Of late, Scully has really tried to embrace the notion that even if you're facing a foregone conclusion, the journey can be worth it.
Her arms slip around him in turn, palms sliding up his back so she can splay her fingers over his shoulderblades; she smiles at the feeling of that light kiss, and then she tips her head up to ask wordlessly for the next one, her eyes dark with want, cheeks flushed with more than just the heat of the water. As best she can she's got her whole body pressed against him.
She doesn't have to do more than tilt her head before he's craning his neck down toward her. Given the chance, he'd be tempted to never let her go - though at the moment, it doesn't seem like she'd fight the possibility.
Mulder kisses her long and slow, meeting that longing of hers with some heat of his own. Whether anything happens in here or not, he'll be happy with the results; just holding her, a hand skimming lazily up and down her hip, has been the stuff of fantasy for a while now.
If all they did was stand here in the steam, it would be enough. This is why her attraction to Mulder has always felt so dangerous-- it isn't as simple as passing lust, or the makeshift intimacy of proximity. Rooted in friendship, their relationship-- even without any formality, without having touched or kissed-- was crucial and enduring.
Fucking him changed nothing, and everything; the truth is they'd passed the point of no return long ago. And at the moment, at least-- humming pleasantly against his mouth, tongue sliding across his lower lip-- she has no regrets.
(That said-- since the indirect approach has been more successful-- if his body decides to cooperate, she's absolutely going to make good use of all this space.)
So far, so good. For the moment, he's genuinely not thinking about what his cock is or isn't doing; kissing Scully is its own reason for being, a goal in and of itself. He opens his mouth to her, his own tongue slipping into hers, and runs a hand along her wet back.
Ribs too prominent, spine too defined - and yet all he could possibly want. It comes into his mind again, what if it was like this for the rest of our lives?, but he pushes the thought away. For once, it's possible to live not in thoughts of the past or fears of the future, but in this steam-drenched moment. He nudges her back against the tile wall, reaching down between her legs.
If this was the rest of her life-- she could do worse. She might do worse, if she returns home and things have changed too much, if they can't find whatever solution he found back then.
She's stopped thinking about it. Mostly. At the moment she's really stopped thinking entirely, and she sighs as he walks her back against the wall, her hands sliding down his body so one rests on his hip; she lifts the other to cling to his shoulder.
"God, yes," she murmurs against his mouth, too aware of the throb of her own racing pulse. She wants him so much, she can't imagine ever having her fill of him.
He breathes out, a laugh that could as easily be mistaken for a sigh, if someone else was listening. "My name's Mulder, actually."
It's the worst joke, and he doesn't care. He'd forgotten, somehow, just how generous she could be with her praise; maybe he'd retained it as a fact in his mind, Scully loves it when you touch her, but he didn't retain what it felt like. She's holding him, already reduced to invocations, and he's hardly done anything. The pad of his thumb moves lightly over her clit, his mouth at her jaw in hopes that she might speak again. Slowly, but deliberately, he begins to stroke her.
It's a stupid joke, but the confidence thrills her. She wants him cocky and joyful and affectionate; she wants to believe that maybe she hasn't really ruined everything for him.
And at the moment she's easy to please; he could reduce her to trembling just talking, she wants him so terribly.
"Shut up," she mumbles, laughing around it; her gaze is a little unfocused, her face flushed. It doesn't take him long to win a little whimper from her.
"You love it," he says, stealing a kiss as her laughter disappears into a needy little sound. The hot water would have brought that little tinge of colour to her face regardless, but there's no denying that his touch is doing the heavy lifting this morning. She's gorgeous about it - hair wet, eyes huge - and her body's more than ready for him.
Mulder slips two fingers past her slick entrance, bracing his other arm against the cool tile above her head. And just being able to talk to her, to tease her - even if the necessary equipment isn't rising to the occasion right now, he's having an incredible time.
Oh, but she does love it. Today, she loves him; seventeen years ago, she loves him. He leans on the wall, and she leans on him, and it feels perfect. It feels right.
She groans softly as his fingers slide into her, her fingers clenching on his shoulder. The whole world narrows in scope; she can forget where and when they are, as long as they're together. She reaches up to stroke his jaw, trying to pull him down for another kiss, a silent yes. She loves it. She loves him.
Scully loves him; Scully wants him. It should be as obvious as breathing, a shadow following him any time he ventures into the light. And for once, it is.
He gives her what she wants, all of it: an easy rhythm, a scorching kiss, the water spraying over them the whole time. (Does this happen often in here? It's hard not to wonder what else this house has seen, in the time Scully's lived here.) It's not what it could be, fucking her the way they both want him to, but it feels like enough, from this vantage point. He's happy with the drag of his fingertips against her inner walls, the gentle pull he gives her lower lip.
It's perfect, she thinks. Then again, anything he gave her would be everything she wants, in this moment-- she wants him more than anything else, any way she can have him. In a quieter moment she'll worry again, but not right now. (In a quieter moment, she knows, she's going to have to ask.)
He gets a kick out of her little noises, she can tell, so she doesn't hold back; she lets herself whine as she chases his kiss, her hands restless, sliding over his wet shoulders, raking nails lightly through his chest hair. Her back arches, shoulders pressed against the tiles, her breathing a little ragged.
His jaw bumps lightly against hers as he moves in to nibble at her earlobe. The warm spray of the water continues on as he fucks her with his fingers, palm pressing up against her clit.
"Scully," he mumbles against the shell of her ear. The scent of her in the heated air is intoxicating. "You're so beautiful, Scully -"
Everything is warm; even the hard tile at her back has lost all its chill, and the heat of his hand between her legs is the only thing that really matters.
"Oh--" it's warbling and broken, the pressure of his palm just right, his voice murmuring against her raising goosebumps down her neck. This is as close to perfect, she thinks, as anything could be-- it's better than perfect, just off-kilter enough to be real rather than fantasy.
She wants it to last forever-- but all things must end.
"Mulder," she pleads, clutching at his shoulders and urging him on until her whole body tenses-- until she slumps into his arms, face pressed against his chest, the water still beating down upon them both.
And he's there with her the whole time, murmuring nothings into her ear - c'mon, you're so good, Scully - as she comes undone a second time that morning. This is never going to get old for him, having her here. It's as natural as it used to be, without any of the recent doubt or bitterness.
When she finishes, he holds her, kissing the wet hair at the crown of her head.
It takes her a moment to gather her wits, breathing hard, but when she does look up at him her gaze is suffused with affection; drowsy and spent but as bright as the sun. He can't possibly doubt she loves him, even if she's been shy about saying it.
Maybe she could say it. Maybe that's what's on the tip of her tongue, when she opens her mouth-- just as a trickle of blood starts at her nose, spreading wildly over her wet skin so it looks like a deluge, dripping down her body to redden the expensive tile.
Maybe he could say it, looking down at her with nothing but affection in his eyes. All of it, beyond the three words that have been choking his throat for all this time. You and me, Scully, let's not worry about what it looks like. If we can't find a way to get you home, we'll live here -
And then she's bleeding.
Mulder's frame stiffens a moment. In the next breath, he rinses his hand off quickly in the shower spray before he lets go of her and gets out of the shower. The towels here are pristinely white, and he couldn't care less; still dripping onto the floor, he hands the first one to her. "Here - how are you feeling?"
Is this an emergency-room situation or a wait-it-out situation?
This is a common enough occurrence that she doesn't panic-- though with the water it's particularly dramatic. He hands her a towel, and she wraps her hand in it and presses it to her face before angling back into the spray a moment to rinse off the worst of the redness, the scent of warm metal mingling with flowery soap.
"Like I killed the mood," she says apologetically, turning off the shower and pulling the towel away to check if it's still going. The towel is going to be a total loss, tinged pink down the length of it, but there's not nearly as much as she looks. It should pass quickly, she thinks. She hopes.
Mulder stands there, feeling old and wrinkled and selfish as he watches her tend to her bleeding face. For a moment or two, he'd thought we could live like this, it could be like this - and his reward is the most vital reminder possible of the reasons they can't. Her life is running out of her, drop by bloody drop, and he's daydreaming about playing house.
"No, no," he tells her, reaching for another pristine towel. "Come here."
He'll dry her off, shepherd her off to the bed they've commandeered. He's going to have to start doing research on the options - but he wants to hold her just a little longer.
By this point, the nosebleeds don't panic her. It's an unpleasant reminder of what's to come-- but mostly it's a nuisance, and right now it's a stain both literal and figurative on what was a near-perfect afternoon.
"It'll be okay," she murmurs, coming closer, tucking her tongue against her lip-- it's probably an old wives' tale, that it will end it faster, but these days she'll try nearly anything.
She walks into the towel he's holding, leaning against him, feeling only a bit deflated.
"Yeah," he agrees, lying, as he wraps first the towel and then his arms around her damp body. "It'll be okay. C'mon, Scully."
Walking them out of the steamy bathroom, toward her bed, he sits down at the edge of it, tugging her gently down beside him. In a couple minutes, he thinks, I'll get to work. In a couple minutes, I'll stop touching her and start finding a way back. For the moment, though, all he does is hold her.
She makes a muffled sound of agreement against his chest, the towel still tucked against her face. It's all right, she wants to tell him, but it's really not. It's better, though, to have him beside her; to lean on him more literally.
And lean she does, letting herself sag in his embrace. For once, she's not trying to hide it, not trying to be all right. She's just waiting it out.
"I think it's letting up," she murmurs eventually.
It's an eternity, one that feels longer than his memories. He never experienced her nosebleeds with this kind of intimacy - but still, doesn't this seem worse? What if traveling to the future kicked her cancer into higher gear? Her presence here might well be killing her, even as Mulder basks in the sense of purpose she gives him.
He can't come up with an answer from this vantage point. The best he can do is wait until she reports a change - and when she does, he breathes out, kissing the top of her head. "Good. How do you feel?"
"Not too bad," she murmurs. A mild headache but that's probably mostly the tension. "It's fine-- I promise."
It's not really fine, she knows, and he knows it too. But it's not much worse than it always is, and these days this is the best she can hope for. She's all right. Someday-- someday soon, maybe, sooner than she wants-- she won't be, but for now it's just a nosebleed.
"We can just take it easy, for a minute.... I ought to drink some water."
It's not fine. He knows what's coming next - her chalky skin, the way she lies down nearly as lifeless as a set of hospital sheets. She's going to get close to dying if she's in her own time; here, she'll simply die. And he can tell her none of this, explain nothing about the way that his arms tighten around her when she says it's fine.
"As long as you need," he murmurs, letting her decide when she wants to get up. "We have all the time in the world, Scully."
Patently a lie - but what else can he do? She deserves to have this time. The immortality they joke about should be hers.
Maybe it's easier for her to accept. She's been waiting, watching the results, trying one treatment or another; she's been winnowing away the options until there's only one path left. She's had time to adjust to the inevitability of it; his suggestion of a reprieve is recent enough not to have wholly taken hold. If it's just another promising miracle drug that falls through... She's used to that.
But he's had her, and lost her, and now maybe he has to lose her again. And again, she thinks, it's less that she worries about living for her own sake, and more that she doesn't want to do that to him.
The more things change, she thinks, with the darkest of humor, the more they stay the same.
She doesn't get up. At least the bleeding has abated, truly, and she shoves the towel away haphazardly, but stays leaning against him-- wet hair sticking to his chest, her damp body cooling in the air. The truth is there's nowhere to go.
He might be forgiven for wondering if she's fallen asleep, but eventually, like she's come to a weighty decision--
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Her arms slip around him in turn, palms sliding up his back so she can splay her fingers over his shoulderblades; she smiles at the feeling of that light kiss, and then she tips her head up to ask wordlessly for the next one, her eyes dark with want, cheeks flushed with more than just the heat of the water. As best she can she's got her whole body pressed against him.
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Mulder kisses her long and slow, meeting that longing of hers with some heat of his own. Whether anything happens in here or not, he'll be happy with the results; just holding her, a hand skimming lazily up and down her hip, has been the stuff of fantasy for a while now.
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Fucking him changed nothing, and everything; the truth is they'd passed the point of no return long ago. And at the moment, at least-- humming pleasantly against his mouth, tongue sliding across his lower lip-- she has no regrets.
(That said-- since the indirect approach has been more successful-- if his body decides to cooperate, she's absolutely going to make good use of all this space.)
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Ribs too prominent, spine too defined - and yet all he could possibly want. It comes into his mind again, what if it was like this for the rest of our lives?, but he pushes the thought away. For once, it's possible to live not in thoughts of the past or fears of the future, but in this steam-drenched moment. He nudges her back against the tile wall, reaching down between her legs.
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She's stopped thinking about it. Mostly. At the moment she's really stopped thinking entirely, and she sighs as he walks her back against the wall, her hands sliding down his body so one rests on his hip; she lifts the other to cling to his shoulder.
"God, yes," she murmurs against his mouth, too aware of the throb of her own racing pulse. She wants him so much, she can't imagine ever having her fill of him.
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It's the worst joke, and he doesn't care. He'd forgotten, somehow, just how generous she could be with her praise; maybe he'd retained it as a fact in his mind, Scully loves it when you touch her, but he didn't retain what it felt like. She's holding him, already reduced to invocations, and he's hardly done anything. The pad of his thumb moves lightly over her clit, his mouth at her jaw in hopes that she might speak again. Slowly, but deliberately, he begins to stroke her.
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And at the moment she's easy to please; he could reduce her to trembling just talking, she wants him so terribly.
"Shut up," she mumbles, laughing around it; her gaze is a little unfocused, her face flushed. It doesn't take him long to win a little whimper from her.
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Mulder slips two fingers past her slick entrance, bracing his other arm against the cool tile above her head. And just being able to talk to her, to tease her - even if the necessary equipment isn't rising to the occasion right now, he's having an incredible time.
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She groans softly as his fingers slide into her, her fingers clenching on his shoulder. The whole world narrows in scope; she can forget where and when they are, as long as they're together. She reaches up to stroke his jaw, trying to pull him down for another kiss, a silent yes. She loves it. She loves him.
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He gives her what she wants, all of it: an easy rhythm, a scorching kiss, the water spraying over them the whole time. (Does this happen often in here? It's hard not to wonder what else this house has seen, in the time Scully's lived here.) It's not what it could be, fucking her the way they both want him to, but it feels like enough, from this vantage point. He's happy with the drag of his fingertips against her inner walls, the gentle pull he gives her lower lip.
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He gets a kick out of her little noises, she can tell, so she doesn't hold back; she lets herself whine as she chases his kiss, her hands restless, sliding over his wet shoulders, raking nails lightly through his chest hair. Her back arches, shoulders pressed against the tiles, her breathing a little ragged.
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"Scully," he mumbles against the shell of her ear. The scent of her in the heated air is intoxicating. "You're so beautiful, Scully -"
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"Oh--" it's warbling and broken, the pressure of his palm just right, his voice murmuring against her raising goosebumps down her neck. This is as close to perfect, she thinks, as anything could be-- it's better than perfect, just off-kilter enough to be real rather than fantasy.
She wants it to last forever-- but all things must end.
"Mulder," she pleads, clutching at his shoulders and urging him on until her whole body tenses-- until she slumps into his arms, face pressed against his chest, the water still beating down upon them both.
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When she finishes, he holds her, kissing the wet hair at the crown of her head.
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Maybe she could say it. Maybe that's what's on the tip of her tongue, when she opens her mouth-- just as a trickle of blood starts at her nose, spreading wildly over her wet skin so it looks like a deluge, dripping down her body to redden the expensive tile.
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And then she's bleeding.
Mulder's frame stiffens a moment. In the next breath, he rinses his hand off quickly in the shower spray before he lets go of her and gets out of the shower. The towels here are pristinely white, and he couldn't care less; still dripping onto the floor, he hands the first one to her. "Here - how are you feeling?"
Is this an emergency-room situation or a wait-it-out situation?
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"Like I killed the mood," she says apologetically, turning off the shower and pulling the towel away to check if it's still going. The towel is going to be a total loss, tinged pink down the length of it, but there's not nearly as much as she looks. It should pass quickly, she thinks. She hopes.
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"No, no," he tells her, reaching for another pristine towel. "Come here."
He'll dry her off, shepherd her off to the bed they've commandeered. He's going to have to start doing research on the options - but he wants to hold her just a little longer.
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"It'll be okay," she murmurs, coming closer, tucking her tongue against her lip-- it's probably an old wives' tale, that it will end it faster, but these days she'll try nearly anything.
She walks into the towel he's holding, leaning against him, feeling only a bit deflated.
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Walking them out of the steamy bathroom, toward her bed, he sits down at the edge of it, tugging her gently down beside him. In a couple minutes, he thinks, I'll get to work. In a couple minutes, I'll stop touching her and start finding a way back. For the moment, though, all he does is hold her.
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And lean she does, letting herself sag in his embrace. For once, she's not trying to hide it, not trying to be all right. She's just waiting it out.
"I think it's letting up," she murmurs eventually.
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He can't come up with an answer from this vantage point. The best he can do is wait until she reports a change - and when she does, he breathes out, kissing the top of her head. "Good. How do you feel?"
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It's not really fine, she knows, and he knows it too. But it's not much worse than it always is, and these days this is the best she can hope for. She's all right. Someday-- someday soon, maybe, sooner than she wants-- she won't be, but for now it's just a nosebleed.
"We can just take it easy, for a minute.... I ought to drink some water."
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"As long as you need," he murmurs, letting her decide when she wants to get up. "We have all the time in the world, Scully."
Patently a lie - but what else can he do? She deserves to have this time. The immortality they joke about should be hers.
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But he's had her, and lost her, and now maybe he has to lose her again. And again, she thinks, it's less that she worries about living for her own sake, and more that she doesn't want to do that to him.
The more things change, she thinks, with the darkest of humor, the more they stay the same.
She doesn't get up. At least the bleeding has abated, truly, and she shoves the towel away haphazardly, but stays leaning against him-- wet hair sticking to his chest, her damp body cooling in the air. The truth is there's nowhere to go.
He might be forgiven for wondering if she's fallen asleep, but eventually, like she's come to a weighty decision--
"Mulder..."
She hesitates.
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