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The X-files fanfiction "We only heal together" 3/3
Read it on AO3
3.
When Mulder opens his eyes, the darkness instantly evolves into a hazy grayness. No snow or harsh blinding light. No screeching metal cabinets behind his back, no blinking fluorescent ceiling lamps, no whirl of snowflakes around. It’s not their office.
His head feels heavy and Mulder draws a deep breath and takes a look around. He’s lying on the tiled floor in what looks like a spacious conference room. He can hear Scully’s ragged breathing somewhere close but not quite there. The pounding in his head is the pounding on the door. Slowly, he comes to the conclusion that what they have just experienced was no more than a hallucination. A dream of sorts. It’s sickening cruelty chilling him to the bone.
“Scully?” he croaks. There’s no answer.
Dizzy and confused from their ordeal, Mulder manages to roll on his back and spots Scully lying a few feet away from him in the fetal position. From where he is, it looks like she’s still imprisoned in their mutual delusion, her eyes darting beneath her tightly shut lids. She doesn’t seem to acknowledge his presence at all, and on unsteady legs Mulder rushes to her, almost crashing down onto the floor in his haste to get to Scully. Not sure whether it’s safe to wake her up, Mulder nonetheless cannot resist reaching out and brushing her shoulder tenderly. At his touch Scully jerks sharply and a weak moan falls from her lips.
“Don’t,” she says in a small voice. Mesmerized and terrified at once, Mulder watches how the lashes of her closed eyes get wet, and when a single tear escapes and runs down her temple, he is overwhelmed with horror. A shocking, stomach-churning realization sinks in.
The pounding on the door becomes almost unbearable in its discordance and in a matter of seconds the noise turns into a thunderous racket. The door gives up under the assault of whoever stands behind, and a bunch of police officers along with paramedics burst unceremoniously into the room.
What happens next happens so quickly that even hours later Mulder struggles to reconstruct the whole evening in detail. It comes in increments, and he knows next to nothing as to which are real and which are just figments of his imagination.
Scully is put on a gurney and whisked away outside to the ambulance, he himself has to endure a disgustingly long and meticulous examination by a young paramedic. When it’s finally confirmed that he sustained no physical injuries and is free to go, he’s held by another officer to explain his involvement. Around him, the place is swiped for evidence. Mulder does his best to deliver his version of events, which feels pretty much like an after-sleep groggy recollection. The police disclose that there was an anonymous call about people being subjected to torture at the location. They have yet to determine the source of the call, but the Portaverros were arrested on the spot upon trying to flee their office. They are being taken to the station at the moment and the agents are welcome to pay a visit and interrogate the couple as soon as they want. Mulder advises the cops that it might be reasonable to separate the couple, and confirms they’ll drop by the police station first thing tomorrow morning.
At last, he ventures out of the building to look for his partner only to find Scully already waiting for him in a car. Not a word is said as Mulder starts the engine and heads off to Georgetown, anticipating how tedious their journey back home is going to be. The silence is uncomfortable and seems to scream even louder than the noise he heard at the crime scene, and it makes him shift anxiously in his seat. His partner’s head rests against the side window, her eyes closed. He can’t stand the thought that she might be pretending just to steer clear of him, so he chooses to believe Scully is dozing off, exhausted.
When Mulder pull the car up to the front of her apartment building, she wakes up only to notice that the car is double-parked and the engine is running, the key still in the ignition. Obviously, Mulder has no intention of inviting himself in. Carefully, as if not to touch him, Scully extends a hand under the steering wheel to turn and pull the key out. The engine dies and the silence stretches like a taut skin of a drum. Taking a moment to gather her thoughts and then measuring each word carefully, she says:
“Come inside, Mulder.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” his voice is a bone-tired whisper.
“We’ll just talk.”
“Scully,” he stops her with an exasperated sigh.
“Mulder, please. We can’t just sweep it under the rug and hope it will sort itself out.”
In an attempt to catch his eyes, Scully cups his chin and turns it to meet her steady gaze. Mulder surrenders to her willingly, secretly elated that she has no trouble touching him. Not like in the Portaverro’s residence. It’s only a moment before he drags his eyes away again, his face contorted in pain.
“Did I really do that?”she knows he’s talking about their shared nightmare, and logically she understands it wasn’t real but it hurts all the same. They will bring it to the surface and acknowledge the damage done. They will deal with that. There’s no way she's going to put her head in the sand and circumnavigate his question. Withdrawing her hand, she says calmly.
“Not for real, no.”
“It felt real.”
“It did.”
The knuckles of his hands turn white from the power of his grip on the steering wheel. All of a sudden he’s a wild animal trapped in a cage, the quiet and limited space of a vehicle suffocating him. He wants to launch himself off the seat, pace around, circle the table, topple a chair, shove his hands in his pockets, put some distance between them, punch someone. He doesn’t do any of these things. Deep down in his heart of hearts, he knows that Scully is right, they have to talk it through. Stealing a quick glance at his partner, Mulder is relieved to see that her expression and posture are open.
“What was your fear?” he finally asks.
“Betrayal,” that makes him jerk his head up and search for her eyes.
“Remember that case we were working on in Braddock Heights? With the vhs tapes?” Scully continues. “At the time, I thought you were in cahoots with the cigarette-smoking bastard. I was terrified of being betrayed, most of all by you. I guess this time that fear manifested itself in the cruelest way possible.”
Her hands are slightly shaking and she hides them between her thighs, so Mulder wouldn't notice and poses the question back.
“What was yours?”
“Hurting you,” Mulder replies without preamble, raw emotion in this voice. His eyes burn, pain filling him up to the brim, threatening to spill over the edge. “I was afraid…” he drops his head, no longer able to endure her sea blue penetrating gaze. “I am afraid to end up doing something that will hurt you, Scully. I fucking hurt you all the time.”
“Mulder…”
“I do, Scully. You can’t assuage my guilt by saying it was your choice. I know what you're gonna say, it's always been your choice, and you stay by my side of your own volition. I know that! It doesn’t make me any less responsible for all the bad things that keep happening to you.” He’s looking at his upturned hands, fingers splayed wide until Scully’s small strong hand comes into his view and cradles his tanned and big one. The contrast is mesmerizingly beautiful. When she tugs on his arm and brings their intertwined fingers to her mouth, kissing each of his knuckles lovingly, his eyes cloud with tears.
From the moment they were partnered, Mulder had the unshakable belief that Scully needed his protection. If he could… if she let him, he would put her into an inner pocket of his jacket to hide her from the perils of the outside world. As far as she was concerned, he was simply scared out of his wits. Mulder is well-aware that despite being a diminutive woman, seemingly fragile and vulnerable, Scully is stronger than anyone he knows. Stronger than himself. Her petite frame is no more than a facade. On more than one occasion, he bore witness to her easily overpowering her male counterparts. Hell, for the seven years they’ve been together she probably incapacitated more offenders than he had done in all his years in the FBI. Scully is his strong little partner, best friend, and staunchest ally. She’s the love of his life.
“Mulder, listen to me. You are intransigent. Adamant. Moderately aggressive, dominant and assertive. Maybe even the most grandiose narcissist in the flesh I know. But aside from being all those things, you’re also kind, compassionate, empathetic, loving. And you are not a rapist. I trust you with my life, Mulder.”
Her soft breaths dance across the skin of his hand still pressed to her warm cheek, lips grazing lightly on his calloused fingers.
“You’re my guiding light, Scully. My touchstone. I wouldn’t be sitting here now if not for you.”
It feels like a moment of distilled creation. He might have chosen other words but their meaning echoes her own: they are not going to let it drive a wedge between them, leaving their lives in disarray and their souls emotionally crippled. As Scully’s hand reaches the door handle ready to get out of the vehicle, Mulder doesn’t hesitate to follow.
The X-files fanfiction "We only heal together" 2/3
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2.
Mulder looked at her with those dark, intense eyes, his gaze traveling over her body. Neither would be able to explain any of what happened afterward. It could be attributed to the inexplicable slideshow they had been forced to watch or just something he saw in her eyes. The next moment his mouth was on hers. One hand was sinking deep into her hair, and the other was covering her breast.
For one millisecond she was absolutely frozen neither returning the kiss nor pushing him off, but then her arms went around his neck drawing him closer. Mulder walked her backward until she was pressed against the metal cabinet, the sharp edges of its handle digging into her back. He skimmed his hands down her sides, gripped her hips, and lifted Scully off the ground. She braced her hands on his shoulders and instinctively wrapped her legs around his midriff, the narrow black skirt riding up and bunching at her waist. The hardness of his arousal was rubbing against her core. Mulder growled in her mouth and pulled her tighter, caressing her everywhere he could reach. Scully’s heart was thudding so loudly in her chest that her voice of reason drowned in the noise, not a single clear thought in her head. When Mulder squeezed the cheeks of her ass through the thin nylon of her tights and sucked on that sweet spot behind her earlobe that always made her knees go weak, Scully let out a moan and opened her eyes. She wanted to see him. She wanted to watch.
There was a wild glint in his eyes like he was on the brink of insanity, and it immediately threw her for a loop. With her hands still wrapped around his neck, she yanked hard on his hair compelling him to look at her.
“Mulder. Slow down.”
He was tuning her out and that didn’t surprise her in the slightest. She could hardly hear herself over the tumult from the ringing in her ears. Groping, stroking, feeling her up, Mulder was acting like an overexuberant teenager on the cusp of exploding if he didn’t get inside her soon.
“I want you so much, baby.”
If that look in his eyes combined with Mulder’s erratic behavior did nothing to Scully, that ‘baby’ definitely tipped her off. She couldn’t imagine Mulder calling her that even in the throes of passion. Scully’s eyes widened in shock as it became abundantly clear that Mulder was under some kind of influence. He may have not even realize it was her in the room with him, his mind was foggy from whatever he had been subjected to. This wasn’t her Mulder. Her Mulder was caring and kind. That Mulder was churlish and indignant.
Was it some kind of perverted trick to make her finally leave him? She would never believe Mulder was capable of hurting her willingly. No. He would not.
The crystalline blue of her eyes filled with tears, but so did her mind with determination to stop her partner from his greatest fall. Overcoming a logjam in her throat and gathering all her strength, Scully managed to push Mulder off and slid off his hips. With her hands planted firmly on his torso, she said as calmly as she could.
“Mulder, stop! Something has been done to you. To us. This is not you!”
Shockingly, her resistance only added more zing to Mulder’s already steel-hard cock and he began grating himself over the layers of her pantyhose and underwear.
“Who else would it be?” he replied gruffly and with one quick motion turned her around, her back to his chest, her compact body trapped between his forearms.
Scully heaved a shuddering sigh, but it was the furthest from pleasure as it could be. Mulder tugged on her hips grinding against her ass, and it felt strikingly right and wrong at the same time. Nothing ever felt so good before. Nothing ever felt so bad before.
“Mulder, no.”
He was panting heavily into her ear, moving his lips, with a taste of water and salt from her cheek, down to her neck to bite on the tendon where he felt her pulse thrumming. Pressing all his weight to her backside, Mulder held Scully between the metal cabinet and his hard rock body, roaming with rough hands over her hips, her breasts, her stomach. Anywhere he could reach, his erection nestling right over the reddish ink of her tattoo.
“I’ve been wanting to do it since day one, Scully. I know that you want it too. Come on, help me here.” He punctuated each word with a thrust of his pelvis.
“Not like this, Mulder. Please. Never like this.”
How would they survive it? There was nothing they could possibly do to overcome it. This would create a rift so deep in their relationship, that nothing would ever be able to fix it.
What they had between them was more than a partnership, more than a certain amount of camaraderie, more than unspoken understanding. There was affection. Devotion. Love. How could it all be shattered to pieces in the blink of an eye?
One of Mulder’s hands crept under her skirt, and when it reached between her legs, she heard him tearing her pantyhose. He expected to find her all wet and aroused for him and was deeply frustrated to see that she wasn’t. Moving the gusset of her panties to the side, he dipped his middle finger inside of her to the second knuckle. He imagined her letting out a moan which would be a mixture of ache and pleasure.
What came out though was a gut-wrenching scream. Mulder covered her mouth with his big palm along with her nose making it impossible for Scully to breathe. A lack of oxygen sent her to the furthest corner of her mind, where one of the darkest memories was buried.
A ten-year old girl, a good swimmer, a natural - she wasn’t good enough that day. One moment she was diving with Bill and Charlie in shallow waters and the next, they were gone. She kept turning her head right and left rapidly but couldn’t see a thing. Utterly terrified, she failed to fathom that her lack of vision had nothing to do with her eyes, but was caused by the water itself. She was drowning. No air. She couldn’t breathe. Panic struck her and she opened her mouth to scream only to gulp mouthfuls of murky salty liquid.
That time Bill pulled her out to the surface, literally saving her life.
Here and now her life was only in her hands. Gathering her wits, Scully bit Mulder’s hand so hard that she felt the metallic taste on her tongue.
“Fuck!”
Mulder cried, pulling his hand away from her face. Scully was half ready for him to backhand her in return and used the moment to jump behind the desk, as far from him as the office allowed. She wasn’t really sure if that Mulder wouldn’t strike a woman.
The man in front of her didn’t move as he was looking at his bloody hand. When he finally lifted his eyes to Scully, she was eyeing him cautiously, her lips were ruddy red with his blood, crimson smears on her palish cheek.
All of a sudden, Mulder was back to another time. They were in their office, their real office.
“Look at you!” Scully smiled, entering through the door and handing him a brown paper bag while moving aside the photos lying in front of Mulder on the desk to sit with her hip on it.
“Is this our new assignment?”
Mulder smirked and stood up to move to the glass-encased annex, the furthest part of the office used as a minuscule kitchen, and grabbed a mug to pour her some coffee from a carafe.
She took a sip and put the porcelain cup down where both their mugs rested together: his - a huge white one with a gray almond-shaped eye alien printed on it, with milk and three sugars, and hers – an elegant golden-rimmed porcelain piece filled with pure black.
He remembered her asking him if extraterrestrials were supposed to be green, and him blowing raspberries at her, stating what a widespread misconception it had always been. It was a theory for amateurs, he said, and they were pros.
He remembered complimenting her on her outfit that day and how she lowered her eyes shyly and started fiddling with the papers on the desk.
He remembered how a red bloom of blood stained the page as she got a paper cut.
He remembered rummaging through the drawers trying to find a box of Kleenex, that, for whatever reason, was missing, and then desperately reaching out, alarmed and panicky, to grab her by the hand and take her finger in his mouth to suck on it gently.
He remembered her eyes going wide, not from the shock of his action but the understanding behind it. He couldn’t stand seeing her bleeding. Not again. He couldn’t stand seeing her hurt. Not ever.
A red bloom of blood stained the page as she got a paper cut.
There was blood on his fingers. Blood on her lips.
“Oh Scully,” he whispered as realization dawned on him.
“Scully… Scully… Scully,” Mulder whispered suddenly completely drained. “Oh God, Scully. I’m so sorry.”
She was right at his side. He could feel her feathery light touch on his cheek, her strong hands pulling him into a tight embrace, her soft breaths on his neck.
She didn’t let go of him as they slid together down the wall. She didn’t let go when he broke into sobs, gently rocking her on his lap.
“I’m so sorry, Scully. I’m so sorry.”
Mulder took her hand and brought it to his lips, trying to soothe and kiss away the pain he knew was in her heart, his tears mingling with the red streaks on her ashen skin.
“It’s OK, Mulder. We are going to be OK.”
They seemed so unfixable and irrecoverable, and she knew that it would only add to Mulder’s guilt. Scully had no idea how but she would fix it. They would fix it. “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from you, Mulder.”
When Mulder felt Scully’s weight changing on his lap almost imperceptibly, he looked back at his arms, and it was like she was slipping away through his fingers. Melting like ice, leaking through the cracks, soaking his clothes, and pooling in puddles by his feet.
“Scully?” he cried. “No, don’t go. Stay with me.”
He tried to squeeze her harder, to hold her as close as possible, to keep her solid and warm.
“Don’t leave me, Scully.”
He shook his head refusing to believe in the reality of the scene unfolding, his head pounding, eyes shut tightly. When he summoned up the courage to open them again, he was sitting on the floor in the pool of water and blood, his arms empty, and the rays of light were turning into snowflakes and falling down from the ceiling, whirling around him - tiny particles gathering in a storm in the midst of their office.
“Scullyyyyy!”
The pounding was getting louder and louder, becoming a deafening roar, the snowstorm raging and enveloping everything in blinding whiteness. His head was the epicenter of the explosion, burying under its ashes everything around, and there was a fleeting thought that he couldn’t help but feel relief. It was over. Whatever it was, it was over.
The X-files fanfiction "We only heal together" 1/3
Read it on AO3
1.
“Are they sleeping?”
“Oh yes, they are.”
“What are they dreaming about?”
“Their worst nightmare.”
----
The “ping” of the elevator car pulled her out of her reverie and as the doors slid open, she was confused to find the basement floor shrouded in darkness. Stepping out of the lift, Scully groped for the switch on the wall but when she flicked it, nothing happened.
Darkness pervaded.
At the end of the hallway, their office was beckoning her with its dim shaft of light peeking from under the door, and she moved towards it as if summoned.
She expected Mulder, the one who didn’t seem to need much sleep and was always up with the sun, to be there. He would probably be starting the second pot of coffee by that time. Always thoughtful, she brought him a blueberry bran muffin for breakfast. A crack about him being the only person in the whole universe leaving the office after nine and coming in around six of his own volition was on the tip of her tongue. She was looking forward to their routine exchange of banter and innuendoes.
As Scully opened the door, the light from the overhead lamps spilt out into the hallway, chasing away the shadows to corners. Spending seven years in that office, she knew it inside out, but that moment she felt like a stranger. It was their office, and yet it wasn’t. Gone was the stale dusty air and little puncture holes on the ceiling from Mulder’s pencils, and even the fluorescent tube lamps blinking constantly as of recently seemed to be changed. There were two mahogany desks facing one another in the center of the room and a potted plant in the corner. Scully didn’t remember ever placing it there. She couldn’t even remember her partner putting in a request for a second desk.
Mulder himself was nowhere to be seen. In passing, she entertained the idea of Mulder wanting to surprise her thus the desk and all the cleaning. The ludicrous idea her logical mind immediately rejected. It just wasn’t possible. They had left he office together the day before, around lunchtime, grabbed a quick bite in the nearby deli, and headed to investigate another case ending up on a damnably boring stakeout.
There was a lead into what Mulder suspected could be anything from hypnosis to telekinesis to possession. The victims claimed they were made to do terrible things against their will. One guy beat his boss half to death, but couldn’t even remember what induced such aggressive behavior. When he entered the office the next day, ready to come clean in front of everyone and make his colleagues report him to the police, his boss was there, not a scratch on his face. The face allegedly smashed to puree no more than a day before.
“A nightmare,” Scully said unimpressed. “Or wishful thinking. They probably had some beef and their hostility manifested itself in a very realistic dream. Not unheard of.”
“One for two?” It was Mulder’s turn to raise a brow. “The thing is, Scully, both remember everything down to the smallest detail, and claim they did some severe punching and kicking.”
It appeared to be worth the time to talk to the people involved, which eventually shed light on some other facts - a few hours prior to the fight, the company’s employees took part in a one-day team-building seminar conducted by two personal development coaches, who also happened to be a married couple. The agents didn’t get any insights into the case upon interrogating Maria and Sebastian Portaverro, but since their possible suspects were about to carry out another workshop, Mulder and Scully decided to stay close and check the participants afterward.
They were sitting in a car across the building where the Portaverros had an office. No matter how much she tried, Scully couldn’t remember anything that happened during or after that. She remembered being in a car with Mulder, and then she was standing in the elevator. The absurdity of the situation was bugging her - the changes in the office, the fact that she couldn’t remember getting back home the night before, or even arriving at work in the morning - everything was wrong. A glance at her watch told her that Mulder should have been here hours ago. Where was he? She needed him to help her figure it all out.
Trying to stay calm and not to spiral into panic, Scully decided to do what she always did best - collect and analyse the data. Stepping over to what was supposed to be Mulder’s desk, she touched the pristine wooden surface. Instantly she knew that something was wrong. Mulder’s desk was never that clean. There was no junk. It was too tidy. Too not Mulder. The papers were put in an orderly pile, and Mulder never bothered to organize his desk’s contents in such an impeccable manner. Even office paraphernalia was scattered around in a weirdly neat way as if each object was placed in its spot, on purpose. On a whim, Scully pulled open the first drawer and felt her stomach shrivel in dread. There were none of Mulder’s most prized belongings. Not even his ever-present sunflower seeds. Scully was horrified as it sank that the only thing she was familiar with in that office was their all-time favorite full-sized “I want to believe” poster. Did someone violate their office while they were on a stakeout? To what end?
As if out of nowhere something clicked and the room was plunged into darkness. Scully recognized the sound as their old-fashioned projector came to life and started switching slides, changing the images rapidly, lighting and darkening the room in turn. It was them - Mulder and Scully. The photos flicked on the screen like memories in her head. The most significant, valuable, delightful moments of both their lives. Imprisoned by the retrospection playing out on the wall in front of her, Scully stood still, frozen. With each image, she was sent to relive her past sensory experiences all over again.
Click, and she was opening the door and looking at the agent she was assigned to work with. Their first meeting. A mixture of curiosity and caution in his hazel eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses.
Click, and they were in Oregon, standing in the graveyard under the rain.
Click. They were in a van and Mulder was dressed in a bulletproof vest handing her his gun.
Click, and they were sitting on the bench in a small town of Home talking about their genetic
makeup and potential parenthood.
Click, and there was a hallway in a hospital in Allentown where their words sounded like a confession.
Click, and there was another time and other woods somewhere in Florida where she, who couldn’t carry a tune, was singing because Mulder asked her to.
Click, and they were in California, burying the daughter she had never known.
Click. “You’re my one in five billion.”
Click. Another hallway, another greatest wish never granted - their aborted kiss.
Click. He was pleading with her not to make him choose.
Click. Mulder’s high as a kite I-love-you.
Click. A hospital bed. Again. His head was on her hip, her hand was in his hair.
Click, and they were dragging their eyes over each other in the decontamination shower.
Click. She was sobbing in his arms, the floor was stained with her blood.
Click. They were exchanging vows on the threshold of his apartment.
Scully pivoted her back to the screen, unable to take it anymore. What kind of sick joke was that? It felt too much. Too personal. Too them. How was it possible to sum up the history of them so succinctly in a few slides? Who the hell played those tricks on them? Her legs went wobbly and she braced herself against Mulder’s desk.
There was another click and all of a sudden the basement was brightly lit again. Scully made a complete 180 and was face to face with Mulder, his tall figure looming over the entryway. “How long has he been standing there? Did he see that too?” There was an ominous look in his eyes, and a foreboding sense of horror permeated the air, but Scully ignored all of that. This was Mulder. He wouldn’t hurt her. The projector kept clicking the slides but with the light back on, it was nearly impossible to make out the images on the wall.
Trying to pay no heed to a knot of anxiety agitating inside, Scully took a few tentative steps toward her partner. Noticing some lint on his shoulder, she reached out to brush it off when he grabbed her arm harshly.
“Mulder,” Scully gasped and stopped dead in her tracks at the threat that emanated from Mulder’s demeanor.
This is The X-Files fanfiction story.
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When Scully comes out of the bathroom, clad in her typical set of silk pajamas, her face bare of any make-up, Mulder is already in bed. He casts a coy smile in her direction, but his face is taut with a mixture of nervousness and anticipation.
“I took a shower in the downstairs bathroom.”
He’s wearing a t-shirt and whatever he has down there is hidden under the blanket, but Scully prays Mulder's wearing his pajama pants. Just looking at him, she feels ready to fall apart at the seams. All of a sudden she is tongue-tied, unable to squeeze out past her lips a single syllable. She feels like a bride on her wedding night who's about to get cold feet but also as if it might be her only chance, which she’s not quite ready to blow. She’s terribly out of sync with her voice of reason, so in order to calm her nerves, she turns off the light, takes a few steps to the bed, and quickly sinks under the covers.
She can feel Mulder moving as far away from her as possible, trying to give her extra space, but it immediately becomes obvious that they can barely fit in that bed together. As Mulder still does his best to avoid touching his lovely partner, one of his knees accidentally bumps into the crease of her ass, and Scully’s whole body jerks so unexpectedly that she knocks him out of bed.
“Oh my god, Mulder. Are you OK?
“Jesus, Scully. You know, you could have told me if you changed your mind about me sleeping on the floor. No need to go ballistic.”
He looks up at her from his place on the floor, grimacing and rubbing a bump on his forehead. With those big puppy eyes, that pouty mouth and mussed hair, dressed only in a tatty white t-shirt and boxers he looks irresistibly cute, and Scully can’t fight the urge to reach out and lightly touch his cheek. The whole predicament is so ridiculously comical that the corners of her mouth start curving up slightly, and she quickly covers it with her hand but it’s just too much and in a second she bursts out laughing, glimpses of tears shine in her eyes. Contagious. Deep, loud, wake-everyone-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night laughter. Mulder starts laughing with her.
And just like that, the tension is gone.
“Here, get back to bed.” Scully makes room for him on the bed and throws open the covers.
Illuminated only by the dim moonlight coming through the window across the bed, she can see Mulder wiggling his brows playfully at her. With a wide grin still plastered on his face, he gets on his feet and slips under the covers. He nudges Scully with his shoulder and she dives under his arm, throwing one leg on his, her head resting on his shoulder. Like they always sleep this way. As if she belongs there.
When Scully first realized that she started having unpartnerly feelings for her partner, she designed a whole set of rules in the situations of extreme proximity to Mulder. It didn’t take much to make her see that she had trouble sticking to those rules lately. Mulder was her guilty pleasure. And she is coming to terms with the fact that any guilty pleasure if done in moderation is not something to feel guilty about at all. Mulder IS her guilty pleasure. The one she is going to indulge in tonight and get away with.
“I have a confession.” Scully nuzzles his neck with the tip of her nose and feels him inhale sharply. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”
“That?” With a hand that isn’t caressing her back in long strokes, he waves between them. “Sleeping together? Hugging?”
“Sleeping, hugging, and all the rest,” Scully confirms quietly.
“The rest?”
“Yeah, the rest.” She lifts her head off his shoulder and eyes him lovingly. Their faces are so close that the wisps of air he lets out tickle her skin, and Scully draws a deep breath like she’s going to plunge into the water. When he first feels her soft lips touching his skin, right where the bruise is already marring his forehead, Mulder stops breathing altogether. She kissed him like that dozens of times before, but somehow this time it feels different. Intimate. Like a prelude to something else. Something more.
Mulder closes his eyes, relishing her tentative caresses. She kisses his cheek then, very close to his mouth but not quite there, and as she’s about to do the same on the other side, he slightly turns his face, and their mouths meet full-on. It's a chaste kiss, their lips are barely touching, almost hovering over each other’s. Her breath is shallow, and Mulder almost stops breathing at all. She wonders if Mulder can hear her heart pounding fast and loud, as blood rushes to her face causing her usually pale cheeks to blush. Her whole body grows hot and tingles with excitement.
When they finally part, their foreheads touching, for several long minutes they don’t move at all. The kiss is mind-blowing. Intoxicating. A promise made under the guise of night, the one Mulder has a full intention of delivering.
“Jesus, Mulder,” she says in wonder, just before his mouth lands full force on hers. One of his hands slides up to cradle the back of her head. In return, she wraps her own hands around his neck, weaving her fingers through his silky strands. When they take a break to breathe, he doesn’t let go but holds her tightly, face buried in her hair. He can hear her ragged breathing, warm puffs of air on his neck.
Scully’s eyes flutter open when he loosens his grip on her, and she slides one hand down his arm to entwine their fingers.
“Wow,” is all he is capable of. His voice is husky, and his smile grows wider as Scully ducks her head. Mulder’s absolutely enamored with her apparent shyness. His logically-minded partner is all of a sudden rendered speechless. So simple, unpretentious, and amusing in her pure wonder.
“Yeah,” she whispers, and then lifts her chin and leans down to steal another kiss.
“What else is in that “the rest”, Scully?”
She snorts and once again hides her face in his t-shirt.
“We are not doing that in your mother’s place, on your tiny bed, in the house full of guests, Mulder.”
They both chuckle and he pulls her into a tight embrace, kissing her hair when Scully’s head returns on his shoulder.
“But the offer is on the table?”
“Mmm,” she hums in agreement. “You better pray there's no snow in the morning and the roads are clean, so we get back home fast and safely to try that “rest.”
“Far be it from me to tell you, Scully, how bad I’m at communing with deities.”
Scully shuts him up with another kiss.
“Oh, God.” Mulder breathes out.
“You learn quickly.”
“Can we do it again?”
“Absolutely.”
This is The X-Files fanfiction story.
Read it on AO3
This is not how she imagined getting into his bed. Not even close.
It all started with a phone call. No, scratch that. It all started with a calendar.
In the duo, Mulder, for all his photographic memory, is prone to being blissfully ignorant when it comes to dates. Her own birthday, not forgotten but rather celebrated in dog years, as he fairly dubbed it, perfectly illustrates an untold number of all the dates Mulder is conveniently forgetful of. Scully, on the other hand, always pays attention.
So she was the one to point at the calendar and circle Teena Mulder’s birthday in red ink. And Mulder was the one to make a face as if he bit on the lemon at her not-so-subtle inquiry if he was going to pay a visit to Greenwich.
He brushed her off, literally hiding behind a random folder and figuratively hiding behind the seemingly heavy workload, excusing himself out of that conversation. He explained later that he’d give his mother a call and FedEx her something nice. Something bright and shiny. Or something practical and utilitarian. Or something useless but obscenely expensive nonetheless. He didn’t really care. He was sure that his mother didn’t care much either. Missis Mulder and her son still happened to be at odds, and it was apparent to his partner that a nicely wrapped box with a ribbon, even with a “Love you, mom” card attached wouldn’t undo the damage. And Scully’s determination when it came to family bonds knew no bounds.
So she kept asking. And Mulder kept dodging her questions. Scully kept reminding. Mulder kept finding excuses. Right up to the moment when he found one hell of a legitimate reason to skip his mother’s birthday party (there was supposed to be a party after all, right?). A case of a teenager abducted landed on his desk, and Mulder leaped at the chance to shift his focus to anything that wouldn’t involve him in figuring out what to do with their mother-son convoluted relationship.
It was the divine intervention though that they ended up somehow in Connecticut around that fateful unfortunate birthday date to investigate an aforementioned case, and Mulder agreed to swing by Teena Mulder’s house if things went well. Not like he really wanted it, but more to indulge Scully. As luck would have it, the agents managed to solve the case in two days, which turned out to be a typical runaway, where an alien was the victim’s boyfriend, and the victim herself was abducted of her own volition.
Surrendering to the promise made earlier, Mulder and Scully drove to Teena’s place and arrived at the house in the middle of a nice family-like gathering, Missis Mulder surrounded by her peers. Good food, rich wine, lots of jokes, and laughter. Despite Scully’s concerns, Mulder felt at ease and seemed to enjoy himself.
The snowstorm came as a surprise. It was problematic to leave Greenwich then, not least because everything froze. They’d have to dig their car out, with one of them shoveling the roads clear in front of the vehicle all the way out of the state, and Scully definitely wasn’t going to let him drive in the midst of the blinding whiteness, let alone fly. Not even in the first class. Who are you kidding? She sighed heavily. Cattle-class flying is more like it.
“Well, now we have a legitimate reason to laze about.” She told Mulder when it became clear they weren’t going to leave any time soon. “I’m not sure about you, Mulder, but my circadian rhythms are terribly shifted out of whack, so I’m going to crash here,” Scully said with an air of finality. “And maybe even have a lie in. We’re not due anywhere until the storm passes. You shouldn’t skimp on your sleep either.”
The problem was that no one in Teena Mulder’s house was due anywhere. They all were stuck for the time being and there were only so many beds available.
This is how Scully finds herself standing at the door of Fox Mulder’s old room in his mother’s house in Greenwich, the one they resided in after his parents divorced, with her partner leaning against the door jamb next to her. The room is small but cozy, so neat actually that it’s the furthest from what Fox Mulder’s own place looks like these days. There’s not much furniture in there, a desk with some drawers, a couple of bookshelves, a wardrobe and a bed. The bed. The bed they’re supposed to sleep in tonight.
“Ah, Scully, you finally get to see my room,” fueled by a few glasses of Cabernet, Mulder gives her his best smile and unglues himself from his spot near the door only to hop into the bed and pat the covers in invitation.
It will be fine, Scully tries to convince herself. We go to bed, we sleep, we wake up, and head back to DC. She doesn’t want to contemplate how small and narrow the bed is and how awkwardly aroused she is at the thought of spending a night in Mulder’s arms. Hey, stop, where did it come from? It’s just sleeping. Nothing more than sleeping. That’s it. More fibs, Dana. Feed yourself with white lies.
“Could be worse, I guess. At least we don’t have to spend the night in a car.”
She has no choice but to grin and bear it. It’s not like they’ve never shared a bed before, let alone too small of a bed, but here, in Mulder’s childhood bedroom, she suddenly feels totally knocked out of the rut. It doesn’t bode well with the fact that she has it really bad for him but has no idea if the feeling is mutual. Mulder manages to get under her skin even staying in another room with a closed door between them, but she’s not so sure she can keep her walls up and her heart shut with him literally breathing down her neck.
“How are you even going to sleep without TV?” Scully asks randomly just to distract herself.
“You are my favorite box set to doze off to, Scully.” He flirts with her shamelessly and she feels how her cheeks start burning and blush creeps down her neck.
Keep your chin up, girl. But if she can’t tell him in all candor about her feelings, she at least can be brutally honest with herself. She isn’t just tired of holding back. She is tired of making the decision of holding back. Decision fatigue, they call it. Each tiny fraction of his body to hers makes her resolve waver. She can already feel how in the darkness of the night, with his body hot and impossibly close to hers, the arguments previously solid and credible become mired in uncertainty.
Mulder, a perceptive one in their partnership, seems to feel her distress and offers quietly: “I can sleep on the floor.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Scully immediately jumps at his rather weak attempt to protest, her voice of reason drowning out in a cacophony of thoughts and blood rushing down to her groin.
“If you sleep on the floor, you’ll feel even more groggy than before you nodded off. Come on, we are adults, we can make it work.”
“Can we…?” He asks with his voice barely audible, and when Scully lifts her eyes she sees that he’s not smiling anymore. Is it possible that he is trying to pull off that con scheme with sleeping on the floor not to save her virtue but because he actually feels something to her, something that she dares hope is as remotely affectionate as what she feels to him and doesn't want her to be uncomfortable? That's just too much for her hazy alcohol-filled brain to process right now.
“I’m going to take a shower.” Scully grabs her overnight bag and in a matter of seconds hides behind the bathroom door.
When Mulder hears the shower running, he growls in frustration and slumps back against the pillows, not even bothering to undress.