"we can't fight gravity on a planet that insists
that love is like falling
and falling is like this."
- Ani Difranco, "Falling is like this"
***
 
 

“Are you hungry or anything?” He asked.

Their wordless accord had lasted through an elevator ride, through the parking garage, into his truck and to the first stop light.  And this, as they might say on the Lifetime Channel, was the moment of truth.  He was offering her an out.  This was where she could say:  “I need to get home,” “I changed my mind,” “Sorry, I really prefer girls.”

Instead Scully shook her head.  “No.  Not hungry or anything.”  She was parroting his words back to him because she didn’t trust herself to make her own response.

“Ah, I guess, my house then?”

She nodded.  They couldn’t very well go to her apartment.  In her head, she heard her herself explaining the situation to her mother.  “Hi mom, could you take my fatherless child out for a couple hours while my partner and I have mad, passionate sex?  Please, because it’s been years since I’ve gotten properly laid, and I would really like to have at least one more orgasm before I die.”  She wanted to think her dear, sweet, Catholic mother would die on the spot but it was more likely she would simply shrug and say ‘have fun, honey.’  For some reason, that was much, much worse.

Scully looked furtively across the truck to her partner who was as composed as ever.  “Please tell me you feel about fourteen years old too,” she said.

John shot her an amused look.  “Fourteen? Nah, it’s not that bad.  Maybe seventeen.”

That earned him a raised eyebrow.

He sighed.  “1974 was a bad year.  I grew about a foot, but didn’t gain any weight,” he said.  “Football coach called me ‘hound’.

“Hound?”

“As in:  ‘Boy, you look like a hound dog somebody left out in the rain.’”  His accent swerved deeply south at that.  “Didn’t have to worry much about girls at that point.  Seventeen . . . well, I wasn‘t worrying then either, but for different reasons.”  Despite his bravado, the tips of his ears flushed.

She laughed, glad that she wasn’t the only one with doubts, and some of her tension dissolved.  And why shouldn’t it, she thought.  They were adults.  Unattached, reasonably attractive adults.  There was no reason why they shouldn’t.  Her resolve lasted all the way to his living room.

She was glad it was a big room.  They were pacing like jungle cats both reluctant to take that first step into . . . what?  What was this, exactly?  She’d groped him, bashed his head into a filling cabinet, tried to cripple him and then groped him some more.  Did that count as a first date?

She was scanning his bookshelves as if looking for an instruction manual for the next few hours.  He was pushing papers around on his desk, turning a tidy pile into a sprawling mess.

He finally ended their wary dance.  His hands were heavy and warm on her shoulders.  “Okay, maybe I do feel fourteen,” he said softly and leaned down to kiss her.

When they finally ran out of air, he turned his attention to the line of her jaw.  She simply curled against him, willing the blast furnace heat of his body to work its way into her.  Sometimes, she thought she hadn’t been truly warm in years. It had nothing to do with the ambient temperature and everything to do with emptiness of her life.

His hands skimmed over her back to span her waist and she pressed ever closer, as if she could climb inside his soft casual clothes.  She’d never felt that way before.  That’s the funny thing about love, she thought.  When you don’t have it, you can live without it, pretend you didn’t need it.  She knew the difference between being alone and being lonely, but she’d had to give birth before she realized that she’d been both for so many years.  She had spent so many years chasing fantastic things and deciding she didn’t need the mundane things like friendship and companionship and love.

Was that what this was? Love?

She pulled her head back and waited for his glazed eyes to focus on her.  When they finally blazed blue and strong again, she’d lost all conception of what to say.

“I have stretch marks,” she said nonsensically.

“I have bullet scars,” he countered and kissed the end of her nose.

“I have those too.”  Not to mention other types of scars.  The last time she’d gone for her Bureau physical the doctor had gently suggested she might be a victim of domestic violence.

“Stretch marks are sexier,” he rumbled against her throat.

“John . . .”

He raised his head and looked at her earnestly.  “I’m not looking for a fuck buddy, and I don’t think you are either.”

“No.”

“I don’t know what this is, exactly.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared outta my mind, but this, whatever this is, is real.  Who the hell needs to define it?”

“Yes,” she said softly.  That was all she needed to hear.  She pulled his head back down to join their mouths.  She wanted him, this, everything; she just wanted.  She was getting greedy in her old age, and she didn’t give a damn.

His mouth was still under hers, letting her explore, letting her claim her territory.  She brushed her knuckles down the hatchet line of his cheekbone.  He let her trace the curve of his ear with tip of a finger and scrape softly with a nail.  Her touch was ghostly in its lightness.  It made him wonder if she really was here or he had fooled himself but good this time.  And people claimed he had no imagination.

Blue eyes met blue eyes.  This was no figment.  The familiar sweep of fiery hair rested against his cheek.  Those small perfect hands splayed across his rib cage then one trailed upward, sneaking across his chest and passing desperately close to a nipple.  He didn’t mind the omission when she nipped lightly at his neck and ran her thumb down the sweep of his collar bone.

His hands were wandering over the taut muscle of her biceps.  They brushed reverently against her breasts before cupping them firmly, testing their shape and weight.  Not quite a handful, but nothing to be ashamed of considering the size of his hands.

“Upstairs . . .bed,” he murmured against her temple.  “Ah, the bedroom is upstairs, I mean.”

She would have laughed at the sight of the unflappable John Doggett stammering, but she had no interest in anything other than them moving from the living room to the bedroom with all possible speed.

Later, she would have no recollection of the stairway or the upstairs hallway.  They might not exist for all she knew.  The last time she’d been in his bedroom, she’d paid no attention to it, and the gap in her memory had haunted her.  Now she studied it carefully.  It suited him with its white walls and wood trim and solid oak furniture.  There was a muted landscape on one wall and plain white curtains on the windows.  A stack of books and a lamp rested on one nightstand; a cordless phone and another lamp on the other.

And then there was the bed.  The glorious, flannel-sheeted, queen-sized, pristinely-made bed.  She was pretty sure she was in love with it already.

He wrapped his arms around her from behind and she relaxed into his body.  Melted further as he kissed his way from her earlobe down the smooth column of her throat until it joined her neck.

“Make love to me,” she said turning to press tighter against him, to offer up her mouth for conquest.

His response was a low growl that echoed in his chest and made her own body vibrate.

His body was heavy and blazing with heat as he lay her down.  “I’m going to crush you,” he groaned and tried to shift his weight off of her.

“Good,” she said and held him tightly until he gave up and went back to kissing her throat, her collarbone, the swell of her breasts through her soft cotton shirt.  Why, why, she thought desperately, did clothes never melt away on command like in movies.

He eased the hem of her shirt up her rib cage, the calluses on his thumb making her hyperaware of every nerve ending they passed over.  She shuddered as he kissed his way down her stomach.  The warring sensations from the slight scrape of stubble and the gentle whisper of his lips were driving her mad.  His hand lingered briefly at the waistband of her slacks, and she stretched languidly under his hand.  She was glad they had shaken off their adolescent flashbacks.  At least now, there would be no youthful anxiety like those first furtive moments when she’d worried Stevie Carroll would laugh at her plain white cotton panties.

She smiled at her own idiocy.  If only she’d known that when a sixteen-year-old boy gets an opportunity to see a girl’s unmentionables, he didn’t much care what they looked like. She ran a fond hand through John’s spiky hair as he drifted to trace the curves of her hipbones with his thumbs.  She tightened her hold and sighed as he eased the waistband down a bare inch.

And then Scully had a moment of panic.  No, I couldn’t have, she thought.  She’d thrown those out months ago.  Hadn’t she?

John made a choked sound and suddenly her stomach muscles were vibrating with his laughter.

No, apparently she hadn’t.

“Shut up,” she said and tweaked his ear hoping to get him back on track.  No such luck.

“You have turtles on your underwear,” he managed to gasp out  through his laughter.

“Shut up,” she said again and followed it with what was supposed to be a playful shove and buck of her hips, but instead sent him rolling to the edge of a bed where he teetered desperately for a moment, writhing like a snake to try to keep his balance.  But it was no avail, in seconds he was tumbling off the side of the bed to land with a disturbing crash on the hardwood floor.  She would have felt contrite except the bastard was still laughing at her.

She rolled over onto her stomach and hung her head over the side of the bed.  “Are you okay?”

He nodded through his fading snickers and reached up to brush the fall of hair off her face and tuck it behind her ear.  As he started to drop his hand, she felt a sharp pull at her scalp.

“Ow, ow, ow.”  He caught her distress, but before he could do anything about it, she was already moving along with his arm to relieve the pressure on her scalp.  She miscalculated her position on the bed and ended up slithering graceless off the side to bounce her shoulder painfully off the floor and land in a awkward sprawl across his body.  Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of the culprit in this latest disaster.   Fine strands of red hair were caught between the silver links in the wristband of his watch.

She cast her eyes to heavenward.  “It is becoming clear to me that we are going to die trying to do this,” she said.  John made sympathetic noises and carefully worked the captive strands free.  “And when we do, my mother is not going to put ‘Beloved Daughter’ on my tombstone, like the last time.”

“Last time?” Doggett muttered, “oh, right, never mind.”  He slung an arm under her legs and eased her off him and into a sitting position that didn’t require the flexibility of a contortionist.  He sat up as well and they both leaned back against the bed frame.

Scully ignored him.  “No, she is going to have them engrave ‘Too Clumsy for Sex.’ on it.”

John’s entire body shook with the effort of repressing laughter.  “The wages of sin are death?” He suggested with a smirk and gave up trying to suppress his mirth.

Scully tried to give him the raised eyebrow of non-amusement, but ended up joining him in slightly hysterical laughter.  When they finally sobered, she hooked a companionable arm around his waist, and then noticed a small bit of blue flannel peeking out of the waistband of his jeans.  She started to tuck it back in for him, but noticed part of a design on them.  Tugging gently she pulled a half inch out.

“You have paw prints on your boxers, and yet you laughed at my turtles,” she said dangerously.

He was ominously quiet for a moment, and she looked up to find him trying to squirm away from her.  She looked down and saw she had a death grip on his boxer shorts and had pulled more than a little out of his jeans.  “Don’t . . . .pull like that . . . gag Christmas gift . . . from Monica . . . laundry day.”

She let go.  “Monica is to have no more involvement with your underwear,” she said severely.  He nodded enthusiastically as the color returned to his face.  Scully put her arm back around his waist, and lay her head against his shoulder.

“I can’t believe you made fun of my turtles when you have paw prints on your boxers,” she repeated in mock betrayal.

“But they were a gift,” John protested.  “At least I didn’t buy them for myself.”

Scully elbowed him hard in the ribs.  “Oof,” he groaned.  “All right, Xena: Warrior Princess, you gotta stop that or we really are going to end in the emergency room.”

She snickered and looked down at their outstretched legs.  His tall frame meant he could almost reach the wall with his toes.  Her legs looked downright stubby next to his.  “You think it’s always going to be like this?” She asked pensively.

“Sweetheart, as long as ‘always’ is the operative word in that sentence, I’m okay with getting smacked around every now and then.”

Ah, Jesus God, the adoration in his sweet smile, she thought.  It alone was enough to make her moan.  She stood and methodically removed her watch, her earrings, her necklace and emptied her pockets onto the night stand.  John set his heavy silver watch next to hers and coiled his belt on the dresser.  Then, skinned out of his flannel overshirt and tossed it onto a chair.

“I don’t wanna know what kind of havoc we could cause with a loose shirttail,” he said with a smile.  She was sure he had smiled more in the last hour than he had in the previous year.  If she did nothing else for him, she’d make sure he smiled more.

She tugged the tight white t-shirt over his head and admired the well-defined muscles of his chest and the rock hard stomach.  He did have bullet scars.  She winced in sympathy over the pale scar tissue on his left shoulder and kissed the jagged wound and the squiggles of suture lines.

“Someone was sloppy,” she said taking personal offense at the surgeon who had had the nerve to give him less than the best of care.

“Wait’ll you see my knee,” he said, and his words turned into a hoarse moan.  Her mouth had drifted across his chest to tease his nipple.  She flicked the small nub with her tongue, tortured him with taunting fingertips on the other.

“Dana,” he whispered against the top of her head.  He pressed her back into the bed, trying again to spare her the brunt of his weight, but she would have none of it.

His hand shook just a little as it worked down the buttons of her shirt.  Delicate white lace cupped her pale breasts, but it was soon discarded in favor of his hands.  The joints of his fingers brushed against their sides, the rough pads of his thumbs caressed her nipples, already tight and eager.  Then, took them each in turn, into his mouth and caressed them with lips and teeth and tongue.

With heartening ease and nary a mishap, she unbuttoned his jeans and eased them over his lean hips.  He kicked them off the end of the bed and soon her own slacks followed them.

He settled against her again, and her only thought was, ‘finally.’  No clothing, just skin meeting skin.  No distractions, no worries, just them.  She bucked her hips just to feel their thighs, their hips, their stomachs slip past each other and return.

He was memorizing her body with his hands, with his lips.  Slowly and methodically, he was working his way down her body like a cartographer, charting the lines of rivers, the rise and fall of mountain ranges, all the hidden secrets of her body with exquisite care and detail.  She had no time for this, and drew her right foot up his calf, bending her knee against his hip so that he was cradled between her thighs.

She pulled his head back to her mouth, kissed him hard and long and urgent.  “I need you inside me,” she whispered in his ear.  “Now.”

If he was trying to speak, it came out as a wordless moan.  His eyes were wild as they searched her face, but he was gentle as he pressed into her.

It was her turn to moan.  Her entire world narrowed to the juncture of her thighs, to the feeling of him, heavy, and hard and hot, filling her beyond anything she had imagined.  His movements were slow, deliberate, making her aware of every exquisite inch of him.  Of her.  Of them.

“Please,” she moaned.  “Please.”  This, this would kill her for sure.  They were moving in concert, quickening their rhythm, rushing headlong for that elusive moment.  She was incapable of speech, and her only thought was ‘more, please, more.’

She was flying and she was falling. She was falling apart and taking the rest of the world along with her.  The entire universe was dissolving into soft cries and shaking moans and his blue eyes.  Above her, he was a suffering saint in his release, beautiful in the collision of agony and ecstasy.

They weathered their final shudders together, his hands gently kneading the muscles of her back, hers stroking the weathered planes of his face.

“You look like a little boy with your eyes closed,” she murmured in his ear.

His eyes flickered open in sleepy disbelief.  “You look like a fallen woman with that red hair all over my pillowcase,” he said.  His tone told her just how partial he was to fallen women .

“Mmm, I like falling,” she said contentedly.

“I like making you fall.”

They lazed comfortably in his bed, dozing and snuggling as the mood struck until she could no longer ignore the steadily advancing hands of their watches on the bedside table.

“I have to get home,” she said sadly, torn with missing Will and the knowledge that soon she’d be missing John.

“I’ll drive you,” he said.

****

Scully hesitated at the door to her apartment.  Nervously, she smoothed her hair and straightened the already faultless drape of her clothes.

John looked at her in amusement.  “Mother’s really aren’t psychic, you know.”

She glared at him as she opened the door.  Inside, her mother was reading on the couch and fixed an astute look on them.

“How was Will?” Scully ventured.

“An angel, of course.  He’s napping,” her mother said and didn’t alter her knowing expression.  “I see you two enjoyed yourselves today.  Good for you.”

Scully floundered and stammered.  “I, uh, don’t  know. . . we didn’t . . .um.”

“Dear, if you were trying to be circumspect, you should have kept your hands off the poor man’s behind in the parking lot,” her mother answered wisely.