Implications II: Damned Author: Ann K Rating: NC-17, for sexual content, adult situations, bad words, and angst Summary: Mulder and Scully struggle to come to terms with the changes in their relationship brought about by one night of intimacy. Timeline: Vague, but somewhere in late season six or early seven. Part of the “Implications” series. The first story, “Implications,” can be found at http://www.geocities.com/annhkus/Implications. Each story stands alone. This is not a work in progress, but rather an occasional series. See author’s notes, thanks, etc. at the end. Feedback welcomed and always appreciated at annhkus@yahoo.com I. She stared at the clock on the wall, unseeing, unfeeling. The seconds that ticked by were gone forever, and she wondered what it would take to turn back time. She thought she made her peace with this. She thought she could compartmentalize her sexual relationship with Mulder. She thought she could keep her personal and professional life fully under control and unaffected. She thought she could handle the torrent of emotions that were unleashed when Mulder ran his fingers through her hair and touched her for the first time. She thought wrong. “Agent Scully? Will Mulder be joining us this morning?” Skinner’s voice shook her out of her trance, and she forced herself to her feet, meeting his eyes with a confidence she didn’t feel. “He’s on his way, sir. He left a message in the office that he was running a little late.” A message. It was the first time she heard Mulder’s voice since Saturday night, the intimate night they shared together in an unfamiliar apartment. The night that everything changed. He hadn’t called her on Sunday, and she was equally devastated and content. She didn’t know what to say to him. But she desperately needed to hear his voice. “Scully, it’s me. I’m running late this morning. Tell Skinner I’ll be there as soon as possible.” She had listened to the brief message over and over, desperately trying to detect a subtle inference in his voice, a shade of intimacy beyond what they normally shared. But she heard nothing, other than her own frustration. And now she was here, waiting for him. In front of Skinner, for god’s sakes. She wanted to turn and run, but she forced her feet to move, one in front of the other, into Skinner’s office. Breathe, Dana. Breathe. Just as she sat down and Skinner opened the file folder she handed to him, Mulder opened the door, walking quietly into the room. He nodded quickly at Skinner. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, offering her the slightest hint of a smile before he slid into the chair next to her. Oh, god. She wondered if he planned it like this, if he thought that their first meeting after their newly-defined intimate relationship would be easier with a third person. He would think that. Mulder never faced any conflict between them head-on. His strategy was simple. Avoidance, until the elephant in the room became so large you couldn’t avoid it anymore. Hell, she was the one who had to make the first step, to bring them across that line they had danced around for years. She felt the bitterness rise in her throat with her morning coffee and tried to focus on Skinner. She refused to look at Mulder. How had it come to this, she wondered. Mulder was her best friend and her partner, and the one person she needed the most in her life. She simply didn’t know how to merge that image of Mulder with the one from Saturday night, naked, his arms wrapped around her, his breath harsh in her ears. It wasn’t easier to see Mulder for the first time with Skinner around. It made it all that much harder. She wanted to ask him if they were going to be okay. She wanted to know if their night together meant as much to him as it did to her. She wanted to hold him, to hear him say her name, to have him bring her to some sort of stable ground. Because she was sinking fast, and needed a lifeline. “Agent Scully? Are you feeling alright?” Skinner’s voice was concerned, and he leaned forward over his desk just slightly, peering at her. “You look a little pale.” Scully exhaled, and then slowly turned to see Mulder. His face was impassive, his hands laced together in his lap. But, as she watched him, he blinked once, twice, and she saw it. The concern in his eyes, the remorse and the hurt and the love and the passion. Then the emotions were gone, as quickly as she saw them. But they were there. Whatever they were doing, they were going to do it together. “I’m fine, sir. Thank you.” Her answer was terse, but effective. Skinner resumed his interrogation about their Minnesota case, and she took comfort in the warmth of Mulder’s arm on the chair next to her. She could feel him, just as she felt his hands on her face two nights ago, the way he caressed her body with a love and tenderness she had never experienced before. He shifted just slightly, and she knew he felt it, too. II. The meeting seemed to last for hours, but, after some time, Scully finally felt normal again. She answered Skinner’s questions with a methodical efficiency, and even managed to argue with Mulder over the elimination of their final witness report. When the meeting was over, and Skinner excused them both, she stood uncertainly, unsure of what to do. “Scully?” Mulder said, tucking the folders under one arm and walking towards her slowly. “I have a noon meeting with BSU about a possible case, but, if your schedule is open, perhaps we can have lunch.” They walked together towards the elevator, the usual Hoover building chaos fading silently around them. “Lunch?” she repeated. Belatedly, she realized she sounded like a child. This was a mutual decision, she reminded herself. They were adults. This would all be okay. “Lunch sounds good,” she said, surprising them both. Mulder rode down with her in the elevator. “I’m sorry I was late this morning,” he said, as the doors slid slowly opened and they stepped into the darkened hallway. “It’s okay,” she answered automatically, and then stopped as she put the keys into the door. “Actually, it wasn’t okay.” Even in the darkened shadows, she could see his surprise. “It wasn’t okay, Mulder, because you and I made a very big decision this weekend. Things have changed, and I think it would have been of some benefit for you to be here this morning, so we could talk about things before we had to meet with Skinner.” She sounded angry, but she knew she really wasn’t. Mulder brought up every single emotion in her, so the anger in her voice was really a representation of her fear and uncertainty. “I wasn’t trying to avoid you this morning,” Mulder said, and Scully counted to ten before she turned to look at him. Ten wasn’t enough to prepare her for the way his shadowed eyes watched her in the darkness, and the way he leaned against the door frame, his body a few inches from her own. “It sure as hell seemed like it. You didn’t call me this weekend, and I needed some clue from you as to how we should proceed from here. For god’s sakes, the last time I see you, you’re naked in bed, and then you walk into Skinner’s office in your Armani, and I’ve got to pretend like everything is normal.” Her voice rose as she spoke, and she was startled to hear her accusations echo in the hallway. She had known Mulder long enough to know that the clinch of the muscles near his jaw meant he was angry, but was fighting the impulse to let her know. She wanted him to be angry. She wanted him to talk to her. She wanted to know that he didn’t make love to her simply because she asked him to do so, that he wanted her just as much as she did him. “Scully,” he finally said, his voice dripping ice. “You asked me to meet you Saturday night. You asked me to make love to you. You said there were rules, that what we did in that room stayed in that room. I followed your rules. I did exactly what you asked me to do.” Then it was obligation, not love, and she wasn’t sure how to react to that. But suddenly his face was directly in front of her own, and his fingers lifted her chin up so she could meet his gaze, and she sure as hell didn’t know how to react. “This is your game, Scully. I’m following your rules. If you want them to change, all you have to do is tell me. But I didn’t avoid you this morning, and I’m sorry I was late.” And then he kissed her, and she stopped trying to rationalize the situation. Instead, she concentrated on the minty taste of his mouth, with the slightest hint of coffee. She took his face in her hands, and pulled him closer, and vaguely registered his moan. His hair tickled her fingers, and his tongue plunged deeper within her mouth, possessing her. He pulled away, reluctantly, and they stood in silence, staring at the floor. “I’ve got to go to this meeting, Scully,” he finally said, stepping away from her to turn the keys in the office door. “I need to get a few files, though.” She didn’t move as he walked into the office, listening instead to his shoes on the floor, and the familiar sound of the file drawer opening. He pulled out a handful of manila folders, walking back to the door. “Maybe lunch today isn’t a good idea,” he finally said, and she met his eyes. “Only because I think you need a little more time. You tell me what you want, Scully. I need to know.” He reached out and squeezed her hand as he walked by, and the elevator doors slid shut behind him, and she was alone. She clung to her Special Agent persona with a certain ferocity. It set her apart in the world, and gave her a status in the male-dominated environment in which she found herself daily. Other agents respected her. She respected herself. Sleeping with her partner was crossing every line she had ever drawn. Scully wasn’t surprised to see Skinner standing in the office door later that afternoon, telling her that Mulder had been called off to consult on the BSU case immediately. Nor was she surprised to find Mulder’s message on their office voice mail, simply saying he’d see her soon. She listened to his message repeatedly, restlessly turning a pencil in her hands, wondering if the kiss in the hallway could be considered outside the rules. III. She infuriated him. She pissed him off. There were times that he wanted to kill her, or at least throw up his hands in disgust and walk away. He also loved her, which seemed to balance out all the frustration and anger that Scully seemed to dredge up in him. He had always loved her. But when he found the key outside of his apartment, and walked in to find Scully ready to cross their imaginary, but comfortable line, it was the key to more than just a strange apartment. That key had unlocked every emotion in both of them, and he admitted that he wasn’t dealing with it too well. Scully was dealing with it even worse. Mulder shifted from one foot to the other, waiting for his bags to arrive on the carousel. It had been an exhausting week, a grueling case. Bringing along his personal emotional baggage hadn’t helped any. He hadn’t talked to Scully since Monday, but maybe that was just as well. Maybe time away from each other this past week had allowed them to put their choice into perspective. There was no going back, and he didn’t want to. Scully needed to make sure she didn’t, either. Now it was 8:15 on a Saturday night, and he had forty-five minutes to arrive at the one place he couldn’t stop thinking about all week. Somewhere over eastern Tennessee, on his flight into Dulles, he had decided. He freely admitted that he almost decided to put an end to this right now. That Scully simply wasn’t ready for an intimate relationship with him, and he didn’t want to jeopardize what they had. He couldn’t define what they had. He knew it didn’t include Scully stripping in front of him, and then clutching the curtains as he entered her from behind, her voice tremulously calling his name. That was certainly new ground. Just as Mulder left the airport, the rain began to fall, and the long line of cars on the freeway grew even longer, and it was fifteen until nine and he was still several miles away, and he began to panic. The rain was heavy, dropping onto his windshield with a fierce delight, the large drops creating a cacophony of sound that eventually edged out his thoughts about Scully into a mild state of panic. “Shit,” he muttered, slamming on the brakes as the traffic slowed to a crawl in front of him. He didn’t need this. Tapping his fingers incessantly on the steering wheel, he rummaged through his bag on the front seat, emerging with his cell phone, hitting the memory dial to connect with Scully. He’d tell her he was on the way. This was all very simple. “The caller you are trying to reach is unavailable...” Damn it. She knew he was arriving this evening. He left a message at work the day before, letting her know he would see her tomorrow. He wanted to see her. He had missed her so goddamned much that it was almost an ache in his chest. It was ten after nine by the time he pulled into an empty parking spot in front of the apartment building. The rain was impossibly heavy now, lacy sheets which blew furiously in the wind. He leaned forward, squinting, trying to decipher the lights of the apartment, the windshield wipers cutting in front of his vision. The fourth floor was completely dark. She wasn’t here. He had screwed up. Big time. When Scully first presented her proposition, he should have spoken up. Told her that he loved her, had always loved her, and things didn’t need to be this way. That they could have a normal relationship, as normal as a relationship with the two of them could be. That one night a week would never be enough, that he wanted to be with her forever. But those simply weren’t things that he would ever say, especially not to Scully. And now he was sitting alone in the darkness, the rain laughing at him from the roof of the car. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there when he saw movement from the entranceway, a blur in the rain. Mulder sat up, slowly. The streetlights cast a hazy glow, and his heart thudded as the figure approached the car. It was Scully. He wasn’t sure when she saw him, or if she recognized the car, but she stood motionless on the sidewalk, a small umbrella cloaking her in the darkness. The rain ran off her trenchcoat in small rivers, but she didn’t seem to care. She had been crying, but Mulder wasn’t sure if it was tears or the rain he saw streaming down her face. They looked at each other, Mulder’s windshield wipers providing a clear glimpse of Scully’s face before the rain covered her again, and again, and again. Mulder got out of the car, picking his way across the flood of water near the curb, and stood beside her in the darkness. His first thought was that she smelled wonderful. His second thought was that he had missed her, even more than he could have imagined. “I thought you weren’t coming,” she began, trembling a little. “There’s nowhere else I’d be,” he responded, and then took her hand, leading them both inside, out of the rain. IV. The apartment was warm when they stepped inside, the rain streaking down the windows. The streetlights cast an odd, low smolder across the sparse room. He remembered every detail, although it had been a week since he had last been here. He chose not to turn on the lights. “Scully,” he said, his voice a low whisper. She didn’t turn around to look at him. He could see her profile illuminated in the hazy darkness. “Scully,” he tried again, walking up behind her. She shivered as his hand went up to her shoulder. “Damn it, Scully,” he muttered. “You’re soaked. You need to put on something dry.” His intentions were noble. Before he made love to Scully again, they needed to talk, a long conversation about what they wanted and where they were headed. It was the kind of conversation they had long avoided. But now they were at a point of no return. Such were his intentions. Scully turned to look at him, dropping her trenchcoat to the floor in a soggy heap, and whatever noble intentions he had were gone. The dress was new, because he sure as hell would have remembered her wearing something like this. His instincts told him it was the type of dress that Scully never wore. She wore it from him, for this evening together. The fabric was damp from the rain, which only made it cling to her tighter, the neckline plunging to her waist. He stared at her, unable to tear his eyes away from the faint outline of her breasts. “I’m glad you’re here.” For a moment, Mulder thought the words were his, and then he saw Scully’s mouth twist into a small smile. “I’m glad you’re here, Mulder,” she repeated, as she walked towards him. “Now help me get warm.” Somewhere, in what remained of his rational thoughts, he knew he should say no. Not that he didn’t want her, but he wanted more than just her body right now. He wanted the part of Scully that he had first fallen in love with, her mind, her complex emotions that made her who she was. But he couldn’t find the words, and then Scully was standing in front of him, her damp hair curling around her face, and she lifted his hands to her breasts. Her hands were trembling, and that was his downfall. “Christ,” he managed, his voice a mixture of pleasure and agony, as he touched her. The fabric was cold beneath his fingers, but he could feel the warmth of Scully’s skin a heartbeat away. He let his fingers trace her breasts, and then one hand moved towards Scully’s neck, reaching to untie the single knot that held her dress together. The dress joined her trenchcoat on the floor, and Mulder let the moment stretch on into eternity. Scully was giving him everything, standing naked in the darkness, the shadows teasing him with their dance across her skin. She was beautiful, and there was no where else he would rather be at this moment. Their lovemaking was desperate, fierce, tinged with the fear that Scully felt when she thought he wouldn’t come to her, combined with his frustration that he couldn’t voice the words they both needed to hear. Somehow, they stumbled onto the bed, Scully pulling off Mulder’s clothes, her mouth never leaving his. He lay on his back and watched as Scully rode him, her hips moving with a trademark assurance that marked every moment of her life. Scully was always in control. Or at least she wanted to believe she was. So Mulder let her have that moment, and he gave himself over to the warmth of being inside her. His hands roamed over her stomach, stopping to rest on her waist as he felt the tremors build inside her, for both of them. And then he achieved his small victory. Just as Scully began to come, her body shivering with so much more than the cold, her eyes locked upon his, and he said the words. They weren’t just words spoken in the passion of the moment. They were the words he’d always wanted to say to her, and this time, she would hear them. “I love you, Scully.” She couldn’t stop the movements of her hips, but he knew she heard him, by the way her eyes widened, and her mouth fell open slightly. Her response was lost in a deep moan, but he swore he heard a “me, too” and it was enough. He came hard, every frustration of the past week spilling out of his body into Scully’s warmth. She collapsed on top of him, her hair falling over his shoulder. Neither of them spoke. Perhaps there simply weren’t any words for the moment. He found his peace in the way Scully’s breathing slowed as she reluctantly rolled off him, pulling the covers up over their bodies, enveloping them both. “Did you miss me this week?” It was his question, but it could have been hers. “A little,” she replied, and he couldn’t see her face. She lazily ran her fingers down his neck. “Work was quiet without you,” she added, almost as an afterthought. Neither of them spoke of their recent confessions, and he found there was nothing else to say. He half-expected Scully to leave. She had before, and he wondered if their intimacy was too much for her, too raw, leaving her too exposed. But she surprised him, as her body became more relaxed in his arms, and her breathing took on the steady lull of sleep. Sleep eluded him for some time. Instead, he watched the shadows, and listened as the rain fell, and wondered in which direction he and Scully were headed. There was no answer, only the gentle rise and fall of Scully’s bare chest, matched by the steady cadence of the rain. FINIS Author’s notes: Thanks as always to my wonderful beta Kayla for her encouragement and helpful suggestions. Read more of my work at http://www.geocities.com/annhkus. Feedback and comments are always much appreciated, annhkus@yahoo.com.