from the most restful sleep of his life. Only very rarely did he shudder back into the present, unsure of who he was or why he was sitting there.
Once he regained his composure, he pushed his chair back from the typewriter and reached for his glass. Gulping the rest of his gin and tonic, he closed his eyes and repeated to himself: I am not Jack Colquitt, I am not Jack Colquitt.
Jack was just a character.
He thought of himself as a good writer because the art of writing mirrored his daily life so precisely. He was an expert at manipulating events and molding them into the truths and falsehoods that people like Fox Mulder took so God-damn seriously, just as writers took facts and used them to weave narratives that sold copies in the millions.
And yet his story was bothering him. Fiction, it seemed, was getting the better of him today. How ridiculous, he chastised himself. But he repeated, this time out loud, “I am not Jack Colquitt, I am not Jack Colquitt.” Finally feeling relieved – because words, after all, always held more weight when spoken out loud – he cleared his throat and eliminated the mantra from his mental repertoire of phrases, certain that he would no longer be needing it.
He put his glass down, allowing his fingers to find their way to the correct positions on his typewriter. The rhythm of the keys - click clack click - soon filled the lonely room with the quiet desperation of a man needing to forget.
***
Ah, the short one. He was his favorite. Melvin Frohike.
What kind of mother would do a thing like that? he wondered. Starting her child’s life off in such an insensitive fashion by naming him Melvin. What hope does one have for leading a good life with such a name? Is there really a worse –
Oh.
He pondered what Mrs. Frohike and Teena Mulder had in common at the time of their sons’ births.
Yet this was a mystery that would have to be tackled another day. His finger hovered delicately over the trigger; after a few seconds of trepidation, he stroked the edge of it, sure and then unsure of the particular way in which he should exert his power today.
He pictured Jack sitting alone on Christmas, the room quiet except for the periodic clink of the ice in his gin and tonic.
Well, then.
"I can kill you whenever I please... but not today," he muttered to himself.
He thought Jack would approve.
Now, I present Part I of II of my entries dedicated to "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man", which, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated episodes of Season 4. (Part II will come later in the form of an episode cap, like what we *used* to do on
the_caps_files.)TITLE: Lies We Tell
AUTHOR:
baltic_beauty CHARACTER/PAIRING: CSM
RATING: PG
WORD COUNT: 689
DISCLAIMER: If I owned them, I wouldn’t be up to my eyeballs in college loans. So. Yeah.
SUMMARY: A set of three “drabbles” (I prefer to call them “character profiles”) about the Cigarette-Smoking Man (CSM). Although not exactly missing scenes, they are based strongly on the events of “Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man”.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to
memories_child, for the absolute best beta ever. Beth, without you, the finished product would be nowhere near as polished as it turned out to be. I owe you about seven drinks when you come to the States. And riddledfate, thank you so much for the read-through and subsequent confidence boost. You are my constant. “I’m going to the movies at the Texas Theatre,” he says to Lee. “It’s only 90 cents. I love the movies.”
This was a lie, of course. A set of sentences that left his mouth dry and his pulse irregular.
I’d rather read the worst novel ever written than sit through the best movie ever made.
Lee wasn’t Mulder, so he couldn’t call his bluff. And yet he wondered whether Lee could see the way he bent his head in quiet shame and understand how deep the lie really was.
Later, he gazes half-heartedly at the movie screen when the police come in to take Lee away.
Goodbye.
He lights up for the first time and thinks to himself: maybe books are overrated.
***
Jack Colquitt sat alone in his apartment at Christmas. He believed in sacrifice... Yet, some nights, he longed for a second chance. He stared at the place where the Christmas tree should have been. He imagined the grandchildren who would have been underneath that tree, ripping the paper off the expensive toys he would have ordered from the finest shops in Europe. He could almost see a little granddaughter shrieking in delight, jumping up and running to him. “Grandpa!” she would yell, and she would climb up into his lap and kiss him on the cheek –
“Damn,” he said loudly, and shook his head.
It was unusual for him to break his own concentration like this. When he wrote he fell into the deepest of stupors; when he stopped, it was like waking from the most restful sleep of his life. Only very rarely did he shudder back into the present, unsure of who he was or why he was sitting there.
Once he regained his composure, he pushed his chair back from the typewriter and reached for his glass. Gulping the rest of his gin and tonic, he closed his eyes and repeated to himself: I am not Jack Colquitt, I am not Jack Colquitt.
Jack was just a character.
He thought of himself as a good writer because the art of writing mirrored his daily life so precisely. He was an expert at manipulating events and molding them into the truths and falsehoods that people like Fox Mulder took so God-damn seriously, just as writers took facts and used them to weave narratives that sold copies in the millions.
And yet his story was bothering him. Fiction, it seemed, was getting the better of him today. How ridiculous, he chastised himself. But he repeated, this time out loud, “I am not Jack Colquitt, I am not Jack Colquitt.” Finally feeling relieved – because words, after all, always held more weight when spoken out loud – he cleared his throat and eliminated the mantra from his mental repertoire of phrases, certain that he would no longer be needing it.
He put his glass down, allowing his fingers to find their way to the correct positions on his typewriter. The rhythm of the keys - click clack click - soon filled the lonely room with the quiet desperation of a man needing to forget.
***
Ah, the short one. He was his favorite. Melvin Frohike.
What kind of mother would do a thing like that? he wondered. Starting her child’s life off in such an insensitive fashion by naming him Melvin. What hope does one have for leading a good life with such a name? Is there really a worse –
Oh.
He pondered what Mrs. Frohike and Teena Mulder had in common at the time of their sons’ births.
Yet this was a mystery that would have to be tackled another day. His finger hovered delicately over the trigger; after a few seconds of trepidation, he stroked the edge of it, sure and then unsure of the particular way in which he should exert his power today.
He pictured Jack sitting alone on Christmas, the room quiet except for the periodic clink of the ice in his gin and tonic.
Well, then.
"I can kill you whenever I please... but not today," he muttered to himself.
He thought Jack would approve.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 12:45 pm (UTC)So glad I could help :)
no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 04:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 02:51 pm (UTC)I LOVE this line:
I’d rather read the worst novel ever written than sit through the best movie ever made.
And:
He thought of himself as a good writer because the art of writing mirrored his daily life so precisely. He was an expert at manipulating events and molding them into the truths and falsehoods that people like Fox Mulder took so God-damn seriously, just as writers took facts and used them to weave narratives that sold copies in the millions.
I never thought about writing this way, it's such an interesting way to describe / conceptualize that process! :)
I agree, Fox is worse than Melvin. But Melvin Mulder might work, LOL.
I can't wait to see your caps, bb! Love you! ♥
no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 03:03 pm (UTC)I should probably point out that I'm not actually responsible for the line "I’d rather read the worst novel ever written than sit through the best movie ever made." That's what young!CSM said to young!Bill Mulder at the beginning of the episode. Although I do love that line very much :)
LOL at ~Melvin Mulder~, hon. Hah! Love YOU!
no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 03:10 pm (UTC)I have no recollection of that great line, which only shows I haven't watched this episode in way too long. That should be rectified immediately! :)
I can't believe I don't even have one CSM icon. So wrong. I should have been better prepared for your awesome fic, bb! :D
no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 03:18 pm (UTC)http://guilty-icons.livejournal.com/23674.html#cutid1
:-)
no subject
Date: 2009-04-30 03:24 pm (UTC)So hard to choose from this huge variety of awesomeness!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-01 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-01 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-02 05:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-04 05:48 pm (UTC)You're my constant.
AND YOU ARE MINE, BB!! *SQUISHES* ♥