TITLE: Burning Bridges AUTHOR: Dreamshaper Dreamshpr@aol.com FEEDBACK: Yes please--is happily recieved (and promptly saved for later worship) at dreamshpr@aol.com... ARCHIVE: Anywhere, everywhere...just give me your addy if we haven't spoken before, please. I'm hideous at finding sites so help me get to yours! RATING:NC17 CATEGORY:MSR (fluff style!) SPOILERS:season 6, the movie...errrr--general knowledge (bigger references to Tithonius, Milagro and The Unnatural) SUMMARY:A day off and a fight against loneliness. (I'm so bad at his summary stuff, sorry!) DISCLAIMER:Not mine, don't want 'em, don't like em...really. Of course...well...no, nevermind ;) NOTES: Explanation for fluff factor at bottom of story--just be warned, it's kind of an odd mix of bittersweet, silly and pure sugar near the end! *************** It's called flowers wilt, apples rot. Thieves get rich and saints get shot, And God doesn't answer prayers a lot. OK? Now you know. And now--forget it. Don't fall apart at the seams, It's called letting go of your illusions, And not confusing them with your dreams. Yes it's quite a blow-- Now you know. Don't regret it, and don't let's go to extremes. It's called your choice, count to ten Burn your bridges, then start again. Sondheim, "Now You Know" *************** I had a free weekend--no cases, no chances of emergency calls, no autopsies, no conspiracies--no Mulder, and none of the things he tends to trail along behind him in his shadow. I didn't know what to do with myself. I cleaned for the best part of the morning...my windows sparkled, my drapes were freshly washed and ironed, I had bleached the bathroom, cleaned the closets, washed the walls--even the surfaces that I tend to neglect for lack of height had been scrubbed vigorously. A run followed, a few miles through the meandering paths of the park in my neighborhood--with plenty of energy to burn following that, I just jogged over to the gym and spent some time working on muscles that had been left to their own devices far too long, though they still looked reasonably well-developed... If that kind of thing can be judged by the stares of the sweaty, musclebound jocks who tried to engage me in conversation, anyway. Unfortunately for the jocks and perhaps even for myself, I was in no mood for a strangers company--no more mood than I was in for my own company at the moment. All the...kind offers to go out were summarily, and I'm afraid quite rudely, turned down. By the time I was done at the gym and had jogged home, it was early evening, and I still had energy to spare...and my restlessness was turning to something I might have titled loneliness... If I were the type to get lonely. Since I'm not...I didn't call it anything, not then. I just showered, dressed in a slightly shorter and moderately less tailored skirt than usual, a simple blouse and comfortably low heels, and walked the half mile to my favorite restaurant, a little Italian place. Going out to dinner alone isn't a favored past time of mine, not in a couple centric world, but I've always been happy enough in my own company, so it wasn't a hardship...certainly, I enjoyed the people watching I was free to indulge in... Mulder might be the psychologist, but I'm as fond as he is of watching the crowds, the dynamics of human interaction. Difference is, where he tends to rashly become involved, I've learned to hold back, just a bit, from the displays around me. After all, I am a scientist. Actually...I think I'm something of a loner. While I rarely desire to shrug off the company of others, I don't need to have people around me. I think that's Ahab's influence--he taught me young that you don't burden people with your problems, you don't overstay your welcome and you don't, under any circumstances, allow yourself to form such a deep attachment that you might not be able to break free later when you need to-- I could hate him for those lessons, if they hadn't served me well enough with most of the people I've run into in my life. There are only a select few who breech those most basic rules of conduct, and I don't think most of them know that they're a breech at all. Mulder knows, of course...hypersensitive and super-wary, he has analyzed his place in my life quite deeply. Where he might step over the boundary professionally...he rarely moves too far personally. But it was not a time to analyze myself, my family...it was a time to step outside myself and watch around me. So I went to dinner. I watched the couples scattered through the restaurant make eyes at each other, in their own worlds...I watched a frazzled young mother deal with a cranky toddler while her husband fed an older child pasta...a middle-aged woman sat with nearby and chatted with her nearly grown children about their accomplishments in school that day, and her eyes were full of pride... I ate my vegetable lasagna and watched, and I assured myself that I was not lonely. The walk back home through streets resplendent with old, elegantly faded homes was more than pleasant, and the feel of the fresh spring air on my skin was soothing--I felt raw for some reason, sensitive to the elements in a way I hadn't been since after our last trip to Antartica, and the gentle quality of the air was magical... My sudden sensitivity had nothing to do with the couples and families strolling the streets I walked alone. The light on my answering machine wasn't blinking when I tossed my keys down onto the table beside it, and I nodded firmly to myself--no messages, no emergencies, no interruptions... I was glad. I had free time, after all, and I was enjoying it--to an extent. A very small, bored-with-myself extent. Looking around idly for something to do, something to dust, a book to read, I toed off my heels and dropped onto my couch. The remote stabbed me in the backside and I fished it from the cushions with a wince, using it to cursorily examine the television programs offered... Nothing caught my attention. Nothing had all day, and I finally had to admit it to myself--not only was I bored, I was lonely. *Lonely*. That's a hard concept for me to deal with--Dana Katherine Scully is her father's daughter and such emotions generally aren't dealt with... Hell, they're generally not even admitted to. But...I had had a hard time lately--I still had to press my hand to my chest every now and again to assure myself that my heart still beat within it's walls. I still had to watch carefully so that I did not jump like a scalded cat whenever Mulder touched me--reactions that were long engrained by a time of distance and a seeming lack of trust couldn't be been overcome by a simple game of baseball. I still found myself watching him closely for any sign that he would prefer me gone... I suppose I had been hypersensitive too, busily analyzing Mulder's reactions to my presence in his life the way he analyzed mine to him... Funny thing is, I think Mulder had finally figured out my place in his life. He knew very well exactly where I fit in, where we fit in to his scheme of things...he knew now what he wanted from me after a long period where we both shifted with the winds. I had no such knowledge, and his calm acceptance of *something* was going to drive me nuts... And I was lonely. Ignoring the shortness of my skirt, the lateness of the hour and all the space I had given my partner lately, I grabbed my car keys, and I headed for his apartment. I just had to hope he was home. `````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` Of course, when I got there he *wasn't* in, and I had to face the fact that perhaps he had a date...tempted to leave, I hesitated at his door, studiously avoiding glancing at Padgett's former abode and trying to will Mulder home... But I was propelled by a need greater than the need to maintain dignified distance, and I let myself in. It was dark, as it always had been before...well, before something inspired Mulder to clean it every now and again and to redecorate a bit. But that darkness, penetrated only by the light from the empty fish tank and scented like Mulder--it was familiar and comfortable, and I fished around in his kitchen to sample some of his very good whiskey without turning on the light before settling into the blackness and resting on his couch. Head tilted back, and whiskey trailing a fiery path through me, I thought about what I was doing there at ten o'clock on a Saturday night when I might have been out with a gorgeous, smart enough jock from the gym, having nice mixed drinks, having conversation... Maybe even having sex... And it hit me with enough force to make me gasp, enough pressure to make my chest tighten-- I hadn't accepted any offers not because I had not wanted the company, the hassle...it was Mulder. He was defintely in breech of all my little rules. I was in love with him. Marvelous timing for a momentous realization, one I had been denying for such a long time--I didn't have a chance to accustomize myself to the notion that the attraction was more than that, the love was more than friendship, the need was mutual between us... Just as I was getting my breath back, just as I had cleared my mind enough to think, a key rattled in the lock of the door, and the handle turned. And there I was, whiskey on my breath, whiskey on my lips and skirt hiked up to display a rather undignified amount of thigh... "Shit." I whispered, and Mulder must have heard me, or seen me, or somehow *felt* me because his head whipped up, his hand fell away from the lightswitch and he very slowly closed the door...thankfully alone... "Scully?" He questioned, and I gave a strangled laugh, feeling as if I had been caught in a most compromising position by the one person who should never see me compromised. He took the rest of the steps necessary to bring him to me, and he knelt carefully beside me and watched me with silent, waiting eyes...dark pools of concern that melted the nonexistent will I had now, knowing that I couldn't deny how I felt anymore--to myself anyway. I was caught. He must have caught the scent of liquor in the air, because his nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed in a half second. I waited for an Inquisition... "Been drinking?" He murmured and I would have missed the concern if I hadn't been looking for scorn. "A bit." I replied as quietly as he had asked. "Just a few sips--haven't had time to deplete your stock." "Looks like you might have been drinking somewhere else before you got here, Scully." His tone wasn't insinuating, was just casually accepting, as if he expected that nothing of too great importance had gone on... He seemed cocky. Too sure of himself and me in that moment where I wasn't certain of either of us at all. All set to knock him back a bit, I opened my mouth to reply. What came out wasn't what I had planned... "No, I haven't, Mulder--I refused all the offers from the beefy guys at the gym, and went out to dinner." I found myself explaining to those eyes even as I wanted to lie to him and make something up that would be so out of character that it would shock him, that it would make him look at me in another light... I was tired of being seen as the replacement little sister, as the steadfast partner, as the replacement Diana... And before I knew what I was doing, I had reached out, pulled his face to mine and kissed him, hot and stunning. Words have been created to describe many things, many concepts that just need a word of their own, that cannot be described with any contemporary phraseology...and I would have thought of one to describe that first kiss if my brain hadn't been entirely muddled by it... But the kisses that followed--hot and passionate, sweetly questioning and a range in between--those kisses are more easily described, and can be understood without benefit of pretentious speech and flowery praise, things I am not entirely too familiar with but am occasionally prone to fall into... When he gathered enough sense to stop the hot, eager kisses, he rested his forehead on mine and we shared panting breaths for a long moment... "God, Scully..." he said, in attempt to break the silence that lay heavily between us, "What the hell brought this on?" I couldn't answer--how was I supposed to then? I had a declaration of love from him while he was drugged and near drowned, I had a handful of tender looks and ruefully sweet glances, I had a pile of innuendoes taller than I would be in six inch heels... I had a handful of kisses... But I didn't have the irrefutable proof I needed, as a scientist and as Ahab's daughter...the kind I needed in order to tell him what was really going on... So I lied. "Nothing, Mulder--except hormones, years of celibacy, and the realization that...well...it's not like I have to worry about getting pregnant." The bitterness shocked me--but Mulder's eyes simply got more of the puppy in them, more of the sweetness, and he opened his mouth to reply. I'm sure it would have been reassuring, comforting...maybe even loving--but I closed his mouth with my own. He didn't resist, didn't try again to speak--he shucked off his clothing, gently removed my own and carried me to the mattress laying in the waterbed's big, heavy frame without another word. Wordless still, we caressed each other with hands and mouths--mine avid, his a little more hesitant as he played across my skin. Lingering a long time in the hollow of my throat with his tongue, he murmured my name against my pulse and surprised me with gentle bites to the faintly throbbing area before moving down to pay the same attention to my breasts, to my stomach and the still vivid scars that twirled across that delicate skin the way my snake curled on my back... I scraped manicured nails delicately across his own nipples, and trailed them down his shuddering stomach on my path to his groin, only to trail them back up across the scars he had been accumulating for a long time, longer than I've known him...though I was the one to add the most raised of all the marks. Regretting that anew, I paid close attention to the round mark with my mouth, apologizing in a way and savoring in another. His skin tasted...so good. Hot and salty--I'd forgotten that taste that is universal to all men but so sharply defined in each... My hands stopped roaming only when his mouth pressed hot, wet and talented over my most sensitive of pleasure spots--then I froze with a soundless cry before moaning and raising my hips and eyes to the sky... Or more appropriately, to the mirror above his bed, which I watched with vague amusement and great pleasure--Mulder's backside was a nice sight, a visual treat even as his very talented tongue explored me delicately. When I had had as much as I could take, I set about returning the favor. His hands tangled tightly but delicately in my hair as I traced my hands paths with my mouth, as I delicately licked at areas that were ticklish and bit lightly into those that were a little less...sensitive. "You're amazingly beautiful, Scully." He told me as he slipped over me, covering my body with the mass of his. "This is beautiful." And quietly, so quietly I might have missed it--"I love you." He told me again that he loved me as he sheathed himself within me and began a heavy rhythm...again as he and I climbed higher...stopping only in the moment was silence overcame us both. Silence has been our friend and our enemy--in this case it was more than either of those things, heightening and dulling, calming and arousing... We came quietly, and together. I fell asleep right after, wine and whiskey, heavy dinner and physical activity finally combining to make me sleepy. Of course, the fact that the restlessness, the loneliness that had been building had disappeared...that had nothing to do at all with my easy slide into sleep. Not that I'd admit anyway. `````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` When I awoke Sunday morning, my body ached a bit in unaccustomed places and I was snuggled very softly into something very warm that breathed with great rumbles under my head... For a minute, laying atop the lean, hard figure...I was afraid I had taken a stranger home. I had so long been in denial of my feelings that it didn't even occur to me that it was Mulder. Not until his husky, low tenor invaded my sleepfogged panic. "Morning, Sunshine." He might have been teasing--he must have been, because I felt... "I can't do this." I whispered the words before I even thought about them, but Mulder's chest stopped moving as if I had shouted, as if I had shot him again... "Can't you? Didn't you already, Scully?" His voice was as tender as it had been mere seconds before, but the stubborn qualities of him were awake now, awake and aware and fully in control. I panicked. He had said he loved me, in the heat of the moment--he had been incredibly, gently loving...but I was so recently aware of what I had been feeling all along... I bolted from his hold, rushed naked into his living room and threw on my clothes as speedily as I could. Then I turned to make my escape, to flee until could think more clearly-- Escape was blocked by his much taller, substantially thicker body in the doorway. Frustrated and feeling a fear that had no name, I tried to shove him aside, but Mulder doesn't shove easily, not when he doesn't feel like budging, and I had the grudgingly accepted feeling that I wasn't going anywhere just then... He pulled my chin up so my eyes met his, searching and haunting, and I froze. I couldn't hide it. I couldn't even...I didn't even have time to try. He lowered his head to rest our foreheads together and wrapped his arms around me gently, one resting across my shoulders and the other across my waist, reining me in and holding me close. "I love you, Scully." He whispered the words again so close to my lips...but undrugged, in the full light of day, and I had to close my eyes against the fervent wish to give the words back to him... Long minutes passed...interminable and desperate. But then...he loosened his arms and let them fall to his sides. Moving out of the doorway, he held an arm out courteously to me, motioning him to pass, and I regarded him warily for long seconds, till he cleared his throat and dropped his arm. "Scully--you came to me last night, and I know why. The same reasons I would have gone to you eventually, the same reasons we've been unable to stay away from each other for years now...but if you made a decision last night that you weren't ready for--" When he broke off, and met my eyes with a sheepish grin, my heart tightened and I nearly bolted out the door, but my feet were frozen to the floor by his eyes. Infinite patience--not a commodity he normally dealt in--compassion, wisdom, tenderness... I moved, finally, to pass him when the joy of his eyes almost destroyed my will, but as I put my hand on the door knob, I remembered the aching restlessness of the loneliness I had felt the day before...I felt the buried longing to love rise up in me and I stopped. I couldn't go back. I loved him--he had to love me, eyes like that weren't lying or confused... Slowly, more afraid than I have ever been, I turned back to him, heart in eyes and stomach far closer to my throat than it had any right to be. For the first time in what seemed hours, I spoke. "Mulder," I murmured, and watched him nod, barely moving, barely breathing. "Mulder...would you really let me leave?" "I'd have to, if that was what you wanted. I learned that over the summer, Scully." His whisper was rougher than I had ever heard it, more pained and more resolute... It was time to run or burn my bridges--the cautious side of me, the side that hid Love from me for years...it urged me to flee, shouted at me to escape with dignity and whole pride because to admit to loving this man would bind me in him forever... The part that urged me to set fire to my escape routes whispered about the loneliness of a disillusioned, lonely life without him... And like it had before, the quiet won, and I prepared for a conflagration. I reached out a hand, touched his warm arm...and closed the door, locking it behind me and taking a hesitant step closer to him. "It's not...what I want, Mulder." Surprised by the shakiness of my whisper, by the shakiness of my hands and arms and legs, I still forged on--strengthened by the hope in his eyes. "That's not what I want--because I love you too." I was caught in a tight hug before I could even take another breath, and I laughed as he lifted me, cradled me... Caught, and exactly where I needed to be. THE END `````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` I warned you about the mush factor in this one, so don't go complaining to management if you found it too sweet for your liking ;) I'm in a sappy, sentimental mood... Of course, I just went riding for the first time in a couple weeks, thanks to my vacation ((Virginia Beach area folks--you guys had the best weather, nicest people and best restaurants! It was gorgeous down there...I was so upset to come home and find leafless trees and flowerless yards ;( And weather far too cold for shorts and t-shirts...)) Anyway--I just went riding and my younger horse, Angel, tossed me quite competently into the mud as an expression of her anger at being neglected. Somehow that inspired this piece--don't ask how, I think I hit my head on a rock ;) Thanks for reading...hit reply to tell me you enjoyed my mud induced fluff! Dreamshaper dreamshpr@aol.com <---and my mailbox finally works! I think...only a third of my mail gets returned by the Mailer Daemon!