Chapter 7 – Oscar

Fersen opened the door to my parents' house, allowing me to enter first. A gentleman, like always. I stared at his large hand that gripped the door knob. Later shaking the hand of my father and then ruffling the hair of my nephew. His large hands. Hands that had been on my neck. The hands that held me down. Hands that bound me.

I had asked him to do all of those things. Fersen said he didn't want to hurt me, cause me any pain. But I wasn't afraid of pain. I was afraid of thoughts and memories. Pain focused all of my attention onto a sensation. I liked how empty my mind became in the presence of pain. Pair this with the pleasure of sex and this was enough to make my toes curl.

We started using handcuffs in the bedroom and were getting rougher with each other. The line blurring the boundary of what we wanted sexually versus the tone of our previous fights. I could feel Fersen's frustration through his impatient and frantic movements. I oscillated between being excited in the moment to empty and distant the next, a small amount of shame creeping in once we finished.

A year after Fersen and I got married, I made detective and our schedules were becoming more and more incompatible. I wondered if the same thing was happened to us.

The phases of life that he had seen me were all so different. I had been an innocent girl when I first met him. Our second meeting, I was damaged. Just seeing him had made me angry because he reminded me of who I was back when I was infatuated with him. I hated and was jealous of that version of myself at the same time. I was angry for not being able to prevent awful things from happening to me. I wished I could go back. Jump across that irreversible line in the sand.

All of my experiences before my captivity were characterized by that line. The line was a constant. There was a before and an after. Everything good was before. I didn't know what came after. All of the before memories were tainted, and I was no longer that person. I felt like I had lived a thousand lives and was depleted.

Fersen had encouraged me to get help and talk to someone. I did end up seeing a veteran counselor a few times, one that he had found for me. Fersen got so upset whenever either of us were reminded of what I had been through. He would pounce, asking about my sessions, as if to check up on me, that I felt like I take care of him and make sure he was okay with it all. Before I knew it, I had started a practice of feigning happiness. Dividing pieces of myself into different personalities. I was Sweet Oscar, Brooding Oscar, Sexy Oscar, each role played for the appropriate context. Sometimes the happiness was real. Fersen initially allowed me to forget what happened to me. He taught me about the security of being loved. He taught me about forgiveness. Over the years, we accumulated a lot that we had to forgive each other for.

Coming down from one of our fights a couple years into the marriage, he had asked me something I didn't expect.

-"Do you still love me?" he had asked.

-"How could you even ask me that?"

-"Maybe I don't know what the answer is anymore…"

-"Fersen… of course I love you...," I said trying to hug him.

He turned away and I saw that he had started crying. I felt guilty when I wondering if I had messed everything up. Did I ruin Fersen? Was I responsible for his misery? I embodied Sad Oscar in that moment, but then I became Indignant Oscar. I wasn't the only one in this relationship. Was it always my fault? Why did I always have to put on a face for him? But maybe he was also putting one on too… I knew I wasn't the easiest person to live with or love. The situation required Sweet Oscar, so that's what I became and comforted him until he relented in my arms.

When Fersen and I first started sleeping together, I was consumed in him. He was like my drug and my sun, giving me energy to go on. Being in bed with him took away every bad thing I felt and focused everything into pure pleasure and pleasure only. He could make me forget anything in the moment. I didn't want to let that go. I asked him to marry me after being together a few months. But like any drug, my tolerance increased and the need to take it to the extreme had devastating consequences.

We were fighting more than usual. Our disagreements layering themselves into each other. We fought about our work, our schedules, not communicating, my tone of voice, his sarcasm, until it all snowballed into a large knot from which we didn't know which loose end to pull. One fight starting before another was resolved. Sex became a way to avoid fighting. We were escalating our sexual dose, needing more extremes to mask the issues we had. We were mixing pain with sex, physically and emotionally.

We were quiet in the cab on the way to my parents' house. We couldn't get out of going tonight. My father's birthday dinner. It was the obligation of those of his daughters who lived nearby to attend. That meant that Josephine, Hortense, and I had to be present. My two other sisters lived in California. I breathed a sigh of relief when Hortense told me that Loulou, her daughter and my niece, wasn't here tonight because she had to attend an astrology club meeting. Hortense had rolled her eyes when she explained this. Thank God Loulou wasn't here because she was constantly followed me around, badgering me with questions about my work and weirdly, my hair. Strangely, I could tell that Loulou didn't like Fersen, which was in stark contrast to everyone else in my family, who loved him. They had been thrilled at him joining the family. My parents and sisters had been utterly surprised when we told them about our engagement.

They thought he was the perfect man, the perfect husband. He looked so good on paper – cultured, European background, military career, professional lawyer, now a chief of staff to a senator. He was handsome and charming, accomplished, a great public speaker and conversationalist. Kind and personable to everyone. This was in contrast to unsociable me – delinquent, victim, and addict.

After dinner, as if on cue, my mom dropped hints about Fersen and I having kids. She had been dropping hints for years. Fersen and me responsible for a child? I ran through the events of last night in my mind. I came home drunk and high on painkillers. Fersen was angry, yelling, asking me where I had been. I opened a bottle of vodka at home, seducing him into drinking with me, and we got blasted into oblivion. More yelling then fucking. It was happening a lot nowadays. It seemed like the only way for us to have a productive fight now. We had woken up to a shattered bottle on the floor and overturned chairs; there was no way we would bring a child into this existence.

After a catered dinner and a toast for my father, my mom and sisters were having port in the living room and Fersen was in the kitchen with my brother-in-law and nephew. My father retreated to his study to take a phone call. I wandered the hallway and grand staircase looking at all the family photos that graced the walls. There were photos of when I won my first track and field event, when I got my Taekwondo black belt, and when I graduated from West Point.

-"Oscar…" my father called me from his study.

-"Dad? What's up?" I walked inside. My dad's study had always been a daunting place to be in as a child. It always felt like being called to the principal's office at school. Wood paneling covered the walls and tall bookshelves with rare books from both my father and mother's family archives filled one side. The other side hung ancient military maps that my father collected. It was dim with just one lamp on his wide oak desk. I sat on one of the armchairs that faced him, inhaling the familiar scent of tobacco and newsprint.

-"Oscar, what's going on at the precinct?" he asked.

-"Things are good… tracking a few investigations right now…"

-"You need to consider your next move," my father asserted.

-"Dad, can we please not do this right now?" I didn't want to have this conversation with him.

-"Think about your future. You're a decorated veteran, an intelligence officer, you're better than this. You've been doing this for three years now. You need to move up ranks or do something else worthy of yourself. I can make a call…"

-"No, don't! …I'm happy where I am," I exclaimed.

-"I heard about your little episode at the courthouse. My God, Oscar, you need to control yourself," he warned.

-"…It's kinda hard when you're faced with a familiar monster," I snorted.

-"You need to stop dwelling on the past. You're a soldier and that means sucking it up. If you have time to dwell on that, practice your marksmanship or do more physical training," my father huffed.

-"Okay, dad, we're done talking." I got up from the chair.

-"Oscar, you have potential but you're wasting your life playing squad detective. You're not helping anyone or yourself by being at your rank. I raised you better than this…," he finished.

I stood silent, frozen in place, taking my father's chastising. Being in his study inevitably had the effect of making me feel small.

-"Sir, I apologize. I couldn't help overhearing, but I think you're wrong," Fersen jumped in and I saw that he stood at the doorway. "I trust that Francoise knows best regarding what line of work she wants to be in. She can decide that for herself because it's her life and her career." My father scowled at him but didn't say anything in response. "I know I'm only intruding on your conversation, so that's all I'll say, but I came in here to get you both for cake and coffee. Francoise?" Fersen finished by coming towards me and putting his arm around my shoulder. He quickly ushered me out of the study.

In the hallway, he scrutinized my face, questioning how I was with his eyes. I answered by leaning into him and reciprocating his embrace. Fersen understood how I felt in that moment. We walked together toward the kitchen where my mom was putting candles on my dad's birthday cake.

I looked at my father's face as everyone sang happy birthday around him. He was getting older and I wondered if we would ever have the kind of relationship I wanted and communicate in a way that wasn't always on his terms. I thought I was doing pretty well as a detective sergeant, and I wished he could see it.

As the cake was being cut and coffee mugs doled out, I felt Fersen encircle my waist from behind, resting his chin on my left shoulder. I turned my head to kiss his cheek, silently thanking him for coming to my aid. Whatever our problems, he had just defended me like a husband. He had vowed to be on my side, my ally, until death do us part.

-:-:-

Contrary to what my father thought, I loved being a detective. It was an amazing feeling to find joy in my work again. I was relieved that my physical and analytical instincts fell into place like muscle memory. Detective investigation procedures for a city police department were slightly different than military intelligence but the principles were the same and a lot of my skills were transferrable.

-"So, you're Daddy's girl?"

-"Excuse me?" I frowned at this strange, large man with dark hair and friendly brown eyes who approached my desk at the precinct.

-"Hahaha, come on, let's go. We're responding to a call in the Lower East."

-"It's Jarjayes or Francoise. Call me Daddy's girl again and I'll cut you. Who are you?" I pulled on my jacket and followed my new partner toward the elevators.

-"You're a ballbuster, aren't you? Haha... Let's go, ballbuster."

When I first met him, Alain wouldn't call me by my actual name for three more weeks. Until we had our big fight. Now I couldn't imagine working without him. Alain was the best partner, and I needed him more than I cared to admit to his face. His cheerful and jokester demeanor brightened my mood during our investigations, field work, and prosecution assists. Working with him brought me back to life and I started to feel empowered again.

My experience in Afghanistan had both positive and negative impacts on my work. Whatever the crime, I developed a new empathy for victims in a way I hadn't felt in the past, maturing the understanding of the pain and confusion I saw on their faces. I knew those looks. I saw it on my own face when I had looked at myself in the mirror after returning home.

Most of the time, I was fine at work. But certain isolated moments curdled my stomach and I had to make an effort not to lose myself in an emotional or physical response. The most recent case was at the courthouse. Victor was prosecuting an abduction case that we recently solved. A kidnapped child had been held, locked in a secret room in the perpetrator's house for a week. It wasn't even the criminal himself, but his lawyer who taunted me in the hall of the courthouse during recess, saying perhaps the child had wanted to stay with his client, when I launched myself forward to accost him. Luckily, Alain threw his body in front of me and trapped my arms. He struggled to pull me outside, lighting and inserting a cigarette in my mouth to calm me down. People were murmuring around us and I had clearly caused a scene; I wondered who ratted me out to my father.

That night, I loitered around the squad room, stalling going home. Asking Alain to get a beer, I coaxed him to getting drunk with me at the bar near the precinct. Stumbling out late, Alain hailed me a cab home. Fersen and I had fought again when I arrived home. I didn't even know what we were fighting about. His schedule? Maybe I missed a dinner? Our fights and subsequent avoidance was getting tiring.

Although the last time he was here, Fersen was busy constantly fielding phone calls from Louis and communicating with his staff and other representatives. When I poked my head into the study in the apartment, he had handed the phone to me and I heard Louis on the other line, who wanted to say hello. Louis and Marie were on the news and social media very often now. Some pundits were even speculating about a presidential run for Louis and Marie as First Lady. I chatted with Louis for a bit and asked him to give Marie my best. It had been a while since I last saw or spoke with her. Marie now spent most of her time in D.C., the kids enrolling in private school there.

I hung up the phone, handing it back to Fersen who set it down on his desk. I looked around the study; it smelled like his cologne with a hint of leather. I had always felt like this room was his, feeling like a guest here. Everything was expensively decorated in his taste and style. I had no need for a study and desk at the apartment. I paused, leaning on the edge of his desk, and then left for the bedroom. Fersen loosened his tie and followed me.

-"I'm gonna jump in the shower," he said, after kissing me on the forehead.

-"Did you eat? I can order something."

-"Whatever you want," he shrugged and starting stripping, throwing his clothes on the bed and walked over to the bathroom.

I gathered up his clothes, figuring I would hang them up when I noticed something in his pants pocket. It was another work phone. I heard the shower starting to run in the bathroom and Fersen starting to hum. I knew he had multiple phones due to his work. He was constantly getting texts, emails, and calls from his staff on all of them. As I held up this one, a text message came in on the home screen. Missing you in the bed tonight…

I stared at the words again. Missing you in the bed tonight. This was a text. For Fersen. A sext, really. I inhaled and exhaled. I was surprised to feel nothing. We hadn't had sex in a while. What was I supposed to feel in this situation? Angry? Sad? Betrayed? After five years of our rocky marriage, I was done reacting. I had already been Angry Oscar, Sad Oscar, and Betrayed Oscar. Now I was Nothing Oscar. I was tired of fighting. If Fersen wanted to fight, if he wanted to explain, then he could do it himself, but I was over it. I heard the shower stop running. I left the clothes, set the phone down and left. In the kitchen, I rummaged through the drawer that housed all our takeout menus. I called the Thai place that Fersen liked and ordered his favorite papaya salad and green curry, and tom yum soup for me.

We had a quiet dinner together and an unremarkable conversation. He didn't say anything out of the ordinary that night, which meant that he was keeping it from me. Weirdly, there was a part of me that was relieved. Whatever I had done wrong in our relationship, I wasn't the only one.

The precinct called late regarding a missing person case I had to respond to. Leaving urgently to meet Alain downtown, I got dressed hastily, grabbed my badge and weapon and kissed Fersen goodbye. He was leaving the next morning, back to Washington. So we continued our dance of coming and going, leaving and returning. Never at the same time. And never revealing what was really in our hearts.

-:-:-

Fersen visiting his family in Sweden during Christmas had given me the time and space to reflect on our relationship and the memories we share. I was sad to see his disappointed face when I didn't go with him.

I couldn't keep doing this marriage half-assed. I had recently disappointed two important men in my life. If I truly respected them, I had to honor them and myself. I had to try and give it a real chance with Fersen and let Andre find his own happiness.

The front door opened and I heard the sleek roll of a carry-on suitcase. Fersen walked in and saw me across the living room on the balcony. He looked surprised to see me at home.

-"Welcome home," I greeted him and took his jacket.

He stood still while I hung up his jacket in the closet and walked back to where he was. His arms remained at his sides when I hugged him tightly.

-"I missed you…," I whispered in his ear and after a second, he reciprocated by wrapping me up in his arms.

After seeing Andre's open heart, I had to try with Fersen. I had to give it a real shot. I said to myself one more chance, like the countless times before. But maybe this time it would be different.

Fersen and I actually talked that night when I suggested we go out to dinner. I asked him about his trip and seeing his family. He asked me about my birthday brunch. We huddled close while walking home in the cold and greeted our doorman together.

Once we got inside the apartment, I kissed him, taking off his jacket and then his shirt, letting it fall gently. He looked slightly surprised but mildly amused. Staring into his gray eyes, I took my clothes off one by one. As soon as my bra hit the floor, he hoisted me up and carried me to the bedroom. We made love calmly and tenderly that night like we hadn't in a long time.

Hello all! I hope the readers understand that the characters are imperfect in their own way and develop coping mechanisms and bad habits, like all of us. Communication is very important, and I see that as the main failing between Fersen and Oscar. They've gotten into a bad pattern of withholding from each other. Hopefully I didn't fail in showing how both Fersen and Oscar contributed poorly to the relationship, and it wasn't just one of them; there are always two sides. Also, they do care for each other, even though they may not love in the way the other wants and are just going through the motions. I say, break up already! Haha, but of course, everything has its timing and we'll see how it all unfolds… I had a hard time towards the end finishing these Oscar/Fersen chapters – I hope this chapter wasn't boring. I have been writing and thinking about Fersen a lot, so maybe I'm ready to be done with him haha. I'm eager to get back to the current timeline and sweet Andre is waiting patiently for our attention again ;). I realize the past few chapters have been quite depressing. Please stay with me and you'll be rewarded later! :)

Oh, I also made Pinterest boards that shows some of the style which I'm imagining for our modern-day Oscar and Andre, mostly their fashion and hair for some of the previous scenes. If you're curious, you can find it by going to the Pinterest website and then type in /oscarswetdream after the dot com to find my profile. I had a lot of fun imagining them in today's clothes! Let me know what you think! This is just what's in my imagination. Does it fit with how you think of them? Love and hugs.