TITLE: The
Way Things Are
AUTHOR: Sukie Tawdry
EMAIL: [email protected]
RATING: NC-17
SPOLIERS: Season 1
CATEGORY: Guess you could call it AU. Diverges
from canon
some time during season 1.
KEYWORDS: Story, M/S (some elements of M/other)
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me. Sniff
SUMMARY: One night and their whole lives were
changed
forever.
FEEDBACK: Good or not so good--go ahead. I can
take
it. I'm a big girl.
ARCHIVE: Again, go ahead.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: At end.
Part 1 - Snow Blindness
It had been a terrible idea, right from the beginning. What
on earth had she been thinking--screwing her
partner. She'd
vowed to be smart on this new assignment. She'd walked into
that dreary basement office and shook his hand,
utterly
determined that she wouldn't make the same mistake
she had
with Jack and Daniel and all the others.
And how long had it taken her to fall into bed with Mulder?
Not even six months--how pathetic. Certainly, Mulder
was
rather irresistable,
beautiful in his loose-limbed grace.
And his brilliance was as blinding as the sun glinting off
snow. That
was what it had been--snow blindness.
But she knew from the beginning that Mulder
wasn't interested
in a relationship with her or anyone else. She'd heard rumors
that Mulder was a
"pickup artist", and she'd seen plenty of
evidence that his reputation was well
earned. She'd taken
phone messages from more than a few women--rarely
the same
woman twice.
She'd seen him wear the same clothes to work that he'd
had on the day before, only a little more
rumpled. Damn,
if he hadn't still looked more gorgeous than
anyone had
a right to, even when his suit was creased and
his jaw
was stubbly.
If anything, he was more beautiful with that
sleepy-eyed "I've got fucked
this morning" look about
him. He was
a player, and she had sworn off players.
Oh, he flirted with her.
She was pretty sure it was a knee
jerk reaction from him, something he wasn't even
aware he was
doing. He
teased and prodded and touched her too often and
stood much too close. Mulder pushed the
limits in general
and her buttons in particular, and he seemed to
enjoy both.
She'd known better, dammit. It didn't take a psychologist
to see that Mulder was
a tortured soul, chasing an elusive
truth and taking wild chances in that pursuit. She'd had
to bail him out of too many tight situations when
he'd
ditched her to do something dangerous.
And it didn't take a Ph.D. to see that he dulled his pain with
one night stands.
If she were totally honest with herself,
she would admit that she felt a tiny bit jealous
of those women.
Maybe that was why she'd behaved so stupidly.
It had been their last night in
Samuel Hartley case. Feeling the sting of not solving the case
fast enough to save lives, they'd had a few too
many beers
in the pool hall bar. Actually, she'd been having the beer.
Mulder had been drinking scotch. Something had haunted him
about that case, and she knew it had to do with his
sister.
Mulder sat close to her, looked into her eyes
a little too often.
It unnerved and excited her, and she found herself gazing back
at him. He
had traced a lazy finger along her arm, testing,
perhaps, to see if she flinched. She didn't flinch.
They were both drunk by the time they left the bar. Their
motel had been down the street, so they'd left the
car at the
pool hall and walked the two blocks. Their steps had been a
little unsteady, his arm around her shoulders,
hers around
his waist.
She was sure they looked like a couple of drunken
sailors, up until the part where he stopped in
the deserted
street and kissed her.
It had been a tentative kiss, the kind of kiss that happens
when two people are drunk, and one of them bends
over to
say something to the other. Their lips met once, twice--
little nipping kisses until he pulled her
close and
began to devour her mouth.
Not that she'd fought or anything. Far from it. She'd
twined her arms around his neck and pushed her
tongue into his
mouth. He
pulled her up against his body, her toes barely
grazing the pavement as he pressed her against
his rock hard
cock. There
had been little question in her alcohol-hazed
mind as to what was going to happen next.
Her legs felt like jello as they
stumbled to the motel.
She had barely gotten her door open before he had his
hand under her blouse, cupping her breast through
her
bra. She
was pretty sure she was whimpering by that
point. He
made short work of her front-closure bra.
She wondered how much practice he had.
The kissing and groping went on and on until they'd fallen
back onto the bed.
Her nipples grew hard in the cool
motel room air.
He brushed his thumb over the tip, lightly
at first, and then more firmly.
She had known in some little corner of her mind, that she
should stop him from hiking her skirt up
around her waist.
When she'd reached out to unzip his pants in order to get
closer to his cock she recognized it as a bad,
bad idea.
But he was so
hot and hard that she couldn't stop herself
from reaching into his boxer shorts and closing her
hand
around him.
It made him moan so delightfully.
He tugged her panties down her legs, shredding her
pantyhose when his nails caught on the sheer
material.
And did she try to stop him?
Of course not.
She
lifted her hips obligingly, turning from side
to side as
he worked her underwear off.
Slick from her juices, his fingers found her clit.
She heard herself making little sounds: mewling, moaning,
totally embarrassing noises as tongue followed
fingers.
He lapped at her, chuckling softly at her bucking hips.
She must have looked ridiculous, skirt up around her
waist, blouse open and breasts bared. At that moment,
she couldn't have cared less as his tongue dipped
into
her vagina and back up to swirl around her clit.
"C'mere," she mumbled,
pulling on his shirt. He obeyed,
climbing up her body and settling between her
thighs.
He pushed into her with one thrust, as she dug her
heels into the firm flesh of his ass.
It was then that reality began to pick at her brain.
She almost pushed it away, so lost in the sensation of
Mulder
moving within her. But that tiny bit of
responsibility forced her to speak
when she wanted
only to moan.
"What are we doing?" she gasped as he put his hands
under
her thighs and pushed back, changing the angle and
driving
deeper into her body.
"I thought that was...obvious," he grunted.
"This is crazy...oh god, that feels good. We're
not...oh...using any protection."
"We should stop," he muttered, as he drove into her.
"Yeah," she agreed, hooking her ankles behind his
neck.
"Oh, yeah...ohyeahohyeahohyeah." But he didn't stop,
and she didn't want him to. No, she definitely made
no move to stop him. Actually, her moans and gasps
and the fact that she couldn't stop thrashing her
head
from side to side, probably gave the impression
that she wanted it to go on forever.
And then her whole body was pulsing, quaking from within.
Her back arched, and she grabbed fistfuls of bedspread
as if that would keep her from flying around the
room.
Her orgasm seemed to trigger a chain reaction as he
stiffened over her and grunted out words that
weren't
really words.
She didn't remember anything after that. The next
morning, she woke up alone--naked and sticky.
The bed
reeked of sex, and her clothes were strewn
around the floor.
She'd sat up too fast and moaned into her hands, trying
hard not to be sick. The wrongness of the whole thing
hit her with the force of a runaway truck.
Mulder's clothes were not mingled with hers on
the floor.
The only sign that Mulder had been
there was the smell
of semen on her skin and the sheets. That and the ache
between her legs. It had been a long time between
sexual partners, and her body complained.
Gingerly, she stood up, and holding her head, walked
to the window and looked out. The bright
sunshine mocked her--reminding her again of how
stupid
she'd been the night before.
She stooped to pick up her blouse, noting that some of the
buttons had come off. She gathered the rest of the clothes,
and stuffed them in her dirty laundry bag,
unwilling to
put them back on, even to go searching for Mulder.
Instead, she pulled on a pair the sweatpants and shirt she'd
worn while lounging around the motel room during
the case.
She fought the desire to pretend this hadn't happened, to
show up all neatly pressed and sunny for the trip
home.
But she worried that if she did that, their partnership
would be more damaged than it already was. So she
went to
find her partner.
She stood in the morning sunshine, knocking on Mulder's
door and fighting the urge to run back to DC and
hide
under her bed.
Had Mulder done that very thing--left
her and run back to the comfort of his
office? She
walked around the building, hoping to find a
coffee
machine.
She spotted him sitting in a dirty white plastic chair
by the motel swimming pool. Though it was chilly in the
early spring air, his feet were bare and his rumpled
shirt untucked and
unbuttoned. Though he probably heard
her footsteps, his gaze didn't move from the dead
leaves
lying on the black plastic pool cover.
"I'm so sorry, Scully," he said as she dropped into a
nearby chair.
"That was a terrible mistake and shouldn't
have happened."
"You're right. It should never have happened, but it was
as much my fault as yours."
"I want you to know that I'm clean. What with the hospital
stay when I was shot this year, I've had more blood
work
than a
like that since I was in high school."
She nodded, unsure of what to say next. She was too
embarrassed that with her medical
background, the health
issues had not occurred to her until he had
brought them up.
"I don't drink often," he went on. "It makes me do
stupid
things.
I...uh...we could have avoided the whole fucking
mess if I'd stayed out of that bar."
"Quite the sweet-talker, aren't you, Mulder. Don't
worry--the secret is safe with me. Nobody ever has to
know you lowered yourself to screw your
partner."
"You think that's what this is about--that I'm ashamed to
have slept with you?"
"Never mind. You weren't the only one drunk last night,
and you weren't the only one who was horny."
She pushed
herself out of the chair, ready to escape back
to her room.
"Listen, I know I'm blowing this all out of proportion.
I'm hung-over and oversensitive this morning."
"No. I need for you to understand," he said, rising and
gripping her arm. "You mean a lot to me--too much, really,
to screw our relationship up with meaningless
sex."
She tried not to wince at the word 'meaningless.' It had
been certainly ill-advised, but it hadn't been
meaningless
to her.
"I don't want to screw things up either. Maybe it's best
if we just leave this here and forget it ever
happened."
Forget it ever happened.
That was the trouble, wasn't it?
He might have been able to forget, but now, two months later,
she knew she would never be able to forget.
They'd gone home, though, and never spoke about it again. He
continued to get phone calls from women, had
continued to
show up at work looking a little the worse for
wear--maybe
more often than ever. He treated her professionally and they
continued to forge their partnership.
They proceeded in fits and starts. She tried not to bristle
when he teased her over her lack of boyfriends
before the little
trip to the forest that nearly got them both
killed. He showed
genuine caring and concern, both during the
mission and afterward
when terribly ill, they'd landed in a month long
quarantine.
And only a few weeks ago, he had carefully put her in her place
when she tried to call him by his first name. Fair enough.
He
clearly wanted this to be a work relationship
and not spill over
into private time.
He was gentle about it--she couldn't fault
him. But it
had stung a bit, nonetheless.
She hadn't been concerned when she missed a period. Her body
had undergone a serious trauma when she'd been so
badly
dehydrated by the insects they'd encountered in
the forest.
Surely her cycle would return to normal when her body had a
chance to recover completely.
But the signs became impossible to ignore when she found herself
vomiting in the ladies room three times in the
past week. It
didn't take a medical degree to figure this
one out.
Which is how she ended up sitting cross-legged
on the floor of
her bathroom, tearing a tissue into confetti as
she waited.
Waited for the little stick to turn pink or blue or whatever
the hell this one was supposed to do. She'd tried four different
kinds of tests, not wanting to accept the truth as
each one
gave it's verdict.
With shaking fingers, she reached for the last in the series
of little white sticks. She blinked back tears as she looked at
the plus sign.
It was time to talk to Mulder.
Author's notes: I began
to wonder, what would have happened in
the first season, if instead of making Gillian
Anderson wear an
overcoat in July, 1013 had decided to write her
pregnancy into the
show. Stay
tuned for the next installment in this exercise in
"What if?" I'm going to try to post weekly or at least
every
ten days.