Chapter Text
In a career overflowing with the inexplicable and occasionally miraculous, it no longer surprised him to be saved. And in a life overrun with trauma, it also came as no shock when salvation was violent, deadly, and just a bit miserable, a body cooling in a parking lot on a gray afternoon, humanity undone by three tiny little rounds to the chest. Life was so cheap.
But life was precious, too, indescribably so—although if pressed he’d have outlined the basics with red hair and blue eyes, about yea-high, singularly intent as an avenging angel.
Behind her were all the serried forces at her command, a swat team and the local PD that started swarming the building behind them and spilling out to check and contain the area. He stood, numb. He felt strange. That, in itself, wasn’t really so strange. It was just the quality of the unease, something more than should have been present after a relatively straightforward drug case. Barely an X-File, the only inexplicable elements to be found in the drugs themselves, processed and packaged in the unremarkable building behind them with precision verging on artistry.
It was almost—almost—a shame the sonofabitch was dead. Now they’d never know exactly what some of those compounds were.
“What do you think triggered the fallout?”
The sheriff was standing with his hands on his hips, surveying the scene like he had all the time in the world.
“Um…” I tricked them into giving up their supplier, and the supplier wasn’t happy when he got there. Easy enough sentence, but he couldn’t seem to make the words come out of his mouth. And he was weirdly fixated on the sheriff’s mouth. It looked…good. Inviting. What?
That was weird enough to be unsettling (is this a midlife crisis? And worse: am I middle-aged?), so Mulder looked away—only to find himself entranced by one of the EMTs, a tired and mustachioed man of about forty. And then the woman next to him, equally tired with quick-bitten nails and hair pulled sensibly back in a cap. They were just normal people. And yet, with a heat that was suddenly making it hard to breathe or feel his extremities, he felt drawn to them. They looked…luminous.
Everybody looked luminous. A thin, watery brightness suffused the whole scene, which by this point was swarming with cops and techs and other personnel. All of whom he felt disturbingly attracted to all of a sudden.
He looked back at the sheriff, hoping that this was some kind of stress-induced multi-sensory hallucination, only to find the man staring at him with concern.
He looked at Scully for some kind of context or confirmation. And—oh. Oh no. Oh, fuck.
She wasn’t just an avenging angel. Her hair was mussed and her lips were parted, and she looked like Venus stepping out of the half-shell, if Venus wore a trench coat and an air of professional concern. Venus—or an amalgam of every porn actress that ever was. His insides turned to goo.
“Mulder, are you all right?”
No, he was not all right. He’d gotten dosed.
“Scully, is the DEA here yet?”
“A few agents, but they’ll be sending more. Why? I thought you said this was a boutique operation, limited scope. Select clients willing to pay for…unique experiences.”
“It is. Was. I just—I think everyone’s going to need to be extremely careful. I think this stuff is very potent.”
She nodded and said something to the sheriff. She wasn’t getting it. His whole body was liquefying and solidifying in place, feverish, and she was still talking about face masks and gloves. I want to believe. I want to believe I am not going to succumb like a dog in heat and fall down frothing in front of everyone. His metaphors were getting mixed up—did he have rabies or was he just horny? Both. I’m pretty sure it’s both. Because he was dazed and crazed and it felt more and more like this was going to kill him.
“Scully—”
“Hm?”
“I think it has a delayed onset. But I think it’s very potent.” He tried to emphasize the words without sounding too obvious.
“Yes, Mulder you said…” The glance she shot him turned back to concern. And then to dawning comprehension. And something more: the faintest hint of horror. “Delayed onset.”
“Yes.” His skin was screaming.
“Sheriff, I think there’s one more loose end we’re going to need to tie up,” she said.
“What’s that?”
Hesitation came and went so quick he knew he was the only one to see it. “I don’t want to say, in case I’m wrong.” Scully, you beautiful little liar. “I just need to check on something. Mulder?”
She turned him around and got him moving, but she did it with a hand on his arm, and that was enough to concentrate all those nebulous, free-floating good feelings into an agonizing point. He was suddenly, violently hard, and his whole body throbbed.
“How delayed?” she asked when they were out of earshot of the sheriff or anyone else.
“Uh.”
“Mulder?”
“How long did it take you to get here?”
“Not long. Twenty minutes after you did maybe, half an hour on the outside.”
“And you went through the processing room?”
“Yes?”
“I fired a round into a couple bricks of the stuff. It went everywhere.”
She stumbled, righted herself immediately. “You breathed it in.”
“Yes. I think you need to drive.”
The car was waiting, and he fumbled for the keys. But she was stock-still. Her eyes were out of focus, though. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“About what?”
“I went through the room, and I—it doesn’t matter. But I didn’t just breathe it in. I may have ingested some.”
He stared at her.
“Mulder, do you feel euphoric, kind of…warm? Are you getting a faint aura around certain objects?”
“People. Auras around people. And…feelings.”
“Do you think you can drive?”
“If absolutely necessary.”
“Good.”
It was twenty minutes to the hotel. After ten, he could hear her breathing like he was tuned into her station, stereo all around. Inside, too. His breath hitched when hers did: braking at a light, when accelerating, when hitting a curve. The friction was stupidly exquisite. It was like being a teenager again, so intense it flattened every other thought.
They were almost back to the hotel—a goal that had seemed desperately important when leaving the scene, but now seemed less like a sanctuary and more like another hurdle. Privacy was crucial, but maybe not as all-important as knowing how and when this was going to dissipate. Well—how wasn’t entirely a mystery.
“Mulder, listen,” she said, breathless and trying—failing—to hide it. “This is—uncomfortable, but it’s nothing to be ashamed of. We can just—I mean, if you want—we’re both adults—”
He pulled into the parking lot and into a parking space with sharp, violent turn. Stopping threw them both forward. It was too sudden to be entirely pleasant, and it jarred both of them into something closer to sanity.
He turned off the car. And then he sat, not looking at her. Not looking at anything.
“Mulder, I’m sorry—I never should have suggested—”
“No.”
She looked at her lap. “You’re right. I’m sorry—” She reached for his hand, an innocuous gesture she realized was dangerous a moment too late. But he flinched like she was an open flame, and she hunched into herself with regret.
“No—you shouldn’t have suggested it,” he said raggedly. He was a live wire fallen into water, throwing sparks in every direction. “Not now, not like this. Jesus, Scully. I know you think it was the morphine after the Queen Anne, but it wasn’t. And now you’re going to think it’s because of this stupid—magic drug thing—but it’s not. You’re not going to believe me because God knows you never do, but Scully, I am fucking in love with you. I am in love with you. So don’t—use me—”
The temperature of the car, already frigid, dropped to absolute zero. Scully stared at him, and then at her lap. Instead of the soft, hitching breaths of arousal, she didn’t seem to be breathing at all.
He couldn’t look at her. Not even when she reached for the door and got out, shut it gently, made her way to her room. He watched her go before he let himself get out, go to his own room and shut the door.
—
Mulder lay on the bed, hands clasped behind his head and burning in every cell, resolutely holding himself at bay.
It was inevitable, what was going to happen. In their separate rooms, thinking separate thoughts. Oh, they would think of each other, briefly—inevitable, given their conversation—but the motivations, it seemed, would be worlds apart. Still, why delay it? Perversity, mostly. It amused him, grimly, to suffer some more. The masochism also satisfied some other, deeper part of him, some self-destructive impulse that made him good at his job and terrible at his life.
There was a knock.
He didn’t want to answer it. He couldn’t not answer it.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me.”
The walk to the door was enough to resign himself to the new inevitable: now they were going to do it. The teenage circumlocution was apt: do it, just do this purely physical thing, clumsy and direct, requiring and deserving no further explanation.
He opened the door an inch or two and let it stand between them like a chaperone.
“Mulder, let me in.”
He didn’t want to. God help him, though, the command in her voice was like lightning branching in his belly, lighting him up. She pushed past him, and he locked the door. Probably he wouldn’t care enough in a few minutes, so he better do it now.
“Mulder.”
He looked at her. She looked devourable. The light was in her hair like flame, and she looked ready to consume him, too. He took a few involuntary steps.
“I recognize that this is a strange and…difficult situation, and that part of it is my fault, and—and ah! I I can’t think straight—“ She was so frustrated; it was so cute. He wanted to get on his knees and crawl to her, wanted to bury his face in her crotch and drown there, she was so cute.
“But Mulder, I think it might be good that I can’t really think straight. Because if I were thinking straight, I would know what a stupid idea this is. And what a foolish risk to a friendship, a partnership that… And what a—a crazy way to—”
She was flushed. That Irish skin that had only grown paler in the basement dim was blazing almost as bright as her hair, and she wasn’t just crossing her arms, she was holding them, fingernails digging into her forearms like pain was the antidote to pleasure. Silly Scully.
“It’s okay,” he said, moving toward her again. “It’s okay. I understand. Use me. I don’t care anymore, I never did—use me, Scully—”
He was almost on her when she flinched away. He stopped. A little pain was one thing, but he didn’t want to frighten her.
She took a few steps back. “That’s not what I’m saying. Mulder, I don’t want to use you, never that. What I’m saying is that—is that—” One hand was still clutching her arm, but the other had crept up her neck, was stroking her own pulse and playing with her collar.
Something painful was reviving in his chest. Buried under this unbearable lust was the faintest, faintest hint of hope, the same color as that glint in her eye.
“Listen, I don’t know when I—it was like a switch that got flicked, and I didn’t realize—”
“Scully?” He could smell her. Jesus. Every inch of his skin was crackling and now she was in his lungs, he couldn’t breathe without feeling like he would be incinerated.
She looked him straight in the eye. “I want you,” she breathed, and he was dead. He was outside his body, outside the grip of this transient desire, just purely hanging on her words. “And I think I love—”
And then he was back, alive, furiously alive and closing the space like a magnet snapping to the pole. His whole body was just the line where it met her whole body and were they kissing? He’d kissed her (this Scully, at least) once, so hesitant it was practically chaste. That was a touch. This was a knockout punch—or any number of them, over and over again until up and down were meaningless and he was entirely raw.
And that was before she wrenched his belt off and started shoving his pants down.
He tried to do the same, tried to undo all the buttons on her shirt and unhook her bra and unzipper her skirt, fumbling everything. He was made of nerve endings, and all of them were incandescent.
She pushed him toward the bed and he stumbled into sitting. It took about ten seconds of her straddling him, trying to tug his shirt over his head while paradoxically trying not to stop kissing him, when he realized there might be an issue.
“Scully, I am not going to last—” he gasped. He tried feebly to push her away. He had imagined this so many times, but not even the most porn-fueled 3 AM absurdities had involved beating her so dramatically to the finish line. Please do not let these teenage hormones give me teenage stamina.
But—Jesus, she was a goddamn miracle—she understood. She pulled away briefly, only to kneel down between his legs. She didn’t even pause, just went right for—
“Oh fuck, Scully, fuck.” Her mouth—her tongue— She took him deep and fast, and god, the pressure was magnificent. He tried to think about crime scenes, dead bodies, monsters. She’d been there for all of them. “Fuck, I’m—” He came like a breaking dam: a rushing whiteout, dissolution with loud noises.
He drifted in it. Distantly he felt her stand, let her push him backward. And he came back to himself as she crawled over him, atop him. He pulled her down.
She was swollen and sticky and she tasted divine. Like how pearls would taste, nestled in a warm sea. Although she only had the one—and he lapped at it, pressed his tongue down until she gasped and begged, and then he did it again.
She shuddered above him, cried out. It might have been wordless; it might have been his name. Even the possibility filled him with primal triumph, made him want to redouble his efforts, but before he could go much further she disentangled herself. Flopped over to one side, lay panting and probably trying not to focus on this maybe-stupid, definitely-mindfuck plunge they had just taken.
He pushed himself backward until they were level, so he could look her in the face.
And then he couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.
Which was absurd. He loved talking. He loved explaining his crazy ideas, giving her that little crinkle between her eyes. He loved making cracks so that she rolled her eyes, almost as good as when she smiled. He loved arguing until she frowned or threw up her hands or—hallelujah—maybe even gave in a little. He could talk in circumstances up to and including mortal peril about or around the wildest, weirdest stuff imaginable.
And now all he could do was smile like an idiot. Because really, it was a little, kind of, the tiniest bit funny.
Apparently Scully thought so too, because she was smirking at him, and then grinning, and then she was laughing very softly. And he was laughing too.
It had taken the edge off. But the edge was coming back, the drug whetting both of them to an even more wicked point. He reached for her, still smiling.
“Again?” she said, a little incredulous, and he wanted to be insulted. Or at least he wanted to feign hurt, just for the sake of flirting, but he was surprised, too. Maybe teenage stamina isn’t the worst thing. The spirit was willing and the body, he found, was more than willing, stiff within moments of her hands wandering down and guiding him close. And best of all, there was no teenage awkwardness or shyness—she nudged him on his back and lowered herself all the way down, eager and unabashed.
I see why people would pay for this. Only it wasn’t this they had been paying for—desire and sex, sure, but not this sex with this woman, burning on top of him so hot that he was sure, he was absolutely certain, that he would be charred down to ashes when this was through. She raked one hand down her front, leaving red lines from collar to navel, and scraped the other down his chest. He grabbed that one and put her fingers in his mouth, one after the other. She tasted faintly of latex. It shouldn’t have turned him on, but it did. Everything did. The plasticky floral comforter, the starched-to-death sheets, the lumpy pillows—it was heaven. Or hell. Funny how none of the religions he knew ever suggested they could be the same place. Heaven and hell, simultaneous and infinite: just one long moment of feeling her move and trying, trying, trying not to come before she did.
And then she did come, arching and clenching up around him. He always took her for a screamer, but this time all she gave him was a soft, amazed “oh.” All the mystics got it wrong: the sound of the universe being created wasn’t om, it was that singular, spectacular oh.
The giddy, fizzy delight of it threw his rhythm, knocked him further back so that he didn’t follow her over the cliff. He got to watch her come back down, panting, and it was such a marvel that he almost wanted to let it all go soft and still, wanted to lay her down and cocoon her in blankets and fall into rapturous sleep.
But his blood was too hot and his cock was too hard and he needed. And so what he did instead was grab her and flip them both, put himself on top so that he could move in longer, slower strokes. She got back into it almost immediately, and he thought maybe she was flattering him, playing along, until she bit his shoulder. Hard. He retaliated by thrusting into her as deep as he could, but she only gasped and dug in her fingernails.
“More, more,” someone said, and it was probably her but he couldn’t quite tell. All he knew was that the pain was a goad and he was racing to get out in front of it, pounding into her, and she was taking it, she wanted it, she wanted him in all his desperation.
I see why people would kill for this. He went off like a bomb exploding, and all she did was join him in lighting up.
—
The comedown was longer and the relief was more meaningful, but he still ached somewhere so deep inside himself he was afraid she’d have to flay him open to get at it. Not that he was opposed. He’d seen what she could do with a scalpel, wondered how precise she could be in other circumstances. Jesus.
Was that still the drug talking? Or was this the culmination of months (years) of frustration and denial finally being shoved to the side? If he didn’t even know himself, could he expect to read anything into the way she was looking at him? She’d had more than he had. But I think I love, most of a thought he’d been too overwhelmed to let her finish. That wasn’t nothing.
He touched her face. Her expression was clear as light through a window, open and pure. Drugs don’t do that.
“Mulder,” she started, and he braced himself for Reasonable and Rational Scully to return. All the serious questions and answers he didn’t want to think about were hovering, and she was going to voice them, he just knew it. What happened to the Truth at any cost? a little voice taunted him. God, sometimes he wanted to tell himself to shut up.
“We need to return to the crime scene. Or at least to the station.”
He blinked at her. “What?” Well, Rational Scully had returned with a vengeance. She was nothing if not consistent.
“We need to give our statements, help with the evidence. There may be suspects exhibiting symptoms, or even law enforcement, and I don’t want anyone handling that drug without medical supervision.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You want to go back for more?”
“No! But we should warn everyone handling the drugs that contamination could prove…”
“Exciting?” he suggested.
“Dangerous,” she corrected sharply. “Who knows what kind of side effects this could also produce? The chemical compounds are unstable, and it could trigger allergic reactions, not to mention its possible interactions with other drugs…”
“I’m glad your brain’s working again, Scully, but do you really want to go down there? Right now?” His hand was on her waist. He didn’t remember putting it there, but he traced slowly down her hip and back again.
“…maybe a phone call.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe in a little while.”
“Mm-hmm…”
—
They slept, at some point. The drug wore off in fits and starts, dropping them for a few hours and then fizzing back up at random intervals. She was constantly making him drink water, dumping the hotel packets of salt and sugar in at one point.
“Familiar with party drugs, Scully?”
“From my ER rotations? Yes. Drink.”
He was privately grateful for the nagging. He felt caffeine-wired and punch-drunk at the same time, and he was sore in places he’d forgotten he had. She clearly was too—the way she walked a little gingerly, well, yeah, he was pretty pleased about that. But was all of it the drug? He wasn’t entirely certain, but he thought not. The thrill went deeper, and the joy was tenacious. It did not come and go.
—
When he woke for maybe the fifth time at 7:30 AM, it felt like a fever breaking on New Year’s morning. He felt weak and bright and new.
He didn’t love that she was getting dressed, but it did allow him to smugly inform her that her bra was hooked over one of the TV antennae and her shirt had mostly fallen behind the console.
“Hey, Scully, I have a question.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” Bra retrieved, she began putting it back on.
“How exactly does it happen that a federal agent, in hot pursuit of justice and racing to save her partner who has, once again, done something maybe a little bit rash, end up ingesting an illicit substance?”
She froze.
“Because I’ve been trying to picture it and I just can’t imagine you pausing to take a snack break.”
She turned and sighed. “Mulder—”
“Admit it!” he crowed. “You were curious.”
“I was not curious. I have no desire to sample drugs from who-knows-where made from God-knows-what.”
“Really? That’s an interesting take on the past—” he looked at the clock, “—ooh, fifteen hours. I think that’s a new personal best for me, Scully.”
She rolled her eyes and reached for her shirt.
“So what did happen, then?” he pressed.
“If you must know…”
“I think I must.”
“I tracked you to the building, but getting inside was a little…difficult. I didn’t want to go in flashing my badge, I knew they would have panicked and probably hurt you. So when they offered me a taste, I didn’t feel I could decline without arousing suspicions.”
“Arousing suspicions. Hey Scully, I think I have a title for my memoir.”
She picked up his boxers, balled them up, and hurled them at his head. “I’m going to take a shower.” She checked her reflection in the TV set before she went, smoothing her hair in a way that didn’t really help, and he felt sickeningly proud of himself and at the same time so tender he could barely stand it.
Then she reached for the door.
“Where are you going? Shower’s right there.”
“Mulder, you think shampoo, body wash, and conditioner all come out of the same bottle.”
“Don’t they?”
She rolled her eyes and opened the door. She was almost gone before he managed, “Scully?”
She poked her head back in. “What.”
“Uh…” Yet again, he could find exactly zero things to say. He was sore and sated, and now he was realizing what an absolute panicked wreck that made him. When was the last time I got what I wanted? And simultaneously: did I want this? And a third simultaneous thought, which was excessive even for him: did I want it to happen this way?
Scully’s face was slot-machining through a whole range of inscrutable thoughts, although he could tell they were all about him. It made him feel vaguely pathetic.
A fourth thought: what did she want? Which really should have been his first thought. So sue me, I was drugged.
The silence dragged on. “Later,” she promised gently, and shut the door behind her.
—
He did eventually shower. And get dressed. But even taking his sweet time, he was down in the car and checking the glove compartment for the fifth time for any snacks that might have appeared since the last time he checked. Stranger things have happened.
Scully appeared from around the side of the building. Stranger things have definitely happened. She looked immaculate. And annoyed, but that was how she always looked. He wasn’t going to take it personally.
She got in the car. He started it, pulled out. Tried not to think about pulling out. Should I be worried about birth control? No, right? Not after her abduction and everything? But should I ask if she’s worried?
“Breakfast?” he blurted instead. “I’m starving.”
“Breakfast sounds good.”
“Well, we’ve got two options. The diner you previously extolled as ‘an exercise in mediocrity,’ ‘a strenuous workout in mediocrity,’ and finally as the truly evocative ‘ugh, whatever’ on the previous occasions we visited, or we can drive forty minutes to the Burger King only generously considered local and you can complain about fats both saturated and unsaturated in a somewhat different setting.” He knew he was rattling on in order to avoid the obvious, but it was amazing how easily babbling lapsed into banter.
She sighed. “Greasy spoon it is.” And it was amazing, too, that she was letting him lapse like this, just falling backward—or worse, intentionally walking it all back, pretending nothing had happened.
“I’m not sure it qualifies as a greasy spoon if all you ever order is oatmeal, Scully.”
“It’s not the food, it’s the hygiene. Or lack thereof. Every surface, spoon or otherwise, was coated in oil. I could practically feel my arteries plaqueing up.”
“Plaqueing? Is that a verb?”
“If it’s not, it ought to be.”
They lapsed into silence. And the worst—or best—part was, that was comfortable, too. Not exuberant, not happy, but comfortable.
Shit.
She ordered the oatmeal, again. He teased her about it, again, and ordered eggs. She commented about his likely cardiovascular collapse in ten years, again, albeit with more lurid details. And it was all going to be fine—not good, not bad, just fine. And so, in desperation, he did something stupid.
He brought it up.
“Do you have complaints about my cardiovascular capabilities, Scully?”
She took a very deliberate sip of her coffee and very deliberately did not look at him. “I’d have to order an EKG.”
“Kinky.”
The silence turned decidedly uncomfortable. And stayed that way until the eggs and oatmeal came.
“Can I get you folks anything else?”
“Yeah, actually. Do you do milkshakes?” Mulder asked.
“Chocolate or vanilla?”
“Oh, definitely not vanilla.” He threw out a look like a challenge. Scully met his eyes but remained otherwise inscrutable.
The waitress was either oblivious or unflappable. “Coming right up,” was all she said, and bustled off, leaving them to a far more charged silence.
“I figured, why not treat myself? It’s not like this happens every day.” He let the pause stretch but not quite snap. “Solving a case, I mean. Seems like forever since I last solved a case.”
Now she was watching him with stray-cat wariness. Fine, you want to play? Let’s play.
“In fact, it’s been so long since I got anything resembling clarity on a case that I was beginning to think that maybe that was just how things were. I got used to the ambiguity. ‘This is how life is,’ I figured. Sure, I might not have answers, but there’s some comfort in questions. A certain soothing routine in asking them. But then—aha, case solved. So now I guess I just enjoy this brief, fleeting treat, really just drink it down to the last drop, and then put it to the side, file it away, and never, ever mention it again. Sound like a good plan?”
She huffed. “All right, you can drop the tortured—and mixed—metaphors, Mulder. I get it. And I’m not filing anything away—I’m waiting until I have something in my stomach and maybe until we don’t have the threat of an entire day’s worth of processing and paperwork to deal with. You know we have to be at the station at 9 AM, right? And that it’s now 8:27?”
“I’m aware. I just didn’t think that this particular morning warranted such slavish punctuality.”
“You don’t think we ought to show up on time after disappearing yesterday? You know how many phone calls I missed from about half a dozen people, all of them wondering where we were and if we were dead?”
He shrugged. “So tell them you took me to the hospital.”
“I did. But unless you want to start digging yourself into another hole that may result in some extremely awkward questions, we have to turn up on time, looking and acting like maybe we’re professionals. And not reeking of sex.”
The last comment was so vehement that he didn’t know whether to be afraid or turned on for a second. Then: turned on. Definitely. He also felt about a hundred pounds lighter. This wasn’t denial. (Not yet anyway.) This was just Scully being Scully.
Scully turned her ire on her oatmeal and scarfed down half of it while he was reeling. “Also, I said later,” she said, a bit petulant.
“It’s later,” he protested, trying not to grin. Failing.
“It’s been twenty seven minutes.”
“That’s later.”
“It’s not and you know it. Now finish your eggs.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to eat this stuff. Isn’t it bad for me?”
She stabbed down with her spoon, which wasn’t really that threatening. More cute. “I’m not sure you’re going to survive long enough to have a heart attack, Mulder. I think that if you’re not finished and in the car by 8:45, heart disease is going to seem like a fond and distant dream.”
He still didn’t take his eyes off her. “Yeah? What are you going to do?” He kept his voice low, mostly to keep it even.
She met his gaze with one of his favorite of her looks (although he was going to have to update the rankings based on some new findings, he realized), the one that said she was genuinely annoyed but also provisionally amused, that she could be—if properly encouraged—persuaded to entertain any number of wacky ideas. The very faint hint of a smile edged out from the corners of her mouth as she leaned in, narrowed her eyes.
“Eat,” she told him.
“Oh, with pleasure.”
She turned away and muttered about getting the check, but he was pretty sure it was just so that he didn’t see her smile.
—
At 8:48, Mulder found himself sitting in the passenger seat and clutching his to-go cup a little too tightly as Scully ran another yellow. “Hey, it’s not my fault they couldn’t find a takeaway cup. I paid for this milkshake, Scully.”
“No, I paid for it.”
“Technically the Bureau paid for it.”
She muttered something under he breath that he couldn’t hear and whipped them around a corner, down a narrow street, and into a parking lot. He was getting a bit of deja vu.
But they parked gently enough.
“See? 8:56. We’re early.”
“Mulder.”
“What?”
“When I said later, I meant it. Please tell me you’re not going to go in there and spend all day making what you think are sly comments. We're on shaky enough ground as it is, professionally speaking, and sometimes I think you sabotage things just because you can. Do not make this one of those things. It’s hard enough being a woman in this field, and sometimes…”
This felt very real all of a sudden. He’d been bouncing between giddy and anxious all morning, and now he was finally back on earth. “I never meant…”
“I know. All I’m saying is what you said before. Don’t use me, Mulder. Don’t turn this into you being clever, because this is a lot more fraught for me than it is for you.”
He stilled himself, contrite. “I won’t.”
She turned off the car. “Good. All right, let’s go.”
—
He was never a fan of paperwork at the best of times, and these were not the best of times. Well, they were, in the Dickensian sense: they were both the best and worst of times, the summer of…something and the winter of despair, blah blah blah. He wasn’t a Dickens fan. He knew it was ironic, but he couldn’t stand how the guy just went on and on.
Tired from being hunched over and bored from a dozen statements, and just about ready to stab Barry the Chipper DEA Agent (in fairness, the guy’s own partner seemed to want to murder him too), by seven PM he was done. He was done, thank you, good night and good luck. He begged off with excuses about being injured in the line of duty and slipped out the back.
He probably could have walked back to the hotel, but instead he got in the car, put the seat all the way back, and decided to contemplate wholly and entirely nothing. And maybe Scully’s breasts. He didn’t think he’d ever be too tired to skip that. Goddamn.
Never usually one to interrogate his own impulses, he was still a bit surprised that he still had it in him. Pushing 40, abruptly and thoroughly relieved of his dry spell, and drugged for Chrissakes. That should have been enough to keep him down for the count. Instead, he was comfortably uncomfortable, stretching out between exhaustion and excitement.
Some indeterminate time later, the car door opened. “Death, is that you?”
“Just me.”
“Oh, Scully, hang on. Death should be here any minute now.”
“Looks like death was here already,” she said, poking him. “You going to make it?”
“I see a light. I think I’m going to walk into it.”
“Seeing lights was yesterday.” She started the car. “Home again, home again,” she sighed.
“Jiggity jig.”
They were back at the hotel before he even remembered dinner. “Wait, Scully, we gotta get food. I think the diner’s still open, or that burger place—”
“I already ordered a pizza to the room.”
“You’re the perfect woman,” he sighed, and meant it.
—
She’d been all business in the precinct, in the car, with the woman at the hotel desk who’d have to send their pizza guy up to the room. Add to that the tenor of their morning conversation and he thought he could be forgiven for getting blindsided when she shoved him—hard—toward his bed and somehow shed both her trench and her suit jacket in this amazingly fluid motion he really wanted to see again. Maybe record.
She didn’t bother with his outer layers, though. Just went right for his belt, shoving him back again.
“Ow—hey—what happened to later?”
“It’ll still be later,” she breathed. Her shirt came off in another astonishingly smooth motion, and oh. This was nothing he hadn’t seen, and yet—oh. That perfect, inadequate syllable.
Indifferent to his revelations, she rucked up her skirt and did her level best to get his pants off. Leverage, however, was not on her side. “Come on, Mulder, help me out here.”
He lifted his hips obligingly, still a bit dumbstruck and off-kilter. “Are you still high?” he blurted.
That was when she did maybe the meanest thing she’d ever done. She sat back. Right on top of him, hitting what felt like every sensitive point on his whole body, his groin gone tight and his dick pressed right up against her ass. Crossing her arms was the cherry on top (oh god he wanted to eat things off her): it did some very flattering things to her breasts. Lust washed through him, tidal.
“What.” Oh, she was pissed.
“Sorry.” Knee-jerk apology. Well, not knee.
“For what, Mulder? For implying I’m not capable of making my own decisions?”
“No! Or—yes. Uh…”
“I’m not on drugs.”
“You’re not,” he agreed.
She stared at him. It was very difficult to keep still. Impossible to keep silent: he groaned, softly, plaintively.
She sighed. He felt her move like she was part of him. “You’re an idiot.”
“Well, I hid it for as long as I could.”
She chuckled, and the way she moved, the way she felt—
“Are…are you not wearing underwear?”
She moved slowly and deliberately backward, and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Fuuuucck.” She wasn’t. The whole day played out in reverse, watching her walk around the dinky rural precinct without panties, that demure black skirt hiding such a dirty little secret, slick and warm, throbbing with her heartbeat as she interrogated people, made them squirm—
“You spent…the whole day…”
She set to work unbuttoning his shirt and trailing kisses down his neck. “Don’t be silly. I took them off right before I left.”
Ohhh that was even better somehow. A quick trip to the ladies’ to drop her panties down past her heels—balling them up, shoving them down into her bag so no one could see and only he would ever know—
She slid his boxers down, slid herself down.
The sound that came out of him wasn’t human. It was ten thousand years too early, a primordial sound from some dark, dripping jungle. And the claws and teeth came with it: he grabbed her hips, sunk his nails in and moved her the way he wanted. He bit her lip, sucked a bruise on to her throat, licked the sweat from between her breasts. He wanted to fucking mount her, but he didn’t dare stop this frantic pace, both of them slamming into each other with animal brutality.
“Ohpleaseohpleaseoh—” She was keeping time with the ragged mantra, but it didn’t last, couldn’t, because he knew he’d found that sweet spot. He reached and found her clit, too, thumbed it roughly.
There was that scream he’d wanted, the one that went right to the base of his spine, sent him spilling into her like bleeding out, and if this was death, then death was good.
—
She eventually got off of him, tipping sideways with an adorable little “oof!” but otherwise they didn’t move much until there was a knock at the door. Then she stood, easy in her nakedness, and declared that she’d be in the bathroom while he dealt with dinner.
He wanted to buy the pizza guy—boy, really—a beer and tell him things would turn around. Not that he knew anything about the kid, but it wasn’t like being a teenager had gotten any easier, right? And everyone should know what he knew: the world was fundamentally a good place, that the truth was everywhere, that fate was kind. Instead, he tipped far more generously than the lukewarm pie warranted and shut the door.
When he turned he found Scully in one of his t-shirts. His heart clenched. He didn’t know what to do with all these goddamn feelings—she looked so small, and so fierce, and she was just so much. All of this was so much. She was in his clothes; he felt justified in possessiveness, wanted to engulf her all the more. And so he did. Just tossed the box on the bed and held her, breathed the smell of her hair until she wiggled around and dragged him behind her so that she could get at the food.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Mm.”
He just kept standing as she ate, letting her move but not letting her go.
“Mulder, this is very sweet and all, but I have to eat. And so do you.”
“Mm.”
“All right, get off.” She elbowed him gently and ducked under his arms to go sit on the bed. He joined her, the pizza box between them.
And she’d gotten half with no peppers.
If they hadn’t been in his room already, he’d have left. It was too much. He was broken and he had smashed up her life right alongside his own, and she still knew what toppings he liked on his pizza. And ordered it! He knew two dozen people offhand who, armed with the selfsame knowledge, would have used it to spite him. She was just so quietly, ceaselessly good. Stubborn, infuriating, and quick to anger, yes, but good in ways he didn’t—could never—deserve.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “What am I doing?” The supreme irony being, of course, that she was the only one to hear it, the only one who stayed.
“Well, I can tell you what you’re not doing, which is eating pizza.”
He kept his head in his hands and didn’t rise to the glibness. “What are we doing?”
She didn’t answer him for so long that he was, eventually, force to look at her. And she grinned. “Finish up the existential crisis, Mulder, or you’re gonna go hungry.”
He noticed the toppings, or lack thereof. And the now-decimated remainder getting cold in the box. “Hey, that’s one of mine.”
She shrugged. “I’ve had a long day. And another long day before that.” She licked her fingers, shot him a coy look. “And night.”
He tried to glare, but of course she stared him right back down. Not many people could do that. He’d always appreciated it in retrospect—in the moment, not so much. “This is not…”
“Not what? Not a good idea? Yeah, I noticed. But here we are. And anyway, when have terrible ideas ever stopped you?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said with wounded dignity. “I’ve never had a terrible idea.”
“Mulder. You’re a font of terrible ideas! You have wandered into forests, lakes, deserts, haunted houses, haunted ships, haunted nursing homes, government facilities, foreign countries, alternate realities, and virtual realities with all the sense that God gave a lemming. I’ve had to bail you out of jail or haul you into a hospital on so many occasions I no longer keep track, and I make a concerted effort not to keep track of all the times we’ve almost been blown up, stabbed, shot, mutilated, or—or eaten alive. You rarely do recon, you never have backup, and it’s only about 50-50 that you tell anyone where you are, what you’re doing, or who you’re with.”
“That’s because I’m usually with you already.”
“Yes,” she said, as if something should now be self-evident to him. As if she’d proven him wrong.
He blinked at her. “You’re proving my point. This is a dangerous line of work and I’ve been reckless and thoughtless, clearly.”
“The only thing I’m proving is what you just said,” she said, speaking gently, moving gently so that her hand was within his reach. “I’m with you already.”
And really—he just couldn’t argue with that. Because it was true. It was more than that: it was the truth. She was already there with him. Here with him.
He took the hand she offered and covered it with his own, felt the softness of her skin and the strength of her bones.
“So if I’m already with you,” she added, entirely unnecessary but entirely welcome just to hear how throaty her voice got with emotion, “then let me be with you.”
Let me. Like she needed permission. Like she ever did. He let out a long breath. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
They finished the rest of the pizza in silence, a new kind of silence that was comfortable with a current running through it, electric and humming. Which was fine until he was on his last bite and she was already sprawled out lengthwise, groaning that she’d eaten too much, and then he couldn’t—could never, Jesus, what was wrong with him—leave it alone.
“So this is—what? Dating?”
He couldn’t really see her at this angle, but damned if he couldn’t feel her rolling her eyes. “Can’t you ever leave anything alone? Wait, don’t answer that.”
“I just thought—since you’ve pointed out how rash and irresponsible I am—that you might like some clarity about where and what and who and how.”
She sat up on her elbows. “Who? Do you have some secret cache of time and energy for a dating life I don’t know about?”
“Do you?”
She lay back down. “Of course not. I’m in podunk, Oregon, and two weeks ago I was in podunk, Missouri. Dating is no longer a word I recognize. Or want to recognize, frankly. Ugh, nothing like explaining you’re late to dinner because an autopsy took longer than expected and watching someone’s entire face turn green.” She gave a disgusted little huff. “Wimp.”
He’d never been so pleased to be inured to death and gore.
“Anyway, what is dating? Just a series of uncomfortable meetings that you hope will get more comfortable, an attempt to get to know someone while simultaneously performing yourself, and knowing they’re pantomiming only their own best qualities, too, so that all you really learn is what other people think you want, and not what you really want to know. We’re not dating, Mulder. We can’t be, by definition. I already know everything about you.”
“Not—everything, surely.” It was humbling to be known, but also vaguely threatening: was he uninteresting? Had he been solved?
“Oh, come on. I’m not just your emergency contact, I’m your doctor.”
“I’m also a client,” he quipped.
She ignored him. “I know your cholesterol levels, your allergies, your blood type.”
“What is my blood type?”
“O negative.”
“Ha!”
“What?”
“Oh, negative. Not even my blood type is optimistic.”
“You’re optimistic.”
“Me? The spooky basement-dweller who thinks aliens are coming to kill us all? Are you sure you know me?”
“For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve never given up believing. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I’d say that’s pretty optimistic.”
“I’d actually argue that the evidence is overwhelming in my favor.”
Her smile turned indulgent, soft. “There you are.”
He was going to keep arguing with her, because that was what he did. What they did. But the core of his objections melted with that smile, and he lay down in parallel with her, the pizza box still between them. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to touch her right now to know that she was there.
“Also,” she went on, “dating requires that you set time aside from your normal activities. That’s impossible: we already spend all our time together. Although I think you could stand to buy me dinner more often.”
“I just bought you dinner.”
“Yeah, and I liked it.”
“Duly noted.”
Even without some kind of label or definition, the what felt settled. But the what now? lingered. They were in his room. They’d had sex. Lines crossed, i’s dotted. He didn’t know how to—how had she put it?—perform himself for someone else. It was part of his problem: he didn’t even try to act, didn’t pull any of his punches or bother ingratiating himself. But that didn’t make this part easy: the part where the sex was done but he didn’t want her to leave, and it was 11:30 and he didn’t want to sleep yet, but he was too tired to have more to say. This was when he really needed definitions: to carry him over and through these ambiguous swaths of time, when he felt untethered from everyone and everything, when he felt both fragile and capable of anything.
The truth was one thing, but honesty felt like something else altogether. But what else was left? So, “what now?” he asked her, because he really did want to know.
“What do you usually do?”
I think about redheads with increasing resemblance to you and get myself off until it hurts. He didn’t need to say it; the brief, pointed silence said it for him. “What do you do?” he volleyed back.
“I’m usually asleep. But if not…” Oh, tell me you’ve been touching yourself too. Tell me you thought about me with your fingers inside yourself, tell me I made you bite your pillow, tell me you kept your voice down thinking I was sleeping next door, when really I was doing the same thing. He wasn’t even that horny; now that the drug was gone he was feeling every year of 36. (Could he sneak into holding tomorrow before they left, get some more? It wouldn’t even break the top ten of illegal things he’d done.) He was done, physically. He just wanted proof. He wanted to hear that he was wanted, that she wanted him—not as a provocation, but as a promise.
She let a pointed silence hang too, before chuckling. “Oh, I think you’ve rubbed off on me. I usually just watch TV.”
Weirdly—everything in his life was so weird, Jesus—that was better. At some point in the near future, he was going to make her admit some of the things she did and thought when she was alone. But for right now, he did actually just want to watch TV.
He switched it on, jumped around until he found a show on whales or dolphins or something.
“A documentary?”
“What do you want to watch?”
“I don’t know, something mindless. A cop show.”
“Wow, and people say I never switch off. You just had fourteen hours of cop show.”
She uncurled herself, but only to get under the covers. “I like it when they pretend there’s no paperwork.”
“Mm, tell me more about your fantasies.”
“No procedures, no due process. Just action and arrests.”
“Wow, that’s some dirty talk.”
“Probable cause is just a suggestion.” She was drifting already, and when he looked over, her eyes were fluttering closed. “Proof is…less of a burden and more of a day bag. Or a lunch bag.”
“Who knew you were so filthy, Scully.” He kept looking at her instead of the TV.
She cracked an eye open. “You knew.”
“And yet I think you’re gonna keep surprising me.”
“Good. I hate it when you get comfortable.” She nestled herself into the covers, the pillows. “It makes you really smug and annoying.”
She wasn’t wrong. He did feel annoyingly smug. And still she was on his bed, falling asleep. Staying.