Sweet Bliss

Ft. Harrison is a secure place. It might be even more secure than Fitz imagines...

Outside, on the weapons range, Ms. Ophir commits to some target practice. She might as well; she's going to be here a while. And if Uncle Sam complicates this more than she already has, she and Fitz are both in a tight spot. And Afroasia will be in the hands of less-than-capable admins for that much longer...

Some of them are Islamic extremists. It's already bad enough that the North American States have lost a pair of twin skyscrapers to the foregoable wrath of the worst of one of her country's favorite religions...with the other two being Judaism, her own, and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity...

Somalis have made a lot of trouble for these North American states too, now that she thinks of it. It's almost hilarious to think that most Somalis haven't even seen the Statue of Liberty...

With confidence, she fires an antitank grenade launcher. It makes a big bang.

She wonders if she should tell Fitz what she knows about the attack on the Grey House... But she keeps deciding against it. First of all, this is a diplomatic errand she's on...or was on, before the attack prolonged things. And second of all, Fitz comes from a VERY conservative group of officials; officials who...might not understand her need to do things like this...or the needs of the men she loves...especially if a rightist would ever see any man as, say, "out of her league..."

A lot of men see themselves as out of Wonder Woman's league. And to think that she's just a primitive amazon...

Inside, Fitz lies down. He's on his chest. He's in a pair of white briefs. They're just white; this time, at least, they're NOT Vixen-patterned...

Vixen the DC heroine, not...

Liv's on his ass. She's still a fraction of her normal size. She's like a bug on Fitz's ass. And yet, for the most part, Fitz feels as if his ass is being manhandled by his favorite woman.

"Thank you for coming out here, Liv," he says. "You're the first inner peace I've had since this all started."

"I really wasn't trying to come out here." Liv massages one of Fitz's cheeks, best she can. "I told you earlier, I didn't know where you were. I didn't even expect this...treatment of one of my clients, to do this to me."

"So, one of your clients is a witch. I can see now why my wife voiced concern, when I asked you to be..."

"She wasn't my client. She was someone my client knew. And if you ask me, you should take away her license, after what she did to me. Or at least, if you were really PASSIONATE about me, you'd do just that."

Fitz scoffs. "Somehow, I KNEW...that my so-called 'lack of passion' was why you'd do something like this..."

Liv sighs. "Can I help it that I'm attracted to powerful men?!"

"You know...a lot of people think that YOU'RE a powerful person. It seems strange that you look for power in a partner, when you've already got enough power in you for four people."

"I don't feel that way, Fitz," she moans. "That's why I'm always working so hard; to get to where men like you are."

"I just don't get it, how you're attracted to powerful men, as you said, and you thought I wasn't powerful when you came to join my campaign..."

"I wasn't trying to stoke your flames, Fitz. I wasn't even expecting you to listen to me. Why would you, after all? I'm just a black girl, with a family history of involuntary servitude in the South, and you're a white man who's been lobbying for high tariffs and low income taxes since you learned the difference between the two...along with a lot of other things that sound strange and scary to more egalitarian crowds."

"Well next time, you should be more careful. The next person you discipline COULD be a lot easier to correct than you realize."

Liv sighs. "If only dreams came true... I got lucky with you. And as you can see, luck isn't always my friend when I'm working!"

"And yet, somehow, you fix EVERYTHING that your clients present you with. Shit, you've even tricked the most powerful country in the world into thinking that its President loves its First Lady like Johnny Cash loved June Carter."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, enough about me. Who is that slut you're staying with, and why are you sleeping together?"

Fitz grins. "Of course. It's a long story."

"I might as well hear it. I've got NO idea how to fix what's wrong with me."

"Her name is Silka Ophir. She's..."

"Let me guess; Gal Gadot's clone, that the leftists have sent to defame you, in a way that they mysteriously seem to know that I'll struggle with while fixing?"

Fitz chuckles. "She's the president of Afroasia, believe it or not. She was on a diplomatic errand. But as you can see, things have gone sideways."

"Let me guess; her angry Islamic extremist husband has put a price on your head, and they're putting you in protective custody because ever since the Twin Towers, no one here can take risks whenever a foreign Arab makes a threat against our nation's security?"

Fitz studies her, out of the corner of his eye. "Has anyone ever told you that you're a crappy fortune-teller?"

"Shut up. Tell me more."

"Things were going fine...at first. Or rather, they were going better than fine. A few times, we were on TV. And I have NO idea how my wife didn't see us before she came home, and caught me, on the Grey House floor, being suffocated by her rack."

"I probably would've...except my client took me everywhere except the real world. You have NO idea how many crazy people I had to convince that he wasn't secretly polygamous; most of them were just scammers, trying to raid his...allegedly dinar-stocked wallet."

"Anyway, we got back to the Grey House. We were about to have the main part of our meeting. She said the sun was hurting her eyes, so I asked someone to shut the blinds. But for some reason, all of my pages were detained, and even though I just gave Cyrus a new tank-mate, there STILL isn't enough telekinesis in those heads of theirs to replace my pages..."

"They could've been bluffing. Cyrus is your chief of staff; he's supposed to sound intimidating."

"Yes; Ophir found that out the hard way, the first time he talked to her. Anyway, there was no one else to do it, so I tried to do it myself. And then, for some reason, Ophir leapt up, charged me, and pinned me to the floor, moments before an antitank rocket flew into the Grey House, and blew up most of the parlor."

Liv stops massaging his ass. "O my god! You were attacked by an RPG?! Was anybody hurt?!"

"Surprisingly, no. But moments after the explosion, when Ophir's rack was still in my face, Mellie came home." He grins, and looks back at her. "KEEP RUBBING MY ASS, SLAVE!"

"Yes, Mr. President," Liv says, faking a Southern accent. She keeps massaging his cheek. "So, Mellie came home, and your face was in another woman's breasts. How'd she take it?"

"Nobody knows yet. She went into a catatonic state. She still is. One of my secret servants called the hospital a few hours ago; she's still a statue."

"Thank god. Mellie ALWAYS needs a break...especially from you."

"Of course you'd think so. Anyway, the NSA thinks that someone's trying to kill me, so I've been relocated out here for my protection. And because Ophir might be a likely target too, that's why she's here. Cyrus is still in the Grey House, with his tankmates."

"I can't believe you let him have two husbands. Gay men will NEVER make sense to me...as much as we both love men."

"Anyway, it turns out that Ophir and I have a lot in common. And she sleeps in my bed because we both have bad dreams."

"Well if you ask me, that makes you codependents. I'm honestly shocked that you wouldn't both have a worse dream if you slept together passionately."

Outside, a rocket explodes. Ophir's still hard at her target practice...

"I'm really rather let down by you, Fitz," Liv adds. "You love me, and you have bad dreams. I'd like for you to tell me about them. Uh...you haven't told Ophir what they are, have you?"

"Not as much as I'd tell you. Very well, I'll tell you the first scary thing I dreamed." He looks back at her. "You can take a break from that, if it helps you listen."

"Actually...I think I'll massage your other cheek for a bit. Could you give me a lift? I REALLY don't want to vault your butt crack."

Fitz laughed. "I'm wearing briefs!"

"Yeah, but...what if you fart?"

"Fine." Fitz reaches back, gathers her in three of his fingers, cranes her across his butt crack, and sets her down in the most sensitive spot atop his other butt cheek. As soon as she's landed, she gets to work.

If Fitz is the eagle, does that make Liv the brown-headed cowbird?

"In my first dream," Fitz discloses, "I relived my dream of being a naval aviator. I'd made it through the academy, and now the navy was augmenting my strength, and giving me the power to control my own gravity..."

"I confess I have sex fantasies about you with that. Go on."

"And then I flew a mission over Iran. The mission was going fine, until I was impeded, in midair, by Dr. Ghurani."

Still massaging his cheek, Liv thinks. "I once had a client who kept mentioning that name."

Fitz nods. "He's a dark sorcerer, if I ever met one. Plus, he's got the Shiiteforce on his side. Shit, he's on closer terms with Allah than the Supreme Leader himself."

"I doubt anyone does, but go on."

"Anyway, he took me to Jahannam. The ground was on fire, and there were black airborne demons everywhere. What's worse, Dr. Ghurani shapeshifted...into Mellie. And I must confess that Mellie NEVER looked better in black."

Liv chuckles. "I must confess that the only time she does wear black is at funerals. She probably wore white to your fucking wedding. If I were there, I would've ripped that fucking gown off her fucking body."

"She defended Iran; Dr. Ghurani, not Mellie. It wasn't really Mellie...that I could tell. I told her that my orders were to disarm her people. She retaliated by shooting me down." He hesitates. "And then I woke up."

"Okay, that's one. Tell me about the other one."

"Wait... Aren't you going to review my first dream?"

"Do I LOOK like a writer to you? Come on, and tell me about your second one."

"Very well. But I must warn you, that this one's a lot harder to explain."

"I don't expect you to explain it...OR understand it. If I understood all of my dreams, I'd be a psychotherapist."

"Of course. So, I was in bed. My dick was erect. You were climbing it."

"Wait," Liv stops, again. "I was this small in your dream?!"

"Believe it or not, Liv, I wouldn't mind if we never found a way to resize you back to normal."

Liv sighs, and keeps massaging his cheek. "I hate you so much. Go on."

"I was moaning. You were climbing, as if my cock was a fucking mountain. It was some of the BEST sex in my life. If you took the consummation of my marriage with Mellie, and the consummations of the marriages of every single rightist president, from John Adams to George Bush Jr..."

"I get it. What happened next?"

"There was a headboard behind me. It had rails in it. I was clutching two of the rails, as you were climbing me. And then, all of a sudden, and without trying to, I pulled the rails right out of the headboard, sat up, crossed the two rails, and jabbed them right into the chest of..." Fitz pauses, for dramatic effect. "And before I knew it," he starts out more slowly, "I was staring right into the face of one of the scariest people who I'd ever met."

"Let me guess; Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct?"

Fitz sighs. "Has anyone ever told you that you're a crappy fortune teller?"

"Sorry. Go on."

"It was Lady Carp. She's a human/carp hybrid, that I've dreamed about before. She has a mouth so big, she could swallow a baby, or a prepubescent child, without choking. And again, I was staring right into that when I opened my eyes."

"Wow, that does sound scary. How did I react?"

"I didn't see you. But I DO remember giving you a hard time, with what I did next. First, I screamed. Then, I got up and ran. I fell over the bed, and hit my head a few times, but as soon as I could, I charged down the hallway. Lady Carp chased me. I ran, until I got to the kitchen. I rummaged through all the drawers, looking for some knives. And you were still down there, hanging from one of my penis hairs, tiring, and begging me for relief. But I couldn't, because I knew that if I stopped, she'd kill us both."

Liv shakes her head. "I still can't believe you have nightmares about a CARP. Seriously, if we met before you met Mellie, I could've sexed you so much that by the time the Grey House started to matter, you wouldn't have known a carp from a goldfish."

"Lady Carp caught up with me. I still hadn't found the knives. I panicked. She gaped, shrieked, and charged me...

"I found the knives. I stabbed her in the arm-which was really the upper part of one of her fins. She didn't react. The knives just stuck there...and still, she stood as strong as ever..."

"If THIS is what the President dreams of, I honestly don't know why we're not under a Code Orange more often."

"I leapt onto the couch. She tackled me. There was a lamp nearby. I grabbed it, and smashed it over her head. She gaped at me, and shrieked. I did too.

"THERE IS NO LIGHT,' she said to me, 'THAT CAN OVERCOME DARKNESS..."

"Did she say that with her abnormally huge mouth, or telepathically, like Cyrus does?"

"Somehow, I threw her. I got up, and ran. You were relieved at first, but then you were hanging again, as soon as I got up and kept running. You swore up at me."

"Ah," Liv smiles, flapping her hair. "Do you remember which words I used?"

"The room was big. There was small furniture, arrayed all over it. Lady Carp chased me. One by one, I picked up each furniture item, and threw it at her, to try to slow her down."

"And she didn't slow down?"

"No, she just..." Fitz stops, and looks back. "Wait...when did you become such a good fortune-teller?"

"Well, Mr. President," Liv says, grinning, "I'm not THAT bad a listening, just so you know..."

Fitz sighs. "Fine. Anyway, I got to the other wall. I was trapped. I could either go out the glass wall-which was a ten-story drop-or, I could make use of the only material thing within my reach that seemed useful..."

"Let me guess: a crossed pair of rifles, that your father kept on his wall, to intimidate any of your sister's boyfriends who came courting her earlier than he expected?"

Fitz sighed. "Ah, and yet, the same old Liv never dies. Anyway, it was an old picture of Mrs. Robinson's hose-clad and otherwise-bare leg. There was this controversial movie, back in the '60s, called the Graduate..."

"Yeah, I know. Go on."

"Really?! A lot of Gen-Xers don't..."

"No, no! I know what it is; go on."

"I ripped the picture off the wall. I think I might've ripped some of the wall off, too. Lady Carp was closing in, and her mouth was as huge as ever...maybe even big enough to swallow both of us. Desperate for relief, I took the picture in both hands, and I threw it across the room, as if it were a discus..."

"Hmm; that's a sad thing. Capt. America only needs one hand to throw his shield."

"I got lucky. As soon as I threw the picture, I discovered the monstrous fish's Achilles heel: her legs. They were slimy, and clearly a LOT weaker than she had me believe. As the picture flew and spun under her, it amputated one of her legs."

Liv gapes. "Wow; I must confess I did NOT see that coming."

"Behind Lady Carp, the picture flew in a circle, like a boomerang. It knocked a lot of pans off a ceiling rack, above the island, in the kitchen where I'd just tried to stab her. And it came back around, and smashed into a million pieces when it made impact with her fish scale-armored back. Well; not entirely; the picture itself survived. Once it was free of the frame, it glided, like a parchment parachute, all the way down to the floor...where it rested, easily, atop Lady Carp's amputated and slime-bleeding leg."

"And...you said that the picture was of Mrs. Robinson's leg?!"

"Yes. Below, you were still hanging from my penis hair. You were screaming, constantly, for relief. But I forewent you one more time, pulled a shotgun out of the couch, and fired a warning shot into Lady Carp's hide. It didn't hurt her...but she hopped around slowly, on one leg, and glared at me..."

"Really?! You chose a shotgun over me?!" Liv scoffed. "I thought I raised you better..."

"I told her to go away. I told her that even though I didn't know what kind of ammo would penetrate her, I would scour the planet for it, if I had to.

"And somehow, she believed me. She flipped her middle finger at me-best she could, with the fin that I hadn't stabbed the knives into-and hopped out of the room, on one slimy leg. I waited until I couldn't hear her. And I lowered the shotgun, and drew an easy breath."

"Did you cover her leg in oil, and fry it like it was damned?"

"No."

"Too bad. I sure would've; and I would've made it extra crispy. Does she have arthritis, by the way, or do you know?"

"At long last, I relieved you. I held you in my hand, massaged your ass with my finger, and begged you for forgiveness."

"Aw," Liv admits, "that's sweet!" She hesitates; she's stopped massaging Fitz's cheek. "Still though, I'm glad it wasn't Lady ANACONDA that attacked you. She would've wanted me because I had buns."

"Yeah, there's a slight problem with that. You were the same size you are now; your ass would've been meaningless to her...AND Nicki Minaj's crushes."

Liv hesitates. She sighs, shakes her head, and keeps massaging Fitz's cheek. "Of course. I don't know why I ever bother to dream big."

Fitz smiles, and sighs happily. "THERE. I've shared my worst dreams with the woman I love. Now if only my secret servants would catch that son of a bitch who's trying to kill me and Ophir, so that we can both go home."

"Yeah, what do you really know about this Ophir chick anyway, Fitz? You keep telling me that you two have a lot in common, but...have you seriously never checked her urine?"

"Well...I've seen her humanity...and I've seen how her skill dilutes it. What else is there?"

Liv laughs. "Why don't you just admit it, Fitz? You have a crush on her. You couldn't see what was wrong with her if she was stowing a nuke in her low-cut."

"She's a Jew. And I'm an Islamic extremist...as much as I must confess that my party has in common with the desert-dwelling rogues who invented jihad..."

"Muslims aren't the only people who hate Jews, Fitz. Just saying."

Through the bedroom door, Ophir can hear some of what Fitz says. She thinks she can hear Liv, but she isn't sure. Poor Fitz; neither he nor Liv have noticed that an explosion hasn't happened outside in a while. They probably neither know nor care where Ophir is, as long as she hasn't left the fort and put them all in danger...or, so rumor has it...

Ophir narrows her eyes, and nods her head, as she listens. It seems, to her, that she and Fitz really DO have a lot in common, after all...

She walks down the hall, to where it dead ends. She looks up at a vent, and sighs...

"I share with them," she starts muttering, "I share with them not. I share with them...I share with them not..."