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‘Scully ...’
‘Scully.’
‘Scully!’
Mulder tore awake with a gasp, arms reaching into the space in front of him, hands clutching at … nothing.
Where was she?
Why was he so cold?
No. God, no. No!
He flung himself upright.
Not again.
Shit. Shit!
He could feel his own warm slickness coating him and soaking into his underwear. As unmistakable as it was humiliating. Mulder covered his face with his hands and groaned. As a grown man - in his fucking thirties - and for the first time since college, he was having wet dreams.
Heat and his own sticky mess. Pressing the heels of his hands hard against his eyes he slumped back on the couch. As his breathing slowed, he steeled himself for another round of this morning routine. Five minutes later, in a cool shower, he dealt with the physical evidence. The shame and disgust at his own lack of control wouldn’t wash away so easily. Neither would the dreams.
Bracing against the shower wall, he closed his eyes and he let the water flow over him.
They always started the same way. Surveillance detail in a dark car with Scully. Sometimes iced tea, sometimes root beer - even his subconscious mocked him. Then the kiss. There was always the kiss. Sometimes he kissed her. Sometimes she kissed him. The logistics always dissolved; the centre console, the stink and mess of takeaway cartons, the need to stay alert. What remained was everything he’d worked so hard to crush. Everything he refused to allow himself to want.
Her mouth on his.
In dreams, nothing stayed buried.
At first she was curious. Deliberate. Her lips moved slowly, as if she was testing him, tasting him, in detail. Whatever she found, she followed with defiance. Seeking proof.
At first, he was careful. Disbelieving. He tried to stay intentional and responsive. That wouldn't be enough to answer her. He let go, giving her his hunger. His conviction.
‘Mulder?’ What questions could be left? There were only her lips. Her mouth. Her voice.
‘Scully.’ There was only one answer.
Lips. Tongues. Breath. He was lost.
He was home.
‘Fox.’ Had other women ever exhaled his name, catching their breath as they looked at him? Had other hands ever buried into the hair at his neck, pulling him closer? Her eyes and her hands and her mouth erased everything.
'Scully.' The only word in the world with any meaning left in it.
'Mulder.' Her voice laid him bare. It was always his name in her voice that was his undoing.
Then, always, the fracture. She pulled away. Scully's mouth left his. Her hands slipped from his neck. The warm weight of her lifted from his body. His arms clung on, but emptied.
Her eyes widened, looking beyond him. At something she recognised.
He could never turn his head.
He could never see for himself.
The last thing he saw was always her eyes.
Then she was gone.
Because having Scully meant losing her.
'Mulder!'
'Scully!'
The ending never changed.
Scully didn't leave.
She was taken.
And he woke. Every time, reaching. Desperate. In a mess.
Tying a towel around his waist, Mulder left the bathroom and padded through to the kitchen for coffee.
He could track this; it was just another pattern. Mulder had been managing inconvenient truths and impossible feelings for weeks. The trigger was obvious. Their off-the-record pursuit of Tooms had been a turning point in their partnership. Another point of no return.
Eugene Tooms. A grotesque mutation of a man. Once captured, he should never have walked free. But he had been released. He had attacked Scully once, in her own home, and there was no way of knowing if he would target her again. Tooms had to be found. Mulder had already been fighting to keep that imperative separate from the constant pull towards her. When she was threatened, everything became harder to control. Worse, he now knew what she looked like in a hospital bed. He now knew exactly how it felt to hold a desperate vigil, willing her to live. Their quarantine experience was too raw, too recent for him to have gained any perspective.
Then, in the silence of the car, Scully had called him 'Fox'. She had never called him that before. He had used her first name to make it personal, in the past, but it was a boundary she had never approached. And she had spoken his name in a voice he had never heard before. He was exhausted and beyond vulnerable; the combination was already devastating. But then she looked him in the eye and told him that wouldn’t put herself on the line for anyone but him.
She had given him nowhere to hide. In his panic, he could find no answer to her sincerity or match for her commitment without everything spilling out of him. So the man who had made a life’s mission out of his search for the truth - lied. He told her he even made his parents call him Mulder. Then he deflected; hiding behind some stupid joke about it being love if there was an iced tea in the snack pack she'd brought. As ever, Scully met him with more grace than he deserved. It was root beer. Balance was restored.
Roughly towelling his hair dry, Mulder started to dress between sips of coffee.
Scully had not been done. She hadn’t just put herself on the line for him. She had stepped right over it. In Skinner’s office, she had looked her superior in the eye and she had lied. That smoking bastard had been there too. All three men watched Scully step into the crosshairs. And spineless, unworthy idiot that he was, Mulder just sat and watched her do it. He knew the stakes and he knew his enemies. But even to keep her safe, he had been unable to speak past the lump in his throat and that goddam ache in his chest.
So he’d retreated into the same old strategy.
Bury it. Lock it away.
Mulder knotted his tie. Tucked in his shirt.
Yes, he could track this. His own subconscious was staging a rebellion. What he could suppress day by day was erupting in dreams he couldn’t control. Dreams where intimacy meant danger; where wanting meant losing.
Understanding what was happening wouldn’t control it, but it did provide some perspective. He must still return to the basement, sit across from Scully and pretend that none of this was happening. Endurance was still the strategy of choice. The dreams would burn out, eventually.
Settling his gun at his hip, he shrugged on his jacket and grabbed his keys.
He just had to hold his line.
Mulder squared his shoulders, stepped into the hallway and locked the door behind him.