Haven't written XF in forever and a day, but here's a post 'all things' piece...
She is rich mahogany
and smooth, smooth, thick lines. Sturdy, slick, shiny, she is lying
in his bed directly next to him and for the second time that evening,
his breathing slows and he takes a long moment to allow his vision to
simply soak in the sight of her.
Even disheveled she is compact, complete, cloistered. Completely casual and clean.
In the way her breath falls across the pillow-his pillow-he can tell she is dreaming and while he knows that it is not of him, he hopes with all that he truly has left in him that it's of a much better place, someplace softer in which she can stand and simply be instead of having to stand and fight.
The way her shoulder catches the reflected moonlight is too perfect and too... something he can't quite place. It's a stillness and peace in the chaos that is life for the both of him. Watching her is cement and glue, it grounds him; watching her is smoke and breeze, carrying his mind, if only for a moment, to a place where he can spend an entire day cataloguing the exact color of her skin.
Stomach empty, heart full, Mulder rests his head into the pillow, as if burrowing, and sighs out seven years of subdued sadness. She is the everything he has needed; she is the one, deep breath he has needed to still his shaking, tilting, quaking world.
She, is.
His fingers are stubby and rough, so wrong for the texture that covers her. But he has to touch and he does, first an index finger trailing along the bulge of her bicep, a middle finger reaching out at the curve of her elbow. She is perfect in so few ways that his heart clenches because that simple fact makes her so.
Perfect.
Pain.
There is so much pain in her, pain that settles in his chest, twines through his ribs and crawls up into his lungs, clenching as he stares upon her face. Lips slightly parted, left hand nearly tucked under her chin...
She, is... Chinese lanterns at dusk and summer cookouts. Mozart and Chopin and loud, loud, loud. Magic eight ball, steel, glass and flame. She is above all else his and he knows this but can't help but compare her to every known, rational thing that can hold water.
A simplistic puddle-wonderful and candle-bright, there's nothing about her that he can truly place in order for her to make sense to him. She wasn't supposed to happen... but she did. Scully makes so very much sense to him and yet doesn't. If he knows her science then he must know math and yet two and two continually refuse to add to four.
Thrown him for a loop, that's what she'd done.
A slow, slow-slide seduction that he didn't realize he'd been under was she. An unintentional bewitching has overtaken him and he's never been so very sated and confused at the exact same moment.
Movement and symphony as she stirs and his hand is pulled quickly away, his heart reeling as his head settles into the pillow and sleep is feigned. Confrontation should be saved for another time; he can hold this slight wonderment and perhaps hope for a stronger certainty in the morning.
Cracked eyes, he watches her sit up and glance down at her naked form, at his.
Fight or flight and she chooses flight, leaving a lingering glance to breeze over his skin as he cracks and eyelid and watches her steal from the bedroom.
There's nothing perfect about her as she leaves, but still she's sturdy and yet pliant, gleaming and gloomy. She encompasses him and he hopes for a curtain call.