Title: Evidence of Things Unseen Author: Scullysfan Classification: VRA Rating: NC-17 Distribution: Do not archive at Gossamer. Anyone else, please ask me first. Thanks. : ) Disclaimer: The characters of Mulder and Scully are the property of Chris Carter and 1013 Productions. They are not mine and no copyright infringement is intended. Summary: Scully contemplates the ethereal made real in her relationship with Mulder. Author's notes at the end. Feedback: Any and all comments longed for at Scullysfan@aol.com For Blueswirl and Meredith -- the original inspirers of the stalking story. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Today I felt fear. Not just in my heart, as an emotion, but as a tangible presence. It lived in the cold steel of the gun pressing into the underside of my chin. It breathed in the sweaty, putrid-smelling man behind me. It whispered with the raspy voice that now has me lying here awake. I nearly died today. Or perhaps I would have been left in a waking coma, shot in the head by a madman. Which would have been the lesser of two evils -- dead or reduced to a staring, unthinking shell of a woman? Had I only myself to consider, I would choose death. That unknown doesn't frighten me... there's something out there waiting for me. I know it. But factor Mulder into the picture, and it becomes impossible for me to make that choice. Either way I'm no longer with him -- to challenge him, shield him, comfort him. To love him. To need him. I know Mulder wants all those things from me. He deserves them. Wanting them and knowing he already has them are two altogether different matters. Oh, he knows I'm there to challenge him. We started off in an intellectual sparring match to end all matches, and even after over seven years we're still going round after round. That I've shielded him from harm, from the powers that be, even from himself, hasn't gone unnoticed. When he discovered I'd spent several nights cooling my heels in a federal correctional facility after refusing to reveal his whereabouts to the Senate sub-committee, his eyes betrayed his shocked admiration. One especially dark day he felt my arms around him in comfort. Gasoline-soaked or not, I couldn't resist turning his exhausted body to face mine as we stood beside his mother's hospital bed. Pulling his head down, I massaged the back of his neck as his arms coiled around me, his tears warming my shoulder as they fell. Mulder even knows I love him, though I've never actually said the words. The first time he did, he was freshly fished from the ocean, a bump on his head the size of an egg, and doped up with sedatives. Deep in my soul, I know none of those things caused him to say what he did. I wish I could get the words out. They seemed so easy for him to say, so matter of fact, as though he'd just realized that the time had come. But I think I'm more afraid than he is, the kind of fear that keeps me from voicing my love. So I do my best to show him. Through our work, by my belief in him, with my body as I lay it bare for his pleasure or those times when I take the control he offers me and bring him to a shuddering release. Actions have always held greater sway for me than words. As a scientist I am trained to look for evidence, not accept the word of anyone solely because he says it is so. That is the way I live my life with Mulder -- allowing my actions to speak the words I only whisper under the cover of darkness and solitude. He has become adept at reading them, the expressions on my face, the clues I dangle in front of him, so I'm certain he knows I love him. Some things are almost impossible to hide. Need is easier to hide than love. Mulder doesn't know I need him. How could he, when I rarely give him proof? If I'm afraid to tell him I love him, I'm terrified to admit that I need him. To do so is to relinquish a measure of control, to leave myself a living, breathing target. To stand before him stripped, more naked than the nights I shed my clothing like a second skin, allowing his eyes to devour my flesh. Today was just another in the long line of chances I've had to place that need in his hands. To open my arms and reach for him, not out of desire, but out of need. Like the snapping of a dry branch, the marksman's rifle report sounded, and Tom Hollifield fell. His long arms that were wrapped around my shoulders, one hand holding a gun under my chin, tightened in a death grip as he pulled me down with him. The gun clattered to the floor of the old building, and a veritable swarm of agents descended on us. Not one of them beat Mulder there. He took my hand and helped me up from the blood beginning to pool. His eyes still held the barely contained wild look they'd had from the moment Hollifield turned on us and decided to use my body to shield his, however ineffectual that had turned out to be. One glance at his face and I knew all he wanted at that moment was to crush my body to his. To reassure himself that my heart was beating, that my lungs had not been stilled. To comfort me. To tamp down my fear. I couldn't let him, not then. With a squeeze of his hand, I walked away -- denying myself the comfort and security I needed, and him the chance to provide them. To give shape and substance to the intangible. There were statements to make, reports to complete, and it seemed we did them all in triplicate before finally making our way home hours later and tumbling into bed. If I were to look over my shoulder, I could see Mulder sleeping soundly behind me. Some might find it odd that he can sleep so easily mere hours after staring first into my eyes and then into those of the one poised to close mine forever. But I understand it, I think. I'm here with him. All he has to do is reach out and touch me. After all the times I've existed only in his memory, it's my corporeal presence that grounds him. As if my thoughts were whispers in his ear, he pulls me closer to him, and even in his sleep attempts to offer the comfort I'd refused earlier. He has no idea at this moment that I'm drinking it in, absorbing the security that flows from his body into mine. For though I may not allow my need for him to manifest itself into sheltering embraces easily witnessed by others, I'm not willing to deny myself completely. Here in the darkness of my bedroom, intangible emotions become real for both of us. My need wears his comfort like a long mink coat, soft and warm, just as his skin is against mine. His chest is bracing my back, one leg is lying heavy over mine. A long arm is draped across my middle, his fist clutching a handful of my tee-shirt. His body spooning mine is a shield to my fear. He surrounds me, protects me. I'm held securely, and no one can steal me away. Rather than weaken, it's a truth that empowers me. It makes me bold, leaves me with a spark of desire, and suddenly I know that fear, security, and need won't be the only abstracts made real tonight. I cover his hand with mine and loosen his fingers from my shirt. Turning in his arms, I find myself looking into warm, sleepy eyes. His stubble-covered jaw pricks the palm of my hand as I smooth it along his face. His lips part, and I know from years of experience what he's going to ask, but this is not a night for words. Only action will do -- love will not be spoken, but made. Before he is able to give sound to his words, I touch my lips to his, feeling their softness melt against mine. Brushing back and forth at first, as lightly as pastels against a canvas. But it's not enough, and I deepen the kiss, pulling his lower lip between mine, tasting and sucking it before tilting my head to better devour him. My tongue sweeps across his lips once in introduction and dives into his mouth to stroke the insides of his cheeks, to rub against his tongue on its way to plunder the recesses of my mouth. He cups my head in one hand as the other glides up and down my arm, leaving the hairs standing on top of goosebumps. The caresses continue down my side until his fingertips reach the bottom of my tee-shirt. He fumbles at the hem for a second, distracted when I break our kiss to nip at the line of his neck. Working my way down, dragging my tongue along his collarbone and through the dusting of hair covering his chest, I feel the vibrations roll through his body. Mulder would never believe me, but he purrs -- a low hum as his arousal is building. Pressed against him, my body begins to tingle, and suddenly nothing will satisfy but for it to surround him. I push against his shoulder, and we roll together until I am looking down on him, my softness coming to rest on the hard length straining against the gray cotton of his boxer-briefs. One, two, three times my hips grind against him and he swells more, the growing heat warming me. Causing my body to soften, open like a blossom under the rays of the sun. His hands entangle with mine, and he pulls me down so that we rest chest to chest. If lying back-to-front is my favorite position, this is Mulder's. I suspect he favors it because of the view it affords him, or because, as I've discovered, it's much harder to hide things like need when confronted face-to-face with the requisite comfort. At the moment, he seems to be enjoying the feeling of my breasts teasing his chest through the worn material of a shirt once his. Hands pull from mine and lift to cup the soft weight of my breasts. I brace my arms alongside his shoulders, rising up to give him room as he begins to knead, to flatten his palms over the hardening nipples, circling until each brush of his hand sends a spark racing down my spine. The need to feel skin against skin hits us both at the same time, and he reaches again for the hem of my shirt as I scoot back to slip my fingers under the waistband of his shorts. Soft chuckles break the silence when we get in each other's way. Pulling away briefly, we take care of shedding our own clothes, our bodies drawn together again immediately. This time as I settle down into his lap, wet flesh glides over the velvety ridge of his sex. It tears a groan from Mulder's throat, and looking up I see his head thrown back, throat bared as he finally breathes his first word of the night, the only word he'll say until we collapse in a sated exhaustion. "Scully..." It's a praise. It's a plea. It's a prayer. With a silent promise to meet every one of them, I rise up on my knees and take him in my hand. Squeezing lightly and then with more pressure, I stroke up and down him, until his hips begin to buck, and I won't deny either of us any longer. His hands rest on my hips as I guide the head of his cock in place. They aren't trying to force me down, impale me on him, but are simply resting there. Holding me. Thumbs lightly stroking the sensitive skin where legs join torso. But as I rock forward and then back, feeling his cock slide into my body, his fingers dig into my flesh, another tortured rendition of my name tearing from him. There will be marks from those fingers in the morning. Tangible reminders of his passion. Finally he is in me, buried to the hilt, and I can feel his heartbeat pulsating against the soft, giving walls now sheltering him. I begin to move, slowly at first, sliding up until he very nearly slips from my hold and then enveloping him again. His legs draw up behind me, his thighs giving me something to put my back up against, mirroring one of the many ways the man himself has been there for me. It's a manuver that has my bottom pressing against his balls with every downward motion, and to say it rachets up the tension in his body is to put it mildly. Leaving my hips, his hands grab my shoulders and haul my face down to his. He doesn't kiss me -- merely pushes my fallen hair behind my ears and frames my face with his hands. Our eyes never waver as our lower bodies pick up speed. His groin slams into mine in perfect counterpoint. My heart now beats in rhythm with his, and I feel it best as blood pulsates through my clit, inflaming it. Leaning forward, I'm able to grind the swollen nubbin against his pelvic bone as I slide down him. Short, quick breaths escaping my lungs and bright, erratic flashes of light across my line of sight signal the end is near for me. One of Mulder's hands leaves my face and insinuates itself between our ever-moving bodies, his fingers spreading the moisture he finds where we are joined. He knows just how to touch me, to turn my desire from an intangible to the very tangible orgasm that explodes within me. Inner muscles flutter along his length, contractions roll through my clit as I stop. As if my climax triggers a chain reaction, his breaks first over his face, eyes slammed shut, mouth open in a silent cry of my name. It flows down his neck, tendons visible under the tautness of the skin. The muscles in his arms and chest are flexed, solid to my hands' massaging. His firm stomach is drawn in as he buries his cock in me one last time, hips rising so far off the bed that I'm left balancing on him, my knees no longer touching the surface. I fall forward into his arms as a wet heat rushes from his body into mine. We sink back onto the bed, hearts racing but slowing. I can feel my earlier sleeplessness slipping away with every stroke of his hand against my back, with every soft kiss along my hairline. Finally, he turns us on our sides as he pulls gently from within me, enfolding me in his arms. Cocooning me. Fitting my head in the hollow of his shoulder, I drift into welcoming unconsciousness, Mulder's comforting whisper still reaching me. "I'm here, Scully." Real. Touchable. Love, comfort, and security incarnate. The intangible made real. END Author's notes: Or should that read "stalker's notes"? I think I've discovered a new genre -- readers writing to persuade the writers to write more. And faster! This was written for Blueswirl and Meredith, authors of the magnificent series, "Tangible," and the very long time in coming "Tangible 3." Thanks to Jill and Laney for marvelous spur-of-the-moment editing and some very late night brainstorming. Feedback: Any and all comments longed for at Scullysfan@aol.com My fanfic: http://members.aol.com/scullysfan/myfic.html Chronicle X fanfic archive: http://members.aol.com/danascu11y/chronx.html (those are "ones" not "L"s in danascu11y)