XF fragments
Random snips
(by Frey)
(some of them you might recognize from stuff - I took them out because they weren't going anywhere that I was going. Others are totally unrelated.)
She shouldn't be disappointed. Alone outside the car on the Clarke property, at least she had a little time to gather herself, free of Mulder's presence after the short but awkward drive from the motel. Mulder was probably glad to go ahead without her, too.
But that was pretty clear, she thought, throat suddenly tight.
Waking up sweaty in his bed - alone - was ironically fitting. She'd thought before about, and internally she chose her words carefully, what it would be like to sleep near Mulder. With Mulder. When she permitted herself at all to think about them in that way, she'd assumed that she was the one holding back, maybe the one afraid. It was the perfect thing to believe. If she was afraid, she was the one in control. Mulder could be the one left lying in bed half-wrapped in a cheap motel sheet the next morning.
- - - - - - - - -
"Scully," he was saying, hunched toward her. She turned up her face to meet his gaze, wishing for him to read the apology there, so grateful for the tenderness she traced in his features. His eyes were an astonishing liquid amber. "Scully. I didn't know - you could have told me you didn't want to be in the field. I would have understood. I thought - that staying wasn't helping. Maybe you wanted out."
"I thought you wanted it," she croaked out, shifting again to look back at his chest, "to keep on going. It seemed like what you needed."
“I don't want anything you don't want, Scully." He swayed in her vision; wary of touching her, she thought miserably. But maybe it was her turn.
He held perfectly still as her hand came out seemingly on its own, to gently skirt the dark stain by his collar bone. She pressed it more firmly, fingering the damp fabric with a nearly-steady hand, before her hands and arms slipped around behind his neck, over the muscles of his lower back, and squeezed.
However awkward her embrace, Mulder was a blessedly quick learner. In her grip, his arms found their way around her waist, gently pulling her against him, leaning them back together against the sun-warm side of the four-door. His breath in her ear, her nose making new and happy acquaintance with the base of his neck, she allowed him to hold her until all their self-consciousness melted into familiarity, and with the failing light of evening they went side by side back through the field.
It didn’t change everything.
- - - - - - - - -
If only he could figure out how to fill this gap inside him, turning over on itself like hunger, emptying the space she'd once filled with occasional hand-holds or chatty cross-country flights. He clings to the idea that saying things could help. He thinks about it while watching her bent over the computer screen in her separate cubby. I miss you. I miss how we used to work together (but they still do). I miss how easy things were between us, before we got stuck in the bullpen working cow-shit (but they never were). I love you. Will saying it help? Maybe if she just knows it. But he thinks about saying it and still wants more.
- - - - - - - - -
When she came off the church steps and into the open air, he was down the street, engine idling, feet tapping. He didn't look at her as she slid in, smothering her flaring temper.
"You didn't have to pick me up, Mulder. I said I'd meet you at the airport."
He kept his eyes ahead, smoothing the wheel, interlacing patterns with the pads of his fingertips. "It's no problem," he said. "Your taxi didn't wait."
Annoyed, she buckled her seatbelt and carefully appraised the skin on her knuckles. She could see the blood beneath, in its endless course, and found herself speaking to him in words that were old and came off her tongue like incense and manna and the Bride of Heaven.
He stopped her half a minute in, with a tentative touch to the back of her hand. "Scully--" and he was watching her face now, "Scully, you don't have to explain yourself to me."
They looked at each other as the road passed silently under them, and Mulder tightened his hand on hers slightly. He dipped his head, leaving her gaze at last to watch the road. She found breath inside her lungs. But as he rested both hands on the wheel again, she felt the warmth of his touch turn her hand hot and almost painful-- burning like bleeding, broken flesh.
- - - - - - - - - -
We are at rest five miles behind the front.
I am in a green canvas jumpsuit that pulls under the arms and itches like hell. I wonder briefly what happened to my hooded camo that I scored off a Bounty, sprawled in the mud with a slug lodged in his third cervical-- then I remember. It's draped around the shoulders of a very tired field doctor twenty miles behind us in
the underbrush. Wonderful. I must be in great shape if I can't even remember what happened this morning.
"Hey!" Brown combat boots appear in my line of sight. I don't think they were originally brown, and they look like someone broke them in while chasing turbans in Gulf I. That's the way most of our outfitting goes. We were lucky to stumble upon an abandoned mechanic's shop earlier this afternoon. Thus my jumpsuit.
"Hey! Sir?"
It's Turner, all of seventeen years old and swathed in what looks like burlap. Alright, so I don't have it so bad. He's standing in front of my bush, binoculars dangling from his neck, sweaty cap pulled low and gaping at me as if I'm Jesus H. Christ himself. Hi, kid, I'm Fox Mulder, seeker of the strange, champion of monsters, mapmaker of the unmapped, and commander of this little unit, where you're going to die before you're old enough to watch porn. Legally.
"Turner, would you get your ass out of my face? Your watch isn't for another three hours."
"Sir, I-- we've received another call. There's a cluster of Grey REBs to our rear."
Damn. In Scully's direction? Time to move camp. "Call your captain. Tell him to have everyone ready for a hike back east." I am on my feet, and as Turner wheels around I grab his shoulder. His eyes are clear blue, and a jolt goes down my spine.
"... And Turner," I add softly. "Don't forget your duffel this time."
"I won't, sir!" he rasps at me, and he's loping back through the trees until I can't make out his form in the darkness.
- - - - - - - - - -
I am on my mountain in a tree home that people have passed without ever knowing that I am here.
I have lived here since before the fire fell from the sky and the land around me turned into ash. I dug out my tree with my mother's gardening shovel tied to a branch that I cut and sanded myself.
I knew what was coming all along. I knew as far back as I could remember, and all my dozen therapists couldn't convince me otherwise. "He's a creative boy," one ventured, but the others just said I was disturbed.
My mother cried at night when she thought I'd gone to bed. "All we wanted was a child!" I couldn't hear my father distinctly, just his low droning, but I picked up the stray words anyway from his mind. Tragedy, they read, strangers, abusive, our boy now, and I heard the ugly echoes of my elementary school years. Adopted.
I didn't cry that night. When my parents died I put my shirts and my baseball into a pillowcase and left for the mountain. I was eleven that year.
I have dreams of the others. One day when my parents were still alive I saw a man in K-Mart with round glasses pushed up on his nose and hair down past his ears. He was staring at me blankly, and I knew he was special because I could not hear his mind. He came past us in the checkout line and gently touched my head. "I knew your parents," he whispered, and after that I had the dreams.
I dreamt of tea and cornfields, and smelled the warm interior of a thousand rental cars. I heard sasquatch and purity, hybrid and polygenic mating, truth, trust, touchstone. I dreamt of the world engulfed in fire, and then I knew that what I had always known was true.
Yesterday it rained for the first time in three years, and I stepped out of my tree home to look past the dust into the rest of the world. It is empty.
(by Frey)
(some of them you might recognize from stuff - I took them out because they weren't going anywhere that I was going. Others are totally unrelated.)
She shouldn't be disappointed. Alone outside the car on the Clarke property, at least she had a little time to gather herself, free of Mulder's presence after the short but awkward drive from the motel. Mulder was probably glad to go ahead without her, too.
But that was pretty clear, she thought, throat suddenly tight.
Waking up sweaty in his bed - alone - was ironically fitting. She'd thought before about, and internally she chose her words carefully, what it would be like to sleep near Mulder. With Mulder. When she permitted herself at all to think about them in that way, she'd assumed that she was the one holding back, maybe the one afraid. It was the perfect thing to believe. If she was afraid, she was the one in control. Mulder could be the one left lying in bed half-wrapped in a cheap motel sheet the next morning.
- - - - - - - - -
"Scully," he was saying, hunched toward her. She turned up her face to meet his gaze, wishing for him to read the apology there, so grateful for the tenderness she traced in his features. His eyes were an astonishing liquid amber. "Scully. I didn't know - you could have told me you didn't want to be in the field. I would have understood. I thought - that staying wasn't helping. Maybe you wanted out."
"I thought you wanted it," she croaked out, shifting again to look back at his chest, "to keep on going. It seemed like what you needed."
“I don't want anything you don't want, Scully." He swayed in her vision; wary of touching her, she thought miserably. But maybe it was her turn.
He held perfectly still as her hand came out seemingly on its own, to gently skirt the dark stain by his collar bone. She pressed it more firmly, fingering the damp fabric with a nearly-steady hand, before her hands and arms slipped around behind his neck, over the muscles of his lower back, and squeezed.
However awkward her embrace, Mulder was a blessedly quick learner. In her grip, his arms found their way around her waist, gently pulling her against him, leaning them back together against the sun-warm side of the four-door. His breath in her ear, her nose making new and happy acquaintance with the base of his neck, she allowed him to hold her until all their self-consciousness melted into familiarity, and with the failing light of evening they went side by side back through the field.
It didn’t change everything.
- - - - - - - - -
If only he could figure out how to fill this gap inside him, turning over on itself like hunger, emptying the space she'd once filled with occasional hand-holds or chatty cross-country flights. He clings to the idea that saying things could help. He thinks about it while watching her bent over the computer screen in her separate cubby. I miss you. I miss how we used to work together (but they still do). I miss how easy things were between us, before we got stuck in the bullpen working cow-shit (but they never were). I love you. Will saying it help? Maybe if she just knows it. But he thinks about saying it and still wants more.
- - - - - - - - -
When she came off the church steps and into the open air, he was down the street, engine idling, feet tapping. He didn't look at her as she slid in, smothering her flaring temper.
"You didn't have to pick me up, Mulder. I said I'd meet you at the airport."
He kept his eyes ahead, smoothing the wheel, interlacing patterns with the pads of his fingertips. "It's no problem," he said. "Your taxi didn't wait."
Annoyed, she buckled her seatbelt and carefully appraised the skin on her knuckles. She could see the blood beneath, in its endless course, and found herself speaking to him in words that were old and came off her tongue like incense and manna and the Bride of Heaven.
He stopped her half a minute in, with a tentative touch to the back of her hand. "Scully--" and he was watching her face now, "Scully, you don't have to explain yourself to me."
They looked at each other as the road passed silently under them, and Mulder tightened his hand on hers slightly. He dipped his head, leaving her gaze at last to watch the road. She found breath inside her lungs. But as he rested both hands on the wheel again, she felt the warmth of his touch turn her hand hot and almost painful-- burning like bleeding, broken flesh.
- - - - - - - - - -
We are at rest five miles behind the front.
I am in a green canvas jumpsuit that pulls under the arms and itches like hell. I wonder briefly what happened to my hooded camo that I scored off a Bounty, sprawled in the mud with a slug lodged in his third cervical-- then I remember. It's draped around the shoulders of a very tired field doctor twenty miles behind us in
the underbrush. Wonderful. I must be in great shape if I can't even remember what happened this morning.
"Hey!" Brown combat boots appear in my line of sight. I don't think they were originally brown, and they look like someone broke them in while chasing turbans in Gulf I. That's the way most of our outfitting goes. We were lucky to stumble upon an abandoned mechanic's shop earlier this afternoon. Thus my jumpsuit.
"Hey! Sir?"
It's Turner, all of seventeen years old and swathed in what looks like burlap. Alright, so I don't have it so bad. He's standing in front of my bush, binoculars dangling from his neck, sweaty cap pulled low and gaping at me as if I'm Jesus H. Christ himself. Hi, kid, I'm Fox Mulder, seeker of the strange, champion of monsters, mapmaker of the unmapped, and commander of this little unit, where you're going to die before you're old enough to watch porn. Legally.
"Turner, would you get your ass out of my face? Your watch isn't for another three hours."
"Sir, I-- we've received another call. There's a cluster of Grey REBs to our rear."
Damn. In Scully's direction? Time to move camp. "Call your captain. Tell him to have everyone ready for a hike back east." I am on my feet, and as Turner wheels around I grab his shoulder. His eyes are clear blue, and a jolt goes down my spine.
"... And Turner," I add softly. "Don't forget your duffel this time."
"I won't, sir!" he rasps at me, and he's loping back through the trees until I can't make out his form in the darkness.
- - - - - - - - - -
I am on my mountain in a tree home that people have passed without ever knowing that I am here.
I have lived here since before the fire fell from the sky and the land around me turned into ash. I dug out my tree with my mother's gardening shovel tied to a branch that I cut and sanded myself.
I knew what was coming all along. I knew as far back as I could remember, and all my dozen therapists couldn't convince me otherwise. "He's a creative boy," one ventured, but the others just said I was disturbed.
My mother cried at night when she thought I'd gone to bed. "All we wanted was a child!" I couldn't hear my father distinctly, just his low droning, but I picked up the stray words anyway from his mind. Tragedy, they read, strangers, abusive, our boy now, and I heard the ugly echoes of my elementary school years. Adopted.
I didn't cry that night. When my parents died I put my shirts and my baseball into a pillowcase and left for the mountain. I was eleven that year.
I have dreams of the others. One day when my parents were still alive I saw a man in K-Mart with round glasses pushed up on his nose and hair down past his ears. He was staring at me blankly, and I knew he was special because I could not hear his mind. He came past us in the checkout line and gently touched my head. "I knew your parents," he whispered, and after that I had the dreams.
I dreamt of tea and cornfields, and smelled the warm interior of a thousand rental cars. I heard sasquatch and purity, hybrid and polygenic mating, truth, trust, touchstone. I dreamt of the world engulfed in fire, and then I knew that what I had always known was true.
Yesterday it rained for the first time in three years, and I stepped out of my tree home to look past the dust into the rest of the world. It is empty.