Chapter Text
First, Second, Third... Fourth?
By Suzanne L. Feld
Rated R
Chapter I: First
It was a nondescript little brown house at the end of a long driveway, surrounded by snowy fields on two sides and pine forest on the others. The nearest neighbor was some distance away, though the glow of a fairly large city showed on the horizon. Two vehicles sat in the driveway, the fact that they were both 4WD giving away the fact that this area was used to either bad weather or bad roads.
Most of the windows are dark even though dusk is drawing down swiftly on this winter night, but a dim light shines in the front of the house and a brighter one from a bay window on the side. Inside, a couple sits at a small round table with a large rectangular casserole dish in the center, most of the food it contained gone. A multicolored Tiffany-style lamp suspended over the table sheds bright but gentle light over them. The petite woman has long red hair, held neatly back in a tortoiseshell barrette, while the man is clearly tall and lanky even sitting, with tousled dark hair and worry lines etched around his eyes. The meal is almost done, pieces of bread scraping the last of the sauce from their plates, wide-bowl wine glasses mostly empty with a three-quarter-full bottle of merlot sitting off to one side.
“--and after that last screw-up they get the results to me as soon as they're done, none of that putting the file back in the rack and waiting until they have another reason to come upstairs.”
He chuckles as she pauses, popping the last bite of garlic bread into his mouth. “You keep them hopping, Scully. It sounds like they needed someone to come along and kick their asses into line.”
“I think once they realize I'm not going to be as lax as Dr. Michaels we'll all get along fine. So, any luck with the Stephens case?”
Mulder picks up his wineglass and twirls it idly by the stem. “I'm taking a break on it for a day or two, stepping back to get some perspective. I worked on Van Dyke today, although I'm pretty sure I know what I'm going to find there.”
Scully nods, familiar with all his cases despite her new job and heavy workload. “So are you planning on working on anything tonight? It is Friday and I'm not on call this weekend.”
He looks up as she begins to gather up the plates, then puts down his glass without having sipped from it and helps clear the table. “Not unless you are. Did you have anything in mind?”
“Nothing other than maybe relaxing in front of the fire with a drink and the new McCarthy murder mystery which I bought two weeks ago and haven't had time to even pick up.” Their movements around the small kitchen are easy, comfortable, familiar; it's clear that they've lived here for some time.
“Scully, you need to put your reading material in the bathroom like I do. How else do you think I keep up with the latest news?”
She gives him the first of what he privately calls The Look of the evening, although he's sure there will be more. “News! You call that news?! Mulder, the day I see you reading anything other than the National Enquirer or Sports Illustrated I'll probably keel over from sheer shock.”
“Hey, I read the local papers online.” The dishwasher begins to hum as he goes to the refrigerator and pokes around, then brings out a bottle of wine. “We've still got a couple bottles of Sauternes from Christmas”, he suggests, holding up the dessert wine so she can see the label. “Mind if I join you in front of the fire?”
She grins, the smile lighting up her face. “Only if you don't bring The Enquirer with you.”
A short time later he stands in the archway between the living and dining rooms watching her. In the last year or so Scully has decided it's her task to make the fire when they want one; this is a real fireplace, unlike the gas-fed one in her old apartment. This occurred after a cold November night when the power had gone out while he was away and he'd come home near midnight to find her wrapped in a blanket and cursing the cold, unlit fireplace. Now, watching her move with deliberate confidence and then flames springing up, he couldn't resist remarking, “It's a lot easier to build a fire that way than with disassembled bullets, isn't it?”
Without turning, still poking at the logs, she said, “As I recall, you didn't do any better than me. In fact, you didn't even try.”
“Scully, do you remember the very first time we slept together?”
Now she does turn, one eyebrow raised, the fire iron in one hand with ash dropping gently from it onto the raised brick hearth. “Now what brought that on?”
He grins lazily, folding his arms across his chest and leaning one shoulder against the cool plaster of the archway. “It's probably got something to do with the way you're bent over. So, do you remember?”
She turns back to the fire, putting the glass screen in place and hanging the iron on its metal rack before straightening and dusting her hands off. Hiding her smile from him, she says in a bored voice, “I think so. It was a long time ago.” She can't resist glancing at him as she walks across the room towards the couch, where her book and glass of wine await. The look on his expressive face is priceless, surprise warring with disappointment. The laughter bubbles out of her as she detours over to him, going to wrap her arms around his lean waist and press herself against his warmth. “Do you really think I'd forget that?” she says into the gray cotton over his chest. His arms come around her shoulders and squeeze her back, and she hears the rumble of his chuckle deep in his chest before he speaks.
“You did have me, Scully. For just a minute there, you had me going.”
A short time later they're settled in front of the fire, having removed some of the large, fluffy pillows from the couch to sit on. Mulder's leaning back against the couch with Scully curled between his legs, leaning her shoulder against his chest. His raised right knee, which is resting against a hassock, is her backrest. This is a familiar, comfortable position for them to have long talks in.
Her book appears to be forgotten, and there's no sign of a tabloid anywhere in sight.
The bottle of wine is within reach on a nearby end table, and all lights have been turned off except a small one in the kitchen, which adds its dim glow to the fire's flickering glow. Mulder gently tips his wineglass against hers and as the crystal rings, repeats his question in a lower, husky voice: “Do you remember the first time we made love?”
She smiles and takes a sip of the sweet wine, rolling it in her mouth a bit to get the full flavor. “How could I not remember, Mulder? Of course, the question really should be which time do you consider our first time? There was some distance between, oh, the first four or five times? It was like the first every time for a while there.”
“Yeah, we did have some trouble getting our act together, didn't we?” He chuckles and kisses the top of her head lightly. “But the sex never was the problem, I think our over-analyzing the consequences is what caused all the trouble.”
“I think that's basically right, Mulder,” she says, looking thoughtfully at the fire. “But it was more than that, too. I think it was a series of misunderstandings that kept us apart more than over-analyzing. We simply didn't talk about it enough.”
“Really? I think we might have talked too much but about the wrong things.”
Scully turns to look up at him. “Then why don't you tell me what you think happened that first time? Why we didn't make love again for months after that?”
“Okay, then--”
–
January 1st, 2000: the new millennium. After their brief New Year's kiss, they walk to the parking lot with his arm around her. Mulder's on painkillers so Scully drives them in her car back to his place. His car has been left at Johnson's house and they decide to leave it there until the next day, when she'll drive him back to get it.
–
“Do you remember how awkward it was the next day when I drove you out there to get your car?”
Mulder chuckles. “I've had less tense moments with a gun to my head.”
–
When they get to his building he pretends to be dopier than he really is--
–
“You really were drugged, you weren't pretending.”
“Not as much as you thought; I was playing you.”
“I'm the doctor, I should know!”
Mulder just smirks and goes on with the story.
–
When they get to the door of his apartment she has to hold him up and dig out her keys. Mulder takes this opportunity to put his hands where they shouldn't go under the guise of being drugged, and doesn't stop when she doesn't object--
–
“You only had your arm around my waist as I recall.”
“And more.”
“You did not!”
“I grabbed your ass and you didn't stop me.”
“If you did, I let you because I thought you were pretty well out of it.”
“Aha!” Mulder exclaims triumphantly.
Scully, disgruntled: “Oh, for crying out loud, Mulder, just go on.”
–
Once inside, she kicks the door shut and starts to help him to the couch but he stops and with his left hand, takes her by the back of the neck and gives her a real kiss--
–
Mulder interrupts his narrative to add, “I knew I could do better than that lame kiss in the hospital.”
“I liked the kiss in the hospital!”
“So did I, but I certainly wasn't going to let it go at that.”
“Neither was I, you just beat me to the punch.”
Mulder is taken aback. “What?”
It was Scully's turn to smirk. “Go on, I want to hear what you think happened after that.”
–
Despite the pain in his arm, he slips it out of sling and gets both arms around her, presses her to the wall next to the door. To his surprise, she's kissing him right back with equal enthusiasm--
–
“You were surprised that I responded?”
Mulder shrugs. “I wasn't sure how you'd take it. Remember, by that time there had been a few displays of affection between us—interrupted and/or pretending to be otherwise, such as in the batting lesson—and I didn't know for sure how you felt about me. You kept me at arms'-length.”
“Yeah, I was confused about us—our relationship--for a long time. I was worried that if we took it a step further we'd lose our friendship. I always valued that more than a lover.”
Mulder looks and sounds a little worried. “Really?”
Scully turns to look up at him, mildly exasperated. “Obviously, I don't anymore.”
“True. Anyway...”
–
He can't help his arousal, knows she feels it, and waits to see if she'll object, move away, show him that she doesn't want this to go any further. When she doesn't, he takes the next step by sliding his hands up from her waist to cup her breasts. When that gets no objection, he breaks the kiss to look down at her and--
–
“I not only didn't object, I was urging you along.”
“Between the drugs and how nervous and excited I was it's all kind of a blur to me after that.”
“Not to me. I remember every moment.”
Mulder raises his eyebrows down at her. “Every moment?”
“Yep. Especially breaking the table.”
He grins. “We did, didn't we?!”
Scully glares up at him. “Don't tell me you forgot that! What about your eidetic memory?”
“I told you, much of what happened after we got in the door was a blur. I was rather involved with what else was going on.”
She snickers. “ 'What else was going on' caused us to break the table.”
Mulder's still grinning. “So it did. Why don't you tell me from here, Scully?”
She smiles up at him. “You were a mass of half-conscious hormones by the time we got past getting our shirts off.”
“I always did wonder how we ended up mostly naked, because I don't remember taking anything off.”
–
She looks up when he breaks the kiss, his hands on her breasts, hers on his waist urging him even closer though you couldn't slide a sheet of paper between them--
–
“A sheet of paper?!”
Scully lifts her left arm, which was resting against his stomach, and cocks it threateningly. “It's my version now, let me tell it!”
He throws an arm up as if to ward off her blow—he clearly knows that she means what she's only threatening at this point. “Okay, okay!”
–
He looks down at her, then rests his forehead against hers. “Scully, are you sure you want this? It's not too late--”
–
“What, was I kneeling?”
“What do you mean?”
With a smirk on his face Mulder says, “To put my forehead against yours. I was either bent over or kneeling, because you're not exactly Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, you know.”
Sully makes good on her threat from earlier and elbows him none-too-gently on the left shoulder; he winces but doesn't let go of her. “That's what I remember, smartass!”
He relents and gives her a little hug back against him, both arms wrapped around her. “Okay, tell it your way. Although the hitting does turn me on.”
She gives him The Look again. “And then--”
–
“--to change your mind if this isn't really what you want,” he finished rather breathlessly. Scully leans back, considers several answers, and instead decides that since he's a man, action is a better option than talk. So it's her turn to take his face in her hands and give him the most explicit kiss she can, putting everything she's felt for him for the past seven years into it--
–
“Hey, I do remember that. You just about singed my eyebrows off with that kiss. Didn't shirts come off shortly afterward?”
Scully nods, smiling. “Very shortly.”
–
He gets the message. Vaguely she feels him pushing her jacket off, then lifting the black shell top beneath and fiddling with her bra. By the time she has to break for air, she's pretty much topless and he's not. She yanks the shell top the rest of the way over her head, flings the unclipped bra off of her arms, then turns to him. First the sling goes, then she carefully and gently eases the grey t-shirt over his head and bandaged arm, saying almost breathlessly, “How bad is the arm, Mulder? Should we--” This time her answer is an equally explicit kiss, along with enough groping to make her certain that the arm isn't going to be a problem in the upcoming activities. She's vaguely thinking of the couch at this point, but clearly Mulder has other ideas. To her surprise, he suddenly kicks a chair away then lifts her by the waist like she weighs nothing onto the edge of the dining room table. Then they're both fumbling with pants buttons and zippers.
–
“ 'Fumbling', Scully?”
“What would you call it?”
“I'd like to think I was suave and practiced when I finally got you out of your pants.”
Scully can't help her smirk. “Even if you thought you were, trust me, we weren't. We were fumbling, Mulder, just like most first-time lovers when the moment strikes without plans beforehand.”
“Whatever, you're finally getting to the good part.” He settles back, picks up his wineglass with a light of anticipation in his eyes.
She's acting mildly exasperated, more playacting than serious. “Then quit interrupting me!”
Mulder smiles over her head, enjoying her annoyance. Never hurts to keep her on her toes; she certainly does enough of that to him. “Keep going, keep going.”
–
Pants slid to ankles, underwear followed—then Mulder paused again to look deep into her eyes, breathing deeply and holding her by the shoulders. “Point of no return, Scully—are you sure?”
–
Indignantly, Mulder protests, “I did not stop and say that!”
“Yes you did!”
“I did not. Seriously. I was too far gone at that point.”
She says sarcastically, “So you'd have kept going even if I'd tried to stop you?”
“Of course not! But I didn't stop and ask you—I was just paying attention to your body language.”
Scully almost chokes on a sip of wine. “ 'Body language'? You make it sound like you were interrogating a suspect.”
He leers down at her, making sure she sees him. “Oh no, I mean body language—and where your hands were made everything pretty clear to me, Scully.”
She turns to look up at him, smiling. “You obviously remember more than you're said you do.”
He grins down at her in surrender. “Don't stop now.”
–
Her answer was to reach down and grasp him with one hand, the other curling around his hip and urging him closer. She wrapped her legs around his waist and, both hands now free as he was much closer to her, brought his head down to hers. “Was there ever any doubt?” she whispers against his lips as they finally join.
–
“You were not talking at that moment!”
Her voice husky with memory, Scully says quietly, “Oh yes I was.”
“And what was I doing?”
–
His answer was to groan and kiss her deeply as they began to rock the table. She vaguely noticed that it seemed unsteady beneath her, but was too busy with what was finally happening to--
–
“Oh, come on, Scully! You did not notice that the table was wobbly!”
Sarcastically she snaps, “Didn't your mind-reading powers go away after you were brought back from the dead?!”
Mulder realizes that he's beginning to really piss her off and makes the conscious decision to back down before he ruins their evening, which has been pretty enjoyable so far. “Okay, maybe you did.”
“I only noticed it very vaguely in the back of my mind, and wouldn't remember having thought about it if the table hadn't collapsed just a few moments later.”
He laughs outright and gives her a hug. “It's a miracle neither of us got hurt.”
She grins up at him with a devilish twinkle in her eye. “It's even more of a miracle that we managed to finish.”
–
They lay in the remains of the table afterward, Scully sprawled on top of him; how Mulder had managed to flip them around as they fell was a mystery to her. He'd taken the brunt of the fall on his back and barely missed a stroke. The top of the table had stayed intact, which was what they were laying on, and pieces of the legs appeared to be scattered throughout the kitchen and foyer. Though languid and sated, a piece of wood was poking her in the knee and she had to get up. As she carefully got to her feet, she glanced down to see Mulder sitting up and smiling at her, and at the look in his eyes her heart lurched.
–
Mulder smiles and rests his chin on the top of her head. “Did your heart really lurch?”
Scully gives his hands, which are crossed around her waist, a squeeze. “It did. And you don't need to be a mind-reader to know that. Although, I have to admit, mind-reading might have helped the next few minutes.”
–
She helped him out of the remains of the table, careful of his shoulder, now avoiding his eyes as she doesn't feel ready to deal with those emotions just quite yet. The look on his face laid his heart bare to her, and she doesn't know what to say or do in response. They both straightened their clothing and replaced what was missing, Scully finding most of hers scattered around the foyer, her bra hanging from the closet doorknob.
–
“That's a hell of a detail to remember, Scully.”
“It was a hell of a New Year's night, Mulder.”
–
When she turns around, fully dressed, Mulder's standing by the sink with just his pants on, peering down and picking gingerly at the bandage on his shoulder. The doctor in her rises to the fore and she hurries to him, stepping over and kicking aside scattered pieces of the table legs, and pushes his hand aside. “Let me look at that, Mulder, we may have torn it open”, she says as she peels back a corner of the bandage. A few drops of blood mar the outside of the gauze and when the ragged, lightly sutured wound comes into sight she sees that he has, indeed, torn it open and it's bleeding enough to trickle down his bare arm. “Go sit on the couch while I get supplies to clean this up and re-bandage it,” she orders, and starts to turn away. But his hand on her arm stops her and she looks up at him uncertainly. “So that's it?” he asks, frowning slightly. “Our itches got scratched and that's that? Back to the old status quo?”
–
Scully pauses and turns to look up at him. “That is what you said, isn't it?”
He nods, looking pensive. “Yeah, or something equally moronic. I was not at my best—but I blame the drugs. I'm not normally that clueless or stupid.”
She gives his hands another squeeze. “I'll agree with that.”
–
Scully shakes her head slightly, more in disbelief than disagreement. Her heart sinking, she looks away from him. So he didn't want anything more? Fine, she was no stranger to the rare one-night-stand herself; she had gone to college and med school. “We'll talk about that later. Right now I need to look at your shoulder before it gets any worse.” He didn't say anything else while she took care of the wound, re-bandaging it and giving him two more Tylenol Threes with a glass of water to take for the pain, and she continues to avoid his eyes. Leaving him sitting on the couch with his arm back in the sling, she goes into the bathroom to wash her hands and freshen up and when she comes out he's sound asleep, slumped to one side on the familiar old brown leather couch where she's seen him sleeping so many times before.
–
“If only I hadn't fallen asleep like that...!”
“You'd been attacked by zombies, Mulder, and then had strenuous exercise on top of it. Not to mention the meds that made you act so stupid, and my misunderstanding what you said on top of all that.”
He's taken aback and stares down at her. “Stupid?”
She grins saucily up at him. “You said it not two minutes ago.”
Mulder laughs and gives her a little hug. “I did, didn't I.”
–
She covers him with the brown and white Indian blanket on the end of the couch and gets her things together, shrugging into her jacket by the door and gazing at the broken table in the kitchen. Although she considers staying, he should be fine and really doesn't need her. It's clear that he doesn't want their relationship to go to the next step despite the sex, and she'll respect that. There is no reason they can't remain friends; she'll never forget it, probably yearn for it to happen again, but she can pretend like it didn't happen if that's what he wants.
–
“We were certainly confused.”
Scully leans a little closer to his warmth. “Thanks for the 'we', Mulder.”
–
She calls to check on him the next morning after a mostly-sleepless night and he sounds the same as ever; no mention is made of what happened the night before or even the broken table. They talk little on the way to get his car from Johnson's remote house, and even less at work either in the office or in one of the many forgettable Bureau pool cars. Scully finds as many excuses as she can to put distance between them, but to her annoyance finds herself watching him when he's unaware. When she does go to his apartment a week or so afterward to drop off a file he forgot, the first thing she notices is that there are no signs of the broken table but it has, however, been replaced with a small, heavy wooden table that, she can't help but notice, has four solid legs. Neither of them mention it and she bolts out of there as fast as she can. Weeks go by, and she is torn between respecting his wishes and being furious that he can ignore what happened between them so easily.
–
“I was pretty damn upset when I cleaned up that broken table.”
Scully looks up at him and smiles. “But you had the presence of mind to buy a sturdier one to replace it.”
He smiles back down at her. “I never gave up hope that we'd work things out.”
“And so we did... eventually!”
“So I guess that leads to the second time, which—at least for me—was as memorable as the first.”
“So, you want to give me your take on this one since you chickened out on the last one?”
Mulder gives her a squeeze. “Sure, we have lots of firewood and wine. And I don't think the picturesque snowfall is going anywhere.” He gestures to the large windows where falling snow is illuminated by the faint light from their windows.
Scully stretches to nuzzle his throat. “Ah, Mulder, you're so romantic and yet so practical.”