DISCLAIMER:  The characters herein are the property of Fox

Broadcasting and 1013 Productions.  The situation into which I

have placed them is of my own creation.

SPOILERS:  Post-Kill Switch

RATING:  NC-17

CLASSIFICATION:  V, A, MSR

FEEDBACK:  emmalanna@aol.com

ARCHIVES:  Gossamer is fine.  Anywhere else, ask me first.

This story belongs in my Burn universe (I really need a name

for it -- suggestions?), though you don't need to be familiar

with it to understand what is happening.  All you need to know

is that in it, Mulder and Scully are already romantically

involved.  This is a quite dark story, so consider yourselves

warned.

Special thanks to my editing team of Kem, Amanda, and

Mara.

NOTE:  The events as Mulder tells them are not wholly in

keeping with the timeline established in the episode; 

however, as Bad Blood proved, memory is subjective and

fallible.

SEMANTICS

By Alanna Baker

+++++++++++++++

There's a difference between fucking and making love.

That knowledge has been with me for some time, but I feel the

difference now.  I've never been comfortable with using "fuck"

as a verb, though I've been known to use it as an expression

of anger, hostility or peevishness.  But I've never "fucked"

someone -- never reduced the physical aspect of intercourse

to that simple word of carnality, just like I always say I make

love *with* someone, not make love *to* them.  Imagine that. 

Me, a proponent of semantics.

But Mulder and I just fucked.

We have made love before.  We have engaged in the physical

act of intercourse, imbuing it with such passion and devotion

and deep, spiritual meaning that the process itself becomes

something beautiful and glorious.  Yet we have never fucked. 

We have never *taken* from each other selfishly, without that

emotional connection.  We have never thrown one another

down on a hard surface and "had our way with each other", to

use a phrase out of silly romance novels.

Semantics, again.

He needed this as did I, in a way.  I'm still not sure what

happened in that trailer -- what that AI machine showed him --

nor do I really want to know.  He's terrified to mention it and

I'm afraid to ask.  Mulder stumbled into my arms, broken

down and defenseless in a way that had little to do with

physical rigor.  He needed me to heal him.  I wanted to.

This in no way makes me co-dependent, nor does it make me

a victim.  We love each other.  We trust each other.  We

know each other better than we do ourselves.  He needed to

feel the life within himself again.  He needed to feel me within

him.  I gave myself to him, but our fucking was as much for

me as it was for him.  And I wanted him within me.  

We stumbled away from the trailer as it blew behind us,

nearly knocking us over with the force of the explosion.  I

curled him within my strong arms and as we approached the

car I began to compile the case report in my mind:  "Nairn and

I entered the trailer and discovered Agent Mulder strapped into

what appeared to be a Virtual Reality helmet and was

subjected to some violent visual impulses.  I removed him

from the bonds and we exited the trailer immediately.  I

attempted to convince Nairn to leave, but she insisted on

remaining.  Seconds later, the trailer appeared to have been

targeted by an espionage satellite and exploded."

Words only begin to convey the story.

Mulder is not a crier -- at least, not around me.  I know he is

fragile, so fragile.  But he often tries to maintain a veneer of

strength around me, as much for his own benefit as for mine. 

I wish he would show me his weaknesses more often.  We

began that case so tough, so focused, then split up to pursue

separate leads.  I should have known better than to leave him

alone.  Instead, I did my job, following *my* lead to that trailer.

Whereas I'd spent the past twenty-four hours royally pissed off at

technology and the world at large, Mulder had spent them as a victim. 

My entire reserve of tension melted when I saw him there.

Oh, God, he looked so small.

He's a tall, lean, beautiful man, but he looked so small and

frail.  Pathetic -- and I mean that in the best possible way.  He

needed me, and I needed to feel that.  I wanted to stand there and run

my fingers over his face and through his hair and down his body to

reassure him that I was here for him, but Nairn had more than proved

the urgency of our situation.  So I hauled Mulder's beautiful ass out

of there.  Laying him down on the dead grass, instinct drove me to

tear myself away from him and go back for Nairn.  I had to.  But as

cruel as it may sound, she could be blown to smithereens, so long as I

had my Mulder.  My kingdom for a Fox.  

But she wanted to stay with the man she loved, so I grabbed

the one I loved and RAN.  I ran as fast as I could, with an

urgency born of fear.  And then I took Mulder home.

I'm not sure how we made it back.  The drive must have taken

an hour or so, but I barely noticed a minute of it.  I couldn't

think of anything, anything at all, but Mulder hunched over in

the passenger seat, rubbing his arms disconsolately.  He

scared the shit out of me, all lost to the world.  The only time

he looked up was as we pulled up in front of his building.  I

really don't know why I chose to take him there.  We usually

stayed at my place -- I guess for the warmth it offered.  It was

more of a home.  Maybe some part of me saw us as

homeless, aimless.  We were in a very dark place and we

needed the gloom of his apartment as a way of punishing

ourselves, though heaven only knows why.

Mulder was out of the car before I could take the keys out of

the ignition.  I followed him inside, nearly tripping over myself in

my haste to keep up.  I didn't stop moving until I was inside his

apartment, watching him pace around the room.  When I shut the door,

all I heard was my heart beating within my chest, it was so quiet. 

And dark, so dark.  I called out quietly, "Mulder?" 

No sound.

I hung my coat on his coat rack and set my briefcase on his

cluttered dining room table, knocking over a couple of

cellphone batteries and a wadded-up tie.  The debris of a life. 

I stood there, my hands flat on the cool wood.  I could feel the

energy flowing out of me, the life slowly dripping through my

fingertips.  But it didn't frighten me.  Instead, I felt an eerie

sense of peace about it all.  Well, peace wasn't quite the right word,

but it was as close as I could manage.  The solitude born of waiting. 

I didn't feel the air around me shift, though I should have,

considering how closely bound we two are.  I didn't feel his

hands come around either side of me or his head move to rest

on my shoulder, until he was there.  

Oh, God, he was there.

It started out... It began so simply.  One hand on either side of me,

crossing over my chest.  I was held within his clasp as surely as I

had been so many times before.  Except this time was different,

unsettled.  I breathed deeply into his hands, which tightened around

me and slowly began to knead my breasts, fingers digging into flesh. 

I lolled my head against his shoulder and concentrated on the

sensation of his breath on my neck.  I couldn't close my eyes against

the harsh morning sunlight slanting through the blinds on the window. 

I wanted the rays to sear my eyes, to implant this moment on my

retinas as surely as I wanted to forget and help him to do the same. 

And so we stood together, living so surely in the moment that I

fancied we had disassociated ourselves from everything else in our

lives.  But he had not.

"Touch my arms, Scully."

I tried to tilt my head back to catch his eye and ask the

question within, but his shoulder trapped my head.  He

repeated himself, his voice more harsh and gravelly.

"Touch my arms."

I did.  I brought my fingertips up to his shoulders and rested

them on the smudged and wrinkled cotton of his shirt.  I

began to run my fingers down his biceps, but he stopped me,

stepping back and removing me from his arms.  Before I had a

chance to turn around, I felt the whoosh of air as the shirt fell to

the ground and I started to move to face him, but he growled, "No."  

I obeyed.

Well, not obey, per se.  Semantics yet again.  In a way, I felt

like an accessory.  Instinctively I knew this was something he

needed, but I wanted it too, in a way I couldn't define.  In a

flash his bare arms were circling me, tightly and unyielding.  

"Touch me."

I wrestled my own arms out from under his hold and began to

touch his own, kneading the warm flesh like his own fingers

had massaged my breasts.  The tension cut through our

bodies like a pulse.  He shuddered slightly under my hands

and pressed against my back.  I couldn't see his face, so I

relied on hearing and touch to break through his reticence. 

Rising and falling against me, his chest carried the weight of

his numbness.  Hands massaged arms and my head lolled

back against his shoulder, moving with a syncopated, erratic

rhythm.  His arms shifted slightly and one hand moved under

my shirt and up my belly, his touch searing and scarring me.  

In moments like these -- moments of intense sexual

experience -- all conscious, rational thought becomes trivial. 

Lucidity is trivial.  Reaction, not action.

My cheek hit the table with a muffled thud.  My breasts

burrowed into the table and the chilled wood rubbed against

my erect nipples like tissue on sandpaper as the hard edge of

the table pressed into my stomach.  One of Mulder's hands

closed over the side of my face while the other snaked around

my hips, fumbling with the clasp of my slacks and jerking the

zipper down with a sharp motion.  A cool rush of air swirled

around the sensitive skin and I felt myself lit like a wooden

match.  

Wood, wood everywhere.  

Inside me.

Everything happened so quickly that I couldn't separate the

movements of Mulder tilting my pelvis to meet him then

entering me with the force and finesse of a fireplace poker

cutting through butter.  I tensed around him and he expelled a

long, harsh moan against my neck.  Tighten, release.  My

body milked all the fear and shock out of him.  Breathing

became difficult and a luxury all in one.  Each deep breath

shuddered through my body, heightening the sensations

Mulder drove into me.  We inhaled in counterpoint as his

chest rocked against my back, the wiry hair on his scratching

the smoothness of mine.  

It was all so quick, so pointed, so urgent.  Focused but

diffuse.  Colors swirling together then breaking into

needlepricks against my eyelids.  I saw nothing, I felt and

heard everything.  It all focused on him -- his breathing, his

body, his needs.  My need was for him, for this moment.  We

were quickly, furiously penetrating the shell his shock had

erected around him.  

We entered a vortex, a wormhole.  His hips slapped against

me, the fleshiness of my ass cushioning them, dampening the

impact.  Stoking us.  The feel of him pushing inside of me

hurt, but with the burning of arousal.  The air around us reeked

of sex -- of musk and sweat and animal fervor.  Mulder's

breath rushed and tumbled across me and his orgasm hit me

like electrocution.  In my heightened state of arousal, I felt

every bit of him swirling inside of me, filling me with liquid

flowing through my organs, my belly.  It lasted an eternity --

the tidal wave rolling and rolling.  

I tossed about like the flotsam of his life.  

Mulder's hand moved heavily against my belly as his body

sagged into me and his penis slipped out of my womb.  His

fluid ran down my thighs, warm and slippery.  I shuddered

against him, still fiery with sexual tension.  I think this might have

been his first awareness of me, of my state.  His voice was molasses

against my shoulder.

"Scully?"

"I-- ohhh," the word more moan than voice.  I rubbed my back

against him, squirming like a centipede, needing the release.

Mulder pulled me into him, his hand tangling in my forgotten

blouse scrunched around my neck.  His other arm moved

around my hips and threaded through my thighs as his

sex-drunken voice murmured, "Oh God, baby, I'm sorry...."  

All he had to do was press into my clitoris with a firm, urgent

motion and I was gone.  My ecstasy was pure and simple. 

No emotion entered it -- just unadulterated sexual bliss.  I

found myself needing and reveling in the raw release as much

as he had just moments before.  Thrashing in his arms, the

orgasm overtook me and tossed me around on the waves

once again.  Every electron burned, then simmered out.  

And we sunk to the floor.  Together.

+++++++++++++++

And now I lay here with him.  Quiet.  Calm.  Sore, but healing.  We

are slumped together on the floor, his back against the wall and my

own against his chest.  Our legs are tangled together and his arms

clasp me tightly.  We are still breathing heavily and our bodies are

coming down.  Mulder has one hand tucked underneath my blouse,

pressing gently into my stomach, then he brings his hand up to my hair

and twists his fingers through the strands, his fingernails dragging

along my scalp.  My eyes focus on the pale beige wall opposite us and

I realize that I've not seen his face this entire time.  Somehow,

that's appropriate.  What we just did was about our bodies, not our

souls.  It was the primal need to release tension. Fucking.  Love was

not directly involved, yet I love him so much that I needed to give

him what *he* needed.  He needed a good fuck.  We all do sometimes. 

And now was our moment for emotion.  

"Thank you," he whispers. 

I take his other hand in mine and press a kiss to his palm,

then sink back into him.  Our bodies coalesce into each other

as I murmur, "You're welcome."  Pause.  "You feel like telling

me what happened?"  

Tension shudders through his body, so slightly that I might

not have noticed had I not been so attuned to him.

"From the beginning?"

"Yup."  

"Welcome to my nightmare."  I can't resist a slight chuckle at

that.  What are our professional lives but an immersion in one

long nightmare, tempered by our private lives and the love to

which they are a testament?  His own testimony begins.

"I'm not quite sure how I got trapped in that... thing.... but I

found myself strapped into some sort of upright full-body

harness.  You saw it.  And then this visor thing came down

over my eyes, and I was powerless to close them.  I couldn't

help but watch.  The highlights.... well, there were no

highlights.  It was all just so damn real, though I guess that's

why it's called 'virtual reality', huh?"

I squeeze his hand once again, trying to ward off my own fear

at hearing what kind of madness had driven him into shock

and terror.  He soldiered on without a pause, as if afraid that

to stop would be to shrink back from the telling.

"It was awful.  I was in a strange, Art Deco-ish hospital.  There were

these nurses, and they were like something out of my...."  I swear

that I feel him blushing under me.  "Anyway, they cut off my arm.  I

saw it, Scully!  And then this nurse told me that if I didn't

cooperate and tell them about the kill switch, they'd cut off the

other one, then my legs.  I remember falling asleep and having this

dream.  I dreamed that I was twelve and that instead of being

kidnapped, Samantha was just walking away from me, telling me she

never wanted to see me again."

Welcome to his nightmare, indeed.  That "memory" is worse

than the supposed reality.  I didn't want to interrupt his flow of

thoughts, and my litany of questions wouldn't come to my tongue.

"Then I had a good dream.  You and I were in bed and you

were just holding me, rubbing your hands over my legs, my

body."  I smile along with him.  "I woke up and you were there

in that room.  You took out all the nurses using those

kickboxing moves you've been practicing down at the Bureau

gym on Saturdays.  You came up to me.  I showed you my

arms, I wanted you to hold me and tell me it would all be all

right.  But you just yelled at me.  You didn't care."  Good

Lord.  "And that's how I knew it wasn't you.  That's all I

remember."

I didn't know what to say.  I couldn't say anything.  And so I

didn't -- I merely sat up a little straighter, then turned around in

his arms and brought my lips to his in a long kiss.  A kiss of

renewal, of understanding.   He bent his leg so I could shift my

position and hold him more closely.

"Mulder, I'm here now, and I love you."

"I know that."  I knew that he did.

I turned back around and leaned  against him. He shifted

behind me, the sunlight streaming through the blinds in

stripes on my legs.  I honestly had no idea what to say to

him, so I chose to just listen.

"How many more times is it going to happen, Scully?  How

many more nightmares do we need to endure before we're

judged good enough?"  His hands tightened around mine.  "It

could have been anyone in that helmet.  It had nothing to do

with me, personally.  I mean... when I get screwed over by the

Consortium, I can accept that responsibility.  But it just never

ends, does it?  There will always be a suspect chasing after

us, or a VR helmet waiting for me.  Or for you.  God, it's

enough to make me want to just scream 'Screw it all!' and

walk out."

I felt my heart crunch ever so slightly.  "Mulder --"  

"But I won't.  I won't walk away.  This is the life I chose for

myself, and I need to be right here with you, searching for the

truth.  All this other torture is just part of the job.  It just gets

so damn hard sometimes."  

His voice trails off just a bit and he sags against the wall,

pulling me back with him.  Instead, I sit up straight and turn

around to face him.  It's the first good look I get at his face,

and my heart contracts some more.  He looks so sad, so

defeated.  So frustrated.  But the love he feels for me shines

through his eyes with a bittersweet ache.  I bring my hands up

to that face and caress his cheeks with my palms.

"You know what I think, Mulder?"  Two eyebrows raise a hair's

breadth.  "You're a good man who just has really fucked-up

luck."  That gets me a pained smirk.  "And you are right -- this

whole thing today could have happened to anyone.  You were

just unlucky enough to be there.  But you know what your

saving grace is?"

"You?"

I nod my head matter-of-factly, trying to suppress a grin. 

"Besides me.  You keep going.  You feel all these things but

you endure.  You don't give up.  You learn from them

sometimes and that's why make you such an incredible man."

We hold each other's gaze for a very long moment, neither of

us making any faces which might break the spell.  Then he

brings his hands to my back and pulls me toward him with a

swift motion that knocks me off-balance.  He kisses me or I

kiss him.  Whichever.  Semantics.  All that does matter is the

kiss we share, the way we make love with our lips.  Moments

pass as we stay together, then I realize the time.

"Ready to endure some more?  We need to get in to work --

already way too late."  

He shifts under me slightly, rubbing against my core, still a bit

tender from our sex.  I breathe deeply then raise up on my knees. 

Getting aroused wouldn't be too good an idea when we have work to do. 

So I stand up and hold out a hand, which he clasps and pulls himself

up.

"Hey, Scully?  I love you."

"Me too," I call over my shoulder as I walk toward his

bathroom.

"Narcissistic much?"  That breaks out the laughs.  I'm sorely

tempted to slam the bathroom door in his face, but he's too

quick for me, reaching for the razor and washcloth before I'm

even able to take off my wrinkled blouse.  After a long and

highly satisfying shower together, we dry off and I make

friends with his iron, trying to salvage my suit.  

And thus begins another day of work.  I replay what he has

told me about his virtual reality sequence and think of all he -- we

-- have had to endure.  But it is our lifee.  We endure.  We love.  I

want to hold him close for the rest of my life, but I know I can't

always do so.  And when I can't hold him close, I can be right beside

him.  His right-hand woman. 

So long as I'm the only one.

Mulder collects his keys from the floor near the front door

while I find my briefcase.  I can't resist one tiny bit of teasing.

"So... tell me about these nurses...."

+++++++++++++++

END (1/1)

emmalanna@aol.com -- for every letter I receive, I lose a pound (wow, 

amazing isn't it?), and I have a little black dress waiting for me to 

squeeze in....