Title: SANDBOX 
Author: Fialka 
Rating: NC-17 
Category: S, MSR (yes, that *really* says MSR ) 
Summary: Balance is a hard thing to keep when the sands continue to
shift.
Spoilers: Je Souhaite. NOT A REQUIEM POST-EP. (Fancy that.) 
Archive: NO ARCHIVE ON XEMPLARY. Ephemeral, Gossamer OK. Others
please write for permission, though I generally give it. 
Disclaimer: Don't own them, just borrowing, promise to put them BOTH
back where they belong when I'm finished. And I expect you, Mr
Carter, to do the same.
First Posting: October 2000. 

Beta thanks -- as always -- to Yes Virginia, with special mention to
Marasmus, M Sebasky, Sarah Ellen Parsons, Punk Maneuverability, Cofax
and JET.Ê 

This is the last story in the Playground Series. It's not necessary
to have read the others ("Seesaw" and "Swings and Roundabouts"), but
they're at The Candybox if you're so inclined. Further notes to
follow.

More candy at http://welcome.to/TheCandybox
The real meal: The Annotated X-Files @ http://smart.issexy.com

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

SANDBOX
by Fialka


ÊÊÊÊ Happiness is equilibrium. 
ÊÊÊÊ Shift your weight.Ê 
ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ ~Tom Stoppard, "The Real Thing"


----------


"Come over," he says on the phone. "I'll get a movie."

It's a Friday night and she's left the office early, left him to deal
with his private I-Dream-Of genie. The woman is a conundrum Scully
can't begin to contemplate, a temptation she won't invite into her
heart. 

Three wishes. What would she wish, if she'd been the one to unroll
the carpet?

She stops by the new bookcase in her bedroom, phone tucked under her
chin, her eye caught by a photograph she keeps on the top shelf. She
thinks of it as the last moment of her childhood, herself in her high
school graduation gown, all big eyes and promise. Her siblings and
parents are gathered arm-in-arm on either side, Mom with her quiet
smile, Dad proud enough to burst his dress whites.

If she closes her eyes, she can still remember how right everything
felt at that moment, safely nestled in her family's embrace. The
first step completed, on her way to the next. Everything planned and
arranged, only a matter of time before the dots would connect to form
the picture of Dana Scully. Surgeon, mother, wife.Ê 

A few months ago she might have used one of those wishes to start
again from that day, to do it all over the way it was planned. Today
a sweet wisp of desire flows over her and she's grateful to have been
passed over by the genie, grateful for every wrong-seeming decision
she's ever made. The dots of her life are finally connecting and
she's surprised at the picture that's beginning to emerge. Right now
she wouldn't change a thing.

Well, maybe her present location. 

"Mulder," she teases, putting the photograph back. "Are you finally
asking me on a date?"

He laughs, low and comfortable. She can hear the creak of leather and
smiles, her mind instantly supplying a picture of him leaning back
into the couch, settling his enormous feet on the coffee table. She
imagines him in jeans and a t-shirt, then suddenly her mind strips
him bare, dapples his skin with moisture from the shower he's just
taken, his hair sticking up in wet spikes as a trickle of water runs
down his freshly shaven cheek.

She catches her breath as the image focuses her diffuse longing onto
a very precise point right between her legs. Oh god, has she ever
been this connected to anyone, so much that the mere sound of his
voice is enough to set her body to immediate anticipation?

"Hey, Dana," he croons, "Wanna go out with me sometime?"

A teenaged giggle escapes before she can stop it. "I don't know,
Mulder," she answers, mock-serious. "I did have plans for tonight."

"I've got plenty of hot water and a big tub over here."

A moment passes between them, one of those where the ground suddenly
turns soft and uncertain beneath their feet. Scully holds herself
still and waits for it to solidify again. She and Mulder have worked
too hard for this; they've lost and fought and misunderstood and
they've earned their recent light-heartedness. She wants to enjoy it,
even if she can't quite believe that happiness is something she has a
right to want, let alone accept.

"Scully?" he asks, and she can hear the concern weighing down his
voice. 

"No teenaged boys trying to get laid, no action flick unless it's got
a young Harrison Ford, and absolutely nothing with Julia Roberts."

He chuckles, evidently relieved. "Not even Pretty Woman? I know
you've got the hots for Richard Gere."

"Not this week."

"Oh yeah? Who's at the top of your list now?"

"Be nice to me tonight and you just may find out," she replies, and
hangs up while she's ahead.


----------


They're sitting on the couch facing the TV, which now rests in a huge
cabinet against the opposite wall. It's overkill to the woman whose
own television is still sitting on her bedroom dresser, but it does
make the room look less like a motel and more like someone's home.

In fact, now that she thinks about it, Mulder's whole apartment is
starting to look homier, showing signs of an attempt to make room for
another presence. It's in the little touches, like the TV moved to a
place where two can watch it, like the kitchen shelves rearranged so
that everything is within her reach. It's the way empty spaces keep
appearing -- a few inches of closet, half the bathroom shelf, a
drawer in his dresser. Places that she has yet to fill with more than
a toothbrush and a single change of clothes.

Scully opens her second beer. She's drinking too fast, inexplicably
nervous. She feels like she's been walking on soft sand all night, so
much effort to come so little distance. Mulder is still cracking
unpopped kernels of corn between his back teeth, eyes flicking
periodically her way. Scully sips her beer and keeps her gaze on the
television, wondering if this is all he had planned. It's been so
long since they've had a whole night to spend together, she imagined
they'd be heading straight for bed.

At last Mulder yawns and stretches, one arm coming down to rest
across her shoulders. It's so transparently adolescent that she
actually blushes and holds her beer closer to her chest. 

"Hey, Scully," he says. "If I could give you three wishes, what would
they be?"

"Are you going to tell me your last wish?" 

He arches one eyebrow, deliberately imitating her. Now when did he
start doing that? 

"What? I show you mine, you show me yours?"

"Nope," she declares, lifting her beer to her mouth. Her wishes would
be far too serious. 

"Jeez, Scully." He takes his arm away, mock-angry. "You're no fun."

For a moment she's terrified that he means it. Secret Fear #302 --
Dana Katherine Scully is no damn fun. It must be painted on her face
in all the colors of a painfully shy adolescence because he suddenly
drops all pretense. 

"I don't mean that." He turns her face towards him. "You know I don't
mean that."

This isn't what she wanted tonight. She's been like a yo-yo all week,
up and down and elated and crushed. One moment she's writing
scientific dissertations on the physics of human invisibility, the
next she's drowning in professional embarrassment. One minute she's
striding around, a grown woman, confident and cherished; the next
she's the awkward tomboy in braces, books raised to hide her new
breasts. 

"I know you didn't mean it," she answers, trying to toss the moment
off. Lately she's discovering that there are all sorts of things
hidden in her mind, hard crusts formed around sharp memories. She
wishes they were pearls, but they're not. Love has pried open her
outer shell, leaving the soft meat of her exposed and vulnerable,
leaving those leaden balls of memory to fall on unsuspecting toes as
they roll out. 

"Scully..." 

He takes her face between his hands and she wishes she'd taken a sip
of beer first. Her mouth is suddenly dry, her heart pounding like
she's never done this, like she doesn't know what to expect. 

"Me or the gopher," she says.

"Huh?" 

Mulder blinks, arrested in the process of leaning over to kiss her.
His eyes have that glazed expression that means the inside of his
brain is lit by red neon lights and she's never quite sure if she
likes it when he stares at her like that. 

"Movie," she hints. His eyes clear a bit as his face creases up in a
mischievous smile. 

He thumps around on the table, trying to find the remote with his
hand while trying to find her lips with his mouth. Success arrives on
both counts, silence and softness. 

Ah, yes. She's been waiting for this all night. 

He curves his hand around her breast as their kiss grows more
passionate, and the heel of his palm presses down on her heart.
Arousal, she's found, produces the same adrenaline high as going in
for an arrest, and the analogy bothers her. How can she compare that
exhilaration to this? She can't. She shouldn't even be thinking about
it. She shouldn't be thinking at all right now.

Mulder tugs her shirt out from her waistband and guides it over her
head. Bra open next, his fingers practiced with the catch, and she
arches her back as he rubs his hands over the marks left on her skin.
He lays her down on the couch, lips following the path of his hands,
and she thinks she must be right in the middle of her cycle, the way
her body is responding. She's not usually this sensitive.

You're not usually this horny, she tells herself, as he rolls a
nipple against the roof of his mouth, making her gasp. 

"I bet I can read your mind," he teases, as she tugs at his belt. She
puts her lips together and blows air across his face. His hips shoot
about a foot in the air so she can pull down his jeans. 

Oh my, she thinks, as she always does when she first gets her hands
on him. It's not about size so much as the fact that Mulder's penis
seems to have its own distinct personality. She's always tempted to
take an indelible marker and give it eyes so it won't seem so strange
to have it nodding at her with what she swears is a lascivious grin.Ê


She looks up and his face has a very different expression, soft and
almost dreamy. She pushes him onto his back. His smile spreads with
his knees as she cradles his balls in her hand. 

"I always said -- ah, Scully -- that you, that you--"

"Should grab life by the testes?" she finishes. He nods vigorously,
grabbing at the edge of the couch as her mouth descends.

"Mrg," he says happily as she nibbles at him. Mulder's vocabulary
often devolves to about ten words when making love, six of which
appear to have no vowels. Either that or he spends the time granting
her a philosophical dissertation on some aspect of the Kama Sutra
that they couldn't possibly attempt at their age without incurring
permanent damage. 

Her mind works in less mysterious ways, calling forth an internal
diagram of the human body as her hands trace muscle and bone.
Gracilis, pubis, rectus abdominus. Mulder shifts impatiently as her
mouth moves across the tensing muscles of his stomach, heading in the
wrong direction. Even that eyeless head seems to be giving her a look
of desperation. 

Now, now, little guy, she thinks, as she slips him into her mouth. 

Mulder makes another one of those vowel-less sounds as she takes him
in as far as she can. She'd like to open her throat and swallow him
right down, just because it would blow his mind to kingdom come -- so
to speak -- if she ever could. So far she can't. 

One of these days, she promises silently, making it up to him in
pressure as she draws him slowly in and out.Ê He lasts through three
of those, then suddenly his hands are in her hair, gently guiding her
to stop. 

"So soon?" she asks, disappointed. She was just getting into the
oddly comforting feel of having his warm flesh in her mouth. 

"I'm an old man, Scully, take pity on me. You have no idea how good
that is."

"Did I not tell you I'm pitiless?" she teases and she's about to go
down on him again when she suddenly finds herself lying beneath him,
her arms pinned above her head. 

"Nice move," she acknowledges.

"Had a bit of training," he says, leaning down to cover her face with
tiny, delicate kisses. 

He has a different expression when he's finished. He lets go of one
of her wrists to unbutton her slacks and she sees in his eyes that
playtime is over. This is about to get serious. 

No. Not like this, with his jeans still bunched around his ankles and
her bra hanging open on her shoulders and the two of them fumbling on
the couch, fucking half-dressed like somebody's wife might be coming
home any minute. Not like that. Not with him. 

"Please, Mulder," she says, as he's tugging at her slacks. "Not
here."

He looks up, startled at her tone, and for a moment it's another face
and a car in the drive and she slides out from under him, trembling. 

Daniel, she's coming to realize, is a lead ball the size of
Baltimore; one that keeps falling on her when least expected.


----------

Mulder stands and pulls his jeans up. He wonders if this is ever
going to get easier, if he's ever going to learn to read her signals
fast enough to respond before she turns off. 

A few weeks ago, when he was sure he was going to die, he was furious
that they'd waited so long, that they'd had so little time. That
bitterness faded along with the taste of nicotine in his mouth, but
he knows what he'd be missing now. He stares at Scully's back, at the
mark of loneliness she put on herself, and wishes that for once she
would just tell him what she wants. 

"I'm sorry. I just don't want to make love on the couch," she
murmurs, as if he'd spoken that thought out loud, which he's damn
sure he did not. 

She turns around, rubbing at her eyes with the back of one fist. It's
a sad, clumsy gesture, one that claws at his heart. 

"What did I do?" he asks. 

"Nothing. Nothing, Mulder. I swear." 

She has that shuttered look to her face, but she doesn't resist when
he reaches for her. Maybe all is not lost. He bends his knees and
scoops her up, knowing that this is incredibly dangerous. One plays
with Scully in this manner only at risk of having one's ego or one's
instep ground beneath a three-inch heel. 

"I can walk to the bedroom," she says, lifting an eyebrow.

"I know." He doesn't know what else to say, doesn't know what he's
doing, except that for a moment she seemed to be headed out the door,
and he can't let that happen. All his light and funny comments seem
to be suddenly out of place, so he goes with his instinct. He kisses
her.

One point to instinct, he thinks several minutes later, as she
regards him through hazy eyes. She lays her head against his shoulder
and he carries her off to bed, feeling rather triumphant. The truth
is, he's been wanting to do that for months.

He sets her on the edge of the bed and tucks that always-too-short
lock of hair behind her ear. Scully graces him with one of her rare,
slow smiles and he's glad he's on his knees or they might have given
out. No one has ever looked at him the way she's looking at him right
now. He wants to grind himself against her until their atomic
structures blend, becoming a new element. 

He lays her down to slide her trousers and underwear off, his fingers
trembling with all the wild endearments he's struggling to suppress.
Scully can't be rushed, not when it's been so long since they've had
a chance to be together. Better to bury his face between her legs,
though that has its own danger. He's so hungry for her now he could
almost take a bite out of her soft flesh. 

If Mulder had his wish he'd do this every night, mapping the way her
flavor changes as the days of the month progress. But she's not with
him every night and too often when she is, all they do is fall
exhausted into bed. Too often he wakes to find she's gone home in the
dawn to change her clothes and be Agent Scully again. 

He slides his hands beneath her hips to tug her to the edge of the
bed and Scully murmurs her assent. She's missed this, he knows, but
he couldn't bear to taint her with the taste of cigarettes and
there's been no time since he got well. Tonight she tastes like an
expensive French dish prepared in cream and white wine and he's a man
in need of a good meal. He intends to savor every morsel of it.

Yes, he thinks, as he feels her begin to relax. Let me do this for
you. I'm an ass and a schmuck sometimes, but I love you, Scully, more
than I'll ever know how to express. 

He writes that thought in tiny swirls between her legs, erases it
with the flat of his tongue and writes it again. 


-----------------------


The moment he enters she always freezes, though she's never sure if
the resistance is in her body or in her mind. It's in this moment,
intensely aware of him inside her, that she's closest to cracking
wide open, of spilling all her thoughts right into his ears.

Mulder goes still, as he's learned to do, balancing his weight on one
elbow. The other hand does a soothing dance across her breasts and
shoulders and throat and face and hair. It's a moment she could
almost like, his face slack with concentration, eyes following his
hand as it moves across her skin, waiting for her to signal that it's
okay for him to move again. 

She wonders if it's the same for a man, if being the one who enters
makes Mulder feel less vulnerable to her than she does to him.
Certainly he's braver than she is when it comes to this. He's the one
whose mouth trails across her cheeks and devours her neck and
whispers words like beautiful, like love; gifts pressed against her
skin. Gifts which she receives like priceless works of art, delicate
and exquisite as jeweled Faberge eggs. 

She knows she's supposed to take those words inside herself, the way
she takes him in, to feel them and be them and coil them up inside
her belly until they explode in orgasm, but she can't. They're just
too precious. She has to put them someplace safe, someplace their
rolling bodies can't crush them and that way, one day when she's able
to hear him, he'll be able to find those words again. 

Mulder's breath sighs across her lips as he arches over to kiss her,
something he rarely does in this position. She's just not the right
size for that. Scully wraps her arms around his back, pulling him
down close so she can hide her face against his neck. 

It smells warm and spicy in there, something she finds almost
unbearably intimate. She wants to tell him that this is what she
loves most about making love -- feeling him inside and out and the
smell of his neck and the press of his stomach and the slightly rough
palm of his hand outlining the shape of her, making her feel real.

"You want to drive?" he asks. 

She shakes her head. It's late and she's tired, and anyway, it might
be old-fashioned and boring but she likes it this way. She likes the
way his chest rubs against hers when he's on top, the way his body
ripples as he moves, the way his weight makes her breathless. She
keeps hoping that if she tightens this set of muscles, if she raises
her knees a little higher, if she tilts her hips just so, then maybe,
maybe it will work this time. Maybe she can slide into his passion
for making love the way she slid into his passion for work, maybe she
could forget about work, forget that she's sleeping with a colleague
again. 

It's true, this is not the best position for most women. The only
position she's found that's good for her is the one Daniel liked to
use, on her knees with her ass in the air. The very thought of that
still makes her hear words that come from her parents' generation.
Cheap. Tawdry. Harlot screwing the married man. 

She doesn't ever want to feel like that with Mulder. She needs to see
his face when he's inside her. If she can just look at him long
enough, sometimes she can stop thinking about everything else --
whatever case they've just finished or whatever dire future might be
in store, or the fact that it's very likely they have no future at
all. She can forget that she's lying on her back with her legs in the
air and she isn't going to come and just concentrate on Mulder
sliding in and out of her body, his breath becoming a string of
incoherent eroticisms whispered against her hair.

She wishes she could tell him how he looks to her right now, how
beautiful he is, how he's made her feel alive in ways she never
imagined. Once she tried, but the words came out as tears and he's
been so careful with her since then that she's afraid to try again.
She doesn't know how to tell him that she cried for joy that night,
that she wishes he would let himself go wild, that she'd like to go
wild herself but she's been so controlled for so long that she's
afraid of what might happen if she lets go now. 

"Tell me how to make this better," he murmurs, lips outlining her
brows, her nose, her ears. 

Take me hard, she answers without sound. Take me away, Mulder, take
me out of myself. 

She doesn't say it. Instead she tightens her legs, stretching to kiss
him until they're both breathless, until he gives himself over to his
body's rhythm and she thinks that it's enough, just to look at him,
to see the intense pleasure writtenon his face as he reaches his
climax. And sometimes it really is.Ê 

"I'm sorry," he pants, his head coming to rest on the pillow beside
hers. "I didn't mean to go off that fast. Just...give me a minute."

She pulls him down on top of her, shushing him, massaging the muscles
near his spine with her strong hands. Mulder's full weight is too
much for her to bear for long, but she likes it for a minute or two,
before he withdraws from her and becomes separate again. 

He gets up on his elbow and lifts each of her arms over her head,
checking to see that he hasn't been too rough. She can't seem to make
him believe that she's just made this way, that it doesn't hurt. What
does hurt leaves its mark so far below the surface that no one ever
knows it's there. 

"I'm all right," she whispers, sliding him just off her so she can
take a reasonable breath. 

He smiles, still lazing on his cloud of after-sex bliss. "We can do
better than all right."

Yes, it's true he can make her come with his mouth or his hands, but
she doesn't need that. How can she make him understand that the
greatest orgasm in the world doesn't compare to the way it feels to
look into his eyes right now? That this is more rare, more necessary
to her, more precious? 

She wants to say this is enough, Mulder. Really it is. This is so
much more than I ever thought we'd have. Don't try to give me
anything else, because I don't think I can accept it. 

"Scully?"

Something in his voice has changed; there's some kind of unwarranted
concern. It *is* all right, and for god's sake it isn't his fault and
if he goes on touching her with that kind of tenderness she's going
to start crying and that will only scare him shitless. 

I wish I was better at this, she thinks, even as she pushes him onto
his back, pressing his hand against his chest so he can't touch her
again. I wish I knew how to make this easier for both of us.


----------


Mulder dreams of a time he barely remembers, of a cold so deep it
freezes the very thoughts in his head. 

He's wearing Scully like a backpack, the two of them zipped inside
his parka, trudging through miles of knee-deep snow. He hears her
voice at first, hoarse in his ear, urging him to take just one more
step, but his goal is growing no nearer and Scully is getting
heavier, sagging inside the coat as she loses consciousness. Mulder
stumbles on, his eyes on salvation, the distant SnoCat. It's like
carrying a sack of crushed ice; her wet body so chilled he can feel
it even through his padded vest. That's when he realises he can't
feel her heart anymore, can't hear her breathe. 

He has to say her name. If he says her name it will be all right. She
will come back. He opens his mouth, but nothing will come out.

Mulder wakes, shivering violently, gasping for breath. 

"Scully?" he manages to ask.

She rolls over, hazy and disoriented, and she's warm with sleep, safe
and in his bed. 

He puts an arm around her waist, wriggling closer. Scully is so much
smaller that when they lie like this his hips are almost level with
her knees. Her shoulder feels too fragile to bear the weight of his
head, but her arms are strong and she holds him tight, stroking his
hair until she drifts off again.

He watches as she sleeps, her face tight and anxious. He doesn't want
Scully to look like that. He wants her to look soft and happy, the
way she did the first time they laid together like this. 

He wants her to tell him what the problem is. 

Mulder slides carefully out of bed, too restless now to go back to
sleep. Where does he draw the line between respecting Scully's
privacy and bashing down the damned barricade she seems to live
behind? In some ways, he knows her well, but when it comes to the
details of her private life, of things that happened before they met,
he hardly knows more than he did after the first year they worked
together.

What they need, Mulder thinks, is a little normal romance.
Professionally, they're getting along better than ever, but there's
still a stiffness to their private relationship, an inability to
throw off their working personae and just be themselves. They've
never done anything an ordinary couple would. He's never taken Scully
to dinner as her lover, never held her hand walking down the street,
never stopped to kiss her by the reflecting pool at sunset. 

In the living room, Mulder grabs a piece of paper and starts writing
down every romantic thing he thinks Scully might like. A drive in the
country. A nice dinner somewhere cosy, with candles. Or a picnic in
the woods, with strawberries and champagne. 

Dancing, perhaps, the old-fashioned way. He remembers that Scully can
dance, that the one time they did is also the only time he's ever
seen her really laugh.

Mulder leaves his list and starts digging through the piles of papers
in his desk. At last he finds the brochure he's looking for,
something he picked up months ago on a case out at the western edge
of the state. At the time he'd hardly imagined that one day he would
be planning a romantic getaway weekend with his partner -- who, now
that he thinks of it, looked like she'd been wondering why he
bothered to pick it up. Maybe that's exactly why he stuffed it in his
pocket.

He sits on the couch and stares at the shiny paper. "Virginia Is For
Lovers" blazes out at him in bright red letters, over a picture of a
country inn.

Mulder smiles and opens up the pamphlet. He's lived in this state for
over ten years. It's about time Virginia earned its reputation.


----------


When she wakes, it's still dark and Mulder is pressed behind her,
snoring away with his face buried in her hair. 

She looks at the clock. Four fifty-five, her internal alarm going off
five minutes before the real one, as usual. The snoring stops as she
leans over and taps the alarm off, but Mulder doesn't wake. He seems
to be in a holding pattern, waiting for her to settle back against
him. 

Scully sighs quietly. She'd like to do that but it's time to get up.
Time to go home and shower, all her tried-and-true defense against
the smell of death now going to mask the smell of life as well. She's
tired of the scent of lemon shampoo, lemon soap. The tang of it
reminds her of the years alone, far more bitter than she ever wanted
to admit. She wishes she could keep this warm animal musk on her
skin, that she could slide back beneath Mulder's arm and sleep until
she's ready to wake up. 

There's no time for that. There's never any time; what they have they
steal. Thieves of minutes and hours and occasional nights. There are
no mornings waking slowly, coming together beneath the blankets,
having breakfast in bed. Scully spends the night and goes home in the
cold dark. When she sees him again it will be at work, where their
eyes might meet, but never really connect; where Mulder's hand may
fall into the curve of her waist, but she'll ignore it, just the way
he'll ignore her standing close enough to brush against him if she
leans slightly back. They hide their secret so well that some days
they hardly even look like friends. 

Some days she herself wonders if they're even that. She wonders if
this is love, or just two unbearably lonely people finally turning
towards each other for sex. 

Whatever it is, it can't get in the way of their work. Scully
swallows down her wishes and gets out of bed. She resets the alarm
for Mulder, then gathers her clothing and heads into the bathroom to
dress. 


----------
continued in 2/2

Sandbox... continued
disclaimers in Part 1


Mulder's day has gone from bad to worse, from waking to find Scully
gone again, to Skinner calling him in just as he was going home and
making the announcement that their expenses have gone out of control.
Mulder's not sure why this is happening now. Their expenses have been
nothing like the year before. No running off to one pole or the
other, no chartering of Justice Department jets for futile rescue
missions. This year the X-Files have come relatively cheap.

This year, according to Skinner, the division has accomplished almost
nothing. Even Mulder's raison d'etre -- his search for his sister --
has run its course. Yes, they caught a child serial killer, but
Mulder's own report on that case admitted that he's spent the last
nine years using FBI resources to further a personal agenda. It's
never been a secret, but apparently someone upstairs has finally
decided that he needs to stop. Come Monday, the X-Files are under
financial audit. 

Mulder is standing at Scully's door, head against the wood, trying to
get his face together so he can knock. The funny thing is, he doesn't
know if he'd really care if the X-Files were closed. A year ago, it
was the greatest disaster of his life, a period so bleak he took his
frustration out on everyone. Even on Scully, desperately trying to
stick by him while dealing with an unfathomable darkness of her own. 

Half an hour ago, sitting across from Skinner, Mulder had the urge to
simply lean over and shake the man's hand, thank him for trying, and
leave his gun and badge on the desk. Not in anger, but relief. The
burden would be gone. He wouldn't have to worry about the entire
world anymore, he could just go home and make a quiet life with the
woman he loves.

The woman he loves would be furious if he did something like that
without consulting her, so the gesture remained only a thought. Who
knows? Scully might even be pleased with Skinner's formal suggestion
that they be bumped over to VCS to take on a more ordinary caseload
if the X-Files are closed. They're still a damned good team; the
Bureau would gain nothing by splitting them up. 

It was Skinner's last comment that threw him off, a parting shot
delivered just as Mulder was about to slump out the door. 

This may be a good time for you and Scully to prioritize your lives.

Knowing Skinner as he does, the words feel like an acknowledgement.
Even a blessing of sorts. And though Scully isn't officially
expecting him tonight, he has the feeling that she is, that they left
something unfinished last night. Certainly he left someone
unfulfilled, and the moment he thinks that his body eagerly begins to
prepare to rectify that wrong. 

Mulder stares down at himself, not sure whether or not to be
embarrassed about knocking at Scully's door sporting such an obvious
ulterior motive. He hasn't been this out of control in years. 

Of course, he didn't have a lover for years. And maybe this is
exactly why. At 20 it was easy to be proud of a pretty girl on his
arm and a perpetual bulge in his pants -- at least until Phoebe came
along and sucked his brains out through his dick. At 30 he'd been
annoyed that one stroke of Diana's manicured hand was enough to prove
exactly how much control she had over that part of him.

At almost 40, he should probably just be grateful that the equipment
still works as well as it does, and the long months of foreplay
taught him that he's capable of pleasing Scully when it doesn't.
Maybe even more. And now he really is going to embarrass himself
because the pictures running through his mind are only revving the
little guy up further and he rather wishes that he hadn't already
knocked.

Scully answers the door wearing jeans and a thin button-down sweater
he hasn't seen in years, one that dips low and makes her look as
innocently sexy as a teenager.

Her face doesn't look teenaged by any stretch of the imagination and
he's glad of that, the way he's glad she doesn't seem to have any
idea how mouth-droppingly gorgeous she is to him. He's had too much
experience with women who knew exactly how beautiful they were, and
exactly how to snare him with it. Maybe that's one of the reasons he
trusted Scully instinctively from the start. After Diana's elegant
and expensive good looks, anyone willing to run around with him in
the pouring rain, ankle deep in mud -- well, that was his kind of
girl. And Scully is aging a lot more gracefully than Diana did. 

She lifts her face to smile at him and he can see that the lines
across her forehead are more deeply etched than the ones at the
corners of her eyes. Scully has worried too much and laughed too
little but he has a chance to change that now. 

Maybe Skinner is right. Maybe it's time to reprioritize. 


------------

She'll remember this as the night it all began to make sense, when
her disdain for pop love songs suddenly turned to understanding. Love
is so overwhelming and inexplicable that almost any attempt to
describe it can only turn out trite and sentimental. It's like trying
to contain the ocean in a jar. She can capture the water, but never
the irresistible force of the waves, neverÊ its depth or grandeur.
Never the astonishing variety of life beneath the surface.

The water is warm, here in Scully's own tub. Mulder is her pillow and
she's surrounded by him, by scented bubbles and candlelight and
Antonini on the portable stereo. They don't talk about what it means
to be doing this. Baths had ceased to be her refuge before they
started sleeping together and the box of candles they're using has
been sitting unopened on the counter for months. It was she who
nodded her agreement as he turned them over and over in his hands,
but it was Mulder who went from room to room, collecting the dusty
candlesticks. It was he who wiped them clean and placed them around
the tub, he who fit the candles and lit them. 

One lead ball buried, never to be dug up again. When she thinks of
bathing by candlelight now, she knows she'll think of this, of how it
feels to lie here, cradled safely between Mulder's legs.

Mulder lifts his hands from the water, letting the drops roll down
her shining skin. She watches them slide over her breasts, youthfully
buoyant with the water's help. The human body is a fragile thing, and
her own, she knows, may not survive as long as his.

She turns in the water, facing him. In a little while her back is
going to hurt from fitting her chin on her hands and looking up at
him, but for now it's very pleasant. Their eyes catch and hold, and
for a few blessed minutes they're content just as they are, floating
in a private world of soft light and centuries-old music.

"If the X-Files were gone," he asks when the concerto is done, "what
would you do? Would you stay with the Bureau or go do something
else?"

She sees that lost boy in his eyes, the one that appears less and
less often now but still looks so terrified when he does.

"Do you want to stop?" she asks.

"Maybe I've run out of gas. Maybe..." He trails off, his hands moving
slowly up and down her arched back. "Maybe I've seen enough to know
that I wouldn't be missing anything at all."

"Mulder, you couldn't just stop. You'd go nuts. You'd become the
fourth Gunman."

She expects him to make some kind of joke, but he's stone cold
serious. "You're the one who always wanted to get out of the car.
What's changed that?"

She sighs, making her body rise in the water. "The things we know."

"Scully. Do you really believe that an alien species is going to
colonize this planet?"

Said like that, it sounds like bad science fiction, but if she
concentrates hard enough, she can still feel the carved skin of that
unidentified ship beneath her hands. "I don't know," she answers.
"But I know that you believe it, and I know that we both want the
truth. I know we can't just walk away without that."

He's silent, spilling warm water over her shoulders with undue
concentration. She hitches herself up so that his lips are within
reach. "Whither thou goest, Mulder, I will go," she says softly,
sealing it with a gentle kiss.

------------

Hunger finally forces them to forage for breakfast, hours after they
wake. Mulder scrambles eggs in a skillet, watching from the corner of
his eye as Scully pours coffee for both of them. She's radiant this
morning, her hair in a tumble, lips and cheeks rosy with carnal
pleasure, her body covered only with that deceptively virginal white
robe.

He stares and he wants her. On her back, on her knees, any way she'll
let him. He wants to take her back to bed and play in that sandbox
forever. Let the world go to hell while he builds castles for Scully
and brings her to one climax after another, until she is all the
world and the world is good and they forget everything they've seen
that is not good at all. He wants Scully always to look the way she
does right now, without a single terrible thought to purse her mouth
or draw her eyebrows down.

"I want to take you somewhere," he says and receives her
is-that-an-exsanguinated
-cow-I-see-before-me eyebrow. 

"Where?"

"It's a secret." 

She hesitates, unconsciously closing the collar of her robe. He's led
her down the garden path so often that it's no wonder she's
suspicious. 

"It's not an X-file," he promises. "Just some place I think you'll
like." 

She looks up at him and the coffee pot begins to tremble in her
hands, and suddenly he too is scared. It's such a mundane thing
they're doing, so domestic. Just making breakfast together. Why
should it feel so fragile, so forbidden?

Only because it's new, Mulder tells himself. They've both been alone
so long they're not used to the simple act of waking up and finding
someone there.

They stare at each other, not daring to speak or touch, each
conducting a private, silent pep rally inside their head.


----------


"You promised to follow me anywhere," he reminded her, so she got
into the car. Now he's waltzing her around a hundred-year-old
pavilion somewhere in western Virginia and she feels giddy and
breathless and wonderfully surreal.

"Aren't they lovely?" someone else says, a woman's voice fading in
and out of the conversation she's silently having with Mulder's eyes.
"...never see young people dance like that anymore..."

It startles her to look around and see that they are the young
people, she and Mulder, twenty years younger than anyone else on the
floor. They're the last of a more genteel world, the last children
born before the hippies started having children of their own. The
last generation to be taught to dance as a normal part of growing up,
like learning their multiplication tables, or how to ride a bike.

"Where did you learn to waltz?" she asks.

"Mrs. Walter's Dancing Academy. All the kids in town went when we
were twelve or so."

That's right, she's forgotten where he comes from. She wonders if
they still teach the boys to dance on Martha's Vineyard, if the girls
still go to debutante balls and giggle in their summer-white gowns.
She learned to dance the old Scully way, five or six years old
standing barefoot on her father's toes.

Mulder laughs when she tells him that, drawing their clasped hands to
his mouth and nibbling at her knuckles. She waits for his usual kind
of remark -- you can dance on my feet anytime, Scully -- but it
doesn't come. The mood between them is light, but there's something
else here too, a reverence that invites confidences. It's the desire
to tell stories that's new, as unexpected as connecting the last few
dots and finding the picture of herself much different than she had
thought.

They're still dancing at the requisite distance, six inches of air
between his body and hers, but that space is filled with heat and
passion and it's true what they say about the suppressed sexuality of
the waltz. Mulder whirls her around as if holding her up to the
light, letting her refract all over the walls and the floor and the
dark pupils of his eyes in which shesees herself as he sees her --
red curls flying, her bare face freckled and flushed -- and suddenly
she wants her other self, the one she knows. The one whose hair stays
in place, whose skin is pale and smooth, the one who's a good three
inches taller than she is right now.

The one who will never be whirled around a dance floor by the man she
loves.

He gives her that wide, froggy smile that always hits her right
behind the knees. She touches his cheek with her thumb, the prickling
of his beard reminding her how it scratches her lips at night, how
much nicer it is the next morning, when the stubble has grown long
enough to soften. It amazes her that she knows this about him now,
that he can weigh her breasts in his hands and know it's the time of
the month to be gentle. How is she supposed to separate these things
from facing him over a cadaver, or sitting by his side while he tries
to convince Skinner that there's going to be some kind of alien
invasion?

And if that's really going to happen, how dare they take the time to
dance?

The ground beneath her feet turns to sand at that thought. She
stumbles and he catches her against him, their dance immediately
coming to a halt.

"Dizzy?" he asks, bent half over to whisper in her ear. "Do you want
to sit down?"

Mrs. Mulder, whatever her other shortcomings as a mother, certainly
raised a gentleman. A gentle man, his fingers soft in her hair. 

Scully shakes her head, but her negative response is to herself. She
can't start thinking like that, in terms of permanence. Nothing lasts
forever and she can't let herself pretend that this can. On Monday,
they'll have to be the realMulder and Scully again, partners in some
kind of struggle that's far greater than either of them truly
understands.

He runs his fingers through her hair again, checking its length
against her chin. "It's growing," he says, and she understands that
he's trying to tell her they've changed since they began. They are
not the same flailing, wounded people they were then.

"You getting hungry?" he asks, taking her by the hand.

"More plans?"

"Mmm," he teases. "Maybe."

Her smile suddenly winks out. "Mulder," she says, "you don't have to
do all this. There's no need."

"I love you," he says, bending down to kiss her, right in front of
everyone. Not a wild, hot, fuck-me-now kind of kiss. Just an old
married couple kind of kiss, tender without passion, momentary but
heartfelt.

She turns around and starts walking away, tears pricking at her eyes.


Oh, what the hell is wrong now, she thinks. She's sure he's thinking
the same and this might be the day she walks away and he doesn't
follow, it might be the "no" he accepts and she'll never have the
guts to take it back. 

"Scully?" 

He's coming and she almost wants to run, but she hears the bare,
awful terror hollowing out his voice and she can't do that to him.
She just can't. 

"What's the matter?" he asks, catching her by the wrist so she can't
walk away again. His grip is not painful, but suddenly she can't be
touched and without meaning to she jerks her hand out of his grasp. 

"Scully, what the hell is going on?"

That's the question, isn't it? Why the hell has she gone from
breathlessly happy to crying inside, from dancing with joy to her
feet moving like she's barefoot on burning sand? All she wants to do
right now is run away from him, just run until her lungs burst and
her brain boils over and her legs give out. To run until she either
outruns this fear or dies of it, and oh god what were they thinking,
what ever made them think that they could get away with this?

"I can't," she says and her feet are moving her away from him, down
the steps of the pavilion. Back to Agent Scully who wears black every
day and never smiles and puts her head down and works hard and
doesn't hope or dream but merely gets on with it. She can do that.
She's very good at doing that. She can live like that, on solid
ground. They're not walking on sand trying to love each other,
they're walking on air. One day one of them is going to be gone and
the other will be left to fall that long, screaming way down. 

She finds a bench and sits on it, head down, avoiding his eyes. He
sits beside her, not close enough to touch, but close enough that she
can feel his heat and she wants him. She clenches her hands on the
edge of the bench, knuckles pale gold with the force of her wanting
him. 

"I think we need to go back," she blurts.

"Back to where? DC?" he asks, bewildered.

She shakes her head.

He's up and walking away from her now, feet stomping against the
ground, and this is just what she's been afraid of. She can argue
with him on a professional level -- they do it all the time -- but
she's never been one to argue about personal matters. She either does
what's expected or goes silently her own way and accepts the
consequences. 

"Forget it," he snaps, coming back to lean over her, his face dark
and angry. "You don't get out of it like that. There is no going
back."

"Why not? Why can't we just be partners again?" She rises to her feet
and folds her arms, summoning Agent Scully to make her tall and
strong enough to hold her ground. She knows who she is with that
badge in her hand. 

"Because that's not how this goes. It's too late to go back. We go
forward or nowhere, Scully, that's all there is. And if you walk away
from me now -- for no goddamn good reason -- you better keep on
walking, you better walk back to your apartment and pack your shit
and move to the West coast because I don't ever want to see your face
again." 

She catches her breath and holds it, mouth clamped shut, toes
clenched inside her shoes to keep her feet still.Ê 

He takes a step towards her, holding his hand out. 

"It's just a day, Scully. A nice day out. That's all this is. You and
me acting like normal people for once." He hesitates, his
outstretched hand dropping. "I thought that's what you wanted."

She says nothing as he starts to walk back the way they came, but
someone is screaming inside her, telling her to go after him, to make
him stop. Someone whose acquaintance she's made briefly in the
moments when she's let herself relax, let herself be happy and whole
and thrilled to be with him. 

She lets her toes unclench and she's moving now, with the swift walk
she learned at his side. She catches his hand and holds on until he
slows, brings the pace down to something comfortable for both of
them. 

"Mulder, we swore that the work was the most important thing, that
nothing could get in the way of that."

"Nothing we've done has. It's the work that's getting in the way of
everything else. And that's not going to change, Scully, no matter
what happens with this audit. We have to find a way deal with it."

"It just feels like there's so much to be done, and even the little
time we manage to steal is too much."

"Do you think you're the only one who's this scared?" he says, coming
to a halt. "I'm scared every time I look at you, every time I touch
you, every time I wake up alone when you were there the night before.
Every time you shut down and won't tell me what's wrong."

She stares at his shoes, at the way the laces go, in little X's
instead of straight across like hers. It seems to say something so
essential about them, then the thought is lost as she understands
that she's doing exactly what he's talking about. She's shutting
down, blocking him out.Ê 

"I keep thinking we're doing okay," Mulder says, "That we're working
it out. And then something like this happens and I think, that's it.
She's figured it out. I'm not worth it."

"That's not --" She wants to say that's not possible, but of course
it is, as possible for her as for him.

"I'm scared I haven't grown up, that I'm still locked in the past,"
Mulder says, babbling as if some valve in him has finally been
released. "That I'll fail you in some way you'll never forgive. That
one day I won't find you in time, or you'll die or walk away and I'll
have to live without you and I know what I'm like without you and I
don't ever want to be that person again."

"The last time I fell in love," she says, closing her eyes to give
herself the strength to say these things to him, "I nearly lost
myself.Ê I couldn't see straight, Mulder, and I did things...things I
was taught never to do. I didn't leave Daniel just out of some
altruistic duty not to break up his family, I left because I was
becoming someone I couldn't stand."

"It's not the same here, Scully. There's no one else."

"There's the whole world, if what you believe is true." 

"The world can spare us a day, Scully. Maybe even more than that."

He starts to say something else and her feet move, but this time it's
towards him. She lays her head against his chest and feels his heart
against her chin, pounding in the arrhythmia of fear. 

"I'm scared," she manages to say, "I'm scared I'll lose you because
I'm too scared to let you see how much I want this." 

He pulls her closer and she remembers the first time he held her like
this, the moment when she first admitted to herself that she loved
him. And then let it go, sure she would not live long enough to do
anything about it. 

That was three years ago, and she's still alive and so is he and the
truth is, she wants every single minute they can steal. 

"Don't give up on me, Mulder," she whispers, pressing herself tight
against him. 

"Never," he swears, and suddenly they're not Agents Mulder and
Scully, crusaders on some holy mission, they're not even Fox and
Dana. They're nobody, just a man and a woman holding each other in
the middle of a country park. Two people trying to believe that they
deserve their chance, as much as any other mismatched couple
wrestling with the imperfections of love. 


----------


There are markers that she keeps, tangible objects that remind her of
a moment when her life pivoted on its axis and turned in a new
direction. That graduation photograph on her bookshelf is one. The
plastic alien decoder ring that Mulder gave her the night they
finally consummated their years-long attraction is another. 

Other things have left her with nothing physical to hold, though the
shift in her life has been no less profound. There's the moment she
took her true self back and walked away from Daniel, the moment she
sat in Blevin's office and first heard the words 'X-Files' spoken
with reference to herself. 

There's that Saturday afternoon, the day they stopped to dance.

And there is this night on Mulder's couch, skin caressing skin and
his hands on her breasts and her legs spread over his lap. There is
the thick hard length of him filling her until she can feel him from
the tips of her toes, to the depths of her heart to the roots of her
hair and she throws her head back to say 'I love you' but what comes
out is far less articulate because that's the moment that her orgasm
hits and turns her inside out so that the entire universe comes
rushing in and she is, for those few seconds, a part of the stars and
the wind and the sea and him and when he starts to moan those jeweled
egg words in her ear -- on his way to his own communion with the
universe and everything in it -- she brings his mouth to hers and
drinks them in. 

In the months to come, she won't think that they once tried to
capture the ocean. She won't dream of searching for him through waves
of sand. In the months to come, she'll think only of the way it felt
to let herself go, and how it felt to hold on as he let go and how
they went on rocking softly on his couch, still holding each other
long after they were done. She'll think of the genie and the lesson
they should have learned about the specificity of wishes, and how
he'll leave her behind a few days later because he wished that night
that nothing would ever take her away again.

In the months to come she'll hold the memory of this night as tightly
as she's now holding him.

And she'll wish. She'll wish.

She'll wish.

--------------
--------------

Author's notes:

This is the end of the Playground Series, the previous two being
"Seesaw" and "Swings and Roundabouts'. I'd like to take a moment to
thank everyone who read the first two stories and encouraged the
continuation of the series, but for those who have asked if it will
go on into next season the answer, sadly, is no.

When I began this series, it was because I was curious about what
might happen after the elation of the "first time" wore off, about
what kind of stumbling blocks Mulder and Scully might encounter as
lovers, trying to juggle this new intimacy with their established
working relationship. While I've tried to weld this very closely to
canon, most of what this series has contained has been speculation
playing off the subtext provided by DD and GA, who really did seem to
decide that this year they were going to act like they were "doing
it'. 

Little did I imagine that canon would follow, and where it would go
from there. 

I mourn the demise of the X-Files as we knew it, even as I hold out a
cautious hope that something wonderful will rise from the ash. This
isn't my farewell to fanfic -- I still have several stories left to
finish and will probably think up one or two more before I go -- but
it is my requiem for the show and the characters as I loved them. 

Thanks for being here to read it. 

Fialka 
October 2000