TUESDAY
The whole bank thing from the day before had him feeling cross and out of sorts. Déjà vu was never his favorite metaphysical phenomenon.
Scully seems out of it, too. On edge and jumpy.
Just as he was about to suggest they call it a day, she pushes back her chair and stands.
"I'm going home," she says, not making eye contact.
"Okay," he says lightly, and she pauses in the doorway, turning back to him.
"Do you want—" she starts, but cuts herself off.
He raises his eyebrows at her expectantly. He suspects she's feeling the same thing he is – off, like maybe if they separate they may not see each other again. Residual mental innervation, he once heard Chuck Burke call it.
"Never mind," she says, and turns back toward the hallway, though she doesn't leave.
"Go get some sleep," he says gently, "It'll pass."
She gives him a half smile and drifts off toward the elevator.
The room feels empty and stretched out. He grabs his coat and leaves, too.
XxXxXxXxX
WEDNESDAY
She awakens with a pang in her abdomen, can feel the path that Peyton Ritter's bullet took through her torso, though she's been healed for weeks, surprising her doctors and herself. She barely even has a scar. She tries to forget the look of pleased surprise on Alfred Fellig's face as he died in front of her.
Her alarm clock informs her that it's 5:07am, and she swings her legs over the side of the bed, knowing she won't be able to fall back asleep. She may as well get ready for work and get in early.
Mulder is already there when she arrives. They both look at each other in surprise.
There are two Starbucks coffees sitting on his desktop, and he slides one over to her without a word. His thoughtfulness surprises her for some reason, making her feel lightly guilty and she smiles at him to make up for it.
He returns her smile and holds it for longer than normal.
She notices the file in his hands then and nudges her chin towards it, sitting across from him, holding the coffee with two hands.
"What's that?" she asks.
"Skinner sent it down," he says, still smiling. "Undercover assignment in California."
"Undercover?" She feels her eyebrows reaching for the sky.
"Married couple," Mulder says, closing the file and lightly tossing it in her direction. "We don't leave yet. It's going to take about a week to set up. An advance team from the LA field office is working on it."
He's not doing or saying anything suggestive, but his smile coupled with the thought of posing as a married couple is sending her mind to places she's not entirely comfortable with. There's a tightening low in her belly and she takes a sip of coffee—it burns all the way down.
XxXxXxXxX
THURSDAY
She'd been in his apartment a week ago, had gotten cold – she was always cold—and had reached for his suit coat. It smelled like her now, just a touch. A hint of her perfume on the edge of his senses, like a memory. He misses her suddenly, though he saw her only hours ago, an ache opening up inside of him, and he reaches for his phone.
"Mulder, what's wrong?" She says after a ring and a half. There's a hesitant quality to her voice, a sleep-touched breathiness.
"I woke you," he says, feeling like an asshole. He hadn't even glanced at the time.
"Are you okay?" She asks, sounding only slightly more awake.
"Yeah," he says, "go back to sleep."
"Mulder—"
"Go back to sleep."
But she doesn't hang up and neither does he. He pictures her in her bed, head on her pillow, phone to her ear, connected to him by the soft hiss of cellular technology. He thinks of a thread running from cell tower to cell tower, stitching them together, the needle piercing his heart.
They don't hang up for a long time.
XxXxXxXxX
FRIDAY
He has somehow caught his elbow on the sharp edge of a filing cabinet in their office, and her chest clutches in sympathetic affection, even as his colorful swearing fills the air.
He falls heavily into his chair and clamps his other hand over his injured joint.
"Oh, Mulder," she says tenderly, reaching out to run her hands lightly through his hair. He has such thick, wonderful hair, and his current cut makes it look buzzy and stuck up in places like a hedgehog. It works on him, it really, really works.
He raises his eyes to her, his lip in a child-like pout.
"Ouch."
She runs her hands through his hair maybe three more times than is advisable and then reaches down a hand to help him up.
"Come on," she says, "let me buy your elbow dinner."
They end up ordering take-out and eating it at his place.
It's a Friday night, so she lets him talk her into a couple of beers and a movie, and he even lets her pick.
She goes with something light hearted, a rom-com she can't even remember the name of, and after 90 minutes, she finds herself warm and brain-muddled from honey lager and somehow her feet are in his lap and he's rubbing them and she doesn't remember how either of those things started.
The guy gets the girl and the credits roll and she reluctantly pulls her feet out of his grasp and tucks them under herself.
"I should go," she says, though she makes no move to leave.
"You okay to drive?" He asks softly.
She nods and he stands, clearing plates and the couple of empty bottles into his kitchen.
When he returns she's still sitting on his couch, and against her better judgment, or maybe because of it, she reaches out and grabs his hand. His hand is warm in hers, dry, dusty-soft. He gives her fingers a quick squeeze.
"Want to double-feature it?" He asks softly.
She shakes her head and stands, still holding onto him.
"I should go," she says again.
He takes a half-step towards her.
"Stay," he whispers.
XxXxXxXxX
SATURDAY
He comes awake slowly, comfortable and impossibly warm. He's still fully dressed.
Scully drifted over in the night, is tucked into his side, still deeply asleep, also fully clothed. They slept under the duvet but not the sheet, like that somehow negated the fact that they were sharing his bed.
They tiptoe and tiptoe around this thing between them, a pirouette of feeling, of unresolved sexual tension. He's almost lost her – how many times? – and why hasn't he done anything, why hasn't he?
He remembers finding out she was in remission-the relief that ripped through him, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, like a net - catching everything inside him, even the strength to stand. He had fallen to the floor. She would live.
They both had. But he is tired of the dance.
Her lips are parted in sleep, glistening like she just licked them. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to lean in and kiss them, so he does. He finally does.
The next thing he knows, Sleep Scully is kissing him back. Without even a breath of wakefulness she's there too, and it feels so good to be kissing someone. To be kissing Scully.
He's a tactile person, a touchy person, but he denies himself those things out of some self-punishment thing that he refuses to analyze in himself but probably has to do with Samantha. To touch and be touched feels amazing and Scully is touching him now, is sort of awake and has somehow not decked him for the osculational indiscretion but instead is clutching his shirt and sucking at his bottom lip and he takes a moment to ensure himself that he's not actually still asleep and dreaming.
She senses his lull and pulls back, looking into his eyes, hers a sleepy aquamarine.
"Sorry," he says, smiling, not really sorry at all.
"Don't be," she says, her voice sleep-choked and rumbly.
He expected her to by shy for some reason, but she's not. They're not teenagers, he reminds himself. There's a real-life grown-ass woman in his bed, and she's still clutching at his shirt. He reaches around her and grabs her backside, pulling her to him, tight.
"I…" He starts, but how do you tell your partner of almost 7 years that that you're insanely in love with them and have been since almost day one and would they mind terribly if you fucked their brains out because that's all you want to do whenever they're within a foot of you?
"Me too," Scully says with a kicky smile, like she heard everything he was thinking.
She probably did, he thinks. There's something ethereally otherworldly about Dana Scully. She heals fast and she can't die and she's a deadeye marksman.
"With an ass that won't quit," he whispers and she's about to give him a look, but he leans in and starts kissing her neck and she sighs instead.
He peels off his shirt, then undresses her slowly, mapping out the soft planes of her body with fingers, with lips. She is uncharted country and he an explorer, intent on discovery.
She's placid in his bed. Warm, willing. She has a sleepy smile on her face and the morning sunlight coming through the window catches on her carmine hair, practically burns his eyes.
She reaches up tenderly when he pauses to look at her, brushes her hand along his raspy jaw, pulls him down to kiss her. He marvels at the pillows of her lips, the way her tongue dances with his. He will never get enough of this, not ever, but there are other places to explore.
He works his way down her body, pausing at her breasts, lavishing them with the attention they're due.
When he moves to the triangle of soft curls at her center, he's taken with the color. He's always known she was a natural redhead—she's always careful in the sun, curses the MC1R gene (it's just like her to curse a gene)—but the fact that the carpet matches the drapes delights him. And just like that, he's developed another Dana Scully-specific kink.
Scully is fully awake now and hungry, hungry for him. He can see it in her eyes, in the way she's pulling at his his jeans, pushing them down.
He had planned to make slow, reverential love to her, but she has other plans, pushes him back toward the mattress and climbs atop him. This is more than he had ever even dreamed and he's having trouble processing. When she grabs him and guides him home, he's certain his brain will short-circuit.
She is riding him hard and has her fingers in his mouth and when she looks at him, connects eyes with him, her hair swaying rhythmically into her eyes, all he can say is,
"Yeah, yeah."
It's been so long, he's not sure how much longer he can hold out when Scully grabs his shoulder with one hand, reaches between them with the other and within seconds is clamped down on him, he can feel her orgasm around him and he's gone too, lights bursting behind his eyes, flashpoint.
Later, when they're laying there, a little sweaty, breaths coming in ever-slowing puffs, he feels a wetness on his chest where her head is resting. He tilts her chin up, canting her face to his own. There are tears in her eyes, but she's smiling, and he feels the exact same way, he knows he does. There's an ocean of feeling inside of him, and Scully the only spit of land.
XxXxXxXxX
SUNDAY
She could have laid around in his bed with him all day, drinking coffee, reading the paper, but she had lunch plans with her mother and dinner with a friend, had no clothes at his apartment. She kissed him lingeringly at his door, slow to leave, and he held her hand, only dropping it when she was in his hallway and he stood there watching her, leaning against the doorframe and he was still there when the elevator doors closed.
She rolls her face into her pillow smiling, thinking of where she was, what she was doing just 24 hours ago.
She thinks she hears something and stills. There it is again, a light knocking at her door, she's certain.
Donning a robe, she approaches the door, looks through the peephole.
She swings the door open, the air differential puffing her hair up around her face.
"Mulder," she says, "it's not even 8:00."
He bites his lip.
"Can I come in?"
She nods, tucking in a smile as she opens the door to him, a sudden feeling like estrus washing over her. She feels like a nymphet, like Lolita. The low throb of want in her womb suddenly shorting out all other circuits. She couldn't stop thinking about him yesterday, of them. She channels her partner for a moment, thinking maybe some psychic connection, some siren paphian call brought him to her this morning.
"I'm sorry," he says, stepping inside, "I… I couldn't stop thinking about you."
She steps into him, close, steps right on top of his feet and scrunches her toes around his shoelaces. Her face is inches below his.
"Fuck," he whispers.
And all she does is nod, and his lips are crushing into hers, finally, finally.
They stumble their way to her bed, shedding clothing, leaving no space between them.
The backs of her knees hit the bed and she leans back, pulling him to her and she wonders if there is any feeling quite so delicious as the heavy, warm, hard planes of a man's body atop your own, but he starts kissing his way down her torso, and yes, yes there are.
And then he's nudging her, asking if it's okay to go down on her and she has this sudden realization that as well as she knows him—and she knows him pretty well—she has no idea of his sexual proclivities, and the fact that he's practically begging to eat her out is just so perfectly him that it takes everything she has to not laugh out loud at the absurdity of the moment.
He takes her silence as hesitancy and his brows crease.
"Scully?" He says, pulling back a fraction of an inch and she can't have that, so she practically bucks her groin into his face.
Luckily, that's all the encouragement he needs, and he grabs her by the hips, and his tongue is there—holy shit, right there, and she doesn't think anymore, she just feels.
Supernova. There's no other word for it. In no time at all she's coming apart at an atomic level. It's almost too much, but it's never enough, and then slack, her whole body, slack.
He gives a rumbly chuckle, planting a firm kiss just under her belly button, and she comes back to herself as he works his way back up her body. He pauses at her necklace, taking the delicate chain into his mouth and tugging on it gently. It's somehow incredibly erotic, and she bites her bottom lip. If Father McCue could see her now…
And then his face is even with hers and his lips are back and she's tasting the warm tang of herself on his lips.
"I want…" she hears herself say.
"Anything," he whispers.
"You," she says, and he's there, right there again, and she's filled to the hilt, and it's all she wants to feel.
Five thrusts, ten, and she hooks her leg up, wraps an ankle over his hip, and they're both gone again. How, she thinks, how is this possible?
He rolls off of her after a minute and she misses the crush of his weight, but he takes her hand and holds it to his lips.
"Is this what this is always going to feel like?" Mulder asks, a hint of awe in his voice.
She presses a kiss to his temple. She's pretty sure it will.
XxXxXxXxX
MONDAY
They have to be at work in an hour, but this has been the best weekend of his life and he's loath to let it end.
He has his hands around her rib cage, his thumbs nearly touching, and she reminds him of a bird—all hollow bones and soft feathers, and he wonders at how this small sprite of a woman contains such strength.
"Satyriasis," Scully says, contemplatively.
Med school word, Mulder thinks.
"It's going to be hard to work today," she says in explanation.
"It's going to be hard to work everyday."
"No funny business at the office," she says then, stern, like she's trying to convince herself.
"Funny business?" He parrots back, teasing.
"I'm serious, Mulder," she says.
You're always serious, he thinks.
"Not in the field, either," she says.
He lets go of her, groans and falls back against the mattress dramatically.
"We can't play the part next week in Arcadia?" He asks the ceiling.
"Mulder," she says, her tone a warning.
"No, you're right," he relents. As if those who want to shut them down need another excuse.
There's silence for a moment, then her voice comes to him low, quiet.
"But we're not in the office yet," she says, standing.
She takes his hand, pulls him toward her bathroom, her shower. She pulls him with her, to her, away from himself, away from the earth.
The office is twenty minutes away, but he's lightyears beyond it, soaring into the heavens, up, up and away.
XxXxXxXxXxX
The End