Date sent: Fri, 18 Jul 1997 10:54:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Valeanna1@aol.com Subject: NEW: Gift (1/1) J.C.Sun Title: Gifts Author:J.C. Sun/Valeanna1@aol.com Rating: PG for light profanity and some violence Spoilers: None Classification: V, Scully-Angst Summary: Sitting in her bathroom, Scully bitterly muses about an abusive relationship. Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, Fox and Co. Not me. I just wrote the stupid peice.. Author's notes: This is in response to a long, long, long ago fanfic challenge concerning what-if Scully got into an abusive relationship. This was only recently interred from the murky depths of my hard drive when I was performing some housecleaning.... /Gifts /by J.C.Sun The blood mizes with the water to form a rosy liquid blurbling and gurgling down the sink. I have a breif, tantalizingly seductive and vivid fantasy of Mulder bursting in on one of these little episodes and wreaking revenge against Jacob. I can see him now, my porno watching, conspiracy hashing, truth seeking angel outlined against the hallway lights; his feet are set wide aprat and a melodramatic wind is blowing his trenchcoat about his legs; he is coming to exact horrible revenge for the crimes against his Scully. With a sharp, primitive battle of cry this angel of mine charges him, and slams a hard fist into Jacob's stomach, folding the bastard like a paperbag at the supermarket. A fist descends on that classic Roman nose. Blood bursts forth from it like a squeezed melon, while another opens that full lip. Moaning, he'll clutch at it, while one Gucci foot swings out, catching Derrins i n the gut. He grunts. Another firmly planted kick, lower this time, causes him to turn a delicious pasty white. Then, Mulder grabs him by the collar and pins him to the wall. For all his violent rage, he's a bug pinned to the collector's plate, thrashing ineffectually and feebly. I smile, and raise myself from the floor. I walk close, close enough to Jacob to feel my breath hissing on his face. And I smile again, viciously, the kind of smile books call 'cool, calm and utterly disturbing in it's complete void of sympathy'. And I spit in his face. The globs run down, like thick tears, mingling with the sweat and the blood pouring from his face, and I'll laugh, amused beyond measure, and I'll feel Mulder's arms protecting me as Jacob crawls out of my apartment, gibbering in terror. Lonely children and those living with pain develop great powers of imagination; I have been both and that is all this is. Sheer, simple fanstasy. I'll never let Mulder see me this way if I can possibly help it; I'll die first, for I delude myself in the thought he cares for me. Popping that bubble would ache far more than the occasional black eye. I wipe my mouth on my gown; I'll call a sick day tommorrow. Yes, I decide, taking in my bruised reflection. Sick, though god knows I've been sick too often lately. Half-bemused by my own, personal tradgedy , I slide my hand down my face, perversely revelling in the sharp bones and the tender spots. I smile broadly, just to see what I look like,and the witch's leer satisfies me in a strange way. Grinning, I fit my fingers over the marks on my neck, finding that his fingers are much thicker and larger than mine. My hair crackles; that irritates me, for I've always taken pride in my hair, the one thing that could genuinely be called a beauty. Beauty. Jesus, but Jacob is beautiful, and it's almost amusing how much he resembles Mulder. They share the same, dry wit, share the same tall, elegant frame and the full, pouty lips hinting at both altar boy purity and unbridled sensuality. And they move with the same achingly fluid grace, the smooth flow of muscele upon bone, the motion of a very much grown up man. Jacob's eyes are blue, rather than Mulder's [Jesus, I still call him Mulder, even in my own mind and the privacy of my bathroom!] witch hazel, but oh, my god, his grin nearly matches Mulder's in sheer voltage power; the mocking twist, the charm blended with an odd sort of pain buried deep and a sensual promise intertwined. I found myself drawn to it across the room and away from the vague protection of Mulder's side and the comfort of his touch on my back. I thought, as Jacob lead me onto the dance floor and nestled his face into my hair, fuck it, Mulder's been no priest these few years, so why should I feel any sort of guilt leaving him to the tender mercies of those idiot females that find him so attractive? I deserve this, I should have it, and I need it. If I can't have, if I won't have Mr. Popular, then I'll settle for Jacob. And a very satisfactory substitution he did make. Jesus Christ, yes, with a lilting smile and flowers on my desk, paired with dinners at some of the Washington area's finest restaurants. It was a romantic sort of thing; I thought Cinderella really had found her shining prince in armor. He was well off, born into an elegant family whose name I recognized from Mulder's withering accounts of high society, and he looked the part, with his smooth high patrician forehead and an easy, offhand air. And yet, behind the elegant facade, I found a child that was still afraid, still trembling with the fear of tomorrow. Insecure, afraid, angry, saddened, immature, and I loved him all the more for it, for I thought he needed me. I suppose it was the child that gave me this bloody nose. A tall, screaming child looming over me and roaring, yelling, pouting that he had found Mulder's sweatshirt casually draped across my couch, and a child too, that had printed it's hand across my face and it's shoes in my belly.The rage is a small, tightness in my stomach. Undoubtedly, he'll send flowers first, too shy to meet my face. Delicate, long stemmed roses damp with florists' dew and enshrined against dark, bowing ferns and caught in tiny, baby's breath. And gifts, bribes, elegant things: a tiny, charming Queequeg in a velvet case stamped Tiffany's, a dainty pair of worked earrings set with abalone, a set of Indian hair combs, elegant, with long, thin tines exiquistely carved to look like slender saplings in the wind, a leather bound volume of Sappho, Godiva chocolate wrapped in their golden boxes, his note of profuse apology thick, dark across the fine cream paper tucked into the tissue paper. Delicate, expensive things that I would never buy. I'll listen to his answering machine messages, savoring the roll of his voice, I wondering if that is a woman's voice I hear in the background, hating myself. And he'll show up at my door one night, too, the rain dripping off his shoulders, eyes trembling with tears and softly fragrant with more roses, and sobbing, he'll swear, he'll swear and he'll promise, rocking on his feet, the pain like a brand across his face. And I'll say no. I'll shut the door in his face the first few times, but eventually, I let him in. Just for a short while at first, a few minutes, enough to scream at him and yell at him and tell him to never come near me again, then longer, and longer until I do slip my hand shyly into large one and his arms wrap around me, his mouth brushing across my forehead. "You'll see," he whispers. "I've changed." And then he gives me a gift, usually, not as wonderful as the earlier ones, but still, something small, delicate. *Like you.* he whispers. Once it was a tiny ring, golden, gleaming and warm around my finger as the grin spread across my face, wide and incredulous. And we have the good time again, until the next time he sees Mulder's hand in the small of my back or I spend the night at Mulder's apartment, filing paperwork, or I'm late or I'm not home. I'll do something stupid, and I'll set him off again. And in a sequence of action that only seems half real, as if I am only half alive, there is the crack of his hands against my face and the blur as I slam into the wall, my shoulder driving into the plaster and my head following it, slamming into the corner and my hands catching on the frame of some small, still-life print. And it is half-real, too, when I hear the turn of the key in the lock, the grind of Gucci against my door step. His voice calls out warm, loud and blustering, enthusiastic. The slap of files against my coffee table, a soft whump as his leather jacket is tossed onto the couch and a rustling (Chinese takeout. Ming's Jade Garden?), as he announces his sincere intention to get those damned IR-2937-A expense reports from the Carlmans case filed. Half-real, too, when the bathroom door creaks open, and he stands there, disheveled, in a Yankees sweatshirt and those black jeans, caught, as if frozen, his mouth open, something exploding in his eyes, and I feel as if numb when his hand catches at my elbow and his hands wrap around my face, fingers trembling, as the grip turns angry, and I can see all the unraveled strands--the sickdays, the heavy foundation, the long-sleeved woolens in July--all of the, coming together into a dark, warped fabric in his eyes, and the rage quietly turning into fury, taut and quivering in his lean body. And it's all too real, though, as my head falls to his shoulder, my face burying in the warmth of him, as his arm holds me close and the insistent buzz and the flickering images of the electronic fireplace of our generation fade into a pleasant buzz, blended together by his comfortable aftershave-sweat-fast food smell and the cool slick of our tears mingling, his silent, unwilling, unacknowledgable courting and comfort gift to me. /End You read the story, so, you know you want to do it. Hit that 'reply' button and GIMME! GIMME! ::The feedback monster rears it's most awful head::