No Win Situation (1/2) Rated NC-17 by Parrotfish (svdf49e@prodigy.com) completed 1/29/97 Category: S, MSR Summary: Their affair revealed, Mulder and Scully have been given new partners. His is bad, and hers is worse. Together, they must suffer through the power games of their professional lives while learning a very different lesson about power in their private lives. Author's note: This is a sequel to "Caught in the Act," available at an archive near you. I hadn't intended to write one, but when I finished "Trust 3" (did anyone read "Trust 3?"), I felt the strong need to write some mind candy. Since I often like my mind candy to have a point, and since I left poor Mulder and Scully in such a fix at the end of "Caught in the Act," I figured I'd scratch my itch (and yours!) by continuing that story. And now it looks like this won't be the last we've heard of this storyline, either. This is rated NC-17 for extremely graphic sexual situations, including mild bondage. __________________________ Hugh Lester was an idiot. It was bad enough that he was a closed-minded, rule-spouting, ass-kissing, unimaginative, insensitive, tasteless career-ladder climber. He was also stupid -- painfully so. Mulder was well aware that few agents came anywhere near his own intelligence quotient -- the fact that he'd managed to hook up with someone as bright as Dana Scully was a stroke of incredible luck. But most people had some mental strengths, and many were much smarter than he about some things. But not Hugh Lester. The only prize the vapid, well-bred Hugh Lester was likely to bring home was for Upper Class Twit of the Year. Mulder knew this extraordinarily atrocious partnership was a punishment visited on him by the Powers That Be. The same Powers that had separated him from Scully after their affair had come to light as a result of the unfortunate combination of a carelessly unlocked hotel room door and a vindictive fellow- agent who didn't know how to knock. Scully and he had been swiftly separated and re-partnered -- and it was only after Scully had brought all her powers of persuasion to bear that she'd even been allowed back in the field. For the millionth time, Mulder cursed that foul hotel room door that had not been set to lock automatically. Who ever heard of a hotel room door that doesn't lock, for Christ's sake? That door, he was convinced, was possessed by demonic spirits that were out to get him. That door had gotten him stuck in Livingston, Montana, with Hugh Lester for a partner. Mulder sighed heavily as he kicked off his shoes and flopped onto the still-made hotel bed. Okay, so maybe the first case he dragged Lester on shouldn't have involved the irate ghost of a long-dead Native American chief who, angry at the construction of a housing development atop a sacred burial ground, had begun causing miscarriages and stillbirths among women living there. But it wasn't his fault. That's just what came up -- so to speak. But Lester was such a conservative son of a bitch that he wasn't even willing to consider the admittedly more plausible explanation that had spawned the investigation in the first place -- the possibility that a local factory had dumped toxic waste in the area. No, Lester was so goddamn politically incorrect, so unwilling to consider any possibilities outside his incredibly narrow world view, that the best explanation he could come up with was coincidence. Coincidence. At least if Scully were here, she'd be hell-bent on nailing some living human culprit to the wall. Mulder's biggest hassle would have been finding enough evidence to get her to consider a less conventional possibility, though she'd still have her doubts. Scully. Mulder reached over to the night table, picked up the phone and dialed. "Scully," came the familiar voice through the line. "Hi." "I thought it would be you. How's it going?" "Lester is an idiot." "Why am I not surprised?" "What about your new playmate?" There was a long pause before she replied. "He's okay." Mulder didn't like the sound of that. She changed the subject before he could ask. "What are you wearing?" He smiled. "Oh, nothing special. Just a little leather g-string I picked up at the Lurid Livingstonian." "Mulder, there's no such store as the Lurid Livingstonian." "Work with me here, Scully." "Oh, so that's how it is?" Her voice was suddenly breathy and half an octave deeper. He could tell she knew exactly how it was. "So what are you doing?" he asked, tense with anticipation. "Me? Not much. Just sitting and thinking." "What about?" "About you." "What about me?" He could hear the smirk in her reply. "I was just thinking about that thing you do." "What thing I do?" God, she was good at this. "That thing with your mouth." "My mouth?" "Mmm-hmm. On my breast." "Your breast?" Already he was losing the ability to form coherent, independent thoughts. "Yeah. When your mouth is on my breast, and your lips are sucking on my nipple, and your teeth graze the tip just a little. I really like it when you do that." "I really like doing that." He shifted down in the bed, tugging at the crotch of his suit pants to make room for his erection. "Every once in a while, I can feel the tip of your tongue flick over the point of my nipple. It makes me shiver and wish you were inside me." "Me too." Who would have guessed that Dana Scully's formidable talent of articulation would ever be used to give the world's most exciting phone sex? It was an aspect of her Mulder had never even had the creativity to imagine. The first time she'd done it, he'd been so shocked that he'd come almost instantly at the sound of her seductive voice. But now that he'd heard it three or four times, he settled into the rhythm of it, letting the joy of the tease wash over him in waves. He loved her for knowing how badly he needed her when they were apart. "Usually, while your mouth is working at my breast, I can feel the palm of your hand resting against my belly and then start working down." Mulder's hand was in fact that moment carefully unzipping his pants. "When you finally get there and your finger slips inside -- that's my favorite moment. I love your hands, Mulder. They're so ... expressive." "My hands love you, too, Scully." His voice was ragged. "At the moment, unfortunately, they're loving you in absentia." The expression of that love was a tight fist that had grabbed hold of his now-freed erection. He squeezed at the base of his cock, not rubbing yet, knowing she would bring him there in her own time. "When you make love to me with your hand, I can feel the tip of your finger press against the front of my vagina. There's this one spot there that you always find, like you know exactly where it is. That spot is wired directly to the pleasure center of my brain. When you touch me there, and your mouth is on my breast, I feel like a tuning fork that's just been struck. It's like I'm humming with perfect pitch, a pure, harmonious note." He could hear her tremble at the memory of his touch. Without conscious thought, his hand had begun to stroke the length of his shaft. He groaned. "Yeah. That's the sound you make while you're doing it." "I can't help it, Scully." "I know. Because when that finger pulls out and goes to the tip of my clitoris, and I feel it massaging me there, I can't seem to shut up, either. You make me want to scream." Mulder could see it, could feel the hot, damp softness of her in her voice. God, she was incredible, the way she did this to him. The raw honesty of the way she talked about it, told him exactly how he made her feel, leaving out none of the details. There was a time when he would have expected this kind of thing to embarrass her. He would have thought she would find a phone conversation like this one slightly disgusting, or at least juvenile. He was wrong. Part of her ability to speak so graphically about any and every part of the body, he supposed, came from her professional background as a pathologist. She had, after all, cut into every imaginable human body part, and some not-so-human ones. But this was no clinical discussion of an autopsy. This was hot, raunchy, wildly erotic. It was exciting. What Mulder had learned, perhaps had always suspected, about Scully was that she was a passionate, warm, generous woman who was ashamed of nothing that happened between them -- the same way she was sure of herself in so many other areas of her life. She was selective, careful about whom she graced with glimpses of this very private aspect of her personality. But once she'd chosen to let him in, to give him this confidence, she went all the way. And all the way was as far as he needed to go. And he needed this. Mulder's hand broke it's steady rhythm to reach down and cup his tight balls, rolling them gently with the thought of Scully squirming restlessly beneath his touch. "I have to touch you then, Mulder," she was saying. "Reach for your erection and make you feel what I feel. Can you feel it?" "Yes," was all he could manage. "Good. I want you to feel it, to feel me there with you. Feel my hand stroking you. Long, slow strokes at first. Then harder, faster ones, until your hips are pumping, pushing you up through my grasp. That feeling, when you respond to my touch, makes me downright giddy. I used to try to imagine what that would be like -- I mean before I'd ever seen it. Before I felt it. I never knew how beautiful you'd be, how your muscles would tense in time with my hand. How your hand would take up the rhythm, how we'd play each other in this erotic pas de deux." She paused, waiting to hear if he'd respond. He was beyond words. She continued. "You can always tell when I'm close, Mulder. When my senses have achieved their most finely attuned state, so that every hair, every pore, every blood vessel is singing with the pleasure of it." Mulder closed his eyes and pursed his lips as the motion of his hand increased, his hips writhing in a grinding, circular motion. Her voice was like heat applied directly to the head of his pumping cock, and his hand was merely a physical manifestation of her words. "When you bring me to orgasm with your hand, when I slip over into that wild place, your finger slides back inside, and out, and in and out again, so fast that the orgasm lasts and lasts until I think I can't stand it any more. And then it's not your finger inside. It's your penis, it's all of you inside me, and it's like laughing and crying and ... and loving." The hypnotic quality of her voice had wrapped him in a trance, transporting him to another place, another reality. She was there. It was real. "Your hands at my hips, pulling me closer, pulling me around you like a blanket on a cold night. It's like the tip of you cuts right through me to touch my brain, so that we complete a circuit and the electricity flows, crackles, burns. Can you feel it, Mulder? Can you?" "Yes." "Can you?" "Yes!" And then he was coming hard, his back arched high off the bed, phone clutched to his ear, cock in fist, coming in a long burst just as though she were there with him, until he felt the loneliness of hot semen spray across the taught muscles of his belly, and he knew she wasn't. "Oh god, Scully," he groaned. "I wish you were here." "Me too, Mulder. I wish I could have seen it." "You do?" he asked, almost shyly. "Yeah. Would you show me sometime?" "Sure." There was a long, warm silence. "You'd better get some rest," she said at last. "You too. Good night." "Good night, Mulder. Sleep well." He did. If possible, the next night Mulder was even more pissed off at his new partner. Without so much as consulting him, Lester had informed the local authorities that there was no suspicious cause for the unusually high rate of miscarriages and stillbirths in the area. They'd closed the investigation with no consideration of Mulder's concerns. "Oh, well," he told himself. "It's not like I ever would have convinced them to evacuate the development and tear down the houses. And at least I can go home tomorrow." He had settled for informing the local tribal leaders of the problem and hoping they knew some way, short of urban renewal, to appease the spirit of Chief Brown Hawk. He dialed the phone. "Scully." "Hey. It's me. I'll be home tomorrow." "So soon?" "Why? Am I cramping your style?" "Of course not, Mulder." Odd. The words sounded flat and strained. He'd expected a cutting comeback, but he didn't get it. "You okay, Scully?" "I'm fine, Mulder." All his mental alarms tripped. "You sure? Did you have a bad day?" "Yeah. Well, sort of." "Everything okay with Ryckman?" "Fine." The terse answer was altogether unconvincing, but he knew there was no point pressing her for more if she wasn't offering it. "I can't wait to see you, Scully." "Me too. Try to miss me a lot, okay?" "No problem." "See you tomorrow." "Mmm-hmm. Bye." Click. Mulder didn't sleep as well that night, eager to get home and reassure himself that he'd imagined a problem where there was none. It was late the next night when his key hit the lock in Scully's apartment door. He could see the light was on even before he opened it, so he wasn't surprised to find her on the couch sipping a glass of wine. "Hi." "Hi." He dropped his suitcase just inside the door and shed his coat before crossing to her. He was halfway through the living room when he noticed the cast on her right hand. "What happened?' he asked as he sat beside her. "Broken." "How?" "I hit something hard." "What?" She hesitated. "A chin." "What? Whose?" "Ryckman's." "YOU HIT RYCKMAN?" Mulder was incredulous. He'd never seen Scully hit anyone in anger. And she must have been pretty angry to hit her own partner. "Yeah, well. He had it coming." "What did he do?" Mulder was already furious without even knowing the details. "Mulder, stay out of this." "What did he do?" "Promise me you'll let me handle this." "Handle what? Scully, if you don't tell me what he did, I'm gonna break the other hand!" She sighed and closed her eyes. "Okay. It seems Agent Ryckman figures that a woman who'll shag one partner will shag 'em all." "He propositioned you?" Mulder's eyes were black with anger. To his surprise, Scully laughed. "Propositioned? That's not a striking offense." "You mean it's happened before?" "Of course it has." "Why didn't you ever tell me?" "You never asked." He hated that answer. "So what did he do?" "Let's just call it an illegal body check." "He made a pass at you?" "In a big way." "Jesus! I'll kill him!" "You will not. Look, Mulder, I already broke his jaw. Believe me -- this," she said, holding up her plaster-encased right hand, "is nothing in comparison. He won't be eating solid food for a month." Despite himself, Mulder grinned. He knew the only thing worse to Ryckman than being rejected by a pretty little redhead was getting his jaw broken by that same pretty little redhead. "So when's the hearing?" She sipped her wine and didn't answer. "Scully? When's the disciplinary hearing?" "There won't be one." "WHAT?" "I said, there won't be one." "Why the hell not?" "Isn't it obvious?" "No, it is not obvious! That bastard paws at you, and you, you of all people, are gonna let him get away with it?" "He's not getting away with it, Mulder. I've already spoken to Skinner privately. Ryckman will be on wiretap duty for the next half-century, if Skinner has anything to say about it. And I'll be getting a new partner." "Wiretap? The asshole should be drummed out of the Bureau!" "Don't you get it, Mulder? I can't afford another sexual scandal. Can't you see how that would look? One partner 'paws' me, as you so eloquently put it, and I fight like a tiger to defend him. Another partner 'paws' me and I haul him up on charges. What would that do to my credibility?" "But they're completely different situations!" "Of course they are -- to us. But to our superiors, they're both just sex between partners. And I'll end up looking capricious and arbitrary." "But that's not fair..." "Welcome to the real world, Mulder." By now, Mulder was up and pacing, doing his caged animal routine. Scully knew it well. It was the one he went into every time he found evidence of a hidden agenda, a covert operation or a multinational conspiracy, only to have the evidence stolen and the eyewitnesses discredited -- or killed. She'd seen him this way many times before. It was how he got when he saw truth denied, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it. She didn't resent him for being so stubbornly unrealistic as to believe that justice should and could be served. In fact, she loved him for it. But sometimes it was so damn tiring. END 1/2 From parrotfish@ibm.net Wed Jan 29 10:09:28 1997 No Win Situation (2/2) Rated NC-17 by Parrotfish She watched him pace for a while. “This whole thing can’t possibly come as a surprise to you,” she said finally. “No? Why not? Isn’t this supposed to be the 90’s? The post- Anita Hill age, when charges of sexual harassment are taken seriously?” “Oh, come on, Mulder. It’s a lot more complicated than that, and you know it. Big institutions are notoriously ill-equipped to handle the subtleties of human behavior. First, they do what thousands of years of socialization have taught -- men lead, women follow. Or better yet, stay home. Then one day women start demanding more. So the big institutions start to adapt. Women start getting into traditionally male roles. But thousands of years of culturally dictated gender roles don’t disappear overnight, and men start using sex as a way to control women in the workplace. So the institutions adapt again -- by implementing blanket policies. ‘No sex between co-workers.’ ‘No sex between professors and students.’ ‘No sex between partners.’ They don’t distinguish between the good kind and the bad kind. Just, “No sex.’ It’s not an X-file. And it’s not going to change in a hurry.” “It’s certainly not going to change if no one fights it. Scully, I can’t believe I’m hearing you talk this way. You sound so resigned -- like you’re willing to just accept this. What the hell is wrong with you?” He was throwing it in her face now, standing there defiantly, arms crossed as though he were grilling a suspect. That pissed her off. “Come off it, Mulder! It’s easy enough for you to preach. You don’t have to pay the price of martyrdom!” She saw her words hit home, stinging more than she’d intended. The word “martyrdom” hung in the air between them, ringing with many meanings. Scully closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mulder. That’s not true. You’re always willing to pay the price. It’s just that you can’t this time. Not on this one.” He let out a long breath and sat down next to her. “I know. I’m sorry.” “No. Please. It’s not your fault.” She reached for his hand with her good one and laced her fingers in his. “The point, Mulder, is that the price is too high.” “Why? Why is it too high?” “You still don’t get it, do you? If I were to bring Ryckman up on charges, that would mean giving up on ever working with you again. If I publicly accuse one partner of sexual harassment, do you think they’d ever in a million years consider giving me a partner I was known to be sleeping with?” Mulder was silent. “Please, Mulder. I need you to understand. I have to chose my battles carefully. In the meantime, at least Skinner knows. He’ll do what he can.” Mulder reached for her and drew her into his arms. “I hate this, Scully.” “I know.” The amazing thing was how truly and honestly he did hate this. It shocked and disgusted him. In some ways, Scully thought, he’s so incredibly naive. It was so far outside his world view to see sex politically, to use his masculinity as a means of wielding power, that he was actually appalled when others did it. Oh, he understood the relationship between sex and power. After all, the man had a Ph.D. in psychology. But he understood it only on the personal level. In a way, the fragility of his self- image made him see sex that way. His eagerness to please her in bed was, she knew, a way of repaying her for love he still felt deep down he didn’t deserve. In fact, his sexual solicitousness bordered on submission at times. But he could never carry that game outside the personal sphere. She looked at him with fond eyes. He wanted so badly to do something for her ... to make this better somehow. She smiled wickedly. Well, all right then. She’d let him. “There is something you can do for me, Mulder to help me work through this, I mean. You know -- take out my frustration.” He heard the change in her tone immediately and knew in what direction her thoughts had strayed. He tightened his arms around her and brought his lips to her ear. “Anything,” he whispered. That was exactly what she wanted to hear. “Come on,” she said, standing and taking him by the hand. They walked to the bedroom together. She went to the closet and rummaged around as he watched curiously. His eyebrows arched questioningly when she emerged with a long, blue silk scarf. “Do you trust me, Mulder?” she asked. “You know I do.” “Enough to let me do exactly what I want?” He licked his lips as the implications of her question turned into mental images. “I want you do to exactly what you want,” he replied. She tied the scarf tightly around his eyes, thinking as she did that this would be for him, entirely for him, though she would let him think it was for her, if that made it easier. Easier to see that, however things worked outside this room, in here power was wielded only when it was given willingly. That it was used only benevolently. That submitting was a kind of power in and of itself. That in the end, the power was always shared. When the scarf was secured so he couldn’t see, Scully’s fingertips drifted gently down his cheek to his neck. She stopped at the pulse there. “Your heart is racing,” she said. “Why?” He didn’t answer. “Tell me what you’re thinking!” she said, her voice demanding obedience. “I’m thinking ... that you’re going to make love to me.” The voice that came from her six-foot-two lover and erstwhile FBI partner stunned her. It was the voice of a child -- hopeful and slightly fearful. Had the blindfold caused such a change so quickly?” “Is that what you want?” she asked. “Yes. Please.” Those two words tugged at her heart. “All right, then. I will.” She walked around behind him and slid his jacket off, then circled in front and undid his tie. When she pulled at his shirt to release it from his pants, he reached to help. “Don’t move!” she said, gently but firmly. His arms fell to his sides. She undid his buttons one by one, then took each hand in turn to unbutton the cuffs. The shirt slid off in her hands. “Raise your arms,” she instructed. She lifted his T-shirt over his head, careful not to disturb the blindfold. The belt buckle was next, then the buttons and zipper on his trousers. She was careful not to brush against him, undressing him as efficiently as possible. Bending down, she untied and removed his shoes, then his socks. The pants and boxers were lowered a moment later. “Step out of them,” she commanded. He did. Mulder stood before her stark naked except for the blindfold. She stepped back to look at him. At first, he was semi-erect, his penis curving gently away from his belly. As she watched in silence -- as he felt her watching -- it grew, thickened, hardened until it stood straight out, pointing boldly at her. Still she watched. “Scully?” he finally ventured. “Don’t speak.” He shifted from foot to foot. “Don’t move!” He stood still. His color heightened, a red tinge starting at his cheeks and spreading down his neck and chest. He was embarrassed to just stand there and be looked at, she realized. She undressed quietly and waited several more minutes before speaking. “You are beautiful, Mulder,” she whispered. “Scully...” “I told you not to speak! Just listen.” She fell silent again long enough for his blush to deepen. “You are beautiful, Mulder,” she began again. “You are not perfect. Your nose is too big. Your arms are too long. Your eyes are set too close together. But those individual characteristics somehow merge into a harmony that is beautiful.” She stopped speaking again, watching to see the effect of her words. It was immediate and obvious. His hard-on grew redder, thicker. She smiled. Approaching him silently, she leaned over and licked at one nipple, wetting it. He stepped backward at the unexpected contact. “Do not move! Do you understand me?” “Yes.” “Don’t speak!” She repeated her action, this time blowing softly across the nipple after licking it. It stiffened to a small, pink point nestled in the sparse hair on his chest. “I love to watch your body respond to me,” she said quietly, laying the palm of her hand against his chest. He swayed forward into her touch. She jerked her hand away, scratching his hardened nipple as she went. He flinched. “I mean it, Mulder,” she said with enough menace to let him know it had not been an accident. “No matter what I do, you will not move unless I have given you permission to do so.” She circled him again, touched him lightly with one finger at the base of his neck, then ran it down along his back, into and down the crack of his ass. When she arrived at the juncture of his legs, she reached between them to cup his balls. He jumped. She squeezed. Hard. Not hard enough to damage. But hard enough to hurt. She said nothing. By now, he knew the message. This last action had not been planned. In fact, she was probably more surprised by it than he. She had never done this kind of thing before. But there was something about the way he had placed himself at her command that excited her, made her want to exercise the authority he had so willingly given. And somehow, she knew that in testing that authority, she was letting him know how much his trust meant to her. He was letting her set the limits, no questions asked, as he did in so many other ways. For a man who had led such a solitary, sovereign existence, this was a striking change -- but one that had brought him relief, eased his solitude. This was giving them both something they desperately needed. They were giving it to each other. Cupping his balls gently again, she rolled them with her fingers, tested their weight. He stood still. “Good boy,” she cooed, kissing his back. She circled again to stand before him. “What do you want, Mulder?” He said nothing. “Do you want me to touch you?” She saw him tremble slightly and decided not to call him on it. “Think about it, Mulder,” she went on. “Think about how beautiful you look standing there.” She placed a hand gently on his inner thigh and squeezed. “Think about how open you are to me right now. How much I want you.” She knelt before him. She felt the muscles in his leg tense, bracing for her touch in a more sensitive place. She didn’t disappoint him. Very, very slowly, she leaned forward and licked the underside of his cock from base to tip. To his credit, he didn’t move. She swirled her tongue around the head once, twice. He still didn’t move. She opened her mouth and slid the head inside. His hips jerked. “Uh-uh,” she breathed, and backed away until she wasn’t touching him any more. And waited. When she finally leaned in and took him in her mouth again, he managed to stay still. Slowly, she slid her lips further down around him, taking in half, and then came back out so the tip rested lightly between her teeth. He became rigid with tension in the effort not to move, to obey her. She repeated the motion a few more times, sliding her hands behind him to hold his buttocks firmly. Then, without warning, she pushed him forward to take in all of him. His knees bent and he moaned. And she was gone. She waited, watching in fascination as his Adam’s apple bobbed repeatedly. He was trying to regain control. When he seemed calmer, she came back, sucked his raging hardness in again and setting up a steady in-and-out rhythm. He was sweating with the sensation of it and the strain of controlling himself, of standing perfectly still. Eventually, it was too much and he thrust forward again. And she backed away. And so it went. She played him like this for what must have been half an hour, until he was able to remain motionless almost until the moment he was about to come. Each time he gave in, pumped himself into her mouth, she backed off until he brought himself back under control. It took all his powers of concentration. There was nothing else in the universe but this exercise in willpower. He was focused completely on it -- on the feeling of her mouth on him and the need not to move. It was as though his body occupied every square millimeter of a very small, intimate universe, one that could reward patience with excruciatingly sweet sensation. But it was so hard. He was so hard. Oh, god, there she was again. She was taking him into that incredibly hot, wet mouth of hers, he was sliding deeper, he was so hard, so hard, his balls were tightening and oh god he was going to come, he had to come, he couldn’t not come, he was so close and don’t move don’t move oh god don’t move... And then he was falling forward, and she was beneath him, pulling him, they fell onto the bed and the blindfold was off, she’d ripped it off him and she was pulling him into her, she was naked and soft and warm and he was inside her, not her mouth now but her tight, burning cunt, she was around him and inside him and everywhere and he completely lost control. Scully wrapped her legs around his back and held on tightly as he pumped wildly at her, all the hard-won control she’d forced on him snapped, shattered, fled. He was totally overwhelmed with fucking her, every aspect of his being, mind and body, poised on the knife edge of absolute sensation. He grunted with every furious thrust and she heaved her hips up to meet him, inviting him, demanding him. The sight, the feeling of him, hard and wild and out of control, slamming into her with such total abandon, brought her to a sudden, fierce climax. She screamed as the muscles of her vagina clamped down on him and her back arched and her head thrashed and the electric thrill of him shocked her to the core. Without thought, without consciousness, he rammed himself home at the moment she flew over that volcano’s edge, and she was falling into fire, she became fire, and he fell into her, and she consumed him. The yell torn from his throat as he came was inarticulate but more expressive than any words she had ever heard. And then he was limp on top of her, bearing none of his own weight, and she reached up to stroke his hair. “Mulder?” No answer. “Mulder? You can speak now,” she said with a smile. Still no answer. He had blacked out. She stroked his hair and his back until consciousness returned and she felt the flutter of his eyelashes on her shoulder. “You all right?” “Oh my god ... Scully ... I ...” “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.” He hugged her fiercely, his now-limp penis slipping wetly from inside her as he rolled over to pull her on top of him. They lay together in silence for some time. “It’ll be all right, Mulder,” she whispered at last, raising her head to look at him. “We’ll be all right.” He smiled. “Well, one thing’s for sure.” “Hmm?” “I pity the poor bastard who messes with you.” She laughed lightly, a merry laugh she wouldn’t have thought possible an hour earlier. She settled back down against him happily, pulling the covers around them. “Thanks, Mulder,” she sighed sleepily. “No,” he murmured. “Thank you.” END