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There’s a lot of silence in the basement. They can be quiet people. He types and she flips through papers, scribbles things into files, they both read and go through the cabinet and reexamine slides. The silence is always comforting, a steady whir of intellectual efficiency that they mass produce like Ford’s cars. Sometimes a sharper edge of something mean underlines it all, when they’re frustrated or tired or burnt out. Today he cuts himself on it.
“There’s a receipt we’re missing,” she frowns, ruffling through more paper. “The bottle of wine we bought for the dinner party in Arcadia?”
“That’s been taken care of by undercover ops,” he replies, lipping around the base of his pencil. He watches her nod and tidy her space, slipping folders into place and putting her pens back in the holder. Five o'clock hits. He watches her stand up and slide her rolling chair under the table. He watches her straighten out her jacket and reapply her lipstick.
He never looks down her clothes, not on purpose, but sometimes it happens and sometimes he goes still and thinks about nothing. Scully is work-place practical with all of her clothing, something he’s come to appreciate, admire, maybe fixate on occasionally when his mind gets ahead of him. Cotton bras, beige, white – one time black, the little bow peaking out from under an unbuttoned button, and he dropped a book.
When she bends over to grab her suitcase, well, it happens again. Her blazer only has one button and she’s wearing a starched white blouse. It gaps open at the collar, and… he looks, is drawn to it like light.
Today Scully forgoes work-place practical. He’s never actually seen the tops of her breasts while doing this, or at least not this much of them. He’s never been that unfortunate. And what they’re enclosed in… lace. Sheer, black, Chantilly lace. The edges are scalloped, they frame her pale skin like a she’s an expensive painting. Maybe she is. She stands up. Mulder doesn’t move.
The phone rings and she gets it before he thinks to, pushing her hip against the desk and announcing their greeting into the receiver. She ticks her chin into her chest, brushes her hair out of her eyes. “Yes, I’m leaving now. I’ll see you soon,” she says lowly, and hangs up.
She nods to Mulder, lets him know she’ll see him in the morning. Picks up her suitcase and clicks out the door. He hadn’t noticed the extra inch to her heels. The new perfume, peppery and masculine with a hint of something soft. Dread fills him like new blood.
***
It’s a habit he tells himself to break whenever he’s made consciously aware of it, which isn’t often. It’s an instinctual thing. All at once he makes himself her most challenging adversary, more protective than any brother. Her most in-need patient, more proud of her than her own mom. No other colleague she’s ever had or ever will have will be more brilliant than him nor more in tune to her own speculative needs. More supportive than her very best girlfriend, sterner than her Captain and just as demanding. One day he’ll be the most interesting corpse she could hope to sink her scalpel into.
And now someone is having sex with her. How about that.
He supposes it was always a gamble. The unknown variable. When he now thinks of all the time she spends away from him, it is in terms of she is with someone else and she is not.
Else. As in opposed to him. As in not him. As in it should be him.
So. He refuses to let it be someone else.
At least not for long. He waits for her on her couch, replaying the image of her bending over in his head. The spite has dissolved his guilt. A different man than what he was only hours ago, he thinks of her in that little bra, thinks of taking her out of it. Making her beg. ”I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
“Mulder?” She hurries to shut and lock the door behind her, dropping her purse and keys on the side table before rushing over to him. “Are you okay? Why are you here?” She feels his forehead, combs her fingers through his hair.
He studies her openly as she hunches over him. Not a hair out of place, no bruises or bite marks, and her mouth is as lipsticked dried-berry matte as it was when she left him in the office. Her clothes aren’t rumpled. Not even close. Nothing – nothing happened then. It’s eleven at night. If it had happened, if it had been him… she cocks her head when she’s concentrating, and there’s this spot on her jaw. His teeth, there. And on her neck. Pick a place any place. Her throat her ears his tongue his lips. He would pay for the dry cleaning. He would have kept the bra. At the very least she wouldn’t look like this. Like nothing happened. Nothing happened.
Right?
“Why are you here, Mulder?” She repeats, but this time she sounds tired. There’s a case, Scully. There’s a wart on my ass, I need you to look. There was an accident on the beltway and I had to make sure it wasn’t you. You’re dead wrong on biorhythms. Just here to say hi. What’s up. How are you.
“Scully, were you out with someone?” The words are thick like a foreign language – because they are. This is not their doublespeak, their runaround, their foot soldier-careful navigation of landmines and tripwire. But it doesn’t feel wrong. Not like he was so sure it would.
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she replies, more curious than defensive. She eyes him warily and joins him on the couch, sitting at the farthest end.
“I almost kissed you,” he blurts out. “Over the summer. We never talked about what that meant.”
Her mouth works around nothing. She hugs herself. “The hallway,” she says mildly. “You’re bringing up the hallway. You’re bringing it up now.”
“It had to come up,” he grits, almost through his teeth. If he shakes her now, by the sword-sharp set of her shoulders, he’d leave her wrinkled. Her shirt would bunch up under his fingers and crease around her elbows, and maybe the collar would flip up. “You know that, Scully.” She shakes her head and it feels annoyingly like they’re in the office, like they’re arguing a case. “You’re saying we could pretend it never happened. That you could pretend it never happened.”
“No, I’m saying it wouldn’t have come up. Mulder, you never would have brought it up.”
“I just did.”
“And why did you?” He stays quiet. To him it doesn’t matter why or how or even when, it just matters that it was brought up. Now they can talk about this. Now they can fix this. “You brought it up to prove a point. You brought it up to be right about something, but God knows what you’ve decided to martyr yourself for this time.”
“I’m bringing it up because we have to talk about it. We almost kissed, Scully.” His voice lowers, something hot stings the back of his throat. “And it wouldn’t have ended there. Not with all we were saying and feeling. We ignored it because you were taken… and I know things aren’t great right now…”
“I considered myself warned.” He frowns at her. “I didn’t want to make anything too personal.” He shakes his head and clenches his jaw.
“Don’t do that, Scully. Don’t take an entirely different set of circumstances and use my words with an entirely different context to dig yourself out of this.”
She cocks her chin and her eyebrow at the same time, stares at him through flesh and bone and kills the cells of him with just that look. “And just what am I digging myself out of?” She asks, hushed and unwavering. “Are you saying I did something to you?” And he feels it that yes, she did. Yes, you did do something to me. Now apologize so we can make up. Now apologize so we can make up. Now apologize so we can make up. “That I can’t even try to be happy without you making it all about yourself?”
Systems failure. He shuts down, her eyes a blue screen of death, their shallow breathing the beep, beep, beep of something wrong and coded. “He makes you happy,” he says blankly.
“I didn’t – ” air whistles through her nose as her face falls, but he’s not looking at her. “I didn’t say that.”
“That’s good.” He means it in a way.
“Mulder…”
“I’m happy that you’re happy.”
“Will you–”
“Don’t tell him that exploding cadaver story. It’s a great story. I love it. But it’s gross, Scully. You’re weird sometimes.”
“Jesus, will you just–”
“That’s a good thing. It’s a great thing. But maybe hold that one in until the sixth month anniversary or–”
“Shut up!” Scully shouts, and he snaps his mouth shut and falls back against the couch. They sit in awkward silence, with Scully holding her head in her hands.
“I should go,” he says finally. There are a million meanings in it, none he’ll ever really follow through with. He should go, though. He really should.
“Don’t,” Scully demands roughly. Okay. Alright. He can put the hurt away and revisit it later. They say it’s better fermented. Fine wine. They say you can really tell the difference.
“What do you want me to say, Scully?” He whispers. She shakes her head and looks away and he knows there are tears in her eyes and he’s sorry he ever said anything. “Tell me what you want me to say.”
Her breath hitches. Her shirt is all bunched up in the middle. Her hand falls off of her lap and she inches it toward him, an offering, a sacrifice, something. He tentatively takes it in his own.
***
“Who is it?” He asks, poised above her on the carpet. He’s proud of his work. The shirt is gone, that bra is… somewhere. She looked so good in it he just had to rip it off of her. Each man kills the thing he loves. Chantilly lace, Scully? You know what I like.
Instead she wears his bruises, his greed, wears out his tongue and his fingers and his cock. He wears her lipstick, the deep tracks of her nails down his spine. He wears her out. By the time he gets inside of her she’s practically melted into the carpet.
“Mm. No one,” she murmurs, fluttering her hands over his broad shoulders. Huh. Dana Scully is cock drunk, glassy-eyed and dumb.
“Who is it?” He asks again. A shallow thrust. She grinds against him, takes him back in all the way. Neither of them are apparently in any hurry. “I just wanna talk to him.”
“Oh. In that case.” She brings her fingers to his nipple and pinches it, hard. “No one.”
“Ask for some pointers.” She is. The tightest thing. Every moment he doesn’t come is a miracle. “Compare notes.”
“You don’t take notes.”
“Who, Scully? Who did you–” fuck who were you fucking “–Put on that pretty little bra for and–” did he give it to you like this “–The matching panties, you little minx–” did he make you fucking come the way I’m going to the way I already did “–Who. Is. It?”
“Mulder.” She sounds serious. He looks up from between their bodies, where she had been leisurely rolling her clit. She cups his face with both hands and tells him the truth. “No one.”
He catches the wrist of the hand she’d been rubbing herself with and sucks her fingers into his mouth. The elation that courses through him speeds up his pounding hips, and the taste of her replenished on his tongue tightens his balls. “For me?” he moans with his mouth full. He can hardly bear to think of it, Scully trying to seduce him as they worked. In the few and far between moments of cognitive function, he imagines how long it could have gone on. Forever. He’s a fucking idiot.
“No, for me,” she gasps, spasming around him. Somehow he likes that idea even more. He fucks her slowly, gives her all of him, makes her come hard with her teeth stuck in his bicep and her hands in her own hair. Making her promise to wear it all again sometime, for him or for her. It did not matter, as long as it wasn’t for someone else.
And he needs… he needs her to keep doing that, fuck, he loves how she kisses him. So much time wasted. He needs to stop that. Notice her. Not avoid looking at her because it – she wraps her legs around his waist and urges him forward, whispering in his ear – because it scared him, because what was scarier than not having her? He thought he had to – please, Mulder. Oh, god, I love you please – share her. He thought he had to share her.
When he finishes, he wraps her up in his arms and holds her against him until she can’t help but fall asleep. His life doesn’t feel all that different. He just knows it feels monumentally better than it did a few hours ago.