#my phone w notifs on for like 3 years (i do not miss the trump presidency) before like detaching in the early 2020s

[milfygerard]

hey does anyone here actually use ground news and have any thoughts on how it works? Are there other news aggregates I should look at or should I just download all the news apps?

[piecesofscully]

The Voicemail, Part 3

Title: The Voicemail, Part 3 Author:  @piecesofscully Rating: PG-13 Timeline: Pre-Revival A/N: This is an unbeta’d quickie continuation of a series written with @kateyes224 .  Please read parts 1 and 2 listed below, so that you have an idea of what the hell is going on. 

The Voicemail written by me

The Voicemail, Part 2 written by @kateyes224

With each step she takes, shooting pain jolts through the center of her heels as she finally enters her dark apartment.  There’s a staleness to the silence now, a product of entering single-living territory again, a lifestyle of chosen loneliness she hasn’t experienced for many years.  Each minute of her thirty-six hour shift sits heavily in her lumbar region, aching with ferocity as she shrugs off her coat and slings it over the back of a rarely used dining room chair.

Her phone pings loudly, its alert slicing through the quiet to announce a missed call and a voicemail.  She glances at the notification, fully expecting to see another summoning from the hospital, and she grips the chair as her knees buckle.  

Mulder.

Her cheeks flush pink with brewing embarrassment as she thinks back to a few weeks earlier, snippets of a drunkenly induced voicemail she had left him run muddily through her mind.  She had been drinking that night with the sole intention of getting drunk, an impulsion she hadn’t conceded to since her rebellious teenage years, and played his voicemail thirteen times, having memorized each line around the seventh or eighth. Each time she hit ‘replay’ she was another vodka and splash of cranberry juice deeper, soaking in every venomous word he spoke.

She has no memory of thumbing through her contacts and finding his number, or pressing the ‘call’ button.  She doesn’t remember hearing it ring or being directed to voicemail.  The words that had erroneously poured from her liquored mouth, however, come back in hazy fragments.

 “I wanted to abort my son.  You know why?  Because you were gone.”

 “How do you find a way to be everything and nothing to me at the same time?”

 “I hate that I love you.  I hate myself for loving you.  You’re like a disease.”

She has vague recollections of tumbling out of Skinner’s passenger seat and vomiting onto the side of the road, purging the vodka and toxicity that had festered inside of her on to the bumpy asphalt. As her hair was pulled from her face and a strong hand patted gently at the center of her back, Skinner remained quiet.  He remained tight-lipped as he drove her home, somehow managing to get her to her couch.  

She’d woken late the next morning with a blinding headache.  A glass of water and a bottle of Motrin sat untouched on the coffee table, and the bathroom’s waste basket perched dutifully next to her. It wasn’t until later when she was licking her wounds under the hot spray of the shower that parts of her diatribe had resurfaced in her mind, and her hangover became laced with regret and weighted down with shame.  

In the few days succeeding, she had gone back and forth as to whether to call him and break the deafening silence that followed with an uttered apology that had been meticulously rehearsed in her head or leave it be.  In the end, leaving it be always won, her humiliation and indignity always trumping the desire to mend what had been viciously torn apart.  Mulder had pulled at the delicate seam that still connected them, but she had dove in and ripped what was left to shreds, leaving a gaping wound between them that grew more necrotic with each day that passed.  

Now, weeks later, she pushes her phone across the table with a sigh and heads to run a bath, letting the screen fade to black, swallowing the voicemail notification.  

 Xxxxx

 For the next three days the notification for Mulder’s voicemail eats at her, haunting her as she presses on through her shifts full of patients, research, and paperwork.  It’s there nipping at the back of her mind as she speaks with patients’ parents, explaining a treatment plan that will span the next fifteen weeks.  It’s there around the edges of her vision as she scans research notes written by two doctors in Sweden.  It’s there like a ghost in the room, hovering in the corner of her bedroom, watching her as she falls asleep each night.  

She has dreams of listening to the voicemail, his strong voice repeating her own words to her, spitting the same acidic vitriol into her ear. She wakes each time drenched in sweat with tears streaming down her face, soaking her pillow.  

 It’s late on Wednesday when a bottle of wine finally offers her the courage to hit ‘play.’  She dreads hearing him speak, knowing that she deserves whatever it is that he’s about to say, whatever tongue lashing he’s about to serve. Her heart beats rapidly in her chest and her palms are moist as the words ‘You have one new voicemail’ mechanically flow from the speaker of her phone.  

 As the message begins, she hears the slow beat of a drum in place of his voice, followed by the soft notes of a gentleman singing.

 I can think of younger days when living for my life

Was everything a man could want to do

I could never see tomorrow, but I was never told about the sorrow

 She stares at the screen of her phone, dumbfounded.  Her number must have been one of the last numbers he called, she realizes, the voicemail an accident. He hadn’t meant to call her at all, she thinks with crushing disappointment.  She had agonized over this recording for days, building it into a mountain, and it’s a fucking butt dial.

Emotions swell within her and she’s unsure if she’s going to laugh or cry as her finger hovers over the key to delete, when the lyrics stop her in her tracks.

 And how can you mend a broken heart?

How can you stop the rain from falling down?

How can you stop the sun from shining?

What makes the world go round?

How can you mend this broken man?

How can a loser ever win?

Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.

 The memory slams into her like a freight train, and she nearly drops her glass of wine.  It had been hot as hell and they couldn’t sleep.  He had promised to install air conditioning before summer arrived, but they were hit with an unusual May heatwave with nightly temperatures that hovered around ninety degrees.  They migrated to the porch swing at 2am, scantily clad and convinced that the slight breeze outside would offer them a bit of solace from the sweltering oven that was their bedroom.  

 A smile spreads across her face and her eyes close as she remembers, practically able to hear the creaking of the chains as she swayed alone on the swing when he had gone inside to grab a glass of water, and music began to flow out from their open windows.   When he returned, he’d set the water down on the floorboards, the glass already dripping with sweat and ice cubes nearly melted, and pulled her to her feet.

 She brings the glass of wine to her lips and sips as she recalls how his warm hand snaked around to her lower back and he pulled her close enough that she could feel his breath on her cheek.  His chest was speckled with perspiration as she lay her face against it, and they began to sway back and forth, barefoot and nearly naked on the front porch in the middle of the night.  The crickets chirped in the background as the tune continued.

 I can still feel the breeze that rustles through the trees

And misty memories of days gone by

We could never see tomorrow, no one said a word about the sorrow

 Her chin quivers as she mouths the words of the lyrics, remembering the feel of him against her, the salty taste of his lips.

 How can you stop the rain from falling down?

How can you stop the sun from shining?

What makes the world go round?

How can you mend this broken man?

How can a loser ever win?

Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.

 She sighs deeply when the recording ends, and promptly hits ‘replay’ to listen again, savoring the 6 minutes and 28 seconds once more.  

 Xxxxx

 It’s nearly a week later when she receives another voicemail.  She doesn’t wait three days to listen this time, instead she finds herself rushing to her office and locking the door behind her.  She holds her breath as music chords begin to play, the message beginning mid-lyric.

 ...The tides have caused the flame to dim

At last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom

Is this the end or just begin?

All of my love, all of my love

All of my love to you, oh

 She stares at the phone in her hand as the song plays, her brows knit in confusion.  Led Zeppelin?  Her fingers twitch as the verse fades into the chorus, and the memory bleeds into her.

They were driving to the airport after a case, bickering about the radio and what to play.  She had wanted quiet, and he had wanted classic rock.  They had only been ten minutes into their hour and a half drive, and this mild argument was quickly setting the tone for how the drive was going to go.  With a roll of her eyes, she relented when he agreed to keep the volume minimal.  

She jerked reflexively when he reached across to grasp her hand.  The show of affection had startled her, as they hadn’t been together very long and displays of affection were still uncharted territory.  She stared at his profile wide-eyed as his fingers laced between hers and settled their interlocked hands atop of his thigh, his thumb brushing the beat of the song against the side of her own.  

 All of my love, ooh yes, all of my love to you now

All of my love, all of my love

All of my love, love, sometimes, sometimes

 The corner of her desk digs into her hip as she leans her weight against it. Tears burn the back of her eyes as she drops her chin to her chest, remembering that she had fallen asleep on that drive, and when she woke he was still holding her hand.

 xxxxx

 Her mind is flooded with memories of the last twenty years as she soaks in a bath, a new after work ritual with her stereo playing faintly in the background. The flashbacks flick rapidly through her consciousness, some random, others more profound.  Mulder wrapping a blanket around her when she was feverish from the flu and surrounded by used tissues, the look on his face as they laughed in the rain in an Oregon cemetery on their first case, him laying in a hospital bed after a supposed trip to a 1939 ocean liner telling her that he loved her.  

Her breath hitches in her chest as the melody of a familiar tune reaches the bathroom, and she instinctively reaches for her phone only to hesitate before dialing him.  What if he answers? she thinks, unsure if she’s ready for actual conversation, words of emotion never having been their forte. Even this unusual way of communicating, however fitting, is already bordering on uncomfortable, making her uneasy for reasons she doesn’t want to admit even to herself.  

She is almost immediately sent to voicemail, and holds the phone towards the open bathroom door, recording the remainder of the song.

 See the marketplace in Old Algiers

Send me photographs and souvenirs

Just remember when a dream appears

You belong to me

I’ll be so alone without you

Maybe you’ll be lonesome too, and blue

 As Patsy Cline laments her heartbreak, Scully hopes Mulder remembers that it was this song playing at the diner in Arizona when he had reached into his pocket for a small box.  Her stomach had flip-flopped as he opened it wordlessly, and pulled a ring from its cushion.  A simple white gold band with three small diamonds embedded in it.

The background noise of a busy lunch rush and the clinking of dishes faded as she watched him intently.  His lips remained pressed closed while his eyes bore into her, conveying an unspoken novel.  He took her left hand in his and slipped the ring over the first knuckle of her ring finger, the first stone a token of their past and everything they’ve been through together. The losses, the sacrifices, their coming together in spite of it all.

 Fly the ocean in a silver plane

See the jungle when it’s wet with rain

Just remember ‘til you’re home again

You belong to me

 His eyes never left hers as he coaxed the ring past the second knuckle, its second stone representing their present and who they are together.  Their loyalty and love, and their determination.  

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as, with a gentle nudge, the ring settled into place.  Its third stone a symbol of their future.  Wildly unknown, but a promise that it’s theirs.  It’s still theirs.

 I’ll be so alone without you

Maybe you’ll be lonesome too, and blue

Fly the ocean in a silver plane

See the jungle when it’s wet with rain

Just remember ‘til I’m home again

You belong to me

 When the song comes to an end, she ends the call and drops her phone to the towel on the floor.  With a sigh she sinks deeper into the tub, her fingers trailing across her left clavicle to the necklace that rests against her chest.  She grasps the ring that hangs from the chain, her fingertip grazing over the embedded stones.

Their past.  Their present.  Their future.  

xxxxx

Note: Song/lyrics: Al Green’s “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” Led Zepplin’s “All My Love,” and Patsy Cline’s “You Belong to Me.”