From: Date sent: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 14:02:02 -0700 Subject: Queen of Hearts II Queen of Hearts II A.I. Irving vsmith@ischemia.unc.edu Category: V, R (Scully/Mulder) Rating: NC-17 Summary: After ditching Scully at a particularly delicate point in their relationship, Mulder returns. Disclaimer: The X-Files and its characters are the property of Chris Carter, Fox, and 1013. Please forward to ATXC and Gossamer. Feedback is a blessing. Author's Note: To set the scene, you might want to read "Queen of Hearts"; you'll know the history behind this story if you've read "The Actor." Both of these stories are available at Lynn's Great X- pectations Page (www.geocities.com/Area51/Dimension/9810) and at Gossamer. I hadn't intended to continue QOH, but as I was raiding my hard drive for something I could steal from myself to help me finish "The Cry of the Truth," I found this hidden in a little folder from last winter. I will now file it, with chapter 18 of TCOTT, in a new folder labeled "Shower Scenes." The nape of a neck May evoke passion. A tired face Grounded my lightning. The poem begins here. May Sarton, "An Exchange of Gifts" Dana walked into her apartment and locked the door behind her. As she shed her coat, she noted an alien smell in the darkness. Dropping her coat on her floor, she reached under her blazer for her weapon. She switched a small lamp that stood on the table near the door and took a step into the living room. She immediately spotted the source of the smell. A bouquet of roses, perfectly arranged in a low crystal vase, sat on her coffee table. Without lowering her gun, she turned on another nearby lamp and approached the flowers cautiously. They were sweetheart roses of the palest peach, probably two dozen of them in a loose globular arrangement. As she circled the table, she spotted one flash of red -- a single American Beauty rose tucked amid the sweethearts. "Do you like them?" She spun around, ready to fire. Backlit by the dim hall light, her tall, lanky partner stood at the edge of the living room, hands in his jeans pockets, head cocked to one side as he awaited her response. "Goddammit, Mulder, you scared the shit out of me!" "Such language, Scully, from a nice Catholic girl." He raked a hand through his hair and took a step toward her. "I would've left a light on for you, but I got tired of waiting, so I got in your bed and dozed off. Where've you been?" "Where've *I* been? Where have *I* been?" She put down her gun and began to peel off her jacket. "Oh, give me a break, Mulder. Where the hell have you been? You ditched me *again*, you idiot! I should toss these flowers against your fat head, you *beast.*" Mulder wasn't sure what to say. He was tempted to laugh at her colorful language -- he had never, in six years, heard her speak that way. He maintained a sober face, however, because he could tell she was in a volatile state. He watched as she unfastened her holster and put the gun in it. She pulled her shirttails from the short skirt of her suit and kicked off her black suede heels. Still close to blustering, she walked into the kitchen. After a beat, he followed her. She poured two glasses of iced tea -- since when does she keep that in the house, he wondered -- and handed him one. From a cabinet she took a bottle of ibuprofen and poured three tablets into her palm. Taking them in one gulp, she leaned wearily against the counter's edge, crossed her arms, and looked at him. "Hi," he said uneasily. He tugged at the rolled neck of his black cotton sweater. "I've been in Charleston. I thought I had found a lead on Samantha...but I was wrong. As usual, right?" She rubbed her forehead impatiently. "No, Mulder, not 'as usual'. Your instincts are generally very good. It's just that sometimes you exhibit a true blind spot when it comes to Samantha. You just don't identify the holes in leads relating to her disappearance as readily as you do in other cases." "I know. I'm the same way when it comes to you, you know." His voice was low as he spoke of her. "I have an enormous Scully blind spot." "Oh?" "Yeah. It's true. Sometimes I can't see the nose on my face where you're concerned, Scully. And I hate that about myself." He sipped his tea without tasting it. "I swore to myself in the cab that day, on my way to the airport when you came back from England -- I swore to myself that I would stop being such an idiot and do right by you." She had not expected to hear this tonight, or any night, for that matter. She was realizing then that she had nearly given up all hope for them, and how close she had been to inviting Skinner inside just now. "Mulder, I --" "Hear me out, Scully. I panicked. I could see that you were hurting over Stuart, and I thought you were regretting your decision to come back to me. And maybe you were, just a bit?" he prodded, his eyebrows spread wide below his creased forehead. She said nothing. Whatever her answer, it wouldn't help the situation. Mulder continued. "I was scared. I wasn't sure what to do to get you to love me. Even the smallest details had me stymied. Should I ask you out on a date? Should I buy you a ring? Should I bend you over my desk and demonstrate, in the clearest possible physical terms, just how much I love you? I even considered doing the Cyrano thing. Believe it or not, I have a headful of poetry -- I'm very well educated, you know -- and letting someone else's words do the work for me holds a certain appeal." She wondered if that was a jab at Stuart's poetic seductions. Then she reminded herself that those memories were hers alone -- hers and Stuart's. Mulder wouldn't know about the details of their romance -- would he? Scully shook her head slightly and put a finger to her face to wipe the traces of mascara from beneath her eyes. It had already been a long night, and the clock had not yet struck ten. "Mulder, why would you think that you needed to sell yourself to me? After six years, I know just about everything there is to know about you. I accept you the way you are -- it's not easy, but then if you were easy to love your appeal would be wholly lost." "I'd just be a soap opera hunk?" he said with a twinkle in his eye. She groaned. "There you go, throwing my words back at me. I told you I didn't mean that, Mulder. Well, I meant it when I said you were handsome, but --" "Scully, you think I'm handsome?" She was blushing furiously. "Uh...yeah, sometimes. At the moment, however, I think you need a shower. How long have you been traveling?" "Too long," he said, reaching for her hand. He held it between his long, tapered hands. He was careful to look into her eyes as he spoke. She had to hear him this time. "Scully. Listen to me. I made a mistake -- another mistake. I'm sorry I disappeared. This time, I think I learned something about myself, even if I didn't learn what happened to my sister. I realized that having you to love in this life is becoming more important than unraveling what happened to her in that life. I'll never stop looking for answers -- I don't have to tell you that. But here, with you, I've already answered some of the existential biggies. I love you, Scully. I want to be with you, now and always." She was nearly overwhelmed by the desire to throw herself against him and sob her heart out on his shoulder. She settled for standing her ground and letting the mascara-tinged tears spot the cream silk crepe of her blouse. He was watching her hungrily. He had just risked everything he had. At least she was crying; that was better than the usual implacable Scully-face. "Dana?" "I heard you." She grabbed a paper towel from the rack under the sink and wiped her cheeks, the rough texture of the paper stinging her already wind-chapped skin. "I wish I could say that I've been sitting around fuming the whole time you've been gone. But I haven't been angry at you so much as I've been angry at myself, for expecting you to instantaneously slip into bed with me and erase all the sadness I feel over leaving Stuart. I...needed time to learn to live with my decision, Mulder. So, in a way, it's good that you were gone. But I was afraid that I had scared you off for good, and that you might never come back, and I'd be left utterly alone, without the new life I very nearly had, and without the old life I wanted back again so badly. My memories of our life together, Mulder....they're more than difficult. You *know*. It's hard to think of facing them for the rest of my life without being able to turn to you and know that I don't have to explain. I can just say 'Tooms', and you know what to do." "It's a match to die for," he said, pulling her into his arms. "To live for, I think," she corrected him, her one last coherent phrase before the tears came in earnest. Then she leaned against him and wept like a child, sobbing and gulping and uttering messy words here and there. She cried out all the wine she had drunk that night. She released all the tears she had stored up while he was away, plus a few more left over from the day when she had left him in the basement office and gone away with Stuart. Mulder held her and rocked her. He stroked her hair and placed a dozen tender kisses along the part. He murmured soft reassurances until she stopped sobbing. He rubbed her back, wrinkling her blouse with his palm. Without really considering the implications he slipped his hand under the hem of her blouse so that he could apply the warmth of his skin directly to her. Then he heard her moan. It was a quiet little sound from deep in her throat, but he felt the reverberations all over his body. For years he had fantasized about making love to her. Now, it seemed that the opportunity was fast approaching, and all he could think about was how many days it had been since he'd had a shower. Dana's tears had stopped. She sniffed loudly and pushed herself away from him. She grabbed the paper towel she had been using as a handkerchief and again blotted the dampness from her face. She blew her nose delicately. He stood over her, acutely aware of his height and of the proportional relationship of their bodies. Mulder wondered what, if anything, he should do next. He was tired and he stank. A seduction hardly seemed in order, but there was no way he was leaving her side that night, sex or no sex. He never wanted to leave her again, period. She sighed raggedly and tossed her paper hanky in the trash bin. Turning to face him again, Dana pushed her fingers through her hair and held it away from her face for a moment. He had never seen her do that; it gave her face a surprisingly girlish lift. "Mulder, we're going to do this. We've fallen for each other, hard. It's not going away, and I don't want it to. We'll figure out how to make it work around our jobs. We've solved far more complex problems together. Do you agree with my assessment of the situation?" "Yes, Scully, I do," he said evenly, barely containing the smile that was begging his lips to twitch. "Good. First things first, then," she said, and strode purposefully out of the kitchen. XXXXXXXXXXXX He followed her and found her in the bathroom. She was lighting a well-used columnar candle that stood on the antique twig table next to the tub. The flame glowed warm and white within the candle, releasing a faint eucalyptus scent. The light flickered off the white tile, the pale lavender walls, the mirror and its embossed tin frame. All was quiet except for the sound of the moon phase clock ticking on its shelf near the sink. Mulder took a step toward her, and stopped. He opened his mouth to speak, and found that the words stuck in his throat. Scully crossed the room, her feet in their sheer black stockings silent on the tile floor. They stood toe to toe, hands barely touching. Mulder bent a knee and touched it to her thigh. "We'll have a nice shower," she murmured, her eyes hooded with a combination of wine, lust, and weariness. "Then we can get some sleep, and maybe in the morning..." "Maybe after the shower," he said, bending his head down to kiss her cheek. She smiled shyly. The feel of his lips on her skin was like the touch of a feather. He ran his hands up and down her arms, hearing the rustle of the silk between them. His hands came to rest on her shoulders. His fingers slipped under the pointed collar and danced across the fabric where it hid her collar bones. "Scully, I -- I'm nervous," he said with an abashed smile. She grinned up at him, the full light of her Scullyness coming through. "Oh, Mulder, I do love you," she said in a full, strong voice. He chuckled and shook his head in amazement. "I tell you I'm nervous and you tell me you love me," he said. "What a deal." She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. Suddenly it was easy to let him in. She had not forgotten any of what had passed between them, good or bad. The past still mattered, but not as much as what was new. "Mulder, you reek," she said, drawing a laugh from him. She slipped her hands under the hem of his sweater and began pulling it off. Mulder took over when her arms had reached as far as they would go. She took the offending garment and tossed it in the willow basket in the corner. His tee shirt soon followed. Her hands reflexively reached for his scars, three across his ribs and one puckered bullet wound in his shoulder -- the one she had given him three years ago. She placed a healing kiss over the scar, and was rewarded with a sigh of satisfaction from deep in Mulder's throat. Her touch was firm and sure as she traced the pattern of muscle and bone beneath the silky skin of his back. Then she lightened her touch to play across the finely textured skin. "Mulder. You're so soft. I had no idea..." "Most men like to be told how hard they are, you know." "Your skin, Mulder. Your *skin*," she said emphatically "I have no doubt that you're hard in all the right places and soft where you should be." "Are you trying to put me at ease, Scully?" he asked with a lopsided smile. "Because it isn't working." "It's just that I've never really touched you except to stop you from bleeding," she said, covering his pectorals with her hands and lightly scratching at the light sprinkling of hair there. "Would it help if I..." "Oh, yes. I'm sure that would help. May I?" "Please," she replied, a smile of anticipation tugging at the corners of her mouth. He fumbled with the covered buttons of her blouse. They fastened with tiny loops and went from the base of her neck to her waist. Determined to complete the task, Mulder took a steadying breath and concentrated on his fingers. When he saw her bra glinting against her pale skin, however, he lost what little coordination he had gathered. "Scully, a black bra with a white blouse? That's really -- wicked." She looked down at herself and blushed. He saw it spread from her breasts, over her chest, and into her face like an eclipse. "I didn't realize...Thank God I kept my jacket on tonight," she said, flustered. "Tonight? You had a date?" he asked, his fingers pausing over the next- to-the-last button. "No. I just happened to run into Skinner, and we had a few drinks. He brought me home. I was a little...worse for wear." "You drank with *Skinner*?" he asked, incredulous. "You realize he has a major crush on you, don't you?" "Mmm, sort of. I don't think it's anything to worry about, though." "Maybe it's mutual?" he posed, withdrawing his hands and resting them on his hips. She felt the loss of his touch like a wound. Her eyes implored him not to believe his words. "Mulder...." He had not expected the words to bring such pain to her lovely face. If he had doubted it before, he now saw in plain view how much she needed him. He felt as if his chest were cracking open, and the only way he could stop the schism was to gather her to him and bury his face in her hair. "Oh, God, Scully, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't realize -- I'm such a fucking idiot. How am I ever going to get this right?" "Maybe we should stop talking for a while," she said, her voice muffled against his chest. Her deft physician's fingers unbuckled his belt and dispatched with the button and fly of his jeans before he had the opportunity to leave behind the mortification he was feeling for his ill-chosen words. Not knowing what to do, he grasped her wrists to still her hands. She looked up at him with fear and confusion, and opened her mouth to ask a question. Mulder stilled her mouth with his. He released her wrists so that he could steady her face between her hands. Conventional language was failing them both; he could put his tongue to better use this way. She opened herself to him readily. She was also eager to relay messages that words could not seem to impart, at least not tonight. Her tongue met his, calm and certain. They quickly developed their own set of linguistic patterns; each stroke, each sweep, each nibble, each resulting whimper and moan and sigh went into their new lexicon. It included terms of healing, culpability, commitment, empathy, adoration, comfort, and hunger. Mulder broke the last button of her blouse. It landed softly on the cotton rug under their feet. Her blouse fell softly to the floor, landing with a whoosh of silk around her feet. Her bra came next, then her skirt. She stepped out of the pile of clothes, kicked them away, and went back into Mulder's arms. She never wanted to leave. If I died right now, she thought, I wouldn't care. I have the peace I wanted. I have -- That was it. This peace was what had been missing with Stuart. It was what Mulder alone could give to her, and she to him. No one else could know what defined peace to them, because no one else could ever fully believe, much less understand, what they had seen together. She whispered his name as he pushed her sheer black pantyhose over her hips and down her legs, kneeling to pull them from first one foot and then the other. Before standing again, he wrapped his arms around her hips and kissed the barely visible scars on her belly. Between her perfectly formed navel and the thick crop of dark auburn curls at the apex of her thighs, three tiny incision scars, most likely from a laparoscopic procedure to remove her precious ova, glowed whiter than even her very pale alabaster skin. He had longed to do this for four years, since she came back to him after her abduction. Once again he rued every day that he had not done it; then he allowed the love to eradicate the guilt. It was time to move on. Her hands combed through his hair, fluffing the wild, silky strands. He looked up at her from his suppliant position, his hands grasping her smooth, rounded bottom. He was granted an invitation in the form of modest smile. She attached to it, however, one caveat. "Sorry, Mulder, but you still reek," she said softly, drawing a chuckle of humility from him. "Time to hit the shower." XXXXXXXXXXXX When she joined him, he was already standing under the stream of hot water, rinsing shampoo from his dark hair and allowing the stream to course over his face. Suddenly shy about her own nakedness, Scully took advantage of the fact that his eyes were closed against the water to explore the revelations of his body. She lathered a wash cloth with her own mild soap and went to work on scrubbing the travel dirt from his slender torso. She lingered over his nipples, drawing a shy smile from him, then scrubbed prudently across his armpits, upper back, and neck. More soap, until she had covered nearly every part of him from elbows and fingers to ears and face, his belly and his gently tucked and rounded ass. She knelt in the tub and ran the soapy cloth over his long, long legs, having him lift each foot so that no spot was missed. He chuckled intermittently as she worked; he hadn't been so thoroughly cleaned since the last time he was in the hospital. Her business nearly complete, she rinsed the cloth and hung it over the edge of the tub. Then, her eyes shy and barely meeting his, she allowed Mulder to wrap his arms around her. Resting her face against his chest, she inhaled his new, clean scent as the steam released it from his skin. She went limp, as she had done when her father bathed her as a little child, as he passed the soap over her skin. His hands stroked her back, her buttocks, her thighs. Then he took a step back so that he could lather her belly and breasts. She rested a hand on his shoulder as he knelt in the tub and vigorously massaged her legs with his soapy hands. As he neared the nest of auburn curls, he felt an approving hand move to his head and caress his neck. At first he rested the heel of his hand against her pubic bone, then shimmied it down across the damp hair, trailing soap as he went. Mulder stood and put an arm around her and only then did his fingers delve into her warm body. He was somewhat taken aback when she lurched against him, but he steadied her easily. Soon she had regained her wits and was taking the soap in her hands, working up a lather, and performing the same very intimate ablutions for him. For a while he felt like a hovering spirit, observing the scene from a perch near the ceiling. He saw her touching him, kissing him, rubbing her body against his, and he was almost afraid to experience it first hand. A steady stream of ponderous thoughts threaded their way through his subconscious as he returned her affection. He worried about the years that had already passed, about the times he had been cool, even cruel, to Scully when he should have shown her at least some of the love that he had harbored for her all along. He wondered what she had done for comfort while he was comforting himself in his dark apartment with only celluloid companionship. Had she taken anonymous lovers, as he had once liked to imagine? No, not the ever prudent Scully. Perhaps she had longed for him. Perhaps all those lonely, sticky-palmed nights could have been avoided if he had summoned up just a fraction of the courage with which he faced the horrors of his job and knocked on her door, his heart in his hand. Might she have opened her arms to him, kissed him then as she was kissing him now, pulled off his clothes, pushed him down on her bed and covered his scarred body with her small, steaming self? He had played out that fantasy in his head a thousand times, and too often his ego interrupted by having her ultimately reject him, because of his poor performance, or his wounded psyche, or even because of his haircut. And now she was kneeling at his feet, drawing his freshly washed and rinsed ego into her lush mouth, quieting his insecurities and replacing them with screaming, raging, uncompromising happiness, the likes of which he had never even considered. But even then he knew there was more to come, happiness of a more intangible sort, something involving her honest blue gaze, her spectral intellect, and possibly, if his luck held, her belly swelling with a child of their creation. Mulder cupped her head in his hands and forced himself to speak. "Scully. Cut it out. Let's do this the old-fashioned way...." It seemed to take a long moment for his words to register. She was enjoying herself, lost in the simple pleasure of her tingling lips and his velvet texture against her tongue and palate. She felt his hands pressing on her shoulders, and pulled herself away with a sigh. But she could not completely release him; it had been too long and painful a journey to disengage without protest. She wrapped her arms around his thighs like a child clinging to her parent. She bowed her head against his powerful quadriceps and rubbed her cheek against the sparse dark hair there. Mulder wept. For the first time in his life, he wept with joy. She heard the jagged sob escape from him, and was immediately on her feet, wrapping herself around his torso, delivering a dozen sweet kisses to his contorted face. "Mulder, Mulder, it's all right. No one is going to take me away from you. No one is going to tell you that you don't deserve this. We've suffered enough, haven't we? Haven't we?" Scully's own tears returned then, commingling with the rapidly cooling water from the shower. He hugged her tightly before turning off the water. Without the rush of the shower, all was quiet except for the occasional drip pinging against the porcelain tub and the sound of her sniffing. "We should get out," he said, unmoving. "I don't want to let go of you," she said, her breath warm against his chest. With a groan of frustration, he pushed aside the shower curtain and reached for the towels she had laid out a lifetime ago. He dried her back and shoulders, and despite her whimpering, released her so that he could run the towel over the rest of her body. He touched her gently, concerned with the delicacy of her pale skin. For the first time, Mulder was allowed a good long look at her small, yet voluptuous, form. He spread his hand across her belly, and found that the span of his long fingers nearly reached from one point of her pelvis to the other. He slipped both hands around her small waist and kissed her navel, flicking his tongue into it and, much to his surprise, drawing a giggle from her. He looked up at her, and saw her blushing. "Ticklish?" She nodded, barely containing her anticipatory giggles. "Don't worry," Mulder said. He stood, dragging the towel across her belly as he went. "I won't tickle you -- yet." "The quality of mercy is not strain'd," she said, pushing him away. "You dry off. I'm going to wash my hair, and I'll be out in a minute." "Oh, Scully, you're leaving me hanging? You're not one of those women, are you?" She glanced at the impressive erection that was pointing her way. "You're not hanging at the moment, Mulder. Go on. You can keep yourself warm for five minutes. You should be a master of it by now." Thus dismissed, Mulder went to work drying himself and planning the last leg of the evening's journey. XXXXXXXXXXXX When Scully emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in her white terry robe, her legs shaved and her hair carefully dried, she discovered that Mulder had already left on his journey without her. He was curled up under her down comforter, dead asleep. She sighed. It reminded her of the many nights over the years when he had returned to her, exhausted, dirty, sometimes injured, after countless other wild chases after the answers to their questions. This time, however, Scully was certain that he had found at least one of his answers. She was the answer. He wouldn't be able to sleep so heavily without the kind of contentment they had found together in the past two hours. She had hoped to offer him a physical manifestation of the understanding they had come to. It could wait another day, she told herself. She shed her robe and pulled on a white flannel nightgown trimmed with lace at the neck and sleeves. As she lay next to him and switched off the light, a line from the poetry she had been reading to comfort herself in his absence resurfaced and spoke itself in a gentle, warm voice within her heart. "The poem begins here." End Queen of Hearts II, 1/1