Chapter Text
The hotel had been attacked by a flying cow, and Dana couldn’t even say it was the strangest thing that had happened since they arrived in Kroner. Nor the most alarming—since the hotel proprietor responded to Dana’s statement that she and Mulder preferred separate rooms by saying that, unfortunately, they were all booked up for the high school reunion, and she and her ‘boyfriend’ could take the one room or leave it.
She’d run her hands through his hair earlier, and could still feel the soft brush of it on her palms. He’d been wearing a blue t-shirt, one that hugged his chest and ended at his biceps and turned his eyes a seastorm color. With her fingers on his scalp, she’d seen his eyelids flutter, his head dip in and towards her. His gaze focused on her like a laser, like a tractor beam, and she was pulled in, unable to fight its invisible subsuming power. They’d been standing close and he was leaning against a tailgate, so they were nearly of a height.
Something opened its eyes inside of her, in the bathroom with Sheila, when she started talking and didn’t stop, when she told the silly but sweet woman about finding new love in old places, about flicking switches, about coming to a bridge you’d come to countless times before (every day for five years) and deciding to cross it for once, instead of burn it down. No smoke trail looping into the sky this time, no picking over charred two-by-fours and blackened chain and steel bolts.
It seems to me that the best relationships, the ones that last, are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship.
The something in her abdomen raised its sleepy head when she stood next to Mulder; it sniffed the air as, together, they watched Holman and Sheila kiss for the first time. They’d only just met them, but it felt to her like the sappy ending of a romantic comedy, and it made her want to reach for Mulder’s hand. There were couples all around them, wrists draped around necks like they were at the prom, ill-fitting suits and sparkly dresses and Billy Joel. It was sweet, and it ached, because these people called this place home—together, for years, they had watched each other grow into ordinary adults with ordinary jobs and wide lives with small joys. They were a community. She’d never had one of those, had moved around too much as a kid; in her time with the FBI, she’d taken too many early-morning flights to too many haunted towns.
But there was Mulder.
He was next to her, in this room and in this life, and he had been for years. He’d seen her cut down and cut up, seen her build herself back together one brick at a time, had added a few evergreen blocks of his own to the mosaic. As they watched the sometimes-shy, sometimes-salacious love happening all around them, she turned to see him looking at her.
He held out his hand, and a sloppy grin twisted the corner of his mouth—like he couldn’t help it, like it had been drawn on with a marker. “Dance?”
She took his hand and he tugged her close, and they fit together. She met his chest with her own; his left hand curled around her fingers; his right slid around her back like it was as familiar to him as his own flesh, even though they’d only danced once before. His spot: the valley above her sacrum, where he anchored himself to guide her through doorways. She didn’t know what her feet were doing, only that they were moving with his; she wasn’t stepping, but gliding. Her entire field of vision was the brake of his jaw, the happy crease of his eyes, the shine of contentment that lit him from within.
One day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before.
And there was something. Like a coma patient, the thing in her abdomen that was waking up wondered how long it had been there—had it been watching her sleep, this whole time? Had Mulder been reading to her, brushing her hair, holding her hand, adjusting her pillow, and waiting, with the patience of an immortal, for her to wake up?
His eyes said yes. They said good morning—you’ve been asleep for a long time. Are you ready to come back to the world?
She was.
He kissed the knuckles of her hand when the dance ended. They said goodbye to Sheila and Holman, wishing them good fortune and many babies (a glint of knowing masculinity from Mulder), and got in the car. She wanted to hold his hand on the drive, but the roads were still shiny with rain, and he gripped the steering wheel with easy, practiced focus.
The person who was just a friend is suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.
Instead of parking, he slid in across two spots and idled. The champagne sweetness of the evening lost a few bubbles, and she felt her mouth tipping down in confusion. “What are you doing?”
He wrapped his arms around the steering wheel and leaned forward as he looked at her. His eyes were unreadable but dark: an evening in the deep, quiet forest. “There was, uh, a hotel just outside of town that had a room available. They’re skinning me for it—I might have to sell my car and get a second job—but…” He didn’t have to finish.
She was unmoored, unanchored. She’d felt they were moving toward something… something new, something finally. And she was there, was ready to grab it and him with both hands and fall over the edge, together.
Maybe he was still waiting. Maybe he didn’t know she had finally woken up.
She had an easy excuse: “I don’t think you should be alone,” she said evenly, watching his face. “You may have hit your head, remember? If you have a concussion…”
“I’m sure I don’t,” he said, brushing off her concern. Then he blinked once, quickly. Recalibrated. “But… you’re the doctor.”
She nodded curtly. “You should stay here. Just in case.”
“Just in case,” he agreed. A smile grew on his face; the same unrestrained, messy one that had captured him after Holman said You should try it, sometime. A little-boy-on-Christmas smile; a gift-unasked-for smile.
They were silent after that, as he reparked the car and got out, as she struggled with her seatbelt and looked up to find he had opened her door, was standing next to it with a hand extended.
She took it, let her fingers be wrapped in the warmth of his palm. Heat lapped through her from the point of contact, chasing the chill away; she wanted to burrow into the space between his ribs. He pulled her out of the car and for a moment, they stood so near each other that her chin knocked his chest when she looked up into his face. The rasp of stubble was a shadow on the planes of his jaw; he was dark gold and chiffony silvers in the streetlight. She smelled petrichor and wet asphalt, frying potatoes from a nearby diner, and him, him, him. Salt and leather and coffee and his skin, that rich lived-in smell of him; the smell of his Hegal Place apartment and of her own home sometimes; of late nights in the dim basement and endless car rides; and always the bright, human outlier in hospital rooms. Her breath caught, and she felt his do the same, and she thought maybe he understood, now; maybe he finally, finally knew what she was thinking. A shiver coursed through her, not from cold but from the chill leaving her body, being replaced with the heat of his nearness.
“Let’s get you inside,” he said, “you’re freezing.”
She wasn’t, but she followed him, as she always did.
Inside, he cranked up the heater and rummaged in his bags where the hotel manager had laid them neatly in the corner, then disappeared into the bathroom. She heard water running. She sat on the edge of the bed, holding onto the mattress like she was afraid she would fall off. Maybe she would. Maybe the fall would be glorious, weightless, free of gravity and expectation and consequence, right up until the moment she smashed upon the ground and her life shattered into a thousand, thousand pieces. Maybe she’d never be able to find them all again. Maybe it would be worth it, that kind of loss, to gain something like this. Like him.
He came out of the bathroom and he was wearing faded green-and-black pajama pants and a worn black t-shirt that looked soft as a plush toy. He sat across from her on the hotel room’s faux leather couch and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Quirking an eyebrow, he punched the seat lightly. “Comfy.”
You don’t have to sleep there. But she was nervous, now that they had left the darkness of the car and were surrounded by cheap white hotel light. She felt something was illuminated that she hadn’t meant to bare yet.
Silently, she rose and went to brush her teeth, closing the door behind her with a light snick. She took longer than she needed to, changing into her lavender pajama set, removing her makeup and brushing her hair and pressing cool palms to cheeks that were heated and pinked.
When she came out, she thought for one confused moment that she’d somehow gone into the wrong room.
He’d turned out all the lights except a small reading lamp on the corner desk. The clock radio beside the bed was singing, a bouncy hair-rock tune that called to mind vodka shots and leopard print and cramming for an exam on her way to class because she’d stayed out too late the night before.
Mulder stood at the window, one finger depressing a single blind as he surveyed the streetlit parking lot. The pajama pants draped his ass and muscular legs, revealing everything and nothing, and for a moment she simply enjoyed the view of him from behind: his well-sculpted body, Doryphoros in weathered cotton.
Then he turned to face her as the song ended. A DJ in some nearby lonely radio station littered with styrofoam cups and cigarette butts seemed to peer across time and space and understand the pivotal gravity of the moment, and the first few gentle guitar strains of Wild Horses slipped into the room with them.
His face softened. Her heart ached with tenderness, with awe. He stretched out a hand. “Dance?” he asked for the second time that night. He grinned, his disarming, boyish half-smile that somehow always braided self-deprecation with unflinching devotion.
She went to him.
She curled into his warmth; with her shoes off, the top of her head only reached his throat. This wasn’t the finishing-school posture of a debutante ball; her spine wasn’t straight and proud. She laid her head on his chest, and he held her close with an arm around her waist. His other hand held hers, laid it flat on his chest beside her cheek and covered it with his own palm, over his heart.
Graceless lady, you know who I am
You know I can’t let you slide through my hands
They swayed together on the faded brown carpet. There was no rush, no highway, nowhere to be, no one to report to. Nothing to chase through a starlit forest, nothing to run from. It was her and Mulder, close and quiet, leaning into one another, slowly turning. Dana felt that she had come home after a day that had lasted years and was finally able to lay her head down and rest.
Wild, wild horses couldn’t drag me away
She lifted her head; she wanted to see his face. He was gazing down at her with so much contented devotion, so much love that had been hiding behind a carefully schooled expression for years but finally been set free, that her breath slipped out of her in a rush. His brow peaked as if he thought she was going to pull away, but she didn’t. She slid her hands up and hooked them around his neck, and a softness lit his eyes and parted his lips, a rush of emotion that seemed to take him by surprise. He looped his arms around her waist, snuggling her close, and leaned his forehead to hers. Their eyes drifted shut.
I know I dreamed you, a sin and a lie
I have my freedom but I don’t have much time
“Scully,” he said, quietly. His breath was sweet and balmy on her cheek, smelling lightly of toothpaste.
A sedated serenity was slipping through her. She felt as if she’d never been warm before this moment. “Hmm?”
“Do you remember when I came back from the Queen Anne? When you came and got me from Bermuda?” His voice was somehow in harmony with Jagger’s, as if the song had left space for them to add their parts to.
“Of course.” She’d been so frightened, had been sure that this was the time his crusade would be the end of him. She’d torn through the Hoover building in a panic, calling on everyone, even her enemies, for aid.
“Do you… remember what I said to you?” For some reason, his voice was shaky. Unsure. “After? In the hospital?”
He’d said You were there. He’d said You saved the world, Scully. He’d said I would’ve never seen you again, but you believed me. He’d said—
Oh.
She flushed, heat cascading down from where his forehead touched hers and down through her body; she found she was gripping him tighter. She tried to answer; it caught in her throat. She nodded, felt the skin of her brow slide against his.
“What did I say?” His voice was a murmur, a whisper sliding across her lips.
She pulled back so she could look in his eyes. They were still swaying, still leaning together against the air. His expression was a mixture of fear and hope; his palms were flat on her lower back.
“You said…” She looked away, unable for a moment to face the profundity, the weight of all those years pulling her down into his eyes. But he tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet him, to look at him when she said it.
She took her courage in both hands, gripped the back of his neck. Her heart beat an allegro in her chest. “You said that you love me.”
He nodded slowly, watching her.
“I didn’t… think you remembered that,” she admitted.
His head tilted in puzzlement, like a puppy. “What do you mean?”
The song had ended, the radio play gone to advertisements, and they stopped dancing. She let her hands slip down the length of his arms, and captured his hands in hers. “You were on strong pain medication. I… honestly, Mulder, I thought you were feeling emotional because you’d nearly died, and that you were just saying… you know.”
He squeezed her hands, his eyes stuck on hers, and shook his head. “Nuh uh. Tell me.” His thumbs began to arc across her wrists; the contact was dizzying and erotic. The intimacy between them gained an edge—not a shift from the tenderness, but another layer laid atop it, like a projector slide. Heat pooling thick under her skin, between her legs.
“I thought you were saying that you—” she gestured between them with her shoulders, because their hands were locked together. “—you know, appreciated me, that you were grateful. That you feel close to me, because I’m your partner, and we… take care of each other.”
He nodded slowly. “I see.” He seemed to retreat from her slightly, to begin to rebalance.
Not this time. She wouldn’t let him step away. She had decided in the car that she was tired of being separate from him, of pretending she wanted anything other than his looming, glittering, all-consuming presence in her heart, her home, her mouth, her body. “Is that… not what you meant?” she asked.
She saw it when he stopped trying to find the wall so he could step back over—when his gaze snapped back to hers, searching. Come on, Mulder. We’re almost there. A sharp breath of relief left her nose when he shook his head. “No,” he said. He lifted a hand to cup her cheek; she felt herself leaning into his palm. Her lips parted. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?” She slid the fingers of one hand up into his hair, and his whole frame shuddered; his hand at her waist convulsed reflexively, pulling her closer.
But he shook his head, and a snarky grin tugged at his mouth. “Nuh uh,” he said. “I already said it once.” He didn’t say It’s your turn, but she heard it anyway.
Jesus, am I really about to—
“Mulder,” she said before she could stop herself.
“Hmm?” His eyes glittered, smoked.
“I love you.”
He sighed sweetly against her mouth. His palm left her back, stroked up along her side, and cupped her face, pairing with the other one, holding her between them like a holy artifact. The heat in her body rose and rose, one degree at a time.
His lips curled as he came closer.
“Oh, brother,” he whispered, and she started to laugh, but then the cold tip of his nose nudged her cheek, his wet breath met hers in her mouth, and he kissed her.
His lips were full and lush, a garden of sensation and flesh. They breathed in together as if surfacing for air, even as they were pulled under. His nose was cold but the rest of him radiated warmth; she slipped into him like a hot spring.
It sluiced through her, raising the temperature of her blood as it went: years of waiting, of wanting; it melted her like candle wax until she found she was only standing upright because he was holding her to him. One of her hands cupped the back of his head, fingers speared through his hair, and the other fisted in his shirt, pulling herself tightly to him like a life raft.
Her mouth opened and he slipped inside, his tongue dashing against hers, then again. Slick and thick in her mouth, he lapped at her like she was a healing fountain, like he could add years to his life and cure all that ailed him if he could just stay there and drink.
They pushed and pulled, a tug-of-war of building need: he chased her mouth; she let him catch her; she burrowed into him; he opened for her. There was no one else here, no one watching; she could touch him and moan for him and she didn’t have to hold anything back—not anymore, not ever again. She did so, spoke his name into his mouth, Mulder, and felt him swell, his hard heat against her belly. His hands were anchored to her face; her palms pressed to the planes of his chest, to the heart within it, the unforgivable layer of cotton.
He broke the kiss to breathe and she made an involuntary sound of complaint; it turned to a slow moan when he crushed a breath-torn kiss to the corner of her mouth, then lit a line of static up along her cheekbone. He nuzzled at her hairline, breathed Scully into her skin like a prayer. The sound of her name on his ragged breath short-circuited her brain; a flush of wet, aching need flooded her in response. His mouth was committing arson, leaving little fires in her skin—in front of her ear, along the strong tendon of her throat, down to her clavicle. His breath was a fever on her skin, his hair tickling the lobe of her ear.
He grazed her neck with his teeth and she keened, making such a frantic sound of need for him that he clutched her closer in instinctual response. She grasped the hem of his shirt, but his hands caught hers; his erection slid across her hip as he turned her; he let his mouth trail around to the back of her neck as he pulled her against his front. And oh, this was good, too—the full enveloping heat of his body, his hardness nudging her ass as he inhaled deeply from her scalp.
“Me first,” he murmured, and loosened the top button of her pajama shirt. He took his time, wrapping his arms around her belly and drawing her close, planting little kisses to bloom on her temple before unbuttoning the second. She leaned her head back, landed on his shoulder, and he nosed into her hair, nipped at her earlobe. The simple pleasure of being close to him was a taut double helix with the open, aching craving for him in her deepest parts.
She rolled her ass back against him, needing to feel him, needing to give him access, and his breath went ragged; he groaned; his hands tightened on her. “Fuck, Scully…”
His voice was aching want and wild wonder; the sweetness, like sugar in her blood, sharpened to crystal-bright lust. She heard herself whimper. His mouth was on the side of her neck; his hands were trembling as they finished with her buttons; he was hot and strong and hard and everywhere. She suddenly wanted desperately for him to take her like this, standing—to rip away their remaining clothing and drive himself inside her. She was flush with desire, wetter than she’d ever been, more than ready for him. “Mulder,” she panted, heard the sharp plea in her own voice, felt him smile into her neck.
He finished with the buttons and slipped the shirt from her shoulders, returned his hands to her belly—finally, his skin on her skin. The muscles of her abdomen trembled under his fingertips as he made a slow expedition across her stomach, along her obliques. His big hands were warm and she felt drugged, ethereal under his palms. A cry caught in her throat and she turned her head; she needed his mouth back. He obliged immediately, eagerly, turning into her, craning his neck to kiss her. His fingers met under the waistband of her pajamas and slid them down her thighs; they fell to the floor; she leaned back against him for balance as she kicked them away.
The air slipping along her skin felt freeing. He drew his hands up the front of her, cupping her breasts. “God, you’re beautiful,” he said into her mouth. Each thumb slid across a nipple and her whole body pulsed, electrified under his hands. He squeezed gently at the weight of her breasts, rolling them in his palms, pinching her nipples lightly as he sucked a kiss from her. Fuck, she could come just from this, just from his hands on her breasts and his tongue in her mouth and the heat-scent of his body filling her nose and mouth and chest.
His nails scratched lightly as they traveled down to meet between her legs. He slid his palms to her inner thighs, pulled her slightly apart. God, maybe he was going to take her right here, fuck her from behind without even taking his clothes off. She murmured something into his mouth—maybe yes, maybe please, maybe God, Mulder, I need you. His breath caught and stuttered when hers did, when he stroked one thumb across the crotch of her panties and found she had soaked through.
“You want me,” he rasped into her ear, and all she could do was nod, her hair brushing his cheek, her neck on his shoulder, her eyes clamped shut as waves of pleasure rolled through her. “Say it.”
“I want you,” she pleaded, “I’ve always wanted you.” She couldn’t keep from contorting to rub herself against his thumb. “Fuck, Mulder, I—”
One large hand tightened on her thigh as the other hand slid up, then sneaked under the elastic band of her panties.
“Yes—” she panted.
His warm palm on the skin of her lower belly, his fingers trailing licks of flame behind them. He took his time, took ages to reach her hottest place; Dana felt herself arching, raising on her toes. “So eager,” he murmured in her ear, marveling, sounding pleased. He nipped her ear and she craned her body until the swollen bud of her clitoris reached his hand.
Fuck—sharp wet lust flashed under her skin at the contact; she cried out. He murmured his encouragement as she rocked herself against his fingers. She’d lost track of her hands; her arms had reached up and back to circle his neck. She felt weightless, unmoored; they could have been floating through space or on the bottom of a boat or falling through the sky; she knew nothing except the point of contact, his middle finger slipping over her clitoris.
He took charge, holding her securely to him with the hand on her thigh, and slipping his magical fingers down between her folds, submerging them in her wet heat. His thumb flicked at her clit with maddening irregularity while his middle finger sought her entrance. And then—Jesus, finally—it slipped inside her. She clenched around him, knowing she was close, reveling in the knowledge that it was Mulder who had brought her here.
“Is that good?” he asked, his voice patient and low and totally in control.
She bit her lip and nodded, turned her head to breathe in the scent of his neck, his hair.
“Tell me,” he chided gently.
“It feels good,” she obeyed. “So good—Mulder—”
Her words turned to vapor, her breath turned strangled as his finger drove deeper, stroked the rippling muscle inside of her. He was hard against her ass; the twin pressures made her vision blink out. Her head dropped to his shoulder and she moaned his name as her body seized, as the orgasm rose from the depths and consumed her—carried her off, tossed her on roiling waves of storm-green and white lightning, and left her breathless and dripping and shuddering on the shore.
Her legs shook, her calves taut with the effort of straining toward him. She let her body loosen, relax, and found that he still held her steady.
His mouth was behind her ear, his breathing staccato, the heat of his body all around her. It felt like coming down from being high, like waiting for anesthesia to leave her system—weightless and soft and filled with thudding light.
His hand retreated, dragging shiny trails across her abdomen; the feel of his sliding fingers on her hypersensitive skin made her wriggle in his arms, and she felt him smile against her ear, then kiss it.
She turned around, pulled at the back of his neck to bring his mouth back to hers. She was awash in dopamine and sensation, her mind pleasantly fuzzy, but still there was a throbbing to the push of blood through her veins. She needed him inside of her, needed to know how it felt, needed to reduce him to the same mindless shuddering.
He felt her urgency and answered it with his own, palming her breasts and biting her bottom lip. Her hands returned to the hem of his t-shirt and tugged. Together they pulled it over his head; it joined the other clothes on the floor, leaving her in only panties, and him only in faded pajama pants. He was gloriously bare, the rolling plains of his chest muscular and tanned, a rough patch of hair in the center. He smelled warm and male, he smelled like him; she made a sound of appreciation and ran her fingertips over his chest.
Mulder gripped the backs of her thighs and lifted her; she twined her legs around his waist like they had practiced this move a thousand times. The soaked crotch of her underwear was pressed to the skin of his belly; the soft golden skin of his pectorals and the rough scratchy hair between them lit up her nipples with their shifting texture. She didn’t even realize he was moving until she felt a shift in gravity, felt his lap form beneath her—and then he was there, the stone-hard heat of him, still restrained by thin cotton. She straddled him where he sat on the edge of the bed, let her knees rest beside his hips. He groaned in appreciation as she shifted, as her crease slid against his cock—still too many clothes between, but it was so good, so fucking hot, riding him like this.
His mouth was somehow everywhere at once—on her neck, her cheek, her eyes, her mouth. In a blinding surge of need, she pushed him roughly down, swaying over him, capturing his hands and pinning them to the mattress above his head. He grinned delightedly, a little dazedly. “Scully…” It was wonder and revelation and awe, as if he’d fallen asleep and woken up in wonderland.
With his hands in captivity, he leaned up to bring his mouth to her breast. His tongue was cool; she gasped at the contact, shivered. Both nipples hardened, reached for him. She let her eyes drift shut as that ripe, luscious mouth closed around the peak of her breast and sucked lightly. She squirmed above him, lost under the lap of his tongue, in the feel of his strong, heavy hands under hers. His hips were swinging mindlessly up, forcing his hard length against her in a pleading rhythm.
She released his hands and he left them where she’d put them, watching with building interest as she trailed kisses down his throat, to his chest; his breath caught sharp when she swirled a tongue around his nipple.
The skin of his belly was soft under her tongue; he tasted like honey and oak and butter. She dotted a line of kisses along the waistband of his pants, slid her hand down to palm the thick weight of him through the plaid cotton. He groaned and thrust into her palm; she smiled, then curled her fingers around the elastic of his pajama pants and boxers and slipped them down.
He sprang free. She turned to nuzzle at his cock with her cheek and nose, to feel the silk of it against her skin. She could feel his pulse there, racing, straining for her.
“Fuck, Scully, god—”
She hummed pleasantly, dragging his clothes the rest of the way off, then turned her full attention to his cock.
She watched him from under her lashes as she laid his erection flat to his belly and pressed a line of kisses along the length of it; his eyes were murky with lust, wide and black and thunderstruck.
Her lips played at the soft skin of his head, her breath hot against his hot skin. He groaned; his legs were trembling; he said in a shaky breath, “Scully—don’t, I can’t—”
“Don’t what?” She dragged her tongue along his length, gloried in the salt of his skin.
“Fuck—”
His whole body shuddered, but his hands reached for her and pulled her away, pulled her up. He scooted up the bed and she settled beside him, chest-to-chest. She reached for him right away, dragging a knuckle along the plateau of his jaw, marveling at the freedom to touch him after so many years of holding back what had always felt like a crashing river, perilously dammed.
His eyes were hazy and wide, his mouth open, his breaths ragged in his throat. He chuckled harshly at himself, slid a hand along her hip. “I… it’s been a long time,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t last very long.”
“That’s okay,” she said, pressing herself closer to the long lines of his body, hooking a knee over his.
“No it isn’t,” he murmured, “not the first time.” His dangerous hand slid down the back of her thigh, hiking her higher. He ground himself into her, his hard length nudging her clit through her panties; she gasped and rocked into him in response. His fingers on her thigh tightened, and a coiled spring of need overwhelmed her, overtook her. She tried to sink into him; she kissed him hard and succubine, drawing his tongue into her mouth, crowding against him and riding a wave of undiluted, uninterrupted pleasure.
He was clamorous and needy, too; his hand slid to cup her ass and pull her flush; together they rolled him onto his back, and she leaned above him, joined at the mouth, her knees opening around him. He was hard below her and for moments she simply rode him like that, letting the pressure build. His tongue was wet silk in her mouth; she caught his bottom lip between her teeth; they both groaned. Her blood pulled toward his, every cell in her body yearning towards him, and he answered with ferocity, dragging her against him, meeting her rhythm with squeezing hands and rising hips.
God, she was going to come again, and he still hadn’t even been inside her. He sensed it; his hands traveled down her sides to lock around her upper thighs. His thumbs traced across her lower belly; he pulled back from their kiss to watch her face. She braced herself on her palms and let him see, let herself hold his gaze as her eyelids fluttered and her arms locked and the muscles of her thighs and ass went tight, contracting as her body responded to his scent and hands and mouth and beautiful, twilight-forest eyes and the slide of his cock against her clitoris.
“Yes,” he whispered. “That’s it, baby.”
She rode him to an orgasm, and left it all on her face, and felt set free by the reverence in his.
Her strength left her, a soft and cascading weightlessness entering her limbs, and she let herself settle on his chest, lay her ear to his racing heart. He stroked her back sweetly, his palms rubbing warm pleasure into her muscles like massage oil.
She tipped her head up for a kiss, and he obliged immediately, his knuckles under her chin to hold her in place. She moved against him and felt his breath stutter. Then she peeled herself off of him to shuck her panties.
When she returned to his side, he didn’t reach to roll her under him, to tower over her, to drive into her the way she knew he was desperate to do. Instead, a light of pained caution entered his eyes, and she felt the stream of magical, near-mystical union ebb for a moment.
“I, uh…” He started, then cleared his throat. “I don’t have a condom.”
It should have given her pause—as a doctor, as a modern woman—but instead she was overwhelmed with tenderness. That he hadn’t planned any of this, that he didn’t carry one around with him (with them) along with an assumption that he would someday need it. That he was so close, so naked and near her, with her entirely bare and wet and willing beside him, and yet would refrain, would deny himself, according to what she decided.
“I don’t care,” she said.
His eyes searched her face, but already his hand was reaching for her, as if now given permission, it was outside of his control; his palm skated down her back and settled at the curve of her sacrum. “Are you sure?” he asked, then kissed her, nudged her nose with his.
“I’m sure,” she said against his mouth. “I want you, completely. And I haven’t…”
“Me neither,” he said quickly, even though she’d already known that.
“Then god, Mulder—” Heat flashed in his eyes; his fingers clenched. “—please. Now.”
He didn’t wait any longer. He shifted so that he was over her, braced on his hands, his head dipping down as he kissed her jaw, her neck. Her knees fell apart and opened around him; he settled between them, his cock hard and scorching against her belly. She whimpered and his eyes darkened, seared into hers. She felt her own body angling, reaching for him; she felt empty, incomplete, with him so close but still separate.
She let her head fall back against the pillow as he nuzzled her breast, as he denied them both, as he made her and him wait. She thought it might drive her right out of her mind.
“I need you,” she choked, her fingers twisting in his hair as he dragged the flat of his tongue across her nipple.
He murmured his agreement, still slavishly devoted to her breast, still thrusting against her.
She reached between them and caught him up, and his breath expelled hot upon her breast like a furnace door opening; he groaned. She arched to reposition herself, guiding him so that he was there, was right there—
“Scully, god—” His eyes closed and he shuddered, his head leaning back against the air, his hips driving forward slowly.
And Jesus, fuck, it was good. She was wet and plump and more than ready, and still he stretched her open with agonizing slowness, pushing forward until she thought she was full, and still there was more of him. She cried out, wild animal need on her breath, and he lost control, pushed all the way in, seated fully inside her.
They panted, their eyes locked. She was wide open to him; he was thick and full inside her; his eyes beckoned her home and fell into her all at once. It was Mulder, completely, finally. Dana felt she had never been whole before, never known pleasure before, never felt this connected to her own body or another person or the beating heart in her chest.
He slid out and came back and groaned. “You’re perfect,” he rasped, his arms trembling with restraint or effort or overwhelming love or all three at once. “Scully, god, you’re incredible.”
She bloomed under his praise, under the strain in his voice.
He began to move, to fuck her slowly, and her hips lifted to meet him as if pulled by marionette strings. Her hands wandered, set free, exploring his chest, his abdomen, the wide cliff of his shoulders. He lowered his forehead to hers, dashed kisses against her lips, murmured into her mouth—I love you, you’re perfect, Jesus. She held his love in her mouth and dug her fingers into the strong muscles of his ass, meeting his rhythm and matching it.
He moved inside her like music, like light, like the holy spirit. Warmth and life and his strong, steady body. He filled her completely, her blood and muscles and skin and teeth and mind, all full of Mulder, Mulder... He drove so deeply inside her she was sure would feel it for days, and she rose to take him deeper, wanting all of it, needing more, demanding everything.
He achieved a mystical rhythm, something matching her own heartbeat and his, and she could tell he was already close. She let the last bit of her own control go, bit him on the cheek, dug her nails into his ass; she wanted his fraught desperation, his breathless loss, his full surrender.
She felt him begin to pull away, to pull out, and locked her ankles behind his thighs. “No,” she said fiercely, anchoring him to her. “Inside me.”
“Dana—”
He went silent then, his breath frozen in his lungs, grounding himself in her, his hips flush to hers, his balls hot against her ass. She wrapped her limbs around him as he covered her, enveloped her, spurted into her. His cock, his come, his breath, his love filled her so completely she was sure she would never feel the same again, would never feel like just a single person, like someone other than them.
He thrust once, then twice, then settled. He dangled over her, his open eyes close to hers like he could see her soul, like he knew it and loved it and wanted it beside his own.
When the tension went out of his legs, he lowered their hips to the bed, and he kissed her slowly, luxuriously. Her mouth opened under his, let him live there, their tongues slow-dancing in both their mouths. He raised a hand to brush damp hair away from her forehead, cupped her cheek. Departed her mouth to press a baby kiss to her nose.
They stayed like, drifting, until he softened inside her and slipped out. He rolled to his side and tucked her into the shelter of his body. Pulled her head to his chest and kissed tender lips to her temple.
She lay content in the circle of his arms. Let her hands roam—up his side, over his bicep, along the muscles of his shoulder, up into his hair. He sighed sweetly, rubbed his cheek against her hair. She burrowed into his neck, breathed him deeply.
“That was…” he said, trailing off. She felt the little stupefied shake of his head. “God.”
“Yeah.” She half-chuckled, her nose bumping along his stubbly throat.
It didn’t feel strange; it didn’t feel like they had had one kind of relationship, and now that this had happened, things would be different. It felt instead like a deepening, like actualization, like evolution on a five-year scale: the final, full manifestation of who they had always been, who they had always been becoming. She had only been waiting until she could wrap herself in his arms, settle against him. Kiss him freely. She did so, now—then she did it again, because she could.
He returned it, gentle and comfortable, like he lived there. Then he nudged her nose with his, scraped his rough cheek against her jaw. “Shower?”
“Yes, please.”