Rating: PG
Prompt: 1587. X-Files, Melissa Scully, Coming out made her the black sheep of the family. Now that she’s back from the West Coast, she hopes that Dana will be more open-minded.
Summary: Post-episode for Beyond the Sea. A reunion and a farewell.

Author’s Notes: Thanks to lightlack and amyhit for insight like a fine-toothed comb. Any remaining tangles are my own.

.

The first memory I have of my father is saying goodbye. We are on a wharf in front of a ship that seems to take up the entire world. Billy and I stand next to our mother, who holds Dana in her arms. Charlie has not yet been born.

In his uniform, my father is a tall shadow blocking out the sun. I squint up at him as he bends to place a kiss on my forehead. “Be a good girl for your mother,” he tells me.

Mommy has promised us ice cream cones if we behave ourselves and so I stand very still, scrunching my toes inside my shoes and watching the men climb up and up and up the ramp that takes them to the top of the ship. It makes me think of the song about the ants marching and I start to hum, swishing my dress a little with my hands. It’s hot and I’m thirsty.

The first memory I have of my father is of him striding away from us as my mother cries softly and Billy scuffs red-faced at the ground. I wait for Mommy to scold him for dirtying his shoes but instead she pulls his head against her hip and strokes his hair.

It feels like we stand there forever, waiting for the ship to leave and make some more room in the sky.

The first memory I have of my father is his absence.

*

“Hey lady, we’re here.”

The slam of a door jerks me awake and I open my eyes to my sister’s apartment building in front of me. I’m groggy from too little sleep and what I’d really like is a cup of chamomile tea and a hot bath, but I have a feeling neither is in my immediate future.

The cab driver hauls my duffel onto the sidewalk and I give him a five-dollar tip as a thank you. I’d give him an extra twenty if I thought he’d carry it all the way inside for me. As he pulls away, I take a deep breath of the frigid eastern air and think wistfully of San Francisco.

It’s almost six o’clock but no light shines through Dana’s windows. I’ve spent the whole day operating on instinct and not once did it occur to me that she might not be here when I arrived.

My father is dead and my sister’s voice on my answering machine sounded more lost than I’ve ever heard it. Worse than the nights she would crawl into my bed after a bad dream; worse than the day she left Daniel.

I look up at the building and take another breath, then let it out slowly, wishing I could bypass this grief. But I’m stronger now than I was two years ago and I’ve made my choices.

The heat inside the building awakens the tips of my ears and nose. I rap on Dana’s door in time to my nervous heartbeat and practice breathwork techniques to calm the fluttering inside me. For a few seconds I will myself into composure, until the sound of the bolt being turned back slams through me like electricity.

The woman who opens the door is not the Dana I left. She’s thinner and her hair is shorter. Her face is pale and pillow-creased and there are dark shadows under her eyes. In leggings and a baggy sweatshirt she looks small and fragile and it shocks me.

“Missy? Oh my God, what are you doing here?” She’s clutching the doorknob as though she’ll fall over if she doesn’t and I wonder if she’s eaten anything today.

“You left me a message,” I remind her. “Can I come in?”

She steps back and I drop my bag, pulling her into a hug. “Hey, little sister. You don’t look well.”

Dana’s never been very easy with physical affection and I’m not surprised to feel her stiffen for a moment. What does surprise me is the way her arms clamp around my waist and she starts to shake. My strong little sister who was always tougher, smarter, braver than all the boys is breaking my heart.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” she whispers.

“I’m sorry,” I say and stroke her hair. “I’m here now. It’ll be okay.”

We stand together and rock and rock.

*

Dana’s apartment is bland and inoffensive. I suspect the décor has much more to do with Mom’s taste than with hers. Except for books and the occasional sentimental object, my sister’s never been very interested in life’s trappings. I’d like to splash some color in here–some deep reds or lemony yellows. All this beige cannot be healthy.

We sit on her sofa drinking tea and it’s as familiar as if we saw each other only last week. Dana’s face is a little blotchy from crying as she tells me about the funeral.

“He was cremated and his ashes were spread at sea. Mom said it’s what he wanted.”

Of course, I think, surprised it hadn’t occurred to me before. How he would have hated the thought of being trapped on land for eternity. “The sea was always his first and greatest love,” I say, more to myself than to her.

“He loved us,” Dana says. “He loved Mom.”

“And he left us every chance he got.”

“Missy–” Dana sighs and rubs her temple.

This is an old, old argument, and one I’m not keen to revisit. My rancor isn’t what it used to be and I have no desire to hurt her. Not tonight.

I take her hand. “I don’t want to fight, Day. I didn’t come here for that.”

Over the rim of her mug, she looks at me with a new hardness in her face. “Why did you come?”

Because you sounded so wounded, so forlorn. Because I was terrified I was going to lose my baby sister. Because I didn’t know what else to do. “I came to see you,” I say eventually. “I came to say goodbye to Dad.”

She nods. “Does Mom know you’re here?” When I shake my head, she asks, “Are you going to see her?”

“I don’t know.”

I haven’t spoken to my mother in two years. I don’t know if I can. I’m not sure that I’ve forgiven her yet.

We sit for a little while longer with our cooling mugs of tea. Dana has to think about what she feels. When she’s decided, she’ll let me know.

Finally she puts her mug on the coffee table and stretches. “How long are you staying?”

“Just until Sunday. I have to be back at work on Monday.”

“Okay,” she says and smiles a little.

Just like that, I’m forgiven. Okay.

*

The last memory I have of my father is from 1992. We are sitting at my parents’ dinner table, five of us. It is early January, not long after New Year’s. I am thirty years old and I have just come out to my family.

My father is the first to speak. “Don’t be ridiculous, Melissa.” The cords of his neck are rigid and his face is flushed.

“Maybe you just haven’t met the right man yet, honey,” says my mother from the opposite end of the table.

Billy wades in with his own opinion that, of course, coincides with Dad’s. I hear the words “phase” and “sin.” Dana says nothing, just looks at me like I’m unrecognizable.

Voices swirl around me until I feel as though I’m at the eye of a storm. I concentrate on the feeling of air passing in and out of my lungs. I relax my clenched fists. I wait until everyone has stopped speaking.

“It’s not a phase, Dad. And I’m never going to meet the right man, Mom.” I meet my father’s eyes when I say the words I’ve practiced for tonight. “I have a girlfriend and I love her. I’d like to tell you about her; I’d like you to meet her. You can choose not to accept it, but it’s the truth. This is part of who I am.”

“I’ve heard enough,” my father says. He doesn’t raise his voice; his expression doesn’t change. “You’ve upset your mother, Melissa, and I think it’s time for you to go home. You can call us when you’ve come to your senses.”

How easily the captain dismisses his crew.

Later that night, my mother calls me. “He’s my husband, Melissa. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“And I’m your daughter.”

“You’re a grown woman now. You don’t need me anymore. Your father does.”

The last memory I have of my father is absence, too.

*

I come to wakefulness with my head buried under a pillow to escape the bright light. If Min has opened the curtains again I will be forced to hurt her. My arm slides across the bed to find a body part to whack and comes up empty. I lift my head, squinting against the sunshine, and that’s when I remember I’m at Dana’s. My sister learned the Scully
“up and at ‘em, rise and shine” motto well. I send Min a silent apology for my intended violence and flop back against the mattress.

It’s after noon but my body protests that it’s only nine. And a Saturday, too. I should be snuggled up against a naked woman in a dim bedroom in San Francisco, not going blind all alone in Georgetown, listening to my sister talk on the phone.

“Mulder, do you want them to put the catheter back in?” she’s asking. There’s a short pause. “Well then use the bed pan.”

I snort with laughter into the pillow.

Last night after Dana fell asleep next to me, I lay awake feeling the familiarity and strangeness of it. We’ve shared a bed often enough for me to know that her body asleep is just as precise and contained as her body awake. When we were little and Mom would come in to check on us at night, she would place her hand over Dana’s face to make sure she was breathing. My sister has always been such a little bundle of contradictions; a force of such focused energy that I envied her.

I don’t envy her grief.

My father loved me, provided for me, yet our relationship was never anything but strained. I felt suffocated. In every new place we moved I moulded myself to fit. It was my only means of escaping the way I never quite measured up to his expectations. Dana, though, struggled under the heavy weight of his favour. She fought so hard to do what was good, what was right, and to please him. He hurt her so much with his disapproval.

Now she’s bearing guilt among all her other burdens.

I hear clinking from the kitchen so I wander in and collapse against Dana where she’s standing at the sink, washing dishes.

“Mmph,” I say into her shoulder.

“Good morning to you, too. Or afternoon. Did I wake you?”

I yawn and turn around to peer in the fridge. “No. It was the light. Too bright.”

“You need half an hour of exposure to sunlight in winter to provide adequate Vitamin D. Trust me, I’m a doctor.” Her tone is wry.

“You’re a doctor for dead people, Day. I’ll call you when I need an autopsy.”

As soon as the words come out of my mouth, I regret them. I turn around and touch her shoulder. “I didn’t mean that.”

Her face is pale but she nods. “I know.”

She sits with me while I eat breakfast, picking at a sandwich of her own.

“Mom didn’t understand why I wanted to go back to work right away,” she tells me. “I needed something solid; I needed something else to think about. But everything seemed to circle back around to Daddy. And then–” she breaks off, crumbling bread and rolling it into little balls.

“What happened?”

“Mulder was shot. I almost lost him, too. We split up to do the search and then I heard the shot. Maybe if I’d been with him I could have–there was so much blood.”

Her hands are clasped together so tightly the knuckles are white. When I touch them, they’re cold.

“But he’s going to be okay, isn’t he?”

I can see her transformation into Dr Scully: the slight straightening of her spine; the set of her mouth; the distance. “The bullet nicked his femoral artery, but the surgeon was able to repair the damage. He’ll need some rehabilitation, but yes, he appears to be healing well.”

“And he’ll have a really cool scar to show his buddies.”

She gives me a sad little smile I don’t understand. There’s something I’m missing but all she says is, “We should probably leave soon.”

*

I make Dana stop at a mall so I can search the bookstores. All last night I struggled to find a meaningful way to farewell my father, a way to lay him to rest for me but also for Dana. I hope I’ve found it.

It’s still early in the afternoon when we arrive at a parking lot in front of a little strip of land being swallowed by water. The low sun is already rolling slowly westward and the blue of the sky is peeling back to reveal a handful of stars and a thumbnail of moon.

The car ticks quietly. The Potomac is a dull metal gray like the hull of a ship. The longer I stare at it, the larger it grows.

“Are you coming with me?” I ask.

Dana looks at me with surprise. “If you want me to.”

I am afraid. I’m afraid the way I used to be whenever Dad came home on leave; afraid because I’m an ungrateful daughter who was happiest when he was away; afraid that the sea will rise up and consume me in retribution; that my father himself will rise up in all his stern disapproval; that I will never truly be free.

“I do,” I tell her.

We leave the warmth of the car and walk along the small jetty. The air is bitter, though calm, and the shush of water moving restlessly against the pylons feels amplified in my body, as if my blood has picked up the rhythm.

I once told Dana that the important thing in life is who we meet along our path. Only now does it become clear to me that the people we leave behind, the people who leave us behind, are just as important.

I think of my father’s ashes spreading out across the Atlantic. I have spent almost my whole life trying to escape him, to wrench myself from his influence, only now to find that he is spread as finely through me as that ash. I could sift forever and never be rid of every speck.

I close my eyes and breathe slowly, deeply. I’ve spent two years away from my family, punishing myself as well as them. And now I have the irrational urge to laugh. Of course I will never be free. I look at my sister and take her hand. We are inextricably bound to each other, by genetics, by love. My father is part of that.

I take my newly purchased book out of the pocket of my coat and open it. This is for both of us, I tell her silently. I hope somehow she hears me.

“You do not have to be good,” I read. “You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

The silence seems deeper when I finish. I feel Dana’s little hitching breaths through our joined hands and I know she’s trying not to cry. A heron fishes in the reeds and the wind flutters the pages in my hand like wings. I am lighter. I am so much lighter.

“Who wrote that?” Dana asks eventually.

“Mary Oliver; she’s a poet.” I tell her.

“It’s beautiful.”

“I’ll leave you the book,” I say. “I have a copy at home.”

She nods and we stay side-by-side, living monuments to all the girls we’ve been who also stood at the boundaries of water saying goodbye.

*

It’s dark when we get back to Dana’s and neither of us feels like cooking. We order pizza and Dana opens a bottle of wine. The apartment is lit by soft lamps and we talk about unimportant things.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” she asks when we’re halfway through the bottle.

I set my glass on the coffee table and curl my feet underneath me. “About being gay?” She nods. This is something I’ve thought about so many times. “Until I met Min, I didn’t know. And then, after, I was confused and afraid.” I shrug. “A part of me didn’t want to say it aloud because that would make it true.”

I watch her take this in, examine it like a specimen, like evidence. The expression on her face is so familiar.

“I think I understand. I wish you had told me, but–” she looks into her wine glass and tucks her hair behind one ear. “I think I understand.”

“I’m glad,” I say. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“I know,” she says, with the first real smile I’ve seen from her since I arrived.

“What’s it like?” she asks after a moment.

“What’s what like?”

“Being with a woman.”

I almost drop the glass I’ve just picked up again. “You mean in comparison to being with a man?”

She nods.

“You’re a doctor, Dana. You should know the answer to that.”

I get a pillow thrown at me, and laugh.

“Honestly, Day, I really don’t know how to answer. She’s smart and funny and sexy and I love her. I’ve never had that with a man.”

“So you’re happy?”

I think of Min the way I left her Friday morning–sleepy and muttering obscenities in Korean when she stubbed her toe on my duffel bag. She’s so cute when she’s grumpy and half-awake. Her disgruntled, “I love you, Miss, but do you have to be such a slob?” followed by, “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” and her worried eyes.

“Yeah,” I say. “I am.”

“I’m glad.”

*

All the lights are off and we’re gazing at the winter sky, counting stars. It’s after midnight, already Sunday.

“I feel as though the world is emptier without him,” Dana says softly. “Even though I know it’s not true.”

I lean against her and nudge her head with my own. She sighs a little and pushes against me so that we’re holding each other up, balancing in place. I find the tiny pinprick that is Polaris in the darkness and mark its position with my finger on the glass. There is so much room in the sky.

“I know,” I tell her. “Me too.”

-Fin-

*

Notes:

The poem that Melissa reads is “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver, from the collection Dream Work.

This fic grew from an idea I had back in 2006 to write a post-ep for BtS that explains why Missy wasn’t at her father’s funeral. Almost as soon as I claimed this prompt, the character of Melissa’s girlfriend came to me and wouldn’t go away. Despite my research and lots of babbling to miss a., almost everything Min-related ended up on the cutting room floor. But I like her a lot and I want to share her, so I’m going to. Min (which means bright/clever) is 38 and a public defender. She and Missy met professionally; in my universe Missy is a social worker. Min’s parents met during the Korean War – her mother was a refugee and her father was an American GI. She has a younger brother, John, who just got married in Canada with one traditional Korean ceremony (peh bek) and one western ceremony, which is why Missy didn’t get Dana’s phone call about their father’s death and wasn’t at the funeral. Min likes turquoise jewellery and still hasn’t come out to her parents (although her brother knows) and this eventually destroys her relationship with Missy, which is why Missy is once again living in the Maryland/DC area during One Breath and beyond.

See, I told you I’d thought about this.

Rating: PG-13 (I know, I know, wimpy for porn)
Timeline: S9 for XF; pre-movie for Firefly

Thanks to a. for saying this is “like a very sophisticated metaphorical psychic threesome.”   I called it oddness and melancholy fluff.

- = ∞ = -

River likes the cargo bay. It’s Serenity’s womb, the place where the old River once curled like an embryo and then spilled out into Simon’s hands too soon, too soon. This is where she comes when the dark horses chase her out of sleep, when she is just a wound inside the shape of a girl and the girl is screaming. There are cracks where the light falls through.

The catwalk is cool against the backs of her legs and she reaches out into the black, into the when and the where, to find a story. “Tell me a story,” she whispers to the ‘verse. She finds rain.

He’s naked and letting the cool air dry the sweat on his skin. He’d asked Scully about it once, the scent of rain, just so he could listen to her explain the chemical complexities of petrichor. Some of his best memories are of her and the rain, like the first time he heard her laugh, or the first time they made love. Laughter, rain, Scully. He falls into the memories, grateful for the sweetness.

It was a Sunday, early, and he woke to the tap of rain against the windows, running quick and silvery down the glass. Scully was sprawled on her stomach next to him, her face mashed into the pillow under the tangle of her hair. He was stupid over her and the twin gifts of her skin, her sleep. He loved it when she drooled or snored, anything that set her apart from her workday persona. When she was just his, his Scully.

He’s trying to pretend that his wandering hands are hers, to preserve this fragile web he’s shaping, spun between weather and memory. The woman in his dreams is so beautiful, with hair as red as Inara’s lips, and so small. Smaller than River, smaller than Kaylee. Yet in his dreams she is so large, she is everything. She is hands and cheeks and a quick step and the colour black and always, always. River closes her eyes and it’s

the first time. When she came to him and she was so sweet he almost couldn’t bear it. The sound of the rain fills his head and she’s kissing him, pressing him back against the sheets. Her tongue is darting out, licking him, driving him mad. He rolls them so he’s pushing her down into the bed, so she can’t possibly get away. And he’s touching her, everywhere, and he knows he’s rushing but he’s so afraid this isn’t real and she’s so small and warm and soft beneath him he wants to cry. Mulder knows it’s his own hands touching him but he can pretend that it’s really

Scully. Her name makes River’s head echo. She’s never been with him before when he’s been awake. His thoughts are darker now, slower; they make her feel heavy and aching. She feels him stroking himself and underneath that the cramping of her own belly. He’s thinking about Scully’s breasts now, taking them in his mouth, the hard little nipples, licking and sucking at them. And Scully’s small body writhing under him, pale and smooth against his darker skin. She’s so beautiful, River thinks, Mulder thinks, and he wants more. He wants to put his mouth on her where she’s hot and wet and find out exactly how she tastes. He’s stroking faster now, his breathing laboured, the images flashing like

lightning illuminating the pale skin of her wrist where it’s flung above her head and her wet, red, open mouth making those little noises he almost can’t hear over the rain but they’re going straight to his groin until he can’t even think and it’s so good that he never wants to stop. He wants to die with Scully under him, slick with sweat, her legs wrapped around him, and him driving in and out of her body while she whispers oh and please and Mulder. And then suddenly she’s coming around him, her eyes wide and blind, gripping him and gripping him until he can’t hold back anymore and he’s spilling inside her and

all over his hand. River shakes with the force of their orgasm, gasping. For a moment they are awash in pure animal satisfaction. Then the reality of her absence reminds them and the weight of their grief turns them foetal. Legs pulled towards chests, arms wrapped around legs, they weep with the terrible ache of loss until they fall, exhausted, into sleep.

Simon finds her on her back with her skirt hiked up on her thighs and tears spattered against her cheeks. He pulls her into his arms and she clutches at his reassuring Simon-shape, his solidity. “What is it, mei-mei?” he asks. “Are you hurt?”

She rubs the top of her head against his collar in a movement that could be interpreted as yes or no. She wants to say yes, that it is her heart that hurts. She is a broken doll whom no one will ever love like that. She wants to say no, that it is not her own hurt she still feels like a dull ache, the way she can still feel the dull throb of pleasure inside her and the wetness on her thighs.

Instead, she says nothing and lets Simon’s sedative swirl its way through her molecules.

“Goodnight, Scully,” she whispers into the black.

The third and final instalment in the ‘prompts I wrote while I was trying to write that other prompt that refused to be written’ series. In which the author has the following conversation with herself:

So, hey, you know how you really suck at writing dialogue?
Yeah, I’m totally craptastic at it, huh?
Totally. So anyway, wouldn’t it be great to write an entire ficlet exclusively in dialogue?
Yes siree bob, that sure would be great.*

And they skipped off happily into the sunset. Well, okay, it was midnight, but whatever.

I owe a debt to Beatrice’s wonderful Mindful which was what got the Mulder and Scully in my head talking about this in the first place. What, you mean you don’t have a Mulder and Scully in your head?

*use hillbilly accent as appropriate

- = ∞ = -

“Because there’s a difference between fucking and making love, Mulder.”

“Have you been reading those Harlequin romances again, Scully?”

“Why do you initiate these discussions if you’re only going to mock my opinion?”

“I wasn’t mocking your opinion, just your choice of reading material.”

“This from the man with subscriptions to Celebrity Skin and the Weekly World News.”

“Your point is well taken. Please continue.”

“Fucking is mechanics, stimulus and response.”

“And making love?”

“Making love is… conscious, mindful. There’s an emotional aspect that heightens and enriches the physical.”

“You have been reading romance novels again.”

“Go to hell, Mulder.”

“Wait, Scully, I’m sorry. I was teasing. Please don’t go.”

“I’m only staying because I can’t find my underwear.”

“I’ll take what I can get. I agree with you, you know. About mindfulness. Don’t look so surprised.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No. No, I guess not. But I am mindful, Scully. There hasn’t been one instant when I wasn’t overwhelmingly conscious of you and of what we were doing together. It’s just–”

“Just what?”

“I thought you wanted this distance, this clear distinction between Mulder and Scully, Special Agents, and Mulder and Scully, lovers.”

“I did.”

“Past tense.”

“I’m finding it more difficult now to maintain the distinction. I’m not entirely sure there is one anymore. …What was that for?”

“Because I like kissing you?”

“I like kissing you too.”

“And I like touching you.”

“I like touching you too.”

“Scully, I love you.”

“Mulder…”

“You don’t have to say anything. I just needed you to know.”

“Mulder, I… oh.”

“You like that?”

“You know I do. Oh, God.”

“I love touching you. I love the way you smell and the way you taste and the way you move and the sounds you make. Everything about you drives me crazy.”

“Please… Mulder… I…”

“What? Tell me what you want.”

“I want you inside me when I come.”

“Jesus.”

“You like that?”

“Unh. You know I do.”

“Oh, yes. Just like that.”

“Scully, I can’t–”

“God, Mulder, right there, right there, don’t stop, don’t…”

“Love you, love you, Scully…”

“Mmm.”

“So was that enriching enough for you?”

“I think that was pretty enriching.”

“Good. Glad to be of service.”

“Mulder?”

“Mmph.”

“Are you asleep?”

“Mmph.”

“Mulder, I love you.”

This was the second fic I wrote while I was still trying to write that other prompt which seriously didn’t want to be written. And I had to cut at this one too. It’s a sequel/homage to Rachel Anton’s Slippery Slope – hence the title.

It probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you’ve read that fic first, but presumably the smut speaks for itself. It’s difficult trying to emulate another writer’s style and character voice. I have no idea if I managed it but the attempt kept me amused. Are you supposed to laugh whilst writing smut?

- = ∞ = -

“Don’t,” she says when I get back in the car. So I don’t. We sit there in silence watching Archie Funt’s house until we’re relieved by the next pair of agents.

She drives us back to the lot where she left her car and gets out, slamming the door. Shit, I think, fumbling with my seatbelt. I finally manage to untangle it and hurl myself after her. “Scully, wait.”

She’s already unlocking the door when I catch up to her, my hand reaching out. The look on her face freezes me where I stand, a mix of anger and humiliation, sadness and hurt.

“I can’t believe you, Mulder,” her voice trembles a little. “I can’t believe you would do something like that to prove a point. That you could be so callous and manipulative, so–” she breaks off and shakes her head.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “Scully, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it. It just came out. There was no blood left in my head. The big head.” I’m begging and I don’t even care. I need to explain. I need her to believe me.

“And everything else you said? Did that just come out too?”

“No!” I’m horrified she’d think that. “I meant every word of it. I meant it when I said I love you and I when I said I wanted to, uh, do those things. With you.”

My God, I’m about as eloquent as Rain Man here.

“Scully I was stupid and thoughtless, but you have to believe that I wasn’t making fun of you and I didn’t do it just to prove a point. And, if you’re willing to concede that it was sex, which you’re under no obligation to do of course, I should point out that it was the best sex of my life.”

I think maybe I see a hint of a smile. I wait as she tucks her hair behind her ears and licks the corner of her mouth. My cock twitches and I tell it to go to hell. It’s the reason I’m in this mess to begin with.

“The best, huh?” She finally meets my eyes.

I nod like an imbecile; completely uncaring of what she now thinks about my past sexual experiences if it means she’s forgiven me, even a little. And then she does the most amazing thing. She reaches up and kisses me, softly, on the mouth. It’s just a light brush of her lips against my lips but it makes my head spin. And then she does it again. And again, until finally I’m tasting her mouth and licking at the inside of her cheeks and it’s even better than I imagined it would be.

She pulls me against her so I’m pressing her into the car door and she’s arching into me and my dick is very, very happy with the situation. The sun is starting to peek over the horizon and I think about the fact that we’re in an empty parking lot and maybe we should move this party somewhere more private when Scully shifts her legs a little, grabs my hand and shoves it inside her pants.

It’s probably unnecessary to say that I stop thinking at this point.

Scully’s pussy is hot and wet and it isn’t my tongue in there but I’m not about to complain. Her fingers are guiding mine into a rhythm that makes her moan into my mouth and bite my tongue, which I never thought would be sexy but somehow is when she does it. When I’ve caught her rhythm, she pulls her hand back and I grab it with my free one and shove her fingers in my mouth. Her eyes open wide as I suck them and moan because, whaddaya know? Scully doestaste salty and tangy just like she said.

I think it just can’t get any better because I’ve got Scully’s fingers in my mouth and my fingers in her juicy pussy, my thumb rubbing against her hard little clit, but Scully proves me wrong because she’s coming and Jesus Christ I can feel it. Her eyes flutter shut and her mouth goes slack and she’s spasming all around my fingers and I take back what I said earlier because this is the best sex of my life, right here in this parking lot where I’m creaming my pants for all the world to see.

She takes her hand out of my mouth and my hand out of her pants and kisses me again, lightly. I’m still panting and shaking when she gets in the car and starts the engine. Rolling down the window, she turns to me before she shifts into gear and pulls away. It’s a little before six in the morning when I’m left standing next to my car with ejaculate running down my leg and her words ringing in my ears.

“Yes, Mulder. We just had sex.”

This was a prompt that I hoped someone would write because I certainly couldn’t. And then the idea popped into my head and wouldn’t leave me alone, despite the fact that I was trying to write for another prompt.

The frustrating thing about my brain is that I couldn’t just write about two hot women having sex – I had to come up with a whole back-story featuring post-colonisation and the finale of BSG’s S3 in order to get to the smut. Thanks, brain. Note to self: writing same sex porn is hard! The pronouns are confusing! Too many of the same body parts!

- = ∞ = -

Lee is dead.

There’s a body this time, just so she’ll know there are no more chances. Apollo won’t be rising again.

The Admiral puts his hand on her shoulder, “Starbuck–”

“No,” she says. Just, no. She heads for violence before the pain can rip her apart.

Bare-knuckled she pummels the bag, letting it slap her in the face on every other swing. Her hands ache and bleed and her cheekbones sting and she’s blinded by sweat and greedy for more.

Harbinger of death, a voice inside her whispers. Kara Thrace and her special frakking destiny. Leading the last of the human race to this ruined wasteland of a planet where they’re all, all going to die.

Just like Lee.

“Kara,” a voice says, and she turns to find Scully stepping through the hatch. “I just heard.”

They have an odd friendship, Kara thinks, she and this red-haired refugee. “My father called me Starbuck,” Scully had told her once, as if she recognised something in Kara, something beyond the name. Maybe it was grief.

“It’s the end of the world,” Kara tells her with a bitter laugh that ends on an unexpected sob. She slumps against the wall next to Scully and stretches out her swollen hands. They don’t talk.

Later that night, Scully slides naked into Kara’s bunk and kisses her full on the mouth. Kara thinks she should be surprised but what she feels is relief. It’s not love but these days you take what you can get. Fucking away the despair at the end of the godsdamned world.

Scully’s tongue is strong and clever inside her mouth, and her fingers are making circles on Kara’s nipples. Kara sits up to pull her tanks over her head and watches Scully do the same. She’s never frakked a woman and the press and rub of their breasts together sends a wet spark straight to Kara’s clit. She sucks one of Scully’s nipples into her mouth and palms the other. Scully’s got a nice little breathy moan that makes Kara’s cunt feel empty and slick.

It’s all fumbling and groping without finesse and Kara’s never been so hot in her life. Scully grabs a fistful of hair and kisses her like it’s a hot, wet dogfight, while one little hand slides inside Kara’s BDUs. Her searching fingers snake past her clit and press maddeningly at the edge of her cunt. Long red hair tangles in Kara’s hand as she yanks it back to bite at the other woman’s throat. Her hips jerk without rhythm until Scully works two fingers into her cunt.

“Frak,” Kara moans as Scully starts thrusting against the back of the hand inside Kara’s pants. “Oh, frak.”

Scully’s writhing on her, all that pale skin flushed over sleek muscles. Kara slides one hand over Scully’s ass and slips two fingers inside her. Scully squirms back against Kara’s hand and Kara twists against Scully’s and the wet sounds their bodies are making are almost obscene.

Scully’s breasts are so pretty, Kara’s suddenly desperate to get her mouth on them again. She licks and sucks until Scully’s making the sexiest noises in the back of her throat. They’re sweating so much they practically slide off each other and the scent of their arousal is more potent than ambrosia. They jerk against one another, fingers buried in each other’s cunts, swollen and desperate.

Scully goes first, up in a flash like a flare, she stiffens and clamps her legs tight on Kara’s hand and gives one abbreviated cry before shuddering and shuddering. Kara almost weeps when the hand between her own legs goes limp, but it’s only for a moment and then the delicious pressure is back and Scully is rubbing and rubbing her into oblivion.

They lay pressed together, panting and flushed. They don’t speak. What is there to say? They’re not dead. One more day among the living.

I had to cut this down quite a bit since the original was too long to fit within the character limit.

There’s something to be said for being forced to hack away at your own work, I suppose, but it did remind me somewhat unpleasantly of the torture that was writing ‘Instructions.’ This is the first one I wrote and consequently the most like a ‘proper’ fic I think.

- = ∞ = -

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. –Albert Einstein

.

“Dana, I miss you,” he says. “It’s been almost a week.”

A glance at the clock tells her it’s 11:21. She has to be up for work in six hours. “Ethan, I’m tired,” she says. The truth is that she hasn’t missed him at all.

He nuzzles behind her ear, under her jaw. “Just let me touch you. Let me make you feel good.”

She allows him to move her to the bed and undress her.

Of late, Ethan’s begun to irritate her. He’s too accommodating, too easygoing. Sometimes she wishes he were a little more willing to push her. Not aggressive, she thinks as he licks his way across her body. Challenging.

The word conjures an image of Mulder from earlier today, arguing with her.

“But nothing is immutable, Scully,” he’s saying. “Facts are only facts insofar as there is no further evidence to disprove them.” She can almost feel his will pulling at her like centripetal force. It’s exciting, taking on his mind’s mobile acrobatics with her own sharp precision.

It’s erotic.

“Oh God,” she moans with a kind of horror. She cannot think about her partner while Ethan is making love to her. But the sudden slickness between her thighs has nothing to do with the man in her bed. She pulls Ethan up to kiss him.

Mulder wouldn’t kiss her like this, she thinks. His mouth would learn all her secrets. His tongue would stab and stroke until she was crazy with it, until she had to have some part of him inside her, his fingers, his cock.

Ethan’s fingers are sliding gently through her pubic hair and she moans. She’s forgotten all about being tired.

Mulder’s hair is darker than Ethan’s, his body longer and sleeker. She’s imagining him in one of his dress shirts, with the sleeves rolled up so the hair along his arms prickles her skin. His hands are so big, so hot.

Ethan rolls to the nightstand to find a condom and she rubs shamelessly against his back, sucking at his scapula. She wonders what Mulder tastes like.

When Ethan moves over her there’s so much tenderness in his look that she can’t bear it. Tonight she doesn’t want tenderness; what she needs is for him to pound into her until she stops wanting it to be Mulder pinning her to the bed.

“Just fuck me,” she whispers into Ethan’s ear. He makes a choked sound, eyes wide with shocked arousal.

She closes her eyes and it’s wrong but it’s Mulder. Mulder in his dress shirt and slacks with his zipper down and his belt buckle cold against her hip. Mulder trapping her against a wall or a desk or the car door with her skirt hiked up and her underwear pushed aside because he just couldn’t wait. Mulder moaning terrible, dirty things in her ear while she clutches his biceps and bites at his neck. Mulder and this clawing, grabbing violence between them until she understands the female praying mantis who eats her lover whole.

In bed with Ethan her body writhes urgently under his thrusts. In her head it’s Mulder’s finger circling hard around her clit while she whimpers against his mouth. They’re not even kissing anymore, just sharing breath; too focussed on the corkscrewing pleasure between them. His eyes are open and locked with hers, the pupils huge and dark.

She wants to feel him, to run her hands over the sweat on his back and trace the ridges of his ribs. Ethan’s hands are all over her, but Mulder’s barely touch her and still it’s enough to bring the pleasure welling up under her skin until she bursts with it like a bruise.

She arches her back against the wall or the desk or the door, against the soft cotton sheet, feels the tightening of her muscles, the pulse of every blood-engorged tissue. Ethan is muttering a litany of “Dana, oh God, Dana” and Mulder is growling against her neck, “Come for me Scully” until she’s suffocating because he’s everywhere inside her, stretching her body and her mind, and it’s so good she wants it to go on forever.

They’re assaulting each other with lips and teeth, his stubble rasping against her cheeks. She grabs the back of his neck to pull herself just a little higher and thrusts down as he’s thrusting up and that’s it, that’s enough, she’s coming hard and so is he, like nuclear fusion, like the birth of a sun.

She opens her eyes and sees Ethan, lax and sleepy beside her. “Love you,” he murmurs.

Over his shoulder, the clock reads 11:30. Nine minutes.

Prompt: Home

A/N: Post-IWTB. There’s also a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to ‘Theef’. I should also point out that I fail at porn. So this isn’t even very porny. I suck.

As usual, thanks to a. who provided speedy chat!beta even though the pr0n makes her laugh and I suck at finishing sentences.

lightlack: Exhausted and () <– what’s s’posed to be in the bracket, anything?
tree: oh yeah! um, a word?

In my head this is loosely linked (thematically at least) to #5 of Instructions.

- = ∞ = -

Somewhere in everyone’s head something points toward home,
a dashboard’s floating compass
–Miller Williams, The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina

.

He calls her at the hospital, says, “Come home.” So she does. Exhausted and tentative, her skin feels flimsy as paper, as easy to tear, scorch, mar. It’s not enough to keep him out or her in. They exchange at a cellular level.

She walks in the door and is enveloped by him, his smell, his warmth. It’s not until he’s taken her coat and wrapped himself around her that she realises how cold she is, inside and out. The tears rise up and spill without her permission, scalding against her cheeks. She scrubs at them, hating this woman she’s become again, leaking saltwater everywhere she goes.

Mulder releases her and stills her hands. “Bath,” he says, tugging her gently. She wonders when he became a man of so few words. But she’s too cold and too tired to argue. In the bathroom he runs the water, undresses her tenderly. His hands have always been the gentlest things she’s ever known.

The heat and the quiet of the bath leach some of the ache from her muscles. When Mulder returns with a warm towel, she is drowsy and limp. “Hungry?” he asks, drying her hair.

“Not really.”

“Bed then,” he murmurs, wrapping her in her robe.

She is bemused by this care and attention, on another day might resent it. But tonight she’s content to follow him as he leads her to the bedroom, puts her to bed. He strips off his shirt and jeans and curls up with her. They lie facing each other like two opposing question marks.

“You know I can’t let you go, Scully,” he tells her.

She nods, her hand reaching out to cup his jaw. “You know I don’t want to go.” And she sees in his eyes that he does know. This is what the last six years have given him, them. Once, he would have let her go for her own good. Now he knows better.

He smiles a little and the muscles of his cheek move smoothly against her palm. He is so very beautiful to her still, so very precious.

“We’ll figure it out,” his voice is a puff of air against her lips just before he kisses her.

Oh, she’s missed this. They haven’t made love in weeks and the hunger rises inside her, burning through the exhaustion. Both hands on his face now to keep the hot slide of his mouth as close as possible. His hands tugging at her robe, peeling it away like the skin of a fruit to where she is ripe and juicy underneath.

She’s suddenly fierce and frenzied, like those first few weeks on the run. Trying to swallow him whole, to take as much of him into her as possible so she would never be without him again. She pushes him on his back and slithers over him as he moans.

“You always keep me guessing,” he mutters, trying to get a nipple into his mouth. She guesses he’d planned a slow seduction, something sweet and peaceful to soothe them both. But she’s long past soothing, subsumed in the animal want of having him part of her, inside her, right now. She mouths him everywhere, wet inaccurate kisses, bites. She’d eat him up if she could, a delicious, wanton feast.

They are not gentle. They both leave bruises, teeth marks. She shoves his cock inside her so sharply it hurts, and she’s greedy for that too.

“Jesus, Scully,” he gasps.

She is whimpering, clawing, so utterly unlike herself that later she’ll be just a little embarrassed. But for now she’s got to come, got to make him come, got to meld them together. His eyes lock with hers as his cock rushes in and out of her body, until she just can’t stand it anymore and she is arching, flung up and over, down into the churning sea which smooths out gently as a ripple at the last.

He is still rocking, heaving under her; then he’s shuddering, moaning her name roughly as he comes.

She smiles drunkenly against his skin as she rises and falls on his chest. He pushes back her damp hair and kisses her temple, her cheek.

“I love you,” she whispers into his neck, sweaty and joyful. They are one breathing body. “I love you.”

“Come home,” he said. So she did.

Author’s Notes:

The first time I heard the song “INSTRUCTIONS” by Veda Hille, I knew I wanted to write something around it. I had no idea it would take SEVEN YEARS for me to actually do it. The lyrics are used without permission and any inaccuracies within them are mine. The song itself can be found on the album “Spine” at http://vedahille.com.

Thanks to:

a. for extraordinary graciousness, perspicuity, and patience in the face of my overwhelming need for reassurance. And for saying yes each and every time I asked.

- = ∞ = -

1. Pick it up and put it in your pocket.

They carried no past with them, no mementos. They had each other and a collection of scars; their secret names whispered into open mouths in dark motel rooms. Lately, she’d begun a ritual. In every new town she pocketed some small item: a pebble, a leaf. Each one was a memory. She kept it until the next town, left it behind like a white stone, a breadcrumb.

“What’s this one?” he asked in the early morning hush, his chest pressed against her back.

She leaned into him for a moment, stroking the delicate shell. “This is the day we met.”

2. Your name here.

She misses him most when she’s driving. Night journeys are particularly marked by his absence. Tonight she sings along with the radio, her voice bouncing back to her in the empty space.

When the song ends, she switches off the sound and opens her window; speaks his name into the rush of dark and hears it swallowed.

Red giants are main sequence stars whose core hydrogen has been exhausted. They appear larger and more luminous even as they consume themselves.

She’s gnawed all the way through her own nucleus. Without surprise, she finds what remains is composed of his grace.

3. Hold a towel in your mouth and be reminded of his clean skin.

She leaves the lights off as darkness gathers. Everything that reminds her of him is gone. All afternoon she cleans, denying herself the luxury of tears. Her clothes are in the garbage. She has to stop herself from burning them.

In the shower she scrubs until her skin is red and stinging. Reaching for her towel, her hand encounters something too small, too soft. She brings it to her face and inhales, chokes.

Her breasts, swollen already and tender, begin to leak. Milk trickles down her body, useless now, wasted; washing away.

She cries for William, for Mulder, for herself.

4. Don’t let them shrivel on the vine.

“The nurse asked me if I was the husband,” he says. “And I had to say no.”

They are spooned, skin to skin, lit by streetlamp and the alarm clock’s glow. She refused to stay in the hospital one more night.

“But we just work together,” she mimics, laughing softly. He presses a kiss to her shoulder.

It’s infinitely sweet to be with him this way, even restricted to bed-rest and forbidden sex. Just him warm and breathing is enough.

So his whisper, full of longing, catches her off-guard. Softly, like the deepest secret.

“I want to be the husband.”

5. Forget it.

She is laughing as she takes him into her body. It is the last and only place he does not already inhabit. Her hands smooth up the furrow of his spine and grasp the budding wings of his scapula. She has forgotten everything but the parts of her that are him.

It feels impossible, like everything else she’s never believed in. The most ordinary things become extraordinary in his presence. Even the knobbed planes of his knees are fascinating.

She rises above him like a wave and knows that she has found her harbor, that he is her beloved country.

6. When you hear a mechanical instrument, think of a child shrieking.

He tells her about the Vermont case over dinner. In her mind the caws of ravens blend with the cries of Michelle Crittendon and Katy Adderly. The sound rises to a peak on the point of Mulder’s knife as it scrapes across his plate.

In this evening refuge, she lays to rest the child they’ll never have. She ceases picking over the wound like a carrion bird.

Placing her hand over his bandaged one, she says, “You can’t save everyone.”

What she means is: I don’t need you to save me. What she means is: maybe I can save you.

7. To all peaks carry water.

Slipping from their apogee she is all burn and ache. They descend in motion and light, remembered grief. Mulder’s arm stretches across the space between them and for a blink she is staring at his coffin, running a finger along his rib. When skin meets skin she is crying, salt water blurring her vision of him, of her through him.

Eyes closed, she shares his sight. His thoughts slip through her like fish wriggling in the ocean between her bones. He is an everywhere nearness, expanding; violent and tender as being born.

Centrifugal force whirls them. She doesn’t let go.

8. Clean the wound and take note of the metal.

The light through the blinds is golden.

Her mind wanders a drowsy landscape of sleep and medication. The chemical symbol for gold is Au, from the Latin ‘aurum’. Shining dawn. As a girl, chrysopoeia fascinated her; the transmutation of base metal into gold.

And gold shines like a sacrament, like a holy thing. The sullen dullness of lead becomes light.

One bullet had rippled through her, exposing her beating red life. Fellig said she didn’t want to be around when love was gone.

When she wakes Mulder holds her hand and her eyes. Solve et coagula: separate and join together.

9. Buy what you can.

It’s Saturday and she feels a little strange arriving at Mulder’s unannounced. He answers the door looking mildly surprised.

Inside, there’s a pile of folded laundry on the couch and the smell of something cooking.

“What’s that?” He gestures to the package in her hands. This is so much more awkward than it should be.

“Boots,” she explains once he’s pulled off the paper. “To replace the ones you ruined. I hope they fit.”

She stands mutely in the center of his living room as he laces them. What she cannot seem to say is, Thank you. For my life.

10. Don’t be afraid to be like her.

In the early afternoon, she takes a walk. The sunlight warms her face and she tilts up slightly, the way a plant grows. She thinks of nothing more than the lovely simplicity of Maxwell’s equations, of luminosity and electromagnetic waves. At certain times she misses the clean and structured paths of physics. The beauty of equations; the assuredness of an answer.

Her memory and Cassandra Spender are missing. What remains is the parallax of the truth.

She moves westward, against the rotation of the earth. She drives toward Mulder’s apartment with an idea: of reaching, of his holding her hand.

11. Learn to recognize the beauty of your own back.

She goes home after her doctor’s appointment and undresses in front of the mirror. Her body looks exactly as it did that morning.

In medical school she was taught that metastasis is the spread of malignant tumor cells through the circulatory system. The idea seems so removed from her own flesh.

Practiced fingers pluck at her nipples, slide down to strum her clit. Back arching, she makes herself come in a jumble of triumph and anguish. Eyes bright and skin flushed with the living hum of blood.

She will regard each day as a victory. She will not tell Mulder.

12. C’mon everyone, drink up.

The water in the sink is scalding and under the bubbles her hands burn as she washes the wine glasses. It’s not Mulder who wants to kiss her. She takes a deep breath in through her nose and lets it out of her mouth.

His mouth.

Behind her she hears the shuffle of shoes against carpet, the rasp of fabric shifting. He is still here.

“Scully?” comes his voice, muted. “Need any help in there?”

“No,” she says. She cannot possibly look at him now, have him look at her and know.

It’s not Mulder who wants to kiss her.

13. Run with whatever you can carry.

She is a maelstrom; she is the choking, savage sea.

His face hurts her. She wants to smash it, gouge out his gentle eyes, force his limp hands into fists. Nothing makes sense. Her gun is so heavy and she’s so heartsick, so tired of running.

“Put the gun down, Dana. Put it down.”

Her weapon is trained on her mother.

Bewildered, she cries, feels his presence like an exclamation behind her. He’s the enemy. She’s seen it, the evidence of his duplicity. And yet.

His hand rests warm on her back, its weight the still center of the world.

14. Remember that you bleed more easily.

”Everything okay?” he asks when she meets him at the gate.

“Fine,” she says, despite the ache of her red, raw heart.

So often she feels as though she’s the string holding him against the wind; the tether against which he strains. And now she’s freefalling and breathless as a kite, while he stands below. Pulling her back to the earth, tugging at the delicate strings of her faith.

Gravity; it’s a force she knows well. His pull captures her as surely as any star. Full circle, she thinks, orbits. Perhaps it’s really that they hold one another in place.

15. Don’t think of it as reasonable, think of it as terrifying.

“Do you love him?” Melissa asks. They’re slumped on the sofa doing nothing in particular. An old movie flickers on the television.

She doesn’t need to ask who “him” is. They’ve been talking about Mulder off and on all afternoon. “Of course I do,” she says. “We’re friends. Partners.”

Melissa rolls her head sideways and regards her solemnly. “That’s not what I meant, Dana.”

She picks at a loose thread, words fluttering in her throat like frightened birds. Melissa squeezes her hand.

They watch the movie wordlessly and all the while the wings in her chest are beating yes, yes.

16. When blinded, construct images around unknown sounds, and assume you are correct.

Her phone rings as she paces inside Franklin Community Hospital. “Scully.” She’s even taken to answering her home phone this way.

“Hello?” She waits. “Mulder, is that you?” The phone pressed hard to her ear, she can just make out a bird chirping over the faint wail of a siren.

“Mulder, where are you? Mulder?”

A sharp slide of panic pricks her. “Mulder, where are you?”

She remembers a deserted bridge, a gunshot, and Mulder tossed from the back of a van. His too-still body in Arecibo. She forgets to breathe.

Then his voice says, “I’m here, Scully. I’m here.”

17. Remember to surface.

The dream vanishes as soon as she opens her eyes. She breathes in deeply, her lungs compressed like a diver’s; the back of her neck sticky with sweat. Her own bed is reassuring after the hard, narrow mattresses of quarantine. But it’s difficult knowing she’s so alone. A month of Mulder’s twitching legs and variegated eyes has proven addictive. He argues with her, makes her laugh. Listens when she speaks.

He’d embraced her briefly in the hallway tonight, pressed her forehead hard against his collarbone and was gone. Now, eyes fixed wide open in the dark, she whispers, “Come back.”

18. Endeavor to dive.

They are laughing in the rain in a cemetery in the middle of the night. She is drowning in the wind and the water and her own belief. For once it feels good to let go the lines, the wheel. She’s no sailor.

The night’s stars are masked and offer no direction; the sky is dark as deep water. In the glow of the flashlight her partner’s eyes are the color of cool shallows. They shine with more than reflected light.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”

She thinks of the pole star, celestial navigation. She swims.

.

*

More notes. I have logorrhoea.

I began this project on January 27th, 2007; however, most of it wasn’t written until April 2008 onwards. Yes, I am very, very slow.

While a. held my hand every grueling step of the way (and kicked my arse at scrabulous), several kind souls on LiveJournal left me positive feedback on one or two of these and I appreciated it greatly. Thanks, folks.

I should also give special mention to mrO, who puts up with my madness on a daily basis and who’s had to endure me chanting “I’m never, never, never, ever doing this again!” at him more than once.

My information on astronomy, physics, and alchemy was gleaned from Wikipedia. All episode dialogue was sourced from the wonderful Inside the X. Information on placental abruption came from a number of sites, but I didn’t use any of the specifics. If I got something wrong, blame it on my substandard research techniques. Similarly, I think I got rid of all the non-American spelling. But if not, I don’t think I should be blamed. It’s hardly my fault that you people spell things incorrectly.

The big list of episodes I wrote about: Pilot, Darkness Falls, Blood, Revelations, Wetwired, Small Potatoes, Patient X, Fight the Future, Tithonus, Field Trip, Chimera, Empedocles, William.

Specifically, (I think entirely too much about this stuff):

8. ‘”Solve” or “solutio” refers to the breaking down of elements and “Coagula” refers to their coming together. In the process of transmuting base metal into gold or arriving at the Philosopher’s stone, this contained both literal and hidden meaning. Esoterically, “solve” referred to the dissolving of hardened positions, negative states of body and mind , thereby dissolving and vanishing negative energetic charge. “Coagula” referred to the coagulation of dispersed elements into an integrated whole, representing the new synthesis. Solve et Coagula expresses transmutation from base to a finer state, the perpetual goal of spiritual growth and human evolution.’ –Source

7. Very obliquely inspired by (a) this quote by Isak Dinesan: “The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea;” and (b) “Poem at Altitude” by Paul Guest.

4. I originally wrote this as sweaty, awkward, third-trimester sex. And then I realized that sex and orgasms don’t go well with detached placentas. After some research, I concluded that Scully should, at the very least, be restricted to bed-rest. So, in my happy land, the abruption was caused (or at least contributed to) by prior sweaty, awkward, third-trimester sex. (Unless Scully’s been snorting cocaine off screen. Which, you know, seems unlikely.)

3. This was written on April 27th for a prompt from a drabble-a-thon on LiveJournal. The prompt was “boobs” *adolescent snicker* and the title was “Wake.” This was actually the drabble that kick-started my renewed interest in this project. I’ve altered the ending just a bit.

Recipient: elapses

Rating: NC-17 for gross abuses of characterisation, language and the human form. Oh, and sex.

Disclaimer: No fictional characters were harmed in the writing of this bad!fic.

Notes: Title stolen from Damien Rice. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the sort of thing he meant when he wrote that song.

Special thanks to mrO, who could probably make a living from writing bad!fic, he is that good. Heartfelt apologies to Lid. All errors in this fic are intentional. And even if they weren’t, I’ll pretend like they were later. Requirements listed at the end.

[Originally posted February 2008]

- = ∞ = -

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Special Agent Fox Mulder, or Mulder as he preferred to be called, woke with a feeling of happiness for the first time in longer than he could remember, which, given his eidetic memory, was a long time. Last night he had kissed his beautiful, wonderful partner Dana Scully for the second time! Well, actually she had kissed him, but in his drowsy half-awake state of mind, it all amounted to the same thing: his lips touching her lips and lingering softly for what had seemed both an eternity and entirely too short a time. It had just been a goodnight kiss, just like their New Year’s kiss a few weeks ago. Yet, it made his heart race and plastered a smile to his lips and he practically danced his way to bed, light as a butterfly, after Scully left.

Now, he anticipated the day to come in their basement office. They weren’t involved in any particular case, so he would have eight hours of uninterrupted Scully time. Time to admire her beautiful Titian hair (which he couldn’t really see properly because he was colorblind) and her rosebud pout. He hoped today would be one of the rare days she wore a skirt so he could admire the lines of her calves and imagine slipping his hands up underneath the hem to see what color underwear she was wearing. Or, if she was wearing any at all.

**Mmm, Scully’s underwear. I wonder if I have time to indulge in that little fantasy before it’s time to get up?**

He opened his eyes and blinked at the brightness.

**Thought I closed the blinds last night?**

Mulder rolled his head to the left and squinted at the alarm clock. At the alarm clock which wasn’t there.

**What the hell?**

He struggled into a sitting position and realized he was not in his bedroom. As he turned to look around and figure out where he was, his hair came around and brushed his cheek. Impatiently, he pushed it back behind his ear.

Behind his ear?

In horror, Mulder held out his right arm to find a pale and decidedly feminine limb. He shoved the covers away from his body and examined the rest of himself. Then he let out a girly scream. He jumped up and ran to the mirror and found himself looking into startled blue eyes. Scully’s blue eyes.

**I’m dreaming. I’ve got to be having a nightmare. Any minute I’ll wake up and it’ll be like the time I dreamt Tom Colton was my pool boy and performed his duties in a leopard print thong.**

Mulder opened and closed his eyes a few times. He pinched himself experimentally. He hopped up and down on one foot and then the other. That last was pretty intriguing, actually, as he watched his – Scully’s – breasts bounce up and down in a very attractive way. It was kind of turning him on. Forgetting himself for a minute, he reached down to touch his cock and it all came back to him in a horrible rush.

**I’ve been emasculated!**

Okay so maybe this wasn’t a dream. What the hell had happened? How the hell was he going to get his body back? Wait, his body! Who was in -his- body? If he had Scully’s body, didn’t it stand to reason that Scully had his body?

**Great! Scully will know what to do.**

Meanwhile, in Fox Mulder’s apartment, Dana Scully was summing up the situation fairly succinctly as she examined her – Mulder’s – body in the mirror. “Fuck,” she said in Mulder’s baritone. Then the phone rang.

“Scully,” she said, out of habit, and realized how weird it sounded in Mulder’s voice.

“Scully, thank god,” Mulder said. “What the hell is going on?”

Scully wondered if her voice always sounded like that when she used it. “How should I know, Mulder? I wake up this morning in your bed, in your -body- when I distinctly remember going to sleep last night in my own bed, in my own body! Furthermore, this sort of thing isn’t even possible, so I’ve decided that I am, in fact, dreaming.”

“Sorry, Scully, but I already nixed the dreaming idea. I pinched myself and I didn’t wake up. I jumped up and down for a while in front of the mirror.”

“Mulder, please tell me you haven’t done anything weird to my body.”

“Scully, I’m hurt that you would even suggest such a thing! I was just trying to gather evidence concerning our current predicament. I mean, you have to agree, it’s definitely an X-File. And you can’t tell me you weren’t even a little bit curious about how all my pieces fit together.”

“I don’t have to agree to anything, Mulder,” she sighed impatiently into the phone. “And furthermore, I’m a medical doctor, I know how the male body works.”

“So you didn’t take the wrapping off the package then, Scully? Attempt a little manual relief for the situation? Don’t forget, it’s my body. I know what it’s like when I first wake up?” **After I’ve been dreaming about you.**

He could almost hear her shaking her head at him through the phone line. “Crude innuendo aside, Mulder, we have to do something about this.”

**Oh great, Mulder, you asshole. Alienate the one person in the world you actually care about some more why don’t you?**

“Okay, Scully, why don’t I meet you at the office? Then we can try and figure out what’s going on.”

“All right, Mulder. I’ll see you there in an hour.”

He could tell she was about to hang up and he was struck with a sudden panic. “Scully, wait!”

“What is it, Mulder?”

“Uh, I need some help with the getting dressed part. I have some experience with -removing- bras, but not putting them on.”

There was silence on the other end.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dana Scully parked in her usual space in the Hoover Building’s carpark and carefully exited the vehicle. Driving in Mulder’s body was a new experience. He was so much taller and just generally larger than she was that she kept having to adjust her spatial perception. Adjustment for the male genitals she’d inherited was also somewhat problematic. She had to keep adjusting herself as they moved around inside her -his- underwear. It really was ridiculous. As many times as she’d fantasised about Mulder, about his body and what it would feel like to touch him, this had certainly never entered her mind.

She was just performing another minute adjustment in her pants when a familiar voice startled her.

“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me, Mulder?”

Spinning around, she found herself face to face with Alex Krycek, who grabbed her and kissed her, hard.

“What the hell, Krycek?” she spluttered and pushed him away, harder than she’d intended. She’d have to remember her -Mulder’s- increased strength.

“Oh, Fox,” he cried. “I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you, and especially later when I saw you in that red speedo! I just want us to be together and now my dreams are going to come true thanks to that bastard Cigarette Smoking Man and his evil Consortium.”

Scully stared at him, befuddled. “Krycek, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you and me together at last, my love! Yesterday I injected you with a new experimental drug that the Consortium has developed. When it spreads into your body and mixes with your saliva, the first person you exchange saliva with–” at this he leered, “will exchange consciousnesses with you the next time you sleep. And since I’m the only person who’s kissed you lately, by this time tomorrow I’ll know what it’s like to feel you inside and out!”

Scully backed away from the deranged look on his face and scrabbled for her gun. “So, what, you and Mul–I mean, me–so you and I are going to just live happily ever after in each other’s bodies? Is that it, Krycek?”

Krycek smiled evilly and amusedly. “Oh no. Once we have sex the compound will be purged and our consciousnesses will revert back to their original bodies. By then I know you’ll love me just as I love you.”

“Krycek, you’re insane if you think I’m going to sleep with you. Oh, and by the way I’m not Mulder, I’m Scully. We kissed last night and woke up this morning in each other’s bodies. So your plan hasn’t worked out the way you wanted it to. And now I’m going to shoot you.”

She shot him. He lay on the ground, wailing heartbrokenly, clutching his left knee. “Oh Fox, Fox, how could you do this to me? Noooooooooooooo!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scully ran to the basement office as fast as she could, which, considering the length and strength of Mulder’s legs, was pretty fast. She might actually miss this once she was back in her own body.

**Wait, what am I thinking?** she thought.

As she raced into the office, she almost barrelled into Assistant Director Skinner.

“Problem, Agent Mulder?” asked the stern-faced, bald man.

“Uh, no sir. No problem,” replied Scully as she caught the frantic gestures of negation Mulder -she- was sending her.

“Good.” He looked at her for a moment and Scully attempted to appear as Mulder-like as she possibly could. “I was just telling Agent Scully that I need to see all your outstanding case reports on my desk by the end of the week. Since I know you’re not currently on an active case, I assume this won’t be a problem.”

Scully nodded jerkily. “No problem. No problem at all sir.”

She waited until she heard the elevator doors closing and then closed the office door and turned to face Mulder.

It was so weird seeing her body as though it belonged to someone else. Which, she supposed, it did for the moment. Mulder had done an okay job of dressing himself. She’d half been afraid she’d come in and find herself slutted up for the day.

“I know what’s going on, Mulder, and I know how to fix it,” she told him.

Mulder heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God, Scully. What do we have to do?”

“We’ve got to have sex.” At the words she felt her -Mulder’s- cock jump. Mulder himself was looking at her as if she’d just spoken in Reticulan.

“We what?”

“I saw Krycek in the parking garage. He…accosted me and told me that he’d injected me -you- with a compound that allowed the initial exchange of consciousness between individuals with the exchange of saliva. Apparently to reverse the process we have to exchange other bodily fluids.”

Mulder looked at her with confusion. “Why would Krycek want you and I to switch bodies?”

Scully ran a hand through Mulder’s hair. “It wasn’t you and I who were supposed to switch. It was you and Krycek.”

“Why would Krycek want to switch bodies with me?” he asked.

Scully cleared her throat and scuffed at the floor. “Uh, he said something about having always loved you and wanting to be with you forever. And he called me -you- Fox.”

Mulder stared at her, mouth open in shock.

“Don’t worry,” she reassured him. “I shot him.”

“You shot him?” he gasped.

“In the knee. I imagine someone will find him eventually.”

“Oh.”

“So, about having sex so we can switch back?” Scully tapped her foot impatiently.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They had decided to go to Scully’s apartment since it was nicer than Mulder’s and she had a bigger bed. They drove there separately and Mulder was still having trouble driving with Scully’s short little legs, not to mention her high heels. It’d been hell all morning just trying to walk and not fall over.

He was trying to think about Krycek and the compound and the Consortium’s evil plots, but all he could really think about was having sex with Scully. Scully and sex. Sex with Scully. Finally all his daydreams and fantasies were going to come true and he could show her the man he really was. Except he was a woman. But maybe after they’d done it and then gone back to being themselves she’d want to do it again. God, he hoped she’d want to do it again. He was getting wet just thinking about it and his nipples were hard. How did Scully manage to go through every day with these sorts of distractions? He was glad this hadn’t happened on a weekend or he might never have gotten out of bed.

He parked outside Scully’s building and walked inside with her up to her apartment. Outside the door were two figures that he realized, with dread, he recognised.

“Mom?” Scully said, in his voice, and he shot her a look. “I mean, Mrs Scully?” she amended quickly. “What are you doing here? And Bill?”

“We’re here to see my sister, you sorry son of a bitch, as if it’s any of your business,” Bill retorted.

Mulder winced as Scully’s -his- eyes widened with what looked like hurt. “Hi, uh, Mom, Bill,” he rushed in, awkwardly. “What are you doing here in the middle of the day?”

“We wanted to surprise you,” said Mrs Scully, hugging Mulder. “Billy’s in town for a few days on assignment and we thought it would be nice to give you a little early birthday surprise. We were just going to let ourselves in with the key you gave me for emergencies and cook you some dinner.”

“That’s really nice, Mom,” Mulder said, looking helplessly at Scully. “But Sc–I mean, Mulder and I have some work to do right now and tonight. Really important work,” he emphasized. Scully nodded. “Maybe you could come back tomorrow?”

“What the hell, Dana?” Bill demanded, demandingly. “Why are you always going off with this guy who is ruining your life instead of being here with your family who loves you?”

“Now, come on Billy,” Mrs Scully interjected, taking his arm. “You know Dana’s work is important to her. We can certainly wait another day.” She kissed Mulder on the cheek and then Scully, and lead a scowling Bill Scully down the hall.

Mulder looked at Scully and saw the pain in her eyes. Not being able to communicate with her family or defend herself to her brother really hurt her, he knew.

“It’s okay, Scully,” he told her. “Everything will be back to normal soon.”

She nodded sadly and they entered her apartment.

They stood inside the door looking at each other for a moment. “Do you want something to drink?” Scully asked, finally.

Mulder shook his -her- head. He licked his suddenly dry lips. “I think we should just try and get this over with.” He watched Scully’s face fall.

**Oh my god, why did I say that? I am such an asshole and I do not deserve her. She is so beautiful and wonderful and all I do is hurt her.**

“Scully, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

She nodded. “It’s okay, Mulder. I know what you meant.”

But he wasn’t sure that she did. He’d wanted to make love to her for so long, sometimes it was all he thought about. And now he’d finally been given the opportunity by Krycek, of all people, in a cruel twist of fate that meant he wasn’t even himself.

He followed her to the bedroom and they paused in front of the bed.

“I think we should just get undressed and get into bed. We don’t have to pretend that it’s anything other than what it is,” she said.

“What if I want to pretend?” he asked.

Her smile was so beautiful and so blinding that he almost wept. “Scully, I’ve wanted you for so long and if this is the only way I get to have you, I’ll take whatever I can get. I just want you.”

“Oh, Mulder, I want you too!” Scully cried.

They began tearing off their clothes, keeping hungry eyes on each other. It was weird, watching his own body and becoming aroused by it, but he supposed it was partly Scully’s body’s response and partly because he knew that it was really Scully in there. He was pretty sure he didn’t actually want to have sex with himself.

Once they were naked, they climbed under the covers and began to kiss. Mulder was so aroused he was squirming, the sensation of Scully’s body’s arousal exciting him even further.

Scully began stroking his breasts and playing with his nipples and he moaned. In retaliation, he grasped her cock and began pumping it in a familiar rhythm. Then it was her turn to moan. It was amazing because they knew exactly how to touch their own bodies to receive the maximum amount of pleasure.

“Oh, Scully,” he moaned. “Dana, I love you so much.”

“Oh, Fox,” she moaned in return. “I love you too.”

She plunged her enormous cock inside his hot, tight opening and he almost passed out from the pleasure. Judging by the expression on her -his- face, Scully was feeling it too.

“Oh Fox,” she sighed, as she began pumping in and out of him. “I want to stay like this forever. I want to be with you forever.”

“Oh Dana,” he replied, in ecstasy and love. “I want to marry you too.”

She stopped and he whimpered a little. “That’s not what I meant, Fox.”

“You mean you don’t want to marry me, Dana?”

She frowned a little. “I don’t know, Fox. I haven’t thought about it. I think we need more time to think about something like that. I just meant that I wanted to fuck you forever because it feels so good.”

“But you love me, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“That’s all I need, Dana. I just need you to love me,” he paused and looked at her lasciviously. “And for you to keep fucking me, of course.”

Soon their rhythmic coupling brought them to ecstasy and they came simultaneously crying out each other’s names.

“Fox!”

“Dana!”

Then they fell asleep, sated.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A few hours later Mulder woke feeling a little sticky and with an emotion of happiness that was more than he’d ever felt before. He opened his eyes to see the tousled hair of his lover spread across the pillow and felt the soft warmth of her little backside pressed tight against his burgeoning erection.

**And we’re back!** he thought in triumph. Now he would finally get to make love to Dana as himself. For as long as he wanted, as often as he wanted. Well, as often as she wanted to, too. But given her moans and screams from earlier, he was pretty sure she’d want to do it as often as he did.

He moved a hand down her body to cup her and felt her wet and ready for him. He felt her wake as she let out a long, drawn out moan. She reached between them to caress his pulsating member.

“Did you bring your flashlight to bed, or are you just happy to see me Agent Mulder?”

Easing her body into the right position, he plunged his hot, hard length into her waiting love cave.

“Let me introduce you to the -real- Agent Mulder.”

“Oh, Fox,” Dana moaned.

He smiled as he began pumping into her fantastic body. She was the most beautiful, wonderful woman on earth and now they would always be together.

–

required elements:

bodyswapping – check
accidental proposal – check
reference to love at first sight – check
lame thought narration – check
three awkward penis jokes – 1, 2, 3, check (actually I think they’re more lame than anything, but I did my best)
Krycek – check
Skinner – check
Tom Colton – check
two random Scullys – check

I FEEL SO DIRTY!

[Originally posted February 2008]

Author’s Notes:

This was inspired by and written as a present for the folks at eyeinfbi. I hope you ladies (do we have any gents?) like it.

Special thanks to:

Helen for answering my questions about ’science-y stuff’; any realistic medical information in this story is entirely her doing.

Wendy for beta services, checking my American spelling, and asking important questions.

Zellie for spotting that last typo.

- = ∞ = -

Scully hasn’t been this afraid of the dark since she was a little girl, not even after Eugene Tooms. With her back braced against the wall, she knows she’s being irrational. Adrenaline and sleep deprivation have mixed a dangerous cocktail in her brain; her sympathetic nervous system is in overdrive. She closes her eyes and tries to regulate her breathing, to focus on slow and even inhalation and exhalation.

The worst part of their current situation is the isolation. If they were almost anywhere else she could set up proper quarantine procedures. There would be lab equipment capable of analyzing the samples they’ve collected. There would be other people on whom to rely, to trust.

This not knowing is making her jittery. Hodges’ hostility, along with her own fears, has combined to make her question herself relentlessly. What was it Mulder had said? “We’re either brilliant or expendable.” Right now she is not feeling particularly brilliant. Her mind buzzes tiredly, incessantly questioning: how is the parasite contracted? How can they prevent further infection? Most importantly, how can they kill it?

No matter what Mulder may believe, Scully is convinced that destruction of the threat is the only viable option. She cannot bear to think of she and Mulder ending up like Richter and Campbell. They’ve been here less than 48 hours and already one man is dead. The parasite’s ability to cross-contaminate between species and the rapid onset of symptoms of infection are terrifying. None of them may have much time to debate this.

Scully leans her head back against the wall and stretches her legs out in front of her. Her eyes feel gritty and her feet are cold inside her boots. She knows her heart rate and blood pressure are up. What she wouldn’t give for a hot bath and her own bed. To be sitting next to Mulder in a plane, or a car, while he eats sunflower seeds and makes bad jokes.

She thinks of the relief on DaSilva’s face when she confirmed that the other woman was free of the black nodules. Of her own relief when the same was confirmed for her. And then Mulder’s destruction of even that small piece of collective hope: “Don’t forget, the spots on the dog went away.”

From the floor, the narrow bed seems acres away, and yet she knows she’s too wound up for sleep. There’s an ache in her left hip where a bruise is beginning to form. Hodges’ acerbic words come back to her, “in the event that something was missed, Agent Scully.” Perhaps she should examine the bodies one more time. Perhaps there’s a clue that she’s missed.

Standing is a distressingly difficult activity. She suddenly has an idea of what it might be like to get old. Pushing the dresser away from the door, she tries to conquer the sudden nausea and dizziness that overtake her. Perhaps another examination isn’t the best idea after all. She’s probably more of a danger to herself than anything else.

In the dim light of the desk lamp, the tiny room feels claustrophobic, tomb-like. Scully wonders how a man, physically larger than herself, managed to live in this confined space for so many months. She runs a hand along the wrapped gift on the desk, a present for a birthday he’ll now never celebrate; the calendar on the wrong date. The posters of women in bikinis amuse her, remind her of the things her brothers thought they kept so secret growing up.

She wonders if there are similar posters in Mulder’s room, if they amuse him too. She wonders if he’s still awake. There’s a heaviness in her chest that’s too much for her to lift alone. For a moment, Scully rests her hand on the doorknob, indecisive. Then she turns it, pulling the door open to the faint hallway light. She crosses quietly to Mulder’s door and taps.

“Mulder?” she calls softly. “Are you awake?”

The door opens as she’s half turned back to her own room. In front of her is her partner, barefooted and shirtless, and she blinks in surprise.

“Scully, is something wrong?”

“Uh, no,” she blinks again. “I just couldn’t sleep. And I thought, if you were awake too, maybe we could keep each other company.”

He nods and moves to let her in. Sitting on the bed, he indicates the desk chair. “We can tell ghost stories.”

That earns him a small smile, and she feels the restriction in her chest ease a little. “How can you be so calm, Mulder?” she asks him, leaning forward to brace her elbows on her knees. “We’re trapped in the middle of a storm, with no way out, and a parasite whose transmission we don’t how to prevent. Doesn’t that make you just a little uneasy?”

“Scully, I’m just as scared as you are,” he tells her seriously. “But this is the first real, conclusive proof we’ve had of the existence of life on other planets. It’s lived in that ice for a quarter of a million years. Who knows how many others like it are still down there? We’ve got to study it. I would think you, as a scientist, would be excited about this.”

He is so earnest, she thinks, so pure in his vision. “Under normal circumstances Mulder, I’d agree with you. But not in this situation. Richter died because one of those creatures had migrated into his brain, and there was at least one more of its larvae present in his blood. These things are hermaphroditic – it would only take one to kill us all and lay dormant to affect someone else when we’re discovered. We have no idea how long they can live once the host is dead.”

“So you’re determined to kill it.” His voice is soft, but it isn’t a question. He’s mirroring her posture on the bed and their knees almost touch in the narrow confines of the room.

Scully nods. “It’s the only chance we have now. We don’t have the facilities or equipment to set up a proper quarantine. I’m sorry, Mulder.” She reaches out and brushes his fingers with her own.

“Jesus, Scully, your hands are freezing.” He grabs the closest one and chafes it between his own. It’s only then that she realises she’s sweating under her three layers of clothing.

“Piloerection,” she mutters as Mulder’s rubbing pushes one sleeve up her arm.

“Are you coming on to me, Scully?” Mulder’s smirk doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

She pulls her hand out of his grip and begins to unlace her boots. “Goosebumps, Mulder. One of the body’s temperature regulation methods, trapping warm air closer to the skin. Except,” she grunts as she pulls off one boot. “It’s not cold. Protracted stress leads to a highly active sympathetic nervous system. My blood is being shunted away from my skin and extremities, toward my heart and skeletal muscles.”

“So the saying ‘cold hands, warm heart’ is really true?”

“Biologically, yes.” Placing her boots neatly under the desk, Scully undoes the buttons on her flannel shirt and tries to wrap it around her feet and lower legs.

Mulder shakes his head and pulls on her arm. “Sit here,” he pats the bed next to him. “My extremities are plenty warm.”

She can’t help but laugh as she curls her feet up under her. Shifting slightly to the side, she winces.

“Sore?”

“A little. I think I bruised my hip when I took down Bear.”

“I meant to tell you, Scully, great tackle. You ever think about playing professionally?” This time the smile on his face is genuine.

She performs a little half-bow. “Growing up with two brothers has its uses.”

For a few minutes they sit in comfortable silence. It’s one of the things she likes best about Mulder, now that they’ve gotten past the awkward newness of their partnership. She likes that neither of them feels the need to fill up the silences.

“Have you eaten anything since we got here?” he asks, eventually.

She has to think about it for a moment. “I don’t think so. Have you?”

Shaking his head, Mulder gets up and scrabbles around in his bag before returning triumphantly with a pack of Oreos. “I knew these would come in handy. They’re not s’mores and there’s no campfire but they’ll have to do.” He opens the packet and offers it. “Pathologists first.”

“Thanks,” she says as she digs cookies out greedily. “Although I don’t think a sugar high is quite what I need right now.”

Mulder clutches a hand to his heart in mock horror. “Scully, I’m ashamed of you. The sugar high is one of the cornerstones of investigating. Didn’t they teach you anything at the Academy?”

Scully rolls her eyes and wishes wistfully for milk. Instead, she washes down her Oreos with some of Mulder’s bottled water. Stretching pulls on her trapezius and she closes her eyes and tries to rub out the stiffness. “Remind me never to do six autopsies back to back again.”

The heat of Mulder’s palm against her neck startles Scully and she opens her eyes to find Mulder twisted to face her, fingers digging gently into muscle and skin. “You should have said something, Scully.”

Raising an eyebrow, she asks him, “And what purpose would that serve, Mulder? It’s not as though there’s another qualified pathologist next door.”

“No, but…” he trails off, drawing his hand away.

“Bear’s autopsy was the worst,” she says suddenly, surprising herself. “It’s been a long time since I’ve participated in surgery on a live patient, years. I didn’t realise how it would affect me to then have to perform an autopsy on the same person.” She sighs and scrubs at her face with her hands, her whole body leaden. “And I blame Hodge. It’s irrational, but I do.”

Mulder eases her hands away from her face. “He’s been antagonistic towards you since the airport. And it was his decision to cut the parasite out of Bear. It’s understandable, Scully. Don’t blame yourself for feeling that.”

“It was the right decision, though. I probably would have done the same thing if he hadn’t been there. Bear was seizing and it was clear that the parasite was moving into the brain stem. He would have been dead either way,” she finishes in defeat.

They sit in silence again, Scully’s thoughts muddied and sluggish. She yawns and Mulder bumps his shoulder against her. “Why don’t you lie down for a while?”

She meets his eyes. They are as weary as she feels and offer the promise of keeping the loneliness and the fear at bay a little longer.

“Are you sure?”

He shoots her a cocky grin. “You’ll help keep me cool.”

She shakes her head and huffs out another laugh. They lie on their sides, facing each other in the narrow bed. Mulder has his back against the wall and Scully curls her knees up into the space between them.

She blinks sleepily at him as her muscles slacken and her breathing slows. “Goodnight Scully,” he whispers. She is asleep before she can say it back.

*

A solid wall of black greets her when she wakes and she blinks several times to be sure her eyes are truly open. Mulder has turned off the desk lamp. She must have rolled over in her sleep because the sough of his breathing is behind her now. His animal warmth is pressed against the length of her back, one long arm slung heavily over her hip and down her thigh.

Scully can’t see the clock and she wonders absently how long she’s slept, what day it is. She is drowsy and not yet ready to relinquish the last vestiges of sleep. Lying here with Mulder curled around her is surprisingly comfortable, comforting, for reasons she’s not prepared to examine right now. She hopes he doesn’t wake up anytime soon.

“Mulder?” she whispers, a quiet test. But his breathing remains a steady, reassuring sound in the otherwise unnatural silence.

It has been a long time since she’s slept with a man, in any capacity. She and Jack made love only a handful of times in the months before their relationship officially ended. His obsession with Warren Dupre and Lula Phillips had become much more compelling than the easy companionship they shared. Since then there have been a handful of dates with men who barely held her attention. And Mulder, who manages to be unfailingly interesting. It is, she thinks, something of a problem.

She has always gravitated toward older, more experienced men; men who are, at least on the surface, not intimidated by her intelligence and drive. Mulder, as far as she can tell, is intimidated by nothing. He seems to respect her, and her opinions, even when they differ from his own.  After years of seemingly endless struggles to prove herself to superiors and colleagues it is a somewhat dizzying feeling to simply be accepted as she is.

That he is so very attractive only complicates matters.

In this room, in this bed, she can allow herself to forget for a little while that this isn’t really her life. Scully moves one hand to cover Mulder’s where it lays atop her leg. That his hands are so much larger than her own astonishes her on occasion. Out of nowhere she will be suddenly reminded of the great difference in their physical sizes. Yet Mulder never makes her feel small or fragile as so many other men have done. He treats her with courtesy, as an equal, as if it has never occurred to him not to. It is one of the very first things she liked about him; that, and the way he smells.

Now she is surrounded by the warm scent of his skin. Lying against him, she can feel with her toes how much further his long legs stretch down the bed; how his hand is half again as big as her own. Surprisingly, having him surround her in this small space, this small room, doesn’t suffocate her at all. Instead, it is sweetly peaceful, a little erotic. There is a hum through her body like bees.

She feels herself drifting somewhere in between sleep and wakefulness, lulled by the rise and fall of Mulder’s chest behind her, and the silky heat of his hand under her own. It occurs to her that Mulder is shirtless, that his half naked body is pressed against her. She has a brief image of rolling over and placing her hands on him, sliding them over his chest and back. She can feel his warmth through her clothes.

Her hand begins to stroke up and down his forearm, the slightly coarse hair sending a delightful frisson of electricity through her fingers. Tendrils of pleasure shoot through her, and over Mulder’s breathing she can now hear her own, louder, and faster, keeping time to the accelerated beat of her heart. This is, she thinks, extremely unprofessional behavior. If Mulder woke up now he would surely be embarrassed, possibly offended. Her own embarrassment would be extreme.

But her hand keeps travelling its slow path up and down his arm. She is not thinking about parasites that live in ammonia hydroxide or the desperate danger they’re in. Instead, she is wondering what it would be like to kiss her partner. To have him kiss her. Just the thought of the soft press of his lips, the hot slide of his tongue, is enough to make her hips shift slightly. A small sound escapes her.

In sleep, Mulder moves too, curling more closely around her, his palm shifting from under her hand up to cover her stomach. As it slips inside her shirt the shock of his skin on hers is as startling as a burn. She waits, breathing shallow, for him to roll over, to wake up. But his body remains slack against her and his breathing deep and steady. She closes her eyes.

She imagines his hand sliding higher, over her ribs to cup a breast. The idea alone hardens her nipples and makes her bite her lip. His open hand would cover her completely, fingers spread upward to her clavicle. She’d be desperate for his mouth, but he’d press it against the back of her neck, open and hot against her spine; pulling her in both directions at once.

Scully moves her hand to once more cover Mulder’s where it rests on her skin. The small muscles of his fingers are lax when she twines her own gently through them. Images of his hands on her body break behind her eyelids like waves. She is impossibly aroused, confused as a schoolgirl. She may either come or cry and both actions terrify her immeasurably.

As gently as possible, she removes Mulder’s arm from around her and eases off the bed. Fumbling a little, Scully manages to find her boots and her flannel shirt. Her body is loose and lethargic as she struggles to find the doorhandle above the thin strip of light seeping below. She does not look back as she slips through the opening and shuts the door softly behind her.

Later, in her own room, when she shoves a hand inside her leggings and makes herself come, she does not think of the sweetness of Mulder’s mouth, or the strength of his hands; of the lean length of his torso, or the softness of his hair; of the bright mischief in his eyes, or the imagined hardness of his cock.

Afterwards, she curls in on herself on top of the covers, raw and shaken. She does not turn off the light.

.

*

More Notes:

This idea was sparked by Sam, who said: ‘My least favourite part of this episode is when she pulls the desk across the door and sits down in the dark. Scully, why don’t you just go into Mulder’s room?’ It’s not exactly SEXY TIEMS, I’m afraid. They just refused to jump each other. I tried to make them, I swear!

I listened to Deb Talan’s song “Comfort” a lot while writing this. The title comes from another Deb Talan song, “Saturn’s Light.”

And I had to eat Oreos. For, you know, research.