Overkill of a Musical Metaphor
Duck Dodgers. Even if we are to believe that life and music are one and the same, for how long can this metaphor be sustained before the core of the story is overridden? Some Marv/Dodgers...uh...smut? Would you call it smut?
If I haven't emphasized it enough already, I think I just committed metaphoricide. If you don't like that sort of thing, I suggest you turn away.
Then, if you don't like Marvin/Dodgers, you'll probably have turned away by now anyway, so you won't be here to read the above warning. Eh, oh well.
Disclaimer: Just because I've, by some miracle, actually RETURNED to a fandom other than SpongeBob ("no way", "way") doesn't mean I suddenly own Duck Dodgers.
Some people say that life is like music: it is given a strict beat but doesn't stick to it, it's loud enough to wake everybody else, and it's always too long or too short.
Others say that music is like life: one can get immersed in it to the point of distraction, it throws cowbell solos at you when you least expect it, and it is often ruined at its serenest moment by a no-talent hick attempting to warble a tune to it.
Still others, such as IQ High, say neither. They insist that music is music, life is life, they are two completely separate entities. Could be so; but then again, they believed the same about the Internet and the Matrix until the early 21st century.
Besides, they are not the authors here. We are. That's how it goes.
Therefore, for the purposes of this story, let us believe that life and music are one and the same. What happens in one affects the other.
As far as you know.
To make effective music, one needs instruments, tools from which the music itself arrives. Otherwise the whole thing gets reduced to an audition for reality TV, which is never good news.
Commander X-2 is the underdog of musical appliances, the bass. Strictly in time with the beat, he doesn't need to be extravagant and flashy to make his voice heard. When plugged into the right speakers, he can cause earthquakes and topple mountains. However, placed next to superior Martians who happen to be electric guitars and sensual violins (his Queen is an example of the latter), no one takes much notice of him methodically thumping in the background. But he is there.
In contrast, Duck Dodgers is the erratic trumpet. He works at his best when he is rapidly improvising notes in the hope that they fit and see him to the song's conclusion – it should be a car crash, but somehow, like freeform jazz, it works. Yet sometimes he gets so caught up in adding flourishes and grace notes that he forgets that he's merely supposed to be playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for example, which majorly pisses off the conductor. You never quite know what he'll play next.
Playing apart they make great solos. Together, for the most part, they clash. The fanfare of the Dodgers trumpet threatens to silence the dum-dum-dum of the Commander bass; this is retaliated by the later getting louder speakers and playing more outspoken tunes into the ears of the former. A hacking of Commander's strings with scissors is quickly followed by a well-aimed gunshot into Dodger's beak-like bell.
They just don't sound good together when competing for superiority.
But.
Once or twice a week – no more, no less – the brash duet puts their differences aside to play a common chorus. A relatively simple one, but one that is so different in tone to the rest of the piece, that it is worth sitting through jumbled verses.
A chorus composed to represent – in two words – lust, relief.
It always starts the same way. Two ships, two tour buses, slip away to the guarded planet on which the music can be made with no interrogation, the concert hall.
Staccato and staccatissimo from the trumpet, the crusader for justice swooping, swerving, dodging the bright light eyes of the common enemy. Quiet quiet loud quiet he goes, the accidental blast of loud nearly causing revelation of his location. But no, no, they choose to ignore it, so off he goes again.
The bass strolls methodically on its way, mingling with the locals, unnoticed as usual.
Each enters the same white room. Locks it behind them. Closes any windows.
Question and answer time – quietly, so as not to disturb anyone. Inquiries from Commander X-2 about why it is they're doing this again, met with brash dismissal from Duck Dodgers.
Now it's the trumpet's turn to ask a question, what it is they're actually doing tonight that's so scandalous. The bass gives a pained and labored explanation of the controversy behind this meeting.
Dodgers doesn't get it. He never does.
So far, so normal piece of music. It is only when...you know, what they came here for...gets underway that the duet finally starts to make sense.
Mezzo-piano, mezzo-forte, forte, fortissimo. The volume of their inner music rises, the passion of the kiss with it, as it does every time. It isn't confined to the ears; their souls, their lungs, the pit of their stomachs thud with the harmony that bass and trumpet share in that moment.
Even their hearts get in on the action, keeping a steady meter in anticipation. And fear.
Fear of being caught.
There is more. There is always more, an extension to the chorus. The bass dominates the trumpet in this, metaphorically holding the whip (and literally on one occasion), fucking him until both of them are sore.
Quavers, crotchets, minims of moans for more.
They don't just feel the music now. They are the music. Beyond the melody of duetic clashes, beyond the harmony they create solo, beyond the metaphor that this fan-author has completely overkilled; this chorus is the only time they are conscious of being the music, being the tunes they play.
Cries going up the scale, building in pitch, in volume, in tempo, up, up, up to a crescendo, up to the highest point until pleasure is the closest thing to pain - - -
then finally it's over, sweet release. Pants bring the chorus to a close, diminuendo, diminuendo, perdendo, perdendosi, fading, dying away.
Then.
The chorus is done, the verses resume, the two pull apart, fly off in their buses, the conflicts return.
For a moment, perhaps, they both played their beat to the same drum, played from the same music sheets (and bedsheets). But that is over now, for another week, and again they are two separate instruments struggling to make their voices heard over each other.
By now the question on everyone's mind is: why the secret duets?
Thankfully, the answer involves dropping the musical metaphor for a minute. Even whilst on missions, Dodgers isn't allowed to get much contact time with willing 'babes'. They don't really want him to anyway; either they have brains that see beyond copulation, or else just do not wish to have to pay twice for the same service: namely, getting screwed.
Commander X-2 is no better: with his Queen practically off limits and having been forbidden to fraternize with anyone unless it is the only route to conquering a planet (and apart from the Plut-Whorians, it usually isn't), most of the time he is one sexually frustrated Martian. Not even playing the one string bass can save him. (Musical pun intended.)
But – one day during particularly intense study of each of their respective laws, a legal loophole was found. The laws rule against playing around with the races they have to save or conquer. They don't say anything about not playing around with their nemeses.
Or, as Commander put it, "fraternizing with the enemy".
Therefore, with no other outlet on which to focus all that frustration, they turn to each other. They may be straight; it may be ethically incorrect to screw without love being there; but it's better than nothing. It suits them just fine.
Of course, they cannot ever show or tell of this secret compositions to anyone. IQ High, the Queen of Mars – hell, high near everyone would go ballistic if they found that one was using the other as his quick relief, his outlet for all the sexual tension he'd accumulated through the week... perhaps you could even call him his sex tool.
But confidentiality, lies and scandal are the price they pay for a good time.
And besides, what the big guys don't know won't hurt them.