North Dakota
By Missy

SERIES: North Dakota
PART: One of One
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING(s): Lenny/Laverne
DISTRIBUTION: To LW, Kai, Myself and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"

Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
CATEGORY: Songfic, L/L
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SETTING IN TIMELINE: California; let's picture ourselves sometime in the late disco era...
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Lenny tries to learn the ways of love, but it's Laverne who must bend when he considers leaving.
NOTES: Inspired and including lyrics from the Lyle Lovett song "North Dakota"; written by Lyle Lovett and Willis Alan Ramsey. All rights reserved

****

He could watch her sleep for days. Just living off of the warmth of her presence seemed enough to sustain him. Food? Who needed the stuff?

Until he got to thinking....Wondering. Wondering if he was the only person in the room who felt a thing.

The boys from North Dakota
They drink whisky for their fun
And the cowboys down in Texas
They polish up their guns
And they look across the border
To learn the ways of love

When he was a boy, playing cowboys and Indians out in the streets of Milwaukee with Squiggy, he had always fantasized himself the white-suited hero, saving the pretty heroine. Squiggy had willingly played the villain; a role he relished. Lenny laughed at himself; he sure wasn't a Lone Ranger.

He was in love.

It was the worst kind of love; painfully unrequited. Satisfied with lust abruptly when she suddenly turned to him in a moment of crisis.

The first time...how had he charmed her into bed? He wracked his brain, trying to remember what he had done, for the first time in his life. He could only remember a frantic need, expunged from his body. It shamed him, because he wanted to treasure every moment he had with her.

But they had both been too drunk.

If you love me, say I love you
If you love me, say I do
If you love me, say I love you
If you love me, say I do
And you can say I love you
And you can say I do

This had been the fiftieth time; the hundredth, last night; he'd lost count in the fevered pattern of lust they'd fallen into. And while they loved as purely as any other flower children, he felt empty; empty because he loved her with every fiber of his being, but she did not break or bend.

She did not love him back.

His stomach lurched painfully as he stood fully dressed at the foot of their bed. He noticed the bruised tone of her lips; the hickey he'd left upon her neck. She lay naked beneath the sheets, while he stood there in his Lone Wolf jacket, hands in the worn pockets, unwilling to fall in with the crowds that inhabited the streets.

It all felt so wrong, one of them naked, the other dressed. Like the gallant passion he'd come to display had turned to violence in their inebriated state.

I remember in the mornings
Waking up
With your arms around my head
You told me you can sleep forever
And I'll still hold you then

She loved him when they were together, in bed, alone. But she could not love him in front of her father. In front of a granite-jawed policeman. In front of Rhonda.

She did not love him at all.

The fact seemed to make him reel; how could she kiss him like a woman possessed and then leave his heart to twist in the wind? Tears blurred his eyes as he backed away, toward the door, as though from a demon. The rules of love had gone painfully wrong for them both; some part of him thought that she should be the one on her knees, but either thought felt unfair.

She would choose to stir at that moment.

"Len?" She stirred, sitting up, smiling blearily, "Len..." Sleep cleared from her eyes when she recognized his tears, "What's wrong?"

He took a deep breath, "I'm leavin' ya, Laverne."

"What?!" She was instantly awake, dragging the sheets with her, "Len, no.."

"Why not?" He snapped, one hand on the doorknob.

"What's wrong?" She repeated.

"The same thing that's been wrong every day of our lives!" He snapped, "Ya don't love me!"

Now the weather's getting colder
Hell, It's even cold down here
And the words that you have told me
Hang frozen in the air

She shivered at the impact of his voice; a vicious condemnation. Laverne had loved him with the only thing available; her body. And he didn't believe it, as she did.

"I gave ya my whole body," She said, her voice like gravel, "Ain't that enough ta show ya I care?"

And sometimes I look right through them
As if they were not there

He stepped through the doorway, "Carin' ain't the same as love." He said roughly.

She cut through the ice, cupping his face. The words she had avoided for years came without a stutter, without a hesitation.

"Leonard Kosnoski, I love you."

And the boys from North Dakota
They drink whisky for their fun

His face melted beneath her touch; he soaked her in his tears. The moment was timeless, as though it had come out of the romantic novels she had adored for years.

"I love you," He echoed. The words were an epiphany.

And the cowboys down in Texas
They polish up their guns

He kicked the door shut, his arms occupied otherwise by her form and body. The floor wore their clothing with a certain air of finality. Neither of them would be quite as lonely again.

His last coherent thought involved Roy Rogers and Dale Evens.

And they look across the border
To learn the ways of love

He knew that they had never loved like this.