Work Text:
All Things
I make my way through the landscaped gardens of Washington National Hospital towards the reception area to look for Scully.
Sunshine glitters among the leaves, and the white buildings, stretching skyward into clear cobalt heavens, seem to reflect and bounce light around.
A stark contrast against the grimness of iron skies, relentless down-pours and fog enveloping the English countryside.
The memory of getting soaked despite the fancy wet gear that was marketed to me as all-weather-proof, and the day-long squelching through remote fields followed by the stares of sheep and cattle for nothing, makes me shiver. I found myself longing for a hot bath out there and it became clear to me why Scully was so fond of them.
I keep to the side and walk in the shade of trees to let a group of nuns pass when a hand lands on my shoulder from behind.
I turn around to find myself looking into eyes brimming with surprise.
“Hey,” I say. I’m sheepish and guilt-ridden.
“Mulder?”
I wasn’t expecting to find her in the garden and judging from the look on her face she was expecting to see someone else.
“I was just looking for you,” I say.
“But you’re supposed to be in England.”
I nod, embarrassed. “I’m back.”
“What happened?”
I had plenty of time to think is what happened and I felt awful about how we parted so I came back early to make amends and boom, here we are, placed on one another’s path by the hands of benevolent cosmic intelligence, but instead, I say:
“Nothing. There was no event, no crop circles. Big waste of time.”
Scully sighs. The sunshine sets her auburn hair aglow.
“Maybe sometimes nothing happens for a reason, Mulder.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” she smiles.
The flow of people around us seems constant: doctors sailing past in white coats, nurses walking with patients or pushing them in wheelchairs, the nuns, a bored janitor leaning against his trolley observing the steady stream of visitors.
I’d like to go somewhere quiet. She places her hand on my shoulder as if she was just reading my thoughts. “Come on, I'll make you some tea.”
***
When we arrive back to mine she heads into the kitchen with the milk she bought on the way.
I watch her as she takes out the old carton from the fridge, with its lumpy contents sloshing around at the bottom, to sniff it. When the stench confirms her suspicion she throws the carton in the trash and pulls out the cutlery drawer. She fishes out teaspoons from the haystack of cutlery without a remark or attempt to bring order to my chaos.
This stuff no longer shocks her, she knew it would be so — and it is. The only one shocked here is me. I stare at her mesmerised, the way the sheep must’ve stared at me in England. It does something to me, seeing her so unguarded, so at home in my life.
She pours boiling water from the kettle into mugs, stirs two teaspoonfuls of sugar into my tea and adds the right amount of milk.
These are the moments when I come face to face with the enigmatic nature of love. I’ve never expected it to happen like this; to just creep up on me over the years through mundane moments as much as the extraordinary, slowly eroding that line we once had drawn between us and called a boundary. To wake up one day only to realise that I was in love and have been for the longest time? It was quite the revelation, yet, not a surprise.
“Hey, Scully?”
“What?”
“How do you know how I like my tea?”
She looks at me startled and there’s a pause just a moment too long.
“I guess when you know someone for so many years you just learn things about them either consciously or subconsciously?”
She’s opting for nonchalance while dodging the answer. I want to know why.
“Sure, but that’s not it, is it?”
Scully smiles a mysterious smile and hands me the mug.
“It’s not an X File, Mulder. There’s a simple explanation, I can assure you.”
“Care to share? Not even my parents knew this about me,” I press on. I think I know what this is about.
She walks away and I follow her to the living room where she kicks off her shoes and makes herself comfortable on the sofa.
I sit down beside her.
“Mulder,” she says, wrapping her fingers around her mug,” do you remember that guy who set the Venable Plaza on fire? That time you passed out from smoke inhalation?”
“Sure. What’s the connection?” I ask needlessly because we both know where this is going.
“Phoebe.”
Bingo.
“She came up to your room with a cup of tea not expecting to find me there. She then decided to let me in on how you both liked your tea the exact same way; two sugars, a small dash of milk. Drinking tea in bed with her was, apparently, your second favourite pastime on gloomy days back in Oxford.”
There’s something she’s still not saying and I wait.
“So, did you guys meet up while you were in England?”
There it is.
If she only knew what a lonely, miserable time I had! With my ego decimated, I picked up a Stonehenge baseball cap at the duty-free souvenir shop on the way home, trying to save face.
“I haven’t seen or heard from Phoebe since her visit to the states. Meeting her again all those years ago made me realise how much I’d changed since Oxford. I was no longer a fun toy to play mind games with.”
“Funny that you say that, Mulder. I had a similar encounter while you were away. I can relate to all of this.”
I place my hand on her shoulder and squeeze it. “Tell me, Scully.”
***
She’s deep in thought, probably thinking of Daniel. She looks tired.
“What is it?” I ask.
She sighs.“I once considered spending my whole life with this man. What I would have missed.”
“I don't think you can know,” I say to comfort her. “I mean, how many different lives would we be leading if we made different choices? We... We don't know.”
I’m thinking about Daniel too and about how close I came to losing Scully, how our future was hanging in the balance on the event horizon of the past and I had no idea.
I thought I knew everything about her but now I’m humbled. I was taking her for granted.
In a way I’m thankful to Daniel for stumbling into the same pitfall as Phoebe with me years ago —failing to recognise he no longer knew who Scully was, for mistaking her for that starry-eyed young woman she used to be; who idolised him and needed his approval—his student, his understudy, his mistress.
I can empathise with the conundrum of that young woman because I’ve been there myself as a young man, more than once. But to Daniel, I can’t extend the same courtesy.
I’m glad Scully can’t, either.
I’m not arrogant enough to believe I’m right for her. I know for a fact I’m not the man she’d envisioned for herself.
She’s been resisting me just like she resists my theories and, for what it’s worth, I understand why, I can see how I’ve been contributing to that from the moment we first met. Yet, I can only offer myself as I am.
She walks the path of her choosing, she knows her mind and over the years she became a woman who could no longer be persuaded by anyone to take a road she is not comfortable travelling.
As contradictory as it may sound, this precisely is my reason to hold onto hope.
“What if there was only one choice and all the other ones were wrong?” She says in a faraway tone. “And there were signs along the way to pay attention to?”
“Hm… All the choices would then lead to this very moment. One wrong turn, and we wouldn't be sitting here together. Well, that says a lot. That says a lot, a lot, a lot about us, probably more than we should be getting into at this late hour—“
I turn to her mid-sentence to gauge her reaction, to see how what I’m saying sits with her but she’s fast asleep, her head lolled to one side and so my sentence remains open and without a response.
I smile and let my gaze linger freely on her face as I brush a stray-away strand of hair back behind her ear.
I take stock of the shape of her parted lips, the awning of lashes casting fuzzy shadows onto her cheeks. She’s peaceful, so peaceful…
I reach across her to draw my Navajo blanket over her resting body and tuck her in.
I leave a lamp on but mute its light to a glow, just enough to illuminate her surroundings if she awakens in the night.
I tiptoe into my bedroom to get undressed for my shower.
The thought of having her here, sleeping on my sofa fills me with a warm, content feeling.
Everything she told me tonight is spinning in my mind.
Maybe once upon a time, she thought someone like Daniel would be the ideal person, someone grounded in rationality and practicality, someone with their drawers and cutlery in order and who never runs out of milk.
Yet, here she is with the man whose soap is watered down to make the last drops stretch for another week because he can never remember to buy more. I’d like to think it means something.
Maybe what matters is not the milk, not the soap, but the ability to share our joy and sorrow while showing grace to each other’s shortcomings.
After my shower, I brush my teeth and tiptoe back to the living room to place a folded towel and a T-shirt on the sofa beside Scully. I leave a toothbrush too. I bought it last week to replace my old one but haven’t yet gotten around to it and now I’m glad.
I leave my shaving light on for her in the bathroom, above the mirror.
I’m listening to music in bed when the song which was playing in the office a few days ago comes on, the one Scully turned off after arriving in a mood with our lunches.
I smile, close my eyes and let the words soothe me.
I can see the wind coming down
Like black night
So speak to me
Like the winds outside
***
I’m not sure what wakes me, whether it’s the pelting rain tapping on the window or the trees clawing at each other but my eyes are open now although my vision is blurred and my mind just as out of focus.
The earbuds fell out of my ears sometime during my sleep but the CD’s tracklist reached its end a while ago anyway.
As I’m becoming more conscious my mind registers how calm the night is, no wind or rain outside.
A fresh soapy scent lingers in the air and I think I can feel a presence but before this could unsettle me my gaze finds a quiet figure standing by the window, bathed in moonlight. It’s Scully.
The sound that stirred me was the shower.
She’s wearing the shadows of dancing leaves painted onto her bare skin by the brush of night.
Everything in me gives way, all my secret seas and oceans swell and rise—she is the moon of my indigo sky.
I flick on my reading lamp and spring out of bed to stride across the room, pushing towards her like a sliding land. I take her into my arms and press her burning cheek against the leaping of my heart. Her hair around the nape of her neck is damp after her shower.
“Thank you for the towel, I found it and—” she sounds nervous, perhaps a little embarrassed.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I whisper into her ear.
She looks at me and I look back too, gazing at her upturned face with a smile and she smiles back at me and brings her mouth to mine.
This kiss is brave and sure of itself, unlike the one we shared in the green-tiled corridor of Burnside Memorial Hospital on New Year’s Eve. After the Millennium Crystal Ball’s descent upon Times Square, we watched all the happy couples kissing on TV as they welcomed the new millennium. I felt it was the perfect moment to take that leap of faith and so I leaned in and pressed my lips against hers, ready to laugh it off and do some back-pedalling in case she took offence but, as it happened, she looked at me in surprise once our lips parted and gave me a puzzled smile, waiting for an explanation. All I could say was, the world didn’t end and she seemed content to leave it at that and I was hoping it wasn’t a gentle rejection only the asking of more time.
Now it’s all different —we are on the same page.
I lift her and her rib cage feels delicate in my embrace like the elaborate lace of snow crystals in winter but her smooth thighs around my waist are powerful and I’m pressed against her, already hard and throbbing with desire.
She breaks off our kiss to sigh into my open mouth when she feels me through my shorts and then we fall onto the bed.
My mouth is all over her, I’m kissing her ear, her mouth, and her neck above her racing pulse, I feast on her nipples and her fingers dive into my hair, tighten into fists and she pushes her breast deeper into my mouth and her breathing becomes faster.
Between her thighs she’s dewy.
When I pull back to look at her, lying naked beneath me in the sea of tangled sheets—her full lips wet and crimson, roses of Eros blooming on her cheeks—her feverish blue eyes hold my gaze and she tells me what she wants me to do.
I kiss her stomach down to her navel and continue downward. I bring my mouth to where she wants it, where she’s hot and wet and when I kiss her there when I dip my tongue into her and glide it up between the slick folds of her lap to her clitoris she trembles. She’s like silk against my tongue and tastes faintly of the ocean — of the Divine Goddess Yemayá.
Her cool thighs brush against my ears as I keep teasing her with the tip of my tongue and when I push my fingers inside her her breath hitches and the words “oooooh, boy ” escape her mouth. It only takes a couple of gliding pushes and pulls of my fingers. She comes fast and hard and I have to pull back again to prevent myself from coming into my shorts.
When her trembling passes she reaches out for me and I join her.
Our bodies are pressing against each other, tangled and animated like kelp in a current, her tongue is in my mouth.
When she pulls off my shorts, I kick them to the floor, and suck on the flushed skin of her neck as she pulls me into herself and I sink into her slick warmth. Our bodies move to the rhythm of waves coming to shore and then rush back to sea just to crash against the coastline once again— a dance of back and forth that starts slow but picks up pace as the tension of passion builds.
I don’t know how I could ever live without her body, this madness of pleasure that wipes my brain clear of anything else. Nothing exists now but me and her and this fever we’re caught up in together. When Scully comes again, there’s a tightening around me and I give myself to its sultry vortex and let pleasure come over me. Every wave of her pulsing and squeezing climax sends me towards the explosion of my own pleasure until I’m there. The powerful bursts of warm, thick fluids leave my body in a state of euphoria.
Then I’m at peace, lying on Scully, breathing in the scent of her copper hair. I bury my face in her warmth and kiss her neck.
I love the feel of her arms around me and her fingers in my hair.
There’s so much I want to say to her but a blissful heaviness lulls me into silence.
It’s comfortable, like opium, and I can’t recall the exact moment of going under.
***
I open my eyes to the sound of the alarm clock and knock it off before it could awaken Scully.
The room is full of dancing lights and soft noises coming from the street. I smile at the thought of Scully sleeping beside me, I turn over to rub my stubble against her cheek until she has no choice but to wake up.
I find the space beside me empty.
I roll out of bed and walk around in my birthday suit, calling out to her but only silence answers. It’s uncomfortable, like doubt.
With a sinking feeling, I confront some unpleasant possibilities. I’m not sure, what part of last night was real and what part was only my house of cards. I can only be sure of one thing: what it all meant to me.
I get dressed and head to work, buy cream cheese bagels and coffee on the way despite the abysmal traffic.
I find Scully in the office, sitting in my chair at the desk, reading a file. She looks impeccable—perfect hair, perfect skirt suit, perfect everything. Something about it unsettles me.
“Hey, Scully,” I put the paper bag with our breakfast on the desk. “Sorry, I’m a bit late. Did you sleep well?”
“Good morning, Mulder. Not as well as you, it seems.” She peers into the bag.
“Black coffee, no sugar,” I inform her, “and I asked for light cream cheese since it’s what you always get.”
“Thank you,” she says. “Mulder, Skinner tried calling you early this morning but he said your cell phone must’ve been turned off.”
I grab my coffee and bagel and take a bite. “Yeah, I was kinda busy last night.”
I speak with my mouth full and try to wash my disappointment down my throat with coffee so it wouldn’t creep into my voice. It seems like we are business as usual.
“He gathered because he phoned me instead,” she continues, flicking through the file. “He wants us to assist him with his investigation in California. Some dirty laundry at Morley.”
“He thinks it’s an X file?”
“I don’t know, but we shall soon find out. The flights are booked.”
I nod and put my coffee on the filing cabinet beside me and go after a dollop of cream cheese that just landed on my tie before it could leave a greasy stain.
“Do you need to grab stuff, Scully? I could—”
“No,” she says and stands up with the folder in her hands, “I have my suitcase packed and ready to go.”
She makes her way around the desk, to where I’m standing licking my tie, and leans against the desk. She closes the folder, raises her eyes and looks at me.
“That’s why I left so early. I didn’t have the heart to wake you.” Her face is open, vulnerable.
“You always keep a packed suitcase in your trunk and I thought at least one of us should get some sleep.”
My shoulders relax. I put the bagel beside my coffee and place my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll drive us to the airport, you get some rest, Scully.”
She smiles and holds my gaze.
“Are you doing anything Friday evening?” she says.
“What are you suggesting?”
“Dinner and movie at mine?”
“Is breakfast included or is it a dinner-and-movie-only sort of thing?”
She reaches out to wipe cream cheese from my chin with her thumb then licks it off. “How do you feel about breakfast in bed?”
If she got any closer to me now she’d get poked by my erection.
“Scully, what time do we have to be at the airport?”
She glances at her watch.
“There’s still a bit of time for a quick briefing to fill you in on the case,” she says and sends the folder flying into the corner.
“Excellent.”I grab her buttocks and press her against me. “Let’s begin.”