Subj: NEW: Midnight Mark-up (1/2) by Louise Marin
Date: 1/17/00 12:38:26 AM Central Standard Time
From: mibosh@earthlink.net (Louise Marin)
Sender: owner-x-files-fanfic@lists.x-philes.com
Reply-to: mibosh@earthlink.net
To: xff@lists.x-philes.com
Title: Midnight Mark-up
Author: Louise Marin
Email: mibosh@earthlink.net
Rating: R (language and mild friskiness)
Category: SRAH
Keywords: M/S UST; MSR; Angst; Humor
Spoilers: Season Six, nothing major, cept A.D. Kersh is a big old meany
Disclaimer: Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, and everyone else belong to
CC, 1013, and Fox. Uhmmm...don'tsueme.
Archive: Sure. Just please let me know where it is.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Summary: Drunken fools, black ink, and territoriality...
Little Notes: This is mostly silliness, with a tiny dash of angst.
I was up very, very late one night...
Midnight Mark-up - By Louise Marin
Scully had always wondered what would happen in this unlikely
situation, and now she finally knew -- she and Mulder both got
goofy when they were drunk and together. Go figure.
As she lifted her fourth or fifth margarita from the bar and
tipped it up to her mouth, Scully congratulated herself on the
amount of motor function she had managed to retain. She felt
dizzy in just the right way; the world around her -- the club, the
lights, the crowd, the music, her partner -- was tilted but not
spinning. At least, not yet.
Obviously the alcohol could have been confusing her perception,
but she swore that Mulder's stool, along with his body, had been
scooting closer and closer to her own since they had sat down at
the bar, whenever that was. Now he wiggled his little butt on his
seat as he giggled in her ear. He was relating some story about
the last time he'd gotten drunk and acted, not surprisingly,
stupid.
"And there were dogs, Scully," he was saying. "Real, honest to
goodness, living, breathing, I-saw-them-with-my-own-two-eyes Dogs.
Right there in the alley!"
"Really?!" Scully gasped, and then she fell into a fit of giggles
herself. "God, Mulder, that's just...unbelievable! Dogs in an
alley!"
"Scuh-leee, I'm telling a stor-eeee!" Mulder whined, and then he
took a sip of his eighth or ninth whatever-the-hell-it-was --
brown water in a double shot glass. After returning the glass,
with a bang, to the bar, he cocked his head and grinned into
Scully's face. His eyes were round and dreamy, as if he just
could not understand why she would want to do anything but gaze at
him and listen with rapture to every word that spilled from his
mouth.
And then, without even the bat of an eyelash, he slid his fingers
lightly onto Scully's stocking-covered knee. An electric heat
shimmied up the inside of her thigh. All the way up.
Scully stiffened. She sat poker-straight, folded her hands on her
lap -- consequently trapping Mulder's hand between her wrist and
her knee -- and tried but failed to be serious and appropriately
businesslike. "Okay, Mulder, I'm captivated," she said, licking
her lips. "How many dogs did you see?"
Mulder, however, seemed too distracted now to go on with his
story. Instead, his face slowly floated even closer to Scully's.
His mouth was open, his breath soft, and his eyes were fixed on
her lips.
Shifting on her stool, Scully stuck her leg out and kicked him in
the shin with the pointy tip of one of the new heels she had worn
to work.
"Ow!" he yelped. Pouting, he reached down with the hand that was
not on Scully's knee and rubbed his injured leg.
"The dogs, Mulder," Scully demanded
"Oh, right! The dogs," he said, the smile returning to his face.
He'd shed his jacket and his tie and unbuttoned the top buttons of
his white dress shirt sometime before they had left the office.
As he righted himself now, his shirt shifted, and Scully found
herself entranced by the light wisps of brown hair that poked out
from his collar. When he finally continued his story, she was
only half-listening.
"Anyway, there were three dogs. And I was peeing, cuz I mean
what's the alley behind a bar for, anyway?" he rambled. "So I was
peeing and then all of a sudden the dogs were peeing too. But it
wasn't normal fire-hydrant peeing. They were peeing on each
other, Scully. On each other. Scully? Hey, earth to Scully...
Hey."
Scully finally blinked when she felt him squeeze her knee. His
touch felt pleasant but...strange, and she recognized that he
shouldn't have had his hand there in the first place. But in the
same second she told herself it was okay because what the hell,
she was drunk. So she turned her gaze up to his face. He smiled
at her, and she smiled back, and a lazy wave of delight passed
between them.
"What happened next, Mulder?" Scully eventually managed to ask,
her voice oddly husky.
"The dogs. Right. Well, I was just completely taken aback and so
I went home and I emailed an animal behaviorist about it, and do
you know what she said?"
"Dogs pee on each other when they want to mark their mate?" Scully
offered with a smirk.
"Yes! How did you know that?
Scully laughed. "You must have been pretty drunk that night,
Mulder."
He nodded. "Mmmm hmmm."
"More drunk than you are tonight?
"Oh yeah."
"Why?" Scully's voice was quiet, and her eyes were locked with
his. His face seemed to bob forward and back, toward and then
away from her, over and over, in slow motion, leaving blurry,
white and green trails in its wake.
She blinked and tried to remember how many drinks she had
consumed. When she failed, she decided she would just grab Mulder
by the cheeks and hold him still. And then, since she was going
to be holding him anyway, and since his lips looked so soft and
wet and she had always wondered what it would be like to touch
them, she decided she would give him a little kiss.
But before Scully could move, and before Mulder could tell her why
he'd gotten so drunk the night he saw the dogs peeing on each
other in the alley, the agents were shoved apart by -- again not
surprisingly -- another woman.
Mulder's hand fell unceremoniously from Scully's knee as the woman
wedged herself between their stools and called for the bartender.
The woman ordered a drink, and then without missing a beat she
turned and shoved her bountiful, half-covered breasts in Mulder's
face.
"Hello," Scully heard Mulder say. He sounded amused, but she
could not see his face because the woman was tall, of course, and
her fluffy brown hair was in the way.
Scully liked to imagine that an aggressive woman like this one
scared Mulder to death. But deep down -- or maybe not so deep,
now that she was drunk -- she was afraid that he was excited and
pleased by this stranger's attention and her big breasts, long
legs, and hooker-red lipstick.
Suddenly, Scully wanted the woman out of the way. Yesterday. She
threw back the rest of her drink and then pulled at the woman's
shoulder. "Excuse me."
Ms. Look-At-My-Breasts turned to Scully, looked her up and down,
and then shot her a disapproving grimace that made Scully's heart
burn. Then the woman turned back to Mulder and pressed her lips
to his ear.
"I can tell you're a gentleman and you'd never ditch Plain Jane
over there," the woman whispered loudly enough for half the bar to
hear, "but the second you're done with her, I think you should
give me a call."
A moment later, the woman's arms began to move. She was doing
something between her own body and Mulder's which Scully could not
see. Just as Scully was about to attack the woman for making a
move on her man...uh, partner, she saw the usurper slide her hand
down Mulder's back to cup his ass and squeeze his left butt cheek.
Scully's jaw dropped. She sat there and blinked. And blinked.
And then in a flash of fluffy brown hair and irritatingly strong
perfume, the woman was gone, disappeared back into the crowd, and
Scully could see Mulder again.
He sat unusually still, staring at the back of his hand, his mouth
hanging unattractively open. But then, with a sudden burst of
giggles, he turned his hand to Scully to show her the phone number
written there on his skin in black ball-point ink.
Scully felt the ridiculous urge to throw her drink in his
ridiculous face. But her glass was empty, and instead she crossed
her arms over her chest and took a minute to wonder at her own fit
of jealousy. That last swig of margarita was hitting her hard,
and she was glad. She would be berating herself so hard, were she
sober, because she knew that were she sober, she would never think
of Mulder as hers. Would she?
Whatever.
She shook her head, trying to clear it, but succeeded only in
making the room finally start to spin. Then she cursed herself
for having sworn up and down to Mulder that she could hold her
liquor as staunchly as any true sailor's daughter.
Trying to focus on him, Scully saw that Mulder was still admiring
his conquest. "This never happens to me," he said in a bewildered
tone that Scully didn't buy for a second.
"Suuuure it doesn't," she said, wishing he would put his hovering
hand back on her knee. But then she figured it would be for the
best if he did not. He was tainted now with Ms. Breasts' damned
black ink.
Finally, finally he dropped his hand to his own knee. When he
looked up at Scully, it was with shock and a tiny bit of torment
over her skepticism. She could also see that his eyes were
beginning to droop and she guessed that his 'limit' had been hit,
probably twice thus far.
The room was still spinning and swaying, but Scully swore that
Mulder and his stool scooted again towards her and hers. He
dipped his head down to hers conspiratorially.
"Really," he insisted. "I don't understand where you gets this
idea that women are always throwing themselves at me, Scully, and
that I'm always throwing myself at thems."
Scully tried not to laugh. The man actually seemed serious, in
his own ridiculously inebriated way.
"AhemKersh'sSecretary," she muttered, clearing her throat.
"What?!" Mulder's head perked up and he hit her with a befuddled
little grin. "I never..."
"Maybe not, but she seems pretty convinced that you have."
He shook his head, and Scully swore she saw his eyes spinning in
their sockets. "I never," he said again. "She's not even my
type."
"Shut up, Mulder. I saw a picture of her twin on the cover of one
of those videos that aren't yours."
"Ahh, Scully..." he sighed. Then he swayed forward until his
forehead landed on Scully's shoulder, making her teeter.
She grabbed onto the bar to keep them both from toppling to the
floor. Rolling her eyes, Scully decided Mulder had had enough.
She took his half-empty shot glass from the bar and downed what
was left of whatever it was.
"Big piles of manure. That fucker," she said into Mulder's hair,
which was, by the way, soft and sweet-smelling and delicious.
"Yeah, Kersh. That fucker...fucker. Fucker Kersh. Fuck," Mulder
mumbled. Then he turned his face towards Scully's, rubbed his
cheek against her shoulder, settled in, and closed his eyes.
"Fucker."
Feeling both wistful and queasy, Scully gazed down at him and
smiled. "I think it's time to go home, Mulder," she said, her
lips fluttering against his cheek.
"Yeah. Fucker."
By the time they both scrambled into a cab, falling over and
around and into each other in the process, Mulder had perked up
again and was giggling like never before.
"Where we goin', Scully?" he asked when she told the cabby her
address.
"My place."
"Why your place?" Grinning, he slid across the cab's leather
seat-back to rest heavily against her.
Scully pushed her hand into his hair and scratched his scalp.
"Cuz I want to."
"Okay."
With a growl, Mulder then turned towards Scully and buried his
face again in her neck. She kissed his temple, ignoring the
warning bell sounding in the only tiny part of her brain that
remembered who they were when the sun was out. Then, tormented by
the nauseating bounce and sway of the taxi, she let her head fall
back against the seat and she closed her eyes.
Twenty minutes later, they entered Scully's apartment with their
arms around each other's waists. For support, Scully remembered
to tell herself. Then she and Mulder made a beeline for the
couch, where they both collapsed.
Scully found herself lying on her side, sandwiched between
Mulder's back and the sofa. She held him in the cocoon of her
arms and legs, realizing suddenly that she had neither the energy
nor the desire to let him go.
Turning her head, she stared at the ceiling and tried to remember
to keep breathing. Her stomach was spinning, and her head was
spinning, and the room was spinning. But Mulder, thank God, was
not. He was just a warm heartbeat thrumming against her chest.
"Scully, did your mom sew your name into your underwear when you
were a kid?" he mumbled out of nowhere.
Scully felt proud that she wasn't too drunk to raise an eyebrow,
but then she giggled against the back of Mulder's head. "Um, no.
She wrote my initials on the tags with a black magic marker.
Why?"
"I dunno. Why do you think moms do that, Scully?"
She knew that in the morning she'd be ashamed she had to think
about this one. "Hmm. I think they did it in case if we went
over to a friend's house or something to spend the night our
underwear wouldn't get mixed up with any of the other kids'."
"Mm. Prolly. It's time to sleep, isn't it, Scully?"
"I think so, Mulder."
"M'kay," Mulder sighed.
Scully closed her eyes, but for reasons she would not and could
not consider, her mind kept flashing back to the woman in the bar.
The image of the woman's long hand fondling Mulder tortured her.
She ached as the trespass played over and over and over...
Oh, God.
Dipping her chin, Scully sniffed the back of Mulder's neck only to
find that the woman's bad perfume still clung to him. To keep
herself from retching, she came up with an idea.
"Let me up, Mulder."
"Uhmhuh?"
"I need to get something. Over there," she said, and then she
rolled over, dumping Mulder onto the floor. He hit with a thud
and then bellowed his discomfort, but Scully simply climbed over
him and scrambled to her desk.
"Hi-Liter, ball point, ball point, pencil... Ah ha!" Scully took
the fat, black Sharpie from her desk drawer, held it up, and
licked her lips.
Then she bounced across the room to find Mulder settling back onto
the couch. He was on his back, his eyes closed and his lips
curled up in a blissful little smile. Without a second thought,
Scully straddled his hips, her skirt riding up around her waist.
Mulder gasped, but then his smile grew into a frisky grin and his
eyes slipped slowly open. "Mmm, hi Scully."
"Hi, Mulder," Scully purred with a smile of her own.
"What'cha doin'?" Putting his hands on her hips, he eased her
down onto his lap, and she felt the hard arc of his erection press
between her legs.
Scully giggled. "What are YOU doing, Mulder?"
"Mmm, feelin' good."
"I'll bet." Telling herself she only meant to tease him, she
rubbed herself against the bulge in his pants, giving him one long
stroke. But God he felt good, and God did she want him, and oh
how she wanted to hear him moan like that again.
But she knew that if she tried to make love to him right now, she
would probably throw up. So instead she settled back down on his
lap, took his hand, and began to use the Sharpie to black out the
numbers inscribed there.
"Hey! That's mine," he whined. "That never happens. Wanted to
show the guys." He popped out his bottom lip to pout at her.
"Awww," Scully said. Her tone was patronizing, but she did lift
the marker from Mulder's skin. Then she cocked her head as a
truly naughty thought struck her. "Okay, Mulder."
"Okay?" His eyes widened but then quickly drooped again. She
guessed he had about five more minutes of consciousness left in
him.
"I gotta better idea," Scully said, giggling and bumping against
his erection again -- just because she could, of course. "And you
don't have to worry, Mulder, because your idiot bimbo actually
wrote a '1' before her area code, and that was the only thing I
scribbled out."
She shoved his hand in his face so he could see, but he pulled
from her grasp and slid his palm back onto her hip. Scully
shrugged. His eyes were almost closed anyway, so she turned her
attention to her new project: his forehead.
Mulder, however, seemed to have other ideas. Scully felt him
slowly slip his hands around to cup her ass. She hesitated for a
moment, enjoying how warm and how nice it felt to have him
touching her and pressing against her. There were other places
she would like to feel his firm but gentle contact, but her
mission was too important for her to spend much time wishing his
hands would go there.
Just as she was fumbling again to fix the pen properly in her
grip, however, Mulder began to sit up, squeezing her ass and
leering naughtily.
"No, you don't," she said, pushing and pinning him down with her
free arm as she raised the pen above his forehead.
"Unpf... Scully? What are you doing?"
Scully giggled. "I'm putting my name in my underwear, silly."
"What?!" He scrunched his eyes shut and shook his head
petulantly. "Nooooo..."
Scully rolled her eyes and huffed a strand of hair from her face.
"I gotta do this, Mulder, so just shut up and lay still," she
commanded. And then she pressed her rear back firmly against his
palms in an attempt to distract him. It worked -- he settled
right down and began to knead her pliant bottom.
A moment later, Mulder's eyes slipped blissfully shut. Scully
bent forward, kissed his forehead, and then began to write as
slowly and carefully and clearly as she could, dizzy as she was.
"Scully, I didn't stay at friends' houses much when I was little,"
Mulder murmured as she worked. "But my mom still put my name in.
Why?"
"I dunno, Mulder. Maybe she was hoping, for you," Scully
suggested. Then she capped her pen and smiled. "There, all done.
Just right."
He cracked his eyes open. "Whaduz it say?"
"I'll let you read it yourself, Mulder."
Mulder shifted beneath her, trying to get up. "I wanna see," he
said, but Scully held him down. He didn't put up much of a fight.
"You can't read it right now, anyway, Mulder. Cuz you're stupid,"
she said confidently.
"I am not ssoopid."
"Yes, you are."
"Mmmmm." He turned his head to the side and closed his eyes.
Scully giggled one last time at the cleverness of what she had
written on Mulder's forehead. Then she collapsed down on top of
him, settled her head on his shoulder, and passed out.
She awoke to the feel of something tickling her nose. She
sniffled and twitched, but the tickling just got worse. It felt
like hair, soft and feathery, teasing her face.
And it smelled like...
It smelled like...
Mulder.
Scully's eyes snapped open. The world was bathed in the hazy dark
gray of pre-dawn. As her vision cleared, she found she was
looking at a sideburn. Mulder's sideburn. She was wondering if
he was ever going to get those silly things trimmed when she
realized she was drooling in his ear.
"Sorry, Mulder," she murmured and then closed her mouth.
At least, she tried to rationalize, she no longer had to wonder
why her mattress was breathing. Not to mention what the
hard...thing was that was poking the thigh she seemed to have
wedged between Mulder's legs.
Scully bit her lip, stifling a fierce laugh. Her mind was foggy
and her humor wry, but the horror running through her was real and
profound. Their current...entanglement, however it had come about,
was unacceptable.
She needed to get up, to move away from him. For a thousand
personal and work related reasons, they weren't supposed to get
this close to each other. Ever. Such intense intimacy would be
far too dangerous to the partnership they'd spent years building
and protecting.
But Scully's body felt like a block of lead, and Mulder's body was
supple and warm beneath her. His abrasive cheek pressing against
her chin and lips felt pleasantly masculine. So, too sore, stiff,
and oddly comfortable to stretch or roll or sit up, she lay still
and wondered what the hell they had done last night.
She remembered drinking. Getting more drunk, in fact, than Scully
had been since college. She had no idea how long it had been for
Mulder. Her nose twitched again against his hair, but he remained
dead to the world; it must have been a while.
Scully also had a vague memory of collapsing with Mulder on what
seemed to be, now upon closer consideration, not her bed, but her
couch. She was unsure, however, how long she and Mulder had taken
to pass out. Or what they had done in between.
Dangerous territory, Scully told herself. Fighting a surge of
frustration, she swallowed hard, expecting to find her throat dry
and sour.
Her mouth did taste like three day old beer, but it was wet. Too
wet. She swallowed again. A wave of nausea enveloped her.
"Shit," she murmured. Then she finally rolled off of Mulder and
slunk through the shadows to the bathroom. She threw herself at
the toilet just as her stomach lurched, twisted, and then
exploded, luckily, into the basin.
Despite her petite size and her puny stomach, Scully's retching
was loud, and tempestuous, and well out of her control. She
prayed that Mulder was too far gone to hear her and realize that
she couldn't hold her liquor after all. He would come running to
hold her hair back like the mother-hen he could be, the one she
hated to indulge. The one who would, like her, be reminded of her
cancer.
"Oh God," she rasped when the heaving finally slowed. At least,
she told herself, the darkness of the little room spared her a
good look at the mess she had made.
Expelling a deep breath, she leaned heavily on the toilet seat.
The porcelain was cool against her sweaty palms. Acid burned her
throat and tears stung her eyes. Her head was throbbing. But her
stomach felt so much better.
With a sigh, Scully concluded she wasn't going to die. She just
had to get cleaned up and changed, throw Mulder out of her
apartment, and then sleep the rest of this misery off. She was
reaching up to flush, thanking God that Mulder hadn't awakened,
when the bathroom light flicked on.
Pain lanced straight through Scully's eyes to the back of her
head. She shielded her eyes as Mulder's groggy voice called out
from behind her, "Scully? You okay?"
Scully opened her mouth to speak, but before she could find her
own voice she made the mistake of glancing down into the toilet
bowl. The sight and aroma of regurgitated alcohol mixed with last
night's dinner sent her stomach into a tailspin.
She heaved again. Right there. With Mulder looking on over her
shoulder. At least, she thought, he had the courtesy not to touch
her.
When there was finally nothing left in Scully's belly to expel,
she hung her head in the toilet. Her cheeks were on fire. She
could feel Mulder standing next to her, watching her, pitying her.
Laughing at her. When she glanced over she found his knees just
inches from her face. She dared not look up at him.
As she spit into the toilet one last time, Scully wondered if the
voluptuous woman she suddenly remembered hitting on Mulder the
night before could vomit daintily, like a lady.
"I'm fine, Muller," she murmured impatiently, hoping he would go
away. To underscore her statement, she flushed the toilet.
Still hiding her face, Scully moved to the sink and began to wash
up. Mulder remained silent and still next to her. She braced
herself for the wholly inappropriate joke she was sure would be
flying from his mouth any second now...
But he said nothing.
"Mulder, some privacy, please? I can do this myself," Scully
growled.
Still he said nothing and did nothing. He was standing just
behind her, and as she sucked water into her mouth, swished, and
spit, she fought the urge to elbow him in the stomach.
"Mulderrrr, go," she groaned when her mouth was empty.
"Scully..."
"What?"
"Scully?"
"What?!"
"Scuhlly."
With sharp movements, Scully slathered Crest onto her toothbrush.
"Really, Mulder, this is a fun game, but you don't need to be here
while I brush my teeth. In fact, I think it would be best if you
went home now and got ready for work and we forgot this ever
happened."
She heard Mulder gasp behind her. "Work," he whispered, as if
speaking the word aloud would usher in the apocalypse.
"Yes, Mulder, work. That place we have to be in ohhh ninety
minutes or so."
"Scully," he said again.
"Mulder!"
Scowling, Scully finally turned her eyes up to the big mirror over
the sink. When she saw Mulder's reflection, she dropped her
toothbrush and brought her hand up to her mouth. "What the..." she
began to ask. And then she remembered everything.
Her first impulse was to laugh, which she did, giggling through
her fingers. Her second impulse was to pack a bag, catch a plane
to anywhere-but-here, and never look back. But just about all she
really could do was stare. And stare. At Mulder's forehead.
"Oh my God," she whispered. Oh my God.
Mulder's face was blank and pale, stark in contrast to the black
letters. The words were backwards in the mirror but written in
two neat rows of her own big block print:
PROPERTY OF DANA SCULLY
Property of Dana Scully. Abruptly, Scully spun around and looked
up at Mulder. As she shook her head, her mouth fell open. But
she quickly found that she had nothing to say for herself. What
had she done?
"Scully, you marked me," Mulder declared.
"What?" Scully had a flashing vision of dogs cavorting in an
alley. It was harmless enough, until this same vision proceeded
to blend seamlessly into one of herself straddling Mulder's
dangerously aroused lap and tagging his forehead. Shit.
"You pissed on my head!" he asserted, his voice cracking.
"You let me."
"I was drunk!"
"So was I!"
Mulder looked at his hand and the phone number Scully had begun to
scratch out. "Yeah, drunk and jealous, I'd say," he mumbled.
A speck of anger had flared in his eyes, but the corner of his
mouth quirked up in an infuriating little smirk that made Scully
want to give him a black eye to go with his branded forehead. Her
face burned like the sun, her stomach churned, and she thought she
was going to throw up yet again.
What have I done? she wondered again. Mulder was amused, the
bastard, and Scully had revealed too much with her drunken but
perfectly clear penmanship. The memory of his erection feeling
hard and oh-so-good pressed between her thighs last night came
unbidden to the front of her mind.
Mulder's erection! Good God. Scully struggled in vain to push
the memory away, thinking that maybe she was indeed a dog in heat,
after all. She remembered last night far too well, now. She
remembered her spinning head, her hypersensitive skin, her
jealousy, her arousal, her desire to...kiss...
"Hey! Scully! Hellooooo." Mulder waved his hand in front of
her, pulling her back to the present. He had been alternately
ranting and laughing just a few inches from her face for some
time, his own face candy-apple red. And black, of course. But
Scully had hardly heard a word, so lost was she in her battle with
her own unacceptable truth.
"What...what, Mulder?" she asked, trying to look anywhere but at him
and her revealing handywork.
"I said, you say you weren't trying to mark me, to claim me. If
that's the case, are you going to explain this or what?" Bending
low, his eyes roguishly twinkling, he shoved his marred forehead
in Scully's face.
Scully winced. She could hardly look at him, and yet she could
hardly not. The letters on his skin were so...big. So obvious.
Possessive. How could she even begin to explain? How could she
take back this confession she had not meant to make, even to
herself? How long would Mulder laugh at her?
"Mulder," Scully finally began as calmly as she could. "We were
both very, very drunk, and...ah...together. And I don't see why we
have to make a mountain out of this. It was a silly drunken
prank, and I just... I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote
that. I wasn't thinking at all."
"Weren't you?" Mulder asked quietly. His tone was skeptical, but
his voice was low, dark. Scully wondered if it was disappointment
she heard. His face wasn't laughing anymore.
For a long moment, Mulder searched Scully's eyes. He seared her
with the same dark green intensity he reserved for The Truth. He
was waiting for her to give more of it away. As if she hadn't
done enough damage already. And Scully wasn't even an alien or
mutant. Well, for the most part, anyway.
Eventually the tall devil saw something he liked amidst the
humiliation and frustration rippling through Scully's body. His
eyes began to twinkle again, and he grinned -- a big, fat,
pompous, I'm-the-man Muldergrin.
Great. Scully wondered why she even bothered trying to lie to him
anymore. She knew exactly what she'd been thinking when she put
her name on him. And he knew it, too.
Contemplating escape, Scully glanced at the open bathroom door.
But Mulder saw and scowled. Before she could make a break for it,
he leaned forward and placed his palms firmly on the edge of the
sink, trapping her between his arms. Scully's heart sank a few
inches, but she had known there was no way he was going to let
this go.
"Really, Scully," Mulder drawled impishly, "I'm flattered, but
couldn't you have just sent me a valentine? Maybe one with a nice
removable name tag inside?"
Scully felt a sudden, ridiculous urge to growl and snap at him.
"A valentine? Mulder, I'm gonna... I'm..." In one fluid movement,
she pushed from the trap of Mulder's arms, grabbed him by the ear,
and shoved his head into the sink.
"Hey! Ow!"
Scully ignored his protest. She reached around and held him
firmly by the scruff of his annoying neck. Then she turned on the
faucet.
"That's hot!" he complained.
Scully tested the water to find that it was warm, at worst.
"Baby," she muttered.
A moment later the water ran down Mulder's face and into his
mouth, muffling his protests. Scully rubbed soap over her hand
and began to scrub his forehead.
His skin and hair were soft and warm, and Scully felt distressed
at how much she liked touching him this way, washing him. And
despite his grumbling and the fact that he was sputtering water
all over the front of her blouse, Mulder's body had relaxed under
her firm caress.
Shaking her head, Scully tried to ignore the intimacy of their
contact, concentrating hard on erasing the offending statement.
Property of Dana Scully.
Scully half-chuckled. Fat chance. This was Mulder the Unruly.
Mulder the Ditcher. Mulder the Breaker of Protocol. Mulder the
Tease. Mulder the Flirt. Mulder the Master of Shallow Sexual
Innuendo. If he was truly hers -- if he would ever be hers --
Scully thought she could at least get him to behave every now and
then. But when had that ever happened?
Property of Dana Scully, indeed.
(End Part 1/2)
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