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Her head lolls on her neck in that wonderful way heads sometimes do after consuming the perfect amount of wine. There’s a smile on her face and a buzz beneath her skin, a man droning on about mythological apparitions beside her.
It’s Saturday night, and all is right with the world.
Well, no, they know better than most that all is not right with the world, but for these few moments, all is right with their world, and sometimes that’s enough.
She repositions, and her neck meets a warm, solid, ridiculous-when-paired-with-a-rolled-shirtsleeve arm instead of the back of her couch. The owner of that arm pauses, mid-pontification, tongue at his teeth.
“Oh,” she breathes, straightening back up.
Another glass of wine perhaps, and she might have thrown propriety to the wind and stayed there. A half glass even. Maybe just another sip.
His hand though—it pulls her back down. Fingers at her shoulder, heavy and inviting.
“Oh,” she breathes again.
They’ve done this lately—stayed late, relaxed, gotten tipsy on wine. His arm’s never been there before though, no. Laid along the back of her couch like a cat in the sun.
He shifts in his seat, and whoops, her head lolls even further, falling right into the dip between his chest and his shoulder. She thinks perhaps he planned it that way, and when his fingers tickle lightly at her upper arm, she’s sure of it.
“Muld—“ she begins, sure this development is something which Must Be Discussed, but he’s already onto his next tale, his voice near her ear as dizzying as the wine in her veins.
He smells like sweat and soap and the deodorant she packs into his travel bag every time he forgets it on his hotel bathroom sink. She closes her eyes and breathes. She’s studied him through the years, knows him the way she knew her Human Anatomy textbook back in 1st year med school, could ace an exam on the intricacies of Fox Mulder with her eyes closed. But she didn’t know this—that when he puts his arm around a woman and tells her a story, his fingers tell one, too—tap tap tapping on her shoulder with each new twist, stroke stroke stroking with each new turn.
She wonders whether he and his fingers are prone to storytelling in the bedroom as well. The thought thrills her. It scares her. But mostly it makes her ache.
It’s been a very long time since a man’s sat on her couch and made her feel this way, purposely or not. She just now realizes how much she’s missed it.
It’s she who shifts next, reaching for her half-full glass of wine then landing back with her cheek to his chest, her knee just barely overlapping his thigh. The wine slides down her throat and his fingertips down her arm. He traces the delicate bones of her elbow and the stories continue. Once upon a time in a basement, Little Dana Scully befriended a sly and clever fox…
She doesn’t listen to a word, but listens instead to his heartbeat, thump thump thumping below her ear. And when her hand drops oh-so-casually onto the denim beside her knee, she swears she detects the thumps quickening.
She feels powerless to stop whatever this is, doesn’t even know that she wants to. She’s in a dream, a trance. Her limbs are loose and her brain is even looser. She’s been rational for seven years straight, and she’s exhausted.
This is fine, normal even, she tells herself. Two friends on a Saturday night, sharing friendly things like wine and stories, like arms and fingers and heartbeats. She conveniently ignores the fact that none of her previous friends ever made her tremble. None of those friends made her… wet.
Christ.
He shifts then, beginning to pull away, but before she has time to react, he drags her right along with him, setting her glass on the table and lying back, wrapping her in his arms and tucking her in between his long, lean body and the cushions of her wheat-colored couch, turning her already fuzzy insides to jelly.
“Comfy?” he asks in a voice that’s not a story-telling voice at all anymore. Instead it’s soft and intimate. It’s the voice he uses when the air gets thick, the one that calls her things like constant and touchstone, the one that makes it terribly, terribly hard not to kiss him. It scares her how much she wants to hear that voice again.
“Mulder,” she murmurs, because decadent as this all is, and it is—it’s the most decadent thing she’s experienced in a long time—she’s still Dana Scully, prone to Analyzing Things to Death, and much as she’d like to, she can’t just let this happen. Letting things just happen goes against her very bones.
But he shushes her, pulling her even closer, his breath on her forehead suddenly an extremely compelling argument against analysis of any kind. Mulder defies analysis. Seven years should’ve taught her that.
He turns again, just slightly, but enough that she’s now at eye level with his chin, his lips. Her heart starts pounding. They’ve been in this position before, many times, but always with their feet on the floor. Horizontal—God—horizontal’s so much better than vertical.
“This is nice,” he murmurs, and there’s that voice again. She hums shakily in response, because words—words would be difficult right now. She tells herself to relax. This is nice, friendly. Warm. His hand smooths down her arm and then back up, again and again, fingers tickling beneath the edge of her sleeve. His voice picks back up with another story.
It takes her a few minutes, but soon she’s again feeling floaty and weightless, drunk off a wine and Fox Mulder cocktail. She watches his mouth as he speaks, his stubbled chin and that plump lower lip. He’s mesmerizing. Doesn’t matter that she’s not paying attention. Another thing she never knew about him—that when he holds a woman in his arms late at night on a couch, his knee will nudge its way between hers as he talks. A thing she never knew about herself—she’ll let it.
She feels a cramp start up in her neck, or maybe she doesn’t at all, maybe she just wants an excuse. Regardless, she twists a bit, placing her hand against his chest for leverage, then against his chest for no reason at all. His voice pauses for only an instant before continuing.
Next time though, as his hand passes over her arm, it reaches her elbow and just keeps going, dropping down to the curve of her hip and staying there. Warm, heavy. Her fingers twitch against the fabric of his shirt.
“S’this okay?” he whispers against her forehead, his thumb making slow circles across her hipbone.
“Yeah,” she breathes, closing her eyes. Yeah, sure, no problem. Just a regular Saturday night.
She focuses for a moment on the story he’s telling, tries to take her mind off the hypnotic movement of his thumb through the fabric of her shirt. It works, for a minute. In fact, she’s so focused that when that same thumb slides beneath fabric and lands directly on her skin, she doesn’t have time to stifle the gasp that slips from her lips.
Another thing she discovers—that her Human Anatomy textbook lied about how many nerve endings are held in the skin of a woman’s hip. They lied so fucking hard.
“Still okay?” he questions softly, but all she can do is give him a quick, silent nod, her full concentration centered on breathing as evenly as possible and on keeping her heart from beating right out of her chest. This isn’t just a regular Saturday night. She thinks she’s ready to admit that. The quickened puffs of air along her hairline tell her he realizes that, too. She wonders whether the potential of what they’re doing scares him as shitless as it does her.
His story picks back up (hasn’t he realized she’s not heard a word he’s said for the last twenty minutes?) and his thumb picks back up, too, circling and circling, each pass finding a new and untouched patch of over-sensitized skin, each touch making it more and more difficult to breathe. So this is what it feels like. This is what they’ve missed all those years pretending not to care.
On one particularly sensitive swipe, she can’t hold back, arching her back with a whimper and dragging her hand down his chest before she can stop it. Another new thing she learns— when Fox Mulder groans out loud against a woman’s temple, it’ll make that woman wetter than she’s ever been in her life.
There’s no pretense now, no more stories, just curious, wandering hands and tightly-strung bodies, the tension so acute between them, it’s palpable. His chest is hard beneath her palm, and his quiet moan as her nails drift across his ribs makes up for every bit of nonsense that’s ever come from his mouth. And oh, his hand sliding up the back of her blouse makes up for something, too, she’s sure of it. She hums softly in encouragement, goosebumps breaking out across her arms, nipples tightening behind her bra. God, she’s dizzy, so many parts of her body touching so many parts of his.
She grows bolder, sliding her hand slowly over his damn irresistible forearm, following it along his bicep then further on up to his neck. Dipping inside the collar of his shirt, trailing fingertips over his skin until he shudders. He breathes her name, his lips so close to her ear, she can feel it. She’s never felt her name on her own skin before. She’s never felt anything even remotely like this.
She tangles her legs further with his, tries desperately not to rock against his thigh, though her body is aching, scrapes her nails through the hair at his nape. The barely-there grunts in the back of his throat could drive her mad.
His hand slips from beneath her blouse to skim briefly over her ass, then smooths back up her body, slowly, agonizingly, following each of her trembling curves with his palm, stroking the delicate skin of her neck until she gasps.
“Mulder,” she sighs, lips just barely grazing his jawline. The tip of his nose nudges her cheekbone.
They’ve created universes before— in basements, in rental cars, in every shitty motel room they’ve stayed in on every shitty case— but the universe they’ve created right here, tonight, in this space between their bodies, it’s the most awe-inspiring thing she’s ever known.
She cups the beautiful curve of his skull, kneads it, thinks about everything held within, the passion, the hunger, the brilliant, brilliant mind.
His fingers slip through her hair, and she closes her eyes. Once upon a time in a basement… He tilts her head until their noses slide together … Rain on her face and tears on her cheeks, a baseball bat held with four hands… until their lips are slack and their panting breaths collide …Hospital beds and hotel rooms, doorways and elevators and hallways… She could suffocate with how much she wants him.
“Mulder,” she breathes, “God,” allowing herself the barest brush against his lips, “Oh God, we shouldn’t do this…” But even as she speaks, she’s sliding her mouth across his skin, she’s pulling him closer, she’s aching, aching for him.
He moans, and she arches against him, gripping his hair, her lips soft and wet against his chin. “We shouldn’t…,” she sighs.
“Christ, Scully,” he breathes, fingers at the curve of her jaw. “Tell me…” He’s the most amazing thing she’s ever known.
“We shouldn’t…,” she moans against his cheek, “We shouldn’t…,” she presses to the corner of his lips, “We shouldn’t…,” she breaths into his mouth. But then there’s Mulder, and there’s the two of them against the world, and there’s lips and there’s tongue and there’s wet and there’s we should, we should, we should.
He cradles her head like it’s the most precious thing in the world, and they explore each other’s mouths the way they’ve longed to do for seven, breathtaking years. Slowly, languidly, thoroughly. She lets herself rock against his thigh and feel her own overwhelming want for him, lets herself indulge without analyzing anything at all. She lets him feel how wet she is and whimpers desperately into his mouth when he does something about it.
Once upon a time in a basement, Little Dana Scully befriended a sly and clever fox. And seven year later, she finally let him kiss her on her couch.
Something she never knew but probably should’ve guessed—that when Fox Mulder kisses a woman on her couch, he’ll make her forget every damn bit of that Human Anatomy textbook she ever memorized, because creating a universe has nothing to do with tangible, testable things like bones or muscles, with nerves or with vessels or with skin. It has only to do with two souls, two hearts, merging in the way they’ve been destined to do since the beginning of time.
And oh, she learns this, too—that when Fox Mulder puts his mind to it, he can make a woman come harder than she’s ever come in her entire fucking life. Twice.