Snakebitten (3/4)
Season 5, MSR
R/NC-17
Part Three
31.
She didn’t want to drive back to D.C. and so they stopped at the first motel they saw, Scully pulling into the gravel lot after Mulder. They got out of their cars, instinctively stretching.
“That was quick.”
“I have a sixth sense for shitty motels,” Mulder said, wiggling his fingers like divining rods.
Mulder waited outside as Scully checked herself in. Then he waited at the door with her as she unlocked it and went in. The bedspread was covered with jam-colored roses. She turned a lamp on, took her coat off, and sat down.
Mulder hovered in the doorway, scissoring the keys on his ring.
“Stay,” she said.
“The drive isn’t that bad-”
“Stay. It’s getting dark. It’s silly for you to drive back tonight.”
He nodded.
32.
Mulder found a pizza place a few miles down the road. He was waiting in the lobby, idly reading corkboard flyers, when the truck from the highway pulled into the parking lot, its headlights bouncing across the plate glass. Shit.
He went up to the counter. “Any chance of getting that pizza soon?”
The girl working the counter was chewing neon green gum, which seemed like it was probably a health code violation.
“Uh, whenever it’s done? It’s on a timer or whatever.”
She scraped at a spot of dried tomato sauce on the counter with her pale blue nail.
“Right.” Mulder drummed his fingers, glanced back at the parking lot. The truck. He was 95% sure it was the same truck. 94%.
“I’ll let you know when it’s done.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
He stepped to the side and didn’t look back as the cluster of bells above the door jangled.
The man ordered two large pizzas, extra cheese, extra pepperoni, extra sausage, and added a two liter of orange soda at the girl’s suggestion. He had a chapped, windblown face and curly hair. He stuck his wallet in his back pocket and tilted his head at Mulder.
“Cold out there.”
Mulder nodded.
“It’ll be warmer tomorrow. I can tell. My ankle gets tetchy.”
Mulder had never seen the guy before, but that didn’t mean anything. Haley wasn’t stupid. It was the same blue truck, wasn’t it? The front plate was missing.
“You know, my great-great-aunt was married to the owner of the original Puxatawney Phil.”
“No kidding.”
“So it runs in the family.”
“Well, I hope you’re right. About tomorrow.”
“Oh, I am.” He sat down on the bench to wait for his pizza, seemingly satisfied with himself. There was no way any of Haley’s guys could pull off an act like this. Right?
Scully turned on the TV while she waited. Cheers was filmed before a live studio audience. The Weather Channel said it was raining in Atlanta and snowing in St. Paul. A round sun hovered over the desert southwest.
She couldn’t think of anything else to do but berate herself. An entire Saturday, ruined. Not even on a case and here she was in a motel, her bed sitting unused at home. What did she think she was going to find? She got some ice and two sodas from the machine and poured them into the glass tumblers from the bathroom sink.
For a moment, she thought about going to the lobby and paying for another room, for Mulder, but didn’t.
When he came in with the greasy pizza box, shrugging off his jacket, Scully handed him a watery Pepsi, like a sixties housewife ready with a whiskey on the rocks. Her inadvertent re-creation struck her as absurd. Her can of soda, her scrubby motel room, her Mulder.
While they ate, he told her about Jersey Devil sightings right there in southeastern Pennsylvania.
33.
She went into the bathroom and he heard quiet movement, a zipper, fabric, then the squeak of pipes and water running in the tub. He wished he could fall asleep, nap in front of the TV, so he wouldn’t be waiting there expectantly when she came out, like some creep who’d just been sitting there the whole time, listening to her in there, thinking about her naked, which, well, he sometimes did, but he wasn’t now.
He watched most of an episode of COPS before deciding she’d been in there too long. You could drown in an inch of water. Not to mention the things they’d seen come up a drainpipe.
He went to the window and looked out. There were five cars in the parking lot: his, Scully’s, and three others near the front office. No sign of the truck. He straightened the vinyl-backed curtains so there were no gaps and double-checked the dinged-up deadbolt.
The warped bathroom door was ajar, so when he said her name and she didn’t respond, he gently pushed it open.
Scully was sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Her pants were carefully folded on the counter and her legs were bare and longer than they had any right to be, skim milk blue against the clean white tub. Shallow water licked at her shins.
“Scully?” he tried again. “You okay in here?”
“Yeah. I am, actually. Close the door, Mulder.”
He reached back and pushed it shut before he had a chance to let himself consider that maybe she wanted him to close it with him on the other side.
“Lock it, please.”
Her voice was calm as he clicked the lock.
He felt as though he’d been woken from a deep, dreamless sleep, and was still trying to form a landscape from pieces: a half-filled bathtub, a half-dressed Scully, and little else to go on.
She turned her head to the side, not so much to look at him but let him know she knew he was there.
He knelt down on the floor behind her, the rug slipping a little. Her legs were pebbled with goosebumps and her hair slid easily to the side.
The pale scar hovered above the clasp of her necklace. It was small, the size and shape of a fingernail clipping. He read it with his fingers.
“I’m alive, Mulder,” she said quietly.
He kissed her neck, pressed his tongue gently down against the scar and imagined he could feel the edges of the chip pressing back.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” she asked, and he shook his head slowly, the tip of his nose cold on her skin.
Her hair was smoky, late spring chill curling between the strands. Burnt bodies, gnarled like driftwood. Her head tilted back against his rough cheek.
It was Saturday night and he hadn’t shaved since Friday morning, when he put on his suit and tie and came to work, and now it was Saturday night and he was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt and she was in her underwear and a tan sweater that was soft as the underbelly of a leaf and which she probably wore to church and to her mother’s for dinner and they were locked in a tiny hothouse bathroom in a shitty motel on the side of the road in Nowhere Exactly, PA.
“What are you doing in here?” he said, his voice cracking a little.
“Thinking. My feet were cold.” What was she doing? What were they doing?
“The water can’t be very warm anymore.”
“Oh, it’s not.”
She turned around on the edge of the tub, dripping water, to face Mulder. She moved his right hand to her left knee. He breathed in sharply. She looked at him with an almost smile as she brushed his hair back. He put his left hand on her right knee.
She’d felt his hands before, of course. She remembered shaking his hand when she met him. She’d felt his hands on her face, in her hair, a finger tapping the back of her hand to get her attention in a meeting. His hand at the small of her back. But now, his palms flat on her thighs, one thumb rasping back and forth on the soft inside of her left knee and she thought: I have never felt his hands before at all.
She reached out for him, said his name, softly, his shirt balled in her fist, and their lips touched. She pushed him back or he pulled her down and either way, they landed together on the floor, Scully straddling him, her arms around his neck.
His elbow cracked the side of the tub on their graceless way down and she folded his arm carefully upwards to examine it.
“Are you okay?” Her fingers tiptoed around the wiggly bones.
“I’ll live.” He looked up at her, his head thunking back against the wall.
Mulder and his sad eyes, his baby-don’t-leave-me eyes.
“That’s good,” she said. Her damp fingers raked straight back through his hair, nails scratching his scalp. She felt powerful, taller than him on her knees. She felt bodied, understanding herself as a physical object for the first time in a long time.
“Scully,” he said, disbelieving. The tips of his fingers sneaked under the edge of her underwear and then they were kissing again, her hands gripping his jaw like he might stop.
When he moved his hands, the elastic snapped against her skin with a pleasant sting. She laughed because she couldn’t believe any of it. Not a single thing.
When she first met Mulder, she found him worryingly attractive. He knew how good he looked, yet he didn’t at all, which was worse than if he’d just been vain.
God, and he was always stretching, slivers of his stomach appearing from underneath t-shirts and sweaters, and she sometimes found herself wanting to draw a finger along the fine bones of his face, down the slope of his nose, without which he wouldn’t have been half so handsome. He would lean back in chairs, his neck open to her like a sign of submission. She wanted to sink her teeth in.
But he was Mulder. It had been five years going on six and he got worn in. He drove her crazy. He talked with food in his mouth when he was excited. She was always surprised when they’d be renting a car and the woman would fumble with the credit card and couldn’t seem to look away as Mulder scribbled his signature, touching the pen to his tongue to get the ink moving. Signing Fox, for god’s sake. “Talk to me when he’s covered in bile,” she wanted to say. But she’d always touch the inside of his elbow then, and enjoy the fact that her one touch would cause him to immediately fold in on her, everything else disappearing from his periphery just because he wanted to see what she had to say.
And now, now she felt superior not just to Karen or Joyce at the Lariat desk, but to her younger self. All you could do was look-
Watching her face, waiting to be stopped, he slid his entire hand down the front of her underwear, palm up, the lace trim against his wrist.
“Oh my god,” she breathed as he moved three fingers up and down.
“I want to taste you.”
“Oh-” She felt like she was going to pass out. I want to taste you. Mulder saying that. Mulder saying that to her.
“I want to taste you, Scully, but there’s not any fucking room in this bathroom.” They were wedged against the tub. He still had his Timberlands on.
“I think-” she ground down, hard, against his hand. “I think it’s lucky, then, that we’re good at solving difficult problems as a team.”
“I knew it would come in handy sometime.”
Standing with her back against a motel bathroom door. Her fuzzy sweater half on. Mulder kneeling in front of her, her hands in his hair, one leg bent over his shoulder. Mulder was, she suspected, the kind of guy who would say, “I want to go down on you all night,” and truly mean it.
Mulder back on the floor, sitting against the wall, holding his own hard cock as she straddled him. This was such a bad idea, a bad bad bad idea, she’d sworn off getting involved with people she worked with, but this was Mulder and he wasn’t really a coworker, not exactly, not really, because what a paltry way to describe him. She was already involved. This, right now, this revelatory moment when he slid into her, this was simpler, made more sense, than any of the other ways they were already involved.
From outside, there was the shrill ring of a cell phone.
“Your phone,” she said breathlessly, covering her bases, acting like it would be no big deal if he chose to end this right now, if he got up to answer it, like she didn’t want to burst into tears at the thought. She kept moving. “Mulder?”
He shook his head no, his forehead rocking back and forth against hers as his fingers circled where their bodies met.
“Oh, thank god.”
“Are you kidding me?” he whispered, and kissed her like they were on a sinking ship, like this was it. She pulled back to look at him.
“This,” she said, “This might be fraternization,” and he tilted his hips up a little so she’d gasp, which she did.
“I think it might be,” he said, pulling her closer-so this is what I have to do to get him to agree with me-“Oh, fuck, Scully.”
“Come here.” She rolled him on top of her, laughing. The tile cold on her back, Mulder’s pleasant weight on top of her. His jeans were still bunched around his knees and she used her foot to push them down.
“Your legs are too long. It’s taking forever to get your pants off.”
“Years.”
Maybe they should’ve moved to the bed but that would mean thought, that would mean decisions being made. This-
He’d always assumed, if it were to happen, that they’d both be wearing most of their clothes and that she would simply button up, straighten her skirt, and continue whatever discussion they’d been having, telling him about the neurological impossibility of telepathy or the nutritional dangers of canned soup.
Now, they were lying on the floor, half-naked, spent and breathing in counterpoint, her hand under his shirt, her head a fuzzy tangle at his shoulder, his hand cautiously stroking her back.
He didn’t expect Scully to love him. This didn’t change that.
(She didn’t expect Mulder to love her. This didn’t change that.)
Mulder hadn’t even meant to like Scully, but he had, almost immediately and to his chagrin. From the first five minutes in his office, he knew he was in trouble.
It scared him a little, what he felt for her now, what he felt for her and what he was certain (not taking into account tonight, which he was sure was an anomaly) she didn’t quite feel for him. It filled every empty space in him, spaces he hadn’t known were empty until they were filled.
(She wanted to stay here forever, locked away, with him.)
She cares about me, he would have allowed, in her quietly fierce, sensible way. She is my partner.
But what he felt. It made the marrow of his bones ache. He had no idea what to do with it.
Out in his coat pocket, on the bed, his phone rang again.
“Jesus,” she said, half a laugh bitter in her mouth.
“Doesn’t Skinner have anything better to do on a Saturday night?”
“You should go answer it.”
As they sat up, getting dressed, not meeting each other’s eyes, Scully kneeled and bent to kiss him. She buried her face in his neck for a minute, her eyelashes wet.
A goodbye kiss, he knew that’s what it was.
(Don’t leave.)
“How’s your partner?” had been Haley’s opener.
“In the next room. Armed.” Mulder finished zipping up his jeans, hoping the telltale noise couldn’t be heard at the other end of the line. He rubbed his mouth, fingers coming away lipstick-tinted.
“I like a woman who knows how to handle a gun.” Oh, sex with Scully had possibly ruined his ability to appreciate innuendo.
“What do you want.”
“Just checking in. Making sure your case isn’t going to take any longer than you thought.”
“I’ll be back in D.C. on Monday.”
“Good. You know, Mr. Mulder, just for future reference, I’m the kind of guy who likes to be kept in the loop. Call me nosy.”
“I’ll remember that. I’m thinking about a bagel for breakfast, but I’ll give you a ring, let you know what I decide. I could go donut.”
Scully came out carrying her boots and set them at the foot of the bed. Her hair was tucked behind her ears and her face was flushed. She sat down and put her socks back on.
“Skinner?” she said, pointing at the phone.
He looked dumbly at the black piece of plastic.
“On the phone? Was it Skinner?”
“Oh. No.” He scratched behind his ear, smoothed down his hair. “It was my mom.”
“Oh. How is she?”
“Good. You know.” He shrugged and tossed the phone on the bed.
He knew she had to be, if not suspicious, at least curious. They left each other well enough alone, didn’t prod too much. It would take a hell of a lot more for her to start asking questions. Snooping, spying, not her style.
Still. Two secretive, late night phone calls, taken in her presence and not explained, that was unlike him and they both knew it and were pretending not to. This was a seed, waiting in the back of her head. It would bloom.
34.
She took the bed and he took the chair. They had some kind of bizarre Victorian sense of propriety.
“Are you asleep?” 1:42 a.m.
“Never,” he said. A truck had pulled into a spot about 25 feet away from their door at midnight and stayed half an hour. In the dark, he couldn’t tell if it was blue or green. A lot of people drove trucks, especially here. He memorized the plate so he could run it when they got back to D.C.
“Are you cold? You have to be cold,” she said. “Come here.”
It felt dicey. He was trying to act normal, because she was apparently taking the tack of ignoring the fact that, hours earlier, she’d been biting his neck while he fucked her on the floor of a motel bathroom. Well, at least they weren’t technically on a case.
But he was cold, she was right, and she already had the blankets peeled back. It would be rude to say no. He crawled in but gave her space. She reached over and placed a hand on his turned cheek, pressed soft circles into his jaw. He clenched it, the way he always did when he was angry or nervous or sad.
“You okay?” he said.
“Uh huh.”
“Really?”
She wasn’t sure if he was still worried about her trip to Ruskin Dam or if he was trying to be gentlemanly, gauge if there was going to be fallout from tonight. She sometimes underestimated the extent to which he needed her to be okay, the way a tilt in her axis could send him spinning ever outwards.
“I feel like I’m being held hostage. If I can get in the car and drive to another state without knowing it-”
“Today?”
“No. But it happened that night. Mulder, I don’t know how I got there. And I came out of it by the grace of who the hell knows. What happens when my luck runs out?”
He laughed.
“What?”
“Luck, Scully. The idea that either of us possess anything even remotely resembling luck.”
“We’re still here, aren’t we? Mulder, it’s just… as long as this thing is in my neck, whose body is this? Whose brain is this? If someone else can flick a switch…”
“You don’t want to-I mean, are you thinking about-”
“No,” she said. “No. Faith is one thing. I don’t know that I want to prove it.”
If she’d asked, he’d have sliced it out himself. But he was glad she didn’t. He really didn’t care what had saved her. Despite it all, he was okay never knowing, as long as she stayed saved. Prayer, technology-the ends were the thing, fuck the means.
“Did you find what you were looking for today? Out here?”
“I guess I wanted to see it with my own eyes.”
“Doubting Thomas,” he said.
“Actually, Mulder, you’ve always reminded me of him.”
“Haven’t you heard? I believe in everything.”
“You’d definitely stick your hand in someone’s side.”
“I’m endlessly interested in the world,” he said. She huffed a laugh.
“I didn’t want to have to rely on an X-File to tell me what I’d done. On some embarrassing hypnosis tape. I thought I could find the answers and move on.”
She threw her arm against her eyes, feeling the heat in her cheeks rise at the thought of the tape. She hated that Skinner had heard it. Mulder was one thing, but her boss?
The problem: it all seemed made up. A tall tale. She wondered, more than ever, how the people they met, all across this wide and bumpy country, managed to hold onto their crazy stories for so long. How he had, for so long.
“I want to find the answers for you.”
“Maybe sometimes there aren’t answers, Mulder, no matter how much we want there to be.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
She sat up suddenly, arms around her knees.
“Mulder.”
He sat up, too, confused.
“I haven’t been entirely truthful with you.”
His stomach dropped, the way your stomach drops when you hear bad news or when you’re in the throes of new love. Two feelings that press up close next to each other.
“There was a woman named Marjorie. Marjorie Eldritch. She lived in Glen Burnie with her husband, John Eldritch. Until last November, when John went missing on his way home from his job as a government contractor.”
“A government contractor doing what?”
“Unclear. He’s suspiciously absent from available government records. And then in March, Marjorie drove to Ruskin Dam.”
“Is she dead?”
“Yes. I found a key card at her house.”
“You went to her house? Did you break in?”
She nodded.
“Scully.” He was a little impressed.
“I’m dropping it, Mulder. It’s dropped.”
“What about the key card?”
“I had Byers try to read it. Nothing.”
“You think the husband is dead?”
“Probably.”
“You could’ve been hurt, Scully.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I would’ve gone with you.”
“I don’t need you to protect me, Mulder.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“I’m fine! Nothing happened.”
“But something could’ve! You could’ve been hurt. At least if I were there, I could’ve gotten hurt instead.”
She laughed, finally, and he took her face in his hands. She looped her hands around his wrists.
“I wanted to do it alone. Because if we did it together, I guess then that made it an X-File. I made me an X-File. Again.”
“So what now?”
“Nothing. It’s over. I’ve realized that I was right from the beginning. I wouldn’t feel better if I found the men who did this to me. I wouldn’t feel better if I killed them.”
“I would.”
She gave him a look.
“I really, truly would, Scully.”
“Nobody needs to kill anybody, Mulder. There’s enough of that.”
As they got into their separate cars in the morning, balancing Styrofoam cups of coffee, Mulder reached out and pressed down the collar of her coat, blown by the wind. It was warmer already. He told her to get some rest, that he’d see her Monday.
“You, too,” she said. “Rest, I mean.”
“Yeah,” he said, stretching a long leg into the car. “You know me. Restful’s my middle name.”
“As if Fox weren’t enough.”
R/NC-17
Part Three
31.
She didn’t want to drive back to D.C. and so they stopped at the first motel they saw, Scully pulling into the gravel lot after Mulder. They got out of their cars, instinctively stretching.
“That was quick.”
“I have a sixth sense for shitty motels,” Mulder said, wiggling his fingers like divining rods.
Mulder waited outside as Scully checked herself in. Then he waited at the door with her as she unlocked it and went in. The bedspread was covered with jam-colored roses. She turned a lamp on, took her coat off, and sat down.
Mulder hovered in the doorway, scissoring the keys on his ring.
“Stay,” she said.
“The drive isn’t that bad-”
“Stay. It’s getting dark. It’s silly for you to drive back tonight.”
He nodded.
32.
Mulder found a pizza place a few miles down the road. He was waiting in the lobby, idly reading corkboard flyers, when the truck from the highway pulled into the parking lot, its headlights bouncing across the plate glass. Shit.
He went up to the counter. “Any chance of getting that pizza soon?”
The girl working the counter was chewing neon green gum, which seemed like it was probably a health code violation.
“Uh, whenever it’s done? It’s on a timer or whatever.”
She scraped at a spot of dried tomato sauce on the counter with her pale blue nail.
“Right.” Mulder drummed his fingers, glanced back at the parking lot. The truck. He was 95% sure it was the same truck. 94%.
“I’ll let you know when it’s done.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
He stepped to the side and didn’t look back as the cluster of bells above the door jangled.
The man ordered two large pizzas, extra cheese, extra pepperoni, extra sausage, and added a two liter of orange soda at the girl’s suggestion. He had a chapped, windblown face and curly hair. He stuck his wallet in his back pocket and tilted his head at Mulder.
“Cold out there.”
Mulder nodded.
“It’ll be warmer tomorrow. I can tell. My ankle gets tetchy.”
Mulder had never seen the guy before, but that didn’t mean anything. Haley wasn’t stupid. It was the same blue truck, wasn’t it? The front plate was missing.
“You know, my great-great-aunt was married to the owner of the original Puxatawney Phil.”
“No kidding.”
“So it runs in the family.”
“Well, I hope you’re right. About tomorrow.”
“Oh, I am.” He sat down on the bench to wait for his pizza, seemingly satisfied with himself. There was no way any of Haley’s guys could pull off an act like this. Right?
Scully turned on the TV while she waited. Cheers was filmed before a live studio audience. The Weather Channel said it was raining in Atlanta and snowing in St. Paul. A round sun hovered over the desert southwest.
She couldn’t think of anything else to do but berate herself. An entire Saturday, ruined. Not even on a case and here she was in a motel, her bed sitting unused at home. What did she think she was going to find? She got some ice and two sodas from the machine and poured them into the glass tumblers from the bathroom sink.
For a moment, she thought about going to the lobby and paying for another room, for Mulder, but didn’t.
When he came in with the greasy pizza box, shrugging off his jacket, Scully handed him a watery Pepsi, like a sixties housewife ready with a whiskey on the rocks. Her inadvertent re-creation struck her as absurd. Her can of soda, her scrubby motel room, her Mulder.
While they ate, he told her about Jersey Devil sightings right there in southeastern Pennsylvania.
33.
She went into the bathroom and he heard quiet movement, a zipper, fabric, then the squeak of pipes and water running in the tub. He wished he could fall asleep, nap in front of the TV, so he wouldn’t be waiting there expectantly when she came out, like some creep who’d just been sitting there the whole time, listening to her in there, thinking about her naked, which, well, he sometimes did, but he wasn’t now.
He watched most of an episode of COPS before deciding she’d been in there too long. You could drown in an inch of water. Not to mention the things they’d seen come up a drainpipe.
He went to the window and looked out. There were five cars in the parking lot: his, Scully’s, and three others near the front office. No sign of the truck. He straightened the vinyl-backed curtains so there were no gaps and double-checked the dinged-up deadbolt.
The warped bathroom door was ajar, so when he said her name and she didn’t respond, he gently pushed it open.
Scully was sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Her pants were carefully folded on the counter and her legs were bare and longer than they had any right to be, skim milk blue against the clean white tub. Shallow water licked at her shins.
“Scully?” he tried again. “You okay in here?”
“Yeah. I am, actually. Close the door, Mulder.”
He reached back and pushed it shut before he had a chance to let himself consider that maybe she wanted him to close it with him on the other side.
“Lock it, please.”
Her voice was calm as he clicked the lock.
He felt as though he’d been woken from a deep, dreamless sleep, and was still trying to form a landscape from pieces: a half-filled bathtub, a half-dressed Scully, and little else to go on.
She turned her head to the side, not so much to look at him but let him know she knew he was there.
He knelt down on the floor behind her, the rug slipping a little. Her legs were pebbled with goosebumps and her hair slid easily to the side.
The pale scar hovered above the clasp of her necklace. It was small, the size and shape of a fingernail clipping. He read it with his fingers.
“I’m alive, Mulder,” she said quietly.
He kissed her neck, pressed his tongue gently down against the scar and imagined he could feel the edges of the chip pressing back.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” she asked, and he shook his head slowly, the tip of his nose cold on her skin.
Her hair was smoky, late spring chill curling between the strands. Burnt bodies, gnarled like driftwood. Her head tilted back against his rough cheek.
It was Saturday night and he hadn’t shaved since Friday morning, when he put on his suit and tie and came to work, and now it was Saturday night and he was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt and she was in her underwear and a tan sweater that was soft as the underbelly of a leaf and which she probably wore to church and to her mother’s for dinner and they were locked in a tiny hothouse bathroom in a shitty motel on the side of the road in Nowhere Exactly, PA.
“What are you doing in here?” he said, his voice cracking a little.
“Thinking. My feet were cold.” What was she doing? What were they doing?
“The water can’t be very warm anymore.”
“Oh, it’s not.”
She turned around on the edge of the tub, dripping water, to face Mulder. She moved his right hand to her left knee. He breathed in sharply. She looked at him with an almost smile as she brushed his hair back. He put his left hand on her right knee.
She’d felt his hands before, of course. She remembered shaking his hand when she met him. She’d felt his hands on her face, in her hair, a finger tapping the back of her hand to get her attention in a meeting. His hand at the small of her back. But now, his palms flat on her thighs, one thumb rasping back and forth on the soft inside of her left knee and she thought: I have never felt his hands before at all.
She reached out for him, said his name, softly, his shirt balled in her fist, and their lips touched. She pushed him back or he pulled her down and either way, they landed together on the floor, Scully straddling him, her arms around his neck.
His elbow cracked the side of the tub on their graceless way down and she folded his arm carefully upwards to examine it.
“Are you okay?” Her fingers tiptoed around the wiggly bones.
“I’ll live.” He looked up at her, his head thunking back against the wall.
Mulder and his sad eyes, his baby-don’t-leave-me eyes.
“That’s good,” she said. Her damp fingers raked straight back through his hair, nails scratching his scalp. She felt powerful, taller than him on her knees. She felt bodied, understanding herself as a physical object for the first time in a long time.
“Scully,” he said, disbelieving. The tips of his fingers sneaked under the edge of her underwear and then they were kissing again, her hands gripping his jaw like he might stop.
When he moved his hands, the elastic snapped against her skin with a pleasant sting. She laughed because she couldn’t believe any of it. Not a single thing.
When she first met Mulder, she found him worryingly attractive. He knew how good he looked, yet he didn’t at all, which was worse than if he’d just been vain.
God, and he was always stretching, slivers of his stomach appearing from underneath t-shirts and sweaters, and she sometimes found herself wanting to draw a finger along the fine bones of his face, down the slope of his nose, without which he wouldn’t have been half so handsome. He would lean back in chairs, his neck open to her like a sign of submission. She wanted to sink her teeth in.
But he was Mulder. It had been five years going on six and he got worn in. He drove her crazy. He talked with food in his mouth when he was excited. She was always surprised when they’d be renting a car and the woman would fumble with the credit card and couldn’t seem to look away as Mulder scribbled his signature, touching the pen to his tongue to get the ink moving. Signing Fox, for god’s sake. “Talk to me when he’s covered in bile,” she wanted to say. But she’d always touch the inside of his elbow then, and enjoy the fact that her one touch would cause him to immediately fold in on her, everything else disappearing from his periphery just because he wanted to see what she had to say.
And now, now she felt superior not just to Karen or Joyce at the Lariat desk, but to her younger self. All you could do was look-
Watching her face, waiting to be stopped, he slid his entire hand down the front of her underwear, palm up, the lace trim against his wrist.
“Oh my god,” she breathed as he moved three fingers up and down.
“I want to taste you.”
“Oh-” She felt like she was going to pass out. I want to taste you. Mulder saying that. Mulder saying that to her.
“I want to taste you, Scully, but there’s not any fucking room in this bathroom.” They were wedged against the tub. He still had his Timberlands on.
“I think-” she ground down, hard, against his hand. “I think it’s lucky, then, that we’re good at solving difficult problems as a team.”
“I knew it would come in handy sometime.”
Standing with her back against a motel bathroom door. Her fuzzy sweater half on. Mulder kneeling in front of her, her hands in his hair, one leg bent over his shoulder. Mulder was, she suspected, the kind of guy who would say, “I want to go down on you all night,” and truly mean it.
Mulder back on the floor, sitting against the wall, holding his own hard cock as she straddled him. This was such a bad idea, a bad bad bad idea, she’d sworn off getting involved with people she worked with, but this was Mulder and he wasn’t really a coworker, not exactly, not really, because what a paltry way to describe him. She was already involved. This, right now, this revelatory moment when he slid into her, this was simpler, made more sense, than any of the other ways they were already involved.
From outside, there was the shrill ring of a cell phone.
“Your phone,” she said breathlessly, covering her bases, acting like it would be no big deal if he chose to end this right now, if he got up to answer it, like she didn’t want to burst into tears at the thought. She kept moving. “Mulder?”
He shook his head no, his forehead rocking back and forth against hers as his fingers circled where their bodies met.
“Oh, thank god.”
“Are you kidding me?” he whispered, and kissed her like they were on a sinking ship, like this was it. She pulled back to look at him.
“This,” she said, “This might be fraternization,” and he tilted his hips up a little so she’d gasp, which she did.
“I think it might be,” he said, pulling her closer-so this is what I have to do to get him to agree with me-“Oh, fuck, Scully.”
“Come here.” She rolled him on top of her, laughing. The tile cold on her back, Mulder’s pleasant weight on top of her. His jeans were still bunched around his knees and she used her foot to push them down.
“Your legs are too long. It’s taking forever to get your pants off.”
“Years.”
Maybe they should’ve moved to the bed but that would mean thought, that would mean decisions being made. This-
He’d always assumed, if it were to happen, that they’d both be wearing most of their clothes and that she would simply button up, straighten her skirt, and continue whatever discussion they’d been having, telling him about the neurological impossibility of telepathy or the nutritional dangers of canned soup.
Now, they were lying on the floor, half-naked, spent and breathing in counterpoint, her hand under his shirt, her head a fuzzy tangle at his shoulder, his hand cautiously stroking her back.
He didn’t expect Scully to love him. This didn’t change that.
(She didn’t expect Mulder to love her. This didn’t change that.)
Mulder hadn’t even meant to like Scully, but he had, almost immediately and to his chagrin. From the first five minutes in his office, he knew he was in trouble.
It scared him a little, what he felt for her now, what he felt for her and what he was certain (not taking into account tonight, which he was sure was an anomaly) she didn’t quite feel for him. It filled every empty space in him, spaces he hadn’t known were empty until they were filled.
(She wanted to stay here forever, locked away, with him.)
She cares about me, he would have allowed, in her quietly fierce, sensible way. She is my partner.
But what he felt. It made the marrow of his bones ache. He had no idea what to do with it.
Out in his coat pocket, on the bed, his phone rang again.
“Jesus,” she said, half a laugh bitter in her mouth.
“Doesn’t Skinner have anything better to do on a Saturday night?”
“You should go answer it.”
As they sat up, getting dressed, not meeting each other’s eyes, Scully kneeled and bent to kiss him. She buried her face in his neck for a minute, her eyelashes wet.
A goodbye kiss, he knew that’s what it was.
(Don’t leave.)
“How’s your partner?” had been Haley’s opener.
“In the next room. Armed.” Mulder finished zipping up his jeans, hoping the telltale noise couldn’t be heard at the other end of the line. He rubbed his mouth, fingers coming away lipstick-tinted.
“I like a woman who knows how to handle a gun.” Oh, sex with Scully had possibly ruined his ability to appreciate innuendo.
“What do you want.”
“Just checking in. Making sure your case isn’t going to take any longer than you thought.”
“I’ll be back in D.C. on Monday.”
“Good. You know, Mr. Mulder, just for future reference, I’m the kind of guy who likes to be kept in the loop. Call me nosy.”
“I’ll remember that. I’m thinking about a bagel for breakfast, but I’ll give you a ring, let you know what I decide. I could go donut.”
Scully came out carrying her boots and set them at the foot of the bed. Her hair was tucked behind her ears and her face was flushed. She sat down and put her socks back on.
“Skinner?” she said, pointing at the phone.
He looked dumbly at the black piece of plastic.
“On the phone? Was it Skinner?”
“Oh. No.” He scratched behind his ear, smoothed down his hair. “It was my mom.”
“Oh. How is she?”
“Good. You know.” He shrugged and tossed the phone on the bed.
He knew she had to be, if not suspicious, at least curious. They left each other well enough alone, didn’t prod too much. It would take a hell of a lot more for her to start asking questions. Snooping, spying, not her style.
Still. Two secretive, late night phone calls, taken in her presence and not explained, that was unlike him and they both knew it and were pretending not to. This was a seed, waiting in the back of her head. It would bloom.
34.
She took the bed and he took the chair. They had some kind of bizarre Victorian sense of propriety.
“Are you asleep?” 1:42 a.m.
“Never,” he said. A truck had pulled into a spot about 25 feet away from their door at midnight and stayed half an hour. In the dark, he couldn’t tell if it was blue or green. A lot of people drove trucks, especially here. He memorized the plate so he could run it when they got back to D.C.
“Are you cold? You have to be cold,” she said. “Come here.”
It felt dicey. He was trying to act normal, because she was apparently taking the tack of ignoring the fact that, hours earlier, she’d been biting his neck while he fucked her on the floor of a motel bathroom. Well, at least they weren’t technically on a case.
But he was cold, she was right, and she already had the blankets peeled back. It would be rude to say no. He crawled in but gave her space. She reached over and placed a hand on his turned cheek, pressed soft circles into his jaw. He clenched it, the way he always did when he was angry or nervous or sad.
“You okay?” he said.
“Uh huh.”
“Really?”
She wasn’t sure if he was still worried about her trip to Ruskin Dam or if he was trying to be gentlemanly, gauge if there was going to be fallout from tonight. She sometimes underestimated the extent to which he needed her to be okay, the way a tilt in her axis could send him spinning ever outwards.
“I feel like I’m being held hostage. If I can get in the car and drive to another state without knowing it-”
“Today?”
“No. But it happened that night. Mulder, I don’t know how I got there. And I came out of it by the grace of who the hell knows. What happens when my luck runs out?”
He laughed.
“What?”
“Luck, Scully. The idea that either of us possess anything even remotely resembling luck.”
“We’re still here, aren’t we? Mulder, it’s just… as long as this thing is in my neck, whose body is this? Whose brain is this? If someone else can flick a switch…”
“You don’t want to-I mean, are you thinking about-”
“No,” she said. “No. Faith is one thing. I don’t know that I want to prove it.”
If she’d asked, he’d have sliced it out himself. But he was glad she didn’t. He really didn’t care what had saved her. Despite it all, he was okay never knowing, as long as she stayed saved. Prayer, technology-the ends were the thing, fuck the means.
“Did you find what you were looking for today? Out here?”
“I guess I wanted to see it with my own eyes.”
“Doubting Thomas,” he said.
“Actually, Mulder, you’ve always reminded me of him.”
“Haven’t you heard? I believe in everything.”
“You’d definitely stick your hand in someone’s side.”
“I’m endlessly interested in the world,” he said. She huffed a laugh.
“I didn’t want to have to rely on an X-File to tell me what I’d done. On some embarrassing hypnosis tape. I thought I could find the answers and move on.”
She threw her arm against her eyes, feeling the heat in her cheeks rise at the thought of the tape. She hated that Skinner had heard it. Mulder was one thing, but her boss?
The problem: it all seemed made up. A tall tale. She wondered, more than ever, how the people they met, all across this wide and bumpy country, managed to hold onto their crazy stories for so long. How he had, for so long.
“I want to find the answers for you.”
“Maybe sometimes there aren’t answers, Mulder, no matter how much we want there to be.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
She sat up suddenly, arms around her knees.
“Mulder.”
He sat up, too, confused.
“I haven’t been entirely truthful with you.”
His stomach dropped, the way your stomach drops when you hear bad news or when you’re in the throes of new love. Two feelings that press up close next to each other.
“There was a woman named Marjorie. Marjorie Eldritch. She lived in Glen Burnie with her husband, John Eldritch. Until last November, when John went missing on his way home from his job as a government contractor.”
“A government contractor doing what?”
“Unclear. He’s suspiciously absent from available government records. And then in March, Marjorie drove to Ruskin Dam.”
“Is she dead?”
“Yes. I found a key card at her house.”
“You went to her house? Did you break in?”
She nodded.
“Scully.” He was a little impressed.
“I’m dropping it, Mulder. It’s dropped.”
“What about the key card?”
“I had Byers try to read it. Nothing.”
“You think the husband is dead?”
“Probably.”
“You could’ve been hurt, Scully.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I would’ve gone with you.”
“I don’t need you to protect me, Mulder.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“I’m fine! Nothing happened.”
“But something could’ve! You could’ve been hurt. At least if I were there, I could’ve gotten hurt instead.”
She laughed, finally, and he took her face in his hands. She looped her hands around his wrists.
“I wanted to do it alone. Because if we did it together, I guess then that made it an X-File. I made me an X-File. Again.”
“So what now?”
“Nothing. It’s over. I’ve realized that I was right from the beginning. I wouldn’t feel better if I found the men who did this to me. I wouldn’t feel better if I killed them.”
“I would.”
She gave him a look.
“I really, truly would, Scully.”
“Nobody needs to kill anybody, Mulder. There’s enough of that.”
As they got into their separate cars in the morning, balancing Styrofoam cups of coffee, Mulder reached out and pressed down the collar of her coat, blown by the wind. It was warmer already. He told her to get some rest, that he’d see her Monday.
“You, too,” she said. “Rest, I mean.”
“Yeah,” he said, stretching a long leg into the car. “You know me. Restful’s my middle name.”
“As if Fox weren’t enough.”