Iris: Chapter 7

If you need me, call me
No matter where you are
No matter how far (don't worry, baby)
Just call my name
I'll be there in a hurry
You don't have to worry

~Marvin Gaye, Ain't No Mountain High Enough

...

The Mulder Family Residence

Chilmark

Martha's Vineyard

Summer of '79

...

Mulder pushed his still sweaty hair out of his face, leaning back against the headboard as his hands did lazily little circles on the inside of her upper thigh where she was still warm and sticky from their love making earlier.

He looked very pleased with himself and Scully felt herself begin to relax into his ministrations as the path of his fingers grew closer and closer, in a nearly hypnotic fashion, to where she wanted him most. She felt herself get more and more distanced from what they were talking about earlier, before any of this had started.

Something about him driving up to the base, right?

Mulder shrugged, a smile playing about his lips, the kind of smile that brought her straight back down to earth. 'What the hell was he up to'.

Scully grumbled, moving her legs off of his, shuffling away from his exploring happy fingers. "Mulder quit trying to distract me, will you?", she scolded, kicking him away playfully as she sat up next to him on the pillows. "For God's sake, how do you expect to get a serious answer when you're hands are inches from touching my-"

Mulder chuckled, drowning out the rest of her sentence. She glared up at him pointedly.

"Okay, okay. Scully, I'm sorry", he said genuinely, expression changing to an apologetic one as he wrapped his arms around her from behind until she was half leaning against the head board and half against his bare chest. "My hands are here, right on top of your hands, no where your mother and father wouldn't want them to be on their precious daughter."

At this Scully smirked, her eyes twinkling with mischief, as she dropped one of her own hands into his lap, dangerously close to Mulder Jr.

"Today alone, your hands have already been everywhere my mother and father wouldn't approve of, Mulder."

She supposed this was definitely one of the many many upsides of dating your best friend. It was already commonplace in her house for her to disappear in the morning and be back late when she was out with Mulder. Not too many questions were asked because they had already been together so long. Her parents trusted them enough to be alone together for long periods of time because that's they way it's always been.

They trusted that the activities of their seventeen year old daughter and her best friend were not too different now than before they had become a romantic couple.

They trusted that their family's teachings and the teaching of the church they visited every Sunday without fail, had instilled a sense of morals in their children. Morals that would have them wait for marriage to consummate a relationship.

Scully supposed it was already too late for religious teachings!

Mulder gulped, his hazel eyes turning dark brown with desire, as his girlfriend's fingers cupped him, squeezing and stroking him in all the right ways from shaft to tip.

He let out a loud guttural moan, thrusting into her hand. Thank God his dad wasn't home; He was, as usual, away on business, leaving his eighteen year old son with a house to himself. (Probably not the most responsible of ideas...but since when was Bill Mulder the most responsible of guys.)

Scully smirked, giving Mulder one last stroke, her fingers swirling teasingly in his precum before letting go of him completely, scooting away on the bed until there was an almost respectable distance between their bodies.

"So Mulder, tell me what were you saying again about a possible point of entry on the Chilmark Naval base?", she asked, a devious smile playing about her lips, her eyes the picture of innocence as she watched him squirm from across the bed.

'He really does have a libido like a bottle rocket', Scully thought to herself almost affectionately, when in reality she wasn't a whole lot better. Their activities from the last few days since they had first had sex on the beach had definitely more than proved that.

Mulder eyes were wide, dark brown like melted chocolate and honeycomb, bottomless and filled with lust. Clearly he was trying to recover from what had almost happened. His mouth was gaping just a little.

"Oh yeah...well, um...the point of entry...umm...it was an...entry point to the...um, base...that we can...enter through"

Scully giggled, giddy that her touch could have her never-stuck-for-words-about-anything best friend/boyfriend absolutely stuck for words. "Kinda hard to be serious when someone's hands are all over you, huh?", she asked amused.

Mulder growled, trying to pull himself back together. He wouldn't let her beat him on this one. How on earth could his villainous saint of a best friend go from lust hooded eyes and hand jobs to giggles in a blink of an eye like that.

He loved that they could explore this new side of each other now, the feral, carnal and sexual side. It was good, whole, beautiful, a way to escape the confusion and pain of their reality and just live in their own little bubble together for a short but precious while.

Wonders never seized.

Mulder sat up uncomfortably straight in the bed, under the very smug gaze of one Dana Scully.

"I'm telling you, Scully; I drove the perimeter of the base today and the fence is broken about a quarter mile from the north entrance, just like Corinda told us, 'a clipped back wire'". He said all of this very fast, trying to keep his voice even.

Scully smiled triumphantly, returning to her original position leaning against the head board, her arms crossed over her chest.

Victory sure was sweet, but she wasn't going to be too mean. It was best if they dropped their teasing game for now. They had, after all, things to talk about...like the state of mind that Scully was almost certain Corinda was in when she revealed said "prophecy" that Mulder seemed to believe wholeheartedly in.

"Mulder, did you see her eyes? If I was that stoned—", Scully began to argue sceptically but Mulder smirked dryly, raising his eyebrows suggestively.

"Oooh, if you were that stoned what?". He knew this wasn't something to joke about, none of it was when it came to Samantha, but it was a defence mechanism.

Scully rolled her eyes, only smiling slightly and half heartedly swatting him on the arm. She knew why he was acting the way he was, to make her think he was okay even when

"I'm just saying that you really need to consider the possibility that she was bullshitting us."

Grumbling in frustration, Mulder tutted aloud, throwing his head back dramatically. Despite his joking and fooling around, he really did need her to see how seriously he was taking this. This was about his father and his sister.

The truth behind everything that had happened to his tragically dysfunctional family in the past six years.

He always tried to act as though he were he was able to hold everything together inside, that was what he was trying to do even then, but he felt his resolve slipping.

The dam he built around his emotions was slowly crumbling until he, inevitably, had to let Scully in.

That was just how they were, how they always had been.

"Scully, the wire was broken just like she said it would be. We're wasting time over-thinking this. We need to act, I need to act-", his voice broke off as it struck him, once again, what he was going to do.

His father; a man who he had admired as a small child and grown indifferent to in his early teen; A man who was never around for his wife or son after his daughter disappeared; A man who could have been behind the same disappearance of his daughter.

The thought brought back a blazing upsurge of pain and memories that Mulder always tried his best to keep locked away, even from Scully: Samantha's smile bright and carefree like any little girl her age, her voice and the teasing sing song tone she always adopted when she teased her older brother, her screams for help as she was taken, screams that Mulder has been trying to answer to ever since.

Scully knew where his thoughts had wandered to, she always knew.

She knew that there was no talking to him when it came to finding Samantha, there never had been, it was why he was so adamant to get into that damn base.

His parents always told him to move on, even though they barely had themselves. They hired shrinks to treat him, men and women who more or less told him the same thing, albeit more tactfully.

His mother had even suggested recently that they have a funeral service for Samantha to try and bring the family some closure.

Neither Mulder nor Scully had talked much about that since he first brought it up a few weeks before. He wasn't able to let go of his sister, not when he could feel that she was still out there. She had to be!

Scully wanted to believe for his sake and on the odd time she found herself praying, she prayed for Sam.

Scully knew there was no 'moving on' for Mulder. Sorrow isn't something a person can leave behind, it becomes part of them. It changes the way you see, feel, and think, and every once in a while sometimes completely unexpectedly, the pain isn't remembered, it's relived.

She saw first hand how loosing Samantha changed Mulder, it changed her too. It made both of them grow up a lot quicker than they should have. It brought them further from everyone else and bound them even closer together irreversibly. Together they had seen things they couldn't explain, things they couldn't tell anyone else without seeming completely insane.

"I'm just worried about you", Scully sighed, putting a hand on Mulder's cheek, guiding him closer and grounding him to her so the darkness wouldn't take hold and she could make him see sense. "I know you want answers, I do too...but we can't walk into this blindly, it wouldn't end well. We need more than some crazy choice words about a hole in a fence from one of Missy's new age, hippie fortune teller friends"

Mulder frowned, ready to argue. He couldn't keep waiting to take action, it was eating him up inside. His sister was out there somewhere...and his father and those other men from the Naval Base knew all about it. " I can't do it anymore", sounding more desperate than angry.

On one hand, he needed to see what was going on in that base but on the other, he didn't want Scully to get hurt in the process.

The hopelessness in Mulder voice broke Scully's heart, he could see it. He could see it in the way her eyes watered and feel it in the way she was holding on to him, like their lives depended on it.

Mulder continued, "I can't not know what happened to her anymore. I can't keep going like this...not when we're this close to the truth. I understand if you need more to go on, I really do. Like I said before, I won't watch you risk your life on this, Scully. But I accept the risk myself, I have to."

Scully smiled sadly, humourlessly, as she absentmindedly traced the corner of his mouth, seeing everything that was left unsaid in his deep hazel eyes. She knew he had to do this, with or without any evidence to go by. She knew how goddamn stubborn he could be sometimes, he knew because she was like that too.

Scully knew she could dig her heels in and say she wasn't going with him unless they had something real and tangible to go on, but she knew he would go anyway. For him there was no other choice.

But there was none for her either. Mulder needed someone with him, he needed her with him.

And she needed him.

"Mulder, as crazy as I think be living Corinda is, I'm going with you. I made up my mind about that days ago...years ago even"

Mulder looked up at Scully guiltily, reaching out and tucking his fingers under her chin until all he could see was the blue of her eyes. Blue like logic. Blue like reason. Blue like peace and refuge.

His Scully. His best friend. His constant and touchstone.

Could he really walk in there with her by his side? Could he really risk loosing her when she was the only person left in his life who he really and truly loved unconditionally.

Mulder knew they had had this very discussion that night in her living room, but his own internal struggle about steering them straight into danger had persistently haunted him since.

Corinda said they would think that they had escaped, but really the never would. Those were the words of her prophecy that had haunted him the most. Would his determination for answers condemn them to a fate that would last the rest of their lives? He could never do that to Scully.

It was the one thing that stopped him from getting in his car and driving to the base right now.

"Mulder", Scully whispered, pulling him away from his thoughts and closer to her until their faces were centimetres apart, personal space a completely lost concept as her breath fell on his face and his on hers. "It's my choice and I choose you...over and over again. Always. Can't you see that?"

Scully knew that many people would take Mulder's needless protectiveness as demeaning because she was a girl, but she didn't and, as was everything with Scully, there was reason behind it; She was just as protective of him. Gender stereotypes had nothing to do with it, it never had.

There was just pure mutual concern for one another and an urgent to keep each other away from danger. It was why she was determined to go with him and why he wished she wasn't.

Scully let her thumb run across his jawline soothingly and held his troubled gaze as she continued. "I've seen first hand how much losing your sister has changed you and affected you and I'm still here. Don't you remember the promise two fifteen years olds smoking a cigarette made on the porch of my house three years ago?"

Mulder nodded slightly. Of course he remembered, it had been the three year anniversary of Samantha's abduction and he hadn't slept at all in three days. He met Scully, who hadn't been able to sleep either, on the porch of her house and they blew smoke rings with a shared cigarette into the cool November night. She assured him that he would find Samantha and promised that she would be with him every step of the way.

"I'm not going to win this argument, am I?", Mulder said, a small smile reluctantly creeping up on his face; He should have known he wouldn't stand a chance with her.

Scully shook her head. "Not a chance."

Laying his forehead against hers, Mulder hummed thoughtfully as he pulled the covers back up around both of them until they were decently covered up again. "Thought so."

Scully smiled affectionately, her eyes serious as he rubbed his nose against hers. "You're bat crap crazy, you know that right?", she said, only receiving an amused smirk in response.

"When are we going?"

"Have any plans for tonight?", Mulder asked the same quirk of his eyebrows that had, paired with his tragically background and outlandish theories, earned him the nickname 'Spooky'.

Meanwhile, neither of them noticed how the door was cracked open slightly. A steely pair of grey eyes watched them from the door, having listened to the whole exchange.

A pair of eyes that belonged to a man who lit a Morley's cigarette and walked away as the teenaged couple, to seal their new understanding, closed the distance between each other once again.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Ain't no mountain high enough
Ain't no valley low enough
Ain't no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you, babe

~Marvin Gaye, Ain't No Mountain High Enough


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