The Art of Being Seen - a Nancy Landgraab story
୧‿̩͙ ˖︵ ꕀ⠀ ♱⠀ ꕀ ︵˖ ‿̩͙୨
𝔓𝔞𝔯𝔱 𝔒𝔫𝔢 - 𝔜𝔬𝔲𝔱𝔥
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AN / Transcript under the cut
AN: Nancy's story will consist of 3 parts: Part One- Youth | Part Two - Uni | Part Three - Wife Three pivotal moments in Nancy’s life that shaped the Nancy we know today.
As mentioned in the prologue, this story may contain mature and possibly even uncomfy themes and all posts will have their corresponding trigger warners in the post as well as the tags. Trigger Warnings are: Homophobia / Religious Trauma / Death via Car Accident/ Drugs / Alcohol / Infidelity / Sex & Nudity
Also, I have experienced CAS burnout lately, so I aged down most of the townies to teens lol. I figured this version of Cassandra Goth can be the AU version since I’ve already wrote Bella and Morti Goth into my Briar legacy, which this story is apart of that universe.
Transcript:
Cassie: This is Blair Hall, the senior girls’ dorm, and if you ask me, it’s the best one. We have our own private library. Down there is the rec room; we’re not allowed to have the boys over unless it’s with a chaperone.
Cassie: We’re also the closest to the church, which is great for when we have group sessions before service. You won’t have to rush and scarf down breakfast, plus you can sleep in a little!
Nancy: [sarcastically] Gee, how’d I get so lucky?
Cassie: Sister Agnes always says, It’s not luck—it’s a blessing! Vacancies are hard to come by. My old roomie withdrew; she had a really hard time fitting in with the other girls. They can be... kind of intense.
Dina: Oh, look. Another pretty blonde rich girl. Like those aren’t a dime a dozen here.
Nina: [scoffs] Here we go...
Dina: I am not joking. I better not catch her ass around Don. The last hoochie he was tonguing down was also a skinny, flat-chested, blonde bimbo.
Vanessa: You need to put his weenie in a cage instead of fighting every girl that breathes the same air as him.
Dina: Well, he wouldn’t be tempted if these floozies would stay away from my man!
Vanessa: I guess dyeing your hair blonde isn’t working for you, huh?
Dina: Oh, shut it, VV. You’re just jealous he isn’t into redheads.
Nina: Hmm, I thought he was into redheads though.
Dina: Ugh, as if!
Cassie: You can pretty much decorate your space however you want. Just nothing that’s on the prohibited list. There’s a room check every night before curfew, and-
Nancy: What do you know about that redhead on the balcony?
Cassie: Dina?
Nancy: No, she said her name was Vanessa. I ran into her this morning but she didn’t mention her last name.
Cassie: Oh, yeah! VV. Vanessa Villareal. She’s- eh, one of the mean girls. I try to stay out their way. Probably best you do the same.
Nancy: [softly to herself] Villareal. So, she’s old money, too.
Cassie: Her family built the school. Guess that’s why she feels like she can do whatever she wants- eh, don’t tell anyone I said that!
Cassie: But, erm, you’re welcome to hang out with me and my friends during rec and lunch and stuff. I know how tough it can, being the new girl and all.
Nancy: Yeah? ...thanks- Cassie, was it?
Cassie: You’ll totally like my friends. They’re the coolest people on Earth.
Cassie: Definitely better than some people. You can tell who goes here because of their faith and who was forced here because of their lack of it.
Cassie: Hey guys! This is Nancy, she’s my new roomie.
Bob: No way, they filled Angela’s spot already? Money talks. I’m Bob, or Bobby, and this cool, tall drink of water is Geoffrey. Welcome to Paradise.
Bob: [whispers] Geoffrey! Say something to the pretty girl!
Geoffrey: [voice cracks] W-we’ve um, met already.
Geoffrey: Our dad’s are friends. I just haven’t seen her since we were 10 years old. She looks so... different.
Bob: Oh, I seeee. First love? Your ears are beet red, my man.
Bob: Take a seat, newbie! Are you into D&D, perchance?
Nancy: I have no idea what that is.
Bob: Oh, ho ho! You’re in for a treat, m’lady. I’ll catch you up from the beginning of our campaign.
Vanessa: You look so bored. Want to get out of here, new girl?
Vanessa: Don’t worry, I’ll return you back to your nerds in one piece.
Cassie: [grumbles] Um, hello, we’re sitting right here?
Nancy: Go where, exactly? This place is in the middle of nowhere.
Vanessa: Guess you’ll have to come and find out.
Nancy VO: [I learned then, that I would follow her anywhere]
Dina: There she goes, taking in another stray.
Nancy VO: [All she had to do was take my hand]
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So. Any chance of a Dropped Call 3??
Dropped Call, Chapter 3
Rated X / 4743 words / posted on AO3 / Tagging @today-in-fic
She thinks of it like a little toggle in her brain, like a switch. Or maybe more like a curtain that she can open and close at will. It’s something she developed as a teen, when her desire to remain pure of mind and body was in direct conflict with her desire to imagine what it might be like if Tommy Warner felt her up under her school uniform. Saturday night she’d stay up late discreetly discovering the hidden pleasure points between her legs, and then on Sunday morning she would simply flip the switch and go to Mass, her indiscretion so completely obscured behind her mental curtain that she felt no connection to Father Malone’s sermon on sins of the flesh.
Over the years, she’s found many uses for this mental trick. In school, in jobs, in relationships, she avoids being overwhelmed by her own emotions by simply setting them aside, behind the curtain, and pretending as though they don’t exist. It doesn’t always work, but she’s found that the more intense the emotion is or the higher the stakes are, the more effectively she can ignore it, at least until she’s alone. In a psychology course at UMD she learned that the term for this strategy is compartmentalization, and that when done to excess it can become maladaptive. Rather than examine whether her own compartmentalization was doing her more harm than good, she stuck that behind the curtain, too.
This whole bizarre situation with Mulder is taking up an increasingly large amount of space behind the curtain. So much space that she worries it could become uncontainable, that it could all burst through some Tuesday afternoon and ruin everything. She’s had to pull back on their friendship out of fear that the dam won’t hold, and the dichotomy of it all makes her feel like a stranger in her own life. She powers through each workday, counting down the hours until she can go home and stop using all her mental energy to hold the curtain closed. When she walks through her apartment door it hits her like a sneaker wave, and she spends the rest of the evening reading trashy romance novels, masturbating, or deep cleaning something just to keep herself distracted.
The worst part of it is that it’s just so stupid. She knows that they both want the same thing, knows it with absolute certainty, and yet she’s too cowardly to let it happen. She can cross all kinds of boundaries with a phone line between them, but the second his physical form is proximal to hers, the curtain swings shut and her walls go up, and she truly doesn’t know how to stop it from happening. As it turns out, defense mechanisms aren’t entirely voluntary.
It’s Friday, a week or so since their last sordid phone call, and Mulder is wearing his charcoal suit. He’s being excessively charming and she can’t stop smiling at him, despite her very best efforts not to. Not that she doesn’t want to smile and laugh with him, she very much does, but when he meets her eye and smiles at her like that, and she feels herself smiling back, the curtain strains against the weight of everything behind it and she begins to panic.
“What are you up to this weekend?” he asks when she starts to pack up her things a few minutes before five.
“Not much,” she says, not looking at him. “Grocery shopping. Maybe Mass with my mother.”
“Would it be okay if I gave you a call?”
She freezes. Mulder calls her all the time, near daily, and he’s never asked for permission to do so. The curtain bulges, threatening to split open, and she clears her throat.
“Sure, that’s fine,” she says, her eyes still downcast.
“Tonight?” His voice is so hopeful, and it makes her feel like shit.
“Okay.”
She puts on her coat and slings her bag over her shoulder. Before leaving, she forces herself to look at him.
“Have a good weekend,” she says with a polite little smile.
Mulder’s eyes narrow in that way that means he’s psychoanalyzing her, his head tilted increments to the side.
“Likewise,” he says, his tone unreadable.
She escapes into the hallway, holding the curtain closed with both hands.
Once inside her apartment, the weight of anticipation sits heavy in her pelvis and her ears tingle with the effort of listening for the phone. She changes into comfortable clothes and conveniently forgoes panties, barely registering the fact that she’s doing so to give herself easy access.
He could call at any time. It could be in five minutes, or five hours. When 8:00 pm comes and goes she entertains the idea of just calling him instead, but she doesn’t have any room for that behind the curtain so she decides to wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
He finally calls at 8:57.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” he says brightly. “Long time no talk.”
Is he being facetious since they just saw each other a few hours ago, or is he referring to the last time she played the role of Electra?
“It’s good to hear your voice,” she says, then makes a face at herself. Electra is supposed to be sexy, not sweet.
“Ditto. What are you up to?”
She’s standing in the middle of her living room, piqued and nervous, but that’s probably not what he’s hoping to hear.
“I’m…talking to you,” she says. “What are you doing?”
“Well,” he says with a sigh, “I have a bit of a conundrum.”
“Oh?” Scully paces slowly around her couch and coffee table. Where is he going to take this?
“I was hoping you could help me out,” he says.
“Okay. What’s the conundrum?”
“Well, it’s about my partner,” he says.
Scully sinks slowly down onto the couch.
“Okay.”
She hears Mulder swallow thickly.
“So I think,” he begins, “that she might be interested. That she might…share my feelings.”
Scully’s heart leaps and begins to pound against her ears.
“That’s…that’s good news, right?” she says, reminding herself that she is Electra right now.
“It is, absolutely. Phenomenal news,” he says emphatically.
“So what’s the conundrum?”
“I think she’s too afraid to take the next step. I know she is, actually,” he says. She can hear the way the sunflower seeds in his mouth change the shape of his words, and she imagines him spending the hours leading up to this phone call munching on them and thinking about how to have this conversation. “And I think maybe she needs me to be the one to do that. But if I’m wrong, I run the risk of fucking things up between us.”
“That sounds difficult,” she says, her head spinning.
“So what should I do?” he asks.
Electra wants to answer the question, but Scully is frantically shoving things back behind the curtain, tugging at the edges in an attempt to keep it all hidden.
“I think you’re right,” she blurts out, closing her eyes. “I think she does need you to be the one.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“But should I wait?” he asks. “Maybe she’s not ready.”
“I imagine she’s as ready now as she’ll ever be,” she says, eyes still closed. The curtain is tearing right down the middle, the contents spilling out, and her stomach lurches.
“Okay,” he says. “Thank you. I appreciate your help.”
Scully sits up, opening her eyes. Was that it?
“No problem.”
“Hey, can I call you right back?” Mulder says, his tone much lighter.
“Sure, okay.”
Her heart pounds painfully hard in the roughly thirty seconds that she waits for him to call back. Maybe he’s going to call Scully this time. Maybe he’s going to put it all out in the open and force her hand. Even though it’s what she just told him he should do, she’s so terrified that she considers not answering.
“Hello?”
“Hey, me again, sorry about that,” he says.
So…she’s still Electra?
“It’s fine,” she says, then waits for him to speak.
“I was hoping we could try something different,” he says. “Bit of a role reversal.”
“Um, okay,” she says, curious but worried. “What did you have in mind?
“I’ve told you about my fantasies.” A pause. “I’d like to hear about yours.” Her entire nervous system short circuits, and she briefly loses touch with reality. “Electra?”
“Yeah,” she sputters, shifting around on the couch uncomfortably. “I’m here. Is that…allowed?”
Mulder laughs nervously.
“The arrangement is that I pay you to talk to me. There aren’t really rules beyond that.”
“Oh.” Her mind is going a million miles an hour trying to figure out how to sidestep this. “That’s, um…that’s quite private, though.”
“True. But I’d argue that you’ve been given unfettered access to my private thoughts, so it’s an equal exchange,” he reasons.
She can tell that he won’t push much further. He knows her too well to do that. But he does have a point, and she still harbors some guilt for not stopping him when he shared his fantasy with her in that first phone call.
“Yeah, that’s true,” she says. “What do you want to know?”
She senses his excitement, and she’s so conflicted between feeling excited herself and feeling terrified. There will be no coming back from this. The curtain is practically in tatters.
“I would be ecstatic to hear literally anything you’re willing to share,” he says carefully, tempering his eagerness.
Scully leafs through her mental file of fantasies, the ones she’s prone to revisit. Her cheeks get hot as she considers the idea of sharing any of them with Mulder, in no small part because he stars in every single one of them. But right now he’s talking to Electra, and Electra would be fantasizing about someone else. She finds an intact corner of the curtain and draws it up, separating herself from the situation.
“We’re in my kitchen,” she says, jumping right into it. “We’ve just had dinner or something and we’re cleaning up. He’s helping me with the dishes.”
“Who is he?” Mulder interrupts.
“He’s…a friend.”
“A close friend?”
“Yes. A best friend.” She can’t leave him to wonder if she’s talking about him. That feels too cruel. “A coworker,” she adds.
“What does he look like?”
Scully lays back on the couch, propping her head on the armrest. She pictures Mulder earlier that day at work in his charcoal suit, smiling at her over his desk.
“Tall. Dark features. Handsome.”
“You think so?”
She smiles and allows this brief break in their role play.
“I do. Very much.”
“So you’re in the kitchen,” he prompts her.
“We’re in the kitchen and we’re kind of joking around, laughing. He’s teasing me, but not in an unkind way. And there’s a moment where he’s looking at me and smiling, and something passes between us. Moments like that happen all the time, but I always look away.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid,” she admits.
“Of what?”
She takes a moment to consider the question. As conflicted as she is when it comes to her relationship with Mulder, she’s never allowed herself to think too deeply about what exactly she’s conflicted about.
“Of being hurt, I guess. Of being vulnerable.”
“You think he’d hurt you?” he asks, maybe a bit wounded.
“Not intentionally,” she says. “But I think it could easily happen.”
She senses that he’d like to explore this line of thought, but that would completely derail the fantasy. She hears a beeping sound and then a soft thud. Maybe the microwave. Leave it to Mulder to get hungry at a time like this.
“I’m sure he’d do everything possible to avoid that,” he says somberly. “So do you look away?”
“No,” she says, jumping back to the kitchen in her mind. “I don’t look away this time, and it becomes…intense. He steps closer and I realize he’s going to kiss me.”
“And you want him to?”
“Yes, very much. He kisses me and it’s sweet at first, but quickly becomes more…intense. Sorry, I can’t think of a different word to use.”
“Intense is a good word,” he says, encouraging her.
His connection is a bit muffled, like the phone isn’t quite lined up correctly to his mouth. She wonders if he’s in bed, and what he’s doing.
“He picks me up and puts me on the counter, which makes things much easier because he’s quite a bit taller than me. And we just kiss for a while. I guess…I guess more accurately it would be making out.”
“Do you think he’s a good kisser?”
“Yes,” she answers immediately.
“You’ve given this thought?”
“Yes,” she says again.
“And then what?”
Scully swallows. This is where things go from PG-13 to explicit.
“And then he pulls me down off the counter so I’m standing on the floor, and he turns me around.” Mulder is silent on the other end of the line. All she hears is a mechanical hum. “And he, um, he pulls my pants and underwear down. And then he sort of pushes me forward so I’m leaning over the counter.”
Her heart simply cannot take this. It’s been in overdrive so long she’s starting to sweat, and she’s lying completely still on the couch.
“What does he do?” Mulder finally asks.
“I think he’s going to…to take me from behind, but he doesn’t,” she says, her voice shaking. “He kneels on the floor behind me.”
“Tell me.” His voice is commanding, not pleading, and it’s effective.
“He, um, he eats me out from behind. He makes me orgasm that way,” she says.
She hears the rush of Mulder’s sharp inhale through the phone.
“Is that where it ends?” he asks.
She barely registers another set of beeps and another soft thud.
“No,” she continues. “After that he does take me from behind.”
“He fucks you?”
The sharpness of the word, from Mulder’s mouth, in reference to herself, makes her clit jump. Scully slides her free hand under the waist of her pants and swirls her middle finger around it languidly.
“Yes,” she breathes. “He fucks me.”
“Do you come again?”
“Yes.”
“What about him?”
“He comes inside me.”
“You want him to?”
“I do.”
“Are you touching yourself?” he asks, his voice a near whisper.
“Yes,” she whispers back.
“Open the door,” he says.
“What?”
“Open the door.”
Her confusion gives way to horror as she recognizes the soft murmur of his voice in the hallway. She’s frozen in place, her hand down her pants and her widened eyes on her front door.
“Mulder, what are you doing?” she hisses, pulling her hand out of her pants as she slips down to the floor and attempts to hide behind the couch.
“Please let me in,” he implores, and she hears his voice in stereo.
“I can’t,” she whimpers.
It feels true. She feels physically incapable of walking to the door and allowing him to look at her after what she just told him.
“Then I’m going to let myself in,” he says.
He waits a beat to see if she’ll object, but she says nothing. She hears the scrape of his key in the lock and then the pop of the deadbolt. The door opens and she slowly stands up from behind the couch, the phone still pressed to her ear.
He’s standing in her entryway, his cell phone in one hand and his keys in the other, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. He catches her eye and holds it for a beat, and she pulls the phone away from her ear, breaking eye contact to end the call. And then she just stands there, shell-shocked, staring at the phone in her hands.
She hears him slip off his shoes and pad across the room towards her. There’s nowhere for her to hide, physically or emotionally. The curtain is toast, and her fingers are coated in her own arousal, and Mulder is in her living room with full knowledge of what she wishes he would do to her. This is either the best or the worst moment of her adult life. She’s afraid to find out which.
He takes the phone from her and sets it on the coffee table. Next she feels his hands on her jaw, forcing her to look up at him. She complies reluctantly, and a few seconds tick by as the familiar intensity builds. She sees in his face how much he wants this, wants her, and it reaches that point she can’t bear where she always looks away. Just when she can’t take it any longer, when she’s about to avert her eyes to the fireplace, he kisses her.
At first it’s sweet. He presses his soft lips against hers again and again, a series of firm but chaste kisses that begin to devolve when she opens her mouth and he runs his tongue across the inside of her upper lip. He’s bent down and she’s on the tips of her toes, and it feels like she just can’t get close enough.
She squeals with surprise when her feet fly out from beneath her and Mulder tosses her down on the couch, quickly covering her body with his own. Their height difference compensated for, he kisses her deeply and intensely, and he is every bit as skilled at kissing as she imagined him to be. His hips are tucked between her open legs, and the more they kiss the smaller the gap between their bodies grows until she feels the hard ridge of his erection press against her clit. She whimpers into his open mouth, and he pulls back a little to look at her.
“Do you want this?” he asks breathlessly, and she nods. “You’ll tell me if you want me to stop?” She nods again.
He shifts his body to the side to free up one of his hands, then resumes kissing her. His hand drifts up under her shirt, and she feels like she could come just from the knowledge that he’s going to touch her, that this is happening. He kneads her breast, gently pinches her nipple, all the while grinding against her hip. It feels so deliciously forbidden, like they’re two teenagers necking in a basement, until his hand slides down her belly and under the waist of her pants.
He pauses, giving her time to adjust or object. She just keeps kissing him as his fingers comb through her pubic hair and then trace the seam of one leg, and then the other. She remembers his fantasy, and she shifts one of her legs to the side to let him know she’s ready. That she wants it.
“Jesus christ,” he mumbles against her mouth when his fingers slide down her slick lips.
His touch, his words, his presence, have her on the edge already.
“Mulder,” she breathes out. “I—”
He pushes a finger inside her and she gasps as her cunt squeezes it tightly.
“Oh, Scully,” he says, grinding against her with his face tucked into the crook of her neck. “You need this.”
She can’t stop it. She’s coming with hardly any warning, with hardly any effort on his part, and with such intensity that she stops breathing. Mulder whispers things to her that she will recall later and blush, gently fucking her with his fingers all the while. It is absolute euphoria, and she’s so high on dopamine that she can’t bother feeling embarrassed for being so easy.
Mulder slips his hand out of her pants and she turns her body so that they are face to face, somehow both wedged onto her tiny couch. She runs her fingers through his hair and then cradles his jaw, and he watches her face with awe.
“That was unexpected,” she says quietly, and a grin breaks out over his face. “Thanks for coming over,” she adds, averting her eyes to his mouth.
His smile suddenly falls. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says, and she lifts her eyes back to his.
“I know,” she says, and then she kisses him.
The kissing goes on for a delightfully long while, and she finds that she very much enjoys the way that Mulder kisses. At the realization that she has the long awaited opportunity to get her hands on the everpresent bulge in his pants, she runs her palm firmly over the front of his jeans, and he groans.
“You don’t have to do that,” he says, extremely unconvincingly.
“What if I want to?” she asks.
She feels him lurch under her palm.
“Then I’d say we probably need to take this party to the bedroom,” he says tightly.
They scramble off the couch, and he walks her backwards into her bedroom as he works her shirt off over her head. He removes his shirt as well, and they stand at the foot of her bed, his fingers tucked under the waist of her pants. A lamp in the living room is still on, but the bedroom is dark, giving them enough light to see without feeling exposed.
“I can’t help but notice that you’re not wearing panties,” he says, and she feels herself blushing.
“They just get in the way,” she admits shyly, and he makes a little sound that’s somewhere between a whine and a moan.
“Can I take these off?” he asks, and she nods.
She feels his eyes on her, but he’s very respectful. He doesn’t stand back to gawk at her or say anything lewd, he just kisses her face, the tops of her shoulders, anything he can reach without sitting down. Before he does so for the sake of getting his mouth on her breasts, she pops the button on his fly and he sucks in a breath.
“Easy, loaded weapon,” he quips.
“I’d be a hypocrite to judge you,” she points out.
“That’s, uh, not quite the same,” he says as she lowers his fly and slips her fingers under his boxers at his hips. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”
She pushes his jeans and boxers halfway down his thighs and then wraps her hand around his cock. Her eyebrows shoot up, and that’s before she runs her palm over the length of him.
“You know that I hate to inflate your ego,” she says, sliding her hand down to cup his balls, “but color me impressed.”
He chuckles and it dissolves into a groan. He sits heavily on the end of the bed, tugging her down with him, and she climbs into his lap. His cock brushes against her clit and she sucks in a shuddering breath.
“What do you want?” he asks, steadying her with his hands on her naked hips while he works his feet the rest of the way out of his jeans.
“...I don’t know,” she says, which is a lie.
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to say?” he asks, reading her mind as always.
She reaches between them and takes hold of his cock.
“I want this,” she whispers, feeling like she might burst into flames.
They start kissing again and she’s still stroking him, brushing him over her clit. She pushes up onto her knees a little and drags the head down over her lips and across her opening. She’s obscenely wet and Mulder is making all kinds of greedy, hungry noises: groaning and humming, grabbing at her ass and sucking on her breasts. He’s right there, and they both want this, and when she presses the head of him against her cunt and he starts to sink in, the energy in the room shifts.
“Oh, shhhhhhhhhhit,” he groans, his breathing suddenly ragged.
She feels proud, and sexy, and powerful as he stretches her open inch by inch. It hurts a little, but not near enough for her to even consider stopping. They’re both panting like they’ve exerted themselves and they’re only just getting started.
She lifts her hips again and sinks back down before she’s even managed to take him in all the way; she just can’t wait any longer. He has one hand on her hip, the other braced against the mattress behind him to keep them from toppling over, and his hips are eagerly flexing up to meet her. Each time she lowers herself back down she takes in a bit more of his length, until they are pressed tightly together and she feels the poke of his pubic hair against her swollen lips.
She stills and immediately he’s kissing her, sucking at her lips and humming noisily. She loves the sounds he’s making and how eager he is, how openly enthusiastic. God, she wants to make him come. Wants to feel him throbbing inside her, running out of her.
She starts to shift her hips forward and back, slipping him tightly in and out and running his shaft across her clit on each downstroke.
“Fuck,” he says under his breath. “You feel…incredible.”
His compliment goes straight to her cunt and she flutters around him, making him moan.
“I’m gonna come,” she whispers shyly against his mouth.
“Shit, you’re gonna make me come,” he says harshly, like this is bad news.
But the idea of him coming inside her is enough to send her over the edge. She digs her fingernails into the back of his neck and presses her forehead against his as she clamps down on him, her mouth open and her eyes squeezed shut.
“Oh my god,” she wails as a tsunami of pleasure crashes over her, sweeping her out to sea.
Mulder lets loose a stream of obscenities and she feels a hot rush deep in her belly. She rides him roughly as it just keeps coming and coming, and he falls backwards onto the bed, taking her down with him. He keeps thrusting up into her from below, and the wet slosh of both of them is almost embarrassing, had she the faculties for embarrassment. He finally becomes too soft to continue thrusting and there is a second hot rush when he slips out of her.
She collapses against him, her cheek pressed to his sweat-damp chest, and waits for the inevitable surge of shame and regret, even though she knows it’s not shameful and she certainly doesn’t regret it. Without warning, Mulder wraps his arms around her and rolls her to the side, which does nothing to contain the mess between her legs. He hovers over her, searching her face, knowing her well enough to predict that she’ll struggle in the immediate aftermath.
“You okay?” he asks, trailing the back of his knuckle across her cheek.
She gives him a weak smile and nods, though tears are pooling in her eyes. She’s not even sure why.
“Please don’t take my demeanor as an indication of anything,” she says, touching his waist. “It’s not about you, I just…this is difficult for me.”
“I know,” he says. “Take as much time as you need.”
She nods, waiting for the tightness in her throat to subside before she tries to speak again.
“I’m sure Electa doesn’t require this much emotional maintenance,” she jokes, swiping a finger under her eye to clear a way a tear before it has a chance to fall.
Mulder smiles at her and sighs.
“I haven’t called her in weeks, just so you know,” he says. “And I don’t plan to.”
“You can call whoever you want, Mulder, I have no right to an opinion on it,” she says quickly, panicking at the idea that he feels beholden to her.
He rests his head on her chest just above her breast and curls up around her, which feels a bit backwards but also feels very nice. She strokes his hair and he splays his hand out over the scar on her belly, and they are quiet for a beat.
“I’d like you to have a right to an opinion on it,” he says suddenly, quietly, and it takes her a moment to follow.
“...You would?”
“Doesn’t have to be right away, but yes.”
“Okay,” she says.
He doesn’t ask what that okay means, which she’s grateful for because she doesn’t really know. And even though she’s not brave enough to ask him to stay over, he seems to know that she wants him to, and he stays. She has absolutely no idea what she’s doing, but she trusts that they’ll figure it out together, like they always do.
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