Chet/Mary. Still love 'em endlessly.
Inspired by God of Wine, Third Eye Blind
Her mind has worked in numbers for as long as he has spent inside it. Ratios, fractions, probabilities, structures, logic. She has spent so much time perfecting her understanding of Western mathematics that it is only natural for her to slip into a scientific background, easily and quietly, neglecting her governmental roots. Her father raised a somewhat disapproving eyebrow when she announced her academic intentions, her mother smiled a habitual blank smile. She left as quickly as her scholarship would allow.
The campus welcomed her into the shade of its tall trees, sunlight moving through the leaves, an undeniably northeastern appeal. She is proud of how far she has come, how many schools wanted her, but part of her wonders what would have happened had she slid down a 3000-mile hypotenuse to California. She chews her lip in front of travel agencies, comparing photographs of coastal sunsets, making excuses. This is how you get into Yale, she tells anyone who asks: want it badly enough. Somehow, being across the country in a place he once called home brings her closer to him than anything physical could. This binds us, she has thought to herself when feeling exceptionally alone, this means we have moved through the same halls, walked on the same grass, learned in the same rooms. This keeps us together.
Still, she knows, all too well, that wanting something badly is never enough. It was the letter: addressed to someone else but somehow privately hers, a line of communication she could never read, an action that spoke louder than the words it contained. Jonathon, scrawled on the envelope, was all she had read of this letter of recommendation, paired carefully with her transcript and letter of intent. The recipient was Jonathon Feller, Chair of Graduate Studies in the Science Faculty; he was on a first name basis with the man who had showed her the beauty of numbers. Her acceptance had been practically immediate; Professor Feller had shaken her hand reverently upon their first meeting. "Dr. Wakeman speaks very highly of you."
Dr. Wakeman speaks very highly of you.
The words had been delicious then, and they were delicious now. Occasionally she mouthed them to herself, savouring how they felt on her lips, contemplating what had been written to invite such praise.
Sometimes she studied. Her topic of interest did not stray far from his; genetics and genomes filled her thoughts with an ambitious intensity. Her classmates were jealous of her instant academic superiority, but slowly she tricked them, turned them, made them believe she was far less of a force than she actually was. A future talent for manipulation was cultivated behind those ivy-covered walls as, one by one, the students fell victim to the malignant charm of Mary Crawford. With each laugh, a girl gave in; with each wink, a boy fell hard. Her sexual experience was fairly extensive because boys were easy, boys were playthings. When they yelped into her shoulder, she rolled her eyes and rolled out of bed. What they offered was a chance to further her knowledge, educational stepping stones for a future she had imagined since she was thirteen.
She is twenty-two now, in her New Haven apartment with two girls and a bottle of vodka, and her mind is working in numbers.
40%. 8 shots.
That's why I don't feel it burn.
She and the girls play freshman games – Truth or Dare, Never Have I Ever. Mary deftly avoids 'Truths' and drinks only when appropriate for her socially acceptable persona.
"Never have I ever kissed one guy and slept with another in the same night." Drink. True.
"Never have I ever been homesick." Don't drink. True.
"Never have I ever worried about my academic future." Drink. A lie.
"Never have I ever wanted to kill myself." Drink. Drink. Drink.
Eventually it all gets a little hazy, and Mary finds herself saying, "Never have I ever wanted to be with someone older than my father."
The girls pause, their shot glasses still full. Mary covers immediately, laughing and knocking back the shot, reminding them of eight-year-old crushes on forty-year-old actors when their fathers were thirty; they giggle and drain their glasses. Her insides churn, and she can't continue the game. The girls leave, loudly.
She shuts the door and collapses against it, tears threatening the corners of her eyes. Her teeth close on her lower lip, drawing blood as she stares heavily at the bottle.
The alcohol, it permeates.
As she swallows, she loses the parts of herself she keeps as a line of defense. Her ambition. Her wit. Her intelligence. Her ruthlessness. Her general disregard for humanity.
She is left with anger: the empty bottle shatters on her kitchen floor and she screams, once, hating what she has had to do to get to this point. What she has sacrified – what had been sacrified for her, without her consent. I had a few days before fall quarter starts...the relationship with her father that could never work, approval that will never be given, a desire to make him hate her as much as he had hated his own father. One day, she thinks furiously, fists clenched, standing still, avoiding broken glass, you will see so much of your father in me – so much of his power – that you will have to accept that I am just better than you.
"Do you hear that?" She shouts, knowing he doesn't. "I am better than you, Dad. I have Crawford blood in my veins, not fucking water."
She stumbles, steps on a shard, and she is left, too, with loneliness: her heart shatters against the walls she has erected around it. Quietly, carefully, she leaves the kitchen, tripping over her own feet and falling onto the living room rug. This is her breaking point: the tears overflow, and she sobs, curling into herself, clutching her bloody knees.
With all defenses down, with all pretenses gone, what she wants is surprisingly simple.
It is not her father's pat on the back, nor her own success or ambition or power. With all defenses down, playing Truth or Dare with the blunt honesty of a child -
What do you want, Mary?
The right answer is "Power." When she sobers up, this will be the answer she gives until she has lost everything.
The true answer, though, is "Him."
She wants what he can give her. The knowledge, the possibility, the warmth. She wants his arms around her as she sobs drunken tears into the ground, she wants him to pull her up off the floor, into the bedroom. She wants his hips between her legs, his tongue in her mouth, his eyes on her eyes, his fingers in her hair. She wants to wake up beside him, to roll onto his chest and pretend the sun hasn't risen. She wants the future she has always wanted and always denied, a future that depends on someone else.
This, this is too horrifying to contemplate.
Sex, she can deal with. Animalistic attraction, scientifically proven; the genetics in her have chosen this man because he is everything she admires, everything she would want her progeny to embody. Brilliant. Strong. Virile. Intense. Kinetic.
But she didn't say never have i ever wanted to FUCK someone older than my father.
She drunkenly crawls to her hall table, where rests, safely tucked into a drawer, a phone number written carefully on a piece of lined paper. Maybe don't do this, a somewhat sober voice in the back of her mind suggests, maybe this isn't a good call.
"Oh fuck off," she hisses to herself. I must be drunk, the sober part of her notes, I'm actually fucking arguing with myself. Out loud. "It has been such a fucking…such a fucking long time. I have been waiting - " and she trails, here. A sob lodges itself in her throat.
I have been waiting.
That's the problem.
She has been waiting almost five years.
"Five fucking years, Uncle Chet," she mutters under her breath.
On her eighteenth birthday, she waited for something - in her current state, she'll admit she wanted him to fly across the country, knock on her door, and sweep her off her feet in a backwards-swirling kiss - but a sign. Something. Anything. She got a book and a card.
For fuck's sake, Mary pulls herself up with one hand, trying to stand, the book could have at least been Lolita.
It wasn't. It was some brilliant piece of literature by some brilliant author whose last name started with an 'E' and of course she loved it and of course it was displayed prominently on the Lady of Genetics' bookshelf despite it being fiction.
"I need a drink," Mary's head swims.
The last thing you need is a drink.
But she listens to her heart, for once, and makes her shaky way to the fridge, pulling out a wine glass on the way.
The card, she remembers (she threw it out in anger, but memorized the contents), was a Hallmark sentiment with his unmistakeable hand making a few (too few) additions. "Mary - Wishing you all the best on your 18th. Though the best is ahead; or perhaps simultaneous [a veiled allusion to the book he'd given her, which dealt with the 20th century, split down the middle]. Seek your thrills. - Chet."
She stops pouring the wine suddenly, slams the bottle on the counter and turns back towards the phone, pale liquid splashing in her glass. Did it take this much alcohol for you to realize that was a sign, you fucking moron?
Mary had assumed he'd been uninterested. It'd been his responsibility, for fuck's sake; what was I supposed to do?! I was a little girl with a fucking teenage crush; he was the king of the scientific underground. She remembered women hanging on to his every word at every social gathering. It wasn't my call. So when he wasn't obvious - god, what had he expected?! She wasn't the interpretive type. Coded messages in a card - was it her call the whole time?
She has waited so long.
She's seen him, a few times, since her 18th. He never acted even the slightest bit differently. A gentleman, candidly interested in every word she said, but never inappropriately. And every time, she tried her damn fucking hardest to get him to notice her. Extra makeup, starved herself a few days beforehand, come hither subtle looks - and he never reacted. Not once. She'd leave frustrated, bereft, empty in a way she'd thought would one day dissipate. Sadly convinced her entire adolescence had been a delusion.
But maybe…
Maybe it had just been too long; too much of the same thing. Maybe they were over stimulated. Maybe neither of them understood the signs because they'd been reading them for so long; maybe nothing changed except her age.
She is back in front of the phone; slides carefully to the floor. Sip of wine. Her knees are still bleeding.
"Seek your thrills," she murmurs thoughtfully.
She has always been his thrillseeker. Some of her earliest memories are of his calls from the front door as she bolted to him through the old house in Las Vegas; "Hello, thrillseekers!" and she would run to him.
You stupid, stupid girl.
"How you doing, thrillseeker?" at 16, when he visited for a few days on his way to Boston; they sat and talked about everything. No holds barred. Everyone treated her like a child except him; he saw through her, into her, deeply understood exactly what she needed in every conversation. Eric jealously drank his scotch, watching his daughter and his friend light up against each other.
Stupid.
She fumbles in the drawer but quickly finds the number. Clearly transcribed in her handwriting from her father's address book: Chet Wakeman, and a Pasadena area code.
You are about to drunk dial the man you just referred to as the king of the scientific underground, Crawford, she snaps at herself. You can't be serious. Look at yourself.
She does a quick mental calculation: it's just after midnight in California.
This is insane.
"He was waiting for me," she says out loud, finally putting it together.
You are wasted.
The phone is against her ear before she realizes she's dialing. Oh you fucking idiot. Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. She is biting her knuckle, stuck in a stasis of disbelief.
"Hello?"
It is his goddamn voice.
God she wants to be beside him, to be stirred out of sleep as he stretches out to answer the phone as sleepily as he just has, voice coated with exhaustion, nuzzle into his arm as he tells whoever it is to fuck off, my thrillseeker and I are sleeping, and curls back into her -
"Anyone there?"
She chokes out a sob.
"Hello?!"
"It's - " her breath hitches.
"Is - Mary?!" his voices jolts awake with recognition. "Mary, is that you?"
"Yes," she whispers. Humiliated. I told you.
But he recognized my voice from one word.
"Is everything - are you okay?" he sounds more terrified than concerned. "Christ, it must be - 3am there? Jesus, Mary, are you -"
"I'm fine," she cuts him off. Humiliated.
"Are you sure?" he's breathing hard.
"Yeah, I just -" You just what. Wanted to confirm your insane suspicion that he's wanted to fuck you for years and you just never acted on it? At THREE AM on a TUESDAY?! "I just…"
He's quiet, waiting. She wonders what he's thinking on the other end of the line. Wonders, sharply, if there is someone slowly waking up beside him.
"I'm sorry to wake you."
"Oh christ, Mary, it's fine." He sounds so certain. Confident. Put-together, brilliant. God, she's flooding between her legs and trying not to cry; what does this man do to her?! "What's up?"
"I've been thinking about that book you got me. For my 18th birthday." At 3am on a Tuesday. Subtlety, honey, has never been your strong point.
A 3000-mile hypotenuse away, she feels him stiffen. "Oh."
That traitorous, sober part of her is waiting cruelly for a female voice to murmur Chet? on the other end of the line. "Erickson."
"I remember." His voice is simultaneously colder and more tender.
Oh you're drunk as fuck already, idiot; just let him in on the joke. "I've been drinking," she lets slip before she can stop herself.
He laughs, genuinely. "I sort of figured. Everyone gone home?"
"Yeah. And yeah, I - " she feels her resolve harden. "I loved the book."
"Yeah. We spoke about it," he says, but not condescendingly - in, or at least it sounds to her drunken ears, respectful memory.
"But the card - " Well, you're on your own. There's no going back now.
She wishes she knew what he was thinking as his voice turns to ice. "Mary, maybe you should get some sle - "
Fuck. "I'm sorry. Never mind. Never mind." One of the few times she will apologize to him.
His end is silent. She hears him shift, hears the blankets in his bed, god, even after this total humiliation you can't fucking keep your thighs dry, huh?, and her heart is cracking into pieces in the pit of her stomach. A few moments pass. She is too terrified to speak.
"How much have you had to drink tonight, Mary?" his voice is soft, gentle.
She snorts. "A lot."
"Do you think you'll remember something tomorrow, if I tell you now?"
Fireworks. Her entire limbic system turns to pyrotechnics. The possibility of this is paralyzing. "I can try."
He breathes out slowly. "That's not the card I wanted to write."
She freezes. Every cell in her, motionless. What does that even mean? You stupid drunken girl, you finally figure out his game and he never actually wanted you to?! "Oh."
"I…" he is having trouble, too, but the next sentence has a joking, intentionally pretentious tone. "For all my genius, I can have trouble expressing myself, sometimes."
She chuckles, despite herself, despite her heart, but that heart lifts when he murmurs: "I wish I could have said it more clearly."
There is a long silence. They are both mulling over the implications. Chet has had more scotch than he'd be willing to admit. Mary can smell a heady mix of booze and her own want. They are both aching.
He speaks first. "Maybe order some pizza. You'll thank me tomorrow."
Another chuckle. Her heart, now, with reflection, is soaring. "If I remember." Oh, perfect move, idiot.
"Hm. Yeah." His voice is thoughtful. "Well, if you do remember, let me know."
"I will," she replies, and something in her twists profoundly - like the feeling when your teenage crush confirms something, not necessarily identical feelings, but the fact that you haven't been crazy this whole time.
Is he naked right now? God. God. Because, of course, the sober part of her is just as head over heels for the man on the other end of the line as the drunk part.
"I should go," she mumbles, with regret.
"Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yes," and she is. Sort of. Except that tomorrow, this conversation will be a blur, a fuzz, and she will cry in her hungover stupor, wish desperately that she had written everything down, that she knew precisely what he had said, what he had meant, and she will feel stupid, stupid, stupid, as she cleans up the broken glass in her living room with a pounding headache, running everything over in her head, over and over, what did he say, did he actually say he hadn't written the right card or was that a dream, why did you call him drunk?!
"Okay. Well, sleep well, Mary."
"You too."
They hang up. She finishes the wine in two gulps and staggers into bed.
A week later, the sting of humiliation hasn't lessened. You've ruined everything. Would he ever want to be around a child like you, a little baby who drunkenly calls people and whines to them?! Someone as regally sophisticated, brilliant, as that - god damn it, Mary, you fucked everything up. Whatever he might have said that night, he regretted the next morning. Her friends keep referring to the evening, laughing, "God that was so much fun; I felt like a kid again!" yes, well.
Everything is ruined. She throws herself into the last classes of the semester, viciously trying to beat Patrick Brown in the lab, really just trying to forget herself.
But he, as he always will, as he always has, anticipates.
The night she called him, her 23rd birthday was barely ten days away. So: a card arrives in the mail, her name and address scrawled in his handwriting.
Her heart stops stops stops she cannot breathe she cannot move she slides to the floor beside her hall table, where she sat a week ago beside a glass of wine.
She builds the courage to open the envelope, slowly. And it is the same stupid Hallmark card, the exact same one, from five years ago.
Beautiful Mary -
Wishing you all the best on your 23rd, though I very much hope the best is ahead. With regards to our phone conversation last week, please know: whatever thrills you're seeking, I will be there.
- Chet
In two months, it will be June 9th, 1993; the first time they'll see each other since this card.
They will spend the next nine years in each other's arms.