Title: Everything is about both of us.
Author: Renata Gabriela Heckler da Fontoura
E-mail:
Keywords: MSR
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: Never Again, Cancerman and Pilot
Disclamer: Mulder and Scully don't belong to me, but to Chris Carter and the 20th Century Fox. This story's purpose is just to entertain the fans.
Summary: "Not everything is about you, Mulder." The discussion about the events of Never Again was just begining when she said those words.
Author's Note: People I'd really really, but REALLY love to get a feedback. After all, isn't that what makes us all keep writing? Besides the pleasure handling this two awsome characters of course. ;)
So now, lets just cut the crap and go ahead with the story!!
"Not everything is about you, Mulder. This is my life."
But the truth was she wans't so sure. That really had been about her, about her life or, more specificly, about the possibility of that life reaching its end. However, over the last couple of days, she had seen in Ed a chance to escape, a chance of distancing herself from Mulder and from all the bad things that had been happening to her.
"Yes, but it's my..." He didn't know whether how or if he should finish that sentence. He felt something had changed inside her since the Leonard Bett's case, but he couldn't tell what exactly.
He could feel the distance she was putting between them, the cold, the doubt and even the fear building inside of her. He just couldn't find out why.
They stayed there in silence for a couple of minutes, none of them knowing how to begin a conversation. Before, Mulder had tried to go back to their routine presenting her some random case, but just as she wasn't following what he was saying, he didn't want to get into another disgusting case and simply forget about all what had happened.
Mulder wanted to know why she'd done that, why she opened herself to a complete stranger, why she was trying to distance herself from him and, a part of him he was trying to ignore, also wanted to know why she couldn't open herself that way to him.
"Maybe I was looking for something more" she said, breaking the silence and quiting of waiting for him to finish what he had started to say.
"Looking for what?"
"I don't know, Mulder. My life, maybe." She didn't know why she was trying to explain what had happened, but she felt she couldn't let that hanging between them. As much as she wanted to forget, Mulder would keep reminding her everytime they looked at each other.
She had seen the pain in his eyes earlier. She didn't know why that had hurt him so much, but the fact remained was that it did. She had hurt him and didn't want to keep looking at him and seeing the effect of her own actions. She just wanted to be able to erase everything from his and her own memory.
"Sometimes I think I lost my life at some point along the way or that it got so mixed with our work that I can't say where one begins and the other ends. Mulder... I can't say for sure why I did that. Maybe I was just feeling lonely and wanted someone to notice me. Then I met Ed... I... Have you ever looked around and tried to give all of this some meaning? And then you noticed you're sticking in the same place trying with all your strenght to take a step foward, but you remain there while everything else around you changes, while the time passes? Have you ever noticed that all the youth you once thought you had, that all the life you thought you had ahead of you is reaching its end while you're walking in circles?"
"Is that what you think I'm doing?" he looked at her but her eyes were still locked with the dry petal on her hands that, he was starting to realize, she thought represented her own life. She didn't answer, so he continued. "Do you think I'm holding you? That while the world spins, I've tied you by the foot of this table and not letting you follow with your life?" He stoped when he saw her shook her head still looking down. "Oh, ok, I know. Not everything is about me, right Scully?"
"No, maybe you're right someway, Mulder. Maybe this is about you, although not because you've tied me to the table, but because at some point, that night when I entered your room, scared, and asked you to exam my body, I did the knot myself. The one I now can't seem to be able to undo. But it's around both of us, Mulder." Just then she was able to look at him and he was able to see in the deep blue eyes something he'd never seen before, something he didn't know what meant.
"I'm sorry, Scully." He simply said.
"Why?" She asked, arching her eyebrow.
"For presuming that someway you wanted this, you wanted to have me around." Now he was the one looking to his own hands that were holding a pencil over the table. "I think I've held you long enough."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm undoing the knot now, Scully."
She got up, walked to the door and just when she touched the handle, she turned to look at him.
"Maybe all I wanted was for you to tighten it up a little" she said.
"Damn it, Scully. Can't you be clearer?" Now he was on his feet and walking towards her. "Couldn't you let the enigmatic doctor Scully aside for a while and tell me what in hell you want?! I may know what some of your looks mean, but I can't read minds yet, Scully! If stepping out of this door and leaving me here is what will make you happy, go Scully! If that's what you really want, you can go! But don't ask me what will give your life some meaning, Scully, because I can't answer that one." Then he saw her shoulders falling and felt her shrinking right in front of him.
"Do you want me to go?"
"Of course not, Scully!" Confused, Mulder held his head on his hands. "But I think this isn't about what I want, Scully. I'm trying to understand what's happening here."
Scully walked past him and sat on the chair in front of the table once again.
"When Betts attacked me, he told me he needed something from me" she said in such a low voice that it took him a while to process what it meant.
"And you think..." He couldn't finish that sentence. Just the thought of her being ill made him feel his heart breaking.
She looked at him and saw how much that was affecting him too.
"Mulder..." She walked towards him and touched his hand. " 'But it's my' what?" She asked and he looked at her, confused. "Earlier, when I said that not everything is about you, you started to say something. What was it? What was it, Mulder?"
"It doesn't matter anymore, Scully." He took his hand away from her and averted his eyes.
"It matters to me, Mulder. I want to know what you were going to say."
"No, Scully, you were right before. This is your life, I have nothing to do with it. And specially, I have nothing to do with who you sleep with." He regreted saying the last part just as the words were slipping out of his mouth. "I'm sorry, Scully, I... I didn't mean that."
"Mulder..." Now she was sat once again and Mulder went back to his chair not knowing what to say.
"Why did you decide now that you wanted to know what I was going to say?" He asked, not knowing exactly why he was bringing up the subject again.
Scully wasn't sure of what to answer, she thought the conversation had already ended. She was as exausted from what had happened on that basement as from everything her mind still had to process. She still wasn't feeling like herself.
She looked at him.
"Because... I don't know, Mulder. Maybe I thought that, somehow, what you were about to say was going to clarify something that's been bugging me since the night I spent in Ed's apartment."
Her saying that she spent the night in Ed's apartment and not with him, made Mulder's heart skip a bit, but he instantly told himself that she was probably using those words not to hurt him.
"And what's that?" Now he could see her fighting with herself to decide whether she should or shouldn't respond.
"Why I hadn't been able to have a single date for all these years and especially why I couldn't sleep with Ed even when that was what I thought I wanted." She was looking at a point beyond his shoulder when she continued. "Why I felt like I was cheating on you."
The breath he had been holding since she started to talk was set free in the form of her name.
"Scully..." He knew how much that had been difficult for her, just as he knew that now was his turn.
Although all he wanted at that moment was to get up, take her in his arms so she'd never have the chance again of meeting another Ed Jerse and tell her that everything was going to be ok, he knew she needed to discuss every point first. It was her nature.
"Scully..." he whispered her name again.
The way his voice had sounded when he said it was none of his business who she sleeps with, made her want to know even more what he began to say earlier and it had flicked something on inside of her that she had been trying to hide for four years: the reason why since she joined the x-files and more especifically, since she met Fox Mulder, she hadn't looked twice to any man, any man other than him.
When she had met Ed in that shop, she thought she could, somehow, let the agent Scully aside and Dana would slip to the surface. But what she didn't know was that it wasn't Ed that Dana wanted. Just as Scully, what Dana wanted was Fox Mulder.
Now, though, she wasn't so sure of what she'd heard in his voice. Maybe he was just mad or desappointed because she willingly put herself in such a dangerous situation. He was not necessarily was jelous of her.
She sank on the chair a little further, waiting for him to say he liked her a lot, but he saw her just as a friend, a sister maybe. She had already regreted saying all that she had just said, when he started to speak.
"Scully, I don't even know where to begin. I hadn't exactly thought about what I was going to say then." When he saw her fight back the tears that were forming in the blue eyes, he decided to go straight to the point. "I was probably going to say that it's my life too now. But I don't know if that's the best way to describe what I'm feeling. Maybe it summarys it pretty neatly, but it definetely doesn't explain everything."Now he was the one concentrating in somewhere beyond her.
"Then explain it to me, Mulder." He could hear the mix of fear and hope in her voice.
"Scully, four years ago, when you came into this office, I think it's not new for you, I thought you were sent here to spy on me..."
"And you weren't wrong" she whispered.
"But your integrity prevailed and, although you still push me and make me prove every single theory of mine, you didn't do what they told you to. I came to admire you for that, but I still appreciated the wall I had built around myself. However, as the time went by, you turned from just my beautiful and intelligent partner into something more, you were my friend and I began to depend on you like I've never depended on anyone before. Sometimes I think I depend on you even to breath, Scully." Now he was looking right at her and could see that she wasn't fighting her feelings anymore as tears were forming a crystal path through her pale skin. "But even then I was still trying to deny why my heart starts to beat faster everytime I look at you and why I hold my breath everytime you touch me as light and chaste as that touch may be. Or why I feel such an incontrollable anger every single time I think that another man can take you away from me. You understand what I'm trying to say, right?"
At some point during his speech, Mulder had gotten up from his chair, turned around the table and was now knelt in front of her.
"I didn't mean to make you cry" he said at last, taking her face into his hands wiping her tears with his thumbs.
"Say it, Mulder" she pleaded. "I need to hear it."
He took a couple of seconds to understand her quest.
"I love you, Scully." He saw the smile on her face and felt a little more confident to complete. "I'm completely in love with you, Dana."
When she heard him calling her by her first name, her smile grew larger contrasting with the tears that were still shining in her eyes.
"Mulder..." she started, but stopped as soon as she noticed his face coming towards her, giving her time to pull back if she wanted.
Then, when she felt his lips pressing against hers, Scully completely forgot what she was going to say and gave herself in to the feeling of his hands sliding to the back of her neck and to her waist and of his tongue caressing hers.
The kiss started slow as they recognized each other, but soon changed as the hunger they had been feeling for four years surfaced.
When they finally broke the kiss, they were both breathless.
"Mulder" Scully touched his forehead with hers, trying to regain her breath. "I need..." She didn't finish the sentence, but Mulder knew what was still bothering her, it was bothering him as well.
"Scully, listen to me" he said, taking her face between his hands and looking into her eyes. "I know you're still worried about what Betts said, I guees I don't have to say that I am too. I'd have liked you had trusted me enough to tell me this before." He saw the hurt in her eyes and instantly regreted using that word, trust had always been the base of what stuck them together. "I'm sorry, Scully, I didn't mean you don't trust me, but I wished you'd felt confident enough to tell me. What I'm trying to say here is that we need to know what he was talking about and IF he was right before anything. We don't need to jump to any conclusions."
"I have an appointment next week for some exams" she said.
"You're going to be ok, Dana." She blank at the use of her first name for the second time in such a short time. "WE are going to be ok as long as we're together" he finished, seeing the smile that had grown on her face dieing as she moved towards him.
"Well, we still have a whole weekend before anything then" she said before covering his lips with hers.
While he kissed her, Mulder was trying to assure her as much as himself that everything really would end up just fine. But soon they were so lost into eachother that the problems had simply vanished, or were so clouded by the new discovery of their love for one another that they allowed themselves to bury them deep into their minds.
Soon Mulder's hands guided Scully to the top of the table so he didn't need to be knelt in front of her. She sat on the piece of furniture and Mulder stood between her legs, which made her skirt go up to the midle of her thighs. Scully took his lips with hers again, while he slid his hands trough her skin to the top os her thighs and as she felt the path of warmth they left, she heard herself responding to his touch with a moan coming from the back of her throt.
Mulder heard her whispering his name against his mouth and slid his hands to her waist bringing her to him and pushing his body against hers, making her feel his erection pressed thight against the moist warmth between her legs.
Scully was about to slide her hand through his turgid member, when the telephone started to ring.
Without breaking the kiss, Mulder reached the phone.
"Mulder" he answered while Scully, her body still pressed against his, looked at him with the puppy dog eyes he so often used to use with her. For a moment he even let himself admire the pink lips swollen from his kisses, her skin flushed and her chest rising and discending rapidly from her harsh breath. The voice in the other end sounded even more distant as she started to place wet kisses along his neck.
"No problem, Sir. The report will be on your desk by Monday" Mulder said, putting the phone back on the huck and turning to Scully.
"Mulder, take me home" she whispered to him.
They still kissed for a couple of minutes before disintangling from one another and reajusting their clothes.
When they turned off the lights and left the room, only the shine in their eyes showed the path their relationship had just taken.
They still had important things to do, problems to solve, truths to persue, but they would have to wait untill Monday along with Skinner's report. They had four years of unsolved sexual tension to solve.
