The Six Degrees of Requiem

A Fighting Chance

Disclaimer: Still not mine.

Rating: M – for my fellow nymphos.

Spoilers: Fight Club

A/N: Promises to Jaed, that as soon as this project of mine is finished, I'll be right back over at Bones. In the mean time, I hope to continue to enjoy this piece of inspiration of mine.

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"I'm sorry," he sighed, pulling the blanket from her naked body, tracing his fingertips across the yellowing bruises that he'd inflicted upon her. Last week, they'd been vibrant and purple, and he hated that it was his hand that had marked her beautiful skin.

"For the thousandth time," she replied patiently, "it wasn't your fault. The arena was a bloodbath, Mulder, and everyone was beaten to a pulp. Besides," she lifted her arm, displaying the round bruise that spanned most of her left side, "this one was courtesy of a lady called Joanne Ivan. And this one," she lifted her leg, "was a man twice your size who's name I didn't catch because I was too busy elbowing him in the head." Mulder chuckled. "Sorry about your teeth…" He winced, having only had the corrective braces removed two days earlier.

"It's alright," he said. "I just hope we never get caught in such a violent vortex again… I'm not sure these aging bones could handle-" she pressed her mouth to his, smothering his piteous ramblings with a hard kiss. "Fine…" he said with a shrug, "brush off my concerns… it's…"

"Oh be quiet," she said, her hands snaking under the duvet to test his level of arousal. "It's Sunday, Mulder, and I'd like to…"

"I know what you'd like to do. Point proven, by the way," she frowned, and his lips parted with a cheeky smile. "You've established yourself as having no reservations whatsoever." She giggled, recalling their late-night dance in LA, and her promise to erase his opinion of her as the straight-laced FBI agent. And she had. Outside of work, anyway. "Don't…" he hissed when her fingers curled around him. "You're a religious woman, Scully, isn't Sunday supposed to be a day of rest?" She shook her head, wavy strands of still un-brushed auburn hair tumbling about her cheeks. She looked ethereal - angelic, almost.

"Shush," she whispered, peppering kisses to his chest, along the hard line of his sternum, as far as the blanket would allow her to go, "I'm worshipping." Tracing his fingers over her spine, he sighed, wondering at how her skin felt like liquid satin, impossibly soft beneath his touch. When she slid up his body, tonguing his Adam's apple and left a moist trail over his jaw, he felt his body harden painfully in response to her. Her lips touched his, and she was like oxygen to his lungs.

I had been a hard week, he mused, sharing painkillers and being confined to the office. Made worse only by his desire for her, he sighed each time she reprimanded him for a lingering stare in the basement, because according to her, they never knew who was watching and secondly, work was after all, work.

He'd more than made up for their 'no sex at work' ban, but the long office hours seemed to drag by, especially with the v-necked blouses she kept wearing recently.

Her tongue slipped between his lips, stroking his inner mouth, waking, not only his own tongue, but all other sensitive parts of him, too. When her fingers danced over his torso, between the duvet again, his fingers coiled around her wrist, hard and tight. She whimpered against his lips, thrusting her hips against him, their bodies grinding with the kind of rampant need that he'd only ever experienced with her. He'd never wanted to be inside another woman as much as he did her.

"Be slow," he whispered, "I don't like when we have to rush…" There had been a few moments when their frenzied hormones demanded a quick fix. Once, she had almost given in to him in the stationary closet. Almost. Languid sex, however, was reserved for the weekend.

"Me neither," she replied, gazing up at him when he rolled, looming over her with tight, firm arms. Glancing down, she saw his penis, hard against his abdomen, and she shivered with anticipation. Meeting his lustrous gaze, she ran her tongue across her dried lips, pulling a tight breath into her lungs. He was spectacular – she never got tired of his body. Or what effect it had on her. "Tell me a secret, Mulder," she said, passing her flat of her hand over his abdomen, relishing the feel of his hard, taut muscles beneath his rippling, warm skin.

"A secret?" He dropped his head, taking a semi-hard nipple into his mouth, coaxing the flesh into a tight point. "I like this…" he sighed, passing the flat of his tongue across the puckered skin, and she winced, grasping his hair into tight fists.

"That's not a secret," she hissed, "you've practically been attached there since…" He smiled against her breast, releasing her, leaving her skin shiny. Scully realised a sigh of what he could only interpret as relief. She had admitted once that his mouth had the ability to lure her dangerously close to orgasm every time. "A proper secret," she said, parting her legs, welcoming his hips to rest against her.

"I watched porn for years," he said, prompting her to roll her eyes.

"I know that too," she said, drawing patterns on his shoulder with the tip of her nail.

"I wasn't finished," he reprimanded her with a hard, bruising kiss before clearing his throat. "I watched it quite a lot, actually. So I've seen good sex before. But I never experienced it until you." She didn't gush, and he didn't expect her to, either. Their relationship was based on more than a gooey slush of romance. He knew she was touched by the way her absent roving stopped, her hand stilling over his shoulder, her eyes boring into his own, searching the depths of his soul.

When he shifted, the tip of his penis grazed her thigh and her body trembled. "And correct me if I am being egotistical, but I think the same can be said for you?" he asked, brushing his lips across her jaw, pulling her earlobe into his mouth and passing his tongue along the back. Her breathless sigh brushed his temple.

"That would probably be an… astute… assumption…" she replied, hooking her legs around his waist, positioning her entrance at his tip. One thrust, and he'd be inside her. Sweet anticipation made her body tingle, as he drew back, claiming her lips with his own. He tortured her for a long moment, barely grazing her sensitive skin with his penis.

"Probably?" he queried, easing himself inside her. She stiffened, never quite accustomed to his width. When her muscles relaxed around him, so did she.

"Fine," she sighed, "you're the best." He laughed, the sound gruff and raw. Drawing back, he pulled out of her almost the whole way, watching her face with the interest of a art aficionado, studying a painting in the Louvre. She held her breath, waiting on the delicious intrusion. His eyes swirled, a myriad of colours – all of which made her think of autumn. From warm, unfathomable brown, to twinkling gold. When he kissed her again, he dispelled a breath and she inhaled, drawing the essence of him into her lungs.

Tightening around him, she felt the steady staccato of his heartbeat against her breast, and felt an enormous amount of pride in knowing that it was her, her body, that could evoke such powerful emotions in his. "Scully…" he whispered and he sounded as though he were having an epiphany. She have come to love this side of her partner, of their mutual love-making that was so powerful, it left the tips of her toes tingling.

Taking his face in her hands, she passed her thumbs over his lips, watching how his mouth opened, as if he wanted to speak, but the sensations of their love-making rendered him speechless. She didn't mind. There was nothing he needed to say and nothing she needed to hear. The shape of his lips, still moist from their kisses, would be recorded in her memory forever – in the event of something awful transpiring, she never wanted to forget how he felt, beneath her hands, around her body, inside of her.

He was still bruised from their encounter with the doppelgangers, and his bronzed skin looked battered, as did her own. Her lips had just barely healed, but her spine, arched now as she leaned into him, still ached. It didn't help, she supposed, that they were in bed together at every opportunity. But the feeling of him, aroused and filling her, joining them together in a sort of heavenly union, was too powerful to resist. It was as if they were supposed to be there – that all the trails in their lives was merely a test to see how strong they would be when forged together in a meaningful relationship. And they worked. They really worked.

Reaching between them, he stroked the sensitive bud between her thighs, listening as she spoke his name as if he were a God. Her God. Pressing the tip of his finger against her, she thrust her hips twice and they were one. The need and desire rose in her chest, and she whimpered, her orgasm rushing through her body like an out-of-control torrent, crashing through her womb, her legs, her belly, to her chest and down her arms. She convulsed, her fingers curling and her nails digging into his shoulder. He winced when she broke the skin, adding another injury to the already growing list of bumps and bruises, cuts and grazes.

He stiffened, his arms shaking from the effort of holding his body over her, and his eyes fell closed as a guttural moan rose in his chest, spilling forth in the form of her name, drawn out as though he were afraid to let go of it. She felt herself loosen, sagging to the bed with quiet exhaustion as he came within her, lost in the emotion of it.

Afraid of crushing her, he withdrew from her body and she whimpered at the loss of him, feeling somehow empty. He gathered her into his arms, smoothing her hair and pressing a kiss to her forehead. "You smell like sex, Scully," he said, inhaling deeply. She hummed against him. She smelt like sex a lot these days. The air in her bedroom often carried a heady spiciness and she's been hesitant to wash her sheets, after catching the scent of him.

"So do you," she said, draping her arm across him, nestled into the nook of his arm. After a long moment, he spoke.

"Still happy, Scully?" he asked. It had becoming something of a ritual, to ask about happiness because, for the majority of their partnership, personal happiness was overshadowed by personal grief. Recently, there'd been a strange absence of sadness and he felt obliged to ask, to be reassured, that the woman he'd grown used to worshipping, was still happy.

"Do I look like an unhappy woman?" she asked – and with her flushed cheeks and full lips, he had to admit, she looked anything but unhappy. Yet, he always craved the verbal reassurance.

"Scully…" he pleaded, drawing his fingertip across her cheekbone. Her eyes fell closed, her lashes brushing his skin.

"I'm happier than I've ever been," she sighed at last. "And happier than I'm ever likely to be again." His arms folded around her again, holding their bodies together.

"Not if you're happier tomorrow," he said and she nodded.

"Do you think we'll be happy forever, Mulder?" she asked, and he shrugged.

"We're in with a fighting chance, I guess," he said, and it was probably the most optimistic thing she'd ever heard him say. It filled her with a kind of warmth that she wasn't used to, and she tucked her head under his chin.

"Happiness has to end sometime," she reminded him. "Unfortunately, it's inevitable." His chest rose in a heavy sigh, his hand passing over her forearm in a gentle caress and she was awed by how she felt when she was with him.

"I suppose you're right," he said at last, "but for now…" she nodded in understanding.

"For now, we are."

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I'm sad writing this, seriously… it just makes me remember how depressed I was at the injustice of Scully losing Mulder in Requiem. It shouldn't have happened, dammit! Anyway… on to Je Souhaite? One of my personal favourites…