"Scully."
The voice sounded like it was coming from underwater, so far away that maybe all she was hearing was the distant echo of the sound rather than the sound itself.
"Scully. C'mon, it's okay. I've got you."
Louder this time. Clearer. Closer. There was a sensation she couldn't place.
"I know you don't want me to call an ambulance, so how about opening your eyes for me so we can avoid all of that, huh?"
Mulder. Mulder's voice. Mulder's fingers tracing over her cheeks. With a groan, she opened her eyes and blinked. The lights overhead seemed so much brighter than she remembered.
"Hey." His face was blurry as she tried to focus on it. "Welcome back."
"What happened?" She stumbled over her words like an unexpected break in a slab of concrete.
"You tell me. You were lying on the floor when I came in."
Her head was cradled in his lap as he sat cross legged on her kitchen floor. "I think I must have fainted." She twisted her legs, preparing to sit up, but it sent another rush of dizziness through her.
"Are you okay? Do you need to go to the hospital?" His eyebrows were furrowed in concern, his thumb still lightly brushing her cheek.
"No, just didn't eat enough today I think."
"Do you want to go to the couch and I'll get you a glass of water?"
"Yeah. Okay." She closed her eyes and swallowed.
Mulder eased her head out of his lap and carefully stood up. "Do you want me to carry you or can you stand?"
"I think I can stand." She moved her legs again but, thankfully, there was no corresponding rush of dizziness.
"Here." Mulder bent down. "Put your hands around my neck."
There was a wave of nausea as she came fully upright, but Mulder took most of her weight as they awkwardly walked towards the couch. He set her down in the reverse motion of how he had helped her up.
"Thank you." She let her head loll against the back of the couch as he pulled the fleece blanket off the back and draped it over top of her.
Scully shivered, pulling the blanket in more tightly around her body as Mulder disappeared into the kitchen before returning with a glass of water. "Take this. Do you have any crackers or something?"
Scully nodded, forcing herself to take a small sip of water. "There are some soda crackers in the bottom cupboard. The one left of the sink. Oh, and can you turn the heat off on the soup?" That was all she needed right now, to burn the whole place to the ground.
She'd managed a few more careful gulps of water by the time he came back with a sleeve of crackers and he sat down on the couch next to her before handing her a few.
"Thanks." She set the glass down on the table next to her and nibbled on a cracker. Bland and tasteless with just a hint of salt. Perfect.
Mulder was trying not to stare at her, looking around the room as though he'd never seen it before. She'd eaten two crackers by the time he cleared his throat and spoke again.
"So, is everything okay? You… well, you haven't seemed like yourself this week and then, when you said you wanted to talk tonight…" His words trailed off and she watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed, his fingers clutching his own knee a little too tightly. "Are you… are you sick again? I'd rather know if it's… I mean, I want to…"
She reached out her hand and placed it over top of his. It was so much warmer, so much bigger than her own. "I'm not sick. I promise. I would have told you right away."
"Oh." She could see the tension evaporate out of him as his posture relaxed. "Oh. Okay. That's good. Every time you tell me we need to talk, I can't help but worry, you know."
The crackers she'd eaten were a dry congealed mass stuck in her throat. She turned away from his eyes, unable to meet the emotions she saw there. She took her hand back and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them beneath the blanket. "But, there is something that I need to tell you, that we need to talk about." She had to look at him. She deserved to see the hurt she was about to inflict reflected there.
"What is it?" The worried look was back as he studied her.
"I met someone. In London."
There was a flicker of something in his eyes as he waited for her to continue. Surprise. Worry. He was holding his breath. Confusion. His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. Anger?
She licked her lips, although it didn't help with the way they felt cracked, stretched too thin. "We spent a few days together, after the conference was over." She wanted another sip of water, her mouth was dry and she was trembling now, but she was afraid of stopping now that she'd started. "For the first time in a long time… I felt…" She wished she knew how to even put it into words. "I felt like I'd found a part of myself that had been gone for such a long time that I hadn't even realized it was missing."
Mulder's fingers were digging into his knee as he let out a rough exhalation of breath like he'd been punched in the stomach, but he didn't say anything. Just looked at her with his moss-coloured eyes that looked like the light in them had been extinguished.
Scully twisted her own fingers more tightly together as she forced herself to go on. "The last little while, I've felt… adrift. Alone. We've lost the X-Files. And," she blinked, feeling the tears starting to form in her eyes, "I don't know where things stand between us. I know, when I first started, that you didn't trust me, but, with everything we've been through together, I thought I had proven myself to you. I thought that we'd reached the point where it was just a given, but… obviously I was mistaken."
She wiped away tear at the corner of her eye with her thumb before it could escape down her cheek.
"Diana." Mulder's voice was thick and, even though he was just at the other end of the couch, it felt like an insurmountable distance.
Scully nodded. "I was…" Her fingers were starting to ache and she needed the pain, needed them to hurt. All or nothing, it was coming out now. She had to look down for this part or she didn't think she'd be able to get it out. "I envied her past relationship with you and was hurt that you'd never even thought it was worth telling me about someone who had obviously been very important to you. It hurt that you didn't trust me. It hurt that you were willing to throw my trust away, that hers meant more to you than mine. I didn't know what to believe any more. Who could I trust if I couldn't trust you? I didn't even feel like I could trust myself any more. That maybe you were right, and my judgment was being affected by my emotional state."
She tried not to sniffle, but it was getting more and more difficult to keep the tears from falling. "I was jealous. You told me," her voice hitched, "you told me that I was making it personal, like it wasn't personal for you, like I didn't mean the same to you as you do to me." A tear dropped off the end of her nose and landed on the blanket. "It is personal for me." She finally looked up at him, tears rolling furiously down her cheeks now. "It's been personal for me for a long time. And, if you don't feel the same, then I need to leave. I need to get away from you because it hurts… it hurts too much and I don't know how much longer I can do it. You're my best friend." The word broke on a soft sob. "We're so intertwined – our lives, our work — but it's not enough for me. Not any more."
She couldn't go on and she lowered her head to her knees, her back shaking with the effort of holding in the sounds that were clawing their way out of the deepest pits of her, trying to escape out her throat. Her body didn't even feel like her own — her head as light as a balloon that might float away, her palate aching with thirst. The essence of her clung like wisps to the bare bones of her physical form and she didn't even have the mental strength to want to stay grounded. Half in her body and half out, she lost all sense of how long they sat there. Mulder was silent while she made enough noise for the two of them.
When she'd cried herself out — he made no effort to touch her, to comfort her, like he had earlier — the first sensation to come back was how much everything ached. There was a throbbing in her head and her eyes felt raw and scratchy. She was afraid to lift her head, half believing that he wouldn't even be there when she did, but he was.
He blew out of a long breath and she could see where a tear of his own making had run down his cheek. His eyes looked as red and watery as her own. "So, that's it then. You're leaving." His voice was flat and quiet.
"That's not what I want."
"What do you want?"
She'd written the list of things she wanted out on a page in her journal last night, but it seemed so much more terrifying to say them aloud. To admit them in a way that couldn't be crumpled up and torn away. All or nothing. She met his stare, missing the warmth that was normally there. This would break them or unite them.
"I want… I want the X-Files back." Start with an easy one, build up momentum until there was nothing she could do to stop the inevitable acceleration. "I want us to work together on cases that matter, to continue what we started, to find the truth and bring those responsible to justice. I want…" Oh God, could she do this? She was trapped in Mulder's eyes, afraid to blink or look away. "I want Diana out of our lives, out of your life. I want you to believe in me, to trust me, more than anyone else."
"I already do—"
"No!" She stopped him harshly. "Just listen. Please." He closed his mouth again but stretched his hand toward her. Her own fingers were numb, clutched together for so long, but she pulled them apart and out from under the blanket to grasp his with a tight fury that made him gasp. The blanket slipped off her legs to the floor, unnoticed. There was no stopping it now. "I want… I want you. I want you to be mine and no one else's."
Her voice dropped to the husk of a whisper and she was afraid, so afraid, of what she was going to see in his eyes next. She wiped away more tears; how could she even have any left in her to cry? "I want you as more than my partner, more than my friend. I don't want to be your quest or part of the cause that drives you. I just want to stand next to you while we brush our teeth." Mulder's eyebrows went up at that. "I want to trip over your stupid shoes that you didn't put away. I want to get into the same car with you at the end of the day and listen to you singing to the radio." She took a deep breath, trying not to shake, but she felt so cold and shivery that her teeth were chattering. "I just want… I just want, more than anything, for you to want me the same way. Just me."
She couldn't help it, she closed her eyes, afraid to see, letting the tears flow once more. She couldn't remember the last time she had cried herself empty, and now she was afraid she might never stop.
"Scully?" His hand tightened in her own. "Oh, Scully." He pulled her towards him and wrapped his arms around her shaking form. "Please don't cry. Don't cry."
After a few minutes, he slid his fingers under her chin, trying to tilt her face up to meet his. "I don't want your pity, Mulder." She sniffled inelegantly, struggling to breathe through the stuffiness of her nose. She'd soaked the top of his shirt.
"This isn't pity. Now, c'mon, look at me. You said you wanted to talk, so let me talk, too." His thumb traced along the underside of each of her eyes, smoothing away the trails of salt and water, as he waited for her to open her eyes. Finally, she blinked a few times, but kept her eyes open.
"Hi." The roll of his thumbs over her skin was soothing. He traced the sweep of her cheekbones in a slow arc, coming down the sides of her jaw. She felt like wrung out dishrag, drained and incapable of movement. He gave her a soft smile, his eyes gentle.
She managed a watery half smile back at him. "Hi."
His thumbs slid slowly down to her chin and then up to her mouth, letting them rest for a moment on the plumpness of her lower lip before continuing the caress back to her cheekbones. "Do you want to know what I want?"
"What?" she whispered.
"I want the X-Files back, too. I want to quit working on shitty background checks and wiretaps. I wouldn't complain if Kersh were to suffer some sort of debilitating accident, but that one's optional." She huffed, and he smiled before tucking a damp curl of hair behind her ear and then continued to stroke gently along her hairline. "I want to find the people behind what happened to Samantha, what happened to you, and to make sure that it never happens to anyone else."
He wrapped his arms around her more closely and she tucked her head against his chest. His rested his head against the top of hers and she could feel the warmth of his breath against her scalp and the rumbling vibration in his chest as he went on.
"I wish I had told you about Diana earlier, but I didn't think we would ever cross paths again. When she left me, I tried to put it all behind me. What would I have even said? I already felt like an idiot for falling so hard for her when she obviously didn't feel the same way about me. I thought, back then, that that's what love was, this… all-consuming thing. So, when she left, I wanted to believe that she'd had an equally all-consuming reason to have to go. I didn't understand how she could throw it all away, like it was nothing, a triviality."
She shifted against him and he began to stroke her hair. The cadence of his voice was soothing, comforting. "Back then, all I'd wanted was for her to come back to me, to come bursting through the door telling me she'd made a terrible mistake. But, when I saw her again, that wasn't what I felt at all. I felt… relieved."
"Relieved?"
"Yeah. Relieved. I'd thought I might feel hurt, that I might feel overwhelmed with how much I still wanted her, that she would tell me how wrong she'd been to leave."
Scully tensed, prickling uncomfortably, but he just held her a little more tightly as he went on.
"But, I didn't. I didn't feel any of those things. Talking to her again in the hospital room with Gibson, it was like trying to compare a candle to a bonfire. What I'd felt for her was so laughably insubstantial compared to what I felt for you that I couldn't feel anything but relief. She had no power over me. Not any more. The way she'd left me didn't matter. It didn't matter at all when all I could think about was how she was nothing compared to you."
"Mulder." Her murmur of his name vanished in the damp fabric of his t-shirt as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
"I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. I guess part of me still wanted to believe, even though she'd hurt me and betrayed my trust, that she wouldn't turn traitor, that she wouldn't willingly work with the people who had caused me so much pain. It wasn't that I didn't believe you, Scully. It was that I didn't want to believe you. I'm sorry. I never doubted you. I felt like an idiot and it was like she had betrayed me all over again and I took it out on you. You didn't deserve that."
She lifted her head, edging back out of his embrace. "It's okay." She pulled his head down to kiss his forehead and then left her cheek resting against him, wanting to feel close.
He drew in a shuddering breath, one of his hands splayed across her back, the other running slow strokes up and down her spine.
"I don't want you to leave me. That, more than anything. I want to be able to talk to you whenever I need to hear your voice, no matter what time it is. I want to make you laugh. You're so beautiful when you laugh." His words were tumbling out fast and furious now, the rush of flood waters over a dry riverbed. "I want to right the wrongs that have been done to you. I want to give you enough happiness to make up for all the bad things you've gone through because of me and the work we do. I want to see your face first thing when I wake up in the morning and I want it to be the last thing I see when I close my eyes at night, knowing you're there beside me."
She pulled back. His eyes were closed, clenched tightly shut. "Look at me. Please."
His breathing was shallow, his lips slightly parted, as he met her eyes. They were so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face.
"I want to be worthy of you, of the trust you put in me, of the faith you have in me, even when I can't see it for myself." His nose brushed against hers. "I'm already yours. Only yours. How could it ever be otherwise?" Scully allowed her eyes to fall closed. She couldn't stop shaking. Her heart was going to explode, spasming in her chest; more than hammering, it was nearly vibrating. She was so emotionally exhausted that she felt paralyzed, fragile. She was holding on to his voice, his words, as the only thing that was keeping her mind anchored to her body.
"Scully," his voice was barely the breath of a whisper, "I want you."
She whimpered, unable to keep the sound from escaping. He was close, so close, but not nearly close enough.
"I want to hold you in my arms every night. I want to kiss you, I want to make love to you…" His breath hitched as the hint of her lips touched his own. "I want you. Just you. Only you. For so long."
She kissed him — hard — her mouth claiming his and he groaned, a low rumble that she felt in her mouth, in her throat, in her chest. His lips were already parted, his tongue sweeping along her lower lip as his thumbs had done earlier.
His hands, warm and large, were splayed across her back, holding her close, holding her steady, and it felt like his hands and his mouth were the only things anchoring her to this plane of existence. She slid forward so she could straddle his lap, needing to be closer, and they both moaned she settled herself fully against him, feeling him hot and hard beneath her.
She moved away from his mouth, wanting to taste the salt of his skin as she moved down his jaw to his neck. The scrape of his stubble against the softness of her skin combined with the subdued musk of his cologne was sending her nervous system into overdrive. This was Mulder, her body was practically chanting. This was Mulder. She felt almost overstimulated to the point of pain combined with a crushing need for more — she wanted his hands, his mouth, the weight of him on top of her, enveloping her. The bed would have made this so much easier, but it was too far away. They'd never make it. She needed him pressed to every inch of her and she needed it right now.
She sucked and licked the skin at the base of his throat, struggling not to bite down, as much as she wanted to.
"Mmmm… Scully…" His head was thrown back, his mouth open as he panted for breath. His hands were under her sweater, stroking her back only to pause and clutch at her desperately each time she drew his skin into the vacuum she was creating with her mouth. His hips were unconsciously thrusting up against her, sending waves of warmth to her core. "Can I… can I take this off?" He pulled half-heartedly at the hem of her shirt, too overcome for any sort of coordination.
"Yes. Please." The words were mumbled between kisses and controlled scrapes of her teeth, but then she forced herself to sit up.
Mulder was sprawled across the corner of the couch between the back and the arm, looking as wild and out of control as she felt. His eyes were wide and dark, his pupils were huge circles, his lips were pink and swollen from her mouth, and his hair was mussed. She was so aroused she could hardly bear to look at him. They just stared at one another. And stared.
"Scully, is this real? I'm not dreaming… please, tell me I'm not dreaming," he finally said in a dazed voice.
She couldn't help it. She began to laugh and soon he was laughing with her. She was bent over, clutching her stomach as tears escaped from the corners of her eyes. She couldn't breathe. Her abdominal muscles hurt. But the sheer absurdity of it all was too much to take.
It took her longer to stop than he did, as he leaned forward to kiss each of her closed eyelids in turn, damp with the good kind of tears this time. He stroked the contours of her face with one finger, her eyebrows, the slope of her nose, around the curve of her upper lip. When she'd calmed and was able to open her eyes once more, he was watching her intently, his eyes burning with desire.
Scully reached down and took the bottom of her sweater in her hands, pulling it up and off in one swift movement before tossing it to the side. She didn't miss how Mulder's eyes widened, how his Adam's apple gave a quick bob, how his teeth bit down on his lower lip. She was wearing one of the sets she'd bought in Edinburgh but had yet to actually wear. It was a muted sea green with a hint of turquoise, criss-crossing over a sheer fabric in a pattern that gave the effect of stained glass. She could feel her nipples, hard against the fabric, but she waited for Mulder to drink his fill before she gave the bottom of his tee-shirt a tug. "Yours, too. I want to see you."
She slid back a little so he could sit up, and then she reached down to help him with his shirt. His shirt joined hers, tossed somewhere over the back of the couch to the floor, and then she was running her hands over the muscles of his bare chest, unable to stop herself. His skin was flushed and hot and wonderful.
He leaned his head down, mouthing at her breasts through the lace of the bra. With her hands in his hair, she leaned back to give him better access, moaning as he suckled each nipple in turn, making them ache with the pleasure of it. The lean muscles of his thighs were trapped between her own as she sat straddled across his lap, and she couldn't help grinding her core against the hard ridge of him beneath the rough denim of his jeans.
His hands were fumbling at her back, searching for the clasp half-heartedly, most of his attention still focused on the broken rhythm of his mouth over the valleys of her breasts. The rough stubble on his cheeks burned and prickled against the soft pale skin spilling out over the cups of her bra.
Finally, when she'd nearly reached the point of telling him to just tear the damn thing off her, the clasp gave way and she managed to pull his head away long enough to pull it over her arms and toss it away behind her as fast as she could before wrapping her arms around his shoulders to pull their upper bodies together.
They groaned simultaneously. His large hands were splayed across her back as she rocked herself back and forth against him, devouring his mouth, not caring when their teeth crashed together or when he bit and pulled at her lower lip and it began to bleed. Her breasts were pressed against the delicious scratchiness of his chest and she wished it were possible for him to swallow her whole.
She could already feel the molten lava of her impending orgasm and they were both still clothed from the waist down. His hands were everywhere on her body, dragging down her back, wrapping around her hips, moving up to knead her breasts. It was as though she was made of wet clay and he was molding her, shaping her, around him.
Without taking her mouth from his, she moved her hands down to the snap at the top of his jeans, tugging at it violently until it let go and she could work the zipper down. The hard bulge of his erection was still trapped in his boxers, and his fingers clenched against her hips as she brushed over it with the backs of her fingers.
"Scully…" Her name was a drawn out moan, gravelled and low, as his hips tilted up to chase her hand.
She raised herself up onto her knees and began frantically tugging at her leggings, working her underwear down and off with them. As soon as he realized what she was doing, Mulder began doing the same thing with his own clothing, both of them increasingly desperate with desire.
Scully finished first, shoving the tangle of her inside-out clothing aside, and then she turned to help Mulder, pulling his jeans and boxers off his ankles where he hadn't been able to reach. She scarcely had time to look at him, sprawled wantonly across her couch, before he was dragging her back up his body.
"Need you, want you," he was murmuring, his eyelids half closed as he pressed searing kisses all over her forehead , her cheeks, her nose, her lips.
"Please, Mulder…" The desperation in her voice didn't even come close to how badly she needed to feel him inside her. Now. Right now. She couldn't wait any longer.
Reaching between them, she circled her hand around the base of him to hold him still, feeling the thudding pulse of his heartbeat beneath her fingers. Oh, God…
She sunk down on him with a loud cry of pleasure as he instinctively surged up against her, filling her as deep as he could go. "More."
He let out a low whine as she pulled herself up on her knees and then rocked back down again, his hands once again on her hips as they fell into rhythm with each other. His fingers stung where they were digging in to her newly inked skin, but she didn't care… if anything, it just served to heighten the pleasure of everything else.
He was talking, of course he was talking, the man never shut up, but they were nonsense words of endearment — so good, you feel so good, need you, don't ever want this stop — and, damn, if the sound of his voice wasn't sending her hurtling closer and closer to the edge.
"Want to feel you come," he murmured, moving his hand down between them so he could swirl the pad of his thumb over her clitoris. "I want you to come for me. I want to watch you."
His eyes were the darkest she had ever seen them, and it was a struggle to keep her own eyes fixed on his. She was already starting to shake with the beginnings of her orgasm. So close. She was so close.
"God, let go for me, Scully. You're so fucking beautiful you make my heart hurt."
"Mulder!" She was full of light and coming apart at the seams as she shattered in his arms, sobbing his name. Still in the throes of it, she felt as he surged up against her, hard, his teeth biting into her shoulder as he pulsed inside her.
It felt like the waves of pleasure would never stop, the two of them still tense as they rode out the aftershocks together until she collapsed against his chest, utterly spent.
Another long chapter to follow this one, as these two still have a lot of talking to do. Thank you to my most wonderful beta, the fabulous Josie Lange, and thank you to everyone reading!