Title: Rhapsodic Canvas Author: Trixie Email: scullymulder1121@hotmail.com Classification: MSR, S, A, SMUT Rating: NC-17 Archive: Go right ahead. Spoilers: The entire series, through First Person Shooter, just to be safe - extra big spoilers for Closure and FPS. It's two, two, two post-eps in one. Summary: "He wanted to paint a mural on the blank canvas of their future." Thanks: To Brandon, NaarIda, & Ropo for the awesome betas. You guys rock. ~ Steadily, the thud-thud-thud of her head hitting the wall echoed through the room. Mulder tried valiantly to protect her, but his hands were full of her flesh and his mouth was so intent upon hers that his dedication was not what it should have been. Scully voiced no protests, her legs around his waist, the clothes they still wore the only thing preventing them from fucking like animals. He wanted to feel her around him, inside him. He wanted to lose himself in her. He had lost himself over the last seven years, in every way, save this one. He wanted to be so deeply inside of her that she felt him in her throat. Instead, they both seemed to settle for grinding against one another mindlessly. It wasn't supposed to be like this, he thought dazedly for a moment, his fingers digging into her thighs so hard he was sure to leave marks. But when she made that little keening sound against his mouth, when her nails made crescent shaped indents on the back of his neck, he stopped thinking about how it was supposed to be, and reveled in what it was. This didn't have to happen. The thought occurred to him absently as she sucked his lower lip into her mouth, bit down hard enough to draw blood, the hurt so good. Very easily, they could have fallen into their normal patterns; flown back to D.C., ignored everything there was and could be between them. He could have settled on his couch, popped in a video, and jerked off till he went blind in one eye. He imagined she could have gone to bed with her vibrator and a single glass of wine, pretending she didn't feel guilty about touching herself. But he didn't want to do that. Not anymore. And he knew that she didn't want to. If she ever had. Growling against her mouth, he felt her tongue flick against the wound she'd inflicted upon him, soothing the pain away as easily as she gave it, inflaming him. He'd never been inflamed by someone before. He found that he liked it, his hands supporting her underneath her thighs, their tongues in and around each other's mouths, his body pinning hers to the wall as though the world would end if they allowed a single particle of air to pass between them. "Fuck," he groaned, her mouth having abandoned his to move lower, her teeth closing around a tendon in his neck. "I'm trying, Mulder." Her voice was breathless and his ego did triple back flip that he had managed to fluster Dana Scully. "You were amazing," he rasped into her ear as he tried to get her clothes off. Damn, it was harder than it should have been. The fact that he could only use one hand at a time didn't help, and he temporarily settled for pawing at her through her clothes. If the moan she emitted was any indication, she didn't seem to mind. "Mulder, you're still wearing pants. I haven't had the chance to be amazing yet." "I don't mean that." Their frenzied movements stopped for a moment as she leaned back the few inches she could to look at him. A grin he couldn't control spread across his face. "Not that I think for a moment you'll be anything less than spectacular." Satisfied with his answer, her tongue went back to tracing every whorl in his ear. Swallowing with some difficulty, he pressed his face into the crook of her neck, licking, nipping, and sucking between words. "I meant before. You were fucking amazing, dressed in that skin-tight leather thing, skillfully wielding a phallic symbol Freud would have a field day with, charging into a virtual nightmare to save my sorry ass." "I don't claim to be an expert - yet," she punctuated the word with a nip to his chin, "but I find it highly unlikely that there's anything sorry about your ass, Mulder." Chuckling, his mouth blazed a trail down her throat, pausing to suck at each of her clavicles in turn. Lifting with his hands, her body moved up the wall enough that he was able to place his mouth over one of her nipples, sucking it through the fabric that was becoming too cumbersome to be ignored. Scully had other ideas, though, because as soon as his mouth closed over her breast, her hands anchored themselves in his hair, holding his head to her firmly. His teeth grazed her flesh through blouse and bra, and his hands slipped beneath the skirt she wore, hiking it up to her hips, damning whoever it was that invented pantyhose to hell. "Mulder . . . gotta--" She broke off, moaning as his tongue slipped between the buttons of her blouse, finding skin between her breasts. "Off," she finally gasped. He assumed she was referring to their clothes, rather than his person, and he couldn't have agreed more. With much regret, he released her legs and she slid down his body, still firmly pinned to the wall. No sooner were they no longer concerned with keeping themselves balanced and upright, their hands became occupied with divesting each other of clothing as quickly as possible. Pulling, ripping, sliding, shimmying, clawing. It took them thirty seconds, which was thirty seconds longer than either wanted. He found her mouth on his again as she stood on tiptoes, her heels having been abandoned before he got her up against the wall. Wrapping his arms around her lower back, he helped her get a little height, pulling her tighter up his body, letting her use his shoulders for leverage as they physically tried to devour each other. Bra has to go, he thought, his mouth finally returning to her chest. They'd both gotten their underwear off, but somehow, they'd forgotten her bra. His hands slid around her back, searching for and finding the clasp. He struggled with it for a few seconds, before he felt her hands reach back as well, which only served to thrust her chest closer to him. He let his hands fall away, leaving the task to her, and instead buried his face between her breasts, his thumbs tracing absent circles over her lower back. A moment later, she emitted a moan of frustration. "Stuck," she muttered somewhere in the vicinity of his temple. "Doesn't matter." He paused to kiss the tip of her shoulder. His hands found her breasts, slipped beneath her bra to cup them fully. He pulled them free, admiring the way they looked sitting atop the frame of the bits of black lace she wore. "Testosterone frenzy approaching," he whispered, licking his lips as prepared to wrap them around the nipple he'd previously only tasted through two layers of silk and lace. He felt her smile against the top of his head, her nose buried in his hair. "Bring it on." Over the next few moments, he couldn't decide which sounds he liked better: the wet, slurping sounds he made suckling at each of her breasts in turn, or the deep, throaty moans she made. "More." Whether he'd spoken the word, or she had, or they'd said it at the same time, didn't really matter. The meaning was understood. He straightened before her, his hands running up her sides, her shoulders, her neck, until he cupped her cheeks in his palms. Their gazes met for a split second before his mouth was on hers again, hot, hard, wet, demanding. She gave everything he asked for and more, her small hands clutching at his bare back, her nails marking him. Savage, he decided as they began to back toward the nearest piece of furniture: the bureau in the corner, near the door where they stood. They were savagely taking one another, equally demanding and giving. Taking and receiving. Wanting and needing. He needed her so . . . Breaking their kiss, Scully turned in his arms, pressing her ass against the erection he didn't think could conceivably get any harder. As she was wont to do, she proved him wrong as she rubbed herself against him, sliding her hands up his body until she clutched at the back of his head again, tugging his mouth toward her from this new position. One of his hands held her face still while he ravaged her mouth; the other slid over her belly to almost roughly cup her between her legs. The action was possessive, more so than he had thought himself capable. He respected her, her body as well as her mind. He respected her as her own person. But this . . . it was primal. He =owned= her, everything about her. "I own you," he found himself rasping into her ear after they broke the contact of their mouths. "Yes," she whispered, thrusting her pelvis toward his hand. "God, yes." "And you own me." His teeth located the back of her neck, the scar beneath which rested the chip that kept her breathing. He licked it, sucked at it, gave thanks for its existence. "For the rest of your life." Her voice was husky, the honesty in her words clear and unfettered with often meaningless sentiment. He liked that. Oh, how he liked that. His fingers played through her curls, teasing her, making her whimper. "Jesus, you're wet." He could feel it against his hand, leaking from her body. His groin tightened, surged toward her instinctively. "For you. Because of you. God, what you do to me, Mulder." His hips were thrusting against hers he realized, her own moving in counterpoint, trying to create friction with his hand where he held her. "I want you." Duh. Idiot, he thought, chastising himself. Scully did not seem to mind. "Then take me. We've already established I'm yours." Before the words had completely left her mouth, he bent her over the bureau, used one hand to hold her hips still, the other to guide his cock into her. One long, hard thrust, and he was buried to his balls, groaning as his mouth closed around her shoulder, his teeth digging into her flesh to center himself, to stop this from ending before it began. "Oh, Mulder . . ." His gaze moved to her hands, saw how she gripped the edge of the bureau until her knuckles turned white. "Please . . ." "Please, what?" His mouth finally released her shoulder, feathering quick, ardent kisses over her skin until he reached her ear. "Talk . . . tell me . . ." He could feel the rapid breaths she took, her heart pounding through her back against his chest. It wasn't that he was more in control than she was. He just couldn't allow himself to lose it yet. Because once he did, there would be no stopping, and he was damned well going to take her with him. "What do you want, Scully?" Breathing heavily into her ear, his tongue got as familiar with the inside as she had with his. "Tell me what you want, and it's yours." "Your voice," she finally managed to gasp as one of his hands trailed up her torso, to hold one of her breasts in his palm securely. "Talk to me." "What do you want me to say?" "Doesn't matter. Wouldn't . . . be the same . . . if I told you . . . what to say." The enigmatic Dana Scully, struggling for words? He almost wished he wasn't too consumed by her to tease her. "How 'bout if I tell you how fucking exciting you are? In every context; physically, sexually, intellectually, philosophically, metaphysically." Unsure as to why, he raised his head up, only to be confronted with their reflections in the mirror above the bureau. His gaze met hers as he pulled nearly all the way out of her, then slowly slid back in. She had her lower lip pulled so tightly between her teeth he feared she'd draw blood. "What about when we were speaking with Ms. Afterglow?" He watched her eyes shift, darken slightly, and he smiled, a feral quirk of his lips he saw in the mirror. "You knew, didn't you?" he whispered right into her ear, his lips as close as they could be without actually touching her skin. Her moan echoed through the room as his hips began a slow, natural rhythm, teasing them both, prolonging the inevitable as long as possible. "Oh yeah," he gritted out, "you knew. That entire time, you knew what I was doing. You were trying so hard to ignore it, to concentrate on your own beliefs, the case at hand." He nipped her jaw, and she whimpered. "You played the game exactly as I knew you would," he continued, his hips speeding up the slightest bit. "Very well. I knew you wouldn't react, but I had to keep trying. I had to see if I could fluster you." He waited until her gaze was completely on his in the mirror again. "You look kinda flustered right now, Agent Scully." This was what she'd wanted, he realized, when he saw her expression. It was as close to ecstasy as he'd ever seen a woman =not= in the throes of orgasm. Although that moment wasn't far off, if the way she kept tightening around his cock was any indication. He took as deep a breath as his lungs were capable of and put his mind back on track. There was a plan . . . an idea to follow, to give her the words she needed, the words he needed to say. "Did you think I wanted her, Scully?" When she didn't answer, he paused the rhythm of his hips, thrusting into her once, hard, sharply enough that a shudder ripped through them both at the feeling. "Answer me." "Not really. I thought . . . that maybe you appreciated her the way you appreciate a truly gifted porn star, but . . ." Her tongue darted out to lick lips which he thought looked a bit dry. He brought his hand to her jaw, twisting her head toward him long enough to kiss her wetly, his tongue moving over her lips, drinking greedily the flavor of her moans, the passion that wafted from every pore of her body. "I may be able to appreciate an attractive woman, Scully, but she did nothing for me." His mouth was against her ear again, and he saw that her gaze no longer skittered away from his in the mirror. They were intensely focused on their reflection. "It was all for your benefit. You wanna hear a story, Scully?" "Yeah." She thrust her ass against his, trying to speed up the pace. Both his hands clutched at her hips, hard, holding her still as he continued to thrust at his leisure, tormenting them both. "I played it up for the cops outside. I bit my fist, as though the sheer magnificence of the specimen in the interrogation room was too much for my poor, hormone-driven male brain to handle. Which, I suppose, was partly true." Satisfied that she had accepted the tempo of his thrusts, at least for the moment, he let one of his hands wander back up her body, gently tracing her stomach. "What they didn't realize was that Ms. Jade Blue Afterglow couldn't hold a candle to the woman I want. This woman that invades my dreams, who compromises my ability to stay focused when all I can think about is how she smells. The entire time in that little room, with that stripper most men would sell their souls for five minutes with, all I could think about was testing you. Imagine having you, just like this, bent over a motel room bureau, so desperate with wanting me that you could barely speak. "I only want you, Scully. You're the only one that can do it for me. The only one I think about. The only woman I've ever wanted to own, yet remain my equal at the same time." He nipped her earlobe, hard, tugging at it, eliciting a high, squeaking sound he'd never heard a woman make. "Only you. Always you." Before he'd finished the last few words, he was already thrusting into her harder, faster, quickly losing his ability to think straight, let alone talk to her like the 900 operator she'd requested. His hips made a slapping sound against her ass with every stroke, his mouth moving over the top of her spine with no finesse, only the gut need to feel and taste as much of her as possible. Soon, what they were doing couldn't even be called thrusting. His dick was buried to the hilt, and they were doing little more than jerking against each other rapidly. His forearm came across her chest, just above her breasts, and he pulled her to him, holding her back to his chest tightly. His other arm secured her hips, his hand once again slipping between her legs. Cave man, his intellect scoffed, knowing the motive that precipitated the gesture. Cave man soon knocked Intellect out with his club. They were half standing, half bent over the bureau, and her hands clutched at him, one at the forearm that held her chest, the other winding around his head, using his hair to direct his mouth to hers. Her tongue was inside his mouth when he came, dimly registering the contractions that tore through her own body. Simultaneous climax, Intellect mumbled from his stupor. That never happens. Shaking, shuddering against each other, their mouths refused to separate, even when the demand for oxygen increased. He pulled out of her, groaning at the overwhelming sense of abandonment that shot through him. Judging by her groan, he'd wager she felt the same. Turning her toward him, their mouths never really separating, only lessening in pressure as they maneuvered, she pressed her breasts to his chest, still pulling him toward her, again, it would seem, trying to climb inside each other. He only hoped they'd make it to the bed this time. ~ ~ It had begun as inauspiciously as anything else in their lives together had. An introduction, a hypothesis, a few words or looks exchanged so that, when stacked up over a span of time, they equaled something much more potent and provocative than it seemed at the time. It began after Mulder found his sister. For days after his declaration of freedom, Mulder had seemed quiet. Not listless, not withdrawn, not even lost in grief as he had until the day of his mother's funeral. He was just quiet. The same kind of quiet when he was trying to figure out a puzzle, or decide which route to pursue in an investigation. It was a quiet she had grown comfortable with over the years. It meant he was all right. The quiet continued for days and days, and she kept waiting for something to happen. She waited for him to realize his sister was really and truly dead, for that knowledge to knock him down as the revelation of his mother's suicide had. In the beginning, she waited for him to request some more time off from work, to tell her he wasn't up to going out in the field. Their entire stay in Willow Park, she waited for him to admit chasing his "werewolf" wasn't making the pain go away. With a naivete she hadn't displayed since the first shaky months of their partnership, she had assumed he was lying to her. That he couldn't possibly be fine, couldn't possibly be okay with confirmation of a truth he'd chased and feared equally his entire adult life. It began by the candlelight in a cheap motel room in Bellefleur, Oregon. Trust exchanged and bartered like baseball cards. Both wary, both unsure as to how to deal with one another. He afraid she was sent to spy, to betray, to destroy. She afraid he would infect, madden, consume her. Such a delicate thing they built. So fragile in its inception, so unbreakable once it was forged with a thousand pains and sorrows shared. Back then, she hadn't known how to read him. She hadn't felt his pain in her pores and his voice like a physical touch. It was like at first sight, genuine camaraderie blooming, despite their best intentions. Originally, it was to be a feather in her cap. I, Dana Scully, reigned in Fox Mulder, Bureau nut. Over the many years that would follow, her feather became his trust and she kept it pressed between the pages of the journal she began to keep because of their work, and their dedication to it. It began in a hospital room with a football video, different but equal nightmares added to their lives experience, and her faith in the form of a talisman returned. Down, but not out, never out, she made the choice to remain at his side. Then, she might have been able to leave, had she wanted to. Their destinies hadn't yet become so inexorably twined that to leave him would be akin to chopping off an arm. But the honest truth was, she hadn't wanted to leave. At some point during that first year, she found herself falling in love, not with him, not yet, but with his world; with the life he had built for himself to facilitate his personal quest. A strange place, to be sure, was the one he inhabited. Many dangers waited there, darkness and evils the likes of which she had never before encountered. But it was never boring. At the end of a normal day, she did not feel dissatisfied. Disillusioned, yes, but never dissatisfied. And, as time passed, as she came to terms with the months that had been ripped from her, it was comforting to realize that there was a person in her life who would take her hand and gladly walk through hell's fire if it were asked of him. He might even be able to figure a way to get back out. God knew she'd come to expect the unexpected from her partner. It began with a bullet, hers, fired into his shoulder; it began with another bullet -- his -- that he managed =not= to fire at her. Trust, again, always between them, tested, demanded, needed, cherished, bent, bent so many times, but never broken. Always intact, with the potential to be so much more. Saved him, he would say to her many years later, she had saved him. If she had, it was because she saw no other course, no other path to choose. They were bonded to each other by their own decisions, by factors neither could control nor completely understand. >From the trust, the partnership, the genuine like between them, a friendship grew. An ideal, or as close to one as mortal man could achieve. This friendship would bind them, even when the partnership showed signs of wear and tear. The friendship and the trust reinvested upon would rebuild any damage done during storms looming on the horizon. It began with a dream of a little red light, holes drilled in his head, and a hallway in Allentown. Beautiful dreams, he has always possessed such beautiful dreams. Beliefs of the world, some that she shared, some that she couldn't, no matter how much she might like to give that to him. The pain on his face at the thought of finding his sister, finding her not as he hoped, but as he feared. He was not ready then, not as he would be later. Her heart ached for him, bled the tears he would not allow himself to cry. His desperate search for answers to his own questions, to the questions posed by her body by the men who threatened to separate them, to destroy a bond that had already been proven indestructible. They could not have this, he had vowed silently with fierce determination in his eyes. They had taken so much already. From him, from her, from both of their families. It began with cancer, seemed to end with fire, and was begun again in a barren, icy wasteland after he had saved her, always saving her, always allowing her to save him. Facing death was something she had come to terms with. It was not something she feared, or even thought about much, despite what her line of work might dictate. Death was inevitable, something everyone faced eventually. She did not want to die. But if it were to happen, it was something out of her control. His death was something she thought of more often, feared more easily, dreaded with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The only memories she had of her time in Antarctica were of his face, first asking her if she was all right, then later, ordering her to breathe. He had never ordered her before, so she knew he meant it. Dimly, she recalled sensations, the fear coming off him in waves, his touch, forcing, encouraging, hurrying, thankful. And she remembered his motionless form in the snow, cradling his unresisting body in her lap, sending up every prayer she knew when he shivered against her. Shivering meant life, and life meant her heart could continue to beat. It began on a baseball diamond in the middle of the night on her un-birthday. Little joys they had never before felt with each other. Whether it was the misguided notion of keeping professionalism alive in the workplace, or simple fear of disrupting this thing between them, it was how they went about their lives. They had never discussed it, had never decided there would be boundaries. It just was. It had always been. Foolish was the only word that came to mind. Any thoughts of doing something as simple as taking in a movie, or hitting a few balls in a baseball field could not be detrimental to their relationship. If nothing came of it, nothing came of it. The love, the trust, the friendship, the partnership between them had survived so much already. Tooms, being shut down, Flukemen, Krycek, abduction, aliens, their own insecurities, Pfaster, Modell, Bambi, more aliens, cigarette smoke, nefarious, two-faced informants, death, life, mutants, monsters, ghosts, tattoos, cancer, The Great Mutato, Modell again, serial killers, Bounty Hunters, Emily, being burned down, still more aliens, fertilizer detail, restlessness, disillusionment, Diana Fowley, beliefs shaken and re-affirmed, insanity and the lengths she would go to, more insanity and the lengths he =did= go to, the measures she would employ to save him as he had come to expect of her. After all that, to think that they wouldn't survive the attempt at a romantic relationship was not only foolish, but quite simply employed sloppy thinking, something neither of them could be legitimately accused of. It began in his hallway, for the second time, truth and affection on his lips, honest loyalty in her eyes. Assured of her place in his life, as he saw it, a burden she hadn't even been aware of carrying was lifted. A thousand insecurities she carried, the fear of being inadequate to him, of not giving a hundred and ten percent, of being something he didn't want, that held him back, fell away. It was all right. They had no expectations from each other, other than that they remain true to themselves. Even as they worked, they began to explore joys. She felt something new in him, and hoped he felt something new in her. It was glorious in its simplicity. He was the same driven, focused, passionate, infuriating man he had always been. But she no longer felt as though she held back his brilliance and passion. Instead, she grounded it, gave him something necessary to the process, something he couldn't find on his own, or with anyone else. When his mother died, when he lost his sister, he let himself need her. And she let herself be needed. Not solely as a work partner, but as a friend. As someone who could comfort as well as be confided in, love as well as advise, protect as well as inform. Through all this, they endured. And each challenge, each touch, each hardship, brought with it a priceless gift: a new beginning. And so it began with a daisy, tucked inside a brochure, casually tossed on her desk a scant few hours before the Gunmen called from Industrial Empire. Cambria was the name of a small town in northern California; somewhere he wanted to take her. It had been building toward this, she had realized a few days before his hesitant invitation. The quiet time he spent, the silent contemplation of a blank computer screen, the sometimes unsettling, but never unwelcome gazes he would toss her way that lasted a few seconds too long to be polite. He hadn't been storing up his grief. He =had= been perplexed about a puzzle. If only he'd shared his thoughts with her sooner, she might have been able to spare him the time he had spent agonizing. When she came down to his office, daisy still situated within the brochure, he hadn't denied being the one to leave it for her. He didn't pretend it was the offer of a friend or a colleague for a picturesque vacation. She was assured there was no ghost, no case, no X-File where they were going. And he told her exactly why he wanted them to go. Not with his words, which only expressed how nice the small bed and breakfast by the beach sounded. But with his eyes, as they sparked and promised things. With his hands, as he took the daisy and tucked it, along with a lock of her hair, behind her ear. And with the way his fingertips lingered like his gaze did, split seconds too long against her cheek. It had been so easy to accept his offer. She hadn't expected it to be, but it was. When the Gunmen had called with their "little problem" she had wanted to scream with the injustice of it all. No, no, her mind had raged. If we go away on a case, it will be forgotten by the time we're through. We won't have a chance to explore a beginning that could be so very, very sweet. Insecurities she'd believed dead and buried began to rear their ugly heads. It didn't get to her. Much. She was able to push it aside, to remain professional, to be the foil with whom Mulder so dearly loved to parry and thrust. A smile had turned her lips at that thought, and she'd filed it away to share with him later. He'd have a field day with the notion of thrusting with her. Understandably, she had been relieved - no, relieved was too mild. She had been rhapsodic - when, shortly before their memorable interrogation with Ms. Afterglow, Mulder asked her a question that had nothing to do with the case, or her findings, or testosterone high adolescent males. "Scully, do you wanna drive up north, or take a plane? Personally, I vote for driving. If I never have to be inside LAX again, it'll be too soon." The thought of actually coming up with a response was impossible. Instead, she told him to do whatever he preferred, rhapsodic, still, at the thought of a beachside B&B and Mulder. That had been the only blatant mention of what was to come, of the seismic shifting of their relationship he had made. Even after he'd saved the Gunmen, she'd saved him, and they were safe, they didn't discuss it. He had raised an eyebrow at her as they'd headed for their rental car, seemingly asking permission. If she hadn't been so exhausted, she might have laughed at him. Instead, she raised her own eyebrow right back, climbed into the passenger's seat, and promptly fell asleep. When she woke, it was to the pounding surf and Mulder's gentle fingers against the side of her face. He had already checked them in. It was impossible to name that look in his eyes, the one that threatened to devour and consume her if she wasn't careful. She wasn't careful. It began again from room 7 of the Cambria Pines B&B by the sea. ~ Her back was a canvas, his fingers instruments of creation, painting and describing all that she was to him with their gentle, feathering touch. Stretched out on the bed big enough to sleep four comfortably, he took time to contemplate how achingly beautiful she truly was. He couldn't see her eyes, but the slope of her back, the individual vertebrae he could detect beneath her skin, were more than enough to fascinate him. Scully practically purred under his touch, putting a cat stretching in the sun to shame with the wanton behavior that she had displayed over the last few hours. Why did we wait so long for this? The answer came easily enough. He hadn't been ready. There hadn't been enough of him left to give her. He had been a prisoner of his past, his present, his quest, his duty, more to the memory of his sister, to the idea of her, than to the eight-year-old girl, with brown braids and a penchant for tattling on him whom he missed so very much. Not to mention the fourteen-year-old child, confused, lost, aching somewhere out there while he'd been playing basketball in high school, planning his escape to Oxford, and wishing his father didn't hate him so damned much. Many times before, he'd mused about the idea of kissing Scully. Or making love to Scully. But he never really went further than that. He wouldn't allow his mind to think of himself in a relationship with her. The idea of marriage, happily ever after, children, a future - those things never occurred to him. Or if they did, he dismissed them quickly and easily as things other people had; things that weren't meant for him. So great was his denial that when he did imagine a world for himself, he could not imagine her in it. Everything was wrong, backwards, and he could barely make heads or tails of it. Only his trust in her, his faith in her, brought him back from the edge that time, as it had done so many times before. In the most succinct sense, he was damaged goods, too obsessed with finding his sister to ever give the brilliant, beautiful woman at his side anything approaching what she deserved. He would have felt like the biggest bastard in the world, waking up next to her in the morning, settling in with her at night after having put in the requisite time at work, living a life with her. It wouldn't have been fair to Scully, or to Samantha. It would have been akin to abandoning his sister. Then, it didn't really occur to him that Sam had been gone for a very long time. There was still hope, hope perpetuated by the men who'd lied to him all his life, that she would be returned. That she was alive, "out there" somewhere, and that one day, if he was a very good boy, he would hold her in his arms, kiss her hair, and have her tell him that everything was okay. That she was okay. That it happened one cold, February night after he had finally begun to accept her death is an irony no one but himself, and possibly Scully, could fully understand. He knew Scully had been worried about him since that night. But he hadn't been able to give her any answers she would accept. He did his best, offering the only words he'd been capable of saying without bawling like a baby, but her concern had been palpable. At lunch, she'd sit a little too close, as though anticipating he'd fall into his egg salad sandwich. In the field, she had exhibited mother hen tendencies he hadn't thought in her repertoire. He had been pleasantly surprised to find that they were. Whatever Freud had to say, he liked being mothered by Scully. Not all the time, but every once in awhile, it felt nice. Very nice. But that didn't really address the issue at hand, namely how to convince his partner that he really was all right. That he was free, and fine, so very fine, and felt so very good to be here with her. "Mulder." Instinctively, he moved closer to her on the bed, his nose brushing the hair back from the nape of her neck. His fingers continued on their path up and down her spine, pausing only long enough to dip below the sheet where it nestled against the curve of her ass. Absently, he was very happy they'd finally managed to get her bra off earlier. "Hmm?" he hummed against her skin. "You're all right, aren't you?" He smiled against her skin. "I'm footloose and fancy free, Scully." They were quiet again, and his hand detoured at the top of her spine, moving outward until he reached her arm. He trailed his fingers down a new path, stopping at her hand, where he twined their fingers together. He pressed his lips to her shoulder blade, then began to travel the same journey with his lips that his fingers had taken moments before. Before, she had liked it when he spoke to her. Would she enjoy the things he had to say now as much? In theory, she would. Could he find the courage to give her the answers she needed, now that he had them himself? Did it really matter, either way? He didn't think so. It was a theory, and he had never been afraid to test a theory out with his partner before. He wasn't about to change his ways now. "I really am all right, Scully," he began, his breath fanning across her skin as he spoke. "I promise I wouldn't lie to you about this." "I'm only concerned that you might not even realize you haven't entirely come to terms with certain things." "Namely, my mother and my sister." She nodded, but did not turn toward him. Scully had always found it easier to converse about important things without looking him in the eye. He respected that, even though he preferred to face his difficulties head on. He needed a connection if he was going to pour his soul into someone's lily-white palm. Compromise was a beautiful thing. Half-lying on top of her, his hand still holding hers, he brought his mouth close to her ear. He didn't want her to miss a single word, as he wasn't sure he'd be able to repeat it. It encouraged him when she moved a little closer, squeezed his hand tightly. For courage, he supposed. "Since the moment we met, you have seen me only as I've been for the last decade of my life. We both agreed somewhere along the way that we wouldn't dig too deeply into one another's lives. Maybe it was safer that way, maybe it was better that way, for awhile. Whatever the reason, that's how it was, how I had come to accept it would always be." He waited for a moment, wanting some kind of agreement or rebuttal from her. Instead, she remained silent, causing him a moment of panic. Maybe pouring his soul into her palm wasn't such a good idea. Because if that palm made a fist, she could crush everything he was feeling, the high he was on. Trust, he repeated in his head like a mantra. It all came down to a matter of trust. This time, it was his trust in her. "Over the span of my life, I have only loved three women. My mother, my sister, and you. Perhaps it's because love and trust are so totally interwoven in my mind. I've had lovers, I've had relationships, I've even thought myself in love, but as I look back on it, as I compare it to this, it doesn't seem real. Like some hazy dream you wake up sweating from, but can't remember the details of when you try. "I convinced myself that the love I felt for you was synonymous with the love I felt for my sister. Maybe at one time, it was. Maybe in some respect, it still is, given that you have now officially become all things to me." Pausing, he tried to gather his thoughts. It was so difficult, saying it all out loud. Organizing one's emotions took a tremendous amount of concentration, and with every inch of Scully's skin pressed against his, concentration wasn't one of his strong suits. Not that he'd want it any other way. "Finding her was everything to me." His voice grew quieter, and he moved his mouth closer to her ear to compensate. "I told you that from the beginning. But somewhere along the way, I had two everythings in my life. There was finding her, and there was you. With her, there was a mission statement attached to "her": finding her. But you, Scully, were always just you. A multi-faceted, multi-purpose being in my life, whose presence I couldn't quantify unless I put you in a little compartment in my head marked "partner" and left you be. "So I did. And if you escaped from your box on occasion, I ignored it. I wrote it off as an aberration. But this place inside me hated myself for it. That place wanted you so desperately, ached for your presence everywhere, in everything. And soon, my two everythings began to dwindle until there was just you who was everything. And I felt so guilty . . ." He swallowed deeply, pressing his face into her neck, inhaling her. Better than Irish courage. "I felt like I was leaving her behind." "Mulder, you know she would never have blamed you for moving on." Her voice was clogged with tears he was sure she wasn't shedding. He nodded against her. "I know that. It doesn't change how I felt. But I know." I know, he repeated silently. "But that isn't what you're trying so hard not to tell me, is it?" Ah, Scully. How can you put a raised eyebrow into the inflection of your voice? "No. What I'm trying to tell you is that I'm okay. That I found her, at least what I needed to find. And that I'm able to go on now, to continue my life without feeling as though I've abandoned her." "When you say continue with your life . . ." "Fishing, Scully?" That earned him an elbow to the solar plexus. He lightly slapped her ass in return and they wrestled for a moment, trying damned hard not to laugh and give away the game. Finally, he took both her wrists in his and pinned them behind her back, both of them lying on their sides, legs having become tangled during their exertions. "In this peace I've found," his mouth was right up against her ear now, "I've also begun to think about my life, my future, and by extension, your life, and your future. Because you gotta know, Scully, that when you're a guy's everything, you figure pretty prominently into his plans." "What do you want from me?" It wasn't a demanding question; just curious, though not at all casual. He rested his chin against her shoulder and gave it serious thought, knowing she would not accept an answer any other way. There were so many poetic things he could say to her. He wanted to read from the pages of her experience, to drink from the liquid life of her body. He wanted to ease his tired being into the gentle waters of her soul. Hyperbole and soliloquies they taught him at Oxford, ways of saying things with flowery language occurred to him. But all that wasn't real, it didn't even exist in the world Scully lived in. She was very big on straight talk and facts. "I want you to be what you've always been to me. And I want you to be more. I want to live with you, sleep with you, cook with you, clean with you, hunt aliens with you, rock 'n roll with you, visit Graceland with you, take vacations with you, solve mysteries with you, sit in the silence and do absolutely nothing =with you=." He smiled, and pressed a kiss to the side of her neck. "And I want to paint a mural on the blank canvas of our future." That had been for his favorite professor, the man who taught him the intricacies and beauty of English Literature. Pulling her wrists from his grip, she untangled herself and turned toward him. Her eyes were liquid, and her hands settled on his chest, lightly picking at imaginary lint. "It would be hard, Mulder," she said quietly. "All things of worth are," he agreed. "We're very different people," she reminded him unnecessarily. "We complement each other," he countered. "You're so damned impulsive!" "You're so fucking rigid!" They were both grinning like idiots. Their foreheads were resting against each other, and Scully brushed her nose alongside his. "I'm not going to Graceland." "Deal." ~ END If you enjoyed, please hit the little reply thingy and tell me so. I guarantee it'll make my day. :) "My vagina wants EVERYTHING!!!" - Kirstie Alley, The Vagina Monologues. (I don't think a line like that needs any further comment)