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Chapter Text

London, January 1991

She stepped off the plane and into the cold, and immediately, everything felt heavier. 

The air clung to her body like damp wool. It wasn’t the sharp cold of D.C. autumns, bright with maple leaves and the smell of coffee carts; it was older, more patient. A kind of ancestral chill that crawled down the collar of her coat and settled into her spine.

Dana Scully stood still for a moment outside Heathrow’s terminal, letting the city press in around her. Her coat, a plain camel peacoat, was already collecting mist along the padded shoulders. Her hair, short and cooper, was beginning to come loose in soft curls from the damp. She barely wore any makeup, just enough to conceal the tiredness beneath her eyes. Small pearl earrings, a pale blouse, black slacks. Professional, understated. She moved like someone who had learned not to take up too much space.

She didn’t know why she’d said yes to the program. It had come in a neatly creased letter, official, impersonal: One of our brightest forensic minds. Opportunity for inter agency academic enrichment. Scotland Yard sponsored special training in psychological profiling.

Her mother had sounded proud. “London,” Maggie said over the phone. “Maybe it’ll be good for you to get away from Quantico for a while. You’ve always been curious and you’ve always wanted to go abroad.”

The black cab wound through the city like a needle pulling thread, tight alleyways, blinking storefronts, iron gates clotted with ivy and age. Everything looked as if it had been standing for a thousand years and would remain standing long after she was gone. Her forehead rested lightly against the window, breath fogging the glass.

Her breath clouded in the air as she closed the door behind her. The scent was foreign, wet stone, diesel, old rain soaked into everything. Nothing like home. She hadn’t slept on the flight. Her eyes burned slightly from a mixture of exhaustion and determination. Or maybe nerves. But she would never call it that, even in her own mind.

“You’re one of the Bureau’s brightest minds,” they’d told her. A special assignment. Cross continental training, exposure to the behavioral methodologies of British law enforcement. A chance to impress, maybe. Or disappear for a while.

She hadn’t hesitated, not out loud.

The flat was modest, old, just a short walk from the Scotland Yard facility building where the training and seminars would take place. Tucked above a print shop on a quiet street in Bloomsbury. The building was Victorian with crooked charm, creaking floorboards, tall sash windows that refused to shut completely, and a narrow staircase that groaned under her squared heels.

A small living room with a green forest velvet couch, an open kitchen with pale yellow tiles, a chipped porcelain sink, a kettle and a single stovetop. Her bedroom was soft, dim, a small desk near the window, walls covered on salmon colored striped paper, and an old dark oak bed.

She left a sigh and let the bags drop to the floor. She could make it work. She always did.

She changed quickly to some more comfortable clothes, heels for boots, slacks for dark denim jeans, a loose blue navy sweater on top. She softened the curls on the end of her hair in the little mirror above the tiny table on the hallway and pinned her short hair in a little ponytail before heading to the street to run some errands.

White linen bed sheets, a rusted orange duvet. Teal blue and white towels. Pasta, coffee, butter cookies, herbal tea, onions, garlic, some fruit, wine.

She unpacked her suitcase, clothes, and toiletries. Left some books by the little desk facing the window, a folder, cream cardstock, Scotland Yard’s seal, her assignment schedule, seminar briefings. She placed a photo of her family on the dresser, her mother’s gentle gaze, Melissa’s unmistakable mischief, her father’s proud stance. Bill behind her, with a handmade knitted Christmas sweater with the sleeves too short for his arms, face frowned. It grounded her in something familiar while the rest of her world tilted toward the unknown. She was going to make it work.

She took a long bath, put on fresh pajamas and cooked some simple but comforting buttered pasta. Letting herself down by the couch with a chamomile tea, she curled under the burgundy blanket that was already at the apartment, jet lag undeniable, she was completely exhausted. She woke up to a half eaten plate of pasta, a cold tea and a copy of The Bell Jar half opened in her hand. It was almost sunrise, her back ached but she was too tired to blame herself for falling asleep on the couch.

***

The seminar building was tucked inside a quiet street with ivy curling around the gateposts. The doorman barely glanced up when she entered. Her low heels echoed across the stone floor. The hallway was dim, lined with portraits of serious men and a few women, all painted in muted colors. Dana’s breath caught for a moment. This was not Quantico, and definitely not North America.

The room was smaller than she’d imagined, more intimate. It smelled faintly of old paper and rain soaked wool. She was early. Of course. She chose a seat near the middle, not eager, nor disengaged. The rest of the room filled slowly with men, mostly and two other women. Students and agents, shifting in their seats, murmuring to one another in low, clipped accents, chatting as if they knew each other already. She kept her gaze forward, notebook and pen placed precisely in front of her. Her fingers were cold. She folded them in her lap to warm them.

The door opened and she walked in. Her heels clicked softly against the floor, the sound delicate but deliberate. Her suit was charcoal, tailored, silk. Pristine. Her blouse, a cream white that caught the light, almost pearled. She moved like water, composed but not stiff. Hair; long, blonde, styled. No earrings. A figure that didn’t apologize for itself.

The air shifted completely.

She didn’t know what she’d expected. She only knew what she hadn’t. She hadn’t expected the quiet to feel this thick, as if the walls had grown used to keeping things. No one had told her what her instructor looked like. There had been no photograph in the materials, no casual warning from the Bureau. Just a name: Detective Chief Inspector Stella Gibson.

“Good afternoon,” Stella said, setting a folder on the desk without looking up.

Her voice was low. Not soft controlled. The kind of voice that had no need to ask for attention because it already had it.

Dana automatically sat straighter while her throat went dry.

“I assume you’re all capable of reading a syllabus,” Stella said, her English accent as crisp as the edges of a pastry crust. “Let’s skip the preamble.”

No one moved.

“Good,” Stella said, not smiling. “This is a seminar in psychological patterning and behavioral inference. I do not teach profiling. I do not teach witchcraft. I teach recognition: of motive, of silence, of power. The things that are not said in interrogation rooms. The truths people tell when they think they’re lying.”

She turned to write something on the board. Her handwriting was slanted, sharp.

“The mind has corridors.”

Emily Dickinson. Dana felt something slide, almost imperceptibly, under her skin.

And then Stella turned.

Her eyes swept the room slowly, cool, evaluating and when her gaze landed on Dana and stayed there just long enough, she didn’t flinch but her pulse betrayed her. During Stella’s lecture, Dana didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. She felt as though she were being read, quietly, thoroughly, by someone who wouldn’t need to ask questions to find answers.

It unnerved her. And thrilled her at the same time.

When the class ended, she stayed to gather her things, perhaps slower than necessary but she hadn’t decided yet whether it was intentional or not. Stella stood at the front, organizing her papers, Dana approached. Her voice didn’t waver.

“Detective Chief Inspector,” she said. “I wanted to thank you. The lecture… was unexpected.” Stella looked up. Their eyes met. Dana’s breath caught, but she didn’t let it show.

“You’re Dana…” she hesitated “Scully,” Stella said, “MD, Pathologist, Special Agent at the Academy, D.C. Based”.

Dana’s spine straightened and felt her cheeks flush.

“It’s in your personnel file,” Stella continued, smoothing a page. “Along with a note from a Quantico supervisor: ‘Brilliant, skeptical, guarded. Resists group dynamics. High integrity. Keeps herself to herself.’” Stella raised an eyebrow. “Would you say that’s accurate?”

Dana swallowed a lump the size of an apple. The heat on her cheeks burned. “Mostly.”

“Which part would you amend?”

A beat. Dana tilted her head.

“I don’t resist group dynamics. I just don’t depend on them.”

A flicker of something, approval maybe, touched Stella’s mouth.

“Then we’ll get along just fine.” She said, with a faint smile on her lips.

 ***

The kettle screamed before she remembered she'd put it on.

Dana turned it off with a sigh and poured the water into the mug, watching the tea bag bleed into the cup like a slow bruise. She stood at the window with the hot mug warming her hands, watching London blur beneath the fine rain. A black umbrella turned inside out on the street below. A bicycle left leaned against a railing, already rusting. The radiator ticked unevenly.

There was a corner of her mind that kept trying to re enter that room, the one from the seminar, hours ago. But it wasn’t the room her thoughts returned to. It was her.

Dana hadn’t expected to be so undone by a moment. One glance. A voice. The way that blouse had shifted over her collarbone when she turned. The kind of woman who looked like she had never once apologized. She brought the mug to her lips and winced, too hot.

She set it down.

This wasn’t her, she didn’t do this. Not this… spinning. Not over a stranger. Especially not one she had to answer to.

Her attraction to women, if she had ever dared to call it that, was something she had spent most of her adult life keeping quiet enough to forget. It had lived in the margins: the flicker of a classmate’s hand brushing hers in college; the ache in her throat when a girl with a leather jacket and sharp eyeliner had once asked her for a light outside a bar in Georgetown. Small things. Insubstantial. Undeclared.

It had never followed her home.

She tried to convince herself, to tell herself it was intellectual. That she admired her. That it was professional curiosity, nothing more. That it made sense: Stella Gibson was accomplished, eloquent, formidable. The kind of person she would naturally study. Like a puzzle.

But her body remembered that first look. The silence in it. How the heat rose in her cheeks when Stella’s eyes had paused, just long enough to notice, and there was no puzzle in that.

She pressed her palms flat to the wooden counter, grounding herself. She was here to work. To prove herself. Not to become one of the people who lost their edge in another country, mistaking their entire life.

But the room still smelled like Stella, though of course, it didn’t. It was in her mind. That faint suggestion of perfume, expensive and barely floral. Musk, powder, jasmine.

She picked up the mug again. This time, it didn’t burn. She held it close to her mouth, letting the steam rise into her face.

Across the room, her coat hung by the door, collar still damp from earlier. Her heels lay sideways, one tilted awkwardly as if kicked off mid thought. It was the kind of thing she never let herself leave behind. She took the mug with her to the bedroom and crawled onto the bed without changing, still in her skirt and tights. The rain scratched softly against the windowpane. She pulled the blanket over her knees and opened the case file they’d been given.

She tried, but she wasn’t reading.

She was wondering how long it would take for Stella Gibson to forget her name. She had come to London expecting fog, structure, and distraction after a breakup. After a long year of first times and pain.

She had not expected her.

Chapter Text

Dana woke before the sun. She always did. The room was dark and unfamiliar in the quiet way all temporary rooms are. She sat on the edge of the bed, bare feet on cold wood. Listened. Nothing but the radiator ticking, slow, and the distant sound of London buses breathing down the wet streets.

It was a habit from medical school, this early rising. An hour before anyone needed her. A small pocket of control.

She ran. Just a mile, sometimes two. Her breath steamed in the morning chill. It felt good to move. To sweat. Not to think. When she returned, showered, hair still wet, she chose a neutral blouse with slacks, a burgundy blazer and made the same breakfast as almost every morning: toast, butter, tea, one soft boiled egg.

The kitchen smelled vaguely of dust and metal. The toaster only worked on one side. She stood at the small window over the sink while she ate, watching the neighborhood come alive. But in the quieter, Stella’s voice; low, deliberate. She couldn’t help it but thought of her. Her presence, like gravity. The memory of her gaze, bright and searing as a match in the dark.

She told herself it didn’t matter. Then she applied her lipstick, neutral, slightly warm, almost imperceptible. And left the house at 8:14.

The building was already packed. The morning full with activities and master classes. In the evening at the seminar room Dana chose the same seat, not by accident. Middle row, left side. Close enough to listen. Far enough not to be seen too clearly.

Not that it worked.

“No person is ever truly themselves in company.”

Virginia Woolf. She replied, words bumbling, escaping from her mouth like a thunderstorm.

There was a faint scrape of chalk. Dana’s pen didn’t move. She was too aware of the sound of her own breath. She turned slightly. Her eyes flicked, just briefly towards her. It was nothing. A moment. A glance.

Dana gripped her pen tighter.

A silence stretched, her stomach coiled with something she couldn’t name, tension, want, both.

Stella nodded, eyes on her, and began to move, pacing slowly behind the row of chairs. “Let’s talk about tactics. You’re in the room with a suspect. You want the truth. You think the truth will arrive because you’ve earned it. It won’t.”

One of the male agents, tall from MI5 with an Oxford tie and something rusty in his voice leaned back and said, “There’s always a way to get it. Sooner or later, someone breaks.”

Stella arched one perfect brow and turned. “And if she doesn’t?”

“Then she’s not innocent.”

The room hummed with unspoken agreement.

Dana stood still.

Across the aisle, the two other women attending the seminar, Detective Mercer and Agent Klein, offered synchronized nods. They were both stylish in a way Dana had once tried to emulate in college, before she understood the economy of female approval in spaces like this. Mercer crossed her legs slowly and smiled when she spoke, every glance sideways, calibrated for effect. Klein laughed at the MI5 agent’s remark, just loud enough to be noticed. She felt no judgment toward them. But no kinship either.

Stella turned then again, this time, glancing briefly toward Dana, and then she spoke.

“That depends,” she said, “on what you believe ‘breaking’ looks like. Not everyone screams. Some people just... shift. Offer the shape of the truth, but not the weight of it.”

A pause. The air in the room leaned in.

Stella’s mouth curved, just slightly. “And do you think you’d recognize that shift, Agent Scully?”

Dana held her gaze, carefully. “I’ve been trained to.” She answered, dryly. Not on purpose but in protection. Resistance.

“But training isn’t instinct.”

“No. It’s restraint.”

A longer pause now. The kind that draws blood.

Stella stepped forward slowly, her eyes still fixed on Dana’s.

“I imagine,” she said, “you know quite a bit about that.”

Laughter flared from someone behind them, breaking the moment like glass underfoot.

Stella’s gaze moved on.

But Dana felt the heat of it long after. Fire between her thighs.

After class, she didn’t rush out. She walked slowly toward the coat rack near the door, half hoping Stella would leave first and half praying she wouldn’t. The room had mostly emptied, save Mercer and Klein, who hovered by the coffee urn whispering something about the MI5 agent’s hands. She ignored them.

Stella was still by the board, replacing her pen in its case. Deliberate. Efficient.

Dana approached.

“You enjoy testing people,” she said quietly. Teasing.

Stella glanced at her, dry amusement dancing in the corner of her mouth. “No, Agent Scully. I enjoy seeing what they do after testing them.”

Dana smiled, tightly. “And did I pass?”

“That’s not the question.”

“What is, then?”

Stella closed the folder, turned fully toward her. “Whether you know how much of yourself you gave away while trying not to.”

Dana blinked. “You think I gave something away?”

“I think you’re fighting not to.”

Silence.

Then, cool and casual: “Walk with me.”

It wasn’t an offer. It was an order, braced low and velvet soft on her voice.

Dana hesitated, then followed.

They exited into the late London afternoon; clouds bruised with rain. They didn’t speak for a few blocks. Stella’s steps were elegant but unhurried, her hands tucked into the pockets of her coat, her body moving like a language Dana hadn’t yet learned to translate.

“You’re different,” Stella said at last. “Not just American,” she said, quipping. That’s the easiest thing to notice. But something else. You’re not here to impress anyone.”

“I didn’t come here to be noticed.”

“No,” Stella agreed. “But you were. Immediately.”

Dana looked over. “You watch everyone like that?”

“Only the ones who hide well.”

They stopped at the edge of a square where pigeons circled a fountain. Dana could smell something sweet; roasted chestnuts, or maybe cinnamon from a nearby stall. Her fingers were cold, but she didn’t want to put them in her pockets. She wanted to feel this, whatever it was, all of it. Stella ordered two large teas from the stall, a splash of milk for her and sugar for Dana.

Then lowering her voice, too close to her temple, she said, “You're a difficult read, Agent Scully.”

Dana’s heart stumbled.

She forced a smile, too restrained. “I’ve heard that before.”

“I imagine you have.”

Stella looked at her then. Fully. And not like an instructor. Not like a superior. Just like a woman.

“Have dinner with me,” she said, quiet and precise. “Not professionally.”

Dana’s breath caught and everything in her wanted to say yes.

But years of discipline reared up like a shield. The weight of a name. The idea of her mother’s voice. The cost of indulgence.

So instead, she said, “Why?”

Stella didn’t smile. “Because I want to see how much longer you’ll pretend not to be curious.”

And Dana felt it, like a lock clicking open somewhere inside her that she’d never meant to touch

Then she left before words came out of her mouth. Her heels too loud on the wet pavement, in the quiet dim evening.

She didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. She could feel Dana’s eyes following her body, her every move.

***

Dana didn’t answer.

Not then. Not immediately. She only stood there, the London sky gray and wet above them, trying not to let her hands shake.

She wanted to say something clever. Controlled. Something that would let her step out of this moment with her dignity intact. But all she could think about was the way Stella had said not professionally.

God, she really wanted to impress her.

As if it was that simple. As if the thing Dana had spent years pressing into silence, not even daring to allow herself to think about it was just… something she could invite in for dinner.

Later, next week, in her cold and lonely apartment, Dana stood in front of the mirror in her small, blurred bathroom. She was still damp from the shower, her hair wrapped in a towel. A drip traced down the curve of her back. She stared at herself for a long time.

At twenty seven, she was used to living for credibility. For containment. But now, she couldn’t stop seeing herself through Stella’s eyes. The way they had met hers, steady and unapologetic. The way she didn’t flinch from silence, or tension, or proximity.

She dried her hair. She chose a dress. Not one she packed to impress anyone, just black, simple, long sleeved. It didn’t cling, but it curved. She stood with it in her hands for nearly ten minutes before she let herself put it on.

Before heading to the stairs, she looked at her reflection in the mirror. She knew her. She could see her. She added lipstick. Subtle. Just enough to feel like herself and then she left the apartment with her stomach tight like a fist with nerves.

The restaurant was dimly lit, quiet and French. Of course. Linen napkins, heavy silverware. Stella was already there.

She wore white silk and a look that could cut through lies without raising her voice. A glass of red wine rested by her hand, untouched. Dana sat opposite her, the candle between them catching faint glints in her earrings.

“You came,” Stella said simply.

“I wasn’t sure I would.”

“I was.”

Dana looked down at her menu, even though she wasn’t reading it. “Confidence is a dangerous trait in an instructor, I’m aware of that.”

“I’m not your instructor tonight.”

That landed hard.

She folded the menu closed. “Is this something you do often?”

“What?”

“This.” Her eyes lifted. “Dinner with students.”

Stella leaned back, amused, unbothered. “Is that what you think you are?”

“I don’t know what I am yet.”

Silence.

“And what about you?” She replied, her lips curving on the edge.

“Actually… no.” She hesitated. “I mean, yes.” She could feel the heat on her cheeks, blushing, tension building. “I dated one of my instructors at the Academy.”

Then, “Good,” Stella said, with that rare flicker of softness. “It means you’re still open.”

She felt the heat drop from her cheeks to her spine.

The waiter arrived. Orders were taken. Dana asked for sparkling water. Stella didn’t push to make it wine.

“I read your paper,” Stella said once the waiter had gone. “On neurological interpretation of deception cues. It was precise.”

Dana looked down at her hands. “But?”

“But sterile.”

“That was the point. Objective analysis.”

“Hmm,” Stella murmured, “So you believe in objectivity.”

Dana looked at her sharply. “Don’t you?”

“I believe in the attempt. Not the success.”

Another beat.

Stella’s gaze sharpened. “What’s holding you back, Dana?”

The use of her first name felt like an exhale pulled from her lungs.

Dana swallowed. “From what?”

“From seeing yourself clearly.”

She didn’t answer.

But something in her eyes must have betrayed her, because Stella’s voice softened.

“You’ve built your world around control. But that’s not the same as understanding.”

“I know who I am,” Dana said quietly.

“Do you?” Stella asked. “Or just who you’re allowed to be?”

That… that hit too close.

Dana’s breath caught.

Stella didn’t press. She sat with discomfort, like it was a familiar guest. She reached for her wine, sipped, and said nothing.

Dana sat back.

The candle between them flickered like it knew too much.

And for the first time in years, Dana Scully felt like she was standing on the edge of something she couldn’t label with science or training, only with want, lust, desire. And the terrifying freedom of it.

Dinner ended late. The streets were slick and glimmering under weak lamplight, London hushed in the way only cities can be after dark, restless beneath the silence. Stella didn’t offer to call a cab. Dana didn’t ask.

They walked side by side, their coats brushing occasionally, every point of contact accidental and impossibly sharp. She was too awake, aware of the heat of Stella’s presence, the way her voice lowered when she asked, “So, what will you do when you go back?”

Dana didn’t answer right away. “I’ll finish training. Start my assignment, I guess.”

Follow the path.

“No field work?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Stella hummed. “You’d be wasted behind a desk.”

Dana glanced over. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

She smiled at that. A real one. It slipped out before she could control it.

They reached a corner where the fog hugged the streetlamps and the air smelled faintly of rain and exhaust. Stella stopped, hands in her pockets.

“I knew,” she said, “the moment I noticed you among the others in the seminar room.”

“Knew what?”

“That you were trying very hard not to want something.”

Dana’s breath caught.

“You don’t know me,” she said, but her voice had no bite.

“No,” Stella replied, stepping just slightly closer, “but I know that look. I’ve seen it in mirrors.”

There was a pause that felt like a held breath.

Dana didn’t move.

Her body was screaming to her in a language she couldn’t comprehend. Do something, step closer, close the gap. But her brain screamed with the voices of her past. Her mother. Her faith. Every measured, obedient part of her.

So instead, she said, “Goodnight, Stella.”

Stella didn’t move to stop her.

She didn’t sleep that night.

At dawn, Dana dressed in silence and left her apartment. The church was empty when she arrived. Church of the Immaculate Conception, at Mayfair, old, lit only by the rising light of London pressing through the stained glass. A single candle flickered by the statue of our Lady of Sorrows its flame barely alive.

She slipped into the back pew, genuflected out of habit, and sat down hard, her knees aching.

She didn’t pray. Not right away. She just breathed.

Let the silence do what words couldn’t.

Then she spoke to herself. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” The confession wasn’t to the marble Virgin. It wasn’t even to God. Eyes closed.

“I’ve followed every rule. I’ve made every right choice. I’ve lived for order. Discipline.” She broke off. Bit her lip.

She thought about Stella’s mouth. Her voice. The way she watched her like she saw past the layers.

She wanted. God, she wanted.

And it scared her more than any corpse, any crime scene, any gun in her hand ever had.

She looked up at the Virgin’s face, the sorrow on her eyes, the folds on her dress, “Is it wrong to want something you were never told you could have?”

The silence didn’t answer.

But it didn’t condemn her either.

***

Mornings were usually immaculate. Stella liked things orderly before the city came alive. She woke early, brewed her coffee strong and bitter, and read three newspapers. The ritual was part armor, part indulgence. But today, the cup sat cooling on the windowsill beside her, untouched.

She had been staring out over the rooftops for the better part of twenty minutes, legs crossed, robe tied loosely at the waist. She hadn’t expected Dana to come. Or rather, she had, but not so soon.

Most people played coy longer, flattered, curious, obedient. They liked her in theory, and feared her in person. It was always easier that way. But Dana… Dana didn’t play.

She listened. Carefully. Fought carefully, too. Always on guard, always ten seconds ahead of what she wanted to say. Her brilliance wasn’t performative, it was burdened. Hidden under something colder. Holier.

Stella had recognized the signs instantly. Not just repression. Reluctant clarity. She’d known it once herself, before things happened and she stopped asking for permission.

Now she felt the tug again. Unwelcome, but familiar.

She sipped her lukewarm coffee. Thought of Dana’s mouth when she said, “I don’t know what I am yet.” And something in her chest, something long dormant and mostly dangerous, twitched.

She should leave it alone.

But she wouldn’t.

Not yet.

She stood in the bathroom, towel wrapped around her hair, and caught her reflection. There were things in her face now she hadn’t seen in her thirties. The world was slower to apologize to a woman over forty. She didn’t mind. Power aged differently on her. But now she was watching herself for something else. Not vanity.

Vulnerability.

She exhaled through her nose. Annoyed. She’d meant to remain untouchable this time, but Dana Scully had walked into her seminar like a locked box full of thunder. And she knew she had never met a mystery she didn’t want to open.

***

The phone in the hallway buzzed its dull ring against the plaster wall of Dana’s bedroom. She’d stared at it for nearly a minute before picking up.

“Hello?”

A pause, then Melissa’s voice on the other end; bright, slightly amused:
“Hey, Starbuck.”

Dana closed her eyes. Childhood, safety, the only person who ever softened her sharp edges. “Hey… Didn’t expect to hear from you until next week. What’s up?”

Dana leaned against the wall, barefoot, one hand gripping the coiled cord too tightly.

“I just wanted to check on my little sister, see how everything was going on in her big London adventure…”

“Fine, I guess…”. “Yeah, nothing, everything is just… fine.”

Melissa was quiet for a second. Then: “Is that ‘nothing’ nothing, or a Dana nothing?”

Dana didn’t answer.

Melissa laughed gently. “Okay. Dana nothing it is then. Let me guess…”.

Dana almost smiled. “I’m fine.”

“You always say that before the good part.”

Silence stretched between them. Melissa didn’t push. She never had to.

Finally, Dana whispered, “Do you ever think about the life you didn’t let yourself have?”

Melissa exhaled slowly. “Honey… I think about it all the time. That’s why I try to have it now.”

Dana leaned her forehead to the wall.

“What if it changes everything?”

“Isn’t it the key?” Melissa said simply. “But maybe not the way you’re afraid of.”

Dana felt her throat tighten.

“There’s someone,” she said softly. Words slipping through her lips.

A beat.

“Okay…”

“A woman.”

Melissa didn’t gasp. Didn’t press. Her voice only dropped into something warmer. “Is she kind to you?”

Dana closed her eyes. “She’s… sharp. Difficult. Brilliant.”

A smile in Melissa’s voice. “Of course, she is.” She laughed.

“I don’t even know if I like her,” Dana said, frustrated. “She makes me feel... off balance.”

“That’s not a bad thing.”

“I’m not like you, Missy.”

“No,” Melissa said gently. “You’re like you. Which is exactly who you’re supposed to be, and I guess it’s what she sees.”

Dana gripped the phone tighter. Her voice barely a breath.

“It scares me.”

Melissa was quiet. “Let it. That’s how you know it’s real.”

They said goodbye soon after, in soft tones. But long after the click of the receiver, Dana stayed in the hallway, head bowed.

A single thought circled in her chest, she truly felt seen.

***

Two days later the seminar ended with the scrape of chairs and murmured voices. Mercer and Klein laughed too loudly as they exited, heels clacking down the corridor.

Dana gathered her things, her expression neutral, but her pulse was loud in her ears. She could still hear Stella’s voice in her head; calm, probing, intentional.

She was halfway into the hallway when she felt it, that presence again. Not loud. Just there. She turned. Stella stood by the door, arms folded, watching her.

Her blouse was tucked in with clinical precision. Her expression, unreadable. But her eyes, they didn’t hide anything. Dana opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out.

Stella took a single step forward. Close, but not too close. Enough for the overhead lights to catch the faintest line of tension between them.

“Good work there,” she said softly. Slightly tapping the folder, she was bracing in her arms.

Dana gave a half smile. “You mean I survived.”

Stella couldn’t think of anything but how her tongue made the “s” sound palatable on her mouth. How the twang in her accent was driving her crazy.

“I mean you held your ground.”

“I wasn’t sure if it was a debate or a test.”

“It could be both.”

Dana leaned slightly against the wall, clutching her folder tighter than she needed to. Her voice dropped. “Are you always like this?”

Stella tilted her head. “No.”

A pause. So slight. But Dana felt the shift in her lower belly, the heat, the unmistakable sensation.

She stared at the floor tiles. “You… you’re not what I expected here. In this programme.”

“And what did you expect?”

“I don’t know. A man in a gray suit. A lecture on criminal pathology without… whatever this is.”

Stella smiled. Quiet. Knowing.

Dana exhaled, unsure what she was even trying to say. “You get under people’s skin.”

“I guess it’s a talent.”

Dana’s eyes met hers again. For a long, charged moment, neither of them looked away.

And then.

“I should go,” Dana said. Too fast. Too sharp.

She shifted her folder in her arms and stepped past Stella, her shoulder brushing her arm with just enough contact to make them both still.

Stella turned her head slightly, watched her walk off but didn’t follow.

She only murmured, just barely loud enough to be heard. “Eventually you’ll stop running.”

Dana didn’t stop. She didn’t look back.

But she heard it.

And the sound stayed with her all the way home.

That night she lay still at first, beneath the cool weight of the duvet. Her body buzzing in the silence. She was never impulsive. Even desire came with deliberation. But tonight, deliberation gave way to something deeper, curiosity, but also hunger. For clarity. For contact. She let her hand slip lower.

Her fingers grazed over the waistband of her pajamas. She pushed beneath them, feeling the warm heat between her thighs. Already wet. She gasped, not at the sensation, but at the truth of it. How ready she was. Not from a fantasy of being taken. But from the memory of the way she makes her felt seen.

Stella’s face. The flesh of her lips. The certainty in her hands.

Dana’s breath quickened.

She moved slowly at first. Two fingers circling on her clit, gentle, curious, reverent. Her hips lifted slightly, chasing the rhythm. Her other hand fisted in the sheet, the cotton damp beneath her palm. She imagined Stella watching her, unblinking, her gaze a kind of permission Dana had never asked for but suddenly needed.

She slipped one finger inside herself, shallow at first. Testing. Her body clenched in response, aching. Her breath came short, her thighs trembling with restraint. She added pressure, and then another finger, her movements small and tight, chasing the tension building at the base of her spine.

Her brow arched, teasing. Her pool blue eyes, searching for answers. The freckle above her lip. Her big, beautiful breasts. Her hands again, cool and certain, everywhere. Not rough, not pleading. Just present. Firm. Knowing.

As if her touch wasn’t asking, wasn’t seducing, but confirming something Dana had already whispered to herself in a darker place. She pressed deeper. Faster. Her breath broke into short gasps. She imagined being touched on her lower back. Kissing her navel. Hands on her hips. Lips on the curve of her neck.

She imagined her. She imagined being watched.

When the orgasm came, it wasn’t loud, but consuming. Her hips lifted off the bed, legs drawn up, body arched. Her mouth opened around a breathless, a gasp trailing into silence.

Undone.

She lay still in the aftermath, stunned. Her hand rested lightly between her thighs, sticky and warm. Her heartbeat, loud in her ear, lulled in her center.

She wasn’t embarrassed. She was more awake than ever.

“Friday. Windy again today. The light in this city feels different. More filtered. Like everything here is half in shadow, but not always in a bad way. Today in the seminar we discussed profiling methodology. It should’ve been dry, but it wasn’t.

She pushed me. Again.

There’s something about the way she listens. She makes silence feel loaded. I don’t think she does it on purpose, but I’m not sure.

She stood close in the hallway. I felt her body heat before I realized I was staring. My chest tightens around her, like I’ve been holding my breath without knowing.

This isn’t…

I don’t know what this is. I’ve never allowed this kind of feeling oxygen before.

It feels dangerous.

It feels true.

I didn’t sleep last night. I can’t keep dreaming about her hands.

Chapter Text

The incense always lingered longer than it should and Dana liked that. It stayed in her clothes, her hair, like some holy remnant might still cling to her. It was quiet as usual, the light, gold and soft through the stained-glass windows made everything look like forgiveness. She hadn’t planned on coming today, but after the night before, she needed something to ground her. She sat near the back. Not quite hidden. Not quite seen.

The priest spoke of surrender, of patience. Of paths not visible but necessary. She listened with hands folded, her eyes closed more than open. She didn’t ask for answers. Just stillness. Just… the ability to breathe again.

She stepped out into the late morning light, wool coat buttoned up to her throat, gloves in hand. It was a cold winter morning. Her breath fogged in front of her as she walked, quick steps toward the bakery on the corner, Mass always left her hungry.

“Didn’t take you for a churchgoer.”

Dana turned, her pulse skipping before she even fully registered the voice.

Stella stood just off the sidewalk, coat unfastened, scarf loose around her neck, one brow raised. She had that same unreadable ease, like she hadn’t waited for this moment at all.

Dana’s mouth parted in surprise. “Are you following me?”

Stella smirked. “You make it sound sinister. I live three blocks that way,” she said, nodding past the church. “But if you want to believe it’s divine intervention, I won’t argue.”

Dana blushed.

Stella’s eyes flicked over her, not in a crude way, but with the kind of attention that made Dana feel undressed. Even in her pressed wool skirt and stockings.

“You look…” Stella trailed off, searching.

Dana crossed her arms. “Catholic?”

“Beautiful,” Stella said plainly.

Silence.

Dana didn’t know where to look. The collar of her coat suddenly felt too tight.

Stella cleared her throat. “I was going for a walk at Hyde Park. There’s a café nearby. You hungry?”

Dana hesitated.

Stella smiled as they walked.

They moved side by side through shifting morning past cyclists weaving through the mist, children sprawled on the damp grass, mothers pushing strollers with their weeping babies, teenagers chasing fragments of freedom, and families of ducks marching solemnly across the wet path. The daffodils had just begun to bloom, yellow mouths opening shyly to the light. Dana kept her gloves on, shoulders tight holding back something unnamed. At the edge of the park, the grass still glittered with dew, silvering their silence.

“You don’t strike me as someone who prays,” Dana said finally.

“I don’t.”

“But you believe in something?”

“Yes.” Stella said. “Behavior. Repetition. Justice. And I believe people tell you who they are, eventually.”

Dana looked sideways at her. “And what do you believe I’m telling you?”

Stella didn’t look at her. She bought two coffees from a weathered stand and handed one over without touching her hand.

Then, quietly. “I think you’ve been holding your breath for a long time.”

Dana didn’t speak. The cup trembled slightly in her hand.

They kept walking, slower now. A loop through Hyde Park that bled into a stroll along the edge of the canal. From first coffee to the second. From small silences to a shared buttered warm pastry on wax paper eaten on a bench that smelled faintly of rain. The bench creaked softly beneath them as Dana shifted, brushing a crumb from her lap. Her hand accidentally grazed Stella’s coat sleeve, and she pulled it back quickly, too quickly. Stella glanced down at the movement, but said nothing.

“I always forget how green this city can be,” Dana said, mostly to fill the space.

Stella leaned back, arm resting along the top rail of the bench, not touching her, not yet, but near enough for Dana to feel the warmth radiating from her side. “Green,” she echoed. “And gray, wet, depressing and entirely too full of pigeons.”

Dana laughed, light, surprised, and it startled even her. Stella turned toward the sound, eyes softening with something close to delight.

“I haven’t heard you laugh like that before.”

Dana bit her lip, glanced down. “Maybe you haven’t been very funny.”

“Oh, I’m deeply funny,” Stella said. “You’re just slow to admit you like me.”

Dana met her gaze then. Something electric passed between them, barely tethered, almost dangerous in how tender it felt. She tilted her head, playful now. “And you’re that sure of yourself?”

“I’m observant,” Stella said, voice low. “It’s part of the job.”

Dana shifted again, this time not pulling away when her knee brushed Stella’s. The contact lingered, like an invitation neither of them quite knew how to answer yet.

“I don’t usually do this,” Dana murmured.

“Walk through parks with professors?” Stella teased.

Dana’s smile was quiet. “Flirt.”

Stella’s hand moved slightly, just enough for her fingers to brush Dana’s, not quite a touch, more like an invitation.

“Neither do I,” she said, and her voice didn’t sound like a lie.

They sat like that for a while, beneath the damp hush of the British weather, pigeons pecking at their pastry crumbs scattered across the pavement. Their knees brushed, fingers drifting nearer by degrees, drawn not by accident, but by a shared gravity neither dared name. Two bodies pretending not to lean, already surrendered to the tilt.

It was that kind of day. One where time stretched sideways. Where Dana felt the scaffolding she’d lived inside for so long begin to bend, not collapse, but soften. She let her coat hang open. Let the wind lift her hair. Let her thigh rest, just slightly, against Stella’s. It wasn’t a date but it definitely felt like something more dangerous.

They walked on, the silence between them deepening into something not quite comfortable but not uneasy either. At some point their hands brushed.

Once. Twice.

And then lingered. Fingers bare, knuckles grazing, innocent in theory, electric in practice. Dana’s pulse jumped, a quick surge that made her breath catch. She felt the sudden, inexplicable urge to just reach over and take Stella’s hand. Just do it. Just feel it. The weight, the answer, the permission.

But she didn’t.

Stella looked at her and said softly, “You can take your time.”

Dana didn’t answer. She was already rebuilding. Quiet. Guarded. Polite.

By the time they wandered back to the neighborhood streets, the sun had dipped low behind the chimneys, casting long gold shadows over the pavement. Neither of them mentioned the time. Or the hours. Or how easy it had been to let the day go.

Stella slowed as they reached the small street where Dana’s rented apartment stood, her hand slipping back into her own coat pocket.

“I liked today,” she said.

Stella tilted her head, closing the gap between them.

Dana looked down. “I don’t… let myself like things like this.”

She stepped closer, the thick wool of their coats bruising, burning. Not touching. Her voice was low, velvety.

“I know.”

“I’m not…” Dana stopped herself.

“You don’t have to name it,” Stella said. “Not for me.”

She nodded, suddenly aware of her own breathing, of how her hands felt too empty, of how her skin still hummed where their fingers had touched before. Her eyes searched Stella’s face, and for a moment, something flickered, something wanting. Like she might lean in. Like she might ask for permission. Like she might kiss her.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she stepped back, straightening the collar of her coat.

“I should go.”

“I know,” Stella said again, but this time, there was a note of ache in it.

They stood for a moment longer. Then she reached for her keys and headed to the door, heels clicking on the stone steps.

She didn’t look back.

But Stella stayed still. A moment longer, her breath fogging faintly in the cold dusk. Somewhere nearby, a bike bell rang and a dog barked, and the city moved on around her like it always did indifferent to whatever tenderness had nearly taken root there.

She stared at the door.

You didn’t ask her to stay, she reminded herself.
You never do.

She walked slowly the long way home. Past the corner shop where she bought the newspaper but never read it fully. Past the bakery with the dusty window she used to frequent with someone she no longer called. Past the pubs with their Sunday roast signs and drinkers laughing too loudly.

Her house was cold when she stepped in. Not from neglect, just from the kind of stillness that seeps in when nothing living has crossed the threshold in days. She tossed her keys onto the tray by the door and slipped off her coat. Kicked her boots free without bending. The radio was on low, something classical she didn’t recognize. She left it playing.

In the kitchen, she poured herself a whiskey. Neat. She didn’t bother with the lights. Only then did she exhale. Not dramatically or in pain. Just… aware. Aware of what she could want, but more aware of how badly she wanted it. She never allowed herself to feel this much, it was unfamiliar, longing without possession. Want, without demand. Not a seduction, not a conquest. Not just physically. But fully. Unafraid.

The whiskey burned on her throat. She didn’t let people linger like this. She didn't keep stories in her head, or hands in her memory. She fucked or taught or led, and when it ended, she left nothing behind. Not for herself.

She sat down at the desk in her room and opened the drawer where she kept blank postcards. She picked one, plain and wrote:

I dwell in Possibility.

She stared at it.

***

The envelope was ordinary. Cream colored. Unmarked except for her name, handwritten in clean, upright letters she recognized instantly and the Scotland Yard stamp. Not her surname or her position. Just her name. Dana.

It was waiting for her on her seat when she entered the seminar room, coat still damp from rain, cheeks pink from wind and guilt. She hesitated before picking it up, scanning the room for Stella, but she wasn’t there. She knew she’ll be the first to arrive as always.

Dana slid into her seat, fingers brushing the flap. She told herself to wait, to be prudent but she was burning inside.

The Construction of Gendered Power in Investigative Frameworks . The draft of her paper. The margins held Stella’s notes in slanted, precise script, not just commentary but challenge. Sharp as always. Stimulating. She loved when people kept her guessing.

But beneath the last page, folded once:

A postcard.

White. Stark. Centered black handwriting.

I dwell in Possibility.

Dana froze.

She turned it over with a shaking hand. A day, an hour, a place. A date.

She stared at it for a long time.

She placed the postcard on her desk when she got home. She stood there; arms crossed over her chest like she might keep herself from unraveling.

Tuesday.

She read the time again. The place. And swallowed hard. Will she let herself want this? She sat down. Picked up her pen and opened the journal to a blank page.

***

The lace top was black, sheer in some places, stitched in elegant detail that made Dana hesitate before slipping it on. It wasn’t overly revealing, it had sleeves, a high neckline, but it clung to her ribs, to the soft slope of her chest, and when she turned in the mirror, she could see her shoulder blades through the back. She wasn’t wearing a bra.

Stella was already seated when she arrived a minute later, a glass of neat whiskey in front of her. No lipstick tonight, just pale eyeshadow and a silk blouse unbuttoned to the third pearl. Casual, but deliberate. Her gaze lifted the moment Dana walked in.

And stopped.

The look she gave her wasn’t just appreciative. Astonished. Not by how Dana looked, but how she had chosen to look.

“You came,” Stella said.

Dana slid into the seat across from her, letting her coat fall open.

“You invited me.”

Stella’s eyes dragged slowly down the lace top, over Dana’s hands folded on the table, to the cut of the skirt just above the knee. She didn’t read her. She studied her.

“I didn’t think you would say yes,” she murmured.

Dana ordered wine and automatically felt the heat rising to her chest, her cheeks. They talked. About everything and nothing at the same time.

“You’re brilliant,” Stella said plainly. “You could teach this seminar.”

Dana smiled without looking away.

“Is that why you invited me out?”

“No,” Stella said. “That was because I wanted to see how you’d look when you finally let yourself relax.”

Dana’s laugh was low. She leaned forward, their knees brushing under the table. The friction of their tights aching, heat pooled in their core. This time no one moved.

They drank more. Not much, but enough to slow the world around them. Enough to make each accidental touch last a second longer than it should. Every glance was a loaded gun. Once, Stella’s hand rested just lightly over Dana’s when she reached for the wine bottle. Dana stilled yet she didn’t pull back. They felt safe. They were orbiting each other, caught in invisible gravity.

Walking down a narrow Soho street, their shoulders occasionally brushed. The rain started soft, then came suddenly, hard and cold. By the time they reached Stella’s home, they were drenched. She reached for her keys. Dana stood behind her, hair soaked, coat clinging, eyes wide and mouth parted from the cold.

Neither moved.

Stella turned slowly.

“I have towels.”

Dana’s voice was quiet. “Okay.”

A beat.

Then Stella opened the door, stepped aside, and Dana walked in.

The house smelled like cedar and something floral she couldn’t name. Dana stood in the entryway, rain dripping from her skirt to the floor. Stella disappeared and came back with a towel. She held it out, but Dana didn’t take it, just looked at her, trembling now.

“I don’t…” Dana whispered. “I’ve never…”

“I know,” Stella said gently, closing the thin gap between them.

Dana swallowed. “But I want.” A low, needy sound escaped her lips.

Stella stepped forward, lifted the towel, and began to dry Dana’s hair with slow reverence, her breath caught. She let her. Her body responded before her brain caught up. The towel moved over her shoulder, her neck, then Stella dropped it silently and reached up with bare hands. She cupped Dana’s cheek and tucked a stray lock behind her ear, fingers lingering just a second too long.

Dana leaned into it and Stella kissed her. Soft, warm, unhurried. Like a secret shared in a church. She gasped, something low in her chest unraveling. Stella deepened the kiss. She felt the slick slide of her tongue along the seam of her lips, gentle but insistent, and without thinking, she parted her mouth. Tongues met, cautious but curious, and heat bloomed low in her stomach, her knees nearly buckled from the sensation: wet heat, the soft press and swirl, the way Dana’s tongue moved like a slow pull, tasting her, savoring her.

They kissed like they were learning each other with their mouths, small moans exchanged between lips, the sound of wet heat and shallow breaths filling the space around them.

Dana’s hand slipped from her cheek to her neck, fingers splayed just below her ear, while her other hand slid to her lower back, drawing their bodies together. She could feel the curve of her hips, the heat of her breasts, the press of her thigh just grazing between hers.

A gasp slipped from her lips, swallowed by Stella’s mouth that only seemed to make her bolder, her teeth caught her bottom lip for a second, just enough to make her exhale sharply, arousal curling tighter inside her belly.

When Stella’s hands slid to her waist, under the damp lace, Dana whispered, “Don’t stop.”

And she didn’t.

They made it to the bedroom half undressed. Stella peeled Dana’s top off like it was something sacred. She didn’t fumble or rush. Her mouth followed along her clavicle, the inside of her elbow, the skin just above her breast. She smiled noticing she wasn’t wearing a bra and could feel Dana’s cheeks blushing under her own skin.

Dana was breathless but not afraid. She wanted this. All of it. And Stella wanted to see her. All of her.

She leaned away just enough to take her all in.

“You’re so beautiful, Dana.”

Her skin was a night sky kissed with constellations, her golden little cross laying just between her breasts. So personal, so intimate it nearly stopped her hands from exploring every inch of her skin. Her breasts, small, round, perfect, screaming for attention. Stella leaned forward and kissed the hollow of her throat, just beneath the chain.

Then lower.

Until Dana was arching into her with something more than permission devotion. She laid her back on the bed like she was something breakable, and then proved she wasn’t. Her hands were sure. Her mouth was everywhere. Kisses along Dana’s breasts, lips and teeth playing around her nipples warm and taut under her tongue. A slow climb up her ribs. A pause before her hips, just enough to ask permission without speaking.

Dana arched. “Please.”

She hadn’t meant to say it aloud but it came out raw and low, like something dragged from her center.

Stella didn’t move right away.

She hovered there, just below Dana’s waist, her hands stroking the inside of her thighs like Dana was a page she was still reading. Her eyes didn’t flick up with triumph or need. They lingered, dark and questioning.

“You want this?”

Dana nodded, mouth parted.

Stella moved closer.

Then closer.

Dana had expected a sudden touch. A rush. A heat like in her own bed when she had tried, alone in the dark, whispering fantasies she didn’t dare name. But Stella kissed her first, just above the hip. Then again, lower, slower, almost cruel in its patience. Her thighs. Then her hip bones. Not for show, but to say: I see all of you. I want all of you. Dana’s head fell back. One hand tangled in the sheets. The other found Stella’s hair, cool and damp at the tips from the rain.

Then Stella’s mouth finally, finally , touched her.

And the world shifted.

It wasn’t fast. Or rough. It was precise. Stella used her mouth like she’d spent years learning how to listen to a woman’s body. Pure worship. Her tongue stroked and circled, pausing just when Dana’s breath caught, pressing deeper on her clit when she whispered her name. She dipped her mouth between her folds tasting every corner. Her flesh was hot and swollen, pleading for more. She traced her rhythm. The way her hands trembled. The way she moaned softly, then with need. The way she broke open like she had been waiting years for this permission.

Dana was gorgeous like this.

Messy. Honest. Gripping Stella’s wrist, then her shoulder, eyes fluttering shut then wide again, like she couldn’t decide if she was dreaming. Her fingers searching, finding, giving. One, two. Her tongue wet, circling, drinking every drop of her arousal.

Dana cried out softly, biting her knuckle. Then she let it fall away.

It wasn’t shameful.
It wasn’t wrong.
It was hers.

Stella’s lips didn’t pull back immediately. She lay there, her cheek on her thigh, hot and heavy, her lips parted, swollen, flush and tender. Her hand still holding Dana, tight, fingers entwined in reverence and care.

Dana laughed softly, a smile blooming slow across her lips as her hand reached instinctively to cover her face. She felt so good. Undone in the most glorious way. Only then did Stella’s grip ease. She laughed too, low and breathless, reaching up to find Dana’s mouth, to see her properly, drink in the freckles, the proud line of her nose, her parted lips, her closed eyes. Every inch of her.

They kissed then, slowly, tender, full. Complete. Tasting herself on her lips.

Dana pulled Stella’s shirt off like she’d done it before. Her hands weren’t timid, they ached. She kissed down her chest, her ribs, tasting skin with her lips and tongue. When she reached Stella’s breast, she paused and looked up, flushed, uncertain.

Stella looked at her and cupped the back of her head. “Don’t stop.”

And Dana didn’t. She kissed, suckled, bit gently, and listened to Stella come undone for once. Head tilted back, body shivering.

They took turns like that. Hands slipping between thighs. Mouths open, hot, unhurried. It wasn’t about dominance. It was about discovery.

Stella whispered, “That’s it. Just like that.” And she cried out as Dana’s fingers pressed inside her, slow and deep, the rhythm building like music only they could hear. Her whole body shook.

They moved together until the rain outside was only a hush in the background.

Until neither of them was hiding anymore.

Until nothing existed but heat, skin, and the quiet, reverent sound of each other’s names.

They didn’t speak for a long time. The only sound was the rain pattering against the windows, softened by the heavy curtains, and Dana’s breathing, still uneven, still raw from all that had been unlocked. Stella lay beside her, arm draped across her stomach, her chin tucked near Dana’s shoulder. Her body was warm, damp in places from sweat and rain, and sex, and the spaces between them. But she didn’t move. She didn’t need to.

She wasn’t asleep. Not exactly awake either. Her hand traced slow, unconscious patterns over Stella’s forearm; tiny circles, over and over again, as if trying to memorize her without knowing she was doing it.

“I’m not going to disappear,” Stella said eventually, voice soft, low in the dark.

Dana’s hand stilled.

“I wasn’t…”

“You were,” Stella murmured. “Or maybe just wondering what happens next.”

Dana turned her head toward her, barely. “Do you know?”

Stella gave the ghost of a smile. “No. But I know what doesn’t happen. You don’t wake up alone. You don’t pretend this didn’t mean something.”

Dana swallowed. Her eyes were heavy, but open. She shifted a little, letting herself turn fully onto her side, facing Stella now. They were close, too close, maybe, but neither wanted to pulled back.

“I feel like I’ve lost something,” Dana whispered.

Stella met her gaze. “What do you mean?”

“The version of me that was… afraid.” Her voice cracked a little. “The one who refused to want this.”

Stella lifted a hand, ran it gently over Dana’s temple, through the wet curls at the nape of her neck. “She was a shadow. And you’re not lost. You’re just… finding your way home.”

Dana closed her eyes at that.

There was a long silence. Then, without planning to, Dana whispered:

“When I was younger, I used to pray that God would take it away. The wondering. The images. The ache.”

Stella didn’t interrupt. Her hand moved to her cheek, thumb brushing lightly. “And now?”

Dana opened her eyes. She looked at Stella. Really looked. At the silver hair falling into her face. At the softness in her jaw. At the woman who had just broken her open with nothing but her mouth and her patience.

“Now I think,” Dana said, “that maybe God didn’t want me to be afraid. Maybe he sent me someone who sees me. Even when I don’t.”

Stella’s throat worked around silence. She didn’t speak. She just leaned in and kissed Dana’s forehead.

And then pulled her close. Held her like something she’d been aching to hold for years.

They slept like that.

Entwined. Breathing each other in. The rain faded sometime after midnight. But neither noticed. Because for once, neither of them woke up to loneliness.

They woke up in warmth, in softness, in each other’s arms.

And it felt like absolution.

Chapter Text

They didn’t talk about it.
Not directly.

After that first encounter back in the seminar room, their conversations remained crisp, measured, professional. But everything about them had changed. Dana felt it first in how she waited for Stella’s gaze now. How she could no longer claim it was accidental when they locked eyes across the room. She caught herself watching the curve of Stella’s wrist as she poured tea, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was thinking. The subtle sway of her hips, a quiet rhythm, shifting side to side behind the track of her heels.

It wasn’t longing. Not exactly. It was recognition, like her body had memorized what it felt like to be opened by that mouth, those hands, and now craved every unspoken echo.

And Stella? She gave nothing away. Except that she did.

In the way she responded just a second faster when Dana spoke. In how she would occasionally let a silence stretch, just long enough to feel intimate. In the way her voice softened imperceptibly when she addressed Dana directly, like every syllable was for her alone.

It was raining again the night Stella offered her a ride. Her umbrella flipped inside out, her hair was curling at the edges, she was exhausted after a long day of classes, campus meetings, and the lack of sleep since they’d secretly begun sharing their nights more often.

The car pulled up beside her, just as she was swearing under her breath, a raindrop trembling at the tip of her nose. Stella rolled the window down and looked at Dana in all her chaos like she was her whole world.

They didn’t speak much during the drive. Just enough.

At a red light, Stella said, “You seemed quiet today.”

Dana hesitated. “I've been thinking a lot lately.”

She couldn’t deny it, at least not to herself, not anymore. There was fear, thick and quiet beneath her ribs. Fear of the future, of what waited beyond the edges of this borrowed time. She was only here for the program. A handful of months. A small parenthesis in her life that was meant to be filled with lectures and papers, not someone like Stella.

Stella, who was older. Who had lived through entire chapters Dana hadn’t even started. Who might have different priorities, solid ones, permanent ones. Not the tender ache of a woman trying to figure herself out in borrowed bedsheets.

She was afraid of what her family would say, if they ever knew. Afraid of what she’d say in return. What words could she even use? That she’d fallen in love with someone who made her feel like a truth she hadn’t known she was waiting for? Was she in love with Stella?

She liked her. Of course, she did. But was that all it was; a fleeting discovery, beautiful and unsustainable? A season. A tenderness wrapped in stolen time. A pastime dressed as something more?

Stella lingered, then let her hand slip onto Dana’s thigh, slowly, deliberately, her fingers settling there with a quiet claim, warm through the thick wool fabric of her skirt.

“Would you like to come over for dinner?” she asked, like it was nothing. Like she wasn’t offering Dana another threshold to cross.

Dana’s heart kicked. She nodded. “Yes.”

The door clicked shut behind her, Dana stood in Stella’s hallway, drinking on the scent of Stella’s hair clinging to the air between them, lavender, white musk, jasmine. Unsure what to do with her hands. Stella hung up her coat, then turned to face her. She could feel Dana’s pulse racing. Her cheeks, burning. She didn’t think twice, she simply leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to her mouth like. Brief. Necessary. She needed her as much as Dana was aching for her need. Dana didn’t move. Just stood there, fingertips ghosting over her lips, a quiet smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Something warm and unnamed bloomed in her chest. Her thoughts wandered to a place inside her that no longer felt hidden.

Stella turned over and took off her heels.

“You can hang that there,” Stella said, her voice low and warm, nodding toward the coat hook as she walked to the kitchen, barefoot, about to open a bottle of wine. Her lips curled with a daring smile.

Dana followed her in.

She opened the fridge and went straight to the big ceramic sink to wash her hands, sleeves rolled up.

“Are you cooking?” Dana said, teasing gently.

“I’m not completely helpless,” Stella replied, pouring two glasses of wine. “Besides, it seemed fair. Last night you gave me your body. I thought I’d feed you this time.”

Dana flushed but took the wine anyway.

They stood in the kitchen, quiet for a moment, sipping. Watching.

“Are you always this charming to all your students?” Dana asked, but there was mischief under it.

“Only the brilliant, complicated ones who keep me up at night.”

Dana blinked. Her stomach fluttered.

Stella turned back to the stove. “Sit.”

Dana slid onto the stool by the kitchen island watching Stella move. There was a grace to her even now, barefoot, in her blouse and trousers, sleeves damp from washing herbs, a strand of her loosened from the little bun she had already made. A different kind of intimacy. One Dana hadn’t expected to crave.

“What are you thinking?” Stella asked suddenly, without looking at her.

Dana hesitated. “That you’re not what I expected.”

Stella glanced back. “Good. Expectations are the enemy of pleasure.”

Dana’s breath caught at that. She took another sip of wine and smiled.

The house was glowing with low lamps and the scent of garlic and rosemary. Jazz hummed quietly from the record player in the corner of the living room. It was too much, but in the way of things you secretly hoped for.

They ate at Stella’s coffee table, sitting on the rug, legs entangled like wild ivy, the city dark beyond the windows, candles flickering low between them. Rain ticked against the glass in a soft rhythm, long forgotten.

The food was simple, grilled fish, roasted fennel, soft bread still warm. Dana ate slowly, partly from nerves, mostly because she couldn’t stop watching Stella. The way she tore at her bread with her fingers, how she spoke between bites, sipped her wine, how she wasn’t polished, not in the way some women tried to be, but she was entirely herself. There was a kind of elegance in her ease, in the way she lived inside her body without apology. Dana found herself smiling, quietly, falling a little more with every bite Stella took.

The bottle was nearly empty. One glass left between them, warming slowly on the coffee table. The lamplight cast soft shadows across Dana’s face, flickering across her cheekbones, the fine edge of her jaw.

Stella shifted beside her, legs tucked beneath her, fingers trailing the rim of her own glass. She watched Dana for a moment, not just looking but studying, like the lines in her face held some secret she hadn’t yet discovered.

“When did you know?” Stella asked, voice quiet but not tentative. “That you wanted to join the FBI.”

Dana glanced at her. The question didn’t startle her. Not from Stella.

She exhaled slowly. “It wasn’t a single moment,” she said. “It was more… an accumulation. Little things, stacking over time. I loved science. Loved medicine. But I also wanted to apply it to something more immediate. Something that felt like it could… make a difference.”

Stella tilted her head. “And did you feel that in medicine?”

“In theory,” Dana said. “But it was distant. Clean. Clinical. I wanted the dirt under the nails of it. I wanted to know why people do what they do. And I suppose,” she added, voice lowering, “part of me wanted to prove I could.”

“To who?”

Dana looked down. Her fingers played with the edge of a cushion. “My father, maybe. The world. Myself…”

Stella reached out. Her hand found Dana’s knee, thumb sweeping slowly over fabric. “You could’ve stayed safe. Taken the academic path. Taught. Published.”

“I still might,” Dana said with a quiet smile. “But the Bureau… it felt like a challenge. Like I could use what I knew to bring clarity to chaos.”

Stella’s eyes softened. “It suits you. This quiet fire. The sharpness. The discipline. But I wonder…”

Dana looked at her. “What?”

“If you know how rare it is,” Stella murmured. “To meet someone who wants truth that badly. Even when it hurts.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was full. Dana leaned her head back against the couch, her body angled toward Stella’s. A pause. A heartbeat.

“It does hurt,” she said. “But not knowing hurts more.”

Stella’s hand stayed where it was, grounding them both. “Then you were never going to choose easy.”

Dana looked at her again. This woman who saw through her without effort, who never asked for more than what Dana was already willing to give.

“No,” she said softly. “I was never going to choose easy.”

A silence stretched, intimate and patient.

Stella leaned towards her, wine glass in hand. “And do you see yourself staying?”

“In London?”

“In the field. In the system. You’re young. But you won’t always be. You’ll rise, or you’ll leave.”

Dana’s gaze dropped to her plate. “Sometimes I think I’ll become something I didn’t plan to be. A ghost in a man’s war. Or a body they’ll bury in bureaucracy. Other times, I think I’ll burn through all of it.”

“That’s the thing about women like us,” Stella said, eyes sharp now. “We’re taught to confuse survival with arrogance.”

Dana met her eyes again. Her voice was soft now. “And what about you? What did you want?”

Stella looked down at her hands, then back up. “To stay ahead of what was expected of me. And to never apologize for being the most dangerous woman in the room.”

Dana stared. “You are.”

Stella’s smile was a slow, quiet thing. “So are you.”

The candles flickered between them.

Dana shifted. She felt something low and warm uncurling in her belly. Not wine. Not nerves. Pure desire.

After dinner, they didn’t rush.

Stella cleared the plates and Dana helped dry, hands brushing. Their eyes met once, held, then looked away, shy. Like teenagers again. They kissed slowly at first, up against the kitchen doorway, Stella’s hands still smelling of citrus and wine.

This wasn’t about surprise anymore. This was pure understanding.

When Stella led her to the bedroom, they undressed each other with more certainty. Dana’s blouse pulled over her head, her hands trembling only slightly now. Stella’s fingers brushed Dana’s collarbone, then her chain. Then her bra, pearled, white, with a little patch of lace. Stella peeled it away, inch by inch, her fingers gentle but deliberate.

Dana stood still, letting herself be revealed, not just undressed.

Then she touched back. When Dana tugged Stella’s shirt off, her hands lingered over the slight curve of her waist, the scar near her ribs, the softness in there. And when Stella kissed her again, deep, open, hungry, she melted.

They made it to the bed in pieces. Stella laid her down with a patience that only made Dana burn more. She kissed across her stomach, her thighs, her collarbones. And then her mouth again slow, deep, their breath mingling.

“You’re so beautiful,” she said quietly. And she meant it.

Stella breathed out. “So are you.”

She crawled between her legs like she already knew the shape of her need, and Dana opened for her without thinking, her breath hitching when her lips met Dana’s thigh. And then, her tongue.

It was slow at first. Measured. Like she was still learning every corner. Dana moaned, spine arching, hands fisting the sheets.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, and Stella hummed into her, sending a shiver straight up her spine.

The tension built with maddening precision Stella circling her clit with steady, unbearable rhythm, fingers sliding inside with ease, filling her completely. Dana couldn’t hold still. She rocked into her mouth, into her hand, chasing every rise, her sounds growing louder, broken. And when she came, hard, full, raw she sobbed Stella’s name tangled on the sheets.

And Stella didn’t stop.

She coaxed her through it. Held her through it. Her arm around Dana’s thigh, her mouth still soft and open, savoring the way Dana’s body shuddered beneath her.

Then Dana pulled Stella up. Kissed her, fierce now. Pushed her back.

“I want you naked,” she said, breathless.

Stella laughed, dark, delighted. “Then you have to undress me.”

She took her time. Mapped Stella’s body with hands and mouth. Let herself wonder. Let herself want. She listened to Stella’s breath falter, to her curses breaking into moans.

She kissed her open. Slowly. Hands on Stella’s hips, sliding her trousers down, revealing skin inch by inch. When she knelt to kiss the inside of Stella’s thighs, Stella gasped and that sound undid Dana completely.

She climbed up the bed, let her fingers explore first slow strokes, teasing. Then she lowered her mouth, tentative but eager, listening to every moan, every curse. Grounding herself, hands playful on her breasts.

“You’re so… fuck, Dana… yes” Stella’s voice cracked when Dana sucked harder around her clit, tongue stroking in rhythm, her hands holding Stella’s hips still.

Stella came undone with a strangled cry, body arching, thighs trembling around Dana’s shoulders.

And when Dana pulled away, slick and flushed, they kissed like they’d been starved. Like language was irrelevant now. Their taste on each other's lips was the best dessert they could ever dare to taste.

They lay tangled together, skin against skin, limbs heavy with release.

Dana could feel her skin still thrummed, her breath uneven, her mouth swollen from kisses. She was slick, raw, wide eyed beneath Stella, her thighs trembling from release. And still, aching.

She didn’t want to stop.

And Stella knew it.

She looked down at Dana, flushed and breathless in the lamplight, her hair mussed, the cross still around her neck. She touched it gently, reverently, letting her thumb rest on the dip of Dana’s collarbone.

“You’re not done with me, are you?” Stella asked, voice low, rich.

Dana shook her head. “Not even close.”

A slow smile touched Stella’s lips. She rose up onto her knees, moving to straddle Dana’s hips.

Her thighs pressed warm against Dana’s, her center slick and ready.

Dana stared, wide eyed, lips parted as Stella reached between them and guided her hand. “Touch me again,” she whispered. “Let me show you what else we can be.”

Dana slid her fingers between Stella’s legs, amazed at how wet she was. How she gasped; sharp and broken when Dana pushed inside again.

Then Stella moved.

She rode her slow at first, hips rolling in a rhythm that stole Dana’s breath. The sight of her head thrown back, breasts rising and falling with every gasp was devastating.

Dana could do nothing but watch and feel, lost in the heat and slick weight of her.

And then Stella looked down, caught her gaze, and began to move harder faster, fucking herself on Dana’s fingers with unrelenting control, chasing her own pleasure with a kind of beautiful ferocity.

Dana moaned beneath her, her free hand gripping Stella’s thigh. “Jesus, Stella”

Stella bent down, mouth close to Dana’s ear, panting, voice wrecked.

“I want you to fuck me so bad,” she growled.

Dana nearly cried out. She was soaked again. Her body clenched, overwhelmed, starved. She pulled out her fingers and arching her hips let her clit found Stella’s.

“Yes,” she gasped. “God. Yes. Please don’t stop”

Stella kissed her hard, deep, tongues tangled and desperate then bit Dana’s lower lip just enough to make her gasp again.

When she came, Stella shattered her cry low and guttural, thighs clenching, hands fisting into the pillow beside Dana’s head.

And Dana watched her. She watched Stella Gibson unravel above her, held by her, because of her.

It was one of the most erotic, electric things she’d ever seen.

Stella collapsed onto her, breath stuttering, hair damp against Dana’s neck.

They stayed tangled. Dana’s hand cupping her ass firmly, pulling her closer, needing her impossibly deep, Stella’s mouth on her collarbone, both of them trembling.

“Fuck,” Stella whispered into her skin, hoarse and wrecked. “You’re dangerous.”

Dana let out a soft laugh, almost dazed. “You started it.” She chuckled.

That night they slept tangled and slick with sweat. Intoxicated in their arousal.

***

The light through the curtains was pale, soft, foreign London light. Dana blinked awake slowly, chest rising and falling under the weight of an arm. Stella’s.

Her body ached in that exquisite, ruined way. Every inch of her skin hummed with memory. Her thighs, especially. Her mouth. Her hands.

She turned her head to find Stella still asleep beside her, hair tousled, one arm draped over Dana’s stomach. Their legs tangled. The scent of sex still in the room. Still on their skin.

Dana watched her. Let herself be still.

She didn’t feel afraid. Just changed. Not something you walk back from.

Her fingers brushed over Stella’s hand, where it rested on her belly. She brought it to her lips, kissed the back of it, then let it go.

Stella stirred, turned toward her. Bleary eyes. A smile, slow and bare.

“Good morning, Agent Scully.”

Dana grinned, embarrassed. “I’m not your student anymore.”

Stella’s smile deepened. “Oh, I know that.”

They lay like that for a while, quiet, smiling, saying nothing.

Eventually, the day would come. The seminar. The reality. The veil again.

But for now?

For now, they had this. They had each other.

***

Dana sat in her apartment alone later that evening, wrapped in one of Stella’s jumpers. It still smelled faintly of her; bergamot, something sharp underneath, cedar, sandalwood. She hadn’t meant to take it, hadn’t meant to need it. But here she was. Knees drawn to her chest. Journal open. Pen paused mid-sentence.

She had always trusted reason. Dissected emotion with clinical precision. But now, language felt useless.

“There is something inside me that can’t be explained by science. Something unfolding. It doesn’t feel like sin. But it doesn’t feel simple either.”

She touched the gold cross resting against her chest.

“What if I’ve always known? What if I just kept it buried beneath ambition and white coats. Does this mean I’d never wanted any men to stay?”

She blinked back the tears she hadn’t expected to come.

Then, almost without thinking, she reached for the phone.

“Missy?”

Melissa’s voice on the other end was warm, immediate. 

“Hey. What’s going on?”

Dana hesitated. “Do you have a minute?”

“For you, always. You sound like you’re in your head again.”

“I’m, yeah. I’m a little lost.”

“London lost, or soul lost?”

Dana smiled, weakly. “Maybe both.”

There was a pause. Melissa never pushed. She waited.

“Okay. You want to talk about it?”

Dana exhaled. “Do you remember the woman I told you about?” She continued without letting her sister reply. “She’s brilliant. Completely unreadable and maddening and exact. And when she touches me I…” She hesitated. “I’ve never felt this way Missy, I don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to run.”

“Then don’t.”

“But I’m still…” Dana faltered. “I’m still me. I don’t know if I can keep doing this without committing to it. But I don’t know If I can allow myself either”

Melissa’s voice softened, serious now. “Of course, you can, Dana? You don’t owe anyone anything but yourself. Not mum, or me, or any of us. Not any church, or work, or religion. Nobody needs to allow this but you.

“I don’t know what this means.”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything yet. Just that you feel safe. And wanted. And seen.”

Dana closed her eyes.

“I think I’ve never felt all of that before. At the same time.”

Melissa’s voice cracked a little. “Then promise me something.”

“What?”

“Don’t waste it trying to dissect it.”

They talked for a long time, about that, and everything else that they could possibly think. Dana hung up the phone with a tremor in her chest. She stared at the cross again. Then at her hands. Then reached for the jumper still carrying Stella’s scent and held it to her cheek. She closed her eyes. And let herself feel it. All of it.

Chapter Text

Spring bloomed without even noticing. Dana arrived early as usual, not to prove anything, but because she wanted the silence. The calm before it all. She wore her hair differently. A little looser her lips, bare, but there was color in her cheeks that hadn’t been there before. A quiet glow that even the other women in the room noticed.

Stella did, too.

She walked in as usual, heels echoing on the parquet, leather folder in hand, tailored lines of her jacket, precise. But the moment her eyes landed on Dana, something shifted behind them. Just slightly. As if the room stilled, narrowed. And when their eyes locked Dana didn’t look away. And that… that was new.

The lecture began. Objectivity, authority, doubt. Dana answered questions with calm insight. She referenced a study Stella hadn’t expected her to read. She watched her closely, not just her words, but her body. The stillness. The confidence. The restraint just beneath the surface, like heat behind glass.

When the class ended, Dana lingered as usual, pretending to file her notes. She didn’t look up. But Stella didn’t walk away either.

She stood near the desk, leaning slightly, low voice pitched only for her.

“You’re changing.”

Dana met her gaze. “I know.”

Stella tilted her head. “Does it scare you?”

“Not as much as it used to.”

A beat passed. Something in Stella’s breath hitched.

“I want to see you tonight.”

Dana nodded. “Mine or yours?”

“Yours.”

She’d opened a bottle of red and poured it before Stella arrived, hands a little shaky. A jar full of daisies in the kitchen, Fierce Attachments half read by the coffee table. Stacks of papers and work piled by its side.

Stella arrived with a bag of groceries. She didn’t kiss her. Instead, she just looked at her with the quiet intensity of someone memorizing a painting, eyes lingering, almost reverent, full of a desire, patient and said “Let me cook for you,” with a quick smile. “You’ve earned it.”

They moved around each other easily; Dana slicing garlic, Stella stirring sauce in a pan. It smelled like home. Like belonging. Neither needed to fill the silences.

After dinner, they sat on the floor near the window in the living room, Stella cross legged, her knees just grazing Dana’s as they passed the bottle between them instead of bothering with another glass. Dana’s legs were stretched out beside her, one foot resting against Stella’s thigh like a quiet claim. Their bodies were close enough to feel the warmth shared between them, but neither rushed it. That was the thing with them; always the pause, the holding back just a moment longer than necessary.

“You were brilliant today,” Stella said, not looking at her at first, just tracing the rim of the bottle with her finger. Her voice was low, the words falling like a murmur into the small space between them.

Dana tipped her head back, exposing the slender column of her throat, smiling faintly. “You still intimidate me.” She tried to suppress a smirk, but failed.

Stella turned then, her eyes serious, mouth curved just so. “Good. You should.”

Dana laughed, a soft sound that didn’t rise much above the music. She tucked her legs under her and leaned in closer, her knuckles brushing Stella’s. When Stella reached for her hand, it was slow, deliberate, as if she was learning her touch by memory. Their fingers tangled, warm and sure, and Dana’s thumb moved instinctively over the bones of her wrist, the soft skin there that pulsed with life.

Dana leaned forward and kissed her, tentative at first, then deeper, a wine dark surrender. Her hand moved up to Stella’s jaw, thumb grazing the curve of her cheek, grounding them both.

“Read for me a little,” Dana whispered against her lips, their breath mingling.

Stella reached behind her, pulling the paperback off the coffee table, the spine was cracked and soft from years of rereading. She flipped it open with the familiarity of someone who returned often to certain pages.

And then she read:

“That space. It begins in the middle of my forehead and ends in the middle of my groin. It is, variously, as wide as my body, as narrow as a slit in a fortress wall. On days when thought flows freely or better yet clarifies with effort, it expands gloriously. On days when anxiety and self-pity crowd in, it shrinks, how fast it shrinks! When the space is wide and I occupy it fully, I taste the air, feel the light. I breathe evenly and slowly. I am peaceful and excited, beyond influence or threat. Nothing can touch me. I’m safe. I’m free. I’m thinking. When I lose the battle to think, the boundaries narrow, the air is polluted, the light clouds over. All is vapor and fog, and I have trouble breathing.”

The words hovered between them, sharp and quiet.

Dana blinked slowly, her gaze heavy, reverent. She placed the bottle down and moved closer, her forehead resting against Stella’s. She breathed her in, the smell of clean skin, jasmine, old paper, and wine lingering on her lips.

“I think you’re mine,” Stella closed her eyes, letting the words fill the hollows in her chest. It didn’t feel possessive. She touched Dana’s face looking for something to ground herself, like it might disappear.

“I’ve never wanted someone so precisely,” Stella said quietly.

Dana exhaled a soft laugh. “I feel like I’m waiting to become the version of myself you already see.”

Stella looked down at her lap, then back up, her eyes piercing. “You’re already her.”

The silence was thick with want.

The soft, warm light through the window kissed the edge of Dana’s cheekbone, shadows slipping like silk along her throat. Her blouse hung open, her jeans clinging tightly to the curve of her hips. She felt Stella behind her, close, steady, fingers slipping beneath the hem with slow, practiced grace.

The zipper came down with a whisper.

Stella’s mouth found the back of Dana’s neck, warm and open, breath fanning across her skin. Dana exhaled a shaky breath and let her weight fall back against Stella’s chest. Her jeans eased down over her thighs, revealing the sheer lace that clung to her. She was already wet.

“Let me see you,” Stella murmured, voice rough, reverent.

Dana turned, bare feet catching on the rug. She kissed her, desperate now, teeth grazing lips, tongues tasting wine and desire. The kiss deepened, bodies grinding, breath catching in their throats.

Stella pressed Dana down onto the rug beneath the window, legs parting instinctively. Her fingers slipped beneath the lace, brushing the soaked silk. Dana moaned, high, breathless. And Stella swallowed it whole. Then she moved lower.

Her tongue parted Dana with a precision that felt like a fight between worship and war. The rhythm; slow, then faster, dragged Dana open, wrung sobs from her throat. Her hands clutched at Stella’s hair, anchoring, riding the wave of something bigger than a thought. She tasted sweet and sour, the flesh almost melting under her tongue. She sucked her clit, precisely, just as she had learnt Dana liked it. And when she came, it was with her thighs shaking, her heels digging into the rug, and her name torn from Stella’s mouth.

She cried, not from shame, not from fear, but because it had never felt like this. Like being known. Like being wanted down to the bone. They didn’t speak. Just breath and skin and the pounding of hearts dancing together. 

Dana shifted, her body still trembling, and turned them over. Stella’s hair spilled across the rug. Her pretty long and blonde hair, silk and soft, her lips bitten, swollen and pink, eyes blown wide. She leaned over her, the tips of her hair brushing Stella’s chest. Her nipples taut, desperate pressing on her top.

She kissed her mouth, wet and hungry, then her jaw, her throat. She ripped her blouse open, surprised that Stella wasn’t wearing a bra. Her mouth found her clavicles and licked the sweat dripping from her bones, she went down the slope of her breasts, cupping them firmly. Her hands moved with confidence, tugging at Stella’s trousers, baring the skin beneath inch by inch. Stella arched into her touch, legs spreading in open invitation.

Dana’s hand slipped between Stella’s thighs, and she gasped, low, needy.

“So wet for me,” Dana whispered into Stella’s mouth.

Her fingers moved in slow circles on her clit, then slid deep. One. Two. Three. Stella moaned, her back lifting off the floor, one hand gripping Dana’s arm, the other lost in her hair.

“Don’t stop,” she gasped.

Dana didn’t. She fucked her with purpose. Each stroke deep, deliberate, pulling pleasure from her like heat from the sun. Her thumb found her clit, flicked in rhythm. She rode Dana’s hand until her breath turned ragged, her body tightening, shuddering, burning from the friction.

“Dana… Dana, I’m” she broke, voice cracking.

“Let go,” Dana said. Thrusting deeper. “Let me feel you.”

Stella came crying into Dana’s mouth, her body shaking, collapsing back into Dana’s hand. She didn’t move. She just stayed there, watching her fall apart, giving her space to return. And when Stella finally opened her eyes, red rimmed and stunned, Dana leaned down and kissed her again.

“I didn’t think I could have something like this,” Dana whispered, almost angry at how true it felt.

“You didn’t need to think of it, you just needed to want it.” Stella said into the curve of her neck.

***

Stella stirred when Dana shifted beside her, the bedsheets rustling softly. One leg tangled between hers. Dana’s skin smelled like powder and peonies and the air was charged with sex, and rain that had stopped sometime before dawn. 

Dana was already awake, watching her.

“Are you staring at me?” Stella asked without opening her eyes.

Dana smirked. “I’m observing. It’s different.”

“That’s rich, coming from the woman who moaned verses and clinical terms in her sleep.”

Dana flushed but recovered fast. “You made me question several long held beliefs last night. You should be proud.”

Stella cracked an eye open. “Is this how you charm all your professors?”

“Only the ones who make me forget my own name.”

A soft, surprised laugh escaped Stella’s lips. “You’re dangerous when you’re well rested.”

“Then I think I’m dangerous now,” Dana said, leaning in, voice low near her ear. “I just haven’t decided how yet.”

Stella hummed, hand trailing lazily down Dana’s back. “Careful, Agent Scully. Some of us actually like to be challenged.”

Dana kissed her slowly, no heat at first, just lips pressing with familiarity, with knowing. Then deeper. Her hand slid down, cupping the curve of Stella’s thigh.

She shifted, rolled them slowly until Stella was beneath her.

Stella looked up at her, something flickering across her expression; expectation, hunger, the impossibility of control.

Dana trailed her fingers along Stella’s ribs. “You always look so composed,” she said, voice almost shy. “But I wonder how long I can keep you like this.”

Stella arched a brow. “Try me.”

Dana kissed her neck first. The underside of her jaw. Down to the sharp line of her collarbone, pausing only to let her teeth graze skin, barely. Just a whisper.

She worked her way down Stella’s chest, reverent, hands sure now, slow and claiming. And when she slipped lower, between Stella’s thighs, she didn’t hesitate. Her tongue was deliberate. Slow, then deeper, then slower again.

She worshiped with her mouth like it was sacred. Not rushed, not showy. She seeked for every corner of Stella’s folds. Holding her hips with firm hands, grounding her, savoring each sound, each breath that grew sharper. She looked up at her once, eyes heavy, hair falling over one shoulder.

And Stella was undone.

She reached for the sheets, then for Dana’s wrist, then let herself fall back entirely, surrendering to it.

The control she wore like armor stripped clean.

She came biting her lip, body taut and trembling. Dana kissed the inside of her thigh and rested her cheek there, breathless, proud. After a few minutes, with the murmur of her panting like a lullaby, Stella reached down and tugged Dana up into her arms. Their limbs tangled again under the still warm covers.

“You,” Stella murmured, voice ruined, “are not what I expected.”

Dana nuzzled into her. “Good.”

Silence stretched again, comfortable, then Dana said, half into her shoulder, “You taste like something I wasn’t allowed to want.”

Stella exhaled shakily. “Say that again and I’ll never make it to work.”

Dana grinned. “Then don’t.”

***

Stella leaned down and kissed Dana before leaving. “You’ll do brilliantly on your paper,” fingers brushing a lock of hair from Dana’s cheek. “I’ll read every word,” she said, stealing a half eaten butter and Marmite toast from Dana’s hand rushing her cup of tea before heading to the door.

She didn’t say where she was going. Not exactly. Just “There’s a thread I need to follow. The less you know, the better.”

That was Tuesday. By Friday, she hadn’t heard a word.

At first, Dana was rational. Stella had warned her, this case was volatile, layered, dangerous. “The less you know the better,” and Stella Gibson wasn’t reckless. She was too composed, too experienced. Work was first, she thought. She somehow knew.

But by Friday evening, Dana had rewritten the opening paragraph of her final essay four times and still couldn’t concentrate. Her fingers hovered over her cross more than she wanted. Her mind looped Stella’s voice in fragments:

“Say that again and I’ll never make it to work.”
“Try me.”

She called home once. Then twice.

No response.

She asked one of the other women from the seminar if they'd seen her all day. She wasn’t supposed to give any lectures that week as they were doing mostly field work and training.

“I haven’t seen her in the campus,” the woman replied, eyes curious but unconcerned. “You know she was working on a huge case, don’t you?”

Of course, Dana knew. She saw how she burned beneath that polished calm. How she gave herself to her work like it was penance. And something deep in Dana’s gut said this was different. This didn’t make any sense.

***

By Friday morning after a long week of lack of sleep and long nights of surveillance, Stella had followed a witness, breaking all protocol without telling anyone where she was going. And he hadn’t wanted to be followed. The quiet flat in Lambeth that seemed safe, surveilled, contained, really wasn’t but she realized too late. A door closed behind her and there was no wind. The phone line was dead. The air, too still.

She was inside a den. And the men around there had been waiting. One recognized her. “She’s the one that shut down our last haul.”

Her gun was gone within minutes. So was her breath. She fought, of course, and she tried, hands hurt, lips swollen, face wet from dripped blood somewhere, but four men and a cracked rib from the fall tipped the scale fast.

They weren’t planning to kill her. Not yet. But she wouldn’t stay lucky.

By the evening she was desperate. She used the spare key Stella gave her so she could wait for her there the days she came late after a long shift, when things got complicated. She’d stared at the phone by the hall. At the empty side of her bed. At the unwashed coffee mugs and whiskey glasses that still carried the faint trace of Stella’s lipstick.

She knew the answers should be there, anywhere, she just needed to know where to look. She slipped off her trench coat and rolled up the sleeves of her emerald green blouse. Then she began sifting through the scattered papers and folders across the coffee table, the kitchen counter, the couch, the rug. Piece by piece, she started connecting the dots. A picture formed from the notes and scraps Stella had left behind. And there it was: an address, scribbled on a post-it stuck to the back of a folder.

She knew it was wrong. She wasn’t assigned to this. She wasn’t even technically in this country in a professional capacity. Nor to say this case. But she couldn’t not go.

She looked around the room one last time and let her gaze settle on the flowers on the counter, nearly dead. Then she was gone.

***

The shot rang through the narrow stairwell, startling even Dana.

It hit the man square in the shoulder as he lunged for the back door. He fell, hard, shouting in shock and pain, but alive. The other one, already halfway through the kitchen window, vanished into the night like a phantom. A rustle of hedges. Then silence.

Dana stood in the stillness. Her breath tore through her chest like it didn’t belong there.

Then, Stella.

On the floor, back against the wall, her wrist bound, lip split. Her blouse was torn at the sleeve and her eyes… Her eyes were wild with disbelief. And terror.

“Dana,” she breathed, like a warning.

Dana dropped the gun, knees hitting the floor as she reached for her. “You’re okay. You’re okay. I’m here.”

Stella winced as Dana touched her jaw. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“You left me no choice. I had to do something.”

“No. You didn’t.” Her voice was sharp now, wounded in ways deeper than bruises. “This was my case.”

“I didn’t come for the case,” Dana snapped. “I came for you, Stella.”

That stilled them both.

Later, once the responding officers had taken her statement, once Stella was on a stretcher being checked for concussion and a fractured rib and split lip, Dana stood at the edge of the hallway, arms crossed over her chest, trembling.

A detective approached her. “You’re not with London Met, are you?”

“I’m FBI. Temporary educational exchange.”

He raised a brow. “Bit unusual, this intervention.”

Dana nodded; voice cold. “Yes. It was.”

When they finally let her into the hospital room, Stella looked smaller somehow. Not weak, but vulnerable. No armor. No silk blouse. Just the remains of fighting for her life along her skin.

Dana hovered by the door. Eyes yearning.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she said, voice raw.

Stella turned her head. “And yet you did.”

They looked at each other for a long time. Then Dana crossed the room and sat beside the bed. “You didn’t answer me.”

“I couldn’t.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Stella didn’t deny it.

“I was going mad,” Dana said, voice low but shaking. “You disappeared. I couldn’t sleep… I couldn’t think. I kept hearing your voice in my mind. I thought maybe I’d lost it… maybe I’d lost you.”

Stella stared at the ceiling, fists clenched in the sheets. Her fingers twitched with the urge to reach out, just brush Dana’s hand. “You shot a suspect, Dana.”

“I disabled a man trying to hurt someone I love.”

The word escaped her before she could stop it. She hadn’t planned to say it, not like that, not yet. It came from desperation, from the wreckage of sleepless nights and too many words unsaid. But as soon as it left her mouth, she knew it was true.

That word landed like a body blow. Stella flinched. The silence after it was sharp, almost punishing.

She turned her head, slowly, as if moving through water. Her voice came out a whisper, nearly a plea. “Don’t say that.”

Dana swallowed, hard. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t know how to survive it.”

***

They didn’t touch again for two days. Not in the way they’d known. The investigation was reopened under scrutiny. How had Stella followed a lead alone, why was a U.S. agent involved, was force used appropriately.

No one asked about love.

But they both felt it, pushing against the glass of their professionalism, warm and terrible and real.

It was Jim who cleaned up the blood. Not literally, by then the crime scene team had long cleared the flat, but the professional mess, the dangerous edges. The quiet favor to keep Dana’s name off the internal report. The call to a friend in the Home Office. The rewritten timeline that left out how she got the address in the first place.

“I did it because you would’ve done it for me,” he said.

Stella didn’t argue. She didn’t thank him either. But he saw it. In the quiet way she tucked her coat tighter. In how she flinched when Dana’s name came up again.

He didn’t ask what they were to each other, but he wasn’t stupid.

Dana didn’t come by the hospital again.

Stella called her the night she got home. They didn’t talk for long, ten minutes, maybe. The air between them was thick with unsaid things. Stella said she was healing. Dana said she was writing. Neither of them said I miss you. It was too hard. Too painful. Too dangerous for their future.

But also, they didn’t need to.

“I’m finishing my final paper,” Dana said, fingers around her burning cup of chamomile tea. “Professor Halston asked to read it in front of the group.”

Stella couldn’t repress the ghost of a smile. “You’ll be brilliant.”

A pause.

“I’m staying clear of you,” Dana said softly. “I know we agreed. But I’m saying it so I don’t pretend it doesn’t cost something.”

Stella looked down, struggling. “Three weeks.”

Dana nodded. “Three weeks.”

***

They tried. God, they tried.

Stella arrived precisely on time for each seminar, cool and authoritative. Her lectures became more precise, more pointed. Dana’s hand ached from taking notes. She answered questions only when asked. Sat closer to the front, but never looked at Stella too long. But her body knew when she entered the room, when she passed behind her chair, when her voice dropped to make a point. It was unbearable.

They didn’t touch.

They didn’t even stand too close.

But every word exchanged in class had a double meaning. Every debate on ethics or morality or narrative voice was charged.

One evening, the hallway outside Stella’s office was dim, drained of sound. Dana had stayed behind with a revised draft, an excuse, they both knew. She lingered by the door as Stella read the first lines in silence. Then slowly, carefully, Stella looked up.

Their eyes met. And held.

Dana stepped in as Stella stepped aside, barely enough space between them. The tension snapped taut. A brush of fabric. The ghost of a breath.

Dana’s fingers grazed Stella’s as she passed her the pages. She felt the tremor in both of them.

“I…” Dana started, and didn’t finish. She didn’t know what she would say. Only that if she leaned in one more inch, she’d be kissing her.

Stella’s lips parted, just slightly. But her hand found the doorknob, her grip tight, white knuckled. “Thank you,” she said, her voice polished to steel. “I’ll read this tonight.”

Dana nodded. Her pulse was a roar. “Three days,” she whispered.

Stella didn’t answer. Didn’t move.

So Dana turned and walked away.

Neither of them breathed until the other was gone.

The pub was warm with laughter and too loud conversation. Someone passed Dana a pint she didn’t want. Music played from a dusty jukebox in the corner, and across the table, Mercer and Klein were laughing about something someone said during the final lecture.

Dana smiled on cue. She nodded. She even added a sharp joke that made them laugh louder. But inside, she felt nothing.

For weeks, she had done what they promised: kept her distance, held herself back. She turned in papers, responded in class, ate alone, and didn’t touch Stella. Not once.

But her body remembered everything. The slope of Stella’s hip, the cadence of her voice just before she came, the quiet way she curled into Dana’s arms afterward like she didn’t know what safety felt like until then. She stared down at the foam of her untouched beer, and thought: This isn’t what I want.

***

The restaurant was old fashioned in a good way, dark paneling, soft candlelight, a live pianist brushing slow jazz across the air. Stella chose the booth in the back, as always.

Dana arrived with her dress a little damp from the June drizzle. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes the most bright and blue in a while.

Stella looked up from her glass of wine and something in her face softened so visibly, Dana felt it in her spine.

“You look beautiful,” Stella said quietly.

Dana took her seat. Breathless, “I’m staying.”

The words landed like a match to dry kindling.

Stella blinked. “What?”

“I called the Bureau. There’s office work here. I pulled some strings, I’ll keep my credentials. I’ll make it work.”

Stella remained quiet.

Dana leaned in, her hand laying on Stella’s thigh, the fabric of her skirt burning below her hand. “Don’t say no. Not yet. I’m not asking for forever. Just the summer. Just enough time to stop pretending this was casual.”

Stella’s hand trembled as she reached for her glass. Feeling the heat on her thigh. The wetness soaking from her centre. “And after the summer?”

Dana smiled. “We’ll see.”

Stella stared at her for a long, long moment. Then nodded.

“Come home with me tonight.”

Chapter Text

They didn’t rush. They never had.

The first kiss tasted like memory, soft and salted. A trembling rediscovery of something once sacred, now suddenly real again. The way Dana held Stella’s face, fingers in her hair, was the same way she had touched her before in the same hallway, when time was shorter, and everything was new.

Stella undressed her with shaking hands, the dress sliding slowly off Dana’s shoulders. Her fair skin, the constellation of freckles above her chest, around her arms. A buttered yellow set of Chantilly lace wrapping around the sacred parts of her body. She was simply perfect. Stunning. Dana undressed Stella with her mouth.Pressing kisses down her shoulder, the long line of her ribs, the still tender scar at her temple. Reverent, unhurried. Worship, not just desire.

Stella guided her to her very well known bed, pushed her down gently, and climbed over her as if she was about to pray. She kissed her like it was the only language she had left. Their bodies met with desperate familiarity, like returning to a place they never meant to leave. Hips arching, mouths open, hands greedy and grateful, all at once. Dana moaned into Stella’s mouth when her thigh slid between her legs, when her hands pulled her down and forward, rocking them together until slick skin met skin and the friction built in fevered pulses.

They moved together like a vow. They have missed each other so badly. Bodies aligned, breath syncing until the moment blurred between surrender and need.

It wasn’t just sex.
It was forgiveness.
It was love made flesh.

Dana whimpered first, voice breaking, back arching, eyes fixed on her. “I love you.”

Stella stilled just long enough to feel it shatter through her, then kissed Dana hard, almost bruising. “I love you,” she breathed, “I fucking love you, Dana.”

They moved harder then, chasing something beyond pleasure. The rhythm fell apart in waves, lost to the sound of gasps and wet skin and aching cries. They held each other like they were afraid to be lost and found. When the storm finally passed and their breath slowed, Dana curled close and kissed Stella’s temple. She laughed against her skin and Stella kissed her like if her lips could hold every unsaid word between them.

They didn’t sleep.
Not yet.

They stayed tangled in each other, rocking, whispering, kissing like time had stopped and they had all night to remember how it felt to belong.

The soft light of a very early morning glistened through the window tracing the contour of Dana’s back. Stella’s hand trailed down her spine, fingertips feather light, until she cupped the curve of her ass and pulled her in again, pelvis to pelvis. Dana groaned softly at the contact, already hypersensitive, already aching again. She opened her eyes to watch her, Stella’s hair was a halo of disarray around her flushed face, blonde strands tangled and damp, her mouth pink and parted. Her eyes, usually so sharp, so commanding, were so soft now, almost dazed. Dana thought she’d never seen anything that beautiful in her life.

She kissed Stella’s jaw, her throat, then lower, her mouth moving with purpose now. She kissed down her chest, slow and open mouthed, tongue tracing the curve of her breast before drawing her nipple between her lips. Stella gasped, her fingers tightening in Dana’s hair.

There was no hesitation anymore, only need, lush. Love. Dana kissed lower, her mouth trailing down Stella’s ribs, her belly, the inside of her thigh. She looked up once, eyes dark, reverent, waiting, and then dipped her head.

Stella’s body arched, her heels digging into the mattress. Dana used her hands to hold her still, opening her folds gently, and then her mouth found her completely, warm, sure, relentless. She licked her slowly at first, savoring the taste of her flesh, the rhythm, the whimper Stella let slip when Dana sucked her clit into her mouth. But then Dana moaned into her, and it sent a shiver all the way through Stella’s center.

“Dana…” her voice broke, hips trembling under Dana’s mouth. “God, don’t stop…”

She didn’t. There was nothing that turned her on more than hearing her pleading. She pressed her tongue deeper, licked until Stella was cursing softly and trying not to sob, one hand clutching the pillow, the other locked in Dana’s hair. And within a minute, she was undone. She came hard, thighs clenching around Dana’s shoulders, back arching as her whole body shook. Dana kissed her through it, slow and soft again, letting her come down gently.

Stella lay still for a moment, and then she pulled her up, fingers trembling, her hand resting over Dana’s ribs, feeling the rise and fall like waves against her palm. Dana’s skin was flushed, lips swollen, her copper hair damp against her cheekbones. The light hit the freckles on her shoulders like stars flung across skin. She looked wild and impossibly young. Stella had always seen her as precise, composed, invulnerable in her intelligence. But this? Bare, and brave, and undone was more beauty than she can handle. She rolled them over and said, low and rough, “Now you.”

Dana’s breath caught. Stella’s mouth was on her collarbone, her breast, her ribs. She slid two fingers inside Dana while her tongue circled her nipple, and Dana cried out, clutching her back, desperate and exposed. Stella moved like she knew every inch of her. Because she did.

She bended over Dana’s face and pressed her forehead feeling the cum spreading along her fingers, tears sliding down her cheeks, her whole body shuddering. They stayed like that, sweaty, tangled, trembling. Skin to skin. Breath to breath. Just one.

***

Back in January, when she first landed in London, Dana hadn’t planned to stay for the summer. She certainly hadn’t planned to fall in love. Her lease ended in June, and there was no way to extend it. Stella offered to move in with her. Softly, easily. She didn’t press or push. She simply made space in the wardrobe, cleared the top drawer of the vanity, and left an extra towel on the rail.

That night, Dana stood beside her at the sink, brushing her teeth with her hair twisted into a messy bun, swallowed in a gray Quantico t-shirt. She couldn’t stop staring at the reflection; Stella beside her, calm and golden, the quiet steadiness of her.

“You’ll get tired of me,” Dana mumbled, foam in her mouth. 

Stella, without turning, simply answered “Impossible.” 

Then her palms slid down Dana’s back, slow and warm, cupping her ass with a deliberate tenderness that left no room for doubt, needing her impossibly closer. Completely.

They packed everything on a warm, drowsy Sunday afternoon. They kissed lazily against doorframes, sprawled on the bare mattress remembering the first time they’d touched each other like they meant it. Each corner of Dana’s tiny flat held echoes of them. That narrow kitchen where Stella had kissed her in the mornings, evenings and nights. Dana’s fingers lingered over a chipped spot in the sink where Stella had once braced her, mouth open on her throat, hips rocking with practiced, desperate rhythm. They both stilled, breath catching, as the memory landed between them like a shared breath.

The threadbare rug that had burned beneath their knees, thighs and backs. The old, squeaky bed that had carried the weight of confession. It hadn’t just been an apartment, it had been a witness. To the aching want. To the slow unfolding. To the moment they stopped pretending they weren’t already each other’s.

“This apartment,” Dana whispered, eyes glassy with heat. Holding back. “It saw us before we knew what we were.”

Stella traced a finger along Dana’s jaw, leaned in, lips brushing her ear. “It heard things too.”

Dana laughed, low, breathless, and kissed her again, deep and slow and aching. Everything about leaving felt like ending a chapter written entirely in touch. The echo of bodies against the couch, the floor, the door, the rug, that one night they didn’t even make it past the hallway.

By evening, everything was packed, clean and ready to leave. But neither of them moved. Dana curled into Stella’s arm, her head resting on her neck, watching the London night falling down through the window, goosebumps forming on the skin of her bare thighs. “I think this place made us brave.”

Stella kissed the top of her head and murmured, “I think that was just us.”

***

They found a rhythm.

Mornings were quiet. Dana liked black coffee and a run before the city woke up. Stella read the paper wrapped in her silk robe and didn’t speak until page four.

By noon, Dana would be sitting cross legged on the living room floor, pathology books and legal pads scattered around her, one hand in her hair, glasses slipping through her nose. Stella would walk by, drop a kiss on her shoulder, and steal a note from the margin.

“She’s brilliant,” she said once to Jim. “Annoyingly brilliant.”

Nights were different.

Candlelit dinners. Dishes done with lazy music in the background. Reading together on the couch, their legs tangled, their hands brushing, Dana’s head tucked into the crook of Stella’s shoulder.

They bickered about books. They disagreed about the ending of Rebecca, Stella couldn’t stand Heathcliff, Dana thought he was misunderstood.

“I’m starting to think you like emotionally unavailable men,” Stella teased, flipping the page.

“I do,” Dana said, eyes dark and amused. “And women.” She chucked.

One weekend, they escaped the city and rented a crooked little cottage on the East Sussex coast. The kind of Victorian place with uneven floors that creaked with every step, flower wallpaper, a blue velvet couch and a chipped kettle that screamed when it boiled. The bed sagged in the middle and groaned with every shift. They loved it there.

They spent the first night walking the shore barefoot, pebbles stabbing under their feet. Stella’s arms wrapped around Dana from behind, her chin tucked against Dana’s shoulder, the sea wind catching in her hair. They spoke little, letting the hush between them say what needed saying. The tide licked their ankles, and Dana leaned back into Stella’s warmth like a second spine. They felt the silence in her bones, something sacred, soft and complete.

The second day, the sun rose with an unhurried glow, and Dana pulled Stella down to the water with the reckless joy of someone who had once lived entirely for discipline and now tasted something wilder. Stella watched Dana swim in her red bathing suit. Her body moved with that quiet strength Stella knew so well, sure, lean, full of grace she never performed for show. The sun gilded her skin, kissed her collarbones, lit her shoulders until her freckles bloomed into constellations across the bridge of her nose, the sweep of her back, the tops of her thighs when she walked out of the surf laughing, hair slicked back.

Stella couldn’t look away. There was something unbearable about Dana at that moment. How completely unaware she was of her own beauty, her own softness. How her smile cracked something open in Stella's chest.

She was radiant. And adorable. And utterly hers.

Later that evening, wrapped in blankets by the fire, Dana rested her cheek on Stella’s thigh and traced lazy shapes across her shin. Outside, the sea whispered against the shore, but inside, it was all breath and warmth and quiet devotion.

“I feel like a version of myself I never let to be,” Stella admitted to her. “Before the career. Before all the damage.”

Dana turned slightly to look at her. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve always been good at keeping things in order. My job. My life. My feelings. Everything with a neat boundary. Controlled.” She hesitated. “I wasn’t planning on letting someone all the way in.”

Dana watched her profile in the low light, each word sinking into her like stones in water. “Why not?”

“I’ve seen what happens when people give everything. I’ve watched them come undone. I didn’t want to be wrecked like that. I didn't want to become some version of myself I couldn’t recognize. So… I stayed busy. I stayed distant.” Her voice trembled, just barely. “But then you came. And suddenly, staying away felt more dangerous than the falling.”

Dana’s fingers found hers, threaded them gently, instinctively. And for a moment, she didn’t speak.

Because she knew exactly what that meant.

“I didn’t think I’d fall either,” she finally admitted. Her voice was low, scratchy from the day. “Much less with a woman. Much less with a professor”

Stella turned to face her, startled but open.

“I came to London to run from things,” Dana continued. “Grief, guilt. I wasn’t ready to feel anything, let alone this… us. And you were this composed, impossible woman standing at the front of the room, intelligent, brilliant…” Stella gave a small, helpless laugh. “And I couldn’t stop watching you. I tried to keep my distance. I tried to keep it safe.”

“Didn’t work,” Stella murmured.

“No,” Dana said, her thumb brushing over Stella’s knuckles. “You’re the only thing that’s ever made me want to be reckless.”

Stella leaned in slowly, pressing her forehead to Dana’s. Their eyes closed.

“I’m still scared,” she whispered.

“So am I,” Dana breathed. “But I think that means we’re doing it right.”

For a long, breathless beat, they stayed like that, foreheads touching, the silence between them charged not with hesitation, but anticipation. Dana’s hand moved first, slipping under the edge of Stella’s shirt, not demanding, just learning. The smooth warmth of skin under her palm unraveled something in her.

Dana exhaled shakily, her lips brushing Stella’s as she spoke. “You make me forget how to hold back.”

“Then don’t,” Stella murmured, and kissed her.

It wasn’t gentle this time. It was hungry. A reverence, a press of mouths that knew exactly what they needed. Dana shifted, pushing Stella back onto the rug, the firelight flickering across their bodies like a blessing. Her hands ran along Stella’s ribs, over the curve of her waist, the dip of her hip, grounding her in the reality of skin and bone and heat.

Stella arched up into her, shedding her shirt like she couldn’t bear another layer between them. Dana broke the kiss only to breathe against her throat, tracing the line of her collarbone with her lips.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered against her skin, “when you let go.”

Stella's hands tangled in Dana’s hair, guiding her lower, gasping softly when Dana kissed the underside of her breast, then again over her heart. That sound, breathy, unguarded, was something Dana wanted to memorize.

That night, they made love with the windows open and the breeze curling around them like a blessing.

Afterward, Stella traced her name into Dana’s shoulder blade with her fingertip.

“I don’t know what we’ll do in the fall,” Dana murmured.

“We’ll do what we must,” Stella replied, kissing her spine.

But even then, a silence lingered between their tangled bodies.

***

It began with a phone call. A late morning back in London, Dana had just put coffee on a mug, barefoot, half dressed in one of Stella’s shirts, hair still damp from the shower. Stella was at the kitchen table, reading a case summary she was working on. She leaned in and kissed her blonde hair, letting the scent of musk and jasmine deepened into her lungs.

The phone rang, and Dana answered out of habit.

“Yes?”

A beat.

Then her posture changed, subtle but sharp. Shoulders stiffening. Mouth tightening.

Stella looked up.

“Blevins,” Dana mouthed.

The call lasted less than five minutes.

When she hung up, her fingers lingered on the receiver. Her eyes didn’t move.

“They want me back.” She said at last.

Stella waited.

“There’s a position for teaching at the academy. I don’t have the full details yet. But they said it’s promising.”

“Do you want it?”

“I don’t know,” Dana said. “I think I’m supposed to.”

They didn’t argue. Not then.

Instead, Stella turned back to the case file and said nothing. The quiet wasn’t cold, it was clinical. A scalpel between them. Dana stood still for a moment, watching her. She could practically see the drawbridge lifting behind Stella’s eyes, brick by brick, pulled taut by instinct and old wounds.

Dana turned around and went to get dressed. She didn’t want to fight in her underwear. She sat by the bed, surrounded by the scent of early morning sex and let the tears silently fall down. By the time she was back, Stella’s pen was clicking rhythmically, filling the room with the sound of distance.

Dana leaned back against the counter, mug in hand, watching the woman she loved disappear into her own armor. Again.

Stella didn’t look up. Not when Dana crossed the room. Not when she placed her hand gently on her shoulder.

“Do you want me to stay?” Dana asked, softly.

Stella’s fingers paused, dropping the pen on the table. Her jaw tightened. “You don’t need my permission to go.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Another pause. One beat. Two.

Stella stood abruptly, gathering her papers with practiced efficiency. “There’s no point answering questions you’ve already made your mind up about.”

Dana’s heart cracked quietly in her chest. “You think I want to leave you?”

“I think you’re trying to be the kind of person who came here months ago. Focused on work, living through others needs” Stella said, too calmly. “I know how that works.”

“You mean like you?” Dana snapped before she could stop herself.

Stella froze. Not visibly, but Dana knew the signs. The way her fingers curled slightly. The way her shoulders lifted, like a wave preparing to crash. But the crash never came.

Instead, Stella exhaled, steady and quiet. “This is why I’ve never done this,” she said, without turning around. “This part. The part where someone matters enough to lose.”

Dana swallowed, hard. “You think I’d just walk away? Like this hasn’t meant everything?”

“I think…” Stella turned then, her eyes tired in a way Dana hadn’t seen before, “I think I have never loved someone who didn’t leave.”

The words landed like a cut across skin already bruised. Dana stepped closer anyway.

“I didn’t plan for all this to happen,” she said. “Not here. Not now. And definitely not with you.”

Something broke softly in Stella’s face, something unguarded. Dana reached for her, gently, her fingers curling around the edge of Stella’s wrist.

“I want to stay,” Dana said. “But I can’t lose myself either. I’ve fought too hard to become this version of me.”

“And I’m still figuring out how to be someone who can ask another person to stay,” Stella murmured, eyes searching hers. “Without folding into guilt or fear.”

For a moment, they just breathed together. Not resolving. Just feeling.

Dana’s hand slipped to Stella’s waist, fingers curling into the fabric of her blouse. “Then ask me. Just once.”

Stella brushed a hand along Dana’s cheek, thumb tracing the edge of her mouth. Her voice was barely audible.

“I can’t.”

And Dana kissed her.

Not out of lust, not out of need, but out of all the aching in between. Her lips pressed against Stella’s like a question she wasn’t sure she was allowed to ask. Stella answered with her body, pulling Dana close, her hands threading through damp hair, her breath catching as Dana’s thigh slipped between hers.

They found the table. Then the wall. Then the couch, half covered in papers, the real world falling to the floor in crumpled sheets. Stella’s blouse came undone with a sigh. Dana’s mug of coffee tipped, forgotten, as she let herself want.

Want this life. Want her .

And even as the shadow of goodbye lingered around the edges, they gave in fiercely, desperately, the way people do when they don’t know how much time they have left.

***

The days passed and something shifted in the air. Small things, Dana waiting for the phone to ring, Stella working later, returning quiet. A space between them at night, where there once was only tangled skin and warmth.

Still, they tried.

They curled into each other on the couch. They laughed, and they made love. Slow and quiet. But every time Dana’s fingers lingered longer at her temples afterward. And Stella’s gaze held something unreadable, even when Dana looked straight at her. They couldn’t talk about it anymore. They couldn’t face the truth they both already knew.

It was then during dinner at a friend’s house, one of Stella’s old colleagues, a retired profiler with too much wine in his voice. They were sitting side by side, knees brushing under the table. Stella wore a muted linen dress, her skin turned gold by the late summer light, her hair falling past her shoulders, she hadn’t cut it in a long time. Dana sat beside her in a soft green dress, embroidered with tiny flowers, her hair pinned loosely at the sides. Her freckles shifted every time she laughed, scrunching her nose, and Stella kept looking at her like she couldn’t quite look away.

He asked Dana what her “next step” was.

She hesitated at first, playing with the food left forgotten on her plate. “I guess… Back to D.C., teaching as an instructor at the academy”

And the man laughed and said, “Of course. They’ll keep you on that track, you’ve got the face and the spine. Won’t be long before they parade you in front of something bigger.”

Dana smiled, polite, searching for Stella’s hand under the table, finding nothing but silence. Stella didn’t speak the rest of the meal.

When they got home, Dana was the first one to break the silence. Softly, “It’s not like I want to be paraded, or anything like that. You know that.”

“I know.”

“But I worked so hard for everything.”

“I know.”

A long silence.

Dana searched for the zipper of her dress “You’re shutting down.”

Stella sat on the edge of the bed leading her from the waist to turn around and unzipped her.

“I’m not good at being part of someone’s plan,” she said. “People don’t usually stay.”

Dana turned over and sank to her knees, resting her head on Stella’s thigh.

“I’m not ‘people’, Stella.”

“Please, don’t make it harder than it already is.” She replied, sliding her fingers through Dana’s titian hair.

***

The storm broke in silence.

No slammed doors. No shouting. Just the soft clink of the ceramic from a tea mug being set down a little too hard.

Stella stood in the kitchen, barefoot, wearing Dana’s Quantico t-shirt. Her jaw, tight. Her eyes, unreadable.

Dana had just come back from the consulate, some paperwork about her status, a conversation about timing. She hadn’t told Stella yet. But Stella already knew.

“The end of September,” Stella said without turning around. “It’s not far, is it?”

Dana froze by the threshold. “I was going to tell you tonight.”

“I imagined that,” Stella said, almost gently. “Over dinner, maybe. In bed, if you felt braver.”

The words didn’t stab. They sliced.

Dana walked forward, slow, careful. “I said the summer.”

“We also said ‘we’ll see for the fall.’”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Dana said. “I’m seeing. I’m… I’m thinking.”

Stella turned. And finally looked at her. Her expression was unreadable, but her voice cracked just slightly.

“I let you in,” she said. “That wasn’t easy.”

Dana’s throat tightened. “I know.”

“I let you in, knowing you were temporary. Knowing I shouldn’t ask for anything.”

Dana took a step closer. 

“You didn’t ask. I gave it.” She said, thinking she couldn’t handle seeing her, so close and so far away at the same time, standing in the kitchen, bare legs, body wrapped in her t-shirt, eyes gone.

Stella’s voice dropped to a whisper. “And now you’re taking it back.”

“I’m not. I just…” Dana ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t know what’s real anymore. I came here to be someone else for a while. And now I don’t know if I’m lying to them back home, or lying to you here.”

That stopped Stella cold.

Dana swallowed. “You make me feel free. Like I’m finally mine. But that girl, the one who came here with a badge and an obligation she still wants to be something. I want purpose, I do want the big thing. And I don’t know how to be both.”

Stella stared at her for a long, long time. Then she said, very quietly, “You can’t be both. That’s the lie.”

Dana didn’t breathe.

“Being free means choosing it every damn day. Not putting it on like a weekend coat.”

She walked past her, brushing Dana’s shoulder just barely. But she didn’t stop.

Dana stood there alone in the kitchen.

“You haven’t been able to ask me to stay either.”

And for the first time since arriving in London, she wasn’t sure which version of herself she trusted more, the one that bled for duty, or the one that bloomed under Stella’s hands.

***

Dana wandered the city for hours.

She didn’t mean to, but one turn led to another, a bookstore, a park bench, a memory. Her, her, her. Always her. Everything, her.

She bought a single peach from a vendor and didn’t eat it. She thought about Stella’s laugh when she teased her about always peeling the skin. “You can’t taste anything if you’re afraid of the mess.” She had told her, licking the juicy of a summer plumb dripping down her wrist.

That night, the sky pressed low, heavy and dark with summer heat.

She called Melissa from a phone booth outside a closed flower shop in Notting Hill. Her sister’s voice on the other end was warm and immediate. She felt like home. Another home.

“Hey you.”

Dana didn’t say anything right away.

“I miss you,” Melissa offered.

“I’m in love with Stella,” Dana whispered. “And I don’t know what to do, how to keep her.”

Silence.

“Do you have to?”

Dana leaned her forehead against the glass. “You don’t understand… I need to choose between her or coming back home. Back to D.C., to my own path…”

“I do,” Melissa said softly. “But maybe that’s not the question, Dana. Maybe it’s not about keeping. Maybe it’s about becoming. Maybe it’s about you.”

When she got home, Stella was in the bath.

Candles. A glass of wine on the edge. Music playing low, some cello. Her favorite. Dana walked to the door and leaned against the frame.

Stella looked up. Her face, unreadable. But her eyes, God, her eyes were full of everything unsaid.

“I thought you were staying out.”

Dana didn’t answer.

She stepped inside, slowly, and knelt beside the tub. She reached out and ran a fingertip through the surface of the water, like it was the veil keeping them apart.

“Can I come in?”

Stella’s breath hitched.

For a long moment, she didn’t speak. Just watched Dana. The freckles on her cheekbones, the weight under her eyes. She nodded.

Dana stripped silently. Her cross necklace slipped against her collarbone as she lowered herself into the warm water. She sat between Stella’s legs, her back to her chest, and let herself exhale.

Stella’s arms came around her. Protective. Reverent. Concede.

They stayed like that, in silence, for a long time.

“I’m not asking you to stay. I can’t.” Stella said finally. Her voice was quiet, raw. “I’m not asking you to give up your path. Or your purpose. I would never. But it’s hard letting you go”.

Dana turned her head slightly, resting her temple against Stella’s shoulder.

“Only if I could, God, Dana. If I could hold you here, I’d hold you forever…”

“I know,” Dana whispered. Letting the tears run wild and free down her cheeks.

Stella kissed the crown of her head.

“You’ll go. And you’ll be incredible. And I’ll watch you from somewhere I’ll never say aloud. You’ll be part of something bigger, and I’ll still be here, trying to believe I didn’t imagine it.”

Dana 's eyes burned.

“You changed me,” she said. “No matter where I go, I’ll never be who I was before you. That version of me… She died here.”

“And a better one was born,” Stella said, her voice breaking now.

Dana turned in the bath with care, the water lapping softly as she shifted to face her. Stella looked like something carved from dusk and longing, her skin glistening, her hair damp at the temples. For a moment, neither moved. The only sound was the distant swell of strings and the occasional breath, deep and trembling.

Dana cupped Stella’s face. “I don’t want to go to sleep tonight without showing you how much I love you.”

Stella’s eyes fluttered closed, a tear slipping free even as her lips parted in a silent ache.

Dana kissed her slowly, mouth warm and sure, tasting her with a patience that felt like prayer. Her fingers slid along Stella’s collarbones, then lower, mapping the familiar topography of the woman she adored.

“Let me love you,” Dana whispered. “Let me worship you.”

She straddled her gently, careful not to spill too much water, the candlelight casting ripples of gold across their bodies. Stella’s hands rested on Dana’s thighs, thumbs drawing slow, reverent circles into her skin, as if memorizing every breath, every muscle, every promise.

Dana leaned in and kissed her neck, her jaw, the dip below her ear. Her voice was low, breathy. “You’ve ruined me for anything less than this.”

Stella let out a shuddered laugh, but it dissolved quickly when Dana took one of her breasts in her mouth, suckling slowly, her tongue deliberated. Her hands roamed down Stella’s waist, her ribs, her hips, until Stella was clutching the edge of the tub like she might otherwise come apart.

“Please,” Stella gasped. “Dana.”

“I’ve got you,” Dana murmured. 

She sank lower, water cascading as she kissed down Stella’s breasts, taking her time, pressing soft kisses into every curve. When her fingers found her, slow and certain and aching, Stella cried out, head tilting back, hands sinking into Dana’s hair like she could anchor herself to the earth through her.

Every movement was an I love you. Every sigh, a vow.

Stella came apart like dawn breaking, quiet but unstoppable, a holy thing. When Dana looked up, her lips slick, eyes shining, Stella pulled her back up into her arms and kissed her deeply, hungrily. She wrapped her legs around Dana and flipped them gently, water splashing over the edge of the tub, neither of them caring.

Now Dana was under her, flushed and panting.

“I want to watch you fall apart.” Stella said, voice husky.

She moved down with reverence, hands firm on Dana’s hips, mouth open and wet, kissing and tasting like she was drinking her soul. Dana arched into her, soft moans slipping from her lips, her hands clawing at the sides of the tub, her cross necklace catching the light where it clung to her breastbone.

They moved to the bedroom. Stella kissed her way back up Dana’s trembling body, breath mingling with steam and the faint scent of lavender on her skin. Dana’s thighs parted instinctively, welcoming her in with a gasp that stuttered into a moan as their hips aligned. Wet, flushed, aching they moved together, slowly at first, as if memory guided them, their clits desperate for finding each other.

Stella cupped the back of Dana’s neck, her other hand gripping her hip, anchoring her as their bodies began to rock in sync, slick, aching friction, skin to skin, slickness against slickness. Dana’s head fell back against the soft pillow, her breath catching in her throat, hands gripping Stella’s ass, pulling her in tighter, deeper, desperate for more.

“God,” Dana whispered, eyes fluttering. “You feel so good.”

“We do,” Stella murmured.

It wasn’t frantic, it was desperate in its own way. But tender too. The rhythm they found was hypnotic, hips rolling, thighs shaking, sweat, and skin, as their foreheads touched, mouths open but too breathless to kiss. It was wordless. Messy. Perfect.

Dana came with a cry she tried to swallow against Stella’s mouth, her whole body taut, her soul unraveling in waves. Stella followed seconds later, her body stuttering against hers, nails pressing half moons into Dana’s damp skin.

Afterward, they stayed that way, breathing hard, hearts thudding against ribs and collarbones, faces buried in each other’s necks.

“I love you,” Dana murmured into Stella’s hair, voice raw, reverent. “I don’t care where I go. You’ll always be in me now.”

Stella kissed her shoulder. “I love you too, Dana.” She said, repressing the urge to beg her to stay. Swallowing back tears.

They stayed tangled, clinging to each other, hearts bruised by the fullness of what they’d made.

Not all endings are sudden. Some are slow, tender unbindings where love is not extinguished, only released. Transformed. But never forgotten.

***

Washington D. C., December 1993

The hum of the overhead lights in the basement office was familiar now. A kind of white noise that wrapped itself around the corners of Scully’s thoughts. She spun idly in Mulder’s chair, legs tucked beneath her, the leather creaking beneath her quiet shift of weight.

In her hands, a letter. Cream colored envelope, handwriting she knew by heart. London postmark. No return address. Just her name.

She hadn’t opened it right away.

She let it sit on the desk for a few hours, untouched, as though proximity might dull the ache. But she should have known better. There were things time softened, but this wasn’t one of them.

When she finally broke the seal and unfolded the page, her breath caught in her throat.

Dana,

I saw your name in a footnote. A strange case, disappearances in Oregon, if I’m remembering right. It was just one line, buried halfway through the article, but there you were. I knew you’d find your way into something bigger. I never expected something dark, but I know the unknown requires that particular way your mind turns over a question until it yields. You always walked toward the truth with your chin high.

I didn’t expect it to feel like this, though. That jolt in my chest. Not quite pain, not quite joy, just something deep and wordless, lodged behind my ribs.

I think about you more than I admit. More than the Birthday wishes and the Christmas cards. You show up in the quiet things. On the way I take my coffee now, long and black. In the spine of a book I pull down and remember reading beside you. In the pause before I speak, because you taught me to listen better. You’re still threaded through my days.

I hope your life is as challenging as you hoped it would be. I hope it fills you up without hollowing you out. I hope you're not too lonely. And I hope your new partner knows what kind of brilliance he's walking beside.

As for me; I'm alright. Work is alright. I’m trying not to lose myself in cases and have a reason to go back. I’ve taken to walking along the Thames in the mornings, when the city’s still blue and quiet as you liked it. I’ve been writing again. Nothing substantial. Just notes, mostly. Fragments. But they feel like mine.

You were never mine to keep. I knew that from the beginning. But you were mine to love, if only for a while. And I loved you with everything I had, Dana. I still do, in other ways I still find.

Be safe. Be bold. Be you.

Always,
S.

Scully blinked down at the letter, her thumb ghosting over the bottom corner.

She had meant to finish a report. She’d meant to go upstairs, get coffee, check in with Skinner. But now the day had folded around her like a memory. The walls of the office faded into a late London sun. The smell of Stella’s perfume, never forgotten in her sheets. The weight of a freckled hand on her thigh, right after laughing too hard at something utterly inappropriate. The sound of rain on glass, and soft moans pressed into her collarbone.

She missed her.

Not in the way that demanded going back, but in the way that filled a space nothing else had quite reached since.

When the door clicked open, Scully startled. The letter fluttered in her hands. Mulder stepped in with two coffees and a new file under one arm.

“Sorry. Should’ve knocked. Didn’t know you were down here.”

She cleared her throat, folded the letter quickly and slid it into the pocket of her blazer.

Mulder caught the motion. Paused. Then handed her one of the coffees and raised a brow.

“Old flame?” he asked lightly, but something in his voice was genuinely curious. Not teasing. Not prodding. Just Mulder being Mulder. Half empathy, half intrigue.

Scully sipped the coffee, then exhaled slowly, feeling something uncoil inside her.

“Yes,” she said finally.

“For your face I don’t know if he was a good one or a bad one.”

“She.”

Mulder blinked. Then tilted his head. “Serious?”

She looked at him over the rim of her cup. “The most serious.” She said, repressing a smirk.

A quiet passed between them. No shock, no discomfort. Just the kind of understanding that didn't need explanation.

“Was she the one who got away?” he asked softly.

Scully smiled. Not sad. Not regretful.

“No. I was. She was the one who made me Dana you know.”

Mulder nodded, like that made perfect sense.

“I bet the Dana I know was already there long before you met her.”

He dropped into the chair on the other side of the desk and opened the new file without asking anything else.

But across from him, Scully let her fingers rest on her pocket. Eyes closed.

There are cases now. Files. Danger and theories, and late night diner talks and phone calls with her partner. And trust. But also, belonging.

Stella lit a deep, quiet fire in her belly. One that had never gone out.

She was changed, always.

Not because she stayed.

But because once, she let herself go.

Chapter Text

Washington D.C., November 1994

(Placed after Irresistible and before Colony)

Stella landed in D.C. for a seminar. Three days of speaking on behavioral precursors and the nature of evil. She was pacing her hotel room, barefoot, in a white untucked tank top and a black pencil skirt, single serve of Scotch on her hand. Her fingers hovered over Dana’s number longer than she meant them to. When she decided to call, Dana answered on the second ring. Her voice was the same. A little lower. Tired in the corners. But warm. Familiar. Utterly hers.

After London, she didn’t cry. She packed. She moved. She reported back. She shook Blevin's hand and said yes to a life she hadn’t quite chosen but couldn’t walk away from. She said yes to Quantico and crisp routines, to teaching rooms with cool lighting and no windows, to days measured in lectures and file folders and tight, professional smiles. Until The X-Files.

What she didn’t say yes to; what she couldn’t, was anything else. Anything that felt too close to want. Love, or whatever passed for it, became an old jacket left behind in someone else’s closet. She didn’t miss it often. Not really. She was busy. She had purpose. She had the safety of being admired but untouched. Her mother commented. Melissa gently pressed. Friends drifted, confused by the way Dana turned inward, always polite, always distant. Like someone who'd once loved too much and now spent her life walking around the ghost of it.

And maybe that was exactly it.

Dana had always been good. That was the word people used. Reliable. Brilliant, yes, but in the way that made men feel safe. With her father, she learned early that obedience looked like love. That being seen meant being polished. Efficient. Unshakable. The daughter with perfect posture and sharper aim than anyone else on the range. The daughter who said yes, even when her instincts whispered no.

It was a pattern she hadn’t known how to break. Not at the Academy, not under Blevins, not even when she walked into the basement that first day and met Mulder. She didn’t push back out of fear. She did it out of habit. Out of a long cultivated ache to be worthy.

Stella had been the first person to see through that. To look at her not as a prodigy or a model agent, but as a woman too used to bending. And she loved her anyway. Not for what Dana proved, but for what she was when she stopped performing.

“I want you whole,” Stella had said once, voice quiet against the curve of Dana’s neck. “Even if that means messy. Especially then.”

And for a while, Dana believed her. 

In London, she started saying no to things. She asked questions that weren’t polite. She had opinions that weren’t filtered through male approval. With Stella, she felt like a person who took up space and didn’t have to apologize for it.

And then she left.

Back in D.C., it was easier to slip back into the mold. Duty became muscle memory. Her voice tightened. Her clothes got sharper. She nodded in meetings and softened her tone. She forgot how it felt to be loved without compromise.

But lately, watching Mulder, standing beside him, disagreeing with him, questioning her, saving each other over and over, something had started to crack. He didn’t ask her to shrink. He didn’t expect her to follow. And when he listened, really listened, he made her feel not just respected, but seen.

***

They planned for dinner in D.C., a quiet place near Logan Circle. A little restaurant with worn leather booths and soft jazz. The kind of place Scully liked, unpretentious, thoughtful, private. When Stella walked in, Scully was already seated near the window, her jacket folded neatly beside her, green blouse, pencil skirt. Her hair, loose and just beginning to curl at the ends in the late autumn moist.

The light was warm and low, painting her in gold. Stella’s hair was longer now, a soft grey dress wrapped around her body that revealed the line of her throat. She looked older. Softer. Still devastating.

Stella’s breath caught. Somewhere in the time between then and now, Dana Scully had grown into herself even more fiercely. There was something magnetic in the way she held her posture now, calm, steady, like the world had handed her more than it should have, and she’d learned to carry it without apology. 

They didn’t touch right away. Just a smile that split between memory and present, and a quiet mutual breath. 

“Hey,” Dana said softly, standing.

She reached out and Stella folded into her arms like she’d never left. The embrace was quiet but deep, bodies fitting together with aching familiarity. A thousand dormant nerves woke up all at once. Muscle memory, scent, warmth, the faint press of a heartbeat. It was a hug, yes, but it was also everything else they hadn’t said. The kind that made you remember who you used to be. Who you still somehow are.

When they pulled apart, reluctantly, they smiled, a little breathless, and finally sat. The air between them shimmered, light and full of meaning. They talked. They teased. They laughed like they hadn’t in years. Stella made Dana blush at least twice. Dana made Stella forget the time entirely.

Across town, Mulder left the basement after a twelve-hour day, and crossed the street toward his car, already thinking of the half eaten pizza waiting on his coffee table. Scully had mentioned plans earlier, vaguely, with a small smile and a “just dinner”. But he hadn’t asked for more. He hadn’t wanted to.

Stella reached for her wine and grinned into the rim. 

“And you? Are you… happy?”

Dana toyed with the stem. “Happiness feels like a strong claim. But I’m alive at work. And… I think I’m not hiding from myself anymore.” Stella’s mouth curved. 

Dana asked, “And you?” 

“Less restless than I thought I’d be,” Stella said. “Which frightens me slightly.”

“That you found a rhythm?”

“That I don’t want to dismantle it.”

Their eyes held a beat too. Stella caught Dana’s hand just as the server left. Her thumb circled her wrist, absent and intimate.

He wasn’t looking for her. But something in the corner of his eye pulled him to look through the window.

She was seated at a sidewalk table, golden light casting across her cheekbones, the last glimmer of a passing taxi reflecting in her eyes. Not in her usual suits or her lab coat. But in a silk green blouse, sleeves rolled, low neckline, sipping wine with one hand curled under her chin, smiling in a way that made him go completely still. She looked beautiful. Settled. Elegance in the way she touched her wineglass. Warmth in the soft curve of her jaw. Utterly stunning.

Beside her was a woman he didn’t recognize at first. Taller, composed, with blond hair. Astonishing. She was looking at Scully with something in her gaze he’d rarely seen, reverent fascination. Desire. Tenderness. 

But it wasn’t that that made him stop.

It was Scully. The way she looked at her. Eyes soft. Completely unguarded. Not just admiration. Adoration. A slow, quiet hunger. A familiarity so deep it felt like watching someone in a dream they didn’t know they were having. The kind Mulder wanted to think he had seen before.

He watched them for so long he didn’t realize how still he was. He could feel the sudden tightness in his chest, an ache he wasn’t sure how to name. His fingers curled into the strap of his satchel. He wasn’t angry. Not even jealous, not exactly. But something in him tilted sideways. He turned away before they noticed him, his throat suddenly dry.  Then quietly, he walked on, blood loud in his ears.

***

Back at Dana’s apartment, after dinner, Stella dropped her coat on the back of a chair and slipped off her shoes with a practiced ease.

“That wine made you bold,” Dana said from the doorway, arms crossed, amusement playing on her lips.

“ You made me bold,” Stella replied, stepping closer. “You always have.”

Dana’s breath caught the same way it used to, like anticipation lived just under her skin. Like she remembered everything.

“Tea?” Dana asked automatically.

“I’d rather you kiss me.”

Before Dana could answer, her phone jangled.

She picked it up, voice careful. “Scully.”

“Hey, Scully it’s me,” Mulder said. His voice was unusually casual. “I was just… reviewing some notes from that case in Folkstone. Thought I’d check something with you.”

A pause.

“Mulder, we closed that case ten days ago.”

“Yeah. I know. I just keep thinking about the autopsy report. The serotonin levels were off. You said you were going to rerun the tox screen.”

She let out a quiet breath. “I did. Twice. It came back the same.”

“Right.”

Silence. Not uncomfortable exactly, just dense. He wasn’t calling about the case. She knew it. He probably did, too.

“You’re working late.” She said softly.

Dana’s fingers traced the coiled phone cord. The air was warm, scented faintly of Stella’s jasmine perfume. Her voice softened.

“Did you really call to talk about a serotonin imbalance?”

He hesitated. “Not entirely.”

Another pause.

Stella approached her from behind. Her hand gripped around Scully’s waist.

“You had plans tonight,” he added, more quietly. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“I didn’t say that.” 

Stella’s fingers wandered around the hem of her blouse. Dana had to repress a soft laugh, her skin tingling under Stella’s fingertips.

Something in his voice was off-kilter. Gentle, but pointed. He wasn’t asking. He didn’t need to. He’d probably already drawn his conclusions. 

Dana leaned her head towards Stella’s chest. “I’m fine, Mulder.”

“Yeah.” Scully’s tone didn’t shift. “I’m with Melissa. She stopped by.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

Stella smiled. A small, sad smile burying her face in Scully’s hair. One that knew exactly what kind of lie had just been told. And why.

“Right,” Mulder said eventually. “Good. I just wanted to…”

“I'm really fine, Mulder,” Dana said gently.

“Okay. Goodnight, Scully.”

“Goodnight, Mulder.”

When she hung up, Stella was still looking at her. Not angry. Just… sure.

“What was that about?” She said.

“Just Mulder being Mulder.” She replied, turning over to face her. Stella’s hands still around her waist.

They hadn’t talked about what this night would be. But the air between them was already thick with it.

“I guess he’s not how I imagined.” She said casually.

Dana laughed, low and surprised. “He’s not what anyone imagines.”

“He cares for you.”

Dana nodded. “He does.”

“And you?”

Dana looked down, suddenly serious. “I care for him.” She said dryly.

“You still haven’t told me if you’re sleeping with him,” Stella said suddenly.

Dana blinked. “What?”, “With Mulder?”

She looked away, a small smile tugging at her mouth. “I’m not.”

“But you think about it.”

There was a pause. A quiet one.

Dana’s answer was honest. “Sometimes.” She said, finally. She couldn’t lie, not to Stella, then added, “But it’s too complicated. I don’t think he’s emotionally available and it wouldn’t work between us.”

Stella nodded once, slowly, like she was cataloguing that truth. “I suppose I’d be worried if you didn’t.”

Dana stepped forward, closing the space between them. “Does it change this?”

“No,” Stella said, brushing a knuckle along the edge of Dana’s jaw. “But it explains why you flinched when I held your hand at the table.”

Dana’s voice came out quiet. “That doesn’t have anything to do with Mulder. I just wasn’t expecting it, or you, or any of this.”

“I’m not asking you to apologize,” Stella said. “We both knew what this was. I’m just glad we still exist in each other’s lives at all.”

Dana brushed her fingertips along Stella’s jaw, then rested her forehead against hers.

“This night is still ours.”

Stella smiled. “Then let’s not waste it.”

***

Dana led them into the bedroom without another word, her hand finding Stella’s like it was something she’d never stopped doing.

The room was dim, only the soft glow of the bedside lamp catching the pale edges of Stella’s collarbone as she stepped out of her dress. Dana stood at the foot of the bed, breath steady but eyes fixed, watching her there, in her D.C. apartment, in her room. In another completely different lifetime. She looked at her like she was trying to memorize every line, every curve of her skin.

“I thought maybe I’d forgotten,” Dana said, voice low. “What this felt like.”

Stella moved toward her slowly, hooking her fingers into Dana’s belt loop and tugging her close. She looked up at her, eyes soft and burning at once. “You didn’t.”

Dana let out a breath, half laugh, half confession. “No. I didn’t.”

Dana exhaled shakily, sinking into her. They kissed like no time had passed, like a few years was nothing compared to this. Mouths open and slow, tongues curling in search, hands relearning geography mapped long ago. Dana’s fingers slipped under Stella’s bra strap, easing it down, dragging her knuckles along her shoulder like the sensation might anchor her.

Clothes fell away piece by piece until Stella was lowered gently onto the mattress, Dana straddling her, thighs tight around her hips. Her hair hung loose now, curtaining her face as she leaned down to kiss along Stella’s jaw, then lower, her breath catching when Stella arched against her. The weight of memory settled in their mouths, their hands, the rhythm of skin pressed to skin.

“Touch me,” Stella whispered. “Please, Dana.”

Dana slid her hips down slowly, the skin of her inner thighs brushing Stella’s until they were flush, warm and slick and aching for each other. Stella’s hands gripped her waist as Dana began to grind against her, slow at first, dragging out every bit of friction like it could mean more than just a feeling.

The rhythm grew deeper, more urgent. They rocked together in sync. Wet, desperate, unhurried but unrelenting. Dana moved with a practiced ease, her body remembering the pace Stella liked, how her breath caught when Dana rotated her hips just so, how her eyes fluttered shut the second Dana moaned into her mouth. Then she trailed lower, her lips grazing along the line of Stella’s ribs, across the soft curve of her stomach.

“I’ve thought about this,” Dana murmured, voice frayed with want, “so many nights.”

Stella reached for her, but Dana caught her hands, kissed each palm, then eased her thighs apart and buried herself between them, slow and reverent. Her tongue was soft at first, tracing the shape of her, circling with aching control.

Stella gasped, her hips twitching up as Dana licked deeper, more focused. Her moans filled the room, sharp and sweet, hands fisting in the sheets. Dana moved like she knew her, because she did. She couldn’t forget her. She flicked and sucked her clit with relentless, tender precision until Stella broke apart with a strangled cry, her thighs trembling, her hands gripping Dana’s shoulders like she was falling from the sky.

Dana kissed her through it, then crawled back up to hold her, their bodies flushed and shaking, mouths seeking each other again.

“God, I missed you,” Stella whispered, her voice wrecked, her forehead pressed against Dana. “I thought I could live detached from this feeling. I really tried.” Dana replied.

When Stella’s breath returned, she flipped them gently; settling herself between Dana’s legs, kissing her with unhurried hunger. Her mouth traced lower, over Dana’s collarbones, the curve of her breast, her belly, her hip. Then she looked up. “Don’t. Don’t try. Just for tonight.”

Dana moaned before she could answer. She was already parting her legs, already arching when Stella’s tongue met her with slow, steady pressure. Her hands tangled in Stella’s hair, holding her there, grounding herself in every hot, wet stroke. The pleasure came in waves, long and coiling, until Dana shattered under her mouth; her voice breaking, back arched, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

They didn’t speak for a long time. They just held each other. Skin on skin. A memory made real again. Stella straddled her, their slick thighs moved in perfect friction, pressure mounting until Dana was trembling again, her hands braced on either side of Stella’s ribs, her lips caught on a silent prayer. Stella met her gaze, wild and unguarded, and pulled her down for a kiss just as Dana came, gasping her name like a benediction.

She didn’t stop moving. Not right away. Not even when Stella pulled her close, chest to chest, mouth to mouth. They kept going; softer, slower, until Stella was shuddering too, the crest of it washing over her with quiet reverence.

They stilled together, chests heaving, Dana’s cheek resting on Stella’s shoulder, her cross necklace cool between them. Their skin pressed to each other, the smell of jasmine and musk, peonies and powder, melting together again, after a really long time.

Minutes passed. Maybe hours, but it didn’t matter.

“You’re still the only person who’s ever made me feel like this,” Dana said quietly, fingers tracing invisible shapes into Stella’s hip.

Stella kissed the crown of her head. “And you’re still the only person I’d completely unravel for.”

Later, when Stella was asleep, curling around her, Dana lay awake, staring at the ceiling. The city lights bled through the window, casting slatted gold across the sheets, across Stella’s hip, across Dana’s bare arm stretched around her. She couldn’t help it but thought about fate. 

Stella has never left her. Not completely. She was still there, somewhere, quietly, at the edges. In the birthday wishes. In a postcard once from Lisbon because the sea always reminds her of them in another lifetime. A single call when her father passed away. The voice on the line, warm and reassuring. The way after living together she couldn’t go back to sleep in anything but silk pajamas. How she tried to make her voice be heard. A thousand little habits that had lived with her through the years. Because they never quite let go.

But in some way, that wasn’t her life anymore. When the X-Files came, it never felt like fate for her. It felt like duty. But then she started to know him deeply. At first, she dismissed the spark between them as friction, the kind that builds between people who challenge one another too often in too little space. But there was something in his eyes. That restless intellect, that wounded reverence. Something broke open in her the first time they laughed together under the rain out of fear and desperation. Like neither of them were a report or a name in a file, but two minds, and souls. A match.

It unnerved her.

She didn’t remember much from the days she was gone. But she remembered waking up and Mulder being there. Not just in body, but soul. And something in her had settled. Like maybe she’d been alone longer than she realized, and the gravity between them wasn’t just imagined. She noticed the shift. A hum in her blood when he leaned too close. A steadiness in her hands when he trusted her with something fragile. The beginnings of a pattern; how often she wanted to protect him, or understand him, or just be near enough to feel the air change when he entered a room.

She never told anyone that she had cried the first night back home after the hospital. Not from pain. But because she had been close to losing someone she hadn’t even admitted she needed.

Still, she couldn’t name it. What she felt for Mulder. It was complicated. Tense. Quiet. Sometimes unbearable. Sometimes safe. Sometimes, when she caught him looking at her like she was a secret he already knew, she felt like maybe this was what love looked like after loss. Something slow, something patient. Something she might not be ready for, but still hoped wouldn’t disappear before she got there.

And maybe, Scully thought; pulling the blanket up over Stella’s shoulders, brushing a kiss to her temple, maybe she was beginning to love him. In a completely different kind of way, but still, love. Because no other love could compare to another one. Every form of love deserved its time, but this wasn’t theirs anymore. 

She closed her eyes. And braced to the woman that she had loved once with her whole heart and knew would never leave her completely.

***

Stella boarded to Heathrow with a book she wouldn’t read and a seat by the window. The lights of D.C. blurred beneath her, golden and indifferent. Somewhere below, Dana was sleeping. Or pretending to. Or lying awake, her mind restless and still half damp with the scent of Stella’s hair on her pillow.

She didn’t sleep on planes, not really. The cabin went quiet eventually, the hush of altitude softening even the clatter of carts and whispers of attendants. She watched the night pass outside, dark and infinite, her reflection faint in the double glazed glass.

It had only been three nights. Seventy two hours. Barely enough time to unpack her suitcase. And yet her body remembered everything; Dana’s voice low in her ear, her fingertips skimming the curve of her back, the stammered softness that came right after pleasure, when words weren’t armor anymore. But that wasn’t her life anymore. They both have moved on. Carried on with their own battles. She felt like something carefully folded and tucked away because that was the same, she had done. She understood the need to compartmentalize. To protect themselves.

She also knew she had meant something to Dana. As she did to her. Something real. Not the kind of love that lasts forever, maybe. But the kind that cracks you open, teaches you how to want honestly, how to be seen and still be chosen. The kind that stays with you, stitched beneath the ribs, soft as breath and just as vital.

She had taught Dana what it meant to be wanted without shame. And Dana had reminded her how it felt to be needed without pretense.

She’d lived long enough to recognize when things weren’t a chapter anymore, but a footnote. That had to be enough. 

And yet.

She would have done it all again. Without hesitation. Without regret. Some women you carry like scars. Dana, she carried like a letter that was never posted, creased and worn, held close to the chest, memorized long after the ink had begun to fade.

Outside the window, dawn pressed gently at the horizon, the faintest rim of silver rising over the ocean.

She thought of Dana in the pale light of the kitchen. Dana in her silk pajamas. In them both not wanting to say goodbye. Not knowing how to do it all over again. And she closed her eyes, not to sleep, but to remember her fully. While it still felt like hers to keep.

***

Washington D.C., April 1995

(Placed after Our Town and before Anasazi)

It had been a long day. One of those cases that left more questions than answers. The kind that stuck to her skin. Dana sat at the desk under the dim hum of the office lamp, flipping absently through the last of the reports. Mulder had gone quiet across from her, pen tapping against his lip as he reread a section of his notes. It was after eight. Neither of them had made a move to leave.

She caught herself staring at his hands. Long fingers, ink smudged. Messy and so precisely him. He had this strange elegance about him when he wasn’t trying so hard to be flippant. Her finger brushing across her bottom lip. The ache in her chest wasn’t sharp, it was old, familiar. A reminder. Of how she used to feel around someone else’s hands. 

“You good?” Mulder’s voice broke softly into the silence.

She blinked once, then looked up. “Yeah.”

“You sure?” His brow furrowed, faintly concerned.

She could’ve brushed it off. Made a joke. Told him she just hadn’t slept.

But instead, she tilted her head slightly, studying him.

“Do I ever strike you as someone who does what people expect of her?”

Mulder blinked, surprised by the question. “Uh… not really.”

“Because I do,” she said. “For a long time. I mean, I did. I built my whole life on it.”

Something about saying it aloud loosened something in her chest.

Mulder didn’t answer immediately. He just studied her for a long moment. “What changed?”

“I think I remembered what it was like to want something different,” she said instead. “To stop apologizing for it.”

Mulder's expression was unreadable, but something flickered in his eyes. Affection, maybe. Admiration. Something heavier.

The silence stretched.

“I’m ordering Chinese,” he said finally, voice gentler than it needed to be. “You want the usual?”

Scully let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“Yes,” she said. “Thanks.”

As he dialed the number, she let herself watch him, just for a moment longer. The way his shoulders moved. The way his voice softened when he talked to her. It was new, but it wasn’t foreign.

There was something in him, curiosity, tenderness, a slow burning loyalty, that reminded her of what she’d had once.

Maybe it could become something entirely its own.

They ate quietly, out of cartons on opposite sides of the desk, the hum of the vending machine at the end of the hallway filling the space. Chinese takeout containers sat open between them on the desk, and Scully sat barefoot, with her feet in her stockings tucked beneath her. She’d taken off her glasses, the red strands at the bottom of her hair curling softly at her jawline.

Mulder dug through the bag and pulled out two fortune cookies, tossing one toward her.

She caught it midair with a small smile and cracked it open. She read the slip silently. Then again.

Mulder tilted his head. “Come on, don’t keep me in suspense. What life changing wisdom does the cookie have for you?” he wandered around the lo mein leftovers, sipping from his root beer.

Scully hesitated, rolling her eyes, then handed him the tiny paper.

He read aloud: “You will remember who you were before the world told you who to be.”

She looked away, lips pressing into a faint, private smile. A flush rose to her cheeks, not from embarrassment, but from something older. Deeper. Like a memory that carried heat.

Mulder didn’t ask what it meant. He just passed the paper back gently.

“You keeping that one?” he asked.

“I think I am,” she said, folding it into her palm like something fragile.

Later, as she gathered her coat and bag, he walked her to the door of the office. 

“You should go home too,” she said.

The lights in the building had mostly gone out. A heavy quiet had settled between them. She turned to say goodbye, and stopped.

Mulder looked at her differently tonight. Not with heat. Not quite. But with something steady. Something searching.

“You’re important to me, Mulder,” she said, quietly, eyes flicking up to meet him.

It caught him off guard. The earnestness. Her voice, steady but too vulnerable for comfort. And it made something shift in him. Some tether inside him pulled tighter.

“You too,” he said. “I mean… yeah. You know.”

“I don’t always know,” she said.

They were standing close. She could smell the takeout on his skin, the faint trace of his aftershave. He looked at her like he might say something else, something too big, but didn’t.

“I’m glad you’re here, Scully.” He finally said.

She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “So am I.”

And then, without warning or explanation, he reached up, slowly, and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered against her jaw, maybe way too long for two people that were just partners. 

Scully’s breath hitched. Her throat worked to swallow.

He didn’t say anything more. Didn’t lean in. Just let the moment settle between them, quiet and charged.

“Goodnight, Scully.” He murmured, voice soft.

 “Goodnight, Mulder.” She nodded.

She turned and walked down the corridor, the fortune slip still crumpled in her pocket, her cheek still tingling where his fingers had been.

***

That night, Scully stood by her bedroom window, the city humming low outside. Her coat was slung over a chair, her gun holster on the vanity, and the little piece of paper from the fortune cookie lay flat beside her watch.

“You will remember who you were before the world told you who to be.”

She thought of Stella, of her perfume on her sheets, the soft rasp of an English voice reading aloud by lamplight, the woman who once looked at her like she could unmake gravity itself. She thought of Mulder too. His quiet presence in the dark, his relentless belief, the touch of his hand against her cheek like a question he hadn’t dared ask yet.

And she thought of herself. Dana who had tried so hard to be good, to be chosen, to be correct. Dana who once laughed in a green summer dress. Dana who had clawed her way back through doubt and grief and still answered the phone when it rang.

We are all made of the stories we live. The people we’ve met. The ones we’ve kissed. And loved. The ones who shattered something in us, only to reveal the shape of our wanting. And the ones who held up a mirror, not to our pain, but to our becoming.

You don’t have to forget someone to move forward.
You don’t have to bury the past to begin again.

Some love stays; not as an anchor, but as a compass. A way to find yourself when you are most lost.

She opened the drawer slowly and placed the paper inside, beside a worn photograph and a letter tied with a thin navy ribbon. The photo had softened at the edges and faded with time. Stella and her in Hyde Park, in front of a wild hydrangea. Stella with her head thrown back in laughter, one hand reaching toward Dana’s cheek; Dana looking at her instead of the camera, eyes bright, caught in a moment so unguarded it almost felt sacred. They were so savage and young and still so them. 

Tomorrow will come. She would meet it.

And somewhere in the dark, in the tangle of all the selves she’d been, something steady pulsed beneath the surface.

Love wasn’t something to get over.
It was something to live by.

“Love had a thousand shapes. There might be lovers whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make of some scene or meeting of people (all now gone and separate),one of those globed compact things over which thought lingers, and love plays.” — Virginia Woolf. To the lighthouse