Title: The Charm
Author: Snowslut
Archive: Go ahead. Drop me a line to let me know where, please.
Rating: NC-17 all the way, baby.
Category: Oh, all right. MSR.
Keywords: MSR
Spoilers: all things, En Ami, Sein Und Zeit
Summary: The scenes CC couldn't show.
Author's Notes: At end.
Feedback: First story, so please let me know if I should bother
finishing the other ones!
Disclaimer: The characters from The X-Files belong to Chris Carter and
1013 Productions.  I'm sure Rupert Murdoch has a hand in there somewhere
also.  Don't bother suing me - you won't get much.
Soundtrack: "Slowly" by Amon Tobin, from the album "Supermodified"

    ==============

The third time established a habit, almost.  It happened easily; after
all, she was already asleep, lulled by warm tea and relief.  No sense
waking her up only to make a dangerously groggy drive home, he reasoned
with the logic of an addict.  It certainly was a surefire cure for his
own insomnia: the terrible scenarios of her being assaulted, abducted,
you name it, that crept up on him in the dark were precluded by her
warmth next to him on the couch.

The first time,  her lap had provided a resting place for his weary head
on the couch after his mother died.  Every time his tortured thoughts
reared up in his sleep, of the meaning of it all, why his mother
couldn't confide in him and let him try to fix things, but instead found
it easier to permanently remove herself from him and everyone else,
Scully's hands would softly coax his body to relax, his brain to leave
alone the conundrums that would never be solved.  Later he wasn't sure
if she had ever slept herself, keeping vigilant watch all night.  She
had leapt up to answer the door in the morning before he even knew
anyone else was there.

The second time was for his benefit also, upon her return from her field
trip with CGB Spender.  After the "Three Musketeers" left, as she had
renamed them in a flat attempt at a joke, he had stood at the window in
silence for several minutes that stretched out like tense hours.  She
knew that once they were alone the fragile agreement they had reached
about what had happened would evaporate under further scrutiny.

"Mulder..." she pleaded quietly, "I thought I was doing what was right."

He refused to answer, staring out at nothing with shoulders hung low,
fingertips pressed against the glass.

She tried again, almost whispering, "Mulder."

At that, he let his head drop, and addressed the floor.

"Of course you thought you were doing what was right.  That's his
weapon, his M.O.  You've seen it before, used on me."

"But I took precautions..."

"Which didn't work."

She forced out her breath, tried to stay calm.  "Well, I made it back,
didn't I?"

She saw his jaw clench.  He turned to face the window again.

"How could you..." she barely heard him force through his gritted teeth.

At that moment she hated how he could make her feel like an errant
child.

"How could I what?  Grasp for the truth from out of the snake's mouth?
Ditch you to follow my own quest, for a change?  You're right, I have
seen it before, and I thought maybe I could do better."

She watched her words beat him further toward the floor, and wished she
had them back.  In the ringing silence that followed he took a breath
and raised his head, desperate eyes meeting hers.

"All I knew for three days was that he had you, had tricked you into
going with him, to who knows where.  All I could do was wait for your...
body to turn up."  With this he turned away again and squeezed his eyes
shut.

She realized how affected he really was, and how unfair she was being,
had been, doing to him exactly what he did too often to drive her to the
edge.  She crossed the floor and the instant she laid a hand on his
shoulder, he turned and wrapped her in his arms, wetting her hair with
silent tears, shaking with the memory of fear and its release.

"I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  It's okay, Mulder, I won't do that again."  The
words came out in a flood, general assurances she hoped acted as balm
for his heart.  Even as she spoke the thought came that this might be
one of the hidden rules of their relationship, that Mulder was the one
with the hall pass, allowed to operate on his own occasionally simply
because she could withstand being the one left.  But maybe she could
stand it only because she had lots of experience.

He drew back and looked at her with far-seeing eyes, still red but soft,
drinking her in like medicine.  "I guess you know what it's like, don't
you?"

Damn, that mind-reading trick again.  She wondered what leftovers he had
from that experience in the mental hospital.

"Let's make a deal," he said, suddenly conciliatory.  "I promise not to
go off alone with shadowy conspiracy figures alone anymore, if you do."

She graced him with a small smile and stroked his head.  "I promise."
Sometimes rocking the boat can help reshuffle the contents.

They naturally fell back to the couch and sank in, each relaxing in the
other's presence for the first time in days.  Scully fell asleep to the
angel-wing brush of Mulder's hand on her face, nestled under his arm.
This time they made it to the bed with his help.  The next morning she
woke wrinkled and disoriented, remembering with chagrin how she had let
down her guard enough to allow the cigarette-smoking man to put her to
bed also, but with the added liberty of removing her clothes.

It was only fitting that in their mutant relationship the steps of a
natural progression of intimacy would be reshuffled.  They had already
seen each other naked several times, but were denied the pleasure of
slow discovery; they were comfortably familiar with each other's quirks
and habits on the road, but off-hours at home for one another remained,
for the most part, terra incognito.  Now they had developed a habit of
sleeping together, but not in the widely used sense of the term, and
waking up together was still too touchy a subject to confront directly.

This third time (the charm) began with Scully falling asleep on the
couch after revealing long-buried parts of her soul to Mulder.  Not
fully asleep: drifting in a languorous paralysis, willing to totally
relax and absorb the waves of heat from his body, basking in the
pinprick glow of his furtive gaze.  She woke to feel his arms under her,
gingerly lifting her slack body off the cushions; even half-asleep she
relished the warm contact, his careful steps, how easily he swung her
over the bed.  He slipped off her shoes but stopped there, and the spell
threatened to break when she realized he wasn't joining her in the bed.

"Huh... don't go," she half sat up and mumbled at his receding form.
She might have been too sleepy to form words or consider consequences,
but the part of her brain in charge of pleasure was awake and scheming.

He stopped and she felt the weight of his stare in the dark, could
almost hear him processing this request and all its implications.

"Okay," he said simply, softly, humoring what he took to be an
incoherent, vulnerable plea.  He stripped down to his T-shirt and boxers
before she realized she'd won, and slid gently in next to her.  The rest
of her brain woke to the situation at hand and tried to panic, but the
sybaritic haze was too thick, and lulled her muscles into relaxing
against him.

Her clothes soon seemed to bind too tight and hot.  She roused herself
enough to wiggle out of her slacks and shirt, slowly, as though Mulder
were already asleep, though she knew he couldn't be; he pretended not to
notice.  She settled back down facing away, but still quite close, as if
by accident.  He casually shifted his arm over her side, his
deliberately even breath falling on the back of her neck, causing
goosebumps to rise on her skin.  A moment later he shifted slowly again,
allowing his hand to land square on the concave sweep of her waist.

Scully waited in taut silence for any further moves.  There was no
chance of sleep now; a different kind of insomnia had hold of her.  Her
body felt sinuous, poised and ready, a feral beast ready to strike.  She
listened to his still-even breathing for any sign of matching
excitement.  There was none.  She tried in vain to keep control of her
own breath, coming fast and shallow.  Now what?  She did not want to
believe that Mulder was satisfied to simply lie there and feign sleep
next to her within such close range of the powerful sexual force field
her body was surely emitting.  She did not want to be used merely as a
security blanket.

And then he began to move.  He inhaled deep and slow and shifted even
closer, as though in a dream, dropping his hand down to the curve of her
belly, his nose poking through her hair.  Finally she could feel his
heartbeat vibrating through to her back, reassuringly rapid.  She waited
a few moments before allowing herself another move in the game, arching
her back ever so slightly against him, testing the strength of his
closeness.  He didn't back away.  Another delicious moment of
anticipation, vibrating stillness, and then she felt his lips touch the
back of her neck, the most sensitive spot eagerly receiving soft
pressure.  Automatically she rolled her head forward to expose more
skin.  Mulder drew his arm a bit closer around her waist and spread open
his fingers, just grazing the undersides of her breasts, not enough.
The heat of his hands was heavy, dropping through the surface of her
skin like a stone through water.  It traveled slowly through her,
warming and relaxing but also building tension; it moved along with her
blood, rushing headlong through the vessels, setting off tiny sparks all
along eager nerves until they collected in her womb, building pressure.

A pause, while Scully collected her courage.  Doubt still lingered in
her mind, not letting her body take full control; he could really be
asleep, or just stealing a bit of forbidden contact, as he did
frequently now, still not ready to have her confront his arousal
directly.  She found her backside edging even closer to him despite her
brain's weak warnings.  An insistent, heavy ache had taken over her sex
now, a hungry vacuum, crying to be filled.  Her body had had enough of
being told what not to do.

Mulder's breaking point must have been reached at the same time, for as
she turned slowly over to face him, he met her halfway, rising up on one
arm to shine glittering eyes down at her.

His scratchy voice cut the silence. "Are you awake?"

How could she not be?  "Yes."

She felt him try to look into her further, to make certain, and she
tried to broadcast in her stare whatever he needed to know.

"Are you sure?" he half-whispered.

She felt the weight of the question, beyond the moment, and could only
reply, in an emphatic, breathless whisper: "Yes."

Amazement, fear, and lust showed at once in his tender eyes in the faint
light.  He stroked back her hair and let his hand rest against her
cheek, then slowly drew his thumb over her swollen bottom lip.  Ecstasy
and relief in his slow, sure touch.  Her eyes closed as she tried to
hold her breath, but it kept escaping in soft rhythm: out-in, out-in,
out-in.  Molten lava flowed inside her.

And then his soft mouth on hers.  A rush of hot, wet velvet pressing
down.  Mouth opening to the wonderful taste of him, something beyond the
reach of her imagination, the reality of his tongue sliding along hers.
The heat in her body pressed her against his full length and her hands
pulled him down to cover her.  His hands shook as they cupped her head,
moved down her shoulder, gripped her waist.  The heat rose fast within
him too as his kisses intensified, tongues chasing, his teeth catching
her lower lip.  Hips grinding into hers, hard and strong, and she called
out softly.  She caught her breath when he stopped.  Did she break the
spell?  Is he just realizing what he's doing?  But his eyes held nothing
but desire and fascination.

"You have to let me... we have to go slow, or it might be over before we
start."

Oh.  Okay.  She smiled in relief at his candidness, and it blended in
with the next kiss, slow and deliberate.  She didn't know how much of
this pace she could stand before her body exploded in magma, but he
seemed oblivious to the seismic violence underneath him.  A deep breath,
he leaned away, and then carefully, reverently, he let his hands
explore, circling over her breasts, easing down her thigh, sliding over
her stomach.  The fire was stoked as if with a soft breeze, and her body
arched toward him in response, taut and open, as her eyes slid shut.
Her own hands were not so patient; they felt out the strong curves of
his arms, his wide shoulders, and were drawn down to where she knew the
center of his arousal was.

For once the prim and proper part of her brain had nothing to say as
Scully brazenly took hold of his erection.  She had never thought of a
man's penis as being, in itself, all that sensuous, but suddenly this
one was the most fascinating object she had ever handled.  Mulder gasped
and froze, clenching his jaw in an inner battle, then sank down onto his
side with a moan.  She relished the sudden control she had over him, the
way he jumped at her experimental touches, his breathing speeding up
when she wrapped both hands around his length and slowly stroked.  He
looked at her from under heavy eyelids, and sparks flew up inside her
again at the awakened hunger in his eyes.  That was what she wanted now:
not a slow and careful meeting, but a fierce connection, a violent
explosion of the physical wall between them.

He rose up above her again, breathing hard.  A small ripple of fear
dimmed the fire for a moment, a nervous flutter at being in the line of
such intense focus.  But her equally intense desire continued to feed
her courage.  She met his gaze steadily, challenging him to go on.  And
then he did: his hand reached down to stroke her, sliding in between her
lips and then within.  Convulsions of heat, waves the whole length of
her body as she dug her nails into his shoulder and bit her lip to keep
from screaming.

"Let it out, Scully.  I want to hear you.  Tell me if it feels good."
Mulder murmured encouragement into her ear, stroking maddeningly slowly,
now in complete control.

"Oh... God..."  She threw her head back and heaved up into him.

"Tell me what you want."  He grazed her neck with his swollen lips,
continuing to stroke the center of the fire, but lightly, deliberately.

"Uh... please..."  She rocked her hips upward, blindly trying to find
release.

"Please what?"

All she could do was cry out unintelligibly, in rhythm with his touch.
She felt reduced to an elemental state, a coin melted down to quivering,
hot liquid.  Desperately she tried to make the words come out.

"I wah... want..."

"Tell me."

"Fuck me."

The dam was breached.  "Oh, God, Scully, yes... " his words rushed out
and he came down upon her, the pyroclastic flow, rushing in and filling
her in a wonderful hot instant.  She clutched him closer with her legs
and arms, bucking against his hips even as he thrust down, faster and
faster.

She knew now what Mulder meant about how baseball players could see the
ball coming at them in slow motion, read the pitch and react in less
than a second.  She had never felt this level of focus, never lived so
completely in the physical realm.  There was only this moment,
saturated with life, on a high, fast-moving point, time falling away
before and ahead into oblivion.

Suddenly she felt him slow, and moaned her impatience, but then she felt
herself being hurled up on top of him.  The flow of fire had changed
direction.  She braced herself against his chest, feeling for a moment
the strong thump of his heart, then pushed off to sit astride him.  His
gaze enveloped her bare self, awestruck and hungry, but the
self-consciousness she would normally have felt was gone; she reveled in
it.  She arched her spine and gazed right back at him with a newfound
power.

"I want to watch you lose control."  His low, rough voice triggered
another shower of tiny flames within her.

She began to move on top of him, grinding in a slow circle, feeling
every inch of him sliding within her.  He reached up to touch her face
lightly, never breaking his profound stare, then brushed his fingers
against her lips.  She couldn't help but open them, hungry for even more
contact.  He allowed two fingers to slip inside, enough to get wet, then
brought them down to touch her clit.  Instantly her pleasure was
multiplied to the point of being almost unbearable.  Scully gasped and
bent down over him, clutching his bicep and the covers in a slow
paroxysm, a warning flash of the rock-melting explosion to come soon.  A
low and hungry moan came from deep in her throat.

No words were necessary between them now.  A long instant passed in
which Mulder seemed to be looking right into her, her mind as naked and
open as her body.  She could see clearly into his as well, and was hit
with the depth of his emotion for her, love and desire unclouded by
fear.  Then a wave of heat and sparks, a river of fire wiping everything
clean, fed by years' worth of tension, a catastrophic release.  Her hips
slammed down, completely out of control, and she dimly heard him call
out her name, his taut body thrashing upward, caught in the same flow.
This is what they both needed so badly, the thought came to her.  This
is how it's supposed to be: pleasure so intense it burns through
synapses, erasing the memory of equally intense pain.

Another moment and the wave had passed.  They were both left gasping and
limp, Scully laid out on top of Mulder's chest.  She couldn't open her
eyes and didn't care.  Floating in a state of comfortable
near-paralysis, she felt him lift his hand up to stroke her hair.

"You know I love you, don't you?"

He had a hitch in his rusty voice and she had to get up and look at him.
There were streaks of tears shining on his face in the half-light.

"Well, yes, I guess I do now..."

"Only now?"

She hadn't a clue as to where he was going with this.  "Mulder, what's
wrong?"

He smiled suddenly and took her hand.  "I guess I just don't know what
we were waiting for."

She had to smile in relief.  "That's okay - we can make up for lost
time."  She thought he'd appreciate the innuendo, but he didn't
acknowledge it.  Instead he clutched her to him as she drifted back into
sleep.

The next morning Scully crept out before Mulder awoke, unsure of what
would be changed.  Given both their abilities to absorb fantastical
events in their everyday lives and carry on, she half expected him to
pretend like nothing had happened.  It was awkward, but not to the point
where either of them shied away from it.  In fact they started over
again, from scratch, but with a bit more confidence, like the second
attempt off the high dive.  He charmed her all over again.  His innuendo
had more weight to it, and in fact made her blush sometimes, since she
now knew exactly what he was inferring.  She feared at first he might
use it to distract her, to get his way, but in fact he used it less,
respecting the weight; and she realized she could just as easily
distract him if she wanted to.  They settled into a nuclear truce while
on the clock.  After work Mulder courted her like a schoolboy, coming up
with things to do together as though she would get bored, always
ecstatic when she agreed to stay over as if she could refuse.

It broke her heart to think of it now, without him, how they would start
over again when he came back, if he ever did.

==============

Author's notes: Thanks to all you excellent writers out there who
inspired me to take a crack at this.  It was a LONG time coming


Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/