RATING: R
SPOILERS: all things, Requiem
CLASSIFICATION: MSR/V
SUMMARY: Waking up, breathing in.
DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, just let me know.
DISCLAIMER: The X-Files, Mulder, Scully, and all
their adventures belong solely to Chris Carter, 1013,
and FOX.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Many, many thanks to Keladry, bugs,
Tabula Rasa, and Karina for invaluable beta reading
on my first fanfic.
------------
"Inhalation"
by Nova
------------
Scully had never really liked the smell of hospitals:
the tang of anesthetic, the muted odor of patients'
bodies, bedpans, medicines. As an intern she had
grown used to it, and for years after she left
medicine for the FBI, the whiff of hospital corridors
made her nostalgic for the long nights she had spent
poring over medical textbooks. But after seven years
with Mulder, and countless visits to hospitals all
over the country, she no longer felt any nostalgia.
Hospitals, she now thought, smelled of death.
She hadn't wanted to stay overnight, but the doctor
who had given her the news had seemed so
flabbergasted that she decided to humor him. She
knew how much she would have wanted to perform those
tests, to uncover the causes of her miracle. And
although she did want to know how it had happened,
she wished she didn't have to stay in the small
rectangular room, dressed in a drab open-backed
hospital gown, ID bracelet taped to her wrist.
In the end, all she wanted to do was find Mulder.
Skinner had been understandably shocked when she told
him the news. The tears that moistened his eyes
spilled over in surprise, and she could see that he
wasn't sure if he had the right to ask the question
he wanted to ask. So she began, "Mulder and I --
we're. . ." She twisted out a grin, and stated a
little bitterly, "You know what they say about us.
Well, this is going to give them something to gossip
about, isn't it?"
She didn't tell Skinner when it had happened,
although she was certain he wanted to know. He cared
about them both, and she wanted to tell him, but she
felt awkward about it. She and Mulder had never
openly spoken about keeping their newly intimate
relationship secret, but neither of them particularly
wanted to give the FBI any more reason to watch them.
After all, it had happened only recently, and there
hadn't really been time to formulate a plan. They
had never thought there would need to be one.
They had made steps toward each other for years, but
it wasn't until this past year that they made the
last few. When he went off to England, searching for
the crop circles she knew to be a flimsy excuse for a
vacation, she had been confronted with her emotions
in a way she hadn't expected. She was angry that he
hadn't simply admitted that he wanted to take time
off. She was frustrated that he hadn't tried more
diligently to convince her to go with him.
But when she saw Daniel's name on that hospital X-
ray, she was glad she had stayed behind. She didn't
think about Daniel much anymore, and it surprised her
that she rarely remembered the man who once meant so
much to her. Seeing him again -- talking to him --
had been more exhausting than she had expected. He
brought her back to a time when she was less sure of
herself than she was now, and the effort it took to
fight off that uncertainty had been tiring and
unnerving.
She spent that weekend searching for something she
could not quite put her finger on: a way out of the
mess with Daniel and Maggie; an explanation for her
moodiness; an answer to a question she didn't know
how to ask. When she found Mulder outside the
hospital, the sight of him had been so unexpected she
wondered if it was a sign. Perhaps she had been
looking for the wrong thing.
Later that night, she found herself telling him
everything. They had talked until she fell asleep,
and the touch of him, warm next to her on his leather
couch, was all she ever wanted to feel.
When she woke up, she was alone. Her neck felt
cramped from the awkward angle it had been forced
into, having fallen somewhere between the armrest and
the back of the couch. She sat up, stretched, and
pulled the blanket away, static rippling away from
the wool and her body. She flinched a little at the
charge, and folded the blanket neatly, placing it on
the cushion next to her. She wondered where Mulder
had gone, and glanced at her watch. It was 2:37 in
the morning. He had probably gone to sleep.
She reached down to put on her shoes, but then
decided to leave them off until she went home. She
loved her shoes, she really did, but sometimes she
wished she were taller so that she wouldn't have to
wear them. But if she didn't, Mulder would look down
at her, and she would have to crane her neck up
toward him, and she didn't like that at all. He
already had too many advantages over her -- she
wasn't going to give him this one.
When she stood up her back ached as if she had been
sitting at her desk for hours, typing up those damn
reports that Skinner would see, and put aside, and
ask oblique questions about. On her way to the
bathroom, she walked toward Mulder's bedroom, and was
halted by the sight that met her.
Mulder had fallen asleep -- in his bed for once --
and his lanky form made a long curve beneath the
covers. The harsh light from the streetlamp outside
the window came in through the half-open blinds to
illuminate his face, smooth and slack against the
pillow. He looked like a little boy.
She had seen him asleep before, of course, and had
always wondered at the way sleep took him: it erased
the lines from his face, drew his mouth into a gentle
curve, shifted the shadows away from beneath his
eyes. She wondered if she looked different when she
slept; whether her worries disappeared, whether her
lips relaxed into a shape like his -- as if he were
waiting for someone to kiss him. He had drawn the
covers up to his chin, but his bare arm was flung out
from beneath the sheets, and the sleek muscles of his
shoulder were colored yellow in the light. She
found, to her surprise, that she wanted to touch him.
When she reached the edge of the bed, he woke up.
His eyes opened as if he expected her, and his lips
parted, and he said in a thick, sleep-charged voice,
"Scully."
She sank down on the side of the bed, the mattress
creaking slightly. The feel of the bed beneath her
traveled like a shock through her body, and she
breathed in the scent of him, so close to her. He
shifted, rolled toward her, and his hand closed over
hers. His fingers were warm, as if they had been
pressed beneath his body rather than stretched over
the sheets in the cool air of his bedroom. She felt
his touch as if she were miles away. The pads of his
fingers were soft against the back of her hand, and
she turned her hand into his, enclosing those fingers
in her own.
"Mulder," she said.
He pushed himself up on his elbow, and the blankets
fell away from him, his body emerging to her as if
for the first time. His skin, where the light
touched it, was smooth as a baby's. But she knew
where his scars were.
"Are you leaving?" he asked her, his voice rough.
She wondered if he thought he was still asleep.
She shook her head, and felt the tendrils of her hair
slide over her cheek, her lips. "No," she whispered.
She brought her other hand to his cheek, and slid her
fingers over the line of his jaw, his lips. She
remembered when she had touched his mouth before,
when he had returned from the hospital with that
horrible bandage over his head, and she had been
afraid he would never be able to think of anything
whole again.
"No," she said again, her fingers lingering on his
lips. "I'm not leaving, Mulder."
He seemed to wake up then; she could see the light in
his eyes when he said, "Good." He sat up, and cupped
her hand against his cheek. He pressed his lips into
her hand, and closed his eyes.
When he pulled her toward him there was no fight left
in her, and she didn't want to fight anymore, anyway.
When they kissed it was as if they had always been
this way: mouth to mouth, close enough to taste the
heat in one another's skin. They had kissed before,
of course -- there had been that time she had stood
in his hallway and they had been so close she had
tasted his breath on hers. She knew what it would
have felt like. And on New Year's Eve, when he had
pressed that chaste kiss against her lips, she had
been surprised, and frightened, to feel the same
shock she felt now -- as if his mouth could reach the
very core of her, that core she had kept hidden for
so many years. She wondered, now, why she had hidden
it.
He tasted the way she had always known he would
taste: like love, the hot fierce love she had felt
for him for years. The feel of it made her dizzy,
and her hand came away from his face to the back of
his neck, pulling him closer. She wanted to drink
him in. She didn't need to breathe anymore.
He seemed to be surprised at her sudden intensity,
and the breath left his mouth in a quick gasp when
she pushed him back against the pillows. She hadn't
meant to startle him -- at least she didn't think so
-- but suddenly she had felt as if she couldn't wait
anymore. She had waited so long it tore at her, and
if she had to wait any longer she would explode with
anger and frustration and fear that she would lose
him before she could tell him that she loved him.
She pulled at his hands and her sweater and then he
was helping her, and her clothes came off damp from
the sweat beading her skin. Beneath the sheets his
body was warm and solid and she could feel the
texture of his muscles with her body, the way they
stretched taut from bone to bone and flexed as he
pulled her against him. He made a short low sound
when she opened her mouth against his, the heat of
her flooding into him. She cupped her hands around
his face, sliding them down his neck, his shoulders,
his back, where she felt the shallow valley of muscle
along his spine. She kissed his neck, tasting the
trickles of salty sweat that pooled in the hollow of
his throat, her tongue flickering out to lick the
liquid of him. Perhaps, she thought in the midst of
her desire, they should stop -- and she broke away,
her breath ragged, but the look in his hazel eyes
told her all she needed to know.
That night, she finally felt whole again. All that
they had endured together was worth this moment: the
sweet damp trace of his tongue against her nipples;
the quick hot plunge of his body into hers; the sight
of him gazing at her, the sleep swept from his eyes
and replaced with what she knew to be love.
When he fell asleep beside her, she watched the
fluttering of his lashes against his cheeks, fanned
by the closeness of her breath. She couldn't sleep,
though. Perhaps she would never sleep again.
Perhaps she had been asleep until this night, and now
she would be always awake to the sound of his breath.
* * *
When Skinner left her, closing the hospital door
behind him with a soft click, she pressed her hands
down the hospital gown, feeling the flesh of her
belly. She had been working out more often this
year, and her abdomen was hard from stomach crunches.
She wondered how it would stretch with the body of
the baby growing inside her. She would have to buy
new clothes. She would stop wearing heels so often.
She would find out how this had happened to her.
And Mulder. She would find Mulder.
*End*
Feedback is gratefully accepted at [email protected].