From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: 15 Feb 2007 16:12:37 -0000 Subject: Learning to Share (1/1) by Athene Source: direct Reply To: athene1121@hotmail.com TITLE: Learning to Share (1/1) AUTHOR: Athene E-MAIL: athene1121@hotmail.com RATING: G CATEGORY: V KEYWORDS: MSR SPOILERS: "Millennium." Learning to Share by Athene With a shudder, she noticed how cold the room had become. The worn cotton blanket around her legs would easily cover her shoulders, and Scully wiggled and adjusted, moving her shoulder gingerly, until its soft warmth settled on her back and embraced her. The wall clock buzzed faintly as the sweep hand passed 12 o'clock, and the nurse breezed back through the limp beige curtain with a sheaf of papers in one hand. "How's the head, Dana?" she asked as she busied herself at the small desk. "I'm fine," Scully began, but her response sounded weak, even to her. Resolutions against hiding weakness were fresh in her mind just days after the new year. She realized she was unwilling to lie to the woman. "Actually, it aches. It's pounding pretty hard." "Not surprising, considering the blow from that bat. I don't even want to imagine what would have happened if you hadn't twisted and blocked the worst of it. I'm amazed your arm isn't broken." The nurse approached the gurney and squinted at Scully's bruised forehead and temple, eyeing the monitors with a practiced glance and checking her pupils. Glancing down at her patient's bruised left arm, the nurse grimaced; Scully saw the woman exhale and slowly relax. "Are you ready for some more dilaudid?" Scully shook her head slowly. "I'd rather not, if you don't mind. I'll probably have to give a statement, and I wouldn't want anything I said to be questioned. No one wants that bastard let off on a technicality." The events of a few hours ago replayed in her tired mind, and she shuddered again. I wouldn't have been able to duck in time if Mulder hadn't seen him coming around the corner, and warned me. "Is my partner still in the waiting room?" The nurse nodded briefly, and faced the monitors with her clipboard. She jotted down a few numbers, pursed her lips in satisfaction, and turned to look at Scully, a smile on her face. "He's attracting a lot of attention out there. There're four high school students from a girls soccer team in the waiting room; they're fascinated by him." "I can imagine," Scully replied, a reluctant smile on her face. Mulder was the perfect embodiment of a suave government agent - well-tailored suit, polished shoes, tall good looks, and the professional confidence that made a girl's heart pound. She had no doubt that he was the object of wistful glances. "Maybe we should rescue him; can he come back now?" With a grin, the nurse headed toward the door. "He'll be relieved to see you, and he'll definitely be safer back here than out there..." Her rubber- soled shoes made her steps nearly soundless as she left the room. Fox Mulder shifted his weight from one hip to the other in an effort to bring back circulation to his ass. The chairs in the waiting room were not designed for anything other than economy and ease of cleaning. There was a flurry of movement and a half-muffled giggle from the girls seated to his left; his eyes closed briefly and wearily in an uncharacteristic appeal to a Higher Power. He rattled the paper he was reading to smooth out the creases, and tried to focus on an article about the Gulf Breeze sightings. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a flash of white, and his head snapped around, instantly alert. Scully's nurse gestured to him from the hallway, an amused smile on her face, and he hurriedly dropped the paper in the chair next to his own, picked up his cell phone, and made his way to her. He felt four pair of spaniel eyes follow his progress, and answered the nurse's smile with a forced grin of his own. "Thank God," he muttered when he came abreast of her. "I felt like a side of beef out there." "You're not much safer back here," the nurse shot back. "I have a student nurse and one very young intern who have been watching you since you got here with Dana." She inclined her head ever so slightly to her left, and his gaze followed hers over until he saw a tall blond man in a short white lab coat, pockets bristling with steno pads, 3 x 5 cards, and an odd assortment of drug pens. His brown, doe-eyed stare was unnerving, and aimed directly at the agent. A flush made its way slowly up Mulder's neck and into his hair, and he shook his head in disbelief. He caught sight of Scully, perched atop a gurney in her cubicle, and his stride lengthened. Within moments, he was standing in front of her, expression grim, lips pursed, staring in shock at the discolored patch of red hair and the bristling row of stitches. "Well," he demanded, eyes fixed on hers, "what's the verdict?" Scully inhaled deeply, and then resolutely met his eyes. "I have a low-grade concussion, and a horrible headache." She paused, then went on, voice just slightly rougher. "If it hadn't been for you, Mulder, I think I'd be dead." Forcing back a reflexive dread at disclosing weakness, she kept her gaze on his eyes, and saw a glow begin in his eyes as her answer registered. She reminded herself again that the reward for her unaccustomed emotional transparency was greater intimacy with this man. Mulder quite obviously reveled in her newly overt trust. He slowly extended his left hand, touching her forehead lightly with his fingertips, and gently swept a few strands of stiff, blood-sodden hair away from the cut. "That would have made two of us dead," he whispered in an odd, hoarse voice. The hand shook, a fine tremor revealing his delayed fright. His gaze turned tender and he began to smile, his voice strengthening. "I don't think I could go on without you." She felt warmth spread up into her face and curl low in her abdomen. This transparency of thought was all so new. Her innermost feelings were laid bare to his profiler's eyes. Every expression, every movement, each word or action was a clue to her thoughts and feelings, and he always read her swiftly, with uncanny ease and accuracy. No one before Mulder had been able to consistently decipher her imperturbable face, the stiff military set of her shoulders, or the cool and dismissive aura she adopted around her peers in the FBI. In the first few months of their partnership, though they barely knew one another, his knowing stare made her feel vulnerable and awkward. Each clumsy deflection of his concern was met with a skeptical glance, and just the barest hint of hurt. When, after a year or two, she realized that he made no improper use of his knowledge, that he meant no emotional blackmail and did not consider her weak, she began to relax. She could no more deny her growing love for him than she could deny the devotion with which he always regarded her. With gentle, persistent tapping at the shell of her defenses, Mulder hollowed out a place for himself, nestling in to stay, she prayed, forever. With Mulder's breach of her emotional boundaries, a new and fragile physical intimacy was a foregone conclusion. And it was very, very new. Twice, now, she had opened her arms and her bed to him. She felt her thoughts drift back to the sun-filled room in her apartment, his warm breath on her neck, his long brown arms wrapped around her body in a loose embrace, the hard muscles of his abdomen and his runner's legs pressing into her from behind. She had never felt so loved, nor so safe. Melding the boundaries of their new relationship into established practice at work was, so far, less trouble than she would have predicted. Mulder kept his smirks and his mischievous glances to himself, unless they were alone in the basement office. There was no real change in the way he positioned himself around her while walking in the halls, or while out interrogating witnesses and suspects. He had always hovered inside her personal space, always within arm's reach of her, always aware of where she was, relative to him. She was not aware of any increase in possessive alpha-male posturing, as if his co-workers at the Hoover Building had any interest in Spooky Mulder's life or his relationship with his partner. Skinner had glanced at them curiously once or twice over the last week, beginning the day they filed their report of the Millennium group's zombie encounters. He clearly noted an alteration in their relationship. Aside from an occasional stare from beneath his lashes, Skinner appeared to consider the change in their partnership a benign development, needing no acknowledgment. Mulder's swift move to embrace her brought Scully out of her reverie and back to the present. She reflexively raised her good arm to his neck, and felt him nuzzle her right ear. His damp trench coat smelled musty; there were traces of toothpaste, aftershave, and his Italian lunch intermingled with wool and the antiseptic odor of the emergency room. "Thank God," he whispered into her ear, almost inaudibly. "Let's get you home." Learning the police were willing to take her statement in the morning, Scully gratefully accepted the nurse's offer for more medicine. In short order, the paperwork was assembled, and within 15 minutes, Scully found herself tucked neatly into the passenger seat of Mulder's Passat, her seatbelt snapped into place, and a steady flow of warm air snaking around her ankles and drifting up into the cabin. Mulder murmured something about submitting a written statement in the morning, and she grunted in response, already under the soporific spell of dilaudid, a well-tuned engine, the glassy rippled monotone of her lover, and warm leather seats. With the cessation of motion, her eyes snapped open. For one moment, she was disoriented, and then recognized the familiar parking lot in back of her apartment. Mulder was already making his way around the rear of the car, and her door opened smoothly and quietly. She needed his steadying arm to stand, and for a moment the ground dipped and rolled in front of her. Clutching his proffered arm, they made their way slowly indoors. Scully's telephone was ringing while Mulder fumbled for his key. He hurriedly unlocked the door and ushered her inside. She grabbed the handset from the coffee table, and breathed "Hello," as Mulder helped her to the sofa. "Dana?" Her mother's warm, familiar voice. Scully smiled to herself, and let out a big sigh. "Hi, mom." "Dana, what's wrong?" her mother asked in a guarded tone. "What makes you..." with a start, Scully glanced up at Mulder, who quirked a smile at her and flopped into the easy chair next to the couch. She began again, conscious of her promise to him. "I'm going to be fine, Mom. I just had a little run-in on the stakeout tonight. I've seen a doctor, and..." "What happened?" A rising note of panic filled Margaret Scully's voice, and Scully winced as the sound knifed through her eardrums. "A suspect took a swing at me, Mom, but Mulder had my back, and I twisted away at the last minute. I'm a little bruised, and my head is throbbing, but the doctor says it's a minor concussion, and released me about an hour ago. I just got home." "I'm coming over, Dana," her mother informed her. "No, mom..." Then more firmly, "No." Silence at the other end of the phone, and Scully could hear the wheels turning in her mother's mind. Quickly. "Mulder's here with me, mom, and he's going to stay here tonight and keep an eye on me." More silence. "Dana..." her mother began. "Mom, please. Mulder is here. The doctor already gave him the list of do's and don'ts, and he's more single-minded than you are about nursemaid duty." "Is there something you're not telling me, dear?" The laughter in her mother's voice took the sting out of the exchange. Scully closed her eyes in surrender, and laughed gently. "Mom, Mulder and I are... He's good medicine for me right now, and I know you trust him. What I really need is to crawl into bed and get some sleep." "With him there?" Her mother's voice now took on a dubious note. "Let me talk to Fox." With a comic wince, Scully held the receiver out toward Mulder, who looked like a boy caught necking with his girl on a porch swing. Pale except for two spots of color high on his cheekbones, he stared daggers at her as he cleared his throat. "Uhh, Mrs. Scully? Hi." "Agent Mulder." A pregnant pause. "She needs to sleep." "Mrs. Scully!" he protested. "What sort of man do you think I am?" "That remains to be seen. I'll be over at eleven with some lunch for the three of us. Take care of my baby." He handed the phone back to her with a sigh of relief, and fled to the restroom. "Dana?" "Yeah, mom?" "What took you two so long?" With a click, the call disconnected.