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skelavender · 9 days ago

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She giggles into her wineglass at how well this plan has worked, relishing in the rush of deceiving a man who thinks he has seduced her. “I can't believe I'm telling you this!” “I can’t believe you haven't told me before.” Not-Mulder – because yes, she is sure of it now, this is not her husband – smiles at her. Scully cocks her head to the side. “I have, though.”

read chapter three of EAT ME ALIVE on ao3, or below the cut.

It’s not until they’re leaving the hospital after an initial meeting with Scully’s new oncologist that Mulder realizes he hasn’t really seen her weak before.

He’d thought he had. When she was in a coma after being returned to him, then when she couldn’t stand up on her own for a couple days after waking up. She had shown him glimpses of vulnerability, of her tears, but he had never seen her lean on him as heavily as when he tucks her into his arm and guides her out of the hospital and out to his car.

She had wanted to go alone. Mulder would have tailed her car if he had to, but she eventually relented to allow him to drive her, to hold her hand as long as he could.

***

There’s a woman who lost her partner too soon. A couple whose time was cut short, between whom the veil of death fell before they got their chance to ever truly be . A man brought back from the dead, through the power of his wife’s love for him.

Mulder understands Ariel. He understands what it’s like to love so desperately. He will soon know what it’s like to lose that. He sees himself in her as she admires the ring on her finger as if it holds her whole world.

***

Scully stays in bed for a weekend. She’s exhausted. Being exhausted is exhausting. Mulder knows this, and just does his best to feed her and care for her and hold her when she allows it.

So it’s a surprise, to him, when she tugs at his arm and commands, “Fuck me, Mulder.”

She’s normally the leader, when they have sex. She states what she needs, and he provides it. She’s often on top. But this time, with exhaustion burrowed deep in her bones, she pulls him on top of her before guiding him in.

Mulder still ends up with red lines down his back from an outgrown manicure. He makes a mental note to schedule her a lunch appointment with the woman she usually sees, down the street from the Hoover building. Scully will like that. Maybe it’ll draw one of those growing-rare light smiles from her lips, the ones that she doesn’t mean to let fall across her face.

***

Mulder beams at her across a table in a crowded bar, his Christmas tree smile lighting up his face. A piece of plastic is caught between his lips, and she can’t help but think momentarily of the other things he’d wrapped them around this morning. Her earlobe, her bottom lip, her nipple, her clit. She shoves the thoughts aside for later and focuses back on the present.

Mulder turns away from her to face where out-of-key notes of the beginning of “Happy Birthday” filter out from across the bar, and God, she should have known he would do something ridiculous.

This isn’t the first time her love for him has hurt, but now it has a different flavor. It tastes like I’m sorry for what I’m about to do to you ; it tastes like Why do you still spend your energy on me knowing I have no choice but to leave you ; it tastes like bitter guilt building up in the back of her throat.

***

Mulder breaks his lips from Scully’s and pushes up slightly to look down at her face. This, in itself, is not odd; Scully knows that Mulder likes to see her when they’re intimate, to take in just how desperate he makes her and watch her come undone. What is unusual is the blood smeared across Mulder’s top lip.

Scully gasps and moves her hand from Mulder’s back to touch her own nose, and the fingers come away red. She removes herself from under Mulder and rushes off to the bathroom without making eye contact, not wanting to see how she’s stained him.

Sex is supposed to be safe . Scully craves it near constantly. How could she not, when the touch of his fingers is the only thing that keeps her pulse beating rhythmically beneath her skin?

But she’s got death in her bloodstream now, pumping through her body next to her pulse and her love.

She doesn’t let him see the fear, the ache that comes with low white blood cells and a ticking clock. Instead, she walks around their home with the same mask of professionalism she wears when performing an autopsy, the analytical fold of her lips guarding her true emotions. This time, though, the body in the morgue is her own.

***

Mulder is starting to feel as though the texture of Scully’s palm is engraved into the ridges of his own flesh. He holds it in every doctor’s office. Some days, that’s the only time she’ll allow him to touch her.

Her skin is addicting. He loves the way the ridges of his fingerprint catch along the crest of the joint of her thumb, or the outline of her nail bed, the life line of her palm that he hasn’t let himself inspect for fear of what he might learn.

***

Scully can’t explain why, exactly, she kept her ring on her necklace when she got home. She’s accustomed to putting it on her hand as soon as she locks the door behind her, whether Mulder is right beside her or not. But today, after placing her keys, cuffs, and badge on the table in the entryway, she doesn't immediately leave the chain in the jewelry dish where it belongs. She keeps it on. She leaves it hidden.

Maybe it’s just petty possessiveness. Mulder had forgotten his own ring on the bathroom counter before they had left for West Virginia, and had been without it the whole time they were there. But maybe something inside her, something subconscious, knows something is awry. Her soul knows Mulder’s intrinsically, and can tell that the man walking around wearing his face is not her husband.

Then, Mulder brings a bottle of wine home. This is, for so many reasons, out of character.

For one, Mulder rarely drinks. He also knocked . On the door to his own house. Their house. As if he hasn’t lived there with her for a year.

There’s something off about him, about the discomfort in his posture. She’s never seen him this stiff in their house. Actually, thinking back, she’s never seen him this stiff at all, like he doesn’t know how to position his gangly limbs.

“We never really uh… talk, much, do we?” he says from the couch across from her.

This is a ridiculous claim. If this guy were Mulder, he would know that all they do is talk. Maybe not about the things they should discuss, considering that it took them over a year of being married and ten months of cohabitating to agree that they were in a relationship, but they do talk. They barely spend a moment apart, considering that they both live and work together. They can’t get away from each other, not that either of them seem to want to.

“What do you mean, like, really talk? No. No, we don’t, Mulder,” she lies. Sure, they have a habit of not talking about important stuff, like how they had been in love with each other for years before properly settling into a relationship, but they do talk.

“Well, what’s stopping us?”

Oh. This is a seduction. Scully recognizes the look in Mulder’s – not-Mulder’s? – eyes, even with the short time they’ve been having sex, as wanting. This look, however, is draped in forced sincerity.

Scully takes a deep breath and considers her options. She’s about 70% sure this isn’t her husband. But she needs to be positive, needs to make sure it’s not just her mind latching onto the victims in their latest case. Like with anything, Scully needs proof.

She can test him. She can test this so-called Mulder.

She rolls over the possibilities in her head. She could ask him something factual, like their anniversary or about a shared memory. But that is too blatant, and potentially something Van Blundht could have studied up on, or gathered from their surroundings. It’s not likely; he doesn’t seem bright enough for that, but she can’t risk it.

She doesn’t know Van Blundht, but she does know her husband. She knows his mannerisms possibly better than she knows her own, after four years of partnership, almost a year of cohabitation, and eighteen months of marriage. And one of those habits she’s picked up on is how intently Mulder listens to her– unless it’s something he already knows. She can never tell the same story twice without him reminding her that he’s already heard that one. Normally, it drives her up the wall, but tonight? Tonight it might be useful.

So, she chooses the first thing that comes to mind. The tale of her horrible prom ordeal from senior year of high school, which she recalls Charlie telling Mulder when she’d seen him at Thanksgiving.

“Marcus was the twelfth grade love of my life,” she concludes. She giggles into her wineglass at how well this plan has worked, relishing in the rush of deceiving a man who thinks he has seduced her. “I can't believe I'm telling you this!”

“I can’t believe you haven't told me before.” Not-Mulder – because yes, she is sure of it now, this is not her husband – smiles at her.

Scully cocks her head to the side. “I have, though.”

Not-Mulder blinks at her. “What?”

“At Thanksgiving. My brother told you, don’t you remember?” He would, if he were her Mulder. His eidetic memory is useful on cases, but it can be a curse sometimes, outside of work. Now, she’s grateful for it, grateful for knowing her partner so well.

“I must have forgotten.” He shakes his head. “Silly me. You know what else is silly, Dana?”

Mulder doesn’t call her Dana unless someone is dead or dying. She resists the urge to roll her eyes. Instead, she hums in reply.

“That we’ve never done this before,” he says, and the dipshit starts leaning in to kiss her. Scully stands stock still until she can’t hold it back anymore, and laughs.

Haven’t done this before . Like Mulder hadn’t thoroughly fucked her on this very couch three days ago. Ridiculous.

She takes advantage of how caught off-guard he is and twists to launch him onto the couch face-first before snatching up her gun from where it sat conveniently on the coffee table and cocking it. She places her sock-clad foot squarely on Not-Mulder’s spine, pressing him into the cushions.

This is, of course, when the door bursts open. Scully’s head snaps up to see another Mulder – this one, presumably, her own – with wide, concerned eyes.

“I’m good,” she says. “I figured it out.”

“You — oh. Good,” her husband agrees as he takes in the scene in front of him. The image of Scully holding him down… wow. “I think you just awakened something in me, Scully.”

She smirks. “Later, sweetheart. Can you grab my cuffs?”

Mulder grabs them from the entry table, but not before wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

***

Mulder closes the door with a click after the officers leave with Van Blundht in handcuffs.

He pads into the kitchen, where Scully is putting the kettle on for a cup of tea. Mulder tucks himself behind her, arms around her waist and nose tucked behind her ear. She doesn’t press into the contact, but she doesn’t brush him off, either.

“Did you mean it?” Her voice is quiet, but it’s firm. Demanding.

“Mean what?”

She turns in his arms to face him, her hands still on the counter. “I think you just awakened something in me, Scully.” She says it in a low, intimate tone, and oh. That’s what she means. “Mulder, do you want me to hold you down onto the couch?”

“Among other things.”

“Other things… like restraints?”

Mulder gulps, and nods.

Scully leans up so her lips are just shy of his. “Then go grab your handcuffs.”

Mulder doesn’t think he’s moved so fast in his life. Before he knows it, Scully is standing in the kitchen in her underwear, clicking Mulder’s FBI-issued cuffs around his wrists, and ordering him onto his knees.

He complies easily, fully hard by the time his knees touch the tile. Scully hops up onto the counter, folding her legs over his shoulders like that’s where they belong. Mulder doesn’t need to be told what to do next. His tongue traces where her underwear meets her skin, taking in the growing-familiar scent and taste of her. She’s not quite wet enough to soak through her underwear, but he can feel the warmth of her cunt through the fabric.

When his tongue sneaks under the garment, her breath stutters and squeaks. Her hips press in closer to his face, and he accepts the offering, using his lips to urge the fabric out of the way as a moan tumbles through them.

“Off,” Scully instructs. “Take them off. Use your teeth.”

Right, because Mulder’s hands are out of commission. Because Scully had cuffed them behind his back, so he couldn't even touch himself if he wanted to — not that his own pleasure is at the forefront of his mind. Scully’s is.

Mulder’s teeth catch at the top band of her underwear and bite, pulling them down to the best of their ability. Scully lifts her hips to assist him and works her foot out. They’re flung somewhere near the stove, but Mulder doesn’t care to check exactly where they landed, not with Scully’s bare pussy right in front of him.

His tongue dips into her, and she sighs, looking down at him like he’s something precious. This just encourages him, and he presses his face further into her.

Drowning in her feels like it lasts forever; he never wants it to end. When she removes her legs from his shoulders, he looks up at her in confusion.

“Stand up,” she demands. Once he’s complied, she undoes his belt and forcefully shoves his pants and underwear down in one go and lines his cock up with her entrance. She tangles her other hand in his hair, keeping his eyes squarely on hers, leaving no room for him to watch where their bodies are about to join.

“Fuck me.”

And Mulder does. With Scully’s hands on his head and under his shirt, refreshing the marks left on his back, he fucks her frantically, chasing his own orgasm without shame. She pulls at his hair, forcing his gaze to the ceiling, and she nips at the column of his throat. She gasps with every thrust, painting his neck with little bite marks and smudges of the lipstick she hadn’t gotten around to taking off. His breath stutters with every bite, growing closer and closer to a moan as he approaches his orgasm.

He loves this, loves being at her mercy. Without the ability to touch her, to pull her closer and relish the feeling of her soft skin under his hands, it’s like he’s just a toy.

“Mulder,” Scully moans into his neck, “God, there.”

She comes first, walls tightening around Mulder’s cock as her legs quiver around his hips and her breath beats unevenly against his skin.

Mulder follows her over the edge a few thrusts later, and Scully’s grip on his hair loosens. He looks down at her, lowering his face for a kiss, but she pulls back minutely and slides off the counter. She turns him around and starts fiddling with the cuffs.

A bit of him wishes she wouldn’t pull away from him so quickly after sex. It’s one thing to be used while they were being intimate, but it’s another to be left alone after they were done, with his cold skin hungry for touch and approval. He’ll take it, though, if this is as much of herself she is willing to give. Who is he to ask for more than she is willing to provide?

“Is this what you expected to see when you walked in?” Scully asks and she unlocks him. “Did you think I would have fucked him, thinking he was you?”

“No,” Mulder says breathlessly, “You — I was worried he’d hurt you. But you know me, Scully, and he’s not smart enough to trick you.”

“No,” she replies, “He’s not.”

She slides off the kitchen counter and escapes down the hall, leaving Mulder alone in the kitchen with only her wet underwear under the stove for company.

#.txt #the x files #LTWrites #LTW: EAT ME ALIVE #fics

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