The Sun Comes Up Over Santa Monica Blvd.
In which the author exercises her relationship demons...
Morning found them both in a tangle of limbs and goose down pillows, Mulder snoring softly behind her, his arms wrapped tightly around her middle. Scully yawned, eyes opening, groaning slightly at the golden light filtering through barely shaded windows and the blooming headache in her head. How much champagne had they drunk the night before? How late had they kept each other up?
That thought at least brought a soft smile to her lips as she stretched muscles sore from the previous nights activities. She turned gently in her partner’s arms, craning to study him as he snorted and snuffled in sleep, dark eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks, resisting the urge to plant a small kiss on the end of his prominent nose. He looked so peaceful in those moments, in perfect rest, something he so rarely got when his brilliant mind was spinning and churning out possibilities and probabilities. On those mornings, after nights together, he did the one thing she didn’t think she had ever seen Mulder do once in their seven years together...relax.
“Do you know how creepy it is to stare at me while I’m sleeping?” His voice rasped groggily, though his eyes didn’t open, causing Scully to jump ever so slightly before snuggling further into his embrace, chuckling.
“Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve done it a time or two yourself.” She had woken more than one morning to find diamond bright eyes watching her with the same passionate intensity that Mulder brought to most everything in life. It had been unnerving, at first, now she simply relished it.
“You are much cuter when you sleep,” he defended with a sniff, cracking one, heavy eyelid.
“Right,” she snorted, rolling completely over to face him, delighting in naked skin brushing against naked skin. “So, now you are awake, got any thoughts in your head?”
Her lascivious smile only seemed to amuse him as his brows drew together in mild alarm. “Woman, you’re insatiable. It’s only been….”
“Five hours, good enough time for you to recover yourself.”
“I can’t believe you timed it,” he groaned, burying his face further into the pillows. “Other human beings aren’t alive yet.”
“The angry honking I heard outside not so long ago would tell you otherwise.”
“It lies,” he insisted, though she noticed his hand roving lazily along her hip. Clearly he wasn’t as exhausted as he said he was.
“You know,” she teased, fingers burrowing through covers to trace along the firm muscles of his abdomen, earning a jerk and quiver for her efforts, “We could just stay in bed all morning. Check out isn’t till two.”
“Don’t think Skinner will come looking for us,” Mulder grunted as her fingers traced lower down the thin trail of hair leading to his navel.
“I saw his date, she was pretty hot.” Her teeth sank into the tender flesh of her bottom lip as Mulder realized two could play at the game she was initiating.
That got Mulder’s attention. His head jerked up from the pillows in mild alarm. “You don’t think he…”
“He’s free, male, and over the age of twenty-one, not married, and I really don’t want to know what goes on in his personal life. Who cares?”
Mulder thought about it for only the briefest of moments before a broad, lecherous grin spread across his still sleep-puffy face. “Way to go, Skinman!”
“Dare you to say that to his face,” Scully snorted, privately rolling her eyes at the male habit of treating sexual encounters like conquests. Of course, the irony of her current situation wasn’t totally lost on her.
“What, and have him ask what the two of us were up to all night? Nope!” His goofy smile melted somewhat wistfully. “Good for Skinner, though. I mean...with his ex-wife and all. And nearly dying on us, twice. Think the man deserves a little bit of a good time.”
That wasn’t the turn of conversation Scully had expected. Her playful touches stopped, her hand lowering in the blankets as she considered Mulder thoughtfully. “You really think that?”
“Why not?” He shrugged, frowning carefully as he suddenly became very interested in a strand of her coppery hair laying across the pillows between them. “Skinner is ex-Marine, you know them all too well. His life has been service, whether it was Vietnam or the FBI, and he’s never really allowed himself to ever step out of that. And I don’t blame him, he’s had to hold both sides against the middle, us and those who are working against us. And it’s a lonely, thankless position. He’s given up a lot, I guess, for not taking sides.”
Scully, honestly, had never thought of it that way. Well, she had of course understood Skinner’s position, that careful dance he performed, the shield he tried to balance alongside his FBI loyalty. But it had never occurred to her the personal toll it took on him.
“Perhaps this job just takes that toll on everyone,” she offered quietly, all thoughts of teasing and trysts gone now in Mulder’s suddenly contemplative mood.
“Not everyone...just us.” His bright eyes flickered to hers pointedly. She squirmed, choosing to study the scar on his shoulder instead, the raised, white pad of flesh where once her bullet had torn through him.
“You saying that there isn’t a normal for us?” She tried to keep her voice cool and self-assured, teasing, ignoring the churning in her gut or the disappointment as last night’s fairy tale seemed to melt like vapor in the brightening, Southern California sunshine.
“Do you want normal for us?”
Scully didn’t dare look up at him. Instead she reached up through the blankets, her wandering fingers now coming to rest on the scar that she was studying, feeling the rough, puckered edges and the smooth, thick middle. They had never spoken of this, the future. What they were, what they were becoming, that had been taboo. They’d both simply ignored it, preferring to live in the now, in the ecstasy of giving into long held desires. But that had been months ago, many less-lonely nights ago. Now what?
“I don’t think you and I could ever come close to the definition of ‘normal’,” she admitted quietly. “Not really.”
“Then what do you want?”
His question was so simple and earnest. But in a million years could Mulder ever give it to her?
“I want...a future for us.”
It was the vaguest possible response, she knew it, and yet she didn’t know what to say. She had no idea what he even wanted, let alone what she wanted. Somehow, the traditional vision of the white picket fence didn’t seem to fit Mulder very well. Not to mention the fact that there could never be the 2.5 kids, not with her. Perhaps a dog. Her vague understanding of what a normal relationship could be was built on the images she had of her parents and brothers, in their loving marriages with their regular lives. And none of that described her and Mulder at all.
Mulder’s thoughts seemed to echo her own. “What in the world does that mean for the two of us?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted, more than a bit sharply, turning from him to lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, wrapping arms against her aching middle. “Something like this, maybe? A future that isn’t wrapped up in conspiracies and spaceships, where we don’t have to worry what is coming at us out of the dark anymore. Where we finally know the truth about why any of this has happened, and stop this endless cycle of lies and deceit and all the people who die for it. Where we can walk away from this, Mulder, and just be...regular people.”
And that was the crux of it. Scully wanted to bring it all to an end.
“Do you believe that we can just...stop this. Finish it all, for good?” There was doubt in his question, and Scully found herself turning her face sharply towards him in surprise.
“You don’t?”
He prevaricated, choosing instead to toy with her hair than to answer straight away. “The X-files don’t work like that, you know. There are always unasked questions, always answers that make no sense.”
“But is there an end, Mulder? For you, for me, for this quest?”
He sighed, rubbing a strand of silken hair between thumb and forefinger. “I want to believe so, yeah.”
Her lips pressed hard together against the stinging in her eyes. She found her voice again, finally, as it croaked through a throat now suddenly tight. “What do you want, Mulder?”
He continued to play with her hair, frowning at it rather than meeting her earnest gaze. “I haven’t had much chance to consider, Scully.”
It was a heartbreakingly evasive answer, and she tried to ignore the uncertain pang it caused in her chest. “Seven years wasn’t long enough?”
“Yes and no.” A ghost of a smile quirked his full lips. “I suppose I never gave myself the luxury of time and space to consider it. Hell, I’m shocked I made it this long to even be having this discussion.”
She’d almost find that statement funny if it wasn’t the truth. “Now you have had the luxury, what do you want?”
He let go over her hair, pulling his hand away slowly, regarding her finally, if not a bit sadly. “I don’t want to make promises to you, Dana, that I won’t be able to keep.”
Scully had no idea what he meant by that.
“Mulder,” she began thickly, ignoring the clawing panic in her brain. “I don’t want to push you into…”
“You aren’t,” he quickly cut in with quiet reassurance. She paused, frowning in confusion, wondering then what he meant by his statement.
“I want to see an end too,” he replied, that old, manic energy of his appearing for the briefest of seconds. “I want to see this out, to finish it, to get the answers we’ve fought so hard for for so long. I want to know what it is that my father sacrificed his entire life and all of us for, and I want justice for those we’ve lost along the way. I want to bring the truth of all of this to light, once and for all. For all these years, Dana, I’ve fought and fought, this crazy man with nothing to lose and I didn’t care what it cost me to get any of that. And now...now I have everything to lose.”
Gentle fingers rose to wipe at tears she didn’t even know were running down her face. His thumb traced the line of one down her cheekbone to her ear, before his palm cupped her jaw, turning her to fully look at him. “I don’t want to lose this. But I can’t promise you anything, not till I see this through, not till I get these answers, and not till I fix...everything that they have done wrong.”
It wasn’t what Scully wanted to hear, but it wasn’t exactly a surprise to her either. She tried not to let her disappointment show, and knew she was failing miserably. “You would choose your truth over us?”
“I would chose the truth because of us.” He replied firmly, leaning in to place a feather light kiss on her brow. “Because I have this mad, insane, fragile hope that I can give you what you want and be what you need. And I can’t give you any of that until I find a way to get these answers.”
He was right. In her heart she knew he was right, and selfishly she didn’t want to admit it. This was a journey she had invited herself onto so many years ago. And like him, she wanted to see it through, if not for herself, for Pendrell, Penny, Cassandra, Melissa, Emily, and the long-lost Samantha, the innocents in this entire, sordid affair. And if that meant, for now, she had to put her own desires to the side, she could do that, and hope that soon they would find their end.
“I just need you, Mulder,” she sighed, reaching hands to pull him down to her, ending their hurtful conversation with a pained, needy kiss. He responded in kind, gently and undemanding, trying to give comfort physically where clearly his words could not. With gentle caresses and warm assurances, with tongue and touch, he tried to assure her that he was there, now, whatever uncertain futures held for them. Their lovemaking this time was unlike the playful teasing of the night before, not rough and needy, but slow and rhythmic, drawn out reverently and with care, until she left shattered, crying at its power and poignancy. She clung to Mulder as he shivered in release, his face buried in her shoulder, his arms holding her so tightly she wondered if he would ever let go. She silently prayed that he never would, that this moment, this perfect union between them would never end, and they could stay cocooned like this, joined together against all the darkness in the world.
But everything ends, even idyllic moments. Her cell phone rang by the bed. Mulder lay with his face pressed between her breasts, right by her heart, his body curled around hers, unwilling to move or to even let go. She stretched as far as her limited reach could go, managing to tip the phone into her fingers and answer it before it went to voice mail. It was Skinner, cheerily asking if they wanted to go with him to lunch before their plane flight back home. Back to Washington. Back to reality.
Scully asked for an hour to get ready and hung up, already heartbroken that it was all coming to an end. The nightmare of the ridiculous movie had given way to such a lovely dream, of her, and Mulder, and living as two normal people, doing normal things like wine and dancing. But the X-files were their reality, and they called.
“Mulder,” she sighed, running manicured nails through his hair lightly. He was slow to look up at her, peeling his sticky cheek from her skin, looking as disappointed as she. “We’ll have to go.”
“Yeah,” he replied, not moving immediately to rise off her. He simply stared at her, green eyes dark and heavy with thoughts he didn’t see fit to express.
“What are you thinking?” It was so rare she asked him. She usually knew. But in this moment, the spinning in his mind was private, closed off. It unnerved her.
“Nothing,” he lied casually in that offhanded way that most people did. He then reconsidered. A sigh, long, sad, perhaps wistful breathed across her chest. Scully tried not to shiver.
“I just wish that we had more time. That’s what I wish.”
Perhaps Mulder was a romantic after all.
“We’ll finish this, Mulder,” Scully replied confidently, cupping his face gently. “And then we will have all the time in the world.”
“I would like to believe that,” he said, as if for some reason the man who could believe in aliens couldn’t believe in that. Before Scully could press him on that, he was up, untangling himself from her quickly, gathering scattered clothes and reaching for one of the hotel provided robes in the closet. The moment was lost now. It was back to being Mulder and Scully.
“I’ll go to my room, shower, and pack up.” He tied the robe off, leaning to kiss her lightly as she sat up in bed, the blankets held up now in front of her as if he hadn’t just been sprawled all over her naked body a moment before. “Come over and knock when you are ready to go downstairs.”
“All right,” she sighed, watching him go. For long moments she stared at the closed door. She had a mad desire to run after him and demand why it was that he doubted their future, to make him tell her, to make him walk away from all of this. But even as she did, the cool, rational part of her merely shrugged, reminded her that Mulder always doubted himself in relationships, and perhaps wanted to make no promises till he felt he could. She didn’t like it, but that was how it was.
Despite the sunshine streaming fully through her hotel room window, Scully realized she now felt suddenly cold.