Kiss of Death (1/1)
Title: Kiss of Death
Part: 1 of 1.
Author: ninamazing, or Nina
Fandom: The X-Files
Word Count: 2981.
Rating: Hard R.
Spoilers: Through 5x02 "Redux II." If I'd written the scene where Mulder comes to her bedside in the middle of the night, it would have looked a little more like this.
Characters: Mulder/Scully.
Excerpt: "So - is there any - any other reason you wanted to see me?" she asks, and it strikes her how absurd it is that this is the safest conversation territory that occurs to her. It's quite a statement on how long they've been in this maze together, two against Skinner and Cancer Man and the DoJ and their families and who knows what else.
Author's Note: 2008 xf-santa gift for ofadoration, originally posted over there. I really hope you love it, dear. And leiascully, thank you so much for the beta. You made this 300% better. At least. ;)
It's so dark after lights-out that all Scully can decipher are the grey brush strokes of the trees outside, and the slow crooked line of her ECG.
She knows what Bill must have been saying to Mulder, of course; he's yelled it enough over the phone already, to her and her mother and anyone else who listened. Already lost one sister to this bullshit of yours. Leave her alone alone alone. She's barely seen Bill since college, and now it's like coming home from the first date all over again, watching Bill frown on the front stoop as Kevin Stone pulled up in his Dodge Challenger.
Your sister can take care of herself, she remembers hearing as she stalked up the stairs to her bedroom. She remembers smiling. But on Monday Kevin left with Bill for baseball practice without so much as a lusty wink, and she knew.
Bill always scored the winning goal in their backyard soccer games, always grabbed the last slice of pizza, always knew what to say on their father's birthday, always sized up her accomplishments with a self-righteous eye he never gave Melissa's. She'd thought the badge and gun would make a difference, but instead she was weaker than ever, cancer crawling through her brain as her older brother talked down to her partner through a glass wall five yards away.
And yet at the time it was kind of a strange relief, watching Mulder deal with him instead of doing it herself. Bill always made her tired, but now - with a malignant tumor closing in on her consciousness - the hours drag on like days. The worst part is knowing she couldn't leave her bed if she tried; the days of ignoring her illness, of hoping it would disappear through the power of denial, are over.
She wonders if Mulder got to mentioning that he had a sister, too. Once upon a time.
She sighs and presses the "UP" button on the remote next to her. The elevation of her bed zigzags all over the map of possibility, and she's so intent on her game that she doesn't notice the silhouette or her open doorway until a long shadow covers her.
"Hi, Scully," he says, and his hands float up just enough: It's me.
"Hi," she softly returns, automatically, and finds herself. "Mulder, what are you doing here? How did you get in?"
He sits on the bed, back at a sane height, and takes her hands in his. She waits for him to lean in and kiss her cheek and smile, but he doesn't. It bothered her before - she saw a fake gesture, born out of pity and grief and guilt - but now in the dark and the loneliness, with the familiar shape of her partner so near, it seems stupid to let anything upset her. No negative thoughts, intoned the doctors, as they handed her sheets of paper putting her time of death at eight months tops. No negativity.
"I wanted to see you," Mulder tells her finally. She squeezes his fingers, traces the dim line of his tie with her eyes. She figures it must be the cancer telling her to reach out and yank it, to pull until he comes down on her and not let go even then.
Has to be the cancer.
"You're lucky I was awake, then," she replies. "I guess we'd better get in our last games of Scrabble, before - before -"
She's surprised at her own cynicism, and even more surprised at the tremor that runs through her when Mulder puts a finger to her lips.
"Don't say that, Dana," he murmurs. There's something darker at the edge of his voice, like a growl. He takes his hand away too quickly, and she thinks he looks at her for a long moment, but it's hard to read his expression without light.
"Mulder," she mutters, "if you're going to be here, you might as well lie down. It feels weird, you hovering over me like that."
He laughs, draws a thumb down the line of her palm. "Do you want me here?"
She nods, but the gesture is too small in the blackness.
"Yes," she whispers. "Yes."
The image of Bill's scowling eyebrows in the crude fluorescent light is still strong behind her eyes, and she wants to settle the score at last. She thinks she should at least be able to control her last eight months. If she has eight months.
Mulder is kicking off his shoes and sliding under the covers so carefully she doesn't even feel a burst of cold air. He slips an arm around her stomach to turn her toward him.
"I can see you so much better from here," he says.
She laughs softly. "Oh, good. Great. There's barely any pigment left in my skin, the circles under my eyes are bigger than Mount St. Helens, and my hair's about to fall out. At least they let me sleep without those damn tubes now, but Mulder ..."
And she's not sure how to finish that, so she lets it hang in the air, cutting the space between them.
His arm tightens around her. "You're still Scully," he says firmly.
For at least a little bit longer.
"So - is there any - any other reason you wanted to see me?" she asks, and it strikes her how absurd it is that this is the safest conversation territory that occurs to her. It's quite a statement on how long they've been in this maze together, two against Skinner and Cancer Man and the DoJ and their families and who knows what else.
She expects something flippant, maybe, or is hoping for it, but he gazes at her like a solemn apparition until she forgets what she asked him.
"I wanted to remember - what was important," he admits, as much to himself as to her. A sudden grin brightens his features, and the hand around her waist moves up to stroke the line of her hair behind her ear. "And it's a lot easier to break and enter here than at your apartment."
"Oh, shut up, Mulder, you have a key," she says, but her eyes are grinning back at him like a dare, and she snuggles in close enough to feel the silk of his tie on her knuckles and the button of his pants against her thigh.
She pretends to ignore it when he sucks in a sharp breath. He fixes her with that deep and careful stare, and he draws the pads of his fingers gently across her cheekbone.
When she opens her lips, his thumb slides across them like an accident, and she can't help closing her eyes.
"Scully," he says.
"What?" she answers, eyelids still shuttered, mouth against his hand.
"I can't -" he begins, but then there's nothing, just dark and the quiet of his slow uneven breaths. He takes so long to finish that she opens her eyes, but when she finally does all she sees is the split-second wash of his face before he kisses her lips like a drowning man.
His touch shoots through her like it's entered her bloodstream. He's got one gentle palm against her cheek and the other at her back, warming the skin in a rush. She's twisting her fists in his tie at last, trying not to tug it too hard, and rolling her hips into his body as though the end of the world is upon them both. He tastes like the one thing that's been missing from her featureless meals, the empty air. He tastes like home.
He breaks away to trace his thumb - again - across her swollen lower lip, and she looks right at him and sucks it into her mouth, runs her tongue across his thumbnail. Dying is doing strange things to her hormones, and to her courage.
When he speaks, his voice is low and seems to hit the resonant frequency of all her muscles.
"Where did you come from?" he asks, and smiles, even though the sentence caught and cracked in his throat to make him sound like a boy.
She smiles back. "Annapolis, Maryland," she says around his thumb. And he doesn't laugh; he just looks at her, with serious eyes. She's never admitted how she loves to be the subject of his stare.
He rubs his thumb against her teeth; suddenly, weirdly, that is affectionate. His fingers curl around her jaw, and again she thinks she could never leave this bed - but at least now that's not the fault of some wasting disease.
She got cancer. It could happen to anyone. And now she's learning all the flavors of her partner, taking the thing she wanted but could never have. That could happen to anyone, too.
He pulls his thumb away and kisses her again. It's so delightful, trying new things; she lets her tongue wrap around his for a few moments, her body sinking into the long warm shape of him, and then she backs out and sucks that luscious bottom lip between her teeth. She traces his lips with the tip of her tongue. She brushes their mouths together, gently, just on the surface. Finally, she attacks him, her tongue demanding, and now she's got his arms curled around her with his body heating up and his breath shorter than the Lariat rental lines at 4 a.m. in Podunk, Wisconsin.
One of his arms begins to move, slowly even as she pulls on the edges of his shirt. His fingers drift to the top of her thigh, at the edge of her hospital gown, and she shivers into his hands and tries to memorize the feel of everything against her skin. He nuzzles her, moves his fingers up, looks at her and nuzzles her again.
"Mulder," she whimpers against his lips, and even though it comes out more like Mmphmm he pulls away and meets her eyes.
"What?" he whispers.
She stares at him, feeling that the spell is broken, until he drops and nips her neck.
"It's up to you, Scully," he says softly, below the jut of her jaw. He takes his hand up her gown to rest at the small of her bare back. "I just want to keep you company."
"No," she says, and he pulls up, trying to catch her meaning. She forces herself to meet his eyes. "No, it's just - I'm on so many drugs. Painkillers, antivirals, muscle relaxants ... an antitussive ... I don't know if I can - how much I can feel. And my heart rate," she continues, over the protest in his eyes - "if it gets high, the nurses will come running."
"You'll just have to stay calm, then," Mulder murmurs, and she can feel him smirking as he brings the press of his fingers back between her legs. He caresses her, barely, then harder. Warmed up like a piece of toast, she thinks, and bites her lip against the sensation.
Mulder seems to know this like he knows exactly which cases she will hate, what to say to her to get a lip-purse in return, when to call her in the middle of the night, where to look for her when she only half-wants to be found. The pads of his fingers gust along her and through her, discovering, and she is surprised to realize she's wet enough to be discovered.
"You're - glorious," he rasps, and she tugs him up so she can press her open mouth to the succulent hollow just above his sternum. He cups her with his hand; she buries her face against his neck and revels in it.
She's forgotten what this felt like. The last time was - med school, of course; she knows but doesn't want to know.
"You've never given up easily," he tells her softly, and she's afraid of what he means for a second. "Let the nurses try and stop us," he continues, and flashes her that grin that has always, always been an invitation.
"Okay, Mulder," she says. "You're on." Her smile is sweet and new and sunny. When she reaches to undo his buttons, he loosens his tie. They've always been a good team.
"Take off your pants," she whispers, and her hands are already starting the job.
She slips out of her gown and he catches her, kissing her lips again. She's always been annoyed with her height, the opportunity it gives people for frustrating tiny-Scully jokes, but now she is cocooned inside his warmth and the furious gear-rolling in her brain is quiet at last. A long-forgotten memory comes back to her, of lying on a hotel bed and watching him stare out the window and talk; she's never quite been able to convince herself that she didn't imagine how this would feel, when he was older, more experienced, with that doomed and dangerous light in his eyes. Before he made his first dumb pun, before he chased after any UFO enthusiast with breasts, she was his. She didn't really think he could become that person she admired again - not for longer than five minutes, anyway - but wonders never cease. Not on the X-Files. Not with Mulder.
At first he holds her cheeks between his palms, like he's nervous now that he's faced with the whole of her naked body, but his courage returns soon enough. His fingers trace open half-circles all the way down her spine; he rests his hands briefly against her curves and holds her by the backs of her thighs. She hums into his mouth and he smiles, and in the next moment he is licking at her collarbone and traveling, taking one nipple against his tongue.
She holds his head and tries to tell him, that way, that she loves him.
Once more his fingers dip suddenly against her clit, and her gasp says it all. She's forgotten almost entirely about nurses. She very nearly wails his name.
"Wait, Scully," he says, and she remembers Mulder also knows how to surprise her. He puts his hands at her waist - they've done this so many times, she thinks, and they could do it so many more if she weren't about to die; the two of them anywhere with Mulder holding her at his side in an almost subconscious way. She looks up at him, trusting, and his swollen-lipped kiss feels like the beginning of the rest of her life.
His fingers stroke between her legs like a reassurance, and her instincts tell her not to stop him when he disappears and appears, an instant later, as a slick burn on the skin around her pubis. Mulder is lapping her up in the middle of a hospital. Once again, she thinks, life defies imagination.
He doesn't stay long. She is straining, puffy, open; also, she suspects, he is trying not to treat this like the last time. Mulder's overactive mind cycles through everything, and it's her job to keep up.
Still, she's crying out - softly, into clenched hands - before his mouth is finished with her. It's the hormones, the stress, the years it's been, but mostly it's just because it's Mulder and she's Scully. He takes her hips in his hands and she is safe.
"Now, Mulder," she chokes, grabs one wrist with her hand and twists into his hair with the other. He kisses her abdomen and then is lying back above her, his hardness hovering between them: a promise, an exclamation.
"How?" he mumbles. Oh, Mulder.
"With my ankles next to my ears," she says. "I've always wanted to do that." She laughs, delighted, at the response in both his eyes and the rest of him.
"Christ," he mutters, laughing with her, but he's running serious fingers down her legs, and his palms hold her thighs as she lifts them. He matches her look. He's vulnerable Mulder suddenly, his expression changing in a way she thinks only she would notice. She wishes she could see him better, but touching his face is enough.
"Now," she repeats, and now it is.
Now.
It is.
He feels natural inside of her. Like lying back in the bath, like the smell of grass. Like breathing. After she slips her hand underneath his chest and touches herself, there is awareness, then numbness -
frozen light.
scully he whispers at the edge of the world
but all she can do is smile
and hold on
(he digs in, shuddering)
hold on.
a brief touch of the painlessness of death.
The ceiling above her comes into focus. There's a smoke detector there, blinking a tiny red series of boring Morse code, and under it is Mulder and her and a bed.
Her partner's hands are drawing her hair back, rubbing over the sweat of her skin.
"Scully?" he says. His voice, like his muscles, are wavering.
She smiles; he returns it; and she recalls, bizarrely, his fingers sweeping barbecue sauce away from her chin. Everything here feels simple, meaningful, heightened to a point where all things nonessential are cut out. The smoke detector blinks again, her ECG is far from normal, and either serendipity or voyeur's remorse has kept any nurses from sight.
"You know, Mulder -" she breaks off, and lets her eyes flick to the dotted red light for a quarter-second - "we don't know anything, do we?"
"No," he answers heavily, "I guess we don't." He holds her like the paranoid lover he is.
"It's okay," she tells him.
"It's okay," he echoes, nodding. Taking her word for it.
"Stay for awhile," she suggests. "I'd love to see you do the walk of shame at the 5 a.m. shift."
"You would, wouldn't you," he grumbles next to her ear, and his hands are warmer than ever against her tired body.
Part: 1 of 1.
Author: ninamazing, or Nina
Fandom: The X-Files
Word Count: 2981.
Rating: Hard R.
Spoilers: Through 5x02 "Redux II." If I'd written the scene where Mulder comes to her bedside in the middle of the night, it would have looked a little more like this.
Characters: Mulder/Scully.
Excerpt: "So - is there any - any other reason you wanted to see me?" she asks, and it strikes her how absurd it is that this is the safest conversation territory that occurs to her. It's quite a statement on how long they've been in this maze together, two against Skinner and Cancer Man and the DoJ and their families and who knows what else.
Author's Note: 2008 xf-santa gift for ofadoration, originally posted over there. I really hope you love it, dear. And leiascully, thank you so much for the beta. You made this 300% better. At least. ;)
It's so dark after lights-out that all Scully can decipher are the grey brush strokes of the trees outside, and the slow crooked line of her ECG.
She knows what Bill must have been saying to Mulder, of course; he's yelled it enough over the phone already, to her and her mother and anyone else who listened. Already lost one sister to this bullshit of yours. Leave her alone alone alone. She's barely seen Bill since college, and now it's like coming home from the first date all over again, watching Bill frown on the front stoop as Kevin Stone pulled up in his Dodge Challenger.
Your sister can take care of herself, she remembers hearing as she stalked up the stairs to her bedroom. She remembers smiling. But on Monday Kevin left with Bill for baseball practice without so much as a lusty wink, and she knew.
Bill always scored the winning goal in their backyard soccer games, always grabbed the last slice of pizza, always knew what to say on their father's birthday, always sized up her accomplishments with a self-righteous eye he never gave Melissa's. She'd thought the badge and gun would make a difference, but instead she was weaker than ever, cancer crawling through her brain as her older brother talked down to her partner through a glass wall five yards away.
And yet at the time it was kind of a strange relief, watching Mulder deal with him instead of doing it herself. Bill always made her tired, but now - with a malignant tumor closing in on her consciousness - the hours drag on like days. The worst part is knowing she couldn't leave her bed if she tried; the days of ignoring her illness, of hoping it would disappear through the power of denial, are over.
She wonders if Mulder got to mentioning that he had a sister, too. Once upon a time.
She sighs and presses the "UP" button on the remote next to her. The elevation of her bed zigzags all over the map of possibility, and she's so intent on her game that she doesn't notice the silhouette or her open doorway until a long shadow covers her.
"Hi, Scully," he says, and his hands float up just enough: It's me.
"Hi," she softly returns, automatically, and finds herself. "Mulder, what are you doing here? How did you get in?"
He sits on the bed, back at a sane height, and takes her hands in his. She waits for him to lean in and kiss her cheek and smile, but he doesn't. It bothered her before - she saw a fake gesture, born out of pity and grief and guilt - but now in the dark and the loneliness, with the familiar shape of her partner so near, it seems stupid to let anything upset her. No negative thoughts, intoned the doctors, as they handed her sheets of paper putting her time of death at eight months tops. No negativity.
"I wanted to see you," Mulder tells her finally. She squeezes his fingers, traces the dim line of his tie with her eyes. She figures it must be the cancer telling her to reach out and yank it, to pull until he comes down on her and not let go even then.
Has to be the cancer.
"You're lucky I was awake, then," she replies. "I guess we'd better get in our last games of Scrabble, before - before -"
She's surprised at her own cynicism, and even more surprised at the tremor that runs through her when Mulder puts a finger to her lips.
"Don't say that, Dana," he murmurs. There's something darker at the edge of his voice, like a growl. He takes his hand away too quickly, and she thinks he looks at her for a long moment, but it's hard to read his expression without light.
"Mulder," she mutters, "if you're going to be here, you might as well lie down. It feels weird, you hovering over me like that."
He laughs, draws a thumb down the line of her palm. "Do you want me here?"
She nods, but the gesture is too small in the blackness.
"Yes," she whispers. "Yes."
The image of Bill's scowling eyebrows in the crude fluorescent light is still strong behind her eyes, and she wants to settle the score at last. She thinks she should at least be able to control her last eight months. If she has eight months.
Mulder is kicking off his shoes and sliding under the covers so carefully she doesn't even feel a burst of cold air. He slips an arm around her stomach to turn her toward him.
"I can see you so much better from here," he says.
She laughs softly. "Oh, good. Great. There's barely any pigment left in my skin, the circles under my eyes are bigger than Mount St. Helens, and my hair's about to fall out. At least they let me sleep without those damn tubes now, but Mulder ..."
And she's not sure how to finish that, so she lets it hang in the air, cutting the space between them.
His arm tightens around her. "You're still Scully," he says firmly.
For at least a little bit longer.
"So - is there any - any other reason you wanted to see me?" she asks, and it strikes her how absurd it is that this is the safest conversation territory that occurs to her. It's quite a statement on how long they've been in this maze together, two against Skinner and Cancer Man and the DoJ and their families and who knows what else.
She expects something flippant, maybe, or is hoping for it, but he gazes at her like a solemn apparition until she forgets what she asked him.
"I wanted to remember - what was important," he admits, as much to himself as to her. A sudden grin brightens his features, and the hand around her waist moves up to stroke the line of her hair behind her ear. "And it's a lot easier to break and enter here than at your apartment."
"Oh, shut up, Mulder, you have a key," she says, but her eyes are grinning back at him like a dare, and she snuggles in close enough to feel the silk of his tie on her knuckles and the button of his pants against her thigh.
She pretends to ignore it when he sucks in a sharp breath. He fixes her with that deep and careful stare, and he draws the pads of his fingers gently across her cheekbone.
When she opens her lips, his thumb slides across them like an accident, and she can't help closing her eyes.
"Scully," he says.
"What?" she answers, eyelids still shuttered, mouth against his hand.
"I can't -" he begins, but then there's nothing, just dark and the quiet of his slow uneven breaths. He takes so long to finish that she opens her eyes, but when she finally does all she sees is the split-second wash of his face before he kisses her lips like a drowning man.
His touch shoots through her like it's entered her bloodstream. He's got one gentle palm against her cheek and the other at her back, warming the skin in a rush. She's twisting her fists in his tie at last, trying not to tug it too hard, and rolling her hips into his body as though the end of the world is upon them both. He tastes like the one thing that's been missing from her featureless meals, the empty air. He tastes like home.
He breaks away to trace his thumb - again - across her swollen lower lip, and she looks right at him and sucks it into her mouth, runs her tongue across his thumbnail. Dying is doing strange things to her hormones, and to her courage.
When he speaks, his voice is low and seems to hit the resonant frequency of all her muscles.
"Where did you come from?" he asks, and smiles, even though the sentence caught and cracked in his throat to make him sound like a boy.
She smiles back. "Annapolis, Maryland," she says around his thumb. And he doesn't laugh; he just looks at her, with serious eyes. She's never admitted how she loves to be the subject of his stare.
He rubs his thumb against her teeth; suddenly, weirdly, that is affectionate. His fingers curl around her jaw, and again she thinks she could never leave this bed - but at least now that's not the fault of some wasting disease.
She got cancer. It could happen to anyone. And now she's learning all the flavors of her partner, taking the thing she wanted but could never have. That could happen to anyone, too.
He pulls his thumb away and kisses her again. It's so delightful, trying new things; she lets her tongue wrap around his for a few moments, her body sinking into the long warm shape of him, and then she backs out and sucks that luscious bottom lip between her teeth. She traces his lips with the tip of her tongue. She brushes their mouths together, gently, just on the surface. Finally, she attacks him, her tongue demanding, and now she's got his arms curled around her with his body heating up and his breath shorter than the Lariat rental lines at 4 a.m. in Podunk, Wisconsin.
One of his arms begins to move, slowly even as she pulls on the edges of his shirt. His fingers drift to the top of her thigh, at the edge of her hospital gown, and she shivers into his hands and tries to memorize the feel of everything against her skin. He nuzzles her, moves his fingers up, looks at her and nuzzles her again.
"Mulder," she whimpers against his lips, and even though it comes out more like Mmphmm he pulls away and meets her eyes.
"What?" he whispers.
She stares at him, feeling that the spell is broken, until he drops and nips her neck.
"It's up to you, Scully," he says softly, below the jut of her jaw. He takes his hand up her gown to rest at the small of her bare back. "I just want to keep you company."
"No," she says, and he pulls up, trying to catch her meaning. She forces herself to meet his eyes. "No, it's just - I'm on so many drugs. Painkillers, antivirals, muscle relaxants ... an antitussive ... I don't know if I can - how much I can feel. And my heart rate," she continues, over the protest in his eyes - "if it gets high, the nurses will come running."
"You'll just have to stay calm, then," Mulder murmurs, and she can feel him smirking as he brings the press of his fingers back between her legs. He caresses her, barely, then harder. Warmed up like a piece of toast, she thinks, and bites her lip against the sensation.
Mulder seems to know this like he knows exactly which cases she will hate, what to say to her to get a lip-purse in return, when to call her in the middle of the night, where to look for her when she only half-wants to be found. The pads of his fingers gust along her and through her, discovering, and she is surprised to realize she's wet enough to be discovered.
"You're - glorious," he rasps, and she tugs him up so she can press her open mouth to the succulent hollow just above his sternum. He cups her with his hand; she buries her face against his neck and revels in it.
She's forgotten what this felt like. The last time was - med school, of course; she knows but doesn't want to know.
"You've never given up easily," he tells her softly, and she's afraid of what he means for a second. "Let the nurses try and stop us," he continues, and flashes her that grin that has always, always been an invitation.
"Okay, Mulder," she says. "You're on." Her smile is sweet and new and sunny. When she reaches to undo his buttons, he loosens his tie. They've always been a good team.
"Take off your pants," she whispers, and her hands are already starting the job.
She slips out of her gown and he catches her, kissing her lips again. She's always been annoyed with her height, the opportunity it gives people for frustrating tiny-Scully jokes, but now she is cocooned inside his warmth and the furious gear-rolling in her brain is quiet at last. A long-forgotten memory comes back to her, of lying on a hotel bed and watching him stare out the window and talk; she's never quite been able to convince herself that she didn't imagine how this would feel, when he was older, more experienced, with that doomed and dangerous light in his eyes. Before he made his first dumb pun, before he chased after any UFO enthusiast with breasts, she was his. She didn't really think he could become that person she admired again - not for longer than five minutes, anyway - but wonders never cease. Not on the X-Files. Not with Mulder.
At first he holds her cheeks between his palms, like he's nervous now that he's faced with the whole of her naked body, but his courage returns soon enough. His fingers trace open half-circles all the way down her spine; he rests his hands briefly against her curves and holds her by the backs of her thighs. She hums into his mouth and he smiles, and in the next moment he is licking at her collarbone and traveling, taking one nipple against his tongue.
She holds his head and tries to tell him, that way, that she loves him.
Once more his fingers dip suddenly against her clit, and her gasp says it all. She's forgotten almost entirely about nurses. She very nearly wails his name.
"Wait, Scully," he says, and she remembers Mulder also knows how to surprise her. He puts his hands at her waist - they've done this so many times, she thinks, and they could do it so many more if she weren't about to die; the two of them anywhere with Mulder holding her at his side in an almost subconscious way. She looks up at him, trusting, and his swollen-lipped kiss feels like the beginning of the rest of her life.
His fingers stroke between her legs like a reassurance, and her instincts tell her not to stop him when he disappears and appears, an instant later, as a slick burn on the skin around her pubis. Mulder is lapping her up in the middle of a hospital. Once again, she thinks, life defies imagination.
He doesn't stay long. She is straining, puffy, open; also, she suspects, he is trying not to treat this like the last time. Mulder's overactive mind cycles through everything, and it's her job to keep up.
Still, she's crying out - softly, into clenched hands - before his mouth is finished with her. It's the hormones, the stress, the years it's been, but mostly it's just because it's Mulder and she's Scully. He takes her hips in his hands and she is safe.
"Now, Mulder," she chokes, grabs one wrist with her hand and twists into his hair with the other. He kisses her abdomen and then is lying back above her, his hardness hovering between them: a promise, an exclamation.
"How?" he mumbles. Oh, Mulder.
"With my ankles next to my ears," she says. "I've always wanted to do that." She laughs, delighted, at the response in both his eyes and the rest of him.
"Christ," he mutters, laughing with her, but he's running serious fingers down her legs, and his palms hold her thighs as she lifts them. He matches her look. He's vulnerable Mulder suddenly, his expression changing in a way she thinks only she would notice. She wishes she could see him better, but touching his face is enough.
"Now," she repeats, and now it is.
Now.
It is.
He feels natural inside of her. Like lying back in the bath, like the smell of grass. Like breathing. After she slips her hand underneath his chest and touches herself, there is awareness, then numbness -
frozen light.
scully he whispers at the edge of the world
but all she can do is smile
and hold on
(he digs in, shuddering)
hold on.
a brief touch of the painlessness of death.
The ceiling above her comes into focus. There's a smoke detector there, blinking a tiny red series of boring Morse code, and under it is Mulder and her and a bed.
Her partner's hands are drawing her hair back, rubbing over the sweat of her skin.
"Scully?" he says. His voice, like his muscles, are wavering.
She smiles; he returns it; and she recalls, bizarrely, his fingers sweeping barbecue sauce away from her chin. Everything here feels simple, meaningful, heightened to a point where all things nonessential are cut out. The smoke detector blinks again, her ECG is far from normal, and either serendipity or voyeur's remorse has kept any nurses from sight.
"You know, Mulder -" she breaks off, and lets her eyes flick to the dotted red light for a quarter-second - "we don't know anything, do we?"
"No," he answers heavily, "I guess we don't." He holds her like the paranoid lover he is.
"It's okay," she tells him.
"It's okay," he echoes, nodding. Taking her word for it.
"Stay for awhile," she suggests. "I'd love to see you do the walk of shame at the 5 a.m. shift."
"You would, wouldn't you," he grumbles next to her ear, and his hands are warmer than ever against her tired body.