FIC: Sweet Nothings For The Numb (X-Files, NC-17)
Title: Sweet Nothings For The Numb
Author: Amal Nahurriyeh
Summary: The journey from Emily's funeral back to DC: A Tragedy in Three Parts.
Pairing: MSR.
Rating: NC-17: Highly angsty and not very romantic sex.
Warnings: ( skip) I don't see any dubcon here, but this is not sex the participants are gleeful about having. Discussions of infertility trauma.
Timeline/Spoilers: Post-ep for Emily; specific spoilers for Christmas Carol/Emily and Memento Mori; deviates from the Per Manum timeline.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to
memories_child for the beta, and wendelah1 for a fruitful conversation about the implausibility of the fertility arc. Everything I know about the functioning of the female reproductive system came from Taking Charge of Your Fertility and The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth, as filtered through my wife, Leigh, so many thanks to her as well. Part 1, Curse and Salvation, was originally written as a birthday gift for icedteainthebag .
Edit: I forgot to say that the title is a (possibly misheard) lyric from the Gnarls Barkley song Necromancer, which you can download at that link. I toyed with the idea of writing songfic for that song--and then realize I already had, and that it was part II of this story. Voila.
I. Curse and Salvation
Scully lies in the dark and traces her fingers over the skin of her stomach, above the pad of fat cradling her uterus, orphaned and alone the last soldier fighting, radio silent, unaware the war has already been lost. It's not that the knowledge of her infertility is still surprising. She has been a dutiful student of her reproductive system since med school. The complexity of the signs an ovulating body gives had fascinated her, and she had gone on a six-month charting binge, complete with minutely descriptive notes on her cervical mucus and even the purchase of a tiny microscope to track the faint ferning in her saliva. So when she had gone six weeks without a period after her abduction, her body giving no signs of any sort of cycle, she had visited her OB/GYN, and endured the four weeks of ultrasounds and hormone panels without much hope. It still stabbed her now and then, though, when her artificial period brought on very real cramps, when the teenager behind the pharmacy counter had the gall to look shocked that the prescription for estrogen and medroxyprogesterone was being filled by a woman under fifty, when she got another baby announcement from a college or med school friend. It's then that she feels the weight of it, the sudden and surprising aloneness. She knows grief is normal; she knows her life is rich and complete without a child, and she would probably never have had one anyway. But alone is what she feels, no matter how much she tries to think it away.
Today the stabbing grief wears a small girl's face, tastes like gritty sand between her teeth. Emily, who she loved with an urgency she had never expected and missed with a bewildered ache. She knew almost nothing about her: not whether she fought against baths or begged for more time in the water, not if she laughed when tickled or talked to her stuffed animals, not her favorite book or song, not even where her body had been taken. It didn't matter; the loss had scratched her open and left her psychic skin oozing. She had a daughter, and she will never have her again, and she knows that she cannot have another. Nothing makes sense and everything hurts in this, the story of her impossible daughter.
But she lives her life in a world where she is forced to investigate ten impossible things between breakfast and lunch, where the unexplainable is a regular occurance, where the strange occupies the jump seat in the back of any number of rented Tauruses. And it is because of that life that she is absolutely convinced that the one man in the world who could impregnate her when it is impossible is Mulder. That motherfucker, who knew how this had happened and never thought to mention it, who did what she asked him to and sulked about it ever since she found Emily; he is her curse and her salvation in equal parts, the answer to the problems he himself has caused.
He is asleep downstairs on Bill's couch; he never bothered with getting a hotel room, and merely shuttled back and forth between hospital and investigation, trailing her home, unwilling to leave her alone. He was the first person she saw after Emily died; he was in the hallway, slumped in a chair , staring at the pediatric playroom, where sick children played weakly with their mothers, their laughter muted by glass. He heard her steps and turned towards her. "I need to find a funeral home," she said quietly.
"I'll get you a phonebook," he said.
By the count of the pills in her suitcase she is on cycle day 15, which was the day she would ovulate back when that was possible. Her traitorous, lying body roils under the skin, tempting her with the prospect of fecundity. She imagines the lushness of endometrial tissue like a feather bed, waiting for the burrowing future. If there is anyone who could bring this back, it's the bastard sleeping at the foot of the stairs.
She stands and goes to him, vibrating with lust and furor. She expected him on the couch, head limp, lost to his own private world, but he is in the armchair, knees splayed, and either he wasn't sleeping either or he heard her coming because he is watching her turn into the living room. His eyes are red, which ratchets up her rage; he has no right to anything he is feeling right now. "Scully," he says softly. "Are you okay?"
"That," she says, "is an incredibly stupid question." He never even got undressed, is sitting there still in the remnants of his funeral suit. His unbuttoned collar shows the hollow of his neck, shaded and soft in the dark of the living room. She stands in front of him, unclear on what to say or do to communicate what she wants, unclear on what any of this is going to accomplish. He stays perfectly still and watches her watch him, and she hates the love and sympathy that vibrates in him, hates that it strikes some pitch in her that wants desperately to ring back. She unbuttons her pajama top and lets it fall to the ground. His eyes stray to her breasts, but he stays still. She pushes down her pants and leaves them in the pile with the top. He swallows. She steps in between his legs, and he presses his legs in until his thighs brush hers. Without saying anything, he leans forward and kisses her stomach just below her navel. His lips are soft, and then his tongue is hot and his teeth are sharp. His fingers slide under the elastic of her underpants and pull them down her legs, and then creep back up to tease her pubic hair. She feels tears in the back of her throat and digs her fingers into the back of his head, wants to laugh as he noses down her belly a little, as if he's really that desperate to taste her pussy. He slides off the chair to the floor and grips her hips, uses his nose to open her up, swipes his tongue across her clit. He is slow, thorough, but his hands on her hips hold her in place like roots as she spreads her legs and bites her lip. He thrusts his tongue into her, just twice, and traces around her opening and back up to her clit. Her body starts taking over for her brain, and she feels any thought more complicated than this and more begin to dissolve.
And then, in the silence of the house, she hears Matthew's thin cry echo from the second floor. Mulder is too focused to notice, but her body is plunged back into reality, away from its own pleasure. She remembers why she is doing this, why it is fruitless and why it is necessary in the same moment. As feet stir softly upstairs, she pulls Mulder's face from her pussy and drops down to her knees to straddle him. His face is damp and sticky against hers as she kisses him, undoes his pants, pushes him onto his back. The darkest bit of her loves the clunk his head makes when it hits the floor, and tries to shush the part that notices how his fingers cling to her hips. She focuses her conscious attention on getting to his cock, ignores his strangled gasps, her own infuriating tears. She catches his eyes as she raises herself above him, and finds that she can't break the look, has to keep knowing where his eyes are as she slides onto his cock. She rocks her hips against him and he arches his back and gasps, and she is suddenly desperate to see him come, desperate to show her body what it should be doing, desperate to fight the odds, to fight him, the only person in the world who would join her in this. She leans over his chest, plants her hands by her shoulders, fucks him hard, absorbing his gasps and muttered attempts at her name through her skin. She tears his shirt open with one hand, runs her nails down his chest until he's doing her bleeding for her, pulls his hair so he opens his eyes to look at her. They're in this together, now, just like everything else they’ve ever done, and the sooner he realizes it's about that and not about whatever sentimental value he assigns to her the sooner they win.
He holds her head in his hands for a moment, trying to love her, and she shakes her head sharply to make him remove them. They hover in the air by her ears for a moment, and then he runs them down her shoulder blades, circles around to pinch her nipples. She feels like some ancient goddess as she throws her head back and thrusts back against him. His rhythm on her nipples follows the one she grinds into him, and they are suddenly stuck in some push-pull limbo neither of them can get out of. She comes suddenly, without wanting to yet, without being cognizant it was coming, but their bodies keep going even while she gasps as quietly as she can. He whispers her name, quietly but she clamps a hand over his mouth; there is no one in this house who needs to hear whatever he feels compelled to say in the last thirty seconds before orgasm. She looks him in the face again, and he says it anyway in the curl of his fingers into her skin, right before his face goes lax, mouth falling open beneath her hand. Remembering everything she once knew about the mechanics of the cervix, she grabs his shoulders, and rolls them over. His sudden weight settling against her public bone sets her off again, and she bites into whatever exposed skin she can find until she tastes iron under the salt.
He leans over her, forehead resting on the hardwood floor next to her, gasping. When he lifts his head, he watches her for a moment before rolling off her and flopping, arms loose, next to her on the floor. They lay in silence, listening to the creak of an antique rocking chair ten feet above them.
"Scully," Mulder says.
She finds her panties next to her head, lifts her legs, slides them on still lying down. It's all make-believe and lies, but she wants them a little longer. She redresses as quickly and efficiently as she can on her back, but then has to stand to leave him there. Just as she leaves the room, he says again, "Scully," and she turns to look at him.
He is lying on his back, his shirt shredded and bloodstained by her hands, his cock flopped against his now-ruined pants, staring at the ceiling. "There are other things I should have told you," he says. "You tell me when you want to hear them."
She can't kick him, she can't strangle him, she can't love him, so she goes up the stairs, alone in her body, smelling rich and loamy, feeling like a liar.
II. Crime and Punishment
There are friendly morning noises coming from the kitchen. Mulder keeps his eyes closed as he listens to them. He's pretty sure he's not invited into anything that pleasant sounding, not in this house, not this morning. Don't think about it. He feels exposed, somehow, even in his clean pajamas, even knowing there's no way anyone but Scully knows what happened last night (the scratches under his shirt itch, don't think about it), like everyone in this house knows he's fucked her. But, no, they just know he fucked her over. And that's enough.
He splashes water on his face in the downstairs bathroom, goes through his duffel bag to find something to wear(the pants wadded at the bottom, don't think about it). When he enters the kitchen, there is a sudden silence, or so it seems. Tara is sipping a cup of tea in a bathrobe, with Maggie next to her, reading some sort of giant book together. Scully is sitting on the other side of table; Matthew is curled in her arms, staring blankly up at her. She catches his eyes, and he can feel the gravity of her, the desperate desire to walk over to her and sink into her orbit. (Her eyes closing as she came, the lines of tears on her cheek, her lips parted, don't think about it.) But he walks over to the counter, pours himself a cup of coffee. Bill is flipping eggs at the stove, and cuts him a sharp look. "Morning," Mulder says as calmly as he can.
"Good morning, Fox," Maggie says pleasantly. "Did you sleep well?"
"Well enough," he says, and looks at his coffee cup to avoid making eye contact.
Tara and Maggie are discussing something called "sleep strategies." Mulder lets himself watch Scully with Matthew, since no one is looking at him. She strokes one finger down his cheek, runs it across his lips, and smiles, so softly. It's like being punched, but he keeps watching as she adjusts his limp weight across her arms. She slips her finger into his little hand, and he grips it.
Bill scrapes eggs off the bottom of the frying pan onto the fourth plate. "We're out of eggs," he says to Mulder as he carries them to the table.
Yeah, so's your sister, Mulder thinks, and drinks his coffee.
"Can I have my grandbaby?" Maggie asks, in a high, sing-songy voice. Scully hands him over, and stares at the plate of eggs in front of her blankly. "So, Dana," Maggie says. "How much longer can you stay?"
Scully looks up at Mulder, and he sees it, in a sudden flash--she needs to get out, she can't be here any longer. He clears his throat. "Unfortunately," he says, "I'm going to have to steal Dana back to DC."
"Really," Bill says, stabbing at his eggs.
"Yeah, we've got a case that's just about to take off. Bodies stacked six-high waiting for her back at Quantico," he says, and takes a sip of coffee. "Paranormal serial killers wait for no woman, sadly. We've got tickets for this afternoon."
Scully pushed a curd of scrambled egg to the edge of her plate. "It's nice to be wanted, at least," she says, and smiles weakly.
Bill gives him the evil eye as he finishes his coffee. Mulder stands there and takes it. It's the least he can do.
***
Scully leans her head back against the headrest in the car as they pull out of the driveway. "So, when's our flight?" she asks, eyes closed.
He looks over at her, and hopes he hasn't just fucked things up even worse. "We don't have one."
She opens her eyes and looks over at him, waiting.
"I figured you just wanted to get out of there," he says softly.
She closes her eyes again and nods, just once. He exhales. "Do you have a plan?"
"I had a couple of thoughts," he said, keeping his eyes on the road. "We could just drive to the San Diego airport, fly standby on the next flight headed east, connect through to DC as soon as we can. Or, we could head up to LAX, try the same thing, probably with a little more luck." He clears his throat. "Or we can go find a hotel, make reservations for tomorrow, eat a hundred dollars worth of room service. It's up to you." I just want to do something, he thinks. Let me do something.
He waits at a traffic light while she thinks. "LA," she says, "tomorrow."
He sighs out a breath he hadn't been holding, not really. "OK," he says, and heads to the highway.
***
It's only two pm as they get close to LA. Too early to head to the hotel, because she hasn't said one word to him since they left San Diego, and if he has to sit in a hotel room with Scully, Scully who he just fucked, Scully who won't talk to him, for the entire day, he will probably find his gun and put it to his head. "You want to do something?" he asks. He has to do something.
She cricks her neck and looks out the window. "The beach," she says. "I want to go to the beach."
He has no idea where the beach is, but he knows which way is north and which way is west and he figures that he can't actually fall off the continent, so he drives past the airport and gets off at an exit that says "beach.” They end up in Venice Beach, which is the single worst place he could imagine, but she seems oblivious to the oiled bodies and the clanging metal. There are surfers in bodysuits on the water, but the beach is populated mainly with dogwalkers in sweaters and couples holding hands. Scully walks ahead of him as they cross onto the sand. He hangs back and watches her, her jeans frayed at the hems, her black sweater hanging loose from her shoulders. She stops, ten feet shy of the water and toes off her shoes, pulls off her socks, rolls up those jeans. Her ankles are beautiful, he's seen her naked and orgasmic and her ankles can still get him hard, and what the fuck is he doing, he just doesn't know. She abandons her shoes and walks down to the water without looking back at him. He sits next to them and watches her stand at the edge of the surf, waves curling up and over her toes, nipping at the bone of her ankles, spraying her cuffs and darkening them. Her arms are folded, her chin up. He digs through the sand with his fingers and finds a shell, delicate and reflective. He doesn't remember shells like this from his childhood; the prettiest thing you find on a north Atlantic beach are those oyster shells with stripes of purple, nothing quite this ethereal. He sits and fingers it, tries not to remember, every time he looks at her, that if she'd never met him she'd have been able to make her own choices for the past five years, that if she'd never met him he'd be dead, that there are probably fingerprint bruises on her hips because he held on too hard and there's a fucking metaphor that you don't even have to work for in that. He loves her. Don't think about it.
She walks back up the beach to him and stops to pick up her shoes. He holds out the shell on his palm. She examines it for a moment, and then picks it up and drops it in her pocket, then starts walking back towards the car. She never puts her shoes on, just brushes the sand off her feet out the car door and then puts her bare feet at the floormats. It takes him an hour to find his way back to the airport, because she falls asleep in the car, and he has no fucking clue where he is going.
****
She stares at the fountain in the Radisson lobby while he gets the keys to the room. The car was returned, tickets for tomorrow bought; it was all over now but the long and awkward stretch between today and tomorrow. He watches her out of the corner of his eye as he taps his fingers on the counter. Apparently, the stages of Scully Grief begin with denial, move on to anger, and then segue into silence. He has no idea what the next stage will be. Truth be told, he's terrified of the next twelve hours. He doesn't know when she'll turn to him and ask him again why he never told her; when she'll call him on his idiotic need to be truthful last night, and ask what else he knows; when she will punch him or leave him or hate him once she knows there is a storage unit in Maryland with her not-very-covert cover name on it. Maybe she'll stay silent until they get back to DC, take Friday off, and come back to work and never speak of it again. He can't decide if that would be the best outcome or the next-to-worst.
He touches his hand to the small of her back, half expecting her to jump. Instead, it's like she's on a delay, and takes a moment to acknowledge him standing there over her shoulder. She just looks up silently and waits. Her face is pale and translucent, her chin still pointed; she never gained back most of the weight when she got well again. He's wondering how much she'll lose in the next two weeks. "We're on the third floor," he says simply, and reaches for her suitcase. She lets him take it, for perhaps the first time ever, and walks just ahead of him to the elevator.
Off the elevator, he points them towards the room, which is down on the end of the hall. She makes no comment about the single room, or the two beds, not even an eyebrow. It's like the Scully's been hollowed out of her, he thinks as she sits, knees together, on the edge of the bed nearer the door. He wants to poke her with a stick until she fights, but he's worried that she might collapse if he does.
He looks out the window. It's dusk over LA, the blaring lights of the airport beginning to stand out over the refracted grey light of the sky. She is still just sitting there, like she has no idea what to do. They have had many silences, but none have been so deadly as this one.
You have to do this. You have to make sure she gets back to DC in one piece. If at all possible, you have to make sure she doesn't hate you in the process. You love her. You fucked her. Don't think about it. He shoves his hands in his pockets and turns to her. "So, dinner?"
She looks up, half-startled. "Dinner?"
"I'm starved." He is; he hasn't eat since the slice of toast Scully passed him at breakfast, and she has eaten almost less. "You want to go out, or stay in? I think there are restaurants downstairs or something." If she doesn't express an opinion he is going to have to leave her alone so he doesn't go insane.
She takes a long minute to reply. "I believe I was promised a hundred dollars worth of room service."
He wants to hug her, to kiss her forehead, to slide a file across a desk to her in joy. "I can do that," he says, and finds the menu.
"I'm going to take a shower," she says softly, and stands. "Order whatever."
"There's a whirlpool tub or something," he says casually, as if he hadn't paid an extra fifty dollars for the room with it. "I'll knock when there's food."
It's more like a hundred and fifty dollars once he's done, ordering salads and ribs and an entire chocolate cake. The waiter rolls in the tray and casts a vague, significant look at the sounds of the burbling tub behind the door. Mulder undertips him and shoos him out. He knocks on the bathroom door quietly. "Scully?"
"I'll be right out," she says.
She's not right out. He sits on his bed and picks at the food, waiting for her. He doesn't know what to do with last night; it's an anomaly, and he can't handle it. Was she angry? Was she looking for comfort? She hadn't said a damn word the entire time, hadn't let him touch her, hadn't seemed to care whether the sex was any good, had just fucked him without rhyme or reason, so hard he had bruises on his ass and a lingering headache from the floor beneath him. He eats an onion ring. He needs answers, and he is damn sure she wasn't going to be giving them.
The ribs are cold when she emerges, wearing the same silk pajamas from last night. He used to fantasize about what it would be like to kiss her in those pajamas, to slide his hands down the fabric and run them up again, underneath, to the skin of her waist. He's worried his next round of fantasies will involve the floor of her brother's living room. He holds out the cake towards her. "I made a small dent, but there's more work to be done."
She reaches around him and grabs the salad, which is some elaborate Californian concoction with strange looking vegetables and giant white hunks which are apparently 'goat cheese.' It's so odd to think of her being from here, to think of a little Scully watching surfers at the beach, driving around with her sister in a beat-up car, going to Tijuana when her parents weren't looking. He can't do it. He tries again: Scully, on the beach in a L.L. Bean one-piece, under an umbrella, shading her eyes to wave at Emily, building a sandcastle at the shoreline, the buzz of the Santa Monica Pier in the distance.
Yeah. That one he can see. Don't think about it.
He has been watching ESPN with half a brain, watching the Lakers fumble the ball around the court. She sits on her bed and eats, unthinkingly, and stares at the game with him. It's almost companionable, except normally she would be making snide comments about why no one in the NBA can make a free throw, or about how a game that scores more than once a minute is clearly designed for the rapidly disintegrating attention span of the American male. He considers baiting her but can't come up with something to say, and, besides, if she ignored him it would be worse than the silence; the silence is almost neutral, but proof of her inattention would hurt.
By the end of the second quarter, she has picked through the salad and moved on to picking at the cake. Her hair is drying soft around her face--not curly, precisely, but with more texture than she's let it have at work for years. He remembers little Scully of the plaid suits, the fluffy bangs, the live sister, the intact ova. He liked that girl.
He loves this one. Don't think about it.
He finally goes to shower after they stare at five minutes of inane halftime commentary. Pointedly, he puts the remote next to her, says "You can change it if you want." In the shower, he leans against the wall under the hot spray and, awkwardly, assembles an image of her naked body. The swing of her breasts had fascinated him, feeling them move under his hands as she moved. He doesn't want to do this, doesn't want to want a grieving woman using him to punish herself. He wants to be a reward, not a punishment.
But the punishment fits the crime, at least.
He redresses in front of the steamy mirror so he can't see himself, dries his hair. When he leaves the bathroom, she is curled on her bed like a comma, eyes closed. The cake's remains are on the tray. The remote is on his bed, and the Lakers are up by thirteen.
He turns off the lights, lays under the covers and watches Shaq rack up the points, stays awake through the stupid post-game interviews and navel gazing about where Kobe will be in a year, and finally drifts off when SportsCenter begins. In the morning, maybe, she'll be herself again.
***
He thinks at first that it's the TV turning off that's woken him, because the room is so quiet. But he turns his head and sees her standing next to the bed. She is ghostly-pale, naked and glowing in the dim reflected light of the airport through their window. She is watching him, and something in her wavers and flickers, like she's a bad projection from a broken film reel. He pushes himself up on his elbows and blinks for a moment, until he almost has the power of speech.
But she speaks first, in a quiet voice he's never heard from her before, with a throat that sounds raw and salt-streaked. "Shut me up."
And he knows that voice, knows that feeling, when your brain is firing too often and you need your body to take over. This is why he runs; this is why he is well-acquainted with his right hand; this is why he spent his twenties banging nameless women he met in bars. If he stopped to analyze, he'd find it chilling to hear Scully ask for physical abandon, the Scully who never moves an inch without it being abundantly clear that her brain is doing the moving. But she's naked, and she's asking him for something without any prodding for the first time all day, and it's something he can give her.
He sits up and pulls off his shirt, and then holds out a hand to her. She kneels on the bed, holding his hand, but doesn't come closer to him, doesn't kiss him, doesn't make a single move. It's as if asking had been all she could do, and now he had to drive. Well, OK. He can do that, if it was what she needed. He runs his hand up her arm from her hand, traces the line of her collarbone across to the hollow where her cross rests. She closes her eyes, as if she's focusing on his hand, his touch. It is unbelieveably hot, but wrong, wrong, deeply wrong, this isn't Scully looking like this as he brushes his fingers down her sternum, as he cups her breast and pinches her nipple. Her lips part and she exhales quietly and he wants to kiss her, but he doesn't know if she'd let him, so he brings his hands up to her shoulders and pulls her towards him, arranges her so she's straddling his chest, bent over with her breasts brushing his cheeks. He loves the feel of her back flexing as he wraps his tongue around her nipple, loves the way her hips begin to rock against him, but her face terrifies him when he opens his eyes; it is empty of thought, eyes closed, jaw just slightly slack, and God, Scully's never looked like this in her life. He closes his eyes again, switches breasts, sucks harder, brings one hand to play with her damp nipple. She gasps and fists her hands into the pillow, and he wants her to touch him, but it's too much to ask.
He can smell her now, fuck, and he strokes one hand around her hip, tightening on the back of her thigh. She rocks back against his hand, and he trails it around again, rotates his wrist, slides one finger against her to open her up. Not the best angle, but suddenly she is wet and burning against his fingers and he can't help the little moan he makes, can't help clamping down on her nipple with his teeth just a little. She gasps and rotates her hips, and he sucks harder, runs his middle finger over her clit softly, then harder as she sets up a rhythm against his hand. His wrist is going to fucking break off and he doesn't care, but then she straightens up and he loses his grip on her breast, and she's just so beautiful, gasping and grimacing above him. He pulls his hand off her, and wraps both hands around her hips, urges her up his body. She comes without resistance, and when was the last time Scully ever did what he said before today, but he's not complaining, precisely, as she leans one arm against the wall and straddles his face. He doesn't even have to ask, she reaches down with the other hand to hold herself open, and it's the most frighteningly pornographic thing he's ever seen, her glistening cunt hovering over his face, her body leaned over him so he can see every inch of her. He reaches up with his tongue and runs it along the inside of her index finger where it's pressing her pubic hair back, then down her middle finger, and finally between them to stroke her clit. She pulls her hand away as he burrows in, and she is soft and warm and wet and suddenly his overfiring brain is quiet too, he can just lay there and feel the skin of her hips under his hands, the wet silk of her under his tongue, the rough crinkle of her hair brushing his nose, her gasps as she works back against him. And then she's making quiet high-pitched noises, and he opens his eyes to see her face wracked with tension, her forehead crumpling, her fingernails scraping the wall. He sucks her clit into his mouth hard and she throws her head back and gasps, her back muscles twitching under his hands as she comes. He lets off the pressure but keeps stroking her gently; he's fairly sure she came twice last night, and now he wants to keep her going as long as she can, to wear her out, to keep her out of her mind as long as she wants to let him.
But then she's pulling away from him, and he feels her leave his hands suddenly empty. He opens his eyes and wants to say something, but she's turned around, crawling down his body, shoving his pants off and--holy fuck--sinking her mouth around his cock with no preamble. He thrusts up unconsciously, and she anchors his hips into the mattress with her hands and slides down further. He moans her name and reaches out to stroke down her back, runs his hand over her ass. She's too far away to get his mouth on, but he awkwardly slides two fingers into her, and she pushes back onto his hand as she backs off his cock, then licks her way around the head. He curls down slightly, trying to find her g-spot, but loses his ability to focus as she sucks him down again, fuck, all the way, until she's nosing his balls as she tightens her mouth. He can't follow her pattern with his hand, just lets her fuck herself on his fingers as she fucks him with her mouth, surrenders to the feeling of her around him, lets himself go. He moans to her that he's coming, and she slides him down her throat, and he shouts and shakes and comes undone for her.
He is vibrating and gasping when he realizes his fingers are damp and cold which means she's gone somewhere, and he opens his eyes to see her, back to him, kneeling on the bed. Her head is bowed, and suddenly he knows with certainty that she's thinking again, and that's what she didn't want, she's sitting there hating herself for fucking him, hating him, hating her life, and he can't let her do that--she asked him to shut her up, he's not going to fail her again, and he sits up and sinks his teeth into the soft white skin of her shoulder.
She throws her head back and gasps. He wraps his hands around her torso, gets his hands on her breasts, keeps biting her shoulder, alternating teeth and lips, trying to coordinate his hands until she is rocking against him again, loose, eyes closed, her neck open to him. He pulls her back onto the bed, rotates her onto her stomach, and covers her body with his, clamps onto her neck, worrying the scar over her chip with his tongue. He thinks about trying to get hard enough again to fuck her, but he's pretty sure he's in charge of making sure they don't miss their plane tomorrow, and if he comes again it's entirely possible he'll sleep through the wake-up call, so he focuses on the taste of her skin under his lips, the way she responds to his playing with her breasts, where she likes pain and where gentleness, memorizing her body to keep himself focused. He creeps down her back slowly, licking the small protrusions of her vertebrae, biting the strong cords of muscle that bracket her spine, diverging to explore the backs of her arms where she has braced herself, curled fetally under him. She moans when he bites the skin above her elbows, cries out and pushes back against him when he growls into the muscles of her back.
He looks down at her back, and suddenly her tattoo is there, red and angry against her moonlight skin, burning, reminding him of everything he's done to her and that she's done to push him away. And here she is, moaning and supple under his mouth, and if this is penance he doesn't know why he's liking it so much. He bends down and runs his tongue around the snake, and she moans lower than before, the single hottest noise he could imagine, so he does it again, and her hips are working back against his chest so he bites her and she shudders. He keeps going, licking and biting hard enough to keep her making those noises, and he hadn't wanted to fuck her but he feels his cock hardening again, and suddenly he wants to hear her make that noise while he's sunk in her, wants to watch her shoulders tense and release as he thrusts and retreats, wants to kiss her neck and hear her gasp. He reaches one hand down and grabs his half-hard cock, begins working it as he bites, tries to get it to the point where he could fuck her, and starts sliding up her back, until his cock brushes against her cunt and he's bent over her shoulder.
"Don't," she whispers, so quietly that if he weren't right next to her head he wouldn't have heard it.
He freezes and his cock wilts. What doesn't she want? He pulls his body off hers fractionally, tries to read in her face what she's saying. She is flushed and gasping, but there is a crease in her forehead that isn't the orgasmic one, something that says she's thinking. He wants to ask her what he should do. He wants to tell her that he loves her and he just wants to make it better. He wants to fuck her and to hold her and to kiss her and he has no idea what she wants.
"Please," she whispers, and turns her face into the pillow.
He leans down and kisses the back of her neck gently, nosing the damp hair away from it. She moans again, and this is a good noise, so he slips his hand under her belly and reaches between her legs. She works her hips away from the ghost of his cock and against his hand, and he slides back down her back with his mouth, keeps working her clit as he finds her tattoo again, gentler this time, but hungry for the taste of her skin. She's quieter but moving again, and he sinks back into her, tries to quiet the nagging question of what she wants in the taste of her skin. She makes a little desperate noise, and he flips her over, pulls her legs up, and dives back in between her legs, slips his tongue into her and nuzzles his nose against her clit. She moans and rocks against him, and he buries himself against her again, desperate to know that he's keeping her the way she wants. He looks up at her. God, he loves her, but she's just not here, is she, not tonight, her legs hooked over his shoulders, her shoulders bracing her against the bed, her hands grabbing the headboard. Because Scully's not there, it's her nerves firing for her, and he did exactly what she wanted, he turned her brain off, but it's her brain he loves, and he misses her, suddenly alone in the bed with her cunt pulsing under his tongue. He'll fuck her as long as she wants him to, but he wants to make love to her, he wants her with him there and he's a little worried that every moment he spends fucking her pushes that moment further away.
This is what you deserve. Don't think about it. He closes his eyes and keeps going.
III. Facts and Conclusions
Scully wakes to his voice speaking her name, quietly. His hand brushes her cheek. "Hey, Scully."
She opens her eyes, not connecting to where she is for a moment, wondering why Mulder is on her hotel room. Then she breathes in, and last night comes flooding back to her, the taste of him in the back of her throat, the pressure of his lips on her back. Oh my god, she thinks. "Mulder?"
"Morning," he says with just a touch of awkwardness.
"What time is it?" she asks. She starts to sit up but then realizes she's naked under the sheet. Oh my god.
"It's almost noon. Our flight's at two, but I figured you'd want to shower and eat first. I got breakfast." He gestured to a tray on the table. The flower was wilted. He must have been awake for hours. "I was just going to go running." So she didn't have to walk across the room naked on front of him. "Is that okay?"
"What? Yes, of course." She could barely look at him. "Have a good run."
"I'll be back in a bit." He stood, patted himself for his key, smiled back at her quickly, left.
She lay in the bed for five full minutes after she heard the snick of the door. Oh my god. Once was bad enough. And she had been taking from him, making him do what she needed; all he had contributed was acquiescence. But last night she had crawled into his bed and turned herself over to him, had let him do whatever he wanted.
Almost anything. She had been blissfully writhing beneath him, unconscious to anything but the nerves firing, but the thought of him fucking her had brought her back to the night before in a sudden rush, and she had felt stabbed again with an unpronouncable grief. She couldn't remember when she had passed out, just that his mouth had been fierce against her skin but his hands gentle. Almost reticent.
She forces herself into the shower and stands under the water, trying to make some sense of the past two days. Fact: she had initiated all the sex. Mulder had seemed as detached as someone actively having sex could be, though not cold or hostile or unwilling. Fact: he was barely touching her when she had her clothes on. Fact: he was going out of his way to be helpful and solicitous, without seeming to have any opinions of his own. Conclusion: she'd spent the past two days getting pity-fucked by a man who, she was pretty sure, was in love with her.
She knocks her head against the tile softly, twice. She is such a fucking idiot. He'd do anything she asked, so she asked for the most fucked up thing possible, and probably ruined their friendship, not to mention any actual chance for a relationship. Which she didn't want, she was 95% sure, but didn't necessarily not want either. That was it. She would have to apologize for falling apart like this, for letting her emotions get the best of her. No matter how terrible she felt, she was entirely out of line. She never should have entertained her little fantasies of his magic sperm, certainly never should have crawled into his bed and let him soothe her with his tongue. She would apologize, and that would be that. She turns off the water.
Clothes are set on the vanity. She didn't bring them in here. She stares until she connects that this means he is back, that he didn't want to see her naked, that he brought her clothes to try to make it better. She nearly starts crying again. No. Clothes on, teeth brushed, out of the bathroom and on with the day.
He is sitting on the bed, next to his suitcase. He's pulled out clothes to fly in, but the rest is packed. Her suitcase is on her bed, opened but still neat. He surveys the outfit he had picked out. "Nice threads."
She takes a deep breath. "Thanks for bringing them in. I must have spaced out."
"I just didn't want to get slapped. Do you mind if I shower? I don't think anyone wants to be in coach class with me right now."
"It's all yours," she says, and stands in front of her suitcase to repack her toiletries case. He passes by her so close she smells his sweat, feels his heat, and she remembers his body under hers, the glorious abandon, the struggle and raw nerves. She has to apologize. She had no choice.
***
She sits in an uncomfortable plastic chair and watches the planes taxi back and forth out the window, next to the blinking sign informing them their plane is delayed. She checked her luggage, and so doesn't have anything to occupy her hands but her purse. Mulder is sprawling in the seat next to her. Neither of them are looking at each other.
He stands suddenly. "I'm going to get a pack of gum. Do you want anything?"
Yes, my daughter, you to love me, to crawl into a hole and die. Her mouth is dry. "I don't have anything to read."
He nods and wanders off towards the little shop. Her brain is slow and incapable of clear linear thought, so she finds herself wondering what he's going to bring her. Really, it could be anything. Her brain circles endlessly back to the night before. She can't remember anything visual, just the sensations of his skin on hers, his lips chasing up and down her body, the feel of his hands holding her in place. She shifts in her seat. God, she was such a fool.
He appears again, and holds out a stack of magazines to her. She flips through them: The Economist; Nature; and Vogue. She holds up the copy of Vogue, and arches an eyebrow at him. He reaches over and snags it from her hand. "That's for me," he says casually, crosses his ankles, and opens it to a random page. If she didn't know what he actually looked like when he was interested in something, he would have been doing a very credible impersonation of someone who was deeply engrossed.
She opens the copy of Nature, and ignores him until their plane is called.
***
She had flown out of Baltimore with her mother, and Mulder had booked them into National, which meant that he is driving. She had tried to argue that it would be easier for him just to go home, that she could take a taxi, that he was driving twenty minutes out of his way to take her home, but he just picked up her suitcase--when had he started doing that?--and started walking to the parking shuttle. She didn't have the energy, anyway.
He pulls into a parking spot down the street from her apartment building. "You want me to carry your bag up?" he asks quietly.
She wants to say no; she wants to tell him to go the hell away, because if she spends any more time in his presence she might touch him again, she might need him more. Instead she swallows. "Sure." She steps out of the car and shrugs her winter coat around her shoulders. San Diego had been warmer, she knew this, but she felt better with her coat on, felt more like herself. She started walking towards her building without looking back at him.
The sun has set, leaving the sky a dirty purple, and there is a gray crust of slush on the sidewalk. She unlocks the door to her building and holds it for him. He stomps his feet on the steps to avoid tracking slush onto her entryway. She calls the elevator without speaking.
Her apartment smells still and empty as she steps in. The red light on her answering machine is blinking; someone hadn't gotten the memo that she was away, or had expected her back five days ago. She glances around. It is emptier than she remembers; nothing here but her quiet objects. God, she doesn't even have a cat, couldn't have one, it would starve to death, no wonder she didn't deserve a daughter. Mulder's presence behind her is somehow steadying. She takes a deep breath of the stale air and walks across to her dining room table. She drops her coat across the chair, starts pulling off her gloves, and listens to the rattle of him putting the chain on her door. She wants him gone. She wants to curl up in his arms for a week. She drops the gloves on the table.
No time like the present to do what needs to be done, and she turns to him. He's still wearing his coat, but he wants to stay, he wants to know what he can do. "Mulder," she says quietly. He puts her suitcase down and steps towards her. He always stands so close, close enough to smell, close enough to feel the heat of his body, but she can't right now, he smells like stale airplane air, his heat is trapped in his coat. It's like talking to Mulder's ghost, and she resists the desire to peel his clothes off him before she starts talking, because if she does that they'll just fuck forever and she'll never get free of this, never. She folds her arms across her chest and stares at his feet. "Mulder, I need to apologize for my behavior over the past two days."
"Scully--"
She rushes past him. "I had no right. I know you acted out of friendship, but I was out of line. You've been more than generous with me, and I know you appreciate the extremity of the circumstance, but I asked you for things I had no right to ask you for. And I'm sorry I put you in that position."
He laughs. She is shocked for a moment, but when she manages to look at his face he is staring off over her shoulder, and he doesn't look at all amused. "I can't decide which part of that to argue about first," he says.
So don't argue, she thinks, but that'll never happen.
He is avoiding her eyes as he starts talking. "Scully, you could ask me for anything. Contract killings, de-grouting the shower, date on command for family weddings and high school reunions, whatever, I'm there. So, that's not, that's not a thing. You can always ask." He looks up and suddenly their eyes meet, and it might be the first time today. "You have the right. And it wasn't--" He swallows. "It wasn't a hardship." He drags his eyes back up to hers, and she thinks she can see straight through him to his burning heart.
She closes her eyes. She can't take this, can't carry his love for her next to her grief, can't hold all of this together. His hand brushes along her cheek, and she realizes just how close she is to crying. She inhales shakily and feels him step closer, and God, it just feels so right to have him so close. She tilts her head back without opening her eyes, and she feels him leaning down ever so slightly, until his lips brush hers. This is their first kiss, she realizes, or at least their first while dressed; he's licked every inch of her body but he never kissed her last night, and his dry lips on hers are warm and still, but she feels it through her whole body. He pulls away with his hand still on her face. She feels her desire to apologize draining out of her with her ability to stand up. She can't take much more of this, and she leans into his chest. He holds her up with a single hand on her back, and he must have memorized her back because he's holding her exactly over her tattoo, when he used to miss it by an inch and a half. This close she can feel his warmth, can smell him under the mustiness, and stands there cradled against his chest, not angry, not hurting, just tired, waiting.
He strokes her back gently, and she can tell he's about to ask if he should leave. She couldn't tell him to leave, can't ask him to stay, so she cuts him off. "Mulder, the other thing you have to tell me." She can feel him suddenly grow uncomfortable, but she keeps talking. "How bad is it?"
His hand is still on her back as he sorts out an answer. "There are ways in which it's very bad, and ways in which it's actually sort of good."
She pulls back and looks up at him. She is fairly sure that his fear is for himself. It's not that she isn't angry that he knew so much about what happened to her while she was abducted but kept his mouth shut, as that she is simply too exhausted to stay angry at him for very long. She needs him with her to fight this. If he would do anything for her, she will, eventually, forgive him for doing it. "What day is today?" she says.
"Thursday," he says.
"Are you planning on going to work tomorrow?"
He shrugs.
She nods. "Sit. I need a drink."
***
He watches her disappear into the kitchen, terrified, stomach twisted. Her little apology had broken him, but that she sunk into his arms right afterward gave him some hope. He has no idea how she is going to take this, but she wants him to tell her, and maybe that means something. He pulls off his coat and picks hers off the table, goes and hangs them both in her closet.
She emerges from her kitchen with a bottle of scotch and two glasses with ice cubes. Together, they sit on her couch as she pours. She hands him one of the glasses and clinks the rims together before she takes a long drink from hers. Does she really want to hear this? Why does Scully have scotch in her apartment? She sets her glass down on a coaster. He takes a perfunctory sip from his and sets it beside hers. "Tell me," she said steadily.
He has been thinking about how to finish this story, or how to begin to finish it, since he arrived in California, but he still doesn't have words. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. The card is hidden behind a dozen for adult bookstores and paranormal researchers, battered and bent, but he knows exactly which one it is. He holds it out to her, and she takes it. Maryland Cryogenic Services, it says, and an address in College Park. She turns it over, but it's blank.
"Account number 4572934," he says quietly. "The name is Katherine Murray, which I know is obvious but was the best I come up with on short notice. The guys can get you ID in the name when you need it."
"What is it?" she asks, still staring at the card.
He watches her closely. "I'm fairly sure it's a vial of your ova." She doesn't react visibly. "As far as I know, they aren't fertilized and haven't been tampered with. The Crawfords let me take them, the night I broke into the Lombard Research Facility. They had more, but I wasn't thinking well enough to take them all. The storage unit they were in kept them frozen; the guys at the clinic were all over me to say where I had gotten the tech, but I thought it was better I not mention it." He cleared his throat. "I had them test them before I bought the space. They're viable."
She puts the card down on the table and picks up her drink. "They had them in vials."
"Yes. In a drawer. Not just yours; I recognized the names of other abductees." He swallows. "And a room full of clones outside it. It wasn't like Scalon's; they were making adult clones, not altered children."
She take one long sip of the scotch, then another. She drains it with a third, and then, unceremoniously, throws the glass across the room, where it shatters on her wall, ice and glass landing on her floor.
He picks up his glass and hands it to her. "Thank you," she says, and drains it as well.
***
She sits in the silence with him, contemplating the melting ice in his glass. Her ova. He has them; he stole them back for her, was keeping them locked away while she was dying. As if there were any hope she would come back to him, any hope she would eventually be well enough to do something with them.
She thought the other night that he could get her pregnant. She didn't realize that, for all intents and purposes, he already had.
"Thank you," she says quietly. She feels him shift next to her, and looks over at him. He is still waiting for her to whip out her gun and press it to his temple, or to demand he does it himself. "For not treating them as evidence," she clarifies.
He shudders visibly. "You're not evidence."
She puts his glass back on his coaster. "You will never, ever keep information about me from me ever again. Are we clear?"
"Yes." He sounds genuinely contrite. Whether he is capable of following through on this promise is debatable, but at least he's willing to say it. She thinks of his hands bracketing her face on the floor of Bill's living room, just like in the hallway in Allentown, calling her back to him, calling her back to the fight. The clock above her VCR whispers that it's the witching hour, time for horrible things to come out and play. "I'm tired," she says.
He doesn't say anything. She stands and starts walking to the bedroom. "Come on."
**
He follows slowly, hesitantly. He had thought they had moved past this moment, that they could talk again. If they fuck more, will she apologize more? In the moonlight of her bedroom, she is pulling off her shirt, unsnapping her bra. He watches her from the doorway, unsure of what she wants. There is a faint bite mark on her shoulder. She pulls off her jeans and drops them and the shirt into her hamper. The edges of fingerprint bruises are visible, peeking out from her panties. She turns to him, watches him stand in the doorway, waiting. She is so beautiful, in the moonlight and faint sodium streetlight through her windows, that he doesn't know what to say.
She walks to her dresser, and pulls out a pair of his sweatpants that he must have left here at some point, and throws them at him. He runs them through his hands and watches her breasts swing as she bends down to pull out a pair of her own pajamas.
He thinks he can do this, as he unbuckles his belt, pulls off his sweater and then his t-shirt, because her apartment is always too warm, kicks off his shoes and lets his pants fall to the ground.
"Don't just leave them on the floor. At least put them on a chair or something," she says, walking past him to the bathroom.
He puts his clothes on the chair where he waited for her, steps into his sweatpants. She comes back into the room a moment later. "Bathroom's yours."
He doesn't have his toothbrush, but will live without it, he thinks as the toilet runs. He splashes cold water on his face, just like yesterday morning, but dries it with one of her towels. He swears he could find clothes washed in this apartment by smell alone. Back in the bedroom, she is curled under the covers on the far side of the bed. She opens her eyes and looks up at him as he enters. He peels back the covers, slides in next to her. She has one hand palm up in between them; he reaches out, takes it in his, pulls it to his lips and kisses her knuckles. It's not so much that she smiles, as that her face softens, and she tightens her grip on his hand for just a moment. "Good night," she whispers, as if there were someone to hear.
"Good night, Scully," he says, and watches her as her eyes close. She is still holding his hand, even when he finally falls asleep.
Author: Amal Nahurriyeh
Summary: The journey from Emily's funeral back to DC: A Tragedy in Three Parts.
Pairing: MSR.
Rating: NC-17: Highly angsty and not very romantic sex.
Warnings: ( skip) I don't see any dubcon here, but this is not sex the participants are gleeful about having. Discussions of infertility trauma.
Timeline/Spoilers: Post-ep for Emily; specific spoilers for Christmas Carol/Emily and Memento Mori; deviates from the Per Manum timeline.
Author's Notes: Many thanks to
memories_child for the beta, and wendelah1 for a fruitful conversation about the implausibility of the fertility arc. Everything I know about the functioning of the female reproductive system came from Taking Charge of Your Fertility and The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth, as filtered through my wife, Leigh, so many thanks to her as well. Part 1, Curse and Salvation, was originally written as a birthday gift for icedteainthebag .
Edit: I forgot to say that the title is a (possibly misheard) lyric from the Gnarls Barkley song Necromancer, which you can download at that link. I toyed with the idea of writing songfic for that song--and then realize I already had, and that it was part II of this story. Voila.
I. Curse and Salvation
Scully lies in the dark and traces her fingers over the skin of her stomach, above the pad of fat cradling her uterus, orphaned and alone the last soldier fighting, radio silent, unaware the war has already been lost. It's not that the knowledge of her infertility is still surprising. She has been a dutiful student of her reproductive system since med school. The complexity of the signs an ovulating body gives had fascinated her, and she had gone on a six-month charting binge, complete with minutely descriptive notes on her cervical mucus and even the purchase of a tiny microscope to track the faint ferning in her saliva. So when she had gone six weeks without a period after her abduction, her body giving no signs of any sort of cycle, she had visited her OB/GYN, and endured the four weeks of ultrasounds and hormone panels without much hope. It still stabbed her now and then, though, when her artificial period brought on very real cramps, when the teenager behind the pharmacy counter had the gall to look shocked that the prescription for estrogen and medroxyprogesterone was being filled by a woman under fifty, when she got another baby announcement from a college or med school friend. It's then that she feels the weight of it, the sudden and surprising aloneness. She knows grief is normal; she knows her life is rich and complete without a child, and she would probably never have had one anyway. But alone is what she feels, no matter how much she tries to think it away.
Today the stabbing grief wears a small girl's face, tastes like gritty sand between her teeth. Emily, who she loved with an urgency she had never expected and missed with a bewildered ache. She knew almost nothing about her: not whether she fought against baths or begged for more time in the water, not if she laughed when tickled or talked to her stuffed animals, not her favorite book or song, not even where her body had been taken. It didn't matter; the loss had scratched her open and left her psychic skin oozing. She had a daughter, and she will never have her again, and she knows that she cannot have another. Nothing makes sense and everything hurts in this, the story of her impossible daughter.
But she lives her life in a world where she is forced to investigate ten impossible things between breakfast and lunch, where the unexplainable is a regular occurance, where the strange occupies the jump seat in the back of any number of rented Tauruses. And it is because of that life that she is absolutely convinced that the one man in the world who could impregnate her when it is impossible is Mulder. That motherfucker, who knew how this had happened and never thought to mention it, who did what she asked him to and sulked about it ever since she found Emily; he is her curse and her salvation in equal parts, the answer to the problems he himself has caused.
He is asleep downstairs on Bill's couch; he never bothered with getting a hotel room, and merely shuttled back and forth between hospital and investigation, trailing her home, unwilling to leave her alone. He was the first person she saw after Emily died; he was in the hallway, slumped in a chair , staring at the pediatric playroom, where sick children played weakly with their mothers, their laughter muted by glass. He heard her steps and turned towards her. "I need to find a funeral home," she said quietly.
"I'll get you a phonebook," he said.
By the count of the pills in her suitcase she is on cycle day 15, which was the day she would ovulate back when that was possible. Her traitorous, lying body roils under the skin, tempting her with the prospect of fecundity. She imagines the lushness of endometrial tissue like a feather bed, waiting for the burrowing future. If there is anyone who could bring this back, it's the bastard sleeping at the foot of the stairs.
She stands and goes to him, vibrating with lust and furor. She expected him on the couch, head limp, lost to his own private world, but he is in the armchair, knees splayed, and either he wasn't sleeping either or he heard her coming because he is watching her turn into the living room. His eyes are red, which ratchets up her rage; he has no right to anything he is feeling right now. "Scully," he says softly. "Are you okay?"
"That," she says, "is an incredibly stupid question." He never even got undressed, is sitting there still in the remnants of his funeral suit. His unbuttoned collar shows the hollow of his neck, shaded and soft in the dark of the living room. She stands in front of him, unclear on what to say or do to communicate what she wants, unclear on what any of this is going to accomplish. He stays perfectly still and watches her watch him, and she hates the love and sympathy that vibrates in him, hates that it strikes some pitch in her that wants desperately to ring back. She unbuttons her pajama top and lets it fall to the ground. His eyes stray to her breasts, but he stays still. She pushes down her pants and leaves them in the pile with the top. He swallows. She steps in between his legs, and he presses his legs in until his thighs brush hers. Without saying anything, he leans forward and kisses her stomach just below her navel. His lips are soft, and then his tongue is hot and his teeth are sharp. His fingers slide under the elastic of her underpants and pull them down her legs, and then creep back up to tease her pubic hair. She feels tears in the back of her throat and digs her fingers into the back of his head, wants to laugh as he noses down her belly a little, as if he's really that desperate to taste her pussy. He slides off the chair to the floor and grips her hips, uses his nose to open her up, swipes his tongue across her clit. He is slow, thorough, but his hands on her hips hold her in place like roots as she spreads her legs and bites her lip. He thrusts his tongue into her, just twice, and traces around her opening and back up to her clit. Her body starts taking over for her brain, and she feels any thought more complicated than this and more begin to dissolve.
And then, in the silence of the house, she hears Matthew's thin cry echo from the second floor. Mulder is too focused to notice, but her body is plunged back into reality, away from its own pleasure. She remembers why she is doing this, why it is fruitless and why it is necessary in the same moment. As feet stir softly upstairs, she pulls Mulder's face from her pussy and drops down to her knees to straddle him. His face is damp and sticky against hers as she kisses him, undoes his pants, pushes him onto his back. The darkest bit of her loves the clunk his head makes when it hits the floor, and tries to shush the part that notices how his fingers cling to her hips. She focuses her conscious attention on getting to his cock, ignores his strangled gasps, her own infuriating tears. She catches his eyes as she raises herself above him, and finds that she can't break the look, has to keep knowing where his eyes are as she slides onto his cock. She rocks her hips against him and he arches his back and gasps, and she is suddenly desperate to see him come, desperate to show her body what it should be doing, desperate to fight the odds, to fight him, the only person in the world who would join her in this. She leans over his chest, plants her hands by her shoulders, fucks him hard, absorbing his gasps and muttered attempts at her name through her skin. She tears his shirt open with one hand, runs her nails down his chest until he's doing her bleeding for her, pulls his hair so he opens his eyes to look at her. They're in this together, now, just like everything else they’ve ever done, and the sooner he realizes it's about that and not about whatever sentimental value he assigns to her the sooner they win.
He holds her head in his hands for a moment, trying to love her, and she shakes her head sharply to make him remove them. They hover in the air by her ears for a moment, and then he runs them down her shoulder blades, circles around to pinch her nipples. She feels like some ancient goddess as she throws her head back and thrusts back against him. His rhythm on her nipples follows the one she grinds into him, and they are suddenly stuck in some push-pull limbo neither of them can get out of. She comes suddenly, without wanting to yet, without being cognizant it was coming, but their bodies keep going even while she gasps as quietly as she can. He whispers her name, quietly but she clamps a hand over his mouth; there is no one in this house who needs to hear whatever he feels compelled to say in the last thirty seconds before orgasm. She looks him in the face again, and he says it anyway in the curl of his fingers into her skin, right before his face goes lax, mouth falling open beneath her hand. Remembering everything she once knew about the mechanics of the cervix, she grabs his shoulders, and rolls them over. His sudden weight settling against her public bone sets her off again, and she bites into whatever exposed skin she can find until she tastes iron under the salt.
He leans over her, forehead resting on the hardwood floor next to her, gasping. When he lifts his head, he watches her for a moment before rolling off her and flopping, arms loose, next to her on the floor. They lay in silence, listening to the creak of an antique rocking chair ten feet above them.
"Scully," Mulder says.
She finds her panties next to her head, lifts her legs, slides them on still lying down. It's all make-believe and lies, but she wants them a little longer. She redresses as quickly and efficiently as she can on her back, but then has to stand to leave him there. Just as she leaves the room, he says again, "Scully," and she turns to look at him.
He is lying on his back, his shirt shredded and bloodstained by her hands, his cock flopped against his now-ruined pants, staring at the ceiling. "There are other things I should have told you," he says. "You tell me when you want to hear them."
She can't kick him, she can't strangle him, she can't love him, so she goes up the stairs, alone in her body, smelling rich and loamy, feeling like a liar.
II. Crime and Punishment
There are friendly morning noises coming from the kitchen. Mulder keeps his eyes closed as he listens to them. He's pretty sure he's not invited into anything that pleasant sounding, not in this house, not this morning. Don't think about it. He feels exposed, somehow, even in his clean pajamas, even knowing there's no way anyone but Scully knows what happened last night (the scratches under his shirt itch, don't think about it), like everyone in this house knows he's fucked her. But, no, they just know he fucked her over. And that's enough.
He splashes water on his face in the downstairs bathroom, goes through his duffel bag to find something to wear(the pants wadded at the bottom, don't think about it). When he enters the kitchen, there is a sudden silence, or so it seems. Tara is sipping a cup of tea in a bathrobe, with Maggie next to her, reading some sort of giant book together. Scully is sitting on the other side of table; Matthew is curled in her arms, staring blankly up at her. She catches his eyes, and he can feel the gravity of her, the desperate desire to walk over to her and sink into her orbit. (Her eyes closing as she came, the lines of tears on her cheek, her lips parted, don't think about it.) But he walks over to the counter, pours himself a cup of coffee. Bill is flipping eggs at the stove, and cuts him a sharp look. "Morning," Mulder says as calmly as he can.
"Good morning, Fox," Maggie says pleasantly. "Did you sleep well?"
"Well enough," he says, and looks at his coffee cup to avoid making eye contact.
Tara and Maggie are discussing something called "sleep strategies." Mulder lets himself watch Scully with Matthew, since no one is looking at him. She strokes one finger down his cheek, runs it across his lips, and smiles, so softly. It's like being punched, but he keeps watching as she adjusts his limp weight across her arms. She slips her finger into his little hand, and he grips it.
Bill scrapes eggs off the bottom of the frying pan onto the fourth plate. "We're out of eggs," he says to Mulder as he carries them to the table.
Yeah, so's your sister, Mulder thinks, and drinks his coffee.
"Can I have my grandbaby?" Maggie asks, in a high, sing-songy voice. Scully hands him over, and stares at the plate of eggs in front of her blankly. "So, Dana," Maggie says. "How much longer can you stay?"
Scully looks up at Mulder, and he sees it, in a sudden flash--she needs to get out, she can't be here any longer. He clears his throat. "Unfortunately," he says, "I'm going to have to steal Dana back to DC."
"Really," Bill says, stabbing at his eggs.
"Yeah, we've got a case that's just about to take off. Bodies stacked six-high waiting for her back at Quantico," he says, and takes a sip of coffee. "Paranormal serial killers wait for no woman, sadly. We've got tickets for this afternoon."
Scully pushed a curd of scrambled egg to the edge of her plate. "It's nice to be wanted, at least," she says, and smiles weakly.
Bill gives him the evil eye as he finishes his coffee. Mulder stands there and takes it. It's the least he can do.
***
Scully leans her head back against the headrest in the car as they pull out of the driveway. "So, when's our flight?" she asks, eyes closed.
He looks over at her, and hopes he hasn't just fucked things up even worse. "We don't have one."
She opens her eyes and looks over at him, waiting.
"I figured you just wanted to get out of there," he says softly.
She closes her eyes again and nods, just once. He exhales. "Do you have a plan?"
"I had a couple of thoughts," he said, keeping his eyes on the road. "We could just drive to the San Diego airport, fly standby on the next flight headed east, connect through to DC as soon as we can. Or, we could head up to LAX, try the same thing, probably with a little more luck." He clears his throat. "Or we can go find a hotel, make reservations for tomorrow, eat a hundred dollars worth of room service. It's up to you." I just want to do something, he thinks. Let me do something.
He waits at a traffic light while she thinks. "LA," she says, "tomorrow."
He sighs out a breath he hadn't been holding, not really. "OK," he says, and heads to the highway.
***
It's only two pm as they get close to LA. Too early to head to the hotel, because she hasn't said one word to him since they left San Diego, and if he has to sit in a hotel room with Scully, Scully who he just fucked, Scully who won't talk to him, for the entire day, he will probably find his gun and put it to his head. "You want to do something?" he asks. He has to do something.
She cricks her neck and looks out the window. "The beach," she says. "I want to go to the beach."
He has no idea where the beach is, but he knows which way is north and which way is west and he figures that he can't actually fall off the continent, so he drives past the airport and gets off at an exit that says "beach.” They end up in Venice Beach, which is the single worst place he could imagine, but she seems oblivious to the oiled bodies and the clanging metal. There are surfers in bodysuits on the water, but the beach is populated mainly with dogwalkers in sweaters and couples holding hands. Scully walks ahead of him as they cross onto the sand. He hangs back and watches her, her jeans frayed at the hems, her black sweater hanging loose from her shoulders. She stops, ten feet shy of the water and toes off her shoes, pulls off her socks, rolls up those jeans. Her ankles are beautiful, he's seen her naked and orgasmic and her ankles can still get him hard, and what the fuck is he doing, he just doesn't know. She abandons her shoes and walks down to the water without looking back at him. He sits next to them and watches her stand at the edge of the surf, waves curling up and over her toes, nipping at the bone of her ankles, spraying her cuffs and darkening them. Her arms are folded, her chin up. He digs through the sand with his fingers and finds a shell, delicate and reflective. He doesn't remember shells like this from his childhood; the prettiest thing you find on a north Atlantic beach are those oyster shells with stripes of purple, nothing quite this ethereal. He sits and fingers it, tries not to remember, every time he looks at her, that if she'd never met him she'd have been able to make her own choices for the past five years, that if she'd never met him he'd be dead, that there are probably fingerprint bruises on her hips because he held on too hard and there's a fucking metaphor that you don't even have to work for in that. He loves her. Don't think about it.
She walks back up the beach to him and stops to pick up her shoes. He holds out the shell on his palm. She examines it for a moment, and then picks it up and drops it in her pocket, then starts walking back towards the car. She never puts her shoes on, just brushes the sand off her feet out the car door and then puts her bare feet at the floormats. It takes him an hour to find his way back to the airport, because she falls asleep in the car, and he has no fucking clue where he is going.
****
She stares at the fountain in the Radisson lobby while he gets the keys to the room. The car was returned, tickets for tomorrow bought; it was all over now but the long and awkward stretch between today and tomorrow. He watches her out of the corner of his eye as he taps his fingers on the counter. Apparently, the stages of Scully Grief begin with denial, move on to anger, and then segue into silence. He has no idea what the next stage will be. Truth be told, he's terrified of the next twelve hours. He doesn't know when she'll turn to him and ask him again why he never told her; when she'll call him on his idiotic need to be truthful last night, and ask what else he knows; when she will punch him or leave him or hate him once she knows there is a storage unit in Maryland with her not-very-covert cover name on it. Maybe she'll stay silent until they get back to DC, take Friday off, and come back to work and never speak of it again. He can't decide if that would be the best outcome or the next-to-worst.
He touches his hand to the small of her back, half expecting her to jump. Instead, it's like she's on a delay, and takes a moment to acknowledge him standing there over her shoulder. She just looks up silently and waits. Her face is pale and translucent, her chin still pointed; she never gained back most of the weight when she got well again. He's wondering how much she'll lose in the next two weeks. "We're on the third floor," he says simply, and reaches for her suitcase. She lets him take it, for perhaps the first time ever, and walks just ahead of him to the elevator.
Off the elevator, he points them towards the room, which is down on the end of the hall. She makes no comment about the single room, or the two beds, not even an eyebrow. It's like the Scully's been hollowed out of her, he thinks as she sits, knees together, on the edge of the bed nearer the door. He wants to poke her with a stick until she fights, but he's worried that she might collapse if he does.
He looks out the window. It's dusk over LA, the blaring lights of the airport beginning to stand out over the refracted grey light of the sky. She is still just sitting there, like she has no idea what to do. They have had many silences, but none have been so deadly as this one.
You have to do this. You have to make sure she gets back to DC in one piece. If at all possible, you have to make sure she doesn't hate you in the process. You love her. You fucked her. Don't think about it. He shoves his hands in his pockets and turns to her. "So, dinner?"
She looks up, half-startled. "Dinner?"
"I'm starved." He is; he hasn't eat since the slice of toast Scully passed him at breakfast, and she has eaten almost less. "You want to go out, or stay in? I think there are restaurants downstairs or something." If she doesn't express an opinion he is going to have to leave her alone so he doesn't go insane.
She takes a long minute to reply. "I believe I was promised a hundred dollars worth of room service."
He wants to hug her, to kiss her forehead, to slide a file across a desk to her in joy. "I can do that," he says, and finds the menu.
"I'm going to take a shower," she says softly, and stands. "Order whatever."
"There's a whirlpool tub or something," he says casually, as if he hadn't paid an extra fifty dollars for the room with it. "I'll knock when there's food."
It's more like a hundred and fifty dollars once he's done, ordering salads and ribs and an entire chocolate cake. The waiter rolls in the tray and casts a vague, significant look at the sounds of the burbling tub behind the door. Mulder undertips him and shoos him out. He knocks on the bathroom door quietly. "Scully?"
"I'll be right out," she says.
She's not right out. He sits on his bed and picks at the food, waiting for her. He doesn't know what to do with last night; it's an anomaly, and he can't handle it. Was she angry? Was she looking for comfort? She hadn't said a damn word the entire time, hadn't let him touch her, hadn't seemed to care whether the sex was any good, had just fucked him without rhyme or reason, so hard he had bruises on his ass and a lingering headache from the floor beneath him. He eats an onion ring. He needs answers, and he is damn sure she wasn't going to be giving them.
The ribs are cold when she emerges, wearing the same silk pajamas from last night. He used to fantasize about what it would be like to kiss her in those pajamas, to slide his hands down the fabric and run them up again, underneath, to the skin of her waist. He's worried his next round of fantasies will involve the floor of her brother's living room. He holds out the cake towards her. "I made a small dent, but there's more work to be done."
She reaches around him and grabs the salad, which is some elaborate Californian concoction with strange looking vegetables and giant white hunks which are apparently 'goat cheese.' It's so odd to think of her being from here, to think of a little Scully watching surfers at the beach, driving around with her sister in a beat-up car, going to Tijuana when her parents weren't looking. He can't do it. He tries again: Scully, on the beach in a L.L. Bean one-piece, under an umbrella, shading her eyes to wave at Emily, building a sandcastle at the shoreline, the buzz of the Santa Monica Pier in the distance.
Yeah. That one he can see. Don't think about it.
He has been watching ESPN with half a brain, watching the Lakers fumble the ball around the court. She sits on her bed and eats, unthinkingly, and stares at the game with him. It's almost companionable, except normally she would be making snide comments about why no one in the NBA can make a free throw, or about how a game that scores more than once a minute is clearly designed for the rapidly disintegrating attention span of the American male. He considers baiting her but can't come up with something to say, and, besides, if she ignored him it would be worse than the silence; the silence is almost neutral, but proof of her inattention would hurt.
By the end of the second quarter, she has picked through the salad and moved on to picking at the cake. Her hair is drying soft around her face--not curly, precisely, but with more texture than she's let it have at work for years. He remembers little Scully of the plaid suits, the fluffy bangs, the live sister, the intact ova. He liked that girl.
He loves this one. Don't think about it.
He finally goes to shower after they stare at five minutes of inane halftime commentary. Pointedly, he puts the remote next to her, says "You can change it if you want." In the shower, he leans against the wall under the hot spray and, awkwardly, assembles an image of her naked body. The swing of her breasts had fascinated him, feeling them move under his hands as she moved. He doesn't want to do this, doesn't want to want a grieving woman using him to punish herself. He wants to be a reward, not a punishment.
But the punishment fits the crime, at least.
He redresses in front of the steamy mirror so he can't see himself, dries his hair. When he leaves the bathroom, she is curled on her bed like a comma, eyes closed. The cake's remains are on the tray. The remote is on his bed, and the Lakers are up by thirteen.
He turns off the lights, lays under the covers and watches Shaq rack up the points, stays awake through the stupid post-game interviews and navel gazing about where Kobe will be in a year, and finally drifts off when SportsCenter begins. In the morning, maybe, she'll be herself again.
***
He thinks at first that it's the TV turning off that's woken him, because the room is so quiet. But he turns his head and sees her standing next to the bed. She is ghostly-pale, naked and glowing in the dim reflected light of the airport through their window. She is watching him, and something in her wavers and flickers, like she's a bad projection from a broken film reel. He pushes himself up on his elbows and blinks for a moment, until he almost has the power of speech.
But she speaks first, in a quiet voice he's never heard from her before, with a throat that sounds raw and salt-streaked. "Shut me up."
And he knows that voice, knows that feeling, when your brain is firing too often and you need your body to take over. This is why he runs; this is why he is well-acquainted with his right hand; this is why he spent his twenties banging nameless women he met in bars. If he stopped to analyze, he'd find it chilling to hear Scully ask for physical abandon, the Scully who never moves an inch without it being abundantly clear that her brain is doing the moving. But she's naked, and she's asking him for something without any prodding for the first time all day, and it's something he can give her.
He sits up and pulls off his shirt, and then holds out a hand to her. She kneels on the bed, holding his hand, but doesn't come closer to him, doesn't kiss him, doesn't make a single move. It's as if asking had been all she could do, and now he had to drive. Well, OK. He can do that, if it was what she needed. He runs his hand up her arm from her hand, traces the line of her collarbone across to the hollow where her cross rests. She closes her eyes, as if she's focusing on his hand, his touch. It is unbelieveably hot, but wrong, wrong, deeply wrong, this isn't Scully looking like this as he brushes his fingers down her sternum, as he cups her breast and pinches her nipple. Her lips part and she exhales quietly and he wants to kiss her, but he doesn't know if she'd let him, so he brings his hands up to her shoulders and pulls her towards him, arranges her so she's straddling his chest, bent over with her breasts brushing his cheeks. He loves the feel of her back flexing as he wraps his tongue around her nipple, loves the way her hips begin to rock against him, but her face terrifies him when he opens his eyes; it is empty of thought, eyes closed, jaw just slightly slack, and God, Scully's never looked like this in her life. He closes his eyes again, switches breasts, sucks harder, brings one hand to play with her damp nipple. She gasps and fists her hands into the pillow, and he wants her to touch him, but it's too much to ask.
He can smell her now, fuck, and he strokes one hand around her hip, tightening on the back of her thigh. She rocks back against his hand, and he trails it around again, rotates his wrist, slides one finger against her to open her up. Not the best angle, but suddenly she is wet and burning against his fingers and he can't help the little moan he makes, can't help clamping down on her nipple with his teeth just a little. She gasps and rotates her hips, and he sucks harder, runs his middle finger over her clit softly, then harder as she sets up a rhythm against his hand. His wrist is going to fucking break off and he doesn't care, but then she straightens up and he loses his grip on her breast, and she's just so beautiful, gasping and grimacing above him. He pulls his hand off her, and wraps both hands around her hips, urges her up his body. She comes without resistance, and when was the last time Scully ever did what he said before today, but he's not complaining, precisely, as she leans one arm against the wall and straddles his face. He doesn't even have to ask, she reaches down with the other hand to hold herself open, and it's the most frighteningly pornographic thing he's ever seen, her glistening cunt hovering over his face, her body leaned over him so he can see every inch of her. He reaches up with his tongue and runs it along the inside of her index finger where it's pressing her pubic hair back, then down her middle finger, and finally between them to stroke her clit. She pulls her hand away as he burrows in, and she is soft and warm and wet and suddenly his overfiring brain is quiet too, he can just lay there and feel the skin of her hips under his hands, the wet silk of her under his tongue, the rough crinkle of her hair brushing his nose, her gasps as she works back against him. And then she's making quiet high-pitched noises, and he opens his eyes to see her face wracked with tension, her forehead crumpling, her fingernails scraping the wall. He sucks her clit into his mouth hard and she throws her head back and gasps, her back muscles twitching under his hands as she comes. He lets off the pressure but keeps stroking her gently; he's fairly sure she came twice last night, and now he wants to keep her going as long as she can, to wear her out, to keep her out of her mind as long as she wants to let him.
But then she's pulling away from him, and he feels her leave his hands suddenly empty. He opens his eyes and wants to say something, but she's turned around, crawling down his body, shoving his pants off and--holy fuck--sinking her mouth around his cock with no preamble. He thrusts up unconsciously, and she anchors his hips into the mattress with her hands and slides down further. He moans her name and reaches out to stroke down her back, runs his hand over her ass. She's too far away to get his mouth on, but he awkwardly slides two fingers into her, and she pushes back onto his hand as she backs off his cock, then licks her way around the head. He curls down slightly, trying to find her g-spot, but loses his ability to focus as she sucks him down again, fuck, all the way, until she's nosing his balls as she tightens her mouth. He can't follow her pattern with his hand, just lets her fuck herself on his fingers as she fucks him with her mouth, surrenders to the feeling of her around him, lets himself go. He moans to her that he's coming, and she slides him down her throat, and he shouts and shakes and comes undone for her.
He is vibrating and gasping when he realizes his fingers are damp and cold which means she's gone somewhere, and he opens his eyes to see her, back to him, kneeling on the bed. Her head is bowed, and suddenly he knows with certainty that she's thinking again, and that's what she didn't want, she's sitting there hating herself for fucking him, hating him, hating her life, and he can't let her do that--she asked him to shut her up, he's not going to fail her again, and he sits up and sinks his teeth into the soft white skin of her shoulder.
She throws her head back and gasps. He wraps his hands around her torso, gets his hands on her breasts, keeps biting her shoulder, alternating teeth and lips, trying to coordinate his hands until she is rocking against him again, loose, eyes closed, her neck open to him. He pulls her back onto the bed, rotates her onto her stomach, and covers her body with his, clamps onto her neck, worrying the scar over her chip with his tongue. He thinks about trying to get hard enough again to fuck her, but he's pretty sure he's in charge of making sure they don't miss their plane tomorrow, and if he comes again it's entirely possible he'll sleep through the wake-up call, so he focuses on the taste of her skin under his lips, the way she responds to his playing with her breasts, where she likes pain and where gentleness, memorizing her body to keep himself focused. He creeps down her back slowly, licking the small protrusions of her vertebrae, biting the strong cords of muscle that bracket her spine, diverging to explore the backs of her arms where she has braced herself, curled fetally under him. She moans when he bites the skin above her elbows, cries out and pushes back against him when he growls into the muscles of her back.
He looks down at her back, and suddenly her tattoo is there, red and angry against her moonlight skin, burning, reminding him of everything he's done to her and that she's done to push him away. And here she is, moaning and supple under his mouth, and if this is penance he doesn't know why he's liking it so much. He bends down and runs his tongue around the snake, and she moans lower than before, the single hottest noise he could imagine, so he does it again, and her hips are working back against his chest so he bites her and she shudders. He keeps going, licking and biting hard enough to keep her making those noises, and he hadn't wanted to fuck her but he feels his cock hardening again, and suddenly he wants to hear her make that noise while he's sunk in her, wants to watch her shoulders tense and release as he thrusts and retreats, wants to kiss her neck and hear her gasp. He reaches one hand down and grabs his half-hard cock, begins working it as he bites, tries to get it to the point where he could fuck her, and starts sliding up her back, until his cock brushes against her cunt and he's bent over her shoulder.
"Don't," she whispers, so quietly that if he weren't right next to her head he wouldn't have heard it.
He freezes and his cock wilts. What doesn't she want? He pulls his body off hers fractionally, tries to read in her face what she's saying. She is flushed and gasping, but there is a crease in her forehead that isn't the orgasmic one, something that says she's thinking. He wants to ask her what he should do. He wants to tell her that he loves her and he just wants to make it better. He wants to fuck her and to hold her and to kiss her and he has no idea what she wants.
"Please," she whispers, and turns her face into the pillow.
He leans down and kisses the back of her neck gently, nosing the damp hair away from it. She moans again, and this is a good noise, so he slips his hand under her belly and reaches between her legs. She works her hips away from the ghost of his cock and against his hand, and he slides back down her back with his mouth, keeps working her clit as he finds her tattoo again, gentler this time, but hungry for the taste of her skin. She's quieter but moving again, and he sinks back into her, tries to quiet the nagging question of what she wants in the taste of her skin. She makes a little desperate noise, and he flips her over, pulls her legs up, and dives back in between her legs, slips his tongue into her and nuzzles his nose against her clit. She moans and rocks against him, and he buries himself against her again, desperate to know that he's keeping her the way she wants. He looks up at her. God, he loves her, but she's just not here, is she, not tonight, her legs hooked over his shoulders, her shoulders bracing her against the bed, her hands grabbing the headboard. Because Scully's not there, it's her nerves firing for her, and he did exactly what she wanted, he turned her brain off, but it's her brain he loves, and he misses her, suddenly alone in the bed with her cunt pulsing under his tongue. He'll fuck her as long as she wants him to, but he wants to make love to her, he wants her with him there and he's a little worried that every moment he spends fucking her pushes that moment further away.
This is what you deserve. Don't think about it. He closes his eyes and keeps going.
III. Facts and Conclusions
Scully wakes to his voice speaking her name, quietly. His hand brushes her cheek. "Hey, Scully."
She opens her eyes, not connecting to where she is for a moment, wondering why Mulder is on her hotel room. Then she breathes in, and last night comes flooding back to her, the taste of him in the back of her throat, the pressure of his lips on her back. Oh my god, she thinks. "Mulder?"
"Morning," he says with just a touch of awkwardness.
"What time is it?" she asks. She starts to sit up but then realizes she's naked under the sheet. Oh my god.
"It's almost noon. Our flight's at two, but I figured you'd want to shower and eat first. I got breakfast." He gestured to a tray on the table. The flower was wilted. He must have been awake for hours. "I was just going to go running." So she didn't have to walk across the room naked on front of him. "Is that okay?"
"What? Yes, of course." She could barely look at him. "Have a good run."
"I'll be back in a bit." He stood, patted himself for his key, smiled back at her quickly, left.
She lay in the bed for five full minutes after she heard the snick of the door. Oh my god. Once was bad enough. And she had been taking from him, making him do what she needed; all he had contributed was acquiescence. But last night she had crawled into his bed and turned herself over to him, had let him do whatever he wanted.
Almost anything. She had been blissfully writhing beneath him, unconscious to anything but the nerves firing, but the thought of him fucking her had brought her back to the night before in a sudden rush, and she had felt stabbed again with an unpronouncable grief. She couldn't remember when she had passed out, just that his mouth had been fierce against her skin but his hands gentle. Almost reticent.
She forces herself into the shower and stands under the water, trying to make some sense of the past two days. Fact: she had initiated all the sex. Mulder had seemed as detached as someone actively having sex could be, though not cold or hostile or unwilling. Fact: he was barely touching her when she had her clothes on. Fact: he was going out of his way to be helpful and solicitous, without seeming to have any opinions of his own. Conclusion: she'd spent the past two days getting pity-fucked by a man who, she was pretty sure, was in love with her.
She knocks her head against the tile softly, twice. She is such a fucking idiot. He'd do anything she asked, so she asked for the most fucked up thing possible, and probably ruined their friendship, not to mention any actual chance for a relationship. Which she didn't want, she was 95% sure, but didn't necessarily not want either. That was it. She would have to apologize for falling apart like this, for letting her emotions get the best of her. No matter how terrible she felt, she was entirely out of line. She never should have entertained her little fantasies of his magic sperm, certainly never should have crawled into his bed and let him soothe her with his tongue. She would apologize, and that would be that. She turns off the water.
Clothes are set on the vanity. She didn't bring them in here. She stares until she connects that this means he is back, that he didn't want to see her naked, that he brought her clothes to try to make it better. She nearly starts crying again. No. Clothes on, teeth brushed, out of the bathroom and on with the day.
He is sitting on the bed, next to his suitcase. He's pulled out clothes to fly in, but the rest is packed. Her suitcase is on her bed, opened but still neat. He surveys the outfit he had picked out. "Nice threads."
She takes a deep breath. "Thanks for bringing them in. I must have spaced out."
"I just didn't want to get slapped. Do you mind if I shower? I don't think anyone wants to be in coach class with me right now."
"It's all yours," she says, and stands in front of her suitcase to repack her toiletries case. He passes by her so close she smells his sweat, feels his heat, and she remembers his body under hers, the glorious abandon, the struggle and raw nerves. She has to apologize. She had no choice.
***
She sits in an uncomfortable plastic chair and watches the planes taxi back and forth out the window, next to the blinking sign informing them their plane is delayed. She checked her luggage, and so doesn't have anything to occupy her hands but her purse. Mulder is sprawling in the seat next to her. Neither of them are looking at each other.
He stands suddenly. "I'm going to get a pack of gum. Do you want anything?"
Yes, my daughter, you to love me, to crawl into a hole and die. Her mouth is dry. "I don't have anything to read."
He nods and wanders off towards the little shop. Her brain is slow and incapable of clear linear thought, so she finds herself wondering what he's going to bring her. Really, it could be anything. Her brain circles endlessly back to the night before. She can't remember anything visual, just the sensations of his skin on hers, his lips chasing up and down her body, the feel of his hands holding her in place. She shifts in her seat. God, she was such a fool.
He appears again, and holds out a stack of magazines to her. She flips through them: The Economist; Nature; and Vogue. She holds up the copy of Vogue, and arches an eyebrow at him. He reaches over and snags it from her hand. "That's for me," he says casually, crosses his ankles, and opens it to a random page. If she didn't know what he actually looked like when he was interested in something, he would have been doing a very credible impersonation of someone who was deeply engrossed.
She opens the copy of Nature, and ignores him until their plane is called.
***
She had flown out of Baltimore with her mother, and Mulder had booked them into National, which meant that he is driving. She had tried to argue that it would be easier for him just to go home, that she could take a taxi, that he was driving twenty minutes out of his way to take her home, but he just picked up her suitcase--when had he started doing that?--and started walking to the parking shuttle. She didn't have the energy, anyway.
He pulls into a parking spot down the street from her apartment building. "You want me to carry your bag up?" he asks quietly.
She wants to say no; she wants to tell him to go the hell away, because if she spends any more time in his presence she might touch him again, she might need him more. Instead she swallows. "Sure." She steps out of the car and shrugs her winter coat around her shoulders. San Diego had been warmer, she knew this, but she felt better with her coat on, felt more like herself. She started walking towards her building without looking back at him.
The sun has set, leaving the sky a dirty purple, and there is a gray crust of slush on the sidewalk. She unlocks the door to her building and holds it for him. He stomps his feet on the steps to avoid tracking slush onto her entryway. She calls the elevator without speaking.
Her apartment smells still and empty as she steps in. The red light on her answering machine is blinking; someone hadn't gotten the memo that she was away, or had expected her back five days ago. She glances around. It is emptier than she remembers; nothing here but her quiet objects. God, she doesn't even have a cat, couldn't have one, it would starve to death, no wonder she didn't deserve a daughter. Mulder's presence behind her is somehow steadying. She takes a deep breath of the stale air and walks across to her dining room table. She drops her coat across the chair, starts pulling off her gloves, and listens to the rattle of him putting the chain on her door. She wants him gone. She wants to curl up in his arms for a week. She drops the gloves on the table.
No time like the present to do what needs to be done, and she turns to him. He's still wearing his coat, but he wants to stay, he wants to know what he can do. "Mulder," she says quietly. He puts her suitcase down and steps towards her. He always stands so close, close enough to smell, close enough to feel the heat of his body, but she can't right now, he smells like stale airplane air, his heat is trapped in his coat. It's like talking to Mulder's ghost, and she resists the desire to peel his clothes off him before she starts talking, because if she does that they'll just fuck forever and she'll never get free of this, never. She folds her arms across her chest and stares at his feet. "Mulder, I need to apologize for my behavior over the past two days."
"Scully--"
She rushes past him. "I had no right. I know you acted out of friendship, but I was out of line. You've been more than generous with me, and I know you appreciate the extremity of the circumstance, but I asked you for things I had no right to ask you for. And I'm sorry I put you in that position."
He laughs. She is shocked for a moment, but when she manages to look at his face he is staring off over her shoulder, and he doesn't look at all amused. "I can't decide which part of that to argue about first," he says.
So don't argue, she thinks, but that'll never happen.
He is avoiding her eyes as he starts talking. "Scully, you could ask me for anything. Contract killings, de-grouting the shower, date on command for family weddings and high school reunions, whatever, I'm there. So, that's not, that's not a thing. You can always ask." He looks up and suddenly their eyes meet, and it might be the first time today. "You have the right. And it wasn't--" He swallows. "It wasn't a hardship." He drags his eyes back up to hers, and she thinks she can see straight through him to his burning heart.
She closes her eyes. She can't take this, can't carry his love for her next to her grief, can't hold all of this together. His hand brushes along her cheek, and she realizes just how close she is to crying. She inhales shakily and feels him step closer, and God, it just feels so right to have him so close. She tilts her head back without opening her eyes, and she feels him leaning down ever so slightly, until his lips brush hers. This is their first kiss, she realizes, or at least their first while dressed; he's licked every inch of her body but he never kissed her last night, and his dry lips on hers are warm and still, but she feels it through her whole body. He pulls away with his hand still on her face. She feels her desire to apologize draining out of her with her ability to stand up. She can't take much more of this, and she leans into his chest. He holds her up with a single hand on her back, and he must have memorized her back because he's holding her exactly over her tattoo, when he used to miss it by an inch and a half. This close she can feel his warmth, can smell him under the mustiness, and stands there cradled against his chest, not angry, not hurting, just tired, waiting.
He strokes her back gently, and she can tell he's about to ask if he should leave. She couldn't tell him to leave, can't ask him to stay, so she cuts him off. "Mulder, the other thing you have to tell me." She can feel him suddenly grow uncomfortable, but she keeps talking. "How bad is it?"
His hand is still on her back as he sorts out an answer. "There are ways in which it's very bad, and ways in which it's actually sort of good."
She pulls back and looks up at him. She is fairly sure that his fear is for himself. It's not that she isn't angry that he knew so much about what happened to her while she was abducted but kept his mouth shut, as that she is simply too exhausted to stay angry at him for very long. She needs him with her to fight this. If he would do anything for her, she will, eventually, forgive him for doing it. "What day is today?" she says.
"Thursday," he says.
"Are you planning on going to work tomorrow?"
He shrugs.
She nods. "Sit. I need a drink."
***
He watches her disappear into the kitchen, terrified, stomach twisted. Her little apology had broken him, but that she sunk into his arms right afterward gave him some hope. He has no idea how she is going to take this, but she wants him to tell her, and maybe that means something. He pulls off his coat and picks hers off the table, goes and hangs them both in her closet.
She emerges from her kitchen with a bottle of scotch and two glasses with ice cubes. Together, they sit on her couch as she pours. She hands him one of the glasses and clinks the rims together before she takes a long drink from hers. Does she really want to hear this? Why does Scully have scotch in her apartment? She sets her glass down on a coaster. He takes a perfunctory sip from his and sets it beside hers. "Tell me," she said steadily.
He has been thinking about how to finish this story, or how to begin to finish it, since he arrived in California, but he still doesn't have words. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. The card is hidden behind a dozen for adult bookstores and paranormal researchers, battered and bent, but he knows exactly which one it is. He holds it out to her, and she takes it. Maryland Cryogenic Services, it says, and an address in College Park. She turns it over, but it's blank.
"Account number 4572934," he says quietly. "The name is Katherine Murray, which I know is obvious but was the best I come up with on short notice. The guys can get you ID in the name when you need it."
"What is it?" she asks, still staring at the card.
He watches her closely. "I'm fairly sure it's a vial of your ova." She doesn't react visibly. "As far as I know, they aren't fertilized and haven't been tampered with. The Crawfords let me take them, the night I broke into the Lombard Research Facility. They had more, but I wasn't thinking well enough to take them all. The storage unit they were in kept them frozen; the guys at the clinic were all over me to say where I had gotten the tech, but I thought it was better I not mention it." He cleared his throat. "I had them test them before I bought the space. They're viable."
She puts the card down on the table and picks up her drink. "They had them in vials."
"Yes. In a drawer. Not just yours; I recognized the names of other abductees." He swallows. "And a room full of clones outside it. It wasn't like Scalon's; they were making adult clones, not altered children."
She take one long sip of the scotch, then another. She drains it with a third, and then, unceremoniously, throws the glass across the room, where it shatters on her wall, ice and glass landing on her floor.
He picks up his glass and hands it to her. "Thank you," she says, and drains it as well.
***
She sits in the silence with him, contemplating the melting ice in his glass. Her ova. He has them; he stole them back for her, was keeping them locked away while she was dying. As if there were any hope she would come back to him, any hope she would eventually be well enough to do something with them.
She thought the other night that he could get her pregnant. She didn't realize that, for all intents and purposes, he already had.
"Thank you," she says quietly. She feels him shift next to her, and looks over at him. He is still waiting for her to whip out her gun and press it to his temple, or to demand he does it himself. "For not treating them as evidence," she clarifies.
He shudders visibly. "You're not evidence."
She puts his glass back on his coaster. "You will never, ever keep information about me from me ever again. Are we clear?"
"Yes." He sounds genuinely contrite. Whether he is capable of following through on this promise is debatable, but at least he's willing to say it. She thinks of his hands bracketing her face on the floor of Bill's living room, just like in the hallway in Allentown, calling her back to him, calling her back to the fight. The clock above her VCR whispers that it's the witching hour, time for horrible things to come out and play. "I'm tired," she says.
He doesn't say anything. She stands and starts walking to the bedroom. "Come on."
**
He follows slowly, hesitantly. He had thought they had moved past this moment, that they could talk again. If they fuck more, will she apologize more? In the moonlight of her bedroom, she is pulling off her shirt, unsnapping her bra. He watches her from the doorway, unsure of what she wants. There is a faint bite mark on her shoulder. She pulls off her jeans and drops them and the shirt into her hamper. The edges of fingerprint bruises are visible, peeking out from her panties. She turns to him, watches him stand in the doorway, waiting. She is so beautiful, in the moonlight and faint sodium streetlight through her windows, that he doesn't know what to say.
She walks to her dresser, and pulls out a pair of his sweatpants that he must have left here at some point, and throws them at him. He runs them through his hands and watches her breasts swing as she bends down to pull out a pair of her own pajamas.
He thinks he can do this, as he unbuckles his belt, pulls off his sweater and then his t-shirt, because her apartment is always too warm, kicks off his shoes and lets his pants fall to the ground.
"Don't just leave them on the floor. At least put them on a chair or something," she says, walking past him to the bathroom.
He puts his clothes on the chair where he waited for her, steps into his sweatpants. She comes back into the room a moment later. "Bathroom's yours."
He doesn't have his toothbrush, but will live without it, he thinks as the toilet runs. He splashes cold water on his face, just like yesterday morning, but dries it with one of her towels. He swears he could find clothes washed in this apartment by smell alone. Back in the bedroom, she is curled under the covers on the far side of the bed. She opens her eyes and looks up at him as he enters. He peels back the covers, slides in next to her. She has one hand palm up in between them; he reaches out, takes it in his, pulls it to his lips and kisses her knuckles. It's not so much that she smiles, as that her face softens, and she tightens her grip on his hand for just a moment. "Good night," she whispers, as if there were someone to hear.
"Good night, Scully," he says, and watches her as her eyes close. She is still holding his hand, even when he finally falls asleep.