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Recap: Moose and Squirrel are at Mama Scully’s house after a six/seven/whatever week ‘let’s drive around America’ road trip which included broken legs, cancer scares, plenty of cuddling and the occasional bout of liquored up goodness …
___________
Letting her go after a few minutes, they discovered the lights had mysteriously been turned off in the living room, the space now empty of heckling relatives and encouraging mothers. Mulder, his arms now around her waist, continued to look down at her stocking feet and his cast hovering below until he felt her hand lift his face to hers, “didn’t I say we should keep this quiet for a little bit?”
“Yeah, I tried my best but shit happens.” Knowing she wasn’t mad, he asked anyways, “gonna kill me in my sleep tonight for it?”
“I just might. Now we have to go in there and see all of them staring at us, commenting and winking and nudging and if I know Charlie and Dave, exchanging money as bets are collected.”
With a head wiggled and a glinting eye, “we could always just sneak out. Go back to your place/my place/I don’t care where place and climb into bed and let me kiss on you some more until you absolutely can’t stand it anymore and insist on having sex with me.”
Oh, the thoughts, oh, the ideas, oh, the quaint, little, spasmodic head-nodding she did in agreement with each and every one of his previous statements. Kissing her chin once she stopped her emphatic agreement, Mulder suddenly yelled over her shoulder towards the fairly loud kitchen, “Maggie, we’re leaving. Thanks for dinner. Shut up, Dave. Get your mind out of the gutter, Charlie!”
“But it seems appropriate!”
“Only your brother, Scully, would yell that in front of your mother.”
Maggie came down the hall, turning the lights back on as she walked, “get yourselves in the kitchen and eat your dessert. The ice cream’s nearly melted and you can wait another 20 minutes to leave.” Giving them a knowing smile, “I assume 20 minutes will not, in fact, kill you, correct?”
Mulder, returning her grin, shrugged but didn’t let go of Scully, “for you, Maggie, 25.”
Scully followed Mulder, who followed Maggie, entering the kitchen to find pie and spoons and sticky children and Charlie counting a wad of bills. As she walked by, Scully neatly snatched the handful from her brother, “thank you very much.”
Attempting to swipe the cash back, Charlie fell off the chair and nearly took out Mulder in the process, the chair skittering across and smacking Maggie in the shins. Immediately she held up her hands, “stop! Everybody! Now!”
Two children had spoons on the way to their mouths and Charlie remained sprawled on the floor. Scully had her hand inconveniently on Mulder’s butt, her hand wrapped in and around his pants pocket in a stupidly useless gesture of assistance but it didn’t help and his teetering turned to crashing, directly on top of Charlie.
“Oh … God …” came the muffled response of the large man below Mulder, “you are not … as light … as I figured … you’d be … Holy God, get … off … of … me!” He was laughing as he said it, however, and waited until someone helped Mulder off him instead of the brotherly response of shoving and pushing to get free.
Joanna and Dave got him standing and while he tottered, Wes, the six-year-old, began laughing, pointing towards Mulder’s backside, “you have on Superman underwear!”
Scully finally woke up to the chaos and realized she was holding Mulder’s pocket in her hand and a large flap of material now revealed Mulder’s undergarment of choice.
Mulder’s hand felt his now air-conditioned shorts and nodding his head, “thank God they weren’t my Spider-Girl ones ‘cause those would have been embarrassing.”
&&&&&&&&
Eventually, somehow, nearly intact and miraculously unhurt, both were back in the car, Scully not speaking until they were around the corner, down the street and next to a darkened spot. Turning off the car, she put her head back against the seat, “good Lord, we really should have just stayed at the cottage another day.”
“Why? You didn’t enjoy making out on the stairs while every cheered us on then collecting $125 bucks from your brother whom I then attempted to squash into oblivion before my pants ripped all to hell revealing my oh-so-super sexy Superman underwear because, let me tell you, I sure did.” The faint light from the full moon and the distant streetlights made his teeth shine as he grinned, “you realize if you can actually get me up to my apartment or yours unscathed, it will be one of those miracles you Catholic people are always raving about.”
“You realize if we actually attempted any kind of sex tonight, there’s a good chance it would kill you.”
It began with a chuckle, which inevitably moved to snorting giggles and finally, full-on, window steaming laughter the likes of which shook the car. After wiping tears and blowing noses, Scully’s hiccupping squeaks subsided and he looked over at her, eyes dancing, “but it would be the best way to go.”
Another brief paroxysm overtook them but finally under control, Scully started the car again, “I say your place. It’s closer and there’s an elevator.”
“Home, James.”
&&&&&&&&&&&&
Finally, finally, finally parking, climbing, swinging, riding, waiting, unlocking, entering and closing, Scully dropped the two main bags she was carrying, “I have never been so glad to see this place and given you probably forgot to empty the fridge before you left, that’s saying something.”
Resting on his crutches, he beckoned her over to him, wrapping his arms around her as best he could, leaning into her, nose nuzzled in her hair, “thank you for getting me home. I love you very much for it.”
Voice muffled against him, “I just didn’t want to have to deal with funeral arrangements.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
Standing silent for a few moments, Scully pulled back, “we need some sleep. You want to shower now or in the morning?”
“Depends when I can get some company.”
“Morning has a lot better outlook for that.”
“Then bed it is.” Letting her go long enough to hobble to the mattress, he propped his crutches, dropped his pants and, after his now-routine struggle to free his cast from his shorts, he flopped back on to the mattress, wrinkling his nose immediately, “I totally didn’t change the sheets before I left either.”
“Are they crunchy?”
“Like a stale bag of potato chips.”
&&&&&
An hour later, they had put on fresh sheets, cleaned out the fridge, taken out the trash, opened all the windows to air the place out and probably woke up the entire building clearing the air from the pipes. Finally, dropping back into bed, Mulder took all of 30 seconds to fall fast asleep, snoring lightly into the now clean-smelling air while Scully, having passed that crucial and all-important threshold from ‘must sleep now’ to ‘shit, I’m going to be awake the rest of the night’, was counting sheep, singing songs in her head, and staring at several cracks in Mulder’s ceiling.
She contemplated, hesitated, debated on just how to proceed next.
She found herself shutting her brain off and sliding her leg over Mulder’s, then her arm, then ignoring the fact that it was nearly midnight, she slid herself up and onto her partner, legs straddling, body upright, shirt tugged over her head as she settled onto his hips.
Inching her hands below his shirt and up his chest, she was half-leaned over, mouth open to whisper him awake …
And he rolled over, knocking her off-balance and onto the floor, a near silent thud announcing her landing to no one except herself because Mulder just kept on snoring, hand now off the mattress, fingers dangling. Reaching up, she slid her shirt from under his arm and pulling it back on, climbed off the floor, deciding a night cruising the couch wouldn’t be such a bad thing, given at least she wouldn’t have to stare at the weird shaped cracks in Mulder’s bedroom ceiling.
It wasn’t long before she heard the tell-tale creak of metal crutches and the soft shuffle, heavy thump tread of sleepy Mulder wandering his way towards her. Looking up from her channel surfing, she smiled, her face glowing blue from both fish tank and television, “hi there. How come you’re awake?”
Not answering until he stood beside her, resting his crutches on the wall, “no idea. I couldn’t find you in bed and thought maybe you were taking a midnight stroll by the ocean and then I realized we weren’t by the ocean but I was already up so I figured …” He ran out of steam and sat down, “I miss the waves. Can we go back? I’ve had enough of this place for awhile.”
Curling against him immediately, she tucked her feet under her, settling in for a comfortable nap, “we’ve been back for six hours.”
“Exactly. Enough of this nonsense. Let’s go back. I want to wake up with you in the big ol’ bed and all the windows and eat M&Ms until we do something drastic like take a nap or go swimming.”
“Mulder?”
“Yeah?”
“This is going to be good.”
Collaring her for a moment, he spoke into the top of her head, warm breath ruffling her flyaway hairs, “yeah, it is.”