Contained within:
-- character study
-- violent imagery
-- angst
-- very little x-file
-- very much M-S romance
-- graphic description of sexual acts

Enjoy.

I have absolutely no right to be appropriating these characters,
their stories, or anything else about the X-Files. It all belongs
to Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen, Fox, and probably Rupert Murdoch
himself.

Point of View
by Parrotfish (svdf49a@prodigy.com)
rated NC-17

The television was blaring some crap about my abs. I wasn't
really
looking at the vacuous shlock-jock flexing his six pack on the
small screen before me. I was seeing something else in my mind's
eye.

That boy. The one we'd found earlier that day. We'd gotten quite
a
view of his abdominals, raw and bleeding through a gaping hole in
his middle. The way he'd been left by the psycho killer we'd been
hunting for weeks. The boy had still been warm, a fresh kill. It
had been a lucky break, if you can consider running across a
mutilated 16-year-old a lucky break. A boy who hadn't had time to
figure out the difference between love and hate. Who was still
too new at living to have had the sense to fear a late walk alone
in the park. Just a boy. Not a boy any more. Just meat.

But at least we'd caught the killer. We knew he couldn't have
gotten far. The corpse was still so fresh. In the end, it had
been simple. Just a few roadblocks did the trick. This one was
pretty stupid. He'd become predictable. My profile made it
relatively simple to figure out where he'd dump the next one, and
when. With lots of cops and agents in the area, we'd found the
kill quickly. The rest was plain old police work.

It was over. But if it was over, why did that red, ragged hole
keep staring at me from my own mind?

There was a knock on the apartment door. I didn't want to see
her, but I knew I couldn't make her go away without getting her
angry.
I opened it.

"Mulder? Have you eaten?" My stomach lurched as my partner
entered the apartment with talk of food.
"I'm not hungry, Scully."
"You should eat something."

"Jesus Christ, Scully! Quit mothering me." "Mulder, you haven't
eaten anything all day." "Well maybe some of us can't sit down to
a bacon cheeseburger after spending the afternoon looking at
hacked-up humans. We can't all be detached professionals, you
know."

"Mulder, why do you have to be such a bastard?"

I sighed and sat on the couch. "I don't know, Scully. Bad habit,
I
guess."

Scully sat in the armchair next to the TV, which was spouting
testimonials from satisfied users whose abdominal muscles were
still planted firmly in their abdominal cavities. She sighed
deeply, choosing not to argue. I was profoundly grateful.

"I don't mean to be a bastard, Scully. Not to you."

"I know, Mulder. It's been a godawful day."

"Yeah."

Scully broke the silence after several minutes. "How about a
salad? Just a salad, Mulder."

"I keep seeing it, Scully. That kid with his insides scooped out.
Christ, I've been profiling psycho killers for the FBI for years,
and I've gotten closer than any sane person ought to get to the
mentality that can commit such an act. I'd even have to say that,
in many ways, I understand it. But I can never just dismiss it.
It just hangs there in front of me -- the image of a butchered
kid."

I closed my eyes, but it was still there.

I heard Scully stand and then felt her grasp my hand, pulling me
to my feet.

"Come on, Mulder."

"No food, please, Scully."

"No food. I just want to give you something else to look at."

She led me out of the apartment, out of the building, over to
her car.

"Where are we going?"

"Someplace where you'll like the view."

Neither of us spoke as we drove. I didn't really pay any
attention to the route we were taking. Just stared idly at the
darkness slipping by the passenger window. I was surprised when
I heard Scully flip open her cell phone and dial.

"Hello, Jim? It's Dana. Yeah, I know. Listen, anybody using the
place tonight? Great. Sure, I'll lock up when I go. Thanks. See
you soon, I hope. Bye."

This was getting interesting. "If I didn't know you better,
Scully, I'd say your dialogue's taken straight from my video
collection. Maybe something called 'Frat House Frolics.' You
gonna get me drunk first?"

"Nope. During."

Try as I might, I couldn't come up with a line to top that one. I
just went back to staring out at nothing.

I must have dozed off, because when the car rolled to a stop I
was
startled. But when I saw what we were parked in front of, I had
to
smile despite my crappy mood.

"Here we are," Scully said. "University of Maryland Astronomical
Observatory. I did a lot of work here when I was an undergrad.
They still let me come up from time to time. We should have the
whole place to ourselves tonight."

"You're kidding."

Scully turned to me and flashed one of those smiles that made my
eyes hurt. It was magnetic, that smile. It exerted a physical
pull on me. It forced me to push back to avoid being drawn
directly to it. I could feel the muscles in my neck tense as I
resisted leaning forward toward her lips. That smile made my
diminutive, redheaded partner in jeans and a t-shirt the sexiest
creature I'd ever seen. And I've seen quite a few.

It was dark inside, but she didn't turn the light on. I stood
just inside the door as she walked to the far wall and opened a
cabinet, the location of which she obviously knew precisely. I
heard the clink of glass. Then she walked back to me, took my
hand and led me upstairs. There,  above us, the observatory
opening revealed a stripe of starstudded blackness. The big
telescope was dimly silhouetted before us.

Scully poured two shots of Scotch, handed me one and downed the
other in a gulp.

"What would you like to see, Mulder?" Her voice was just a
whisper
beside me in the vast, empty space. It made me shiver and sent a
hot flash across the skin of my back.

"Show me what you like, Scully." I swallowed my drink, and she
refilled both glasses, draining hers again and putting it down on
a table with the bottle.

Scully walked over to a smaller telescope at the far end of the
room.  "We'll have to use this one. We can't redirect the big one
because we might screw up someone's work." She fiddled with the
instrument for a couple of minutes as I stood behind her
watching. Then she said,  "Come look."

I leaned down to the eyepiece and found a bright pinpoint of
light
centered in the field. "What is it?"

"Vega. It's the brightest member of the constellation Lyra, the
Lyre -- the harp used by Orpheus in his attempt to charm Pluto
and Persephone into allowing his wife out of Hades."

"You never cease to amaze me, Scully."

"Your expectations are bounded by the limits of your imagination,
Mulder." Ouch.

She gently pushed me back and adjusted the telescope again.
"Here,
check this out."

I looked again. "It's beautiful," I murmured.

"Comet Hale-Bopp. It's much larger than most comets that swing in
toward the Sun. The envelope of dust surrounding it stretches
over 2.5 million kilometers, and its volume is greater than that
of the Sun.  Scientists at major observatories have imaged
luminous jets of material squirting from the comet's nucleus as
its icy surface cracks, spilling slowly warming gases from
inside." With her slightly drunken slur, the scientific
explanation sounded downright erotic.

"How far?"

"About 630 million miles from the Sun."

I stared into the telescope's eyepiece as minute stretched into
silent minute. The heavenly body I was looking at was stunning,
but I only had half a mind on it. The other half was growing
increasingly aware of a much more earthly body that was not quite
630 centimeters away.

"Thank you, Scully."

"Don't thank me, Mulder. I needed this just as much as you did."

I drew my eye away from the lens and turned to face her. I could
see her quite clearly now, my eyes having adjusted to the dim
starlight. She seemed unreal and insubstantial in the vast,
empty, shadowy space around us. I reached out to touch her cheek.
It was warm and soft, and very real.

Scully flinched and stepped backward. I felt a spark of anger.

"Come on, Scully. Don't do this to me."

"Do what?"

Do what? I couldn't believe she had to ask. She takes me at my
weakest, most wide-open moment, so raw that the hum of the
electric wires in the walls jangles my nerves, and she reaches
right in, all the way, deep into the naked, exposed innards --
then pulls away when I touch her face. And then she asks me, 'Do
what?'

"A little while ago, you wanted to know why I was such a bastard.
What I wanna know is, how come you're such a bitch?" I don't
think I meant it to come out with that much bitterness. It must
have sounded very bitter, because I could see her wince.

"I only wanted to..."

"To what, Dr. Scully? You only wanted to what? To cure what
ails me with some soothing celestial balm, then leave me alone in
the recovery room while you go off to treat your next patient?
For Christ's sake,  Scully, maybe you can turn it on and off like
a hot water tap, but I can't."

"Mulder..." I could hear a quiver in her voice. It shook the
resolute anger I'd been working up through that last speech. But
I wasn't quite done yet.

"Scully, you and I play fetch with the hounds of hell every day.
Neither of us will ever find anyone else with a prayer of
understanding what that's like. So how come we can't even touch
each other?"

"I don't know," she whispered. I saw her hang her head, a sweep
of red hair falling in front of her face. She reached for the
bottle and refilled both our glasses. We both gulped the shots
down.

I stepped closer, my body almost touching hers. "Maybe there's no
good reason, Scully."

"There are lots of reasons, Mulder," she said quietly. She still
didn't look up.
"But no good ones."
"Rules, Mulder."
"Rules aren't reasons."
"Danger."

"Our lives are already dangerous. There's already an
international -- hell, an interstellar conspiracy against us.
How would my touching you make that any worse?" I spat the words
out contemptuously.

"I'm afraid." Her whisper was so quiet I barely heard it. But it
was like a slap across my arrogant face, and it took all the
fight out of me in a second. It takes a lot to make Dana Scully
afraid.

"Please, Scully. Please don't say you're afraid of me."

"No, Mulder." At last she looked into my eyes. "Not of you. Of
losing you."

"If you're already afraid of that, how much worse can it get?"

"I don't know. I'm afraid to find out."

"You've taken a lot of risks for me, Scully. Can you take one
more?"

"What is it you're asking me to do, Mulder?"

I put down my glass, reached out and placed a hand on each cheek,
holding her face gently, marveling at the soft skin beneath my
fingers.  "Let me in, Scully. All the way."

I held my breath and waited. Looking back, I have no idea what
gave me the courage to ask. Somehow, I found it, but just barely.
I had no energy to spare for trivialities like breathing.

Slowly, tentatively, she leaned forward, rose up on her toes and
gently touched her lips to mine, as though asking me a question.

"What then, Mulder? If I let you in, where will we be?"

"I don't know, Scully. I want to find out."

She leaned in again, my hands still cradling her face. When her
lips found mine this time, she pushed harder, her tongue sweeping
the width of my mouth until my teeth parted and she stroked deep
inside. It was no longer a question. It had become a statement.

"Let's go home, Mulder."

Scully drove to her apartment. Neither of us spoke in the car, or
on the way upstairs. We didn't even touch. It was as though we
were trying to fast-forward without missing anything -- without
losing any significant plot developments. Or maybe we were just
scared. I know I was.

At last we were standing in her living room, with no light but
the dim glow that came from the street lamp outside. Scully just
stood there looking at me, like she had no idea whether I'd kiss
her or tell her a joke or pull out my gun and shoot her. Seeing
her that way, waiting,  giving me a chance to lead this wherever
it was going to go, I felt none of the rancor I'd been displaying
earlier.

"I'm sorry, Scully."

"For what?"

"For pushing so hard. For being moody and mean. For never telling
you how I feel."

She walked over to me and stopped just inches away. The fact that
she crossed the space first, that she came to me, brought a lump
to my throat.

"How do you feel, Mulder?" She breathed the words so quietly I
could barely hear them. She had given voice to The Question. Even
though I had already touched her that night, we'd already kissed,
it felt as though nothing had been resolved. Yet.

I put my hands on her shoulders gently and looked straight into
the
blue wells that passed for eyes. "I love you, Scully. I may not
have done enough to show you up until now, but my mind, my heart,
my spirit have been yours for a long time. My body is yours if
you want it."

I felt her skin twitch under my fingers. She stepped forward, her
body now lightly touching mine, arms still hanging at her sides.

"I want it," she said quietly, firmly.

I thought my knees would buckle. My hands traveled from her arms
to her hips, pulling her more firmly against me so the hard bulge
in my jeans pressed against her stomach. She bit her lower lip,
and my hard-on got harder. I bent my head and kissed her hair,
breathing the smell of her down deep.

"Is this really happening?" I said.

In answer, she raised her arms and wrapped them tightly around my
waist, burrowing her face into my chest. The surge of emotion I
felt came from somewhere way outside my book of previous
experiences.  It was lust, but it was pure and beautiful.

"Kiss me, Scully."

She looked up and smiled, and I couldn't breathe. I gave in to
the pull I'd always resisted, leaning down and capturing her lips
with mine,  biting on the lip she'd bitten a moment ago. My hands
roamed across her back, her shoulders, down her sides and back
up. I felt like a blind man who had suddenly gained his sight,
experiencing something familiar in a totally new way.

Without breaking the kiss, I felt her hands move up over my chest
and start on my shirt buttons. Her gentle touch made me swallow
hard,  even as my tongue kept up its steady stroking inside her
mouth. When my shirt was open and pulled from my jeans, she
slipped her hands under the fabric and clutched at my back. The
direct contact made me want much more.

I broke away from her lips and brushed my mouth against her ear.
"I want to make love to you." Even now, I was terrified to say
the words to her, but I couldn't not say them, either.

I felt her warm, soft lips on the tender flesh of my neck before
she answered. "Only if you can make love to me while I'm making
love to you."

I smiled. "I guess that depends on your point of view."

Her quiet laugh was musical. I could feel it gurgle in her chest.
Taking me by the hand, she headed down the hallway toward her
bedroom.  Once there, she turned on a small, dim lamp on the
night table, kicked her shoes off and reached for the hem of her
t-shirt. I stopped her hand.

"No. I want to."

I slid my hands up under the soft cotton and across her firm,
gently rounded stomach. She stood motionless, staring into my
eyes. A quick pull brought the shirt over her head and off,
leaving her in her bra and jeans. My eyes slipped down to the
rounded softness of her breasts cupped in black satin. I leaned
down and planted a gentle kiss in the crevice between them, and
as my mouth worked its way up her chest and neck, back to her
lips, I reached behind her to unhook the bra. It slipped to the
floor, and I brought a hand to each breast, thumbs caressing the
hard tips, teasing them to sharp points.

She moaned. Oh my god. Holy fucking shit. She moaned. Right in my
mouth, she moaned this low, fierce sound, like a stalking
wildcat. My Scully, the skeptic, the thinker, the fighter, the
courageous, the noble -- she moaned her passion into my mouth,
and all because my hands were on her.

All the thousands of fantasies I'd had about her suddenly became
weak memories in the heat of that moan.

I wanted to say something -- tell her what that sound was doing
to me.  But it seemed like somebody had freeze-dried my vocal
cords, and nothing like language would ever come out of my throat
again.

So I looked at her instead. I pulled my lips from hers and locked
my eyes on hers, willing my thoughts and feelings into that look.
I didn't realize it at the time, but Scully told me later --
there were tears in that look.

Slowly and carefully, I finished the job of undressing her, then
myself.  I don't think our eyes parted once until I pulled my
boxers down and kicked them away. Scully's eyes went to my raging
red erection.

For a moment, I was embarrassed. Now she knows. I'm just a man.
No
goddamn FBI boy genius, no profound believer in extreme
possibilities.  Just a man with a hard-on who at that moment
could think of nothing but planting it well and deep inside her.
The biology of the situation was standing at attention before
her. And somehow, I felt she deserved better.

So I was surprised when she reached out and wrapped her warm hand
around it. "You're beautiful, Mulder," she said.

How does she do that? She takes my lowest low and makes it fine.

I pulled her to me and fell backward onto the bed. Her whole
body, all five feet two inches of it, lay pressing down on mine.

I determined to make that small body very, very happy.

Grasping her magnificent buttocks, I held her firmly and rolled
over so she was beneath me. Her hand moved again toward my
center, reaching for my erection. I caught her and laced my
fingers in hers, moving both her hands out to her sides, pinning
them to the bed.

"Mulder ... let me touch you," she said in a voice now quite
husky.

"You will -- I promise, Scully. But I want to make this last."

Another smile. "It'll last, Mulder. It'll last a good long time."
I could tell her words went beyond the bedroom, and they had the
ring of prophecy. I smiled.

"Then let me give you now," I told her. I slid down her body
until my head lay pillowed on her breasts, and reached my tongue
out to flick against one nipple. She rewarded me with a gasp, so
I kept it up until I felt her hips begin to respond, pushing up
against me. Then I pulled her breast inside my mouth and sucked
steadily on as much of it as I could so that her hips set up a
rhythm to match. When I released one of her hands, it flew to the
back of my head, urging me on to the sweet task.

I brushed my hand down along her torso, first skirting the curls
between her legs to caress the outside of her thigh, then the
inside. By the time I touched her where I longed to be, she was
writhing beneath me. I moved my mouth to the other breast and
gave it the same attention I'd shown the first, but this time I
pushed my middle finger deep inside her, where the heat and
wetness I found made me lightheaded. Scully rolled her head back
and forth across the pillow, moaning steadily. I could feel all
her muscles clenching as she approached release. Carefully, not
wanting to scratch or pinch, I set up a rhythm with my finger --
in and out in time with the pulling of my mouth on her breast.
When my thumb found her clitoris and rubbed gently, her back
arched clear off the bed.

"Mulder!!!!" My name came out an intimate scream as I felt her
slick wetness cover my hand and her powerful vaginal muscles
clench around my finger. I felt as though I had for the first
time in my life fully achieved a goal that was worth achieving. I
brought Scully to orgasm.

I drew my finger out of her and brought it to my mouth, tasting
the flavor I'd milked from her. It was a flavor I'd never tasted
before, and yet somehow I already knew it.

Gradually, her breathing slowed and the tremors stopped.

I kissed her gently.

I was surprised to feel her shift under me and roll to the side.

"Scully?"

"I want to hear my name called like that," she said. She rolled
back under me, a small packet in hand. With her bent knees
cradling my hips, she unrolled the condom onto my penis, which by
now was harder than I would have thought possible. All at once,
Scully squeezed her knees around me and flipped over, and I found
myself beneath her,  looking up into those blue wells again. Then
I felt her lower her hips onto me and sheath me inside her
searing heat.

Every muscle below my waist leaped in response, and my hips
shoved
up hard. I was afraid I'd hurt her.

"Oh, God, Scully. You're like hot velvet. I've wanted to be here,
in you,  for so long." I don't know how I made the words
coherent, but I must have because I felt the response immediately
-- a hard twitch in the muscles that surrounded my cock.

Then she started to move. Her strokes were slow and long at
first,
pulling up until only the head of my cock was inside her, then
slowly dropping back down until I was buried to the balls. Her
hands rested lightly on my chest, and I watched as her face
registered the sensations I felt. It was as though we felt
everything together, so that I knew what it was to surround a
man, and she knew what it was to plunge deeply into a beautiful,
vital, beloved woman. I thought for a moment as I watched her
that I could see it all through her eyes, see myself staring up
into her passionate face with a love of which, until that night,
I would have thought myself incapable.

When she started moving faster, all those thoughts fled. There
was
nothing but our union -- no thought, no words, no quest, no fear.
Only feeling. Only satisfaction. Only joy. The pace got faster -
Scully held nothing back, until finally she was grinding her hips
forward and backward, her clitoris rubbing across my belly. When
she came, I felt her clench hard around me.

"Scully!!!"  Her name came to my lips from some deep and urgent
place I'd never known I had. The rest was bliss. I felt my entire
being pump itself deeply into her, and I felt her accept it,
welcome it.

I'd had a lot of orgasms in my life. But for the first time, I
felt a woman had made love to me.

As she collapsed against me, I grabbed her and held on tight. I
was afraid to let the moment go.

"It's all right. I'm not going anywhere," I heard her say. I
realized I must have been crushing her. As I eased my grasp she
slid off me, taking the condom off before coming back into my
arms, lying across me with all the bulk of an autumn leaf.

I looked at her there, long and hard, and she raised her eyes to
find me staring.

"How do you feel, Scully?"

"I love you, Mulder."

"Are you still afraid?"

"Yes. But I think it'll be all right."

"It will be as good as any two mortals can make it, Scully." She
touched my face gently. "No one can know, Mulder. That's going
to be hard. We have to pretend there's nothing between us."

I was starting to feel sleepy. "Sure, Scully. No problem."

I heard her giggle before I dropped off.

I woke up hours later, with the dawn light just starting to enter
the room. I was on my back, and she was next to me on hers. Her
hand was in mine, and she was breathing softly.

The sound of her breath made me hard again. 'Jesus, boy, you've
got it bad,' I thought when I realized how little it took.

I reached over to the night table and grabbed a condom. As I
rolled it on, I noticed it was lubricated. Good. I wanted to wake
her up gently,  without hurting her.

I moved above her, placing my knees between hers and bracing
myself on my arms so that none of my weight rested on her. I was
pleased she still slept.

Very, very slowly, I placed the tip of my penis inside her and
pushed,  entering her gently. I watched as consciousness changed
her features.  Her eyes were still closed as her lips curled up
in a smile.

I leaned down to whisper in her ear. "Good morning."

"Yes. It is."

I made love to her for a long time, keeping it slow, stroking her
gently inside and out, waking her body up in a way I'd often
wanted to. I'd watched her sleep so many times -- in hotels, on
planes, in cars -- and fantasized about waking her just this way.

Her morning orgasm was quieter, more subdued. So was mine. That
meant we had the luxury of watching each others' faces through
the
whole thing. I'd always believed Scully and I could tell each
other epics with our eyes. I was proven correct.

"We have to go to work," she said as I held her afterwards.

"Mmmm-hmmm."

I don't really remember what happened that day at the office. I
just remember it seemed like an endlessly long one. But it's
gotten easier since then. We've had a lot of practice leading
double lives now.

The horrors haven't stopped for us. Our work brings us into
contact with things no one in his right mind would want to see.
And often, the truth is kept from us by those who value power and
control above justice and compassion.

Scully once asked me if I wouldn't rather work alone, with no one
constantly questioning my assumptions. I told her there was a
time
when I would have said yes -- when I hadn't needed a skeptic
around to doubt me all the time. But since then , my point of
view has changed.

END