Lost in You
Set during Arcadia. Cannon-divergent. Rated M.
A/N: This little writing exercise wouldn’t leave me alone until I refined and shaped it into a full-fledged fic. So here it is. Some parts old, some new, but all of it an attempt to finally do this story justice and give it closure. I’m really attached to this one, for some reason, so please read and review, and let me know what you think.
Mulder can’t take it anymore. Being in this perfect little house that’s anything but little– or perfect– with Scully. Seeing that ring glaring back at him, taunting him, every time he looks at her left hand. A constant reminder of the life he doesn’t have, can’t have, but desperately wants– a revelation that has recently taken hold in his mind and hasn’t let go.
He wants it all. The honeymoon videos. The wedding albums. The house. Not this one, though. Their own house, with their own dishes and welcome mat– not the ones the FBI picked out for them.
He quietly climbs underneath the sheets next to her sleeping form before he has a chance to change his mind, the early morning light nothing but a whisper on the horizon. A promise in the sky. For a new day. For something more.
“Scully,” he pleads desperately, nuzzling her neck. “Let’s be Rob and Laura… just for one night.”
“Mulder,” she whimpers as he runs his tongue along the shell of her ear. Her hand crawls, finger by finger, along the nape of his neck– reading him, learning him, goosebump by raised goosebump, guiding her path as if it were Braille– and he shivers at her exploratory touch.
“I don’t want to be Rob and Laura. I just want to be us.”
He pulls back to search her eyes for any hint of reluctance, his heart galloping with reckless abandon in his chest as his mind reels from what she’d just said, and he wonders if she’s even aware of it, or if her words were uttered in the hazy aftermath of slumber, after being thrust so suddenly from its grip. It takes everything in him to steady his tremulous hand as he brushes a strand of fiery red hair away from her face, studying her as though he’s not entirely convinced she isn’t a figment of his imagination, that he’s not dreaming this moment into existence. The air in his lungs grows stale, and he finally remembers to breathe.
“Do you ever think about us? Like this?“
His words are spoken so softly, so hesitantly, he’s afraid they’ll burn and disintegrate to ash before they even reach her ears– as if they were inscribed on a piece of flash paper and set ablaze to be carried off by the wind.
Because he has. Thought of them like this. Arguing over who gets the shower first thing in the morning or who took out the trash last night…
Or how it would feel to wake up to the sensation of her small body pressed tightly against his before he even opens his eyes. Of being acquainted with the feel of soft skin against skin, of the steady rise and fall of her chest, only allowing his selfish eyes a glimpse of her laying next to him out of the need to reassure himself that he’s not actually dreaming.
He’s had six, long years to think about it. To imagine it. And he doesn’t want to imagine anymore.
“Yes,” she answers in kind, and he has to stop himself from eagerly swallowing the word in a kiss as soon as it leaves the perch of her perfect, plump lips.
Her admission, however, takes him aback. It shouldn’t. But it does. The beat of his heart falters, and he’d almost be afraid it had stopped altogether were it not for how incredibly alive he feels laying here with Scully so close he can feel the flutter of her shallow breaths against his skin. A sensation that sends a tingle through every nerve ending in his body.
This case has affected him in ways he could’ve scarcely predicted. The staunch lines of friendship– of professionalism– becoming more blurred with each passing day.
That’s what happens when you draw lines in the sand– they’re not impervious to wind or water. The shifting sands of their partnership have changed between them lately. He feels it in the ground beneath his feet. In every tidal breath he takes in. Deep in the pit of his stomach when she walks into a room, and he has to remind his heart to keep beating.
He feels it especially now, with this case. With her lying in his arms. Not as Laura Petrie. But as Dana Scully.
And just a little bit terrifying.
He’s stared down the barrel of a gun. Looked evil in the face without so much as a flinch. Played the game of Risk so many times, he’s surprised he’s made it out with his sense and wit still (mostly) intact and, if he were a betting man, he’d think his chances at living a long, healthy life were slim to none. His luck is bound to run out. Eventually.
But despite the knowledge of that fact, or perhaps because of it, what scares him more than anything is making it another six years on this earth without letting Scully know how much he loves her.
He’s told her, in so many words…
You’re my one in five billion.
You’ve kept me honest. Made me a whole person.
But he wants to show her. Needs to show her. With his lips and his hands and his body. The way a man shows a woman. The way a husband shows a wife.
“We’d be so fucking good together, Scully,” he groans in her ear, his husky voice still relaxed from sleep, and she makes a strangled mewling sound in the back of her throat that he’s never heard before but aches to hear again.