From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org
Date: Wed,  8 Apr 2009 20:39:44 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Kvs7: The Fall Of Our Summer (NC-17, 1/1) by Khyber
Source: direct

Reply To: khyber@khyberfic.net


Title: The Fall Of Our Summer
Author: Khyber 
Email: khyber@khyberfic.net
Classification: VAR
Spoilers: "Drive"
Keywords: Mulder/Scully
Summary: Post-ep for "Drive." Technically, also slightly AU. The
rest of Khyber Versus Season Seven can be found at
http://www.khyberfic/vs7.html

Thanks to Cath (um, surprise, it grew) and Penumbra.

x x x

Arcata Hotel
Arcata, California
November 16, 1998

"Do you know you can't shingle in the rain, Scully?"

This far north in California they didn't do wine, didn't do
tourists. The hotel overlooking the town square smelled of forty
years of morning sea fog, like molluscs rotting in cat piss under
the worn red carpet. The pregnant girl at the counter said they were
having a problem with the phones. Scully guessed that was the
problem you have when you don't pay the phone bill.

"No, but hum a few bars and I'll fake it."

She shut the door. Mulder had a sixpack in his room, sitting next to
him on the bed. It was something cheap, working-man, that only
tastes good cold and barely even then. He hadn't changed, was still
wearing the same shirt and pants he'd been wearing 48 hours ago in
Idaho.

Scully could see where he was already, wishing he knew how to do
something with his hands, wanting to throw a baseball around. The
guys with hammers and baseballs wish they had sunglasses and guns,
she thought. Nobody's happy.

"So... I just got off the phone with the SAC of the Sacramento
office," she said. She very deliberately yanked a beer from the
plastic rings, making sure he watched her. "She's really unhappy."
You're not in trouble from *me*, Mulder, the way she popped the can
open was supposed to say.

"'Bout what?" he mumbled.

"You trying to set up a press conference tomorrow?" Beer had
splashed out on top of the can when she popped it open and she
delicately slurped it off, leaving a bit of lipstick on the rim.

"Oh, that." He twisted the tab off the can, sank it nine feet into
the bathroom wastebasket.

"Why were you going to hold a press conference, Mulder?"

"Can't shingle in the rain," he chose not to respond. "Learned that
from Mr. Patrick Crump. I don't know why. You'd think if you had
taken your roof apart, that you'd especially want to fix it if it
was raining."

"The last time you went into a Home Depot it was because the cargo
elevator ate a man." She sat down on the edge of the bed. "What's on
your mind?"

"He was an innocent man, Scully. Crump, I mean, not the guy in the
elevator, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt too. No, it's
worse than that. Mr. Patrick Crump... was a victim, a victim of a
system we're supposed to trust but that doesn't give a damn about
you if you don't make trouble and tries to crush you if you do."
Mulder crushed the can in one hand, rattled it hard into the
wastebasket. "That's no way to treat a man, take away his dignity
like that."

Mulder was a cheap drunk. For that matter, so was she. If they split
that sixpack, he'd be mopey as hell and she'd be tanked and needing
to pee every fifteen minutes.

"So you were gonna try and, what, set the record straight?"

He ripped straight into a second beer, looked at it for a second,
but didn't drink.

"It matters, it matters how we remember. I want everybody to know
that the crazy guy on the news yesterday was trying to save his
wife's life, that he was doing what anybody would do if they were
half a man. Not just," now he swigged from the can, "America's Best
Car Chases."

What anybody would do. Mulder came to the end of the earth for me.
The literal end of the earth, the point at which cartoon physics
suggests you should fall off.

It had been five weeks since they'd last been at each other, nine
weeks since they'd first. It should have been ten, Scully thought.
She should have dragged him over to her apartment the moment the
flight from Buenos Aires had landed, pushed him onto her bed still
battered and glowing in the heroic aura of their improbable lives.
She should have given him the base and honest gratitude of her body,
the sweet barbaric reward he deserved but would barely admit to
wanting.

But she didn't. Instead she'd fucked him on his couch a week later
out of need and a vague malice, wanting to use him and confuse him
at the same time. She thought it was something one of those
complicated, clever women he'd loved might do, pull on her clothes
and leave without a word.

Scully screwed him with the same fierce, focused competence she did
everything nowadays, deriving the same detached and temporary
satisfaction. She knew she was a better lay than she'd been before,
though it wasn't as if she'd had any opportunities to practice. It
had been almost three years since their first affair. She liked to
think of it that way, an affair, box up those few months and put it
in the closet with the photographs that would never be sorted.

They'd kept doing it. It wasn't like the affair, where they'd have
lunch together, where she'd dress wondering if his hands might
undress her later. Now he showed up at her place at two in the
morning, eyes wide and honest and full of promise. She sensed
danger, shoved her sex in his face before he could say anything she
would regret later. Mulder understood, and bent her over a rental
car in Illinois, nine-thirty in the morning under Indian summer sun,
told her in spine-quivering detail exactly what she felt like.

The last time, five weeks ago, Scully had gone to his place on a
Sunday morning, because she wanted to be with him. It went exactly
like that feeling should, he made her laugh and smile and made love
to her on a duvet on his living room floor. Scully felt herself
melting, the hardness of will and self-containment shrinking like
ice in the sun. If he'd had a bed to hold her on, the glass threads
that hold her together would have shattered and left her scattered
and immobile, left him with an armful of sweet useless rag doll.

She should have known. Five weeks ago, and she never went back.

"What were you going to say at the press conference?" she asked.

"I hadn't quite thought that through yet," he admitted, sipped his
beer. "I had more of a mental picture. The basics. SEAFARER, your
autopsy results. There has to be something about this besides a
couple minutes of car-chase footage."

"Well, you may get it. Apparently Vicky Crump's sister and father
are suing the Elko PD for wrongful death."

"That was fast," Mulder snorted. "I wouldn't be surprised if the
Navy's already paying all the lawyers on both sides, keep it behind
the 'pending lawsuit' forever."

"It'll happen, Mulder. There's too many people who know about this.
There'll probably be a full inquiry."

"People don't know, Scully. If there's an inquiry we'll be talking
about dolphin sonar and intercranial pressure and wavelengths and
resonant frequencies, not about a guy who watched his wife's head
explode in the back seat of a car he stole trying to keep her
alive." Mulder dragged on his beer and stared into the empty
television screen. "She'd been making him breakfast, he had a day
off, and she had a headache, and..."

She heard his voice hitch. His eyes looked lost, watery. Scully put
a hand on his arm, interrupting.

"And you drove from northern Nevada to the coast with a gun to your
head yesterday. Patrick Crump lived his life and you lived yours."
Her hand lingered. "You're exhausted. I'm gonna sit here, and we're
gonna finish our drinks, and then you're going to go to bed."

I could have said we, she thought, feeling him under her hand. Shove
him into the shower, pull him into bed. That would, in the big
picture, be the right thing to do, like it would have been the right
thing to end our Antarctic adventure with a kiss and a fade to
black.

"You're right," he said. "I'm tired. This was really not a good
day." He rubbed his hand on his chest as if he was trying to wipe
something off.

They sat quietly for a few minutes, the faint barroom scent of the
cheap beer around them. I should make him touch me, she thought.

Comfort him against my naked breasts, let him draw on my body with
his fingers.

She retired, untouched, to her own room to her notes and files, to
the focused and competent aggregation of dolphin sonar, intercranial
pressure, wavelengths and resonant frequencies.

x x x

Scully didn't startle when she heard the bathroom door open. A few
minutes before, she'd heard the front door of her room over the rush
of water from the shower. He'd been standing outside, getting his
nerve up. It was him, it could only be him, if only because he was
the only one with a key to the room.

She turned off the water, slid the curtain open to get a towel, and
let him watch her naked body. Scully knew the parts he liked, the
trim stomach, soft breasts. He'd told her their third time that her
pussy was beautiful, that he could stay there all day. It was the
first dirty, sexy thing either of them had said to each other. She
toweled herself dry, ignoring him as he stood in the doorway

"What?" His voice was low, rough, almost angry. "This is what we do,
isn't it? Have I figured out how this works now?"

"No, you haven't," she said, tossing the towel on the floor and
running her fingers once through her damp hair.

"Why's that?" When he stepped closer she could smell him, still
unwashed, sweat and beer. She was going to need to shower again
after.

"Because you're still talking."

He had her up on the edge of the counter in five seconds. Her travel
bag fell to the floor, feminine secrets clattering on the scuffed
tiles. Mulder groped roughly at her breasts, her breath hissing as
he captured her nipple between two fingers. There was no trail of
kisses down her belly, he simply dropped to his knees, hungrily at
her sex like a starving dog. He was readying her, hard and quick,
reducing her to a linear progression of sexual responses. Scully
gasped and swore, a tenant in her own warming, moistening, uncaring
body.

She held his head between her legs, fingertips digging into his
scalp, until the mutual chemistry of want/need demanded that he be
inside her. Released, he stood up, flattened his hands on the mirror
behind her, trapped her shoulders between his outstretched arms.
That's right, she thought, I only want to be *held*. Scully raked
her nails along the insides of his biceps, his forearms, before
reaching down between them to spread herself with one hand, guide
him in with the other. Mulder's cock was as stiff and hard as oak.
She left her fingers there as he sank into her sex, felt herself
wrapping slick and wet around him.

She had no leverage on the countertop and so she let him fuck her,
thighs spread to receive his thrusts, stroking her own clit with one
hand. Everything tuned out, Mulder's wild, dark eyes, the damp hard
edge of the counter under her ass, the world reducing down to the
hard thing slithering over the sensitive places inside her. Scully
opened her eyes to look down, saw the thick ruddy shaft plunging
back and forth, momentarily surprising her with its synchronicity
with the sensations inside her.

That's it, that's me, I'm getting fucked, and then whoooosh like c1
and c2 were disconnecting from her skull, coiling down into her
belly to surround her cunt as she went off. When Mulder fucked her
she came, every single time since the first, and once upon a time
she'd thought she was one of those girls who just doesn't, not with
someone else.

missy told her she just hadn't met the right guy yet

When she looked up Mulder was slowing, his eyes flat and sad. He
tried to pull back from her, out of her, mumbling.

"No, this is, not like this, this is just fucked up..."

She locked her legs around him, crossing her ankles over his ass.

just fuck me, Mulder, don't cry on me, if a single tear hits me I'll
soak and split like tissue paper

"This is all there is," Scully said. She grabbed a handful of his
tshirt, dragging him inside, urging him back into the rhythm,
bearing herself down to squeeze his cock.

all I know of Vicky Crump is the gaping bloody hole in her head

"Does it work?" he growled. She pulled him in closer, he liked to
feel that, feel her body pressed against him like they were really
lovers.

edematous with dead things, dead angels, blonde and burned, I have
no room left for Vicky or Patrick Crump or anything else

"I don't know anymore," she whispered over his shoulder.

When he came inside her, she wondered if a black-eyed demon born of
a corpse had a word that felt like "mommy."

x x x

the end

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