c o l l a p s a r by khyber TITLE: Collapsar AUTHOR: Khyber E-MAIL: khyber@citizensofgravity.com DISTRIBUTION: Ephemeral and Gossamer OK, others please ask. RATING: PG-13 (language, mature subject matter) CATEGORIES: VA KEYWORDS: Mulder / Scully UST, implied Mulder/Scully sex SPOILERS: Show over, no one cares. SUMMARY: Post-ep for "Millenium." "If there is anything more between us, it doesn't happen because it's New Year's Eve." Disclaimer: If I owned them, I'd settle with Fox and make the damn movie before DD gets an afro to go with that '70s 'stache. Author's Notes: Something begins here. Thanks to mimic117 for an early read and CathrynXF for the exacting technical edit. * * * Holiday Inn Hagerstown, Maryland January 1, 2000 1:48 AM "You don't get to do this, Mulder. There will be no sweeping-off-of..." Damn it. How do you say that? "You are not allowed to sweep me off my feet." And these feet will stay right where they are, traitors. "Not now. Not after everything. Not after the ditchings. The ignorings." That's clumsy. "Just because you suddenly find a moment, you don't get to change the rules." What rules, he says... That's not going to work. She can't sleep, hell, she can't sit down, still stomping the small hotel room in her blue jeans and sock feet. First she had been mad at herself, mad for ruining what could have been a perfectly good moment. You could have kept looking into his eyes. Kept smiling, because you know you were Dana, and said the same thing, "No, it didn't." You wouldn't even have had to change the words. It would have been fine right there, everything else going the same way, except maybe he'd have put his arm around your back instead of your shoulder. You'd have come back to this little room with a warm feeling and a tingle. But you didn't, and now it's broken. No, it's not, it's his fault, what the hell is he thinking pulling cheesy after-the-office-party crap like that on me, after all this time? It's not fucking fair, it's almost, it's disrespectful, somehow, that you think that will work. I've cleaned blood off you, I've cleaned puke off you, I've fucking shot you, I've fucked you and not just once, you think you can just pull out the Times Square ball and suddenly my knees will go weak? Are you just saving me for a spare moment, after all this time? No! Damn you! I am not going to apologise for not playing along when that's all you think I am worth. I'd be less pissed at you if you had just pulled out a ring. Okay, don't say that last part. In fact, don't say anything, Dana, you never have and you never will. In fact, if anyone is keeping score, Dr. Scully, you're up about four to two, even if tonight counts, on failed, embarrassing, painfully pedestrian attempted seductions. The wine and cheese incident? The time after who remembers which horror when you managed to say "don't go," but couldn't bring yourself to say anything else, and not so much as an overcoat was removed? That's it. I'm perfectly capable of embarrassing myself, Mulder, and if I am your goddamned touchstone I expect better from you... that is an unbelievably weak line of imagined argument, and he's opening the door. How did I... Oh, God... "Hey, Scully." She stands gaping, as if she had no idea how she'd come to be knocking on the door four down from her own. Her face is flushed, her eyes wide. "Mulder! Mulder, I... what are you doing up, you should be..." "Then what are you doing here?" he laughs quietly. "No, those Tylenol-3s keep me up anyway. I'm glad you came, look, c'mon in..." He moves to the side, but she doesn't enter. She's looking up at him, because he's not wearing a shirt, and that's something she'd prefer not to pay any attention to. In fact, she'd helped him take it off an hour ago-- on account of his shoulder, of course. At an almost automated level, she's pleased to notice that he's still wearing the sling. "Okay, or don't..." He takes a deep breath, looking down at his feet. "I'll just say it, I'm sorry, that was a stupid, cheesy, office-party kind of move." She's taken one step forward, but not far enough in that he can close the door behind her. He's still hemm-hawing, kicking at imaginary dust with one sweatsocked foot as he continues. "Sometimes we think too much, and I figured, what the hell, it'd be nice to sort of go with the moment. And... I shouldn't have done that." "No," she says. She thinks it might be a trick, trying this aw-shucks boy stuff like she wouldn't remember where he likes to put his hands. Three fast steps forward, pushing the door shut behind her. "You do not get to do this, Mulder. You are not allowed to decide how this is going to happen. Not like everything else." "What do you mean?" "This has never been an equal partnership, Mulder. The where, the what, the when, it's always been up to you. " He almost staggers backwards, looking confused. "Scully, I... I mean, if you want to take a bigger role directing what we're working on, I think that would be great..." "Another time, Mulder." She needed that, him to be either stupid or coy, otherwise her fragile and sparking wave of anger would just dash itself up and dissipate. "Okay, I'm lost now." That wave is rolling now, cresting, as he stands there looking dumb and playing innocent and asking for it. She stays far enough back from him that she doesn't have to look up. "If there is anything between us... more between us, it doesn't happen because it's New Year's Eve." Her voice stumbles over itself slightly, faster than she would normally speak. "It doesn't happen when we're nearly dead. It doesn't happen when you think 'gee, I should kiss Scully'. It doesn't happen when there's nothing else more interesting going on." * * * I've got him. I've got him positively squirming. This is his nightmare scenario, because I know that he can't say no to me, not when it matters. He can argue. He can cut me out. He can try to go behind my back. He can question me after the fact. He can rationalise anything, as long as it doesn't involve saying 'no' to my face. He can't do it because he loves me, I love him, but he's *in* love with me and he *believes* in love, the same way he believes in alien space ships and ancient Navajo bibles and zombies. "So how does it happen?" He calls the bluff, if it's a bluff, in fine style. Subconsciously, I think, he knows the voice. Low, quiet, a hint of challenge. Daring me to match it, go one better. He's profiled me, whether he knows it or not, and that voice has worked a couple of times before, on darker days. Bad things in me want that voice, things that have all the wrong connections to my thighs, my breasts, and the parts of me that hum and whimper with wanting and don't know their medicine from their poison. I step in close. He said once, in another close moment, that under the shampoo and the soap that the scent of my hair made him think of heat, of fire. I want him to smell that, I want him to want me and fear the fire. This is how I feel with a gun, I think, sharp-edged and volatile, and the bad things in me sing because that's how they want him to feel, too. I'm just wearing a tank top and he can see the flush on my neck, my chest, knows it starts down where he wants to put his lips. But he can't, because he's had his turn. He used the voice. It's reverse Russian Roulette, Modell-style, which is appropriate considering that was one of the dark days. My turn to pull the trigger now. When guns go off things can end, and Mulder's terrified of finality. My hand goes up behind his head, pulling him down. It's a dominant gesture, the squeeze on the trigger. Our eyes are open almost up until the point our lips meet, mouths open, no little nuzzles this time. He knows what I like, remembers it better than I do. I reach down with my other hand to intercept his wrist, because I know he wants to put his good arm around me, pull me in so our bodies press together. His bare chest will touch me, and his fingers will brush on the skin of my lower back where my top is pulled up. If those things happen I'm doomed, and this dark night goes down with the others. The bad things sing because they remember those nights and that one afternoon, insensate and aflame. Those broken, razor-edged shards of obsidian time float separate from everything else, waiting to be tripped and fumbled upon, accidentally (yes it's always an accident) slicing open rational skin. But oh, is this one good, our mouths working togther, breath mingling, his tongue gently meeting mine (this is my favorite thing, maybe ever.) It starts with deep sweetness, sweet like but deeper than the auld lang syne of a couple hours ago. In the middle goes to promise, committing, and then at the end we're starting to show off, our mouths skipping the words and trying to communicate all the things our bodies are wanting to do and be done to. The pull on my body, everything wanting to press forward into him, is unbearable gravity. Collapsar, I think, black hole star, collapsar-- no, still sounds too sexy, try singularity-- but even a physics word is sounding like sweat and fingertips. We stop for air, opening our eyes, inches apart. I'm trying to control my breathing, trying not to pant. Mulder's breath chuffs out hard. "Scully," he says. It's the voice to the tenth power, sounding as though he's come from full moon woods with blood on his hands and a year with the wolves. No, it doesn't happen like this. bang * * * She removes her hand from behind his head, not so quick as to recoil, and takes a long step back. Her breath catches. He breathes hard, blinks, looking down, up, just not at her. "Mulder, Mulder, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that's... I'm not helping... that's not what I meant... you're hurt, you should rest, I'm being..." She pats at his slung arm, an almost pathetic gesture in its plainness. "I... no, it's okay, Scully, you just, you better go." She turns quickly, letting herself out. * * * finis Pedantic Author's Notes: Even in 1999, you had to go pretty far off the beaten track to not get cell service in Maryland, so I am assuming that our heroes decided it would be smarter to grab a hotel rather than drive back to DC at midnight when they've both been beaten up in the past 24 hours. Awright? khyber@citizensofgravity.com