From: Sarah Parsons Date: 12 Apr 1999 14:44:20 -0700 Subject: NEW - Arcades (Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.) 1/2 TITLE: Arcades (Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new-) 1/2 AUTHOR: Sarah Ellen Parsons E-MAIL ADDRESS: se_parsons@yahoo.com DISTRIBUTION: Archive wherever you want, just keep my name attached. SPOILER WARNING: Everything, 6th season, Arcadia, like you didn't guess it from the title. RATING: R CLASSIFICATION: Story, Mulder/Scully, Scully-angst, UST, MSR? and H. KEYWORDS: Angst SUMMARY: Arcades is Latin for "people who live in Arcadia". The rest of the title is the last line of "Lycidas", which goes to show if you're hard up for a title or an idea, rip off Milton. God knows, Neil Gaiman has made a career out of it. And done a damn fine job, too. Season 6 has made me sad. I foresee only bad things. But, as you might have noticed if you've read any of my other stories, I'm rather like that. I am dreading Milagro next week. DISCLAIMER: Don't own 'em. Not making money. But the dieties know, it can't be as bad as Alpha no matter what happens. ARCADES As she scrubbed the make-up off her face a little harder than was strictly necessary, Scully wondered what she'd done to deserve it. It wasn't like they'd been getting along particularly badly or anything. It wasn't as though she'd done anything to criticize him or question his theories any more than usual or to undermine him in any way. Yet since the revelatory events that had led to the death of the conspiracy they'd followed and their return to the X-Files, it was like Mulder was using the opportunity not to happily plunge himself back into his long-delayed life's work, but to take out all the frustrations, the disappointments and the resentments built up over months of shit jobs and shittier treatment on her. And this latest assignment was no exception, in fact it was as though he was taking particular pleasure in being as annoying and immature as possible just because they were in such horrible forced proximity. Trapped inside the house like rats in a cage. Well, here was one rat that was getting ready to turn on its companion in the overcrowded conditions and chew it a new bodily orifice or three. Especially if it didn't stop hanging on her, simpering at her and making embarrassingly cutesy and explicitly sexual comments every five minutes or so. Not to mention its sloppy personal habits - toilet seat perpetually up, smashed toothpaste tube, wadded up towels on the bathroom floor, and the sneaking suspicion she harbored that it had been drinking out of containers and then putting them back in the fridge. It had better stop it, and right away, if it knew what was good for it. Scully rinsed the facial wash from her skin and surveyed the freckled, shiny results critically in the mirror. THAT would serve it right. Even more frightening than the green facial mask of the night before. Scully au naturale - take THAT, Rob Petrie, like the dish! She picked up the horribly mangled toothpaste tube and carefully squeezed the contents from the bottom, rolling the end of the tube upward until her Evil Roommate from Hell came along to undo all her work once more. She brushed her teeth for a good long time, the sharp strokes cleaning the day's accumulated grime from gums and tongue much more easily than she could rid herself of the anger at her asshole partner. She could hear him out there in the bedroom. Rummaging through the chest of drawers. Though Mulder was sleeping on the couch, his stuff was all in her room, so the portrait of the nauseatingly happy fictitious Petries could be maintained. She hoped he would put on a normal t-shirt or something instead of the hideous conglomeration of pastel golf shirts and sickly matching sweatsuits he'd been sporting ever since they'd arrived at the Klein House, or the crime scene, or whatever they called this little corner of Hell. The shuffling footsteps approached the bathroom door, and she knew her little haven of tranquillity and order was about to be shattered yet again. The footsteps hesitated at the door, then moved forward rapidly, the door swinging open to emit a grinning Mulder, clad in sweatpants and a fairly normal gray t-shirt. "Hey, Laura, ya decent?" he said, the wide shit-eating grin letting her know that he half expected the answer to be "no". When she simply continued brushing her teeth, not even giving him the satisfaction of an answer, Mulder moved on to the next annoyance tactic in his seemingly endless arsenal. Always a space invader, Mulder had used their confinement to the same house as some sort of excuse to ignore the concept of personal space entirely. He was constantly touching her when they had witnesses and she couldn't protest, and then keeping up the crowding in private despite her warning on their first day, all the while acting supremely unaware that it bothered her. And she just knew he was doing it on purpose, like all the unprofessional cracks about "honeymoon videos" and whatnot that was all going into their report. He'd be lucky if Skinner didn't bring him up on charges for sexual harassment once he saw that crap. The touching was just so excessive. Even in this scary land of perfectly happy marriages and model families, none of them touched each other the way Mulder insisted on touching her. "Spooned right up like little, baby cats", indeed. Nauseating. Now, instead of moving to one side of the vanity like any normal person, Mulder took up position directly behind her, reaching over her shoulder to get into the medicine cabinet for his own toothbrush. This, despite the fact that the bathroom, like the rest of the house, was huge, and white, and perfect. And cold, and antiseptic, and barren, which was, of course, what Mulder thought of her. He'd said as much the night before after he'd complained of the place's hideous and monotonous sameness and conformity, the facade of perfection hiding empty blankness and lack of character, "You'd fit right in here, Scully" he'd said. Just because she didn't feel the need to let uneaten take-out ferment into new life forms beneath her couch, just because she didn't think weirdness for the sake of weirdness was necessarily a virtue, didn't mean that Scully didn't feel the wrongness of the place. The Stepford-like quality of the people here made her flesh crawl in ways she hadn't even known existed. And why? So they could have a life in the "right" neighborhood with the "right" people. Who were the "right" people anyway? There was a hundred times more rightness in the Lone Gunmen than there ever could be in Mr. Gogolak, perfect resident of perfect-land or not. The Gunmen were real. Gogolak was hiding something. And most likely something awful. Scully spit out her toothpaste and rinsed out her mouth in the sink. It wasn't until she'd pulled out her dental floss, had started in on her left rear lower molar and Mulder actually missed his brush with the center-squeezed toothpaste that she realized what had been going on the entire time she'd been brushing and thinking. He'd been watching her. Really watching her to the exclusion of everything else. And she kicked herself for her own stupidity as she saw the reason why staring at her from the mirror. She was not wearing a bathrobe. She was wearing a white cotton nightgown. It was not a good combination for company. Especially not for present company. She was very glad her face was already red from scrubbing, so he wouldn't know she was aware of the way he was rudely staring at her breasts, nipples dark and obvious through the white cotton as she raised and lowered her arms. She just kept flossing, trying to minimize her movement, of course, not that it was going to do any good now. Mulder was riveted. And he wasn't being polite and pretending not to notice, like a decent partner would. No. She was surprised she hadn't felt the drool running hotly down her bare shoulder by now. "Well let him fucking look, then", she thought, finishing up with her floss and rinsing her mouth again. It wasn't going to do him any good. And she still had to brush her hair before bed. If she didn't, its natural curliness would be completely unmanageable by morning and she had to maintain some level of professionalism and try to look businesslike in some Laura-appropriate sweater-set. Curly hair would simply not do. As Scully pulled open the drawer on "her" side of the vanity to get her hairbrush, Mulder finished brushing his own teeth and leaned around her to spit into the sink and rinse. His chest grazed her right shoulder as he went by, but otherwise the touching was minimal. For which she was very thankful, indeed. Taking the brush into her right hand, in order to force him farther away, Scully began running the brush in short, sharp strokes through her hair. Her action had the unfortunate result of stopping Mulder dead in his tracks, whatever he had been going to do forgotten in his renewed fascination with her bosom. He only succeeded in making her angrier, and more determined to finish her brushing and ignore him completely. As much as she could ignore a six-foot, space-invading man breathing hotly down the back of her neck, of course. And she awaited the comment. The comment that was inevitably forthcoming from the ever-assholeish primitive fore-brain of the porn-obsessed Mulder-beast. And she waited. And she waited. And he looked like he was going to say something. He'd opened his mouth, but then he just shut it again and walked out of the bathroom, leaving her in blessed space and silence. It was almost disappointing. She'd so been hoping for an opportunity to yell at him. But maybe he'd just go away and she could get a good night's sleep instead. That would be nice. There was a lot to do the next day. Mulder had arranged to have some men come in to dig up the front yard for a "reflecting pool". Actually it was so they could do a forensic exhumation of whatever was buried there. And Scully, as the resident pathologist would be in charge. A lot of responsibility to get it right. Scully put away her hairbrush and turned off the bathroom light as she went back out to get into bed. Only Mulder was there before her. Tonight he was not only ON her bed, he was IN her bed. With a big stack of Internet download on his lap, the IKEA bedside halogen lamp turned on high and his glasses on. He made a frighteningly normal picture as he read through the stack of white paper, piling the already-read portion beside him on the mattress. He looked for all the world like he belonged there. A normal businessman from normal-land, going over the next day's presentation or stock forms or whatnot, instead of a quasi-insane paranoid FBI agent with an obsession for paranormal phenomenon and a perverted lust for anything female in his remote vicinity. Scully felt like she'd just fallen somehow into a frightening parallel universe where her partner was NOT an asshole who had not two minutes before been ogling her breasts, but a respectable, decent human being who didn't deserve the butt-kicking she was prepared to give him for being where he was. "Exactly what do you think you're doing?" she asked him, placing fists on hips for body-language emphasis in case he couldn't gather she was pissed off from her voice or expression. "Research," Mulder said mildly. "I downloaded this stuff today and didn't get a chance to go through it yet." "And why are you doing it in my bed?" Scully asked. "I didn't know the bed was exclusively yours. I mean, you sleep in it, but it has the best light, and I'm tired, and I don't feel like reading at the kitchen table right now. There's crap light in the living room and I don't want to get eyestrain for my trouble, ok?" Mulder said reasonably. "If you want to go to sleep, go to sleep. You won't bother me." "I can't believe you are doing this after all that bullshit last night," Scully said angrily. "What about, "get out of my room" didn't you get?" "I don't see why you're so angry," Mulder said with an air of superiority, but he couldn't hide the twinkle of pure evil that sparkled in his eyes as he concluded. "It's not like I said, "nice tits, Scully" or something." "What did you say?" Scully said dangerously. She could feel the desire to rip his head off growing exponentially by the second. "I mean, you DID want me to comment, didn't you?" he asked. "That IS why you went parading around here dressed like that, isn't it?" "I'd hardly call using the bathroom and brushing my teeth and hair "parading around". You're the one who came barging in on me. I wasn't expecting to be sharing the room with anyone, or I would have put on a bathrobe," Scully protested, and then she stopped herself angrily. "But why the hell am I justifying myself to you? You're the one that's not supposed to be in here. Now get the hell out of my room! Scat!" Scully pointed imperiously toward the open door of the bedroom, the abrupt movement having the unfortunate effect of getting everything above her waist into some sort of motion under the white cotton nightgown. But she was too pissed off to care. "This is really sad, Scully. I mean, if you want it that bad you don't have to stand there with a backlight on," Mulder said with a small sigh, putting down his papers and looking at her over the rims of his glasses. "What the hell are you talking about, Mulder? I'm trying to get you to understand that I want you out of my room. But somehow I'm getting the feeling that either you've ceased to understand the English language or I've been speaking Swahili for the past few minutes," Scully ranted. Then she stopped. "What the hell was that about a light again?" "Oh, don't pretend you don't know," Mulder said primly, continuing to look at her over his glasses in a raffishly professorial way. It would have made a charming picture if he had been anyone else. Or if she hadn't known he was a total asshole. Scully looked at Mulder. He continued to look at her over the rims of his glasses. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. And then she looked behind her. She'd left the bathroom light on and she was standing right in the light from the doorway. It was reflecting brightly from the rows of theatre-style dressing-room bulbs that lined the top of the mirror and lighting up her nightgown like she was standing in a spotlight. Mulder had to be able to see everything she had. Scully shut her eyes in horror. "Out of my room," she said, not moving. What was the point, now, after all? "Just come to bed, Scully," Mulder said, picking his papers back up. "I've got some work to do, but I can take care of you later. You just have to wait a few minutes, that's all." "But I don't want to wait a few minutes," Scully said in the overly-reasonable tone one reserves for the very young or the very stupid. "I want you to go now." "Well I'm not going, so deal," Mulder said not looking up from his papers. "I have a legitimate reason to be here, and I'll stay here until I'm done. Then we can see about your needs so you can stop this pathetic acting out and then I can go down and hit the couch and get some sleep." Scully couldn't believe it. She was engaged in a turf war with her partner over a piece of furniture. It was even worse than the office desk and nameplate thing. She wasn't even going to touch the sexual insults. Not even going there. She had a couple of options. She could simply leave the room and go downstairs and sleep on the couch herself, but she wouldn't put it past Mulder to come down there himself just after she'd gotten to sleep and wake her up in some unpleasant fashion. Probably by touching her in some totally inappropriate way. It seemed quite unappealing as an option, and in addition the rental couch was new and overstuffed and therefore uncomfortable enough to sit on, so she hated the idea of trying to sleep on it. And, though she didn't like to admit it, there was something about the house that gave Scully the creeps, and the open floorplan of the downstairs made her feel exposed. Like someone was watching her. She didn't think she could get any sleep down there at all. So that left facing the dragon in its lair. Or in her lair, actually. Maybe if she just got into bed with him and totally ignored him no matter what he did, she could get her point across and he'd get bored and go downstairs to sleep on the couch. Sort of like playing dead when you were attacked by a bear. Well, she wasn't getting anywhere standing there indecisively. And Mulder was doing a pretty good job of pretending to be interested in what he was reading, though he'd been flipping through pages that were upside down for the past minute or so, pretending he was reading them before passing them over to the stack of read pages at his side. Deciding finally to face the monster head-on, Scully just turned around and shut off the bathroom light and then turned around again, catching Mulder turning back to his papers, and then went over to the bed. She shut off the light on her side and crawled under the covers, turning on her side at the very edge of the Queen size mattress, away from Mulder and his light. It meant she had her back to him. Which wasn't exactly a way to feel secure with what he might be planning. But it did make her seem serious about getting some sleep, and serious about getting sleep she was. She lay there very still, trying to slow her breathing and fall into a state of anything other than total wakefulness. But every time she started to relax, Mulder would turn a page, flicking the stiff paper loudly. Or he'd sigh, or mumble, or shift on the mattress and give her a little jolt, waking her right back up again. She knew he was doing it purposefully, but she just ignored him. Then he'd go away. He had to. He had to go away or she was going to kill him and bury his body under the perfect lawn just as he suspected had happened to the Kleins. After he'd kept it up for about forty-five minutes by her rather accurate internal clock, Mulder finally stopped shuffling through the papers and stacked them up in some orderly fashion and leaned over the side of the bed and put the stack down on the floor. Then she heard his glasses click as he set them down on the nightstand. Then he turned down the lamp. He didn't turn it off. He just turned it down. That did not bode well, she thought. Then she felt the mattress shake and depress beneath his weight as he slid down into the bed and over next to her, invading her space again. She could feel the warmth of his body as he lay there waiting, just inches from her, and his hot breath on the back of her neck. She thought of his red blood staining the pristine whiteness of the sheets and the carpet. She almost smiled, but still hoping he'd leave her in peace, she repressed the desire. The anticipation was horrible. If he would only act then she would be able to react. But he seemed to want to make her sweat it out. Well, he wasn't going to get the satisfaction of knowing he was succeeding. If he had fallen asleep back there she was going to kill him twice. That was when he started touching her, but she couldn't tell what he was doing - what he MEANT by it, so she continued to wait. They were both lying on their right sides, far over on that side of the bed, and Mulder was brushing her hair away from her face with his left hand, gently. Maybe he simply thought she'd fallen asleep despite his best efforts to keep her up, if so -then Scully had what she wanted. All she had to do was pretend to be asleep and he'd give up and go away. She suppressed a smile at the fact that she was winning and lay perfectly still, trying to keep her breathing perfectly regular and deep. That was when she felt Mulder's lips on the nape of her neck. She remained frozen in place though every nerve in her body was suddenly on the alert. The touch was very light. Not enough to wake her if she had truly been asleep, so she had to endure it. And it wasn't as though the touch itself would have been much to endure under normal circumstances. Under perfectly normal circumstances it would have been pleasant, nice, comforting. It was just that it was Mulder, her asshole partner, doing it. Her asshole partner who was invading her bed and touching her as if he really WERE her husband. As if he had the right. And after he'd insulted her just minutes before, too. Take care of her needs. She'd show him her needs all right. Right now she needed to see him writhing in pain, begging for mercy, eating his nasty and sarcastic words. Preferably while being felt up by a very ugly and overweight female ex-weightlifter from the Russian Olympic team. She really couldn't think of another instance where Mulder would mind being felt up. Not that he'd done THAT exactly. But he'd hung on her like she was his possession, his trophy, ever since they'd come to Arcadia. The only way he could have been more territorial and obvious is if he'd peed on her and then on the house - HIS house, HIS wife, HIS partner, even this was all about him. Mulder's lips moved farther left, from her nape to just under her ear, just the lightest of caresses, still too light to "wake" her. And she could feel the slightest of touches on her back where his chest was pressing against her as he curled his body around hers. What the hell was he up to? It was infuriating to have to just lay there while he did whatever he wanted. But if she moved or reacted, she lost. He'd know he'd bothered her. Then Mulder's left hand joined his lips, his fingertips trailing so lightly over the skin of her bare arm that if she hadn't known he was up to something, she might have missed it entirely. That was, until he used them to so very gently brush the strap of her nightgown off her shoulder, so his lips could move over that part of her as well. Scully knew that things were getting dangerous, but she felt trapped. Trapped like the rabbit hiding in the tall grass is trapped by the circling hawk, or the stalking dog, or in this case, the stalking Fox. She'd almost have rather been in danger of her life, because right now something much more vital was at stake - her pride. Her self-respect, her ability to face Mulder, her chance of winning in this sick little game they'd begun playing, all of them were dependent on how she reacted to whatever he tried next. And she just wished it hadn't been so long since anyone had touched her. So that what he was doing wouldn't feel so good. She wanted him to stop, of course. It was just that she wanted him to go on as long as possible before he did. Because Mulder DID know how to touch her. He knew just what she liked, no matter how much she told him she didn't want it. No matter how possessive he was, no matter what demeaning thing he said, no matter how much she wanted to scream or hit him or just get the hell away from him, every time he touched her she had to fight herself to keep from leaning into it. To let him know that she knew better than to allow him to do that. But she couldn't think of anything that had ever felt better than the light touch of his lips on her bare skin. Mulder had kissed her shoulder quite thoroughly in that feather-light way that wouldn't wake her up. He seemed quite expert at it. Which made her wonder. Had there been other times when he'd done this, or something similar, and she didn't remember? Mulder seemed to know exactly what she liked. But how could he? They'd never been intimate, and she knew he didn't know anyone she had been with closely enough to ask them or to have heard stories. Now he was running the back of his hand lightly over the flesh of her spine, still kissing her gently on the neck. Scully suppressed a shiver of delight. He was such a bastard, and yet he could still do this. For one, mad second Scully allowed herself to wonder what more might be like. How he would touch her as she lay beneath his weight. How that skillful mouth would feel on hers, on her breast, between her thighs. Scully took a firm grip on herself. It would not do to allow herself to be carried away by him now. By his touch. It would mean that she would lose, because she would have allowed him to belittle her and then would have rewarded him for it. And the proximity alone was dangerous. There would be no trips down to San Diego tomorrow. She'd have an entire day spent in the house - with Mulder. Probably wearing some annoying golf shirt, an equally annoying expression of middle-aged complacency and a shit-eating grin if she'd allowed him to get away with anything. That would be unendurable torture. Bad enough to have to be with him at all these days. Mulder lightly squeezed her nipple and Scully mentally cursed herself for drifting off into her own musings. While she'd had her mental lapse, Mulder had taken the opportunity to move from feather-light invitations to play into full assault mode. Somehow he'd gotten his right arm around her waist and had insinuated the left into the bosom of her nightgown. How had she failed to notice? And how was it that she found herself with back arched and neck extended into the crook of his shoulder, while Mulder placed kisses on her throat hot enough to leave a mark. Scully jerked her body to stiff attention. "Mulder! What are you doing?" she said, bringing her hand up to grasp his where it rested inside her nightgown. "The same thing I've been doing for the last ten minutes, as if you hadn't noticed," he said into her neck. The words were slightly muffled, but she heard him well enough. Mulder ran his thumb in a circle around her nipple and sucked on her neck. "Mulder! Stop it!" she said, plucking ineffectually at his caressing hands. "Why?" he asked, not taking his lips away from her. "You don't really want me to." "Yes I do!" Scully cried. "Of course I do! Have you lost your mind?" Much to her simultaneous relief and sadness, Mulder removed his hand from inside her nightgown. He hitched his body backward more toward the center of the bed and away from her, and she was relieved that she hadn't had to be too mean to get him to let her go. Unpleasant scenes just before bed were the worst. And now he'd leave and everything would be fine. But Mulder hadn't apparently been planning to leave. When he got himself to the center of the bed, he simply used the arm still around her and the other to turn her over and drag her back there with him. He was just moving her into position, but it was one of those things designed by the universe to just make Scully go ballistic. She hated being small, and she hated being reminded of how small she was. Especially in so cavemannish a fashion. Another Mulder expression of MINE. My Scully. Here. Grunt. Scully remembered that stupid Caveman movie with Ringo Starr that had played on HBO about a zillion times when she was in high school. That was what he was acting like. She could still reconstruct the dialog. Considering there were like three words in the whole movie it wasn't exactly a challenge. Mulder zug zug Scully. That's what he was after. Zug zug. When Scully wanted someone who would alunda Scully. And this was definitely NOT Mulder alunda Scully. It was all about zug zug. Well, here was one caveman who was definitely not going to be getting any zug zug tonight. Scully put her hands flat on Mulder's t-shirt-covered chest and pushed. To absolutely no result whatsoever. "Wow, Scully, you're so limp. It's like we really ARE married," Mulder quipped, settling himself down on top of her. Well she knew what the weight part was like. Mulder was grinning at her in a lopsided fashion other people might no doubt have found charming. Mulder certainly seemed to. He thought he was cute. The bastard. Scully didn't have time for this crap. She decided to go for the low blow. "Not only me, Mulder. But I suppose I can understand it in a man of your age," she said with a smile that was really a mere bearing of teeth. Showing the Fox her fangs. "It's really nothing to be ashamed of. Or to worry about. Just part of the body's natural aging processes." "What are you talk- Oh, I see." Mulder smiled about as evil a smile as she'd ever seen on him. Then he placed both hands on her thighs just above the knees and pulled them farther apart, moving over her to drop himself down between them. "I think you've forgotten just how short you are again, Scully. But all that requires is just a little change in position." Mulder pulled on Scully's spread thighs dragging her downward so that she could feel- Oh this was really not at all what she wanted right now. "What was it that you were saying about the aging process again?" he asked, challenge written all over his piercing hazel gaze. "Oh-" was all she managed as he pushed against his chest again. "Oh-oh-.just- just-.bite me, Mulder!" "Your wish is my command," he said and lowered his head until Scully felt his teeth lightly grazing her left nipple through the cotton of her nightgown. "Would you stop that?" she practically shrieked, appalled at how high and shrill her voice had suddenly gotten. "But you just asked me to do it!" Mulder protested innocently. "You know all you have to do is tell me what you want. You know I'd do anything for you." Scully wanted to kill him again for the horribly sincere way he'd said that last part. Especially in light of the way he'd been mocking her ever since they'd come to the Falls. Because he HAD gone to the ends of the fucking earth for her. He HAD risked his life again and again on her behalf and other times when he thought he was keeping her safe. He HAD trusted her with many of his secrets. ARCADES (Tomorrow to fres woods, and pastures new.) 2/2 DISCLAIMER etc. in part 1 But that didn't make him any less of a bastard for the way he was treating her now. In fact, it made it worse. More awful, more demeaning, because it was just a mockery of something that might once have been beautiful between them. But now, it was only the ashes of something long ago burnt out. And ashes are sad things, their life gone. They can give no warmth or comfort. Thank God he hadn't kissed her, because she knew that's what she would have tasted. Scully just couldn't look at him any more. She couldn't bear to see that mocking expression on his face. To view him in all his assholeish splendor. Because of the time when she hadn't felt that way about him, no matter what he did. No matter what stupid thing he'd said. Because he'd never meant to be an asshole before. And now he did. He wanted to be an asshole. He wanted to torture her. And she didn't know why. She didn't know what she'd done to deserve it. She thought nothing. Scully closed her eyes and turned her face away from him, drawing her body up as tightly as she could, cringing away from his touch like a turtle drawing back inside its shell. "No!" Mulder said explosively right beside her ear. "No you don't, goddamnit! Not this time!" Scully cringed away from the sound of his voice. "You were human just a minute ago. I saw it," Mulder hissed. "I won't have you turning back into this thing! Do you hear me, Scully? Yell at me. Hit me. Do something, just don't- just don't do this." Scully looked back at him. The pain in his voice demanded her attention. She needed to see if he was manipulating her, or if it was in his eyes as well. But when she opened her eyes it was to find he'd already closed his own as he lowered his mouth to hers and they had their first taste of each other. And Scully was wrong about the ashes. Mulder tasted of many things: anger, disappointment, bitterness, pain, hunger, longing, loneliness, tenderness, resentment, pride, lust, devotion, possessiveness, desire, passion, need, and loyalty. It all made one powerful combination, nearly impossible for her to refuse. Which was when she realized that she'd ceased wanting to refuse right about the time he'd started kissing the nape of her neck. Why was she such a complete fool for this man? Anyone else and she would have been out the door years ago. And she would never have known what it was to kiss him, to feel his body next to hers, to have him lying on top of her ready to make love or war, or whatever it was that they were doing to one another. Scully was gripping the sheets on either side of them so hard that they were beginning to come away from the mattress, but she wouldn't put her arms around him. She had to claim some kind of moral superiority even though he was kissing the hell out of her and shoving his tongue so far inside her mouth she was sure he could feel the filling on her back molar and she was letting him do it as much as he wanted. But letting him do it wasn't the same as doing it herself. She could still claim it hadn't been her idea. "Scully," Mulder moaned into her mouth and then moved his mouth back to her throat while his left arm locked around her and his right hand began moving in a disturbing fashion over her thigh. "Please don't do this. Don't leave me." "W-what are you talking about?" she breathed as his hot mouth found her nipple again through the cotton fabric of her nightdress. "Ev-ever since we got back from Antarctica," Mulder said. "It's like a part of you, of us, never came back. You don't trust me. When you look at me all I see is a blank wall, or contempt. And I don't know which one is the hardest to face." Scully didn't know what to say. It was true. But not for inexplicable reasons. But she was more than aware that he didn't want to know those reasons. That if he heard them that was the end of even this shadow of their partnership. But how could he not know? He was the one that had been on his way to the hangar with Fowley when she'd made her last-ditch attempt to intercept Cassandra Spender. If she hadn't called him- Well most likely he'd have been fried along with his father's colleages and she, herself, would have been taken back aboard the Goodship Cloneipop for more experimental breeding projects. Or else simply impregnated with an alien to incubate, as had already been attempted in Antarctica. But Mulder was clueless as to why she was cold to him. She had to be. That or die of sorrow. And to think he'd told her he loved her. And once when he hadn't been drugged to the gills, though not in so many words. "You make me a whole person," certainly seemed like love to her, though. Even at her most literal-minded that sounded like love to her. "And tell me, Mulder, just what is there to come back to?" she found herself saying. Mulder looked at her, and she could see something akin to her own sorrow in the look on his face, in his eyes. "This," was all he said, and then he kissed her again. And his body grew more insistent along with his mouth and his hands. Ever physical, Mulder was falling back into his own preferred means of expression, when really what they needed to do was talk to each other for once. But Scully knew where this was coming from at least. And there was a kind of sincerity in it. There was nothing demeaning in the way he touched her, no matter what he said. Mulder was gentle, almost reverent in his ministrations to her body, and she couldn't help but respond. She didn't want to not respond. She wanted him. She wanted them together. And if she couldn't have him as her partner, the way he had been, then this was good enough for now. It would make all the rest easier to take somehow. If it wasn't moving forward, then at least it wasn't the same awful stasis where they bit and fought at each other like weasels. No, they'd just fuck like weasels instead. Scully was glad Mulder had his face buried in her shoulder so he didn't see her smiling humorlessly at the weasels thing. She wouldn't want him to get the wrong impression, that she thought this was a joke. She knew it wasn't. Just like all his cracks about honeymoon videos and playing house hadn't been jokes. This is what they'd been about. This is what Mulder thought they should have been doing all along - ever since he told her how he felt. She knew that. But what he didn't know was that the only reason she was allowing it to happen now was that she knew it was already a lost cause, and she knew that she wouldn't be able to live with herself later if she'd never let herself know what it was like. What he was like this way. They were lost. Mulder was not her husband. He never would be her husband. And once he knew what it was with her, he'd wonder why he'd thought he'd wanted it in the first place. Mulder was like that. Flighty. Easily bored. Always having to go on to the next problem, the next case. He was due for a change. She'd seen it in his stubborn refusal to believe any ill of Diana Fowley. Even if he hadn't recognized it in himself, she had. He was ready to move on. But not before he knew. And that's what this was all about. He was determined to stick until he wore her down. Until she'd given him what he wanted. And then there could be closure, resolution. Then there could be, "Sorry Scully, we tried, but it just didn't work out." That's what Mulder wanted. And her heart was broken anyway, so what did it hurt to give him what he wanted? It wouldn't make it easier, but he might be a little less abusive as they wound down to their final, sad conclusion. And it wasn't wrong for her to look out for herself. Scully had never loved anyone so much, nor had she ever felt so hopeless. She didn't realize she was crying until Mulder noticed and began kissing away her tears, mumbling nonsense into her ear, running one hand through her hair even as he moved the other inside her, readying her for the conclusion of their sad, hopeless coupling. Scully loosed her grip on the mattress and clung to him madly. Because he was the only thing that was real. Because she didn't care anymore what he thought. Because she wasn't looking for an out or an excuse or a way to save face. That just didn't matter any more. She just wanted to touch him, to know what it was before it was gone. And he would interpret it the way he wanted to anyway, no matter what she did, no matter what she really thought or felt. Mulder would just see the Scully he wanted to see at the moment, the Scully he loved, the Scully he hated, the Scully that was somewhere in-between, and he'd never ask her what it really was. He'd never talk to her. He was afraid of the Truth. The Truth would force him to make a choice. It would force him to examine his own actions and his own feelings, and he didn't want to face that. So much easier to blame her and to justify things to himself in light of her reactions or non-reactions. Mulder kissed her again as he eased himself inside her. And that was a completion of sorts. The completion of six years of wondering. The completion of the ending of their union. After this, they would never really be together again even if they decided it was all right to have sex. Because that was all it would be - having sex. They would never make love and Scully had so wanted to make love with him even if it was only once. She had thought about it often when she was dying, and she'd come so close so many times. She wished it had been then and not now. It would have meant something then. Now she just couldn't stop crying silently even as Mulder brought her closer and closer to climax. How could he destroy her emotionally and fulfill her sexually in the same moment? It shouldn't be possible. But they'd done the impossible together more than once. And Scully supposed this was just more of the same. She said his name quietly as she felt reality rocking away beneath her on the tides of orgasm. But it left her feeling emptier than before, even as he continued thrusting inside her, moving closer and closer to his own release. "I love you, Scully," is what Mulder said as she felt him come inside her and his weight sink down onto her body. She held him close and wondered what it would have been like if he'd really meant it. Because this wasn't good at all. Mulder fell asleep almost immediately, arms wrapped tightly around her, head pillowed on her chest. Scully was left alone, awake and dreading what was to come. -30-