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Title: Spanking Scully's Stone Soliloquies
Author: Lydia Harkness
Email: xpositions@yahoo.com
Rating: PG-13
Category: Vignette, Mulder POV
Spoilers: Je_Souhaite, pre-Requiem (references might qualify this as a
post-ep, though this doesnt try to fill in any holes or pick up where that
ep left off.)
Summary: Mulder comes thismuchcloser to telling Scully how he feels.
Archive: anywhere, just please tell me.
Disclaimer: blah blah blah. My apologies to: the Grand Canyon, Crest Tartar
Control, Sony, Lolita, Nilla Wafers, Caddy Shack, and Pavlov. No
infringement or insult intended.
_____
Late at night, when the rest of the building is slipped inside the secret
cocoon of dreams and nightmares, tossing back and forth between insomnia and
narcolepsy, I do battle with the granite god of my childhood fears. While
others are stirring against the faceless patterns of fear, I sit with my
friend of rock as only a child resigning himself to his own terrors can.
And it was as a child that I hated him. Now his ten foot height and
crumbling frame will pull up a chair, clutch a pen with delicate sympathy,
and listen to my heartbeat in the still of apartment forty-two.
"How are you tonight, Fox?" He asks in my father's voice.
Pebbles and dust shift from his fingers and the corners of his mouth, down
to the cracks of my cushions. He smells of museum antiquities. Like
ammonia and dust. Floor polish and parchment paper.
"Still not sleeping are you?"
Usually it's the same voice echoing inside his great height, but when the
sky deepens to a jeweled black my mind ranges from past to present,
gathering the different voices of old friends and acquaintances for these
twilight sessions. I've heard my mom's voice issuing from his decaying
lips; she embodied my granite god with even her perfume and the glint of
gold earrings that sparkled off the walls. The brightness of them bringing
tears to my eyes, highlighting memories I've only begun to understand. And
on nights when the guilt pervades any sense of decency, Skinner's intonation
seeks the justice of all those I've injured.
My therapist's lips are rigid but geometrically repetitive, like the Grand
Canyon. They echo back to reveal beyond the stone a pair of woman's teeth.
Reeking of mint, they are impossibly white like the mouth of a girl who has
demonstrated the advantages of Crest Tartar Control one too many times
before a rolling camera. But he is not as pretty, nor as young.
I swear that he is just as real, though, if not more so. He does not mock
my sorry state of affairs from behind celluloid and a Sony label. He
listens to my complaints, and questions my fears. My own subconscious
bubbles with inane revelations as my monster psychologist makes sense of my
life for me.
"It is her again, isn't it?"
I nod into my arm, indulgently flung across my face. It's a guilty posture
for sinners and heathens, and I partake of this moment with all the
repentance a man like me can bear. "It was her blouse." I reply, into the
inside of my elbow. He nods with careful understanding and jots something
down on a yellow legal pad I recognize from our previous sessions.
"Unbuttoned. Hmmm, I see. How many this time?"
"Three." And it was, too. It was like learning how to count all over again
as my eyes traced down her neck to the shallow region of her throat, curving
down only to rise up slightly again and disappear into blackness. Night.
I recognized twilight in her blouse as she sat so unassumingly, studying the
expense report we'd gone over for the tenth time that day.
There's nothing so innocent as Scully leaning forward, but lately there's
been something devious in her eyes and something childishly seductive in her
choice of shirts. This is my partner, Lolita. The mundane two hollow slits
where a button would normally reside lay unfulfilled, like tiny virgins of
fabric and thread; that number has increased to three, and it is there that
I loose myself. It isn't simply sexual, though that is an aspect I won't
entirely deny. This is also cheap dare on her behalf to face the inevitable
and instinctually I resent her for it.
"Don't you trust her?"
"Of course." He knows this and shouldn't have asked. The question was for
my benefit alone; a rhetorical inquiry preceding his attack of
sweetly-hidden truths. About love and the FBI. Passion and the x-files.
Lust and my partner. I must be insane to entertain these notions, inviting
them in for tea and Nilla Wafers and a friendly chat.
But only insomniacs like myself are truly crazy, listening in the shrill,
high-pitched silence of night for a rational thought to land. When the
traffic outside dims to the occasional passing, and the fish tank is no more
than a gentle murmur, long forgotten, it is the sound of repetitive wings
that begs entrance to my mind. Rarely do I grasp these notions, but when I
do it is only because of my concrete guest and his yellow legal pad.
Description goes beyond him where appearances are concerned, chiefly because
he doesn't exist.
He is ten feet tall, but I told you that already. We met when I was nine in
the Hall of Tutankhamen and the recognition of his grotesquely familiar face
was only exceeded by the kind of fascination felt for the truly obscene.
The Museum of Natural History had a special exhibition of Egyptian artifacts
that had traveled from coast to coast in an international display. Laying
in bed that night he came and sat beside me, unlike any other monster I'd
feared. They would have crept in closets or giggled beneath my bed. He sat
and stared at me with questioning eyes.
Lurking outside in shadows was not his game. He stayed there by my bed the
entire night. And the next night when I could not sleep, he was there
again. Nearly thirty years later he is the alpha and omega of my
subconscious. Now at night when I lay awake, too tired to face the creeping
memories in my closet or the nagging fears beneath my bed, I fall into a
light slumber. That's when I find pebbles in the couch cushions the next
morning.
"If you trust her, why can't you listen to what she's saying?"
"I've never denied Scully her voice."
His lungs creak and groan like a hardwood floor beneath heavy feet. He
chuckles. "You listen but I don't think you hear." I look at him only to
immediately turn again and rub my eyes. I need some aspirin or heavy
alcohol. My subconscious is unkind tonight.
The sound of shifting sand grates like sandpaper in my silent apartment as
his mouth unfurls in a cruel grin. I know his next move, carefully plotted
and planned to reach the seam of my armor where any weapons will lodge
within my skin. It's Scully's voice he uses next, the bastard. "Hold me,
Mulder."
I shake my head vigorously, the leather squeaking lightly beneath.
"Kiss me, Mulder."
"No."
"Fuck me, Mulder."
"No, Scully." Don't be a bad girl.
"Love me, Mulder."
Three quick heartbeats. "No."
No. I think the word into foreign obsoleteness. The simplicity of it
dissolves into a deranged lack of meaning until denial becomes acceptance.
I do not love because I fear loss, right? That was the conclusion of
Wednesday night's session.
And as I think, 'no' becomes maybe. Maybe becomes one day. One day becomes
only-if-she'll-make-the-first-move.
"But she already has, Fox."
I sigh. "Three buttons," is all I can reply.
Scully is being naughty tonight, and my mind shifts momentarily to the
thought of spanking her, but that would only hurt my hand. She is granite
after all. Maybe just a dirty look will do for now.
I push myself up, letting the leather slip away with the moisture of a lost
sleep. She already has made the first move, he said. Gathering my head in
my hands for a moment, I reach for the glass of water kept nearby. He reeks
of dust when he moves and the air fills with tiny spores of age and
antiquity. Opening my eyes I find him gone.
The chair is on the other side of the room.
My living room smells of heavy dreams. Sweet and damp.
The yellow legal pad does not exist, I remind myself.
But I wish it did. That's where he keeps his conclusions about me. When he
hems and haws and his lungs creak with laughter he writes about the truths
I've been searching for internally. The truth about me and what I really
want. Who I really love and the choices that might be predetermined after
all. Someday I'll find the yellow legal pad, and that's the day I'll show
up on her doorstep at 2:00 am.
Not because we're chasing the next big thing. No autopsies either. Maybe
I'll even leave Caddy Shack at home, only now resurrected by my sudden
interest in a normal life.
I'll be there at 2:00 am for her and for me. And that's when three becomes
seven. Or no buttons at all, spilled on the floor in some maniacal race to
catch up with time before we're too old to appreciate the relative youth we
have.
I drain the last of the stale water before finally making that inevitable
trek to my bedroom. The clock says it's only 1:47 am, but that must be a
lie. It's usually 4:00 am before I find myself between the sheets, dreaming
about being between her legs instead. Partners shouldn't have these
thoughts, I know. But I'm content deluding myself that we're so much more
than partners...emotional and mental lovers. The thought that one day we'd
wind up somewhere in each other's needy grasp keeps me going, as wanting her
has become a passion in itself.
On the way from my couch to the bedroom my right foot makes contact with
something thin and cool. Looking down, I remove the slip of paper and
unfold it. Yellow with thin blue lines, it looks like it has been torn from
a larger piece.
An oily texture of blushed pink has stained the paper in the unmistakable
shape of a mouth. The faintly waxy scent slips away from me as quickly as
it is inhaled, passing into the night as the shadow of her presence leaves.
I know the color like I know the Tabla Rosa principle. And I know the shape
of that mouth just as well as I know the theory of Classical Conditioning.
Like one of Pavlov's dogs, I salivate at the scrap of her left behind.
She's trained me so well.
The shape, the smell, they've been catalogued and memorized with a million
other traits of hers, but the presence of the paper in my living room still
makes no sense to me. And then it hits me like some grand revelation, the
impact of which will reverberate throughout tonight and maybe beyond: Scully
was fixing her makeup while I was making the popcorn.
Scully was putting on lipstick.
It's a magical thought, complete with visions of waking up in an erotic
languor and clothes littering her neat bedroom floor. Tranquil and domestic
thoughts like these are surprisingly rare; the aftermath of a covert sexual
signal on her behalf. I could do what I always do, finding steady fingers
and a calm heart time and time again in Playpen and the remote control, but
instead I reach for my shoes and a jacket. Then I'm heading out the door.
I can still make it to Georgetown by 2:00 am.
_____
There's something categorically different about Scully's neighborhood. It
even smells different from mine, and early in the morning a peaceful calm
reigns instead of the occasional siren I am accustomed to. But we make the
same salary; pay scale G14 plus overtime. Some financial miracle affords
her the luxury of a larger, nicer apartment; how I'll never know. I wallow
in my cheapness instead, a self-inflicted punishment. Living with the
seedier side of DC makes me feel clean again.
As I pull up I wait and watch a moment until it becomes uncomfortably
similar to stalking. There aren't any lights on as far as I can tell, and
the last thing I want to do is wake her. Lord knows how many times I've
been here before, gun in hand and ready to save the day. Countless.
And for all those times, there have been others where I've simply shown up
gun in hand, convinced she needed saving. I haven't decided yet if that's
my granite friend pushing the envelope of fate, or me and my over-inflated
ego. Either way, those nights are the best. Precedents for conversation
exist only when we're on the clock. She sees that I'm the one who needs
saving, and a cup of coffee and her sleepy smile are the cure.
Taping my fingers lightly against the steering wheel, I am thisclose to
making my choice. Toes practically tingle from anticipation, but instead I
reach into my pocket for the paper lips. Without thinking, my thumb brushes
lightly against them, taking a streak of soft pink with it. Imagining that
imprint fleshed out and real, pouted and ready for me is too much to bear
for the constraints of a seatbelt.
In moments I am at her door, clearing my throat and pre-planning the few
words we'll share. I need you. I want to need you more. And I want to
need you again and again. But that seems wrong; the right words seem
shuffled around in all the wrong ways, betraying the honesty of them. I
don't want to sound like I'm trying to be her knight in shining armor.
She knows me better than that, and that's who I want her to understand. The
tarnished, wearied man.
And then the moment falls apart. The hilarity of this suddenly hits me, and
a smile blooms. My insanity has just been upstaged by pure idiocy, and I
can only imagine her response to this late-night surprise. "Mulder, are you
drunk?" "Mulder, are you suffering from a massive head injury?" "Mulder,
who's been messing with your tap water this time?" Scully can always
undermine my sincerity with calm rationalism.
I sigh and finger the remnants of her kiss in my pocket, struggling to find
contentment in the one piece of her I can have physically too. Instead of
spending the night outside her apartment door, I decide it's time I just
leave already. Let her have her dreams, and I'll keep mine too. Maybe one
day 2:00 am won't seem like such terrible timing, and I think that's when
I'll make the first move.
_____
THE END
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