Fairies, Skip Hence
This is my pic for the 2019 X-Files Secret Santa fic exchange. It was written for @msrafterdark, who’s prompt was “Soft early MSR, maybe a small gathering at the Scullys in which Mulder is invited. I'm a sucker for where Mulder and Scully are trying to find equlibrium in their new relationship.”
Observing her from the passenger seat, she looked nervous, tense, eyes focused on the road like high beams. Her sharp little bob was perfectly coiffed, and she was wearing the bra and panty set (he’d been there when she put them on) that made her walk more upright. He thought of them as her Confidence Boosters, though it wouldn’t do to tell her that--she’d roll her eyes at the double meaning and never wear them again.
Hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, knuckles almost white.
He’d loved her for years, and knew she felt the same. They’d been Pyramus and Thisbe, speaking words of love through walls of their own making. It was only recently that those walls had come down, and he knew she felt unsteady, was still finding her footing. He didn’t know how the next few days would go, but he did know one thing: she still wasn’t sure about this.
XxXxXxXxXxX
She still wasn’t sure about this. Mulder was coming to Christmas at her mother’s house.
She wouldn’t even be dealing with it if they’d been slightly more discreet and a lot more awake--he’d accidentally answered her phone at 8am on Thanksgiving when Maggie had called to asked Dana to bring an ingredient she’d forgotten. When Mulder had handed her the phone (they really needed to figure out what side of the bed they were each going to take, and leave phones ONLY on their own side), he’d looked both chagrined and pleased, and her irritation had given way to mortification when she’d heard the tone of her mother’s voice.
“Good morning, Dana. Was that… Fox?” she’d asked, her voice full of hope and barely concealed delight.
For all his foibles and for as much as her older brother hated him, her mother had
always had a soft spot for Mulder. “Fox and I have been through a lot together, Dana,” she would always say.
One grandchild was all Margaret Scully had, and the prospect of more--however they might come into the world--would sustain her. A man--any man, really, but this one in particular (Scully had reluctantly told her mother about the IVF failure earlier in the summer)--answering her daughter’s phone at dawn on a holiday was surely cause for celebration and hope.
Scully had steadfastly refused to bring him along that day, their relationship being so new, so she really ought not to have been surprised when Mulder told her a week or two later that Maggie Scully had called him herself to invite him to join the family at Christmas.
She’d pinched the bridge of her nose when he’d asked her what she thought he should bring.
And that was how they’d found themselves bright and early on Christmas Eve, driving north through quickly accumulating snow with a backseat full of gifts, a half case of wine and increasingly jangly nerves.
“We do stockings on Christmas Eve,” Scully said out of nowhere, her fingers drumming nervously on the steering wheel.
“Okay,” Mulder said, clearly wondering where she was going with this.
“Just a warning,” she went on.
“Okay,” Mulder repeated.
“Bill is going to be there.”
“You’ve mentioned that several times.”
“And Tara and Matthew, and Charlie is home on leave,” she went on.
“Right.”
“I’m not sure where Mom will want us to sleep. She might put us in separate rooms.”
“So sex only clandestinely in the bathroom,” Mulder joked.
“Mulder!”
“Scully, I’m kidding. Relax, it’s going to be fine.”
She gave him an extremely skeptical look.
“Please no sex jokes in front of my family.”
“Noted,” he said, and then, “I grew up with a full Emily Post upbringing, Scully, I promise I can comport myself.”
Her mother knew she and Mulder were together now, which meant that so did everyone else. She worried she’d be treated differently. She worried Mulder would be treated differently. She and Mulder weren’t exactly “public,” so she worried she’d treat him differently. Everything was so new. God, would he kiss her in front of her family? Would she want him to? What if she wanted him to? Seven years of saying we’re just friends to her family was a hard habit to break. She’d rather do Christmas with the Gunmen, she thought, as she took her mother’s exit off 95. She’d rather see Frohike in nothing but a Santa hat.
She sighed dramatically.
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” she said.
She thought, it’s everyone else. It’s Bill. It’s me.
Mulder reached over the console and tried to rub the tension out of her neck.
His touch fortified her as it always did. Maybe it would all be okay. Maybe.
XxXxXxXxXxX
They made it through the lekking ground of the entryway, Bill and Charlie gathered to alternately dole out hugs and stiff handshakes laced with polite menace. Charlie winked at her as he shook Mulder’s hand.
Tara met them at the threshold with glasses of spiked eggnog, which Scully downed half of instantly, gratefully.
They made small talk in the kitchen with Tara and her mother, while Matthew scooted around on the floor, running a Brio train over everyone’s shoes. Mulder offered to make his legs a tunnel for the boy, and she saw both other Scully women’s eyes crinkle at the corners, charmed.
The man could charm anything but bees, she thought.
Scully couldn’t help but be thrown by his presence amongst her family, his dark minky hair and his Fortean job, all out of context amidst the buttoned up Naval fortitude of the Scullys, with their fair hair and their strict adherence to protocol.
He looked and sounded relaxed, as did the rest of her family, but she couldn’t unclench. He reached for her several times and she didn’t reach back.
Her mom caught her eye from across the room and gave her a questioning look.
She ducked into her mother’s quiet den not long after that, pulling Mulder rather reluctantly behind her. The room was much the same as it had been when it had been her dad’s office: still smelled of leather and old books. Naval charts hung on the walls. She took a moment to center herself.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked her.
She turned to him.
“I was going to ask you the same,” she said.
He cocked her a half-grin.
“This is not my first too-hard handshake, Scully. I can handle myself.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said.
“I’m the prince of subtlety,” he said, “I plan to challenge Bill to a game of one-on-one and throw an elbow.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose again. She’d been doing it a lot lately.
“The guy plays like Bill Lambeer, Scully,” he said, continuing to push her, “you can just tell. It’ll be completely justified.”
She didn’t rise to the bait and instead stepped into him, close.
“Everything is different now,” she said, nervously, and he sobered.
“Nothing is different now,” he replied as he moved in to kiss her forehead, then leaned down to catch her eye, “absolutely nothing is.”
She knew he meant that they had always had love between them, fierce and unconditional.
She nodded at him, her face softening, “but everything is all out of context here and it’s already throwing me for a loop.”
It was probably as honest and forthright as she had ever been with him. He decided right then to be on his best behavior.
“It’s going to be fine,” he said, kissing the tip of her nose as he backed out of the room, “come on, let’s go be social.”
She glanced at her watch as she followed him. It was not yet noon.
XxXxXxXxXxX
Lunch was a simple spread of cheeses and meats, laid out on the dining room table for casual grazing -- Mrs. Scully had a big dinner planned.
Mulder helped himself, but Scully seemed too preoccupied to eat, and he watched her interact with her family as he sat on the couch in Maggie’s living room, a paper plate perched on his knee.
It was fascinating watching her comportment shift from Agent Scully to Dana, to watch how she joked with her brothers, slouched like a teenager against her mom in the kitchen. The Scullys were a tactile, affectionate bunch, prone to sarcastic comments about one another, but always with the understanding of love under each gentle jibe. Hers had been a very different upbringing from his own. He was held rapt.
The star of the show of course was Matthew, who was happy to be the center of attention, taking time to engage with each adult to gauge their suitability as playmate and co-star. Mulder appeared to pass muster with his ability to realistically die when poked with a small plastic lightsaber.
Mulder caught Scully staring during one such encounter with the boy, her expression guarded and unreadable.
XxXxXxXxXxX
Scully watched Charlie watch Mulder surreptitiously from where he sat in the living room. Her brother was obviously intrigued by him, having heard the stories from other members of her family, having never met the man himself.
Each of the Scully children had very different personalities. Charlie had always been the prankster, the lighthearted sarcastic kid that could bring a smile to anyone’s face. He’d also been the kindest, and Scully thought, behind his extroverted, jovial exterior, the most observant. He never missed a moment.
As if on cue, he shifted his gaze to her and smiled. Pointed to Mulder and gave her an exaggerated thumbs up.
Charlie’s approval was almost antithetical to high spirits and she found her mood turning sour, which she knew was ridiculous. She operated better when it was just her and Mulder against the world, when her love for him was a closely guarded secret. They had only just started sleeping together, and she was afraid of how much she already needed him. She found she wanted to go to a corner and lick at nonexistent wounds, to snarl at anyone who came near. She was mad at herself for getting mad.
When her mother asked if anyone wanted to decorate the Christmas cookies she and Matthew had made the day before, Scully surprised everyone by volunteering and drifting off toward the kitchen with Tara and Bill, leaving the room with an apologetic glance at Mulder. She could feel his eyes on her back as she walked away.
XxXxXxXxXxX
“Enjoying ‘The Very Best Sacred Christmas Carols?’” Charlie said, handing Mulder a cold bottle of beer and dropping heavily onto the couch beside him.
“Of course,” Mulder said, nodding his thanks.
Charlie took a swig from the bottle he was holding. “You don’t have to lie,” he said, “there’s only so many times a man can hear a choir singing the word ‘holy’ before he wants to get hung from a yardarm.”
“Depends on the choir, I guess,” Mulder said, smiling.
A stiff, staid chorus sang from the speakers in Maggie’s entertainment center.
“I think this one is from King’s College, Cambridge,” Charlie said thoughtfully, “I’ve only heard it every Christmas since 1979. Mom is militant that the Christmas music be as Jesus-y as possible, and Bill is militant about Mom being militant.”
Mulder took another swig. “Always been more of an Oxford guy, myself,” he said, noncommittally.
Charlie regarded him for a long moment.
“Bill isn’t a big fan of yours,” he said levelly. Mulder quirked a shoulder—a ‘what are you gonna do?’ gesture. “But you seem to make my sister happy,” the man went on.
Mulder sat up straighter and chuffed a self-conscious laugh.
“I wouldn’t have drawn that conclusion by the way she’s been today, myself,” he said, still smiling, catching his thumbnail on the edge of the beer label.
Charlie laughed brightly.
“That’s actually how I can tell,” he said. “She cares so much about making a good impression, she’s getting in her own way. And you haven’t seen the way she’s been looking at you when you’re not looking at her.”
Mulder looked to the younger man.
“You do the same thing, by the way,” Charlie went on, laughing. “My aunt Mabel would have used the word ‘besotted.’”
Mulder flashed on something he’d said a year or so before, I do not gaze at Scully.
“You guys are hopeless,” Charlie laughed. “But… I’m not my brother,” Charlie went on, “and to be honest, I’d like you on the off chance it would piss Bill off-“ Mulder quirked a grin at that “-but couple that with Dana’s obvious and utter devotion to you, and I’ve decided to like you because she does.”
Mulder felt he’d just earned something hard-given. He looked at the youngest Scully with gratitude.
“Now cover me,” Charlie said, and suddenly stood, the earnest moment forgotten as the young redhead pulled a CD case out of his back pocket. He handed Mulder his beer.
“What?” Mulder said, confused.
Charlie nodded towards the room’s entrance.
“Cover me,” he said, and Mulder stood, holding a cold beer in each hand, moving to the edge of the room, a precipitate look-out man. “Nobody fucks with Mom’s carols,” Charlie went on, kneeling in front of the CD player in the middle of the room. He pushed a button and the music suddenly stopped, the changer slowly giving up the ghost and ejecting the disc that had been in the player. “So let’s see what happens, shall we?” He pressed a mischievous grin in Mulder’s direction and pushed a new CD in.
It took about ten seconds before a new song started playing, more loudly than the carols had been, a drum beat followed by piano—Elton John’s bizarre holiday song ‘Who’d Be A Turkey At Christmas.’
From the direction of the kitchen, Bill’s voice came with an approaching “Now what the hell?” and Charlie ran toward Mulder, a roguish smile on his face.
“Run,” he said, coming right at Mulder, who braced himself.
“What?!” Mulder said, amused, but unnerved.
“Run!” Charlie said, darting past Mulder and grabbing his beer out of Mulder’s hand in the process.
Mulder felt he had no choice but to run up the stairs after him, laughing—a sudden but willing accomplice—while Elton drawled on drunkenly about having ‘a few too many,’ loudly from the speakers just as Bill barged into the room on a wind of blustering confusion.
XxXxXxXxXxX
Scully narrowed her eyes at Mulder, as they deposited overnight bags in the corner of her adolescent bedroom.
“What?” Mulder asked.
“Charlie took full responsibility for the music kerfuffle,” she said, and Mulder looked at her innocently. He would not implicate himself. Charlie had hit a setting on the CD player, whether on purpose or not remained to be seen, but Bill couldn’t get the player to stop until it was halfway through ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.’
Peace had been restored and the choir of Cambridge was once again singing its way through the Wassail Song though Scully had used the temporary chaos to steal out to the car and grab their luggage. She still wasn’t entirely sure Mulder wouldn’t be relegated to the foldout couch in the basement, being both the other half of an unmarried couple and now party to the playing of non-sanctioned Christmas music.
He sat on her childhood bed, bouncing on it experimentally.
“Not too creaky,” he said, waggling his eyebrows at her.
She ignored him, hands on her hips.
“You seem to be getting along with everyone okay,” she said, half questioning.
“I’m not without my charms,” he shrugged. She seemed tense and still hadn’t sat down. “Your family is great, Scully,” he said, “even the ones who don’t like me have been very polite.”
That at least elicited a reluctant smile, and she finally sat down next to him.
“We’re halfway through,” she said.
“Halfway through what?” he asked.
“The day,” she said, and he shot her a sympathetic smile. “Next up we’ve got stockings, dinner, then midnight mass…”
“And then?” he said, swaying into her.
“And then we take a Benadryl with the family Sauterne and wait for sleep to save us,” she said, standing and offering a hand up.
He laughed as she had meant him to and took her proffered hand.
“You okay with going to mass?” she asked him soberly as she pulled him up.
“If you go, I go,” he said, and gave her hand a quick peck before dropping it. “Tara’s been trying to get me alone for the last three hours, I’m going to go give her a chance.”
She smiled at him.
“Want some backup?” she said.
“Always,” he said, backing out of the room.
XxXxXxXxXxX
Bill started coming up the steps as Mulder was headed down, and Scully waited on the landing so as not to crowd him.
He passed her and started to head down the hallway, but as he walked by, he gave her a look which brought her up short.
“Something you want to say, Bill?” she said to his back. He stopped and turned toward her slowly.
“He’s staying in your room, I see,” he said.
“And Tara is staying in yours,” she said, a statement of fact.
He gave her a long look.
“Why him, Dana?” he finally asked.
“Because he loves me,” she said, feeling as though she really needn’t justify herself.
“Any man would love you,” he said, “look at you. You could have anyone you wanted.”
“But I want him.” She didn’t need to convolute it any. When it came right down to it, it really was as simple as that.
Bill looked at her for another long moment and then, seeming to come to some kind of internal decision, nodded at her and turned away.
XxXxXxXxXxX
After a few minutes he watched as Scully came into the living room to find him perched casually on the couch next to her sister in law. She sat in a chair on the opposite side of the room and picked up a nearby paperback. Good old Scully, watching his back as always. The music in the room was still extolling the glory of the season and it afforded he and Tara a fair bit of privacy.
“Have you done Yankee Swap before, Fox?” Tara asked him brightly.
“Don’t know. Sounds vaguely punitive.”
She smiled at him.
“It’s a fun gifting thing we started doing a few years back where you can take someone else’s present or swap it out for a new one.”
“That’s a relief,” he said, deadpan, “I was afraid you were coming onto me.”
Tara laughed as he had hoped she would, then leaned into him confidentially, her breath smelling sweetly of pinot grigio. She had a smudge of flour on the left side of her chin.
“You know, Dana has never brought over a boyfriend before,” she said, probably a bit louder than she meant to.
Scully looked up sharply from where she sat curled up in her chair, and Mulder gave her a significant look which was completely lost on Tara as he leaned in to talk to her.
“We’ve been worried about her,” Tara said, “with that job of yours. It seems dangerous and all-consuming. We didn’t think she’d ever meet anyone.”
“I, for one, am glad she didn’t,” Mulder said and darted a look at Scully who was pretending not to eavesdrop.
Tara giggled good naturedly.
“Maggie’s been telling us about the change in her these last few weeks. How happy she seems. I guess falling in love with each other was inevitable,” she said wistfully.
Mulder nodded softly.
“Fate,” he said, and Scully’s eyes bobbed to his.
“Sweet,” Tara sighed girlishly, “well, we’re glad you’re here, Fox.” She patted his knee. “You’ll make Dana a wonderful husband, I’m sure,” she went on, clearly meaning it as the highest of compliments.
“Well,” Mulder said, holding Scully’s eyes across the room, “it’s an honor just to be nominated.”
XxXxXxXxXxX
Afternoon rolled into evening, and the weak sun laid long shadows through Margaret Scully’s neighborhood before it was blotted out completely in a blast of swirling snow.
He had drifted into the den and had been looking at the Naval map of the Carribean when Scully found him.
“Please tell me you’re not considering another trip to the Bermuda Triangle,” she said.
He turned to her and smiled, reached out to her. He saw her look at his outstretched hand and she walked around it, moving to look out the window.
“Looks like you’re getting out of midnight mass,” she said, one finger pulling down a slat on the room’s Venetian blinds, “it’s really coming down out there.”
The wind was gusting, pushing snow and ice past the glass; visibility was limited to about ten feet. The family had agreed to keep an eye on the weather and bow out of attending the midnight service if driving conditions became too dangerous.
Mulder came up behind her and bent down to look outside as well, her back pressed into him. When she straightened, he didn’t move, and he felt a frisson of energy run along the skin where he was pressed to her. He brought his hand to her hip and pressed his lips to her ear.
“Don’t,” she said, stepping away, and Mulder looked at her, hurt and confused. Immediately, she reached out a conciliatory hand and looked to the heavens as if for help. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He gave her a long look.
“If you didn’t want me to come, you should have told me,” he said gently.
“That’s not it.”
“Then what is it? Because honestly, Scully, you are the only one making things weird. Even Bill is acting like an adult, which is, frankly, almost as surprising as your attitude.”
She sighed.
She was prickly and self-conscious, beautiful and unapproachable. Even when she was pissed off with him--even when he was pissed off with her too--he felt like the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.
“We’re still trying to figure out what this is, Mulder,” she said a little desperately, gesturing between the two of them, “I still don’t know how to be with you. How to work with you. How any of this is going to play out. And having to figure that out while surrounded by my family of all people is just… a lot.”
He sighed himself and stepped back into her space, reaching out to rub a hand up and down her back.
She was tense under his hand.
“Tara keeps staring at my ring finger,” she said, and Mulder couldn’t help but chuckle.
“It’s not funny,” she said.
“It’s kind of funny,” he said.
“Mulder-”
He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to him, pressed his lips to her neck. One of his hands started creeping under the hem of her blouse.
“Scully—“ he started, when Matthew toddled into the room on a delighted shriek, the only one in the house who wouldn’t have picked up on the blatant frottage before him.
Scully took a step away from Mulder as Bill popped his head through the door.
“I think we’re going to to do stockings now,” Bill said, nodding toward his son, “some of us are getting a little antsy.”
“Sure,” Scully said to him, and then knelt down in front of the boy. “Matty, will you show me where the stockings are?” she asked him, and he happily took her by the hand and pulled her out of the room. She glanced behind her at Mulder as she left, who was still standing by the window, backlit by the snow.
XxXxXxXxXxX
Her mother found her outside just before dinner, wrapped in a tatty old afghan and leaning over the railing on the back porch, watching chickadees dart in and out of the feeder in the day’s fading light. The wind had stopped blowing, but the snow was still coming down, fat white flakes drifting down out of the silent heavens.
“Everything all right?” Margaret Scully asked from the doorway. She turned to look at her mother, who was hugging her sweater around herself tightly, her feet shoved into an old pair of fleecy slippers.
“Mm,” she hummed, smiling at her.
Her mother closed the door behind her and walked out slowly to join her daughter, the snow squeaking under her feet as she moved.
Scully had gone outside to get a little fresh air, and, she hoped, a clearer head. She was avoiding Mulder’s touch like he was some secret teenaged boyfriend she wasn’t allowed to see and her head was running in such circles about the whole damn weekend, she was wound up in her own thoughts and likely to fall face first.
“Is my absence conspicuous?” Scully asked her mother lightly, reaching out an arm and wrapping a corner of the afghan over Margaret’s shoulder.
“Only to me,” her mom said, leaning into her. Her mother’s intuition was flawless, and sometimes all it took was Maggie flashing her a compassionate look for Scully to crumple back into a pre-teen mess and spill all her fears and secrets. “And to Fox.”
She turned to look at her mother. She’d inherited her insubstantial height, and being eye to eye with her always seemed to buck up Scully’s morale.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
“He’s fine,” her mother answered with a small smile, “currently building a fairly intricate train track with your nephew.” Then, after a long moment, “how long?” Have you been together didn’t need to be said.
Scully breathed out, a column of vapor dissipating into the air.
“Not very,” she answered.
Maggie Scully smiled and looked out onto her small white yard.
“I’m glad,” she said.
“Bill’s not,” Scully said softly.
“Bill doesn’t understand what you have,” her mother said, looking at her significantly. “I don’t know if anyone really can, other than the two of you,” she went on. Scully tucked her chin to her chest, not able to meet her mother’s eye. “That man loves you, Dana. With the kind of unquestionable, forever love any of my kids would be lucky to see in the world, much less experience. I’m glad Fox is here with us for the holiday,” she reached out and ran a hand up and down her daughter’s arm, “I hope you are, too.”
She looked up and saw her mother’s wistful expression, the way she rubbed her thumb over her wedding ring like a talisman. Maggie smiled at her and headed back into the house.
XxXxXxXxXxX
“You feeling any better?” Mulder asked her. He had volunteered to do dishes after the meal, so she volunteered to help him, drying as he washed and putting the dishes away.
He had one of her mother’s aprons on and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, suds halfway up his forearms.
“A bit,” she said.
He’d been the consummate guest at dinner, regaling the table with stories from his college days at Oxford, full of vulpine charm and Vineyard decorum. At one point she’d even seen Bill chuckling at one of his stories.
She felt guilty for laying her own discomfort at his feet when he was the outsider, the guest at her mother’s table. She told him so, while she wiped a casserole dish dry.
“Hey,” he said, bumping her gently with his hip, “you know I know you, right?”
She smiled at him.
A siren approached outside the house and they both stilled, a Pavlovian anticipation building until the emergency vehicle passed, the siren fading into the night. Water dripped from Mulder’s hands and they both slowly unclenched.
“Go be with your family, Scully, I’ll finish up here.”
She regarded him, took the glass he was holding and dried it slowly.
A round of laughter came in from the dining room, where the rest of the Scully clan were sipping Sauterne, Matthew playing troll under the table.
“You don’t know where anything goes,” she said.
“I’ll figure it out.”
She kissed his cheek, lingering there for a moment, and hooked the damp dishtowel over his shoulder, then left to join her family.
XxXxXxXxXxX
She offered to help Matthew put out cookies and milk for Santa, and Mulder followed them into the living room, charmed by the boy’s enthusiasm.
Once the goodies had been strategically placed just-so, she let Matthew talk her into reading him a small Christmas book he’d gotten in his stocking. She barely made it halfway through before Matthew ran out of steam and slumped against Scully’s leg, half a cookie clutched loosely in his damp hand, leaving a trail of crumbs on her knee. His eyes slid closed.
Scully ducked her head down to look at him, sweeping soft curls from his forehead. She closed the book and set it down next to her.
Mulder cocked his chin toward the boy.
“I had a roommate once, was the same way,” he said quietly.
Scully smiled and resisted the urge to smell the boy’s head. His little body had pinned her arm to her side.
Another round of cheerful laughter came in from the direction of the kitchen, the rest of the adults in the house all loosened up from a good meal and a round of wassail, the proximity of family.
Mulder rose from where he sat, and kneeled down in front of Scully, scooping the child up in his arms from where he’d been pressed to her. Her side felt suddenly cold.
“Where does he sleep?” Mulder whispered, and Scully rose, silently beckoning him to follow her.
Up the stairs and down the hallway they crept like thieves, Mulder and the child behind her a sleepy votary.
She opened the door to Missy’s old bedroom, which her mom had converted to a sewing room. It had a large crib set up in one corner and a Fisher Price nightlight projecting a jungle scene onto the ceiling. The door creaked as it swung open, but the boy didn’t awaken, and Mulder crept to the crib and deposited the child gently onto the mattress. He snuffled once and turned onto his side.
“Should we change him into PJ’s or anything?” Mulder whispered, keeping his eyes on the boy’s sleeping form.
She shook her head and took in the scene before her, Mulder watching over a sleeping Scully child. Whatever emotion threatened then, she refused it.
“I’ll go let Tara know we put him down,” she whispered back and turned from the room, drifting down the hallway like Marley’s ghost.
XxXxXxXxXxX
When it was confirmed that Matthew was finally asleep, Bill and Charlie set about bringing in gifts from the trunks of various cars, and Mulder had to jump in and help when they tumbled in through the front door, overloaded with gifts and stamping snow onto the mat.
Several toys needed assembling and the unlikely trio headed into the garage and went about it in the usual male fashion; with several strong opinions and more tools than necessary.
When they finished, they found that Tara and Maggie had gone up to bed, and Bill and Charlie followed suit.
Mulder searched the house until he found Scully.
Bubbles floated like dust motes silently through the living room, catching the color from the lights on the Christmas tree and turning the room kaleidoscopic. She sat in front of the fireplace amongst Matthew’s scattered stocking stuffers, looking young and small. She held a small Santa-shaped bottle, blowing bubbles quietly into the room from a wand protruding from Santa’s hat. She looked like a fairy in the festive space, and his heart clutched at the sight of her.
“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania,” he said softly.
She looked up with a smile.
“What, jealous Oberon?” she said.
“Never,” he said, and lowered himself cross-legged next to her. The fire gave off a radiating heat that pushed into one side of his face.
“I’m sorry--” she started, but he cut her off with a finger to her lips.
“Don’t,” he said, “this is a lot for you--all of it--I get it. You don’t have to apologize.” She smiled at him in relief. “So long as you don’t forswear my bed and company,” he went on.
She looked at him, her eyes watery, but bright.
“Never,” she whispered.
A bubble landed on her hair and refused to pop. He could hardly blame it.
XxXxXxXxXxX
A log gave a sharp snap in the fireplace and she turned her head to look at it.
She had realized she was in love with him when she was sick, writing to him in a journal she didn’t want him to read. Back then it was too late to do anything about it. Then she was granted a reprieve, death’s scythe pulled back, and regret was replaced with cowardice.
She looked back at him, the glow of the fire turing his face chimeric, and thought of Matthew’s crumby, damp hand, the glint of Charlie’s hair by the light of the sun. Her mother’s worn, papery skin, Bill linking his hand with Tara’s under the dining room table at dinner. She thought of the thump and swish of Mulder’s heart when her ear was pressed to his chest. It all felt like family. It all felt like home.
He was her partner, her fidus Achates, the love of her life.
“Take me to bed,” she said softly, reaching out for him.
“Look, I don’t know what the secretarial pool has been saying, but I’m not that kind of g-“
Scully silenced him with a kiss to the lips.
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a basket case today,” she said, catching his eyes in the warm light of the fire. “Take me to bed, Mulder,” she said again, coyly arching an eyebrow at him.
He nodded at her earnestly and took her by the hand.
They padded lightly up the steps as Handel’s “Messiah” began to play on the stereo in the living room behind them.
XxXxXxXxXxX
She closed the door after he followed her in and the room took on a sudden quiet, the music from downstairs pushing gently at the outside of the door.
It was an odd contrast to see Mulder, an adult man, standing in her adolescent bedroom looking at her in anticipation, his eyes hooded with lust. She stepped into him, her toes on the tops of his--he flexed them even as he reached out and pulled her to him by the hips.
Sex between them had been surprising, incredible, but it was still new, and they had not yet settled on an easy rhythm, a give and take on the act’s initiation.
“Come here,” he said softly, though she couldn’t get much closer, and he pulled her flush up against him, his breath fanning her face.
He slowly took her arms one at a time and propped them up over his shoulders until they were encircling his neck, then he grabbed her firmly by the ass and lifted until her face was more or less even with his. She wrapped her legs around his waist reflexively.
“Better?” she whispered, smiling at him, their faces only an inch or so apart.
“Better,” he answered, and then leaned in slowly to kiss her.
His lips were framed by the rasp of his five o’clock shadow, which scraped against her skin, her teeth, as she opened her mouth to him. She hummed into him, relaxing into his embrace.
The stresses of the day seemed to peel back--her fears, expectations, pressures from her family whether real or merely perceived, all seemed to coalesce into one sharp feeling that melded somewhere in her chest and slowly sunk until it was an exquisite yearning pressure in her womb.
She threaded her fingers through his silky hair and she felt him turn and start walking them to the small double bed of her youth. Mulder sank slowly until he was sitting on it, Scully perched earnestly on his lap. He finally broke the kiss and leaned back to look at her.
“So I’m the first boyfriend you’ve brought home, huh?” he said, an obnoxious grin spreading across his face.
“Shut up, Mulder,” she said on a smile of her own, and reached down to grab the hem of his sweater, pulling it up and over his head, effectively erasing his insufferable expression.
She brought her hands to the spongy hair on his chest, running light fingers over his pectoral muscles, then slowly lower down over his abdominals, naming his anatomy in her head as her fingers explored. Rectus abdominis, external oblique, transversus abdominis. When her fingers reached the area of the linea alba, he hissed in a breath and she felt his body react to her touch, swelling under her right thigh.
He grabbed her hands and pulled them gently away from his body, leaning in to whisper in her ear.
“Turnabout is fair play, Ms. Scully,” he said, lifting up the shirt she was wearing and pulling it up and over her head.
She leaned in as his hands once again found her waist, and darted her tongue into his ear.
“That’s Dr. Scully to you,” she said, and clamped her mouth around the delicate flesh of his earlobe.
His hips responded to her, surging up as his hands held her steady--the pressure where their bodies met sharpening to an exquisite point.
The alarm clock next to the bed was an hour ahead, passed over when Daylight Savings ended. It glowed cherry red over Mulder’s left shoulder. Her mouth drifted down his neck, her tongue following the long line of tendon as his hands migrated toward her front, cupping her breasts over her bra.
The wind had once again picked up, blowing snow in soft tinks against the glass of the window. He pinched her nipple gently through the fabric and she let out an involuntary moan. She heard him laugh quietly and then he pressed his lips into her ear.
“Shhh” he shushed, and her skin broke out in gooseflesh even as sweet wine sloshed in her stomach. She felt warm and concupiscent, lusty and clear. She wanted to feel his skin on hers.
She leaned back, stood, stepped out of her pants and rid herself of her underthings. Mulder did the same, standing before her--his skin a golden bronze, his gaze intense--ithyphallic and unashamed. She laid on the bed and reached out a hand for him.
He joined her, kneeling onto the bed above her, knees pressed into the mattress between her legs. He took a moment to run his tongue slowly from beneath her navel to the point of her chin, painting her skin with his cooling breath.
His skin felt fevered on hers, but his eyes were clear and bright. He pushed into her slowly and her own eyes slammed shut, her teeth digging into her lip. He stretched her out, filled her up, and she took a moment to adjust, to enjoy.
Time seemed to stretch out, sand in the hourglass slowed to a honey drip. The bed was silent beneath them, for which she was thankful.
Seven years she had waited for this—a hymnal in the air, his overbite on her skin. What time she had wasted, what pleasure they had denied themselves. She pulled him to her, bit his shoulder, licked the teeth marks she had left. She wanted to consume him, take everything he was and absorb it like light.
She felt love-drunk, parched, caught up in chasing the high of their frenzy. He had his arms bracketed on either side of her face, and the hollow of his throat was at eye level. She darted her tongue out to taste it.
Suddenly, he reached down, grabbed her by the hips and flipped them and she found herself perched atop him, wild and wanton, his own Lady Godiva. Time caught back up to them and she gave him a wicked smile.
XxXxXxXxXxX
He still had trouble believing he had unlimited access to her compact, tight little body; she seemed all angles and edges these days with the exception of her center which was all soft, lush, wet heat--the sweet brine of her anointing him like a sacrament.
A car turned somewhere on the street, its headlights sweeping once over her, catching a freeze frame of her above him, back arched, head thrown back, mouth open.
He licked his thumb, reached between them and swept it over the tight bud at her center; she made a breathy noise in the back of her throat.
When they had finally gotten together there had never even been talk of a condom; the only thing left between them was for one of them to say “now, no more waiting.” He thought of his seed inside of her, thought of putting a baby there, an impossible gift he almost believed he could give her from sheer wanting. He’d read once that it was theorized female orgasm--unnecessary from a scientific, purely reproductive standpoint--helped by perhaps moving sperm further up into the womb, and he thought of it as he applied himself to her with a renewed vigor.
She started breathing that quick, shimmery breath that he’d only recently come to understand meant she was close, and he drove up into her as he pressed her with his thumb, encouraging her in a quiet, whispering voice. She clutched at him, fingernails digging into his hips on a hiss.
He followed her into oblivion, cresting just as the Hallelujah chorus reached the height of its crescendo in the living room below them, the sound both tinny and muffled. Mulder would associate the song with sex for the rest of his life.
The French call orgasm “the little death” and that felt right to him, proper and precise; he felt struck down and reborn in the cradle of her hips.
She rolled off of him, to the scant empty space on the bed, and laid face down, a small smile cracking slowly up her cheek from the pillow below.
He propped himself up on an elbow and considered her naked back, glistening with a thin sheen of sweat in the dim light, her hot slip cooling on his thighs. He leaned over to kiss the dimple above her ass cheek, and he heard her chuff a laugh.
Emboldened, he ran his tongue along the ouroboros upon her back, dared not tell her that it was an ancient symbol of alchemy. Dared not tell her how fitting it was that it was branded upon her skin, that he believed she was the elixir of his immortality, that she alone gave him life.
Outside, the world was cold, tilted away from the sun. Dust collected on the nicotine tainted pages of their files, and monsters walked the earth.
Inside, she was dreamy hot skin pressed to his side. She was his cover--the alert, sharp eyes that watched his six, the love of his life.
“Merry Christmas, Scully,” he said quietly, could already tell she was on the edge of sleep.
“Merry Christmas, Mulder,” she mumbled back, and he reached for the blanket, pulled it up and over them both.
XxXxXxXxXxX
When he woke, her head was near him on the pillow, she had a crease in her cheek and she smelled of sleep. Unable to help it, he reached out and tucked a feather of hair behind her ear. Her eyes fluttered open.
“Hey,” she said on a breathy smile.
“Hey,” he lobbed back.
The bed dipped in the middle under their weight and had pitched them together; her whole side was pressed to his, his own personal hot water bottle. He threw a leg over her.
The house had come to life below them, he heard cabinet doors swung closed, the soft chunk of coffee mugs on granite, gentle murmuring.
He could stay in this little bed with her all day, he thought, reading books pulled from her childhood shelves—Black Beauty, Moby Dick, A Brief History of Time. They would lock the door, make love, take sustenance only from each other.
She had an eye cracked on the pillow next to him, regarded him warmly with her cool blue stare.
“I love you,” he said, apropos of nothing.
She smiled, slowly blinked.
“They say ‘if you love something, let it go,’” she said, her voice rough from a night’s disuse.
He considered her, the peach fuzz of her skin in the early morning light.
“I don’t want to let you go. I want to hold on forever.”
To prove his point, he reached out and looped a pinky through one of her own, her hand lying close to her face on the pillow. He felt her breath puff against the hairs on the backs of his fingers, humid and warm, a humectant tropic in the tiny bed.
“It’s supposed to be a test, to see if what you love comes back to you.”
He squeezed her finger with his.
“You do always come back,” he said.
“So do you.”
They were thinking of the same things—her abduction, him lying in a hogan in New Mexico, her cancer.
It was Christmas morning, he remembered. The day already felt like a gift.
“I suppose we should get up,” Scully said, “put Matthew out of his misery.”
Mulder let go of her and stretched in the tiny bed, his feet lopping out over the end.
“How long do you think he’s been awake?” he asked, then reached for a pair of jeans.
“Oh, hours,” Scully said with a smile, and she pulled on the pair of pajama bottoms she’d brought with her. After a moment’s hesitation, she swiped the undershirt he’d worn the day before out of the sweater she’d tossed to the floor and pulled it up and over her head.
“Your family’s going to start getting ideas about us, Scully,” he joked, pleased.
“Let them,” she said, and went for the door.
They padded down the steps hand in hand, and when they reached the bottom, instead of letting go, her grip on his hand became more firm.
He followed her into the kitchen where they found everyone else milling about, all the adults wearing the pre-caffeinated shell-shocked look of a pre-dawn awakening.
Matthew cheered gleefully at their arrival, which had clearly been a pre-negotiated stipulation of gift-opening.
Bill, after giving their joined hands a long look, thrust his chin towards the counter and said “Coffee’s in the pot.”
Maggie caught her daughter’s eye before smiling into her own steaming mug like Emma of Hartfield. Charlie and Tara shared a knowing look and an arch smile.
Breakfast was eschewed in lieu of gift-opening, and Matthew ran to the tree, the adults a slow shuffling procession behind him. Gifts were passed out, opened, fawned over, played with. Thanks were shared and coffee was drunk.
There amongst her family, he felt content, happy, accepted. Scully looked at him warmly over her shoulder, and separated as they were by mounds of torn wrapping paper, he felt connected to her in a way he’d never felt connected to anyone.
She was his favorite gift. Sent to the basement to punish and dissuade him, she’d done the opposite. She was everything they hadn’t planned, antipodal to their strategy of turmoil and distrust.
She was the dawn in the night of his life.
He was glad he’d come. And so was she.
