"More" By XFBandit Classification: MSR, V-esque, but probably more SRA. Rating: R (Naughty words, adult images, themes, boinka-boinka) Archive: You bet! Feedback: Sure. drambo@sonic.net Disclaimer: Not mine, never were, never will be. Don't sue. Summary: Title says it all. xfwriter@azstarnet.com +=+=+= Annapolis, MD Not sure, really, why I'm here. People talk about blowing off steam, of allowing the pressures that plague them to exit the body by shouting or by exercise or by some physical activity designed to exhaust the body and the spirit at the same time. The only problem is that once the body rests, once the spirit recovers, the pressure that caused the original problem is usually still there, waiting, ready to pounce. And thus the crux of my little visit to Scully's apartment at... oh, Lord, almost midnight on a Friday. Pressure, thy name is Scully. I knock. <><> I glance at the clock and sigh. It can only be one person. You'd think that after that entire Blundht thing, Mulder would know better than to show up at my apartment unannounced. I get up from the floor in front of my TV and head towards the door, wondering (not unkindly,) what the hell he wants. Out of habit, I peer through the peephole. Distorted, elongated in three different axis, Mulder stares back at me. He doesn't give me that goofy grin which is good, because I can't handle too much d^Aj^¸ vu right now. I open the door. <><> The door opens with a twist of a lock, the rattle-swish-clump of the chain being released and a blast of wind as Scully yanks it open. Standing there, one hand on one slim hip, the opposite brow arched in mild annoyance. At least I think it's annoyance. I'd hate to think that it was pity. "Mulder," she asks, "What the hell are you doing here at this time of night?" <><> Instantly, I'm aware that it's the wrong question asked at the wrong time in the worst possible way. His eyes darken more than usual. A small muscle underneath his lower lip throbs once, twice, and then stills. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that Mulder is about to actually cry. <><> I feel the sting behind my eyes and turn away. I will not cry. As bad as I want to, I will not cry. "Sorry," my voice says, completely disconnected from my mind, "I guess...I thought...I don't know what I thought. Sorry for bothering you." Without conscious thought my legs turn my body and start taking me down the hallway away from her, away from the woman that haunts my nights. "Mulder, wait," she says, her fingers closing around my right bicep. <><> I feel the muscles in his arm tense as if he's going to bolt. Mulder is the only man in the world that can annoy me to no end by showing up unannounced at all hours of the day and night and at the same time ache when he leaves my presence. Confounding and annoying. Totally, typically Mulder. He stops, though, and I see his eyes close. The muscles in his arm relax. I frown, realizing that he's leaning towards me. It's so subtle I almost miss it. He's pressing his arm against my hand, eager for the contact as light and meaningless as it is. Or is it? <><> Scully's fingers on my arm, strong and sure and warm and familiar. Fingers that have ruffled my hair when I needed a friend (roche) ...fingers that have trailed up and down my back in a Senate hearing room in front of God, the world, the US Senate and Skinner (krycek) ...fingers that have stroked my own fingers in the hospital room of a madman bent on the destruction of the one and only constant in my life (modell) ...the one person that accepts me without qualification, without hesitation and without complicated words and emotions and feelings. So why now do I need to hear those words? Why now do I crave these emotions, these feelings? Why now am I here on her doorstep to ask her, beg her, to say those things to me that I swore I would never need to hear from anyone ever again? <><> He's vibrating. Like a tuning fork. Mulder is obviously on the edge of... ...a breakdown? No...more like catharsis. In an instant, I get it. He needs to blow off steam, to let out whatever demons are dogging him this week, to confess his sins, both real and imagined. I've been Mulder's priest for as long as I can remember. "Come in, we'll talk," I find myself saying. He turns his head towards me, eyes beseeching me to understand. I nod at him, tugging gently with my fingers, knowing that he has to decide to come in, knowing that it was hard enough for him to decide to even come over here. "I'm sorry I sounded...upset. I'm just tired." He nods without speaking, accepting my lame excuse. The dance, I realize, has begun once again. He'll accept what I just said, knowing that in a way it's true and in a different, no more or less different but equally valid way that I was upset to see him, that he is intruding, but that I realize he needs to. And, hating myself, I admit that I need him to. I need him to intrude on my life. <><> When I'm away from her, from the office, from the cases, she's never far from my thoughts. Sometimes I think of her apartment as a resting place, a pit stop from what my life has become. I pull in, engine racing, the tach hovering near the red line, taking on fuel, readying myself for the rest of the race. And like any high-performance race car, I'm nothing without the race, without the chase, when not screaming around the track as fast as I can go, wondering if the next turn is going to send me into the wall so quickly that I disintegrate into a thousand pieces of twisting, smoking metal. It also does not escape me that the race-car metaphor can extend to the image of the car endlessly going around in circles, speeding towards nowhere, the race itself more important than a destination that can never be reached. She leads me into her apartment. I can't tell what she's thinking, exactly, but I know she's lying through her teeth. And it's ok. This one way we lie to each other, this odd little production that gets played out every time I impose on her... It's a ritual, after a sort. I extend myself and she resists before capitulating. And after she admits to herself that she... She needs me to need her. After she admits that, everything is fine. I just wonder how she's going to react tonight when she discovers that I need her in a new way. Not new, exactly. Ancient, in the greater scheme of things. New to us. And that's not exactly one-hundred-percent true, either. It's not new for us. Just unexplored. Hey, Scully, I think. Wanna go on a trip? <><> He arranges himself on my couch, grabbing a throw-pillow and clutching it to himself like a teddy-bear. I gingerly sit on the other end of the couch. "What's up, Mulder?" I ask. "Spot a little gray man while you were out for a walk?" He smiles at me, shyly, almost like a teenager. "I just need to talk, Scully." I tilt my head to the side without knowing that I have. "About?" He falls silent. "Stuff," he finally finishes. I wait. <><> She's waiting for me to say something. How to start? "I love you, Scully." Too direct, too sixteen-year-old-hoping- desperatly-that-the-head-cheerleader-doesn't-have-a-date-to-the-prom. I open my mouth. "Scully, were you a cheerleader?" If there were a single word to describe `confused, panicked incredulity,' Scully's face should sit in the dictionary next to it. After a very long, silent moment, Scully shakes her head. "No, Mulder, I wasn't. Why do you ask?" I shrug. She studies me for a while, her brows drawing together. I've seen that look on her face before, usually after she lifts her eyes from the oculars of a microscope, wondering what the hell she's looking at. She gets up and vanishes into the bowels of her apartment, returning after a moment with a yearbook. She hands it to me. I take it, opening it, checking the date, doing the math. Her junior year. I flip to the Junior class and start running my finger down the pages. There she is. "Dana K. Scully." I stare at the picture. The smile is shy, blinding. Not the Scullysmile I'm used to; her teeth are held in the grip of the bane of teenagers everywhere: Braces. How, I wonder, did her father afford that on a military salary? Sacrifice, I think. "Not even close," she smiles at me, retaking her seat. "I...I just always thought of you as you are now, only younger." An eyebrow is the only answer I get. My hand waves in the air, a magician getting ready to produce a rabbit. "As...beautiful as you are now." Writers use the term `pregnant silence' to describe what falls over the room. This is the sextuplets of pregnant silences. <><> Beautiful? He thinks I'm beautiful? I can't get past that word. It repeats over and over in my mind, the needle stuck in the groove. I hear his mouth saying the word, can see his mouth saying the word, can hear the damn word in my ear and in my mind. Beautiful? Me? Mulder thinks I'm beautiful? <><> "Why are you here, Mulder?" she asks. I close the book, drumming my fingers on the cover. "I'm tired of kidding myself," I say. "Tired of trying to...hide what I think, what I feel." "From who?" My Scully; quickest knife in the east. Cuts right to the bone with a single stroke. "From me. From you." I hesitate. "From us." <><> Us? There's an `us?' <><> Reading her mind, I nod. "Of course there's an `us.'" Is there? I wonder. Please... There has to be. There has to. <><> Surprising the both of us, I ask. "What do you feel, Mulder?" He sighs, looking away, his eyes slowly widening. I want to smile. Not because it's funny. It's not. Because it's so typically Mulder. Assuming that by telling me he has `feelings' that I'll somehow know exactly what he feels, what I should feel in return and how we're going to deal with it. Not this time, pal. <><> She's not playing fair. Then again, considering the subject, I guess I should have expected a deviation from the norm. After all, admitting this is a deviation. Of the highest order. "If I tell you...and you don't feel the same way...will that mean the end of our partnership?" I feel her fingers on my knee. I look at them and follow them up her arm and into her eyes. "No," she says softly, saying more with that single word than with a thousand hidden-smile, rolling-eyes silences. "I...need you," I say. <><> Well, no shit. <><> "...I need more," I say, and wait. <><> "More what, Mulder? More friendship? More what?" I wait for his answer. "More," is all he can manage. Have I been waiting for this day since the moment I walked into his office? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that I did detect a bit of shared destiny the moment I glanced into his eyes. I'd be lying and he'd know I was lying if I denied it to him or to anyone. That destiny, writ large in our quest, has meant many things to us over the years. Has it now come to this point that all men and all women seem to reach at some point? I've had male friends before. Very good male friends. And every single one of them...there has always been a moment when I wondered what it would like to be with them. Not just...'with' them...in that odd, teenaged sense that young girls use to wonder what it would be like if the Tommy O'Rileys of the world were to kiss them under the mistletoe at the marching band's Christmas party. That's just human nature. But `with them' in the sense that I find myself wondering how he would look at me, how he would touch me, how he would relate to me and my life. That, too, is human nature. No, in the sense that the idea of being with Mulder in that way was too intense to consider. Too smothering. Too controlling. Too needy. Too Mulder. <><> I see the emotions crossing her face and I know it's time to leave. The partnership will go on and we'll find a way to manage. I know that it's not that she doesn't feel the same way about me that I do about her. I know that it's because of who I am, not who I am not. I gently place the yearbook on the coffee table and stand. "I...I'll see you Monday, Scully," I say softly, smiling to let her know it's all right, knowing that if she looks into my eyes she'll know that I'm dying inside. I make it around the end of the couch before I sense her movement. <><> He's leaving. He comes in, drops this bomb on me and leaves. Bastard. And the part that really kills me... I need him. I need him to need me. This way...every way. I'm moving before the thought is fully formed. <><> I'm almost at the door, my hand reaching for the knob, when I feel her touch me. The hand is low, at the small of my back, pushing and turning me at the same moment. I resist, and she pushes, hard. Such strength from someone so small. Small in stature, maybe. My left shoulder hits the door with a thud, then my left elbow. Surprised, I look down at her eyes. And I see. For the first time I see my own need reflected in her eyes. <><> I step into his space, feeling his heat, warming myself with it. It's been so long, I think, so long since a man has... Heated me. "Where the hell do you think you're going, Mulder?" <><> I'm scared. I'm actually scared of the look on her face. <><> "Did I ask you to leave?" "N-no," he stammers, looking around. "I..." "You said you needed more, Mulder," I explain patiently, my fingers reaching out for his, entwining with his. "Just more, right?" He nods. I unlace my fingers, letting them tiptoe up his arm. "Is this enough, Mulder? Is this more?" My fingers ascend his arm and cross to his shoulder, my nails dragging on the skin. He twitches and I bury the smile that threatens to burst across my face. I've never made a man twitch like that. It's powerful, heady. My fingers find his chin and trace the outline. "Is this more, Mulder?" He nods. His eyes alight on mine. Time, that ugly human concept -- vanishes. I feel my mouth open slowly, the muscles in my face going slack as the full impact of what's happening finally sinks in. His hands grip my face, pulling me in for a kiss. I resist. Oh, no, Mulder. Not that easy. <><> She's resisting. Her fingers find my wrists and pry them from her face, forcing my hands to my sides. She steps closer, forcing a leg between my thighs. Going up on her toes, I feel the rub. My mouth drops open, my lips dry. <><> This is fun. I have no idea what he thought was going to happen, but it certainly wasn't this. When he gives me the power, I'll let him have mine. But not until then. He came over here thinking that if he confessed the feelings that have been so obvious to the both of us for so long that I'd...what? Fall into his arms? Hardly. He'll have to _take_ me into his arms. But I won't let him take me until he lets me. I remember words my mother spoke so many years ago. I'd asked her how she'd met Dad, how she'd known that He Was The One. "A man," my mother had said with a grin, "chases a woman until she catches him." Amazing how smart my mother becomes the older I get. <><> Fire. Fire in my veins, on my skin, in my heart. I feel like I'm wrestling with her. Her hands are on my waist and before I know it I'm facing the door. Her tiny little foot is between mine and my legs are kicked wide. "Assume the position," she growls. Oh my God. <><> This is more fun than I imagined. I squat, running my hands down his legs, checking for weapons. Back up, a short stop on his ass... I'll have to revisit that. And then the abdomen. My hands curl around his stomach, searching for contraband. My fingers tug his T-shirt out of his pants, my palms sliding up his chest, skittering over his nipples. He gasps against the door, the sound wet and throaty and needy. "Is this more, Mulder?" I ask, my voice low, dangerous. "Y-yes," he whispers. My hands return to his ass. And then it happens. <><> Too much. No more. Not on her terms. Our terms. I turn and she frowns. Rules are changing, Scully. She comes at me, her brows drawn together, asking a question with her eyes. I answer it with my mouth. Finding hers, capturing it. Hers for mine, mine for hers. She's wearing some kind of sweater-blouse-something over a snug burgundy T-shirt. It vanishes under my hungry hands. Her hands are at my belt, loosening it, finding my button, unsnapping it. Hands dip inside my waistband, seeking, searching, finding. Hot and smooth, against me, fingers tickling the tiny hairs. I groan into her mouth and she grins against my lips, drunk on the power she has on me. Turnabout being fair play, my fingers slide over her breasts through the shirt. Her smile vanishes in a matching gasp of her own. My turn to smile. "Too many clothes, Mulder," she grunts. I can't resist. "Is this more, Scully?" "Better believe it, G-man. Think you can handle-?" She doesn't finish her sentence. We kiss, hard; our teeth click together. We sink to the carpet. I wonder how we're going to do this. I wonder how we're going to survive another ten seconds if we don't do this. <><> I feel the burn of the carpet against the small patch of skin between my waistband and the hem of my T-shirt. I'm going to be sore in the morning. Screw it. My hands find the hem and lift it up and away. Skin against skin, silk against fire. His fingers dig at the carpet underneath me. I lift myself, knowing what he wants. I tug his shirt off at the same moment the clasp of my bra dissolves under his fingers. Skin against skin, he kisses me. Fire against fire, I kiss back. <><> Scully's breasts. Those two words repeat themselves in my mind. Scully's breasts. Two words that I've never put together in my mind. Too dangerous. Too wonderful. I feel them sliding over my chest. Too perfect. <><> He is hungry for me. Only for me. I answer his hunger with my own, reaching for him, dragging him down to where I am, where I need him. More, I think. I need more. And Mulder, bless his heart, has nothing but more to give. <><> Scully's mouth. Scully's breasts. Scully's lips. Scully's eyes. Her breath in my mouth, dark, dangerous, delicious. Her fingers, demanding, rough, pushing my pants down, digging for me. She's keening now. Almost...animal. <><> Five years, I keep thinking. Five years and not a single goddamn man has touched me, has wanted to break the fa^€ade I keep building every single goddamn day of my life. Not a single man has wanted... Who gives a shit? I think, ashamed at my own internal vulgarity. Tom Cruise his own goddamned self could have shown up on my doorstep and I would have turned him away for not being more. Not being Mulder. Damn him. "Now," I whisper in Mulder's ear. "Goddamit, now." <><> "Hurry," she whispers. I think five years is quick enough, don't you? <><> Later. She struggles from underneath me, moving to sit against the back of the couch. Her eyes are bright. She's gloriously naked. She sits with her knees bent, giving me this strange smile, this expression I've never seen. "Took you long enough," she teases. "Yeah," I sigh. "So sue me." She stands, walking to her bedroom. Amazed, I watch her walk. Poetry in motion. Her last words to me before vanishing inside her bedroom: "I've got a better idea." I'm moving before the echo of her words dies. <><> FINI