Wonder if you could write the first time Mulder guided Scully with his hand on her back? Could be fun.
Hey! This took a while, sorry. It’s been unfinished in my drafts forever and finally I was inspired by folks asking me on Twitter to fic this tweet. I hope you like it :)
The first time he touches her there she is naked and trembling. She is afraid.
His fingertips glide across her skin as he searches for the source of her fear, alleviating it as he goes. His touch calms her long before he reassures her what she’s afraid of are merely war wounds any sixth grade camper might sport after a weekend in the woods.
Mosquito bites. Just damn mosquito bites.
Mulder doesn’t know her very well yet but she’s sure he does know that Dr. Dana Scully wouldn’t show fear of the unknown in this way, especially so soon. After all the crap she’s given him over the past couple of days, she should feel a bit chagrined. Maybe even embarrassed. But she feels only comfort through his touch.
She throws herself, actually throws herself into him and lets him hold her. She doesn’t know why, not really, because her fear is already gone. But her motives for all things are usually kept hidden, deep down where her feelings are. Deep down where she can’t even find them, let alone analyze them.
It’s the Dana who propels forward into his arms two days into this partnership. It’s the Dana who allows herself to get wrapped up into this man in her customary way.
But it’s the Scully that keeps her here, in his embrace, as his fingers dip down to rest on the small of her back. Scully. His Scully.
The next time he does it, it’s already like a habit. She’s just learned Billy Miles has been wandering around in the woods on legs that shouldn’t work at all and her mind is racing.
She lets it happen, lets his hand rest there, guiding her. She thinks of Daniel, who used to do this all the time and it felt controlling, almost fatherly. She’d liked that from time to time, but with Mulder it’s different. It isn’t a power move; it’s respect and belonging. She doesn’t like the idea of belonging to a man, never has, but when Mulder touches her there it feels like they belong to each other. She likes that feeling.
They continue this way for years; him taking his own tiny personal liberty, reconfiguring her reality, as if by mere touch he can alter her perception. Make her see things his way. And she allows it time and time again because she wants to see things his way. She likes belonging; to him. To them, whatever they happen to be. She doesn’t know yet, not really.
There’s always something situated between them; usually some sort of barrier resembling the elusiveness of the paranormal. Always something they cannot agree upon; something they refuse to face. Sometimes that barrier is the elusiveness of their own feelings.
And some days, some nights, they are far from each other. Like a stormy night in Philadelphia when she slips. Having become tired of a life that stands still, she goes and seeks out one that moves forward instead. A straight line. Stepping forward. Marking a moment.
She tries this guy on for size and he fits, at least at first; until his hands encircle her waist, fingers landing on the spot, Mulder’s spot, still raw and tender from the needle; her act of rebellion.
It felt good, all of it, up until now.
Not everything is about you, Mulder.
A stranger touching her there feels wrong somehow, too intimate. Even more intimate than sex. She wonders why.
Two years later, another stranger enters her life. This stranger sees her to the point of unnerving her. He sees her innermost thoughts, her latent desires.
Agent Scully is already in love.
She’s denied it for so long even the truth doesn’t feel real anymore. But the stranger is right, and she knows it.
Mulder is quiet for a moment, then reaches out to touch the spot. It feels somehow new and exciting, even more intense now. A cold rush of truth serum injected at the base of her spine like an epidural.
She steps forward to exit the cell, another step forward, towards… something.
She isn’t afraid. He won’t know what Padgett meant, he won’t notice his deadly accuracy.
Men will come and go in the life of Dana Scully, but the Daniels and Eds and even Padgetts won’t stick. She knows this because they always disappear, they’re always gone, eventually, and Mulder is still here, right here, right next to her.
More years go by, time passing in moments, and she is thrown into the path of Daniel once again. She’s changed so much yet here he is, exactly the same, still wanting Dana.
But she isn’t Dana anymore, not really. She is Scully.
I’m not the same person, Daniel. I wouldn’t have known that if I hadn’t seen you again.
Daniel brushes her hair out of her face the way Mulder would, to look into her eyes, to see her there, and in this particular moment she knows she doesn’t want anyone seeing her there except Mulder.
It’s funny the way all things happen, the way events unfold. The way dominoes fall, one by one, until the timing is right.
Tonight will be the night. Tonight, she will make him see.
Tonight she goes to him, rouses him from his sleep. Tonight she kisses him not the way a friend would, or the way a partner would, but the way a lover would. And the moment they make this leap, the moment she feels him inside her she closes her eyes and waits for what she knows is coming; for his beautiful hands to slide down her back and land on the spot.
He touches her there, and again, she is naked and trembling. But this time she is not afraid.
