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Rain poured down from a steel grey sky and thunder rolled, almost ear splitting in it’s volume. The storm that had been threatening all day had finally burst from over saturated cumulonimbus clouds, turning the streets into rivers and sending people scurrying indoors, wanting to avoid being soaked to the bone within minutes.
Two people emerged from Hennessy’s bar, pushing open the heavy door and stepping outside into the warm mid-June air. Nineties rock music and the loud chatter of a busy bar followed them outside, which was swallowed when the door closed behind them. They stood under the covered doorway and looked at the sheeting rain in surprise, not expecting the weather to be as bad as it was and began to laugh.
“Good job I brought this,” Mulder said, holding out an umbrella triumphantly and pressing a button to unfold it. He held it over his head and stepped out from the doorway, the sound of the rain immediately becoming louder as it pounded against the fabric of the umbrella. “You coming?”
Scully looked up at the sky and then at the umbrella, her eyebrow cocked sceptically. “You sure that thing will cover both of us?” She wasn’t convinced.
“Of course it will,” he replied confidently, moving it over to cover her step from the doorway to him, even though his shoulder started to get drenched. He didn’t even notice. “Come on, we’ll be back at my place in no time.”
“I dunno Mulder. We should at least try and hail a cab.”
He looked up and down the street and back at Scully. “From where? All the cabs will be in the city taking all the youths to their next nightclub, where they’ll dance the night away and come out to wet streets and not even realise there’s been an apocalyptic storm. Come on Scully, we’re federal agents. We’ve seen worse than this.”
“Like what?”
“Hurricane Leroy?”
She tilted her head, conceding his point as she remembered their time down in Florida not long ago as they hunted a sea monster. If she looked carefully enough, she could still see the faint marks on Mulder’s neck following his attack by whatever the hell was in the pipes in the apartment block.
Shaking her head, she sighed but quickly stepped under the protection of the umbrella and looked up at him. “Let’s go then G-Man,” she said, unsure whether this was going to work. Her smile turned quickly into a loud squeal and a laugh as drops of rain made their way down the back of her neck. She pressed herself against her partner in an attempt to avoid the water that was cascading over the edge, but was failing miserably in her efforts.
“Oh my god Mulder, this isn’t working!” She half screamed, half laughed as the umbrella tilted when Mulder began to laugh, sending more water over her.
“It is, it is, we’ll be fine, you’ve just gotta stop squirming like that.”
She reached up and grabbed the pole and tilted it further over herself. “Then you have to let me hold it. You’re too tall for this to work.”
Mulder laughed and wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “We can do this, we can do this, we’re adults.” Scully raised an eyebrow at him again. “Okay so you’re the adult and I’m just this big, lanky, man child who’s lucky to still have a job at this point,” he laughed. “Come on, we can tell Skinner we don’t need to go on that team building conference he keeps threatening us with again,” he said as he grinned down at her.
Scully giggled and clutched at his t-shirt as she looked around at the rain that continued to pound around them. “Yeah, I’m not sure about this,” she said, glancing up at him.
“Sure we can, we just gotta...”
Mulder shuffled them over to the edge of the sidewalk, which drew more laughter from his partner. The umbrella wasn’t really helping as they both began to get soaked, but neither cared. They had too much alcohol in them and were enjoying being pressed together far too much to care about a rainstorm. As they reached the edge, Scully looked up at Mulder questioningly and watched as he stepped down the four inch kerb into the road, making their height difference a little more manageable.
“What are you doing?” Scully asked, smiling at him. Instead of craning her neck to look up at him when they were so close together, this time she was eye level with his lips, which seemed to be quirked into a permanent smile.
“Making it easier for us,” he grinned as he reached up and tucked some hair behind her ear. “Who needs a pyramid of office furniture, huh?”
Scully smirked and glanced at his feet, which were now submerged in two inches of rain water that was gushing along the road towards the gutter entrance ten feet away from them. Mulder followed her gaze and laughed.
He shrugged, not caring about the water that surrounded his feet. He’d just be happy if she continued to look at him the way she was. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get walking.”
Mulder grinned at her, shifted the umbrella to his left hand and held his elbow out for her. She returned his grin as she looped her arm through his and pressed against his side to keep as much umbrella over her as possible. They ambled along slower than they should have, but they’d had far too much fun over the course of the evening to want it to end, even if the rain was the worst they’d ever experienced.
Thunder rumbled overhead and rain continued to pour. The jackets they wore provided little protection from the pounding rain, which soaked through the exposed sleeves and drenched their skin, but neither much cared. It reminded both of them of the rain they had laughed in together at the very beginning of their partnership out in Oregon; Scully still savoured those memories.
“Thank you for tonight Mulder. I needed this.”
“What, getting soaked to the bone in the worst storm DC has seen in years? You’re welcome.”
Scully nudged him with her shoulder and laughed. “Shut up,” she smiled. “I mean... everything. The baseball and then this. I had a lot of fun.”
He looked at her and smiled. “So did I,” he said. “Even if you did cheat,” he added, turning his gaze away to look down the street.
“I did not cheat,” Scully weakly protested.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I asked if you’d played baseball before and you said no, only for me to discover that you’re actually Babe Ruth’s long lost daughter.”
Scully laughed as she stopped walking and tugged gently on Mulder’s arm, forcing him to stop too. They turned to look at one another, bringing themselves closer to each other than expected, all pretences of their own personal space long gone.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Scully began as she reached up to tap a manicured finger on the centre of his chest, “but I don’t recall hearing you complain when I let you wrap yourself around me to teach me how to hold a bat.” Mulder grinned at her words. “I’m fairly certain you were extremely… pleased, with the outcome,” she continued innocently.
“You felt that, huh?” Mulder asked.
“A nice piece of ash I think you called it.”
“I was talking about the bat.”
“I’m sure you were.”
They looked at one another for the longest moment. Scully bit her lip and tried to hide a smile, but she was failing miserably. Just as she felt the intensity grow too much to bear, a flash of lightning lit up the darkness, turning night to day for a second and a crack of thunder split the sky, breaking the built up tension between them. They both looked up at the same time and laughed nervously.
“We should really get out of here. It’s not safe walking around with an umbrella in a storm like this,” Scully said.
“The safest position in a lightning storm is to hold your ankles and stick your ass in the air,” Mulder replied.
“Be that as it may, I am not standing in the middle of the street with my butt in the air. Besides, I’m pretty sure you don’t need an excuse to stare at my ass.”
Mulder grinned and chuckled, surprised that she had caught him checking her out. “You’ve noticed that?”
“Oh yeah,” she smirked as she took his free hand and pulled him out of the street to a small alley between two buildings that she had spotted.
There was just enough space to provide cover from the constant rain thanks to the overhang at the top of both buildings. It was dark and they had stepped back far enough so as to be away from the drips coming from the roof as well as the rain hitting the sidewalk. Even if there were people stupid enough, like themselves, to be out in the storm and happened to glance down the alley as they hurried past it, they would never have noticed two people sheltering in there.
“We should probably wait until the rain eases off a little,” Scully said, flicking her gaze from the bouncing rain to her partner a few feet away.
“Probably. Although I do think we should start collecting the animals.” This time his comment made her chuckle. “Now she laughs,” Mulder said, rolling his eyes..
“To be fair,” she began, “I was still pretty pissed at you for kissing Sheila last time you said something like that.”
Mulder smirked and put his hands on his hips. “Scully, were you jealous?”
“Um, no, I was not jealous,” she stated, grinning at him when he stepped closer to her. “I thought it was very… unprofessional of you to get involved with a potential suspect.”
“Involved? With Sheila? Not a chance,” he laughed, shaking his head.
Scully turned to lean against the wall and crossed her arms but her eyes shone with amusement from their bantering and the corners of her lips were quirked upwards. “You were kissing her. I’d say that was pretty involved, wouldn’t you?”
“Uh uh, she was kissing me,” he replied, taking a chance and moving half a step closer towards her. She hadn’t pushed him away yet so he was feeling confident that his advances were being encouraged and when he felt her hands slip inside his jacket and settle on his waist, he knew that she was perfectly happy with his tentative come on. “You would have noticed that from the way I was trying to get her off of me. And anyway, if I was going to get involved as you put it, it certainly wouldn’t have been like that. I’d have tried to seduce her,” he added as he slowly slid his hands up her arms and back down again.
“Seduce her? Really?”
“Well…” he said with a shrug, “I’d have tried.”
“Yeah? So what would your proposed seduction have entailed?”
“Well,” Mulder sighed, “first I would have taken her to a baseball field under the pretence of teaching her how to play the beautiful game, but really it was just so I could spend time with her and try and work out if she wanted what I wanted.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I would have been totally shameless and showed her how to hold a bat and done this whole hips before hands thing that I know she’d love.”
Scully nodded and grinned. “Oh she would definitely have loved it.”
Mulder laughed and continued to casually rub his hands up and down her arms as he spoke. “Good to know. So, by this point she’d know that I was coming onto her and she would be loving the attention.”
“Would she?”
“Oh yeah, definitely. I don’t pay enough attention to her,” he added. “She’s a beautiful woman and deserves all my attention.”
Scully nodded and cocked her head to the side. “You know, it’s funny but this is starting to sound extremely familiar.”
Mulder grinned and nodded. “I would have taken her to a crappy bar afterwards and bought her cold beers and good food-”
“The food was good,” Scully commented with a nod.
“-then when we were done, I’d have walked home with her in the middle of an apocalyptic storm and ended up taking shelter in some alley because we’re idiots and think it was okay to be out in the rain. Although getting caught out in rainstorms is kind of our thing.”
“And then what?”
“Well, this is where it gets interesting right? So, I’d have effectively just taken her on the best date of her life-”
“Questionable, but okay.” She giggled when Mulder pinched her side gently.
“Hey, it was the best date of her life,” Mulder repeated. “Anyway, I’d have flirted with her, brought what I consider to be my A-game even though it’s been, admittedly, a long time since I went on an actual date, but she doesn’t need to know that because it’s kind of embarrassing.”
“Mulder? Focus,” laughed Scully.
“What? Oh, yeah, sorry,” he joked. “So, I’ll have been attentive, treated her like she deserves to be treated…”
“And?”
“And… even though it was only the first date-”
“Um… I’m not sure she considered it a date,” Scully interrupted, barely hiding her smile. “You should probably refer to it as something else.”
“Oh it was definitely a date.”
She giggled again and squeezed his waist. “How far do you think she’d go on a first date?”
“Well… first base maybe? I mean, if she wanted to of course.”
Scully bit her lip and nodded as she leant up towards him. “With a date as good as that, I’d say that first base would be a given, wouldn’t you?”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah,” she murmured.
Their lips met for an instantly bruising and heated kiss. The tension between them had been building all night and had finally come to a head after hours of flirting and casual touching as well as the conversation they’d just had. Scully slid her hands up Mulder’s chest to his head where she threaded her fingers through his hair, gripping the strands to hold him to her. He didn’t seem to mind.
The need for oxygen forced them apart as they separated breathlessly. Scully fingers remained tangled in Mulder’s hair, keeping his face close to hers. “I swear to god, if I’d caught you kissing Sheila like that, I’d have fucking shot you.”
Mulder couldn’t help but laugh and feeling emboldened by her words, he kissed her again and slid his hands down to her ass. She didn’t seem to mind if the small moan that escaped her was anything to go by. His back and neck began to ache but since he had no intention of stopping kissing her in case she came to her senses and smacked him, or worse, he did the only thing he could think of; he bent slightly to lift her up and press her against the wall. From the way she immediately wrapped her legs tightly around his hips, he was confident that she appreciated his movements. Eventually they needed to breathe again but this time, Mulder kissed his way down her jaw and neck.
“Sheila was right,” Scully breathed, tugging his head away from her neck as she spoke. “You really do know how to kiss.” As she was leaning in to kiss him again, a police car with flashing red and blue lights drove past, lighting both of them up for a split second and dragging Scully back to her sensibilities. She looked at Mulder and stroked his jaw lightly. “We should really get out of here if we don’t want to be arrested for public indecency.”
“Yeah, I don’t think Skinner would appreciate having to bail our asses out, do you?”
“Or my mom,” Scully added. “She definitely doesn’t need to know that her daughter was being felt up in a dirty alleyway by her work colleague.”
“Hey, your mom would be thrilled,” Mulder protested as he set her down on the ground. “And less of the work colleague,” he continued, poking her in the side and drawing a smirk from her. “So, you wanna get out of here? We could do more of that feeling up you mentioned.” He wiggled his eyebrows and leered at her, making her laugh.
Scully nodded but reached up on her tip toes to kiss him again gently. “Take me home Mulder,” she murmured against his lips.
He knew what she was asking and while he was trying to play it cool and not jump for joy because he had wanted her for longer than he cared to remember, he didn’t want her to regret anything in the morning as a mistake brought on by too much alcohol. He was feeling pretty sober and clear headed himself, but he wanted to make sure she knew what she was asking him.
“You’re sure? I was kidding about the feeling up but-”
She silenced him with another kiss and caressed his face gently with her thumbs before wrapping her arms around his neck to hold him close. “I’m sure.”
Scully knew what he was asking of her. Initially she’d had every intention of going back to his place to call a cab and go home, but now, she knew that if she went home with him, there was only one outcome for them and she wouldn’t be going home at all. And right then, going home with him was all she ever wanted.
Mulder picked up the umbrella and held out his hand to her, which she took and laced their fingers together. “You ready G-woman?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she replied.
Mulder grinned and leant down to kiss her one last time, wrapping an arm around her waist to hold her against him and letting his hand drift lower than it normally would. “I’m kind of addicted to doing that now,” he said when he pulled back. “I make no apologies.”
Still pressed against him, Scully smiled and kissed him back while she stroked his jaw with her fingertips. “That’s good to know… so am I.”
Foregoing the umbrella, Mulder pulled a laughing Scully out into the rain that had finally slowed to a drizzle and they began the short walk back to his building. Both knew what would happen on arrival at Hegel Place and neither wanted to think about the consequences of what was about to happen between them. Tomorrow they could sit and discuss their actions as much as they wanted, but for tonight, all that mattered was getting somewhere warm and dry and finishing what they’d started.