Chapter Text
His rental car circles her block twice—then the streets nearby—but there is nowhere to park within any reasonable walking distance. Mulder knows the area too well now to feel confident parking somewhere illegal when off-duty, but he does it anyway—just as he now does many things with a vagarious hybrid of romance and impatience—right under a NO OVERNIGHT PARKING sign, behind a neighborhood sports club.
Scully's street is as deserted and dark as the surrounding ones. Her apartment block appears empty besides a solitary exterior light, shining like a beacon to guide him up the front steps to her door. No movement inside, as far as he can tell.
Mulder skips up the stairs, on what are now two perfectly good feet, to what he hopes is the correct front door, because his brain has barely registered how many floors he’s come up.
It gets him every time, since their stay at the commune. The anticipation, the yearning. The way his touch is not only allowed, but sought out by Scully. Wanted. And reciprocated. The truth of it catches him off guard. The way the need to see her, and be near her, feels necessary to his very survival.
Mulder stops, without knocking, without making a sound, breathes deeply through his mouth and looks down at his limbs. The dirty bronze of the fading tan he had brought home weeks ago changes color momentarily; dilutes deep red. Flushed down to the hands. He notices it under the harsh light of the stairwell, and realizes he’s shaking.
A noise like a footstep nearby and ever-nearer reminds him there’s a world outside his body, that he’s not alone. And so he broaches the final step to the door and knocks softly.
When Scully answers, Mulder will only hold back an instant, to make sure it’s her, to make sure she’s there, before pulling their bodies together. His arms—both of them at last—encircle her at first. Cradling her head in the crook of one elbow, his lips devour hers. That’s it. That’s his greeting.
He feels her fingers crawl up to his cheeks as his tongue wrestles hers, the exchange growing more and more vigorous as her hands move to roam his upper back and grab onto the fabric of his coat.
Encased in this new world where breathing equals moaning, he feels her press into him repeatedly, as if to make sure every spot is covered and no gaps are left uncovered between their bones.
There’s a beat, a single beat, in which their mouths part and their eyes meet, but before he can say something, he sees Scully smile as her fingers wrap around his collar and pull him through the threshold and into her living room, closing the door behind them. The same door she then unceremoniously, almost aggressively, presses him against.
Picking up where they’d left off, in slower exploration this time, he lets her take her time, learning the texture of her lips, tasting the roof of her mouth and allowing the sharpest edges of her teeth to leave barely-there bruises on his tongue.
“Ouch,” he teases, when she bites down a little harder. “I just got cleared by the doctor, woman. Do you want to send me back there again?”
He feels her chuckle in the trembling of her ribcage against his.
“Maybe”, she says. “By the way; you never told me how you justified your bullet wound to the Bureau's physician.”
“I told him the truth—“ He bends his head toward hers, though not for the kiss she may have expected. Instead, his mouth connects with her chin, sucking in a playful bite. “I said, doctor, I got me this woman. And doctor, you won’t believe it, but she likes me so much she had to shoot me. The same way she did years ago, when she was still making her mind up about me.”
Scully smiles that smile of hers he cannot keep from kissing, so he does just that as she mumbles into his mouth,
“They say third time’s a charm, right?”
He sighs, half-teasingly, “I can’t wait.”
Mulder’s jacket has more than served its purpose and, one arm at a time, he lets it fall to the floor. He does away with his shoes, next, to then cover the small distance between them again.
Their shared silhouette stumbles farther into the apartment. Mulder holds on for balance, and with greed, too, keeping his fist locked around the front of her dress-shirt, trapping the animal and pulling it closer whenever forward momentum bounces them apart.
It always surprises him how Scully, a woman whose presence can fill an entire room, can feel so tiny and fragile when he holds her. As if she might simply drift up and away if nothing anchors her. Vanish, with a trick of the light. Stay here, his hands say, taking a better grip of the oversized shirt underneath them. Not roughly, but with a certain insistence.
He can’t help the hum that escapes him. Their side-to-side sway. The back-rub that starts with his hands under her shirt and reaches wherever it can. Is this all she’s wearing? This and some begrudging undergarments?
Scully will feel his smile as he explores her and confirms it. A day's worth of unshaven beard against the side of her neck. Their height difference never more apparent.
She might notice, too, the tension in his body, the heartbeat galloping against his throat.
The kiss has finished but their faces stay close, still touching, Mulder breathing through his mouth now, sucking in air, raising his knee to massage indirect stimulation between her thighs.
Maybe it catches her off-balance, maybe it feels precarious to stand on her toes between his body and the wall—and his shoulder still smarts at even the lightest touch—but he enjoys feeling her cling to him.
"Scully.” Her name rumbles in his throat like muffled thunder.
Mulder raises his chin, tilting Scully’s thumb past the edge of his lower lip, and catches her mouth for a new kiss, charged with incursions of otherness. The seductive gyre of their lips and tongues, breath and teeth.
His body unfurls from hers without hurry. A languorous push and pull of limbs, Mulder drops to his knees in front of her, tearing apart the sheen of saliva that alloyed their lips.
This is yet another place in which to furtively appreciate Scully, swallowed by the mini-dress she made of a white shirt. The skin of her belly under his kisses is soft and warm; in some spots, she seems almost transparent. Opalescent pink.
He gazes up at her from this view at eye level with her hips. His arms wrap around her thighs and hold his upper body flush against her.
"I love you.” Now it has a name. "I love you, Scully."
Love, its evolved form having passed through a previous flawed and imperfect aloneness, melts what was once two separate prayers into infinite tenderness.
Aloneness has skin, and the warmth of love melts it away. Aloneness has armor, which lovers try to pierce and perforate.
The line which guides love rises and soars, disappearing behind the brilliant glare of solar brightness, where everything is consumed by the same heat as the Californian woods in summertime.
Where there is no skin, no armor, no alone.