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She showers quietly, using his body wash when she realizes that the travel sized bottle she’d had in her overnight bag is empty. Arctic something, it’s called, and she wonders if he will notice the smell of him on her. She hears her heart pounding in her ears, feels it pumping in her chest, and still she has to look down to know that she’s there, that she’s alive, that she is whole.
It is unsettling, to feel incomplete.
She turns off the water, smoothes her hair back from her face, reaches out past the shower curtain blindly for a towel and pulls it to her, immediately surrounded by the smell of him.
He is everywhere. He is inescapable. He is waiting for her in the bedroom when she comes out.
She jumps briefly, but more out of surprise than fear. She does not pull the towel tighter underneath her armpits, like she wants to. She does not let it drop to the floor, like people do in the movies. She simply stands there, not quite sure how to move.
“Want some coffee?” he asks.
“Sure.”
He closes the door behind him when he leaves. She changes into a pajama top and clean underwear, and then suddenly feels very tired. She is under the covers pressing her thumbs to her temples when he reenters with two cups of coffee, one black, one with sugar.
“Thank you.” She takes her cup from him and downs a long swallow, the bitter sweetness burning her tongue and, for the moment, erasing all memories of lying in pieces on the floor of his living room.
Did she want to go back to her house, he’d asked a thousand times, but for some reason she couldn’t bear it. He’d offered to stay with her there, but she didn’t want to, she wanted to be at his place, so they’d stayed.
They stay, sipping coffee on his bed that is more frequently used as a laundry basket than as a bed.
“When did you start sleeping here instead of on the couch?” she asks, the surprising thought suddenly occurring to her.
“Well how could I resist that waterbed?” he jokes, and she can’t help but smile. “I’ll be taking the couch tonight though, don’t worry.”
“I don’t,” she says. He makes her talk in riddles sometimes.
He starts to ask her if she’s okay again and she silences him with a hand on his wrist. “Do you remember that game Operation?”
A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth but he looks away, down into his lap. “Scully…”
“No, I’m serious.”
“Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.”
She doesn’t go on, realizes it would be overkill, and then suddenly notices that she hasn’t moved her hand from his, her fingers resting lightly over his wrist. If she closes her eyes she can feel his pulse fluttering beneath her fingertips. She doesn’t move.
“Are you tired?” he asks after a minute.
“I don’t know,” she says, really thinking about it. Everything requires so much effort, she thinks. Why can’t things just be easy? Mulder is easy (sometimes). Mulder is effortless (almost never). Being around him is like breathing (her own special oh-two).
“I want to go to sleep,” she decides finally.
He takes her coffee and places their cups on the bedside table as she shimmies down the mattress, pulling the duvet cover tightly up to her chin. She is relieved that she doesn’t have to say please don’t leave, relieved that he curls around her like a parenthesis on top of the covers, relieved that she doesn’t have to humiliate herself by saying stay with me.
As is instinct, his hand moves to rest against her chest, and she takes it between her palms, absentmindedly kissing each knuckle. By the time she realizes what she’s done she’s already slipping into sleep, a pleasant chill going down her spine as his breath warms her neck.
X
She has always been an early riser, the first to wake up on family vacations and overnights at friends’ houses. Her eyes open and Mulder’s bedroom is bathed in orange light, the curtains left flung open.
Scully shifts out of bed to close them and feels Mulder stir behind her.
“It’s okay,” he says, voice thick with sleep.
She pauses where she is at the window, squinting in the bright dawn. What she sees in his eyes as she turns to face him is shocking. It’s adoration, completely, purely, simply. How many times has she seen that look and written it off as something else? How many times has she certainly thrown him that glance, hoping he noticed, praying he didn’t? How many times are they going to stare at each other before it’s too late?
She’s embarrassed now, and suddenly realizes she’s not wearing pants, only the top of her pajama set, a minty green toothpaste color.
“Sorry,” she says, looking down at the carpet. She wonders if he managed to get the blood off his living room floor.
“Scully, you’re…” He says it like he’s thinking of the time, or looking up where they’re off to for their next investigation.
She smiles, and her heart breaks a little, and then she is tired of being too late. She sits back down on the bed, one leg tucked under her like a flamingo. Reaching out to touch his face like she’s done so many times is suddenly very difficult, but then everything after that is easy.
He kisses her palm, then the inside of her wrist, then pushes up the loose sleeve of her shirt and kisses the inside of her elbow. She trembles, and she is not prone to trembling. She brings her other hand to his face and they kiss, tender and soft like in a few dreams she’s had, then hungry and needy like a few better dreams she’s had.
She hears Mulder’s breathing staccato in her ear as she drags her lips down his throat, sucking briefly on his Adam’s apple, the juncture of his neck and shoulder. She pulls his gray t-shirt up and and over his head and keeps going down the slope of him, lips resting for a moment on the circular scar she gave him a million years ago. His arms are strong, dextrous fingers threading through her hair as she kisses his bicep, usually hidden away beneath pressed shirts. She drags her bottom lip up the inside length of his arm from elbow to shoulder and he shudders, hand gripping tightly at her thigh.
Scully is on fire suddenly, and she lets out a moan. She leans into the splay of his fingers and turns her head to rest it against his chest as he rubs up and down her thigh exploratorily, listening to his heart pound. He is somehow both gentle and deliberate, and she feels her legs parting slowly every time his fingers brush the hem of her shirt. He smoothes his palm up her thigh and she locks her fingers with this, then guides his hand to the top button of her night shirt. He doesn’t need further encouragement and he undresses her slowly, like he wants to remember it. She is filled with a surge of affection for him and kisses him again, boldly sucking on his bottom lip as his hands push her shirt from her shoulders. She feels beautiful.
Mulder’s hands start at her waist and trace the curve of her body up, coming to rest over her breasts. She lets out a long, slow puff of air when he tugs at a nipple and then a sharp cry when his lips close over it. She cradles his head, fingernails cutting sharply at the base of his neck. He alternates with tongue and teeth, making her squirm until she is sitting on her knees, involuntarily moving against him and panting wordless prayers. He drags his mouth between her breasts, up her neck to her mouth, where he doesn’t kiss her but he hovers, watching her eyes, waiting for… waiting for what? Permission?
“Mulder…” she says slowly, almost a laugh, but that is all the answer he needs.
He palms down her stomach and runs a finger along the band of her underwear. She suddenly wishes they were something sexy, not plain and tan, but he doesn’t seem to mind. She rises to kneeling to grant him better access, and he slips two fingers inside. She doesn’t realize how wet she is until she feels him stroke her and it makes her gasp.
“Jesus, Scully,” he manages, teasing her clit. She grasps at his arm for leverage, and because she’s suddenly incapable of being upright. He slips one finger inside her and then another, and she hisses at the explosion of pleasure and pain.
“Sorry,” she explains. “Been a while.”
“You’re perfect,” he says, and begins to move his fingers, slowly at first, and then rapidly, quickening, curling forward and hitting her at just the right angle until she is bucking against him, her only cognizant sounds oh’s and ah’s and then an oh god as she feels herself coming. She deepens the spread of her legs and leans her full weight against him, still shallowly thrusting her hips to meet his hand as she comes undone, breathing his name with her face buried in his chest.
She read once somewhere, though she had already known from experience, that the male orgasm is exhaustive, that often after achieving climax, a man will fall into a deep sleep almost immediately, but that the effect is opposite for women, that when a woman climaxes she is energized and unstoppable. She feels it now as she pushes Mulder onto his back and straddles him. She feels it as she undoes his belt and scrapes her fingernails down his chest. She feels it now as his erection presses against her inner thigh and he reaches up to cup her breasts again, fingers catching in the chain around her neck.
“Mulder,” she whispers, pressing against him insistently, “Pants.”
“Right.” He tears his hands away and shimmies his jeans down his legs, then his boxers, and she takes the time to slip her underwear away and then they are there. She positions herself above him carefully, giving him a few hard strokes. He is firm and throbbing in her hand. She exhales slowly, bracing herself for what’s to come. Mulder reaches up and strokes the inside of her elbow with the pad of his thumb, and she lowers herself down onto him, gasping at the feeling of him inside her.
She is tight, and she takes in short, sharp breaths as she raises and lowers herself a few times before they are moving comfortably. She sets the pace, bracing her hands against his chest. Some men have been intimidated by her practical need to be on top, but whatever Mulder is experiencing could be described as the opposite of a problem.
She leans down so their chests are touching and slows her rhythm slightly. “Good?” she whispers into his ear.
He laughs and she feels it rumble in his chest. “Unbelievable,” he manages to get out, smoothing a hand up her body from backside to clavicle.
“Why?” she asks, sitting up again, resuming her normal pace.
“Because,” he says slowly, breathing becoming more difficult as she rises and falls against him again and again, “because this was the one thing I was scared to believe.”
She nearly comes again at the tenderness and sincerity in his words. “Mulder…”
He reaches up and pulls her to him again, kissing her cheek on a passionate miss, and then her lips. She feels his hips rise to meet hers and she stills as he fills her deeply again and again, making her hiss sharply into his mouth. His breathing quickens in her ear, his thrusts becoming uneven and deep, and then he finishes, her name escaping his lips on an erratic breath.
Scully still feels something building within her, pooling low and deep when he rolls and turns them over and kisses down her stomach.
“Mulder–”
“Sh.”
His lips close over her clit and her hips rise off the mattress with a moan that she at first doesn’t recognize as her own.
“Holy… god!”
Mulder’s mouth is as skilled as his fingers and she writhes beneath him, propping herself up on her elbows one minute, then burying her head in his pillow the next. She holds him between her legs with a hand on the back of his head, cooing as she scratches at his scalp with her neatly-trimmed fingernails. He looks up and his eyes meet hers as he slips two fingers inside her.
“Mulder!” she gasps.
“Mmm?” His hum resonates through every sounding board in her body, the gentle vibrations sending a jolt of electricity straight to her center.
“Do it again,” she urges, tasting the sweat forming on her upper lip.
“Mmm…” Mulder groans against her, his lips still licking her clit again and again while his fingers curl forward inside her, hitting that place that makes her feel like she’s going to split in two. And then it’s all too much and she shatters, comes hard against his mouth, jerks up one of her thighs involuntarily and knees him in the head, finally breaking his sweet contact.
“Shit!” she hisses, still coming.
He chuckles, kisses her lips as she slows her shaking, and she tastes herself on his tongue: salty and sweet at the same time. It has been impossibly long since she licked herself from the lips of another. She loves it. She loves him, undeniably, has for what feels like forever, but doesn’t need to say it, doesn’t need to will it into existence for it to be true. She knows he doesn’t need it either.
He rubs the back of his head where her knee made contact, and mumbles, “No harm, no foul, no bruise.”
“I can assure you I’ve never done that before.” She is still lying on her back, sweat cooling as he lies beside her, still too on fire to touch just yet.
“There’s a first time for everything.” He means it as a joke, but it brings her back to reality, which, to her surprise, isn’t as earth-shatteringly different as she thought it would be.
She covers her face with her hands but she is grinning behind them. “Mulder, that was–”
When no descriptor comes to her quickly he supplies, “Easy,” in what she has come to learn is a hopeful tone.
It hadn’t been what she was thinking of, but it is true. The formation of their partnership had been natural and effortless, despite their differences. She isn’t sure why, all these years, she thought that their romantic union would be anything less than simplistically perfect.
“Yeah,” she concurs. She sits up, brushes her hair from her face. The bedroom still glows in the orange light of the dawning but everything is more focused, like the harsh glow of a field report on her computer screen after she slides on her glasses.
She is ready for a thousand more moments like this, moments of bright, blinding clarity.