TITLE:  Mutually Assured Destruction
AUTHOR:  A. Kelley Nolan
EMAIL:  akelleynolan@yahoo.com
DISTRIBUTION:  Wherever.  Just let me know.

RATING:  PG-13 (Language)
CATEGORIES:  SR
KEYWORDS:  Mulder/Scully romance
SPOILERS:  Triangle, but surely you've already seen it.

SUMMARY:  Scully thinks "I love you" is a shitty thing to say.  
Mulder disagrees.  Denouement.

Disclaimer:  If I owned them, I'd live in Malibu, not Boise.  Mulder 
and Scully belong to some combination of Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen, 
Fox, and The Man.

Author's Note:  This assumes that Mulder and Scully have a Past.  
Feedback is good.

---------------

"Oh, brother."  It was the first response that came to mind after 
Mulder's little declaration of doped-up love.  How else do you respond 
to a sap bomb like that?  "Oh, Fox, I love you, too"?  Not likely.

She rolled her eyes, turned on her heel, and walked out.  She was sure 
he still had that dippy look on his face as he lay propped on one arm 
and watching her go.  And how was she supposed to believe that look? 
she wondered as she strode down the hall and felt the color rising up 
her throat.  The look that said he felt brave and good for being so 
clever and sweet, and how about just falling into these puppy dog eyes 
of mine, Scully?  God knew it had worked before.  That was the 
problem.  It had worked - like a conjurer's trick, or mesmerism.  
I'll crook my finger like this, and you cluck like a chicken.  I'll 
stare at you soulfully, and you fall into my bed for a while.

Her heels clicked a tattoo of annoyance on the linoleum.  All right, 
that wasn't really fair, she conceded.  She had certainly played a 
role in their comings and goings (so to speak).  A giggle flared 
briefly and immaturely in her brain, but anger quickly replaced it.  
She wasn't sure yet if it was for switching the rules on her mid-game, 
making her feel foolish, or some other sin she hadn't discovered yet.  
He had crossed the line that they had never admitted but always known 
existed.  "Scully.I love you."  What a shitty thing to say.

A few days later he was out of the hospital and fully recovered, 
although undeniably acting weird.  The first day he'd been boyish, 
full of smiles and humor and a million reasons why he had to brush his 
fingers against her.  She met his enthusiasm with a rigid silence.  
The second day he was thoughtful and uncertain, his jokes strained, 
his touches no less frequent.  She met his indecision with a slight 
frown between her eyebrows.  The third day he was grave and silent, 
and he kept watching her the way he had back in the cancer days, when 
he spent every spare moment looking for nosebleeds.  She welcomed this 
as a step in the right direction.

The fourth night he showed up at her house.  Shit.  He'd been staring 
at her all day.  She could feel the intensity of his gaze across the 
room, boring into the top of her head, which she kept studiously bent 
over a file.  Once, when she couldn't avoid meeting his eyes, she had 
found them hot and sea-colored, a sure sign of trouble to come.  She 
sighed as she pulled open the front door.  She really wasn't up to 
this.

"Hey, Scully," he smiled.  "Is this a bad time?"

"Well, if you can deal with the house party, I guess we'll manage," 
she replied, gesturing at the empty room and surprised by how tart and 
tired that had sounded.  "You want anything?"

"No, thanks."

She sat down on the couch, pulling her legs up under her, and he sat 
down across from her on the coffee table.  She hated it when he did 
that.  It wasn't a Barcalounger.  She didn't sit on his coffee table.  
And he always sat right in front of her, so that his knees brushed 
hers. Space invader.  "I just wanted to thank you," he said.

She tried to decide if this was a sincere, if totally unique, 
expression of gratitude or if it was another new twist in his strategy 
to do whatever the hell it was he was trying to do.  "For what?" she 
asked cautiously.

"For saving my ass.  Again."  He quirked a small smile at her.  
"Skinner told me what you did.  Nobody else would have.  Thank you."

She looked at him a long moment.  She didn't have the energy for this.  
She felt like the flag in the middle of a tug of war rope.  The 
problem is, the flag gets muddy no matter who wins.  She swallowed 
another sigh and let her eyes slide away from him.  "I'd go to the 
ends of the earth for you, Mulder.  You know that."  Oh, wait, she 
thought.  I already have.

"Scully, what I said in the hospital."  She felt him staring at her, 
but she refused to meet his gaze.  "Shit," he muttered, dropping his 
head into his hands.  "Nothing's changed."

Now she turned and looked at him, eyes slightly narrowed.  "What did 
you expect to happen?"

"I don't know," he replied, and immediately contradicted himself, his 
eyes sea-green and stormy, and his voice low.  "I thought you might 
believe me."

A new artesian spring of fury bubbled up inside her.  Where the hell 
did he get off?  She kept her voice controlled and tight.  "You know, 
you've got a nice smile, Mulder, but it's not a magic wand.  You can't 
just flash it at me and expect everything to be all right."

"This is such bullshit," he hissed, standing up abruptly and striding 
over to stare out the window.  He leaned his forehead against the cool 
glass for a moment, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths.  
When he turned back to look at her his eyes were blazing.  "I give up, 
Scully.  I thought I got it, I thought I understood where we were, but 
I don't have a fucking clue what you want."

She felt a shiver crawl up her spine.  Mulder rarely swore in her 
presence, and he never used anything starting with f unless he really 
wanted to get her attention.  Well, he had it. "Why is this always 
about you?  Why do you get to decide?  Don't I have a say in this?  
I'm not a toy for you to take out and play with when you're bored or 
lonely or feel like you should be congratulated, and then put back on 
the shelf when it's time to get serious again ."

"Don't," he whispered.  "Don't you dare."  He was suddenly standing 
very close to her, and his voice was low and dangerous.  "This," he 
said, gesturing between them, "has never been in my hands, and you 
know it.  You ended it, Scully.  I never wanted that.  You say when, 
you say if, you pull away."

She looked up at him, wishing for the umpteenth time that she had a 
stool or something so that she could look him straight in the eye.  
"What is it you want, Mulder?"

"I want us to stop fucking around," he answered ruthlessly.  "I want 
us to stop acting like we've got all the time in the world."

He didn't move any closer, but she suddenly felt crowded, 
claustrophobic, like he was sucking away all her air.  Bastard, she 
thought, but her heart wasn't really in it.

"Do you think I don't remember, Scully?  How your skin feels, those 
little patches of freckles on your shoulders, how you like to be 
touched, how we fit together perfectly when I tuck you under my chin 
and wrap myself around you, how you taste, how your breath feels 
against my neck, how my hand was made to fit the curve of your hip?"  
His voice was a whisper, and it went straight to her brain and points 
south.  "I remember.  Every day.  Every night.  Why should we only 
have that when one of has just about died?"  He shook his head.  
"There aren't enough days, there aren't enough lives, to pretend 
that's all this is."

She decided to be merciless.  She'd been drawn in by beautiful 
speeches made with beautiful eyes before.  She'd been conjured into 
his bed only to find that his heart, or hers, was unavailable at the 
moment, please leave a message.  "So you want more sex?"

"I want more you."  He must've seen that one coming, because he didn't 
miss a beat.

Scully sat down wearily, letting her hair fall forward to hide her 
face.  "What if there's no more to give?"  He didn't seem to know how 
to respond.  He just stood there uncertainly for a minute, then sat 
down next to her, careful not to touch her.  She felt tears pricking 
her eyelids, so she squeezed them shut and forced them back.  "I feel 
sucked dry by your need sometimes, Mulder," she whispered.  "I'm 
afraid you'll consume me."

She felt his fingertips on her back, tentatively, tracing her spine.  
This wasn't his seduction touch.  This was her mother, rubbing her 
back when she was feverish, but he was much less sure of his welcome, 
of his right to be there.  He didn't say anything at first, which was 
so unlike him that she was briefly afraid that he wouldn't, that he 
would force her to keep going with his silence just as she had 
manipulated him with hers, and she had no idea what came next.  Then 
his voice was soft next to her.  Like his touch, it wasn't the dark 
and forbidden one that sizzled straight to her desire center.  It was 
just him, quiet and thoughtful, like he was working out a math problem 
in his head.

"I think about that sometimes," he said.  "About being devoured."  
His fingers trailing up and down her spine were hypnotic, but she 
still managed to notice that he'd made the conversation about him 
again.  She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt before she 
either launched herself at him like a wild thing or shut down 
completely.  "It would be so easy, Scully," he was saying, almost 
dreamily.  "I could disappear in you, lose myself in you, so easily.  
You could crush me in an instant.  But you don't.  I trust you not 
to."

"Don't give me that kind of power, Mulder," she pleaded into her 
hands.

"It's too late," he replied simply, without regret.  "At some point - 
I don't know exactly when - I chose to give it to you, to yield that 
to you.  It's nonreturnable, nontransferable.  That's the same power I 
have over you.  Do you trust me not to use it?"

There it was, that tiny tremor in his voice that betrayed him.  She 
turned slowly and met his eyes, and her heart split a little.  God, 
Mulder, I could destroy you just by blinking right now.  She had a 
sudden memory of those terrifying newscasts of her childhood, droning 
impassively about deterrence and mutually assured destruction.  She 
had stayed up nights thinking about that, had breathed a sigh of 
relief when the cold war ended and she could stop thinking about it, 
and here it was again.  Mutually assured destruction.  A precarious 
balance based on each side trusting the other one to keep their finger 
off the button.  If either of them gave, it would be a conflagration, 
nothing left but shadows burned into walls.  Images of fire filled her 
mind for one heart-stopping second before she was able to draw in 
breath again.

This wasn't about a standoff.  It wasn't the explicit threat of their 
own destruction that kept them from launching the first strike.  But 
it could be almost as coldly self-serving - anything that destroyed 
him, destroyed her.  Maybe it was symbiosis, not deterrence.  And he 
was right, it meant choosing.  She realized with her next heartbeat 
that she had made her choice a long time ago.  His hand had stilled on 
her back, and she felt it there, warm and heavy, as if he had simply 
forgotten about it.  He was holding his breath, because his question 
wasn't that simple - no, never that simple.  It was an offer, a plea, 
and there was fear haunting his eyes like a specter.

Scully reached out and laid her hand flat against his chest, feeling 
his heart beating strong, and a little fast, against her palm.  
Saying yes to Mulder meant saying yes to his quest, his pain, his 
need, his love, his fear, his hunger.  She had done that a long time 
ago.  It meant acceding to, or at least admitting, her own.  Much 
harder.  He was so much braver about feeling things.  But there was 
only one possible answer.

"Yes, Mulder.  I trust you with everything I am."

He didn't say anything, but she watched his eyes clear like the tide 
rushing in.  And he must have remembered his hand then, because it 
slid down to find its resting place at the small of her back, where it 
fit like they were carved from a single piece.  For a long beat, 
neither one spoke, just looked at each other, cataloguing six years 
worth of scars.  He broke the silence first, his voice soft and 
caressing like his thumb on the small of her back.  "I meant what I 
said, Scully.  I love you."

She wondered if she had ever really doubted that he meant it.  And 
yes, she decided, some part of her had been certain it was just 
another joke, another misplaced tease, and that part had opened a 
cavernous aching spot, like a pearl working in reverse.  So it wasn't 
anger at all, was it, Dana?  It was blind, cold terror.  She felt the 
ache contracting, felt the pit it had dug in her heart sliding shut, 
as she reached up and touched his cheek.  "I love you, too."

"I know."  His eyes sparkled, sunlight on water, and he turned into 
her hand, kissing her palm with a tiny smile playing at the corners of 
his mouth.  "Anyone who didn't love me would have been gone a long 
time ago."

"Years ago," she agreed seriously.

"After the first week."  He pressed his lips very gently against her 
forehead, caught and held her gaze for a moment, then bent and kissed 
her softly, sweetly, with a promise of something deeper and darker, 
like whiskey, on his tongue.  After a long, lingering moment, he drew 
away and gave her a look of such sleepy contentment and smoky desire 
that her knees might actually have gone weak if she'd been standing.  
He smiled lazily.  "Later I'll want to ravish you."

"Later, I'll want you to."

He caught the unexpected note in her voice and twitched an eyebrow 
into his version of a question mark.  "And now?" he asked softly.  
"What do you want now?"

"Let me think about it," she answered, letting his hand at the base of 
her spine guide her toward him and tucking herself against his chest, 
breathing in the warm, familiar scent of him, steadying herself.

He stroked her hair, watching it dance over his fingers like flames.  
"You're avoiding," he chided gently.

"I know."  She curled up a little closer, allowing the feeling of 
being surrounded by him to wash over her comfortingly.  "Give me a 
minute."

Mulder rested his chin on the top of her head, his hands soothing over 
her instinctively.  When he spoke, she heard his voice in his chest as 
much as in her ear.  "You know what we remind me of, Scully?  Did you 
ever play that game when you were a kid, where you hold hands with 
somebody, and then you both lean back as far as you can?"  She made an 
indistinct sound against him, which he took as a yes.  "It's the 
tension that keeps you both upright.  If either person lets go, you 
both fall.  I think that's how we are."

She considered that and had to give him credit.  "That's a lot nicer 
than my analogy," she admitted.  "And truer, I hope."  He amazed her 
by not asking, but she could practically hear him thinking about it.  
She looked up at him, studying the lines of his face.  She could trace 
them in her sleep.  She had, in her dreams.  Every curve, every angle.  
She had catalogued every sea change of his eyes.  "I know what I 
want," she said quietly, and he looked at her, waiting.  "Could you be 
the strong one for a while?"

He smiled, dazzlingly, and drew her back into his arms.  "For as long 
as you want me to, Scully.  I won't let you fall."

-Fin-