#and a BERRY just plopped down onto the bench next to me. immediately there is a fly enjoying the juice splash

[orcelito]

My Backpack Is Dripping But I Can See The River So Life Is Okay

[mangokiwitropicalswirl]

On the 8th Day of Christmas...

1. One Fancy FBI Ball  / 2. Two Women, One Man. Trouble / 3. Three Final Words / 4. A Dance in Four-Four Time / 5. Five White Berries/ 6.Six Degrees Fahrenheit / 7. Seven Dollar Cocoa

8. Eight Ways of Looking at a Kiss

Scully measures her breaths carefully and feels the weight of Mulder’s hand in hers. She presses her eyelids together tightly –  once, twice – as the image in front of her blurs through unshed tears. The memories triggered by the painting have made her a little dizzy, like she’s stepped through the frame and back into another time.  

But she’s here, now, holding Mulder’s hand in an empty gallery, missing her father. She takes a deep breath in and turns her face upward.

“So what did you want to show me, Mulder?” She ventures a little smile, trying to let him know she’s alright.

“We can go now if you want Scully,” he says quietly. “We’re warmed up now.”

“No, no,” Scully urges, “I want to see your favorites. You snuck us in here, it’s gotta be good.”

“You sure?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” She grins and squeezes his hand again.

Mulder guides them through several hallways, around corners that he seems familiar with, stopping only briefly at pieces that catch their eye. Scully makes a mental note to come back more often, to bring her mother to see the Winslow Homer that had graced their kitchen for so many years.

Finally, they come to a room filled with bronze and marble sculptures. To Scully, a few of them look familiar, like she should know the artist. She glances at Mulder who is leading them toward the long wooden bench at the center of the room.

“Let’s sit,” he nods. “You must be tired.”

She’s immediately grateful for the chance to rest her now-throbbing feet. Say what you will about sexy shoes, she thinks, they don’t look sexy when you’re limping.

“So?” Scully stretches her legs out and crosses her ankles, leaning back on her wrists a little. Mulder plops down next to her, his knee careening into the side of her leg and his hand coming to rest next to her hip.

“These are my favorites,” he says, nodding to the sculptures surrounding them. “They’re Rodin. Do you know him?”

Scully’s a little surprised. She’d have expected him to like Goya or Dali, maybe Bosch – surrealists, depictions of myth and horror – not these lyrical, polished figures.

“Not really,” she confesses. “Freshman art appreciation is a long time ago.”

“Well,” Mulder begins, and Scully can hear him gearing up for one of his lectures, “at Oxford, we studied him alongside Freud during one of my psych classes.”

“Why’s that?” Scully humors him, moving just a little closer to him on the bench so her leg is flush against his.

“Apparently Rodin was one of few artists of his time interested in exploring the sexual experience of women, and his sculptures were quite anatomically correct.”

Scully gulps. Mulder’s interest is making more sense now. She can feel the heat rising to her cheeks, but she lets him continue.

“Look at this one.” Directly in front of them on a low stone dias is a small bronze figure of a man and a woman bent toward one another in embrace. “This is a cast model of a much larger work. But look at the woman, the way her arm is around his neck, pulling him toward her. She’s not a passive subject.” He pauses.

Scully raises an eyebrow and waits for more. She knows there’s more, but she’s feeling warmer, the flush on her cheeks moving down onto her chest. She loosens her scarf.

“Look at his hand on her hip.” Mulder shifts his arm behind Scully on the bench. “He isn’t grasping her as closely as she’s holding him. Not yet.”

He takes another breath before diving further into the story. “The piece was supposed to be part of a larger work depicting Dante’s Inferno, and these were two lovers trapped in hell for their sins of the flesh. Dante modeled them on a famous scandal of his day, the ill-fated Paolo and Francesca.”

“What’s it called?” Scully’s voice lowers, she’s almost hypnotized by Mulder’s description, her eyes taking in the sensuous lines of the woman’s long limbs and torso, the breadth of the man’s hand against the stone woman’s hip, the arch of her foot.

“It’s called ‘The Kiss.’” Mulder explains, concentrating his gaze on the figure, “which is funny because if you look closely, you can see they’re not actually kissing. They’re frozen forever in that moment just before their lips meet.”

“Really?” Scully laughs lightly.

“But we wouldn’t know anything about that? Would we?” He turns to her, his eyes wide and his pupils dark. He intently smooths one hand along Scully’s leg and watches her own eyes widen as he curves his fingers down into the crevice between her knees, just below where the hem of her tight dress has ridden up.

The heat of his hand on her leg sends a jolt through her. She tries to concentrate on his words, but her brain is beginning to buzz. The phrase “would we?” echoes through her mind. Then it hits her. He’s talking about last summer, the moment in his hallway, the glacial pace at which they had moved toward one another. The goddamn bee, and everything that had followed.

“That would be torture,” she whispers, voicing what she’s felt in the months since. “To be so close.” She turns her whole body toward him now, his hand slipping further up the curve of her leg. “But never get there.” She brings her arm up around his neck, watching as his eyes widen further and his mouth parts slightly.

Scully moves her head toward his with the same agonizing pace she remembers. In her peripheral vision, she sees Mulder’s hand move from between her knees and reach up to undo the lowest buttons on her coat. She feels him slip one button then the next tenderly through each buttonhole until she feels the cool air of the room nip at her bare neck.

Neither of them have moved to bridge the gap between them. Mulder’s breath is warm on her cheek as she feels him move his hand back to grip her hip, while his arm behind her presses between her shoulder blades.

“Do you wanna know the story of Paolo and Francesca?” he whispers into her ear.

Scully almost laughs. “Right now?”

“Yes, right now,” he smiles, making no move toward her, but not pulling back either. She can almost feel each word vibrate through her jawbone as he speaks. “Legend says that the two lovers were alone together reading a book of courtly love, probably the story of Lancelot and Guinevere, and felt so strongly that the story they were reading was similar to their own that they were overcome with passion and had to set the book aside.”

“So what you’re saying, Mulder,” Scully smiles against his cheek, threading her fingers more tightly through his hair, “is that we’re sitting here getting turned on looking at a work of art depicting two lovers who got turned on by reading a work of art?”

“You could put it that way.” Mulder moves his mouth from her ear down her bare neck, leaving a trail of hot breath as he goes, but he refrains from actually pressing his lips to her skin. He just hovers, half a centimeter away, mimicking Rodin’s lovers frozen in their longing. “Scully?”

“Yes?” She feels like a damp fire has begun licking up the inside of her legs, settling in her core and radiating shivers out to the tips of her fingers.

“Are you gonna put us out of our misery or what?” He brings his face level with hers again and she understands. This next step is up to her.

Like the woman in the statue, she pulls him toward her. There’s the soft warmth of Mulder’s lips and then the almost violent interruption of his tongue. He crushes her to his chest so swiftly, it steals her breath. She gasps and squeezes his side where her hand has snaked beneath his suit jacket.

“Oh God!” Scully exclaims as one of his hands swiftly works under her skirt and strokes the skin of her inner thigh. The arm that had been holding her upright from behind is now sliding into her coat and winding up to the back of her dress. Mulder groans into another fierce kiss as her hand hurriedly finds the buttons on his dress shirt and tries to find a way in. When he finally releases the kiss, he quickly presses an open mouthed kiss at the base of her neck before he begins kissing down the slope of her chest as Scully moans and tips her head back to allow him more access.

The damp fire settled at her core is now a full blaze, and she’s afraid she might leave a wet mark whenever they finally get up from the bench. Mulder is pulling her as close to him as he can, kissing a trail toward where her breasts are rounding over the top of her gown.

Scully fumbles at reaching the bare skin of his chest, thwarted by his undershirt and the fact that she can’t quite yank hard enough to pull the shirt from the waistband of his pants. She whimpers in frustration and then sighs with pleasure as Mulder’s tongue leaves little wet spots along her neck.

Suddenly, she wants him, needs him. Badly. Immediately.

She moves her hand down to smooth over his thigh, and then she cups the hard length of his erection with a swift caress. Mulder jolts up and muffles a squeal by pressing his mouth to her skin.

“Scul-ly,” he draws out her name and sits up, giving her a quick kiss on the mouth. She doesn’t want him to slow down and pulls him back toward her. They lose track of a few minutes as their tongues meet again and again.

Mulder is the first to pull away and he rests his forehead against hers with a sigh. “Security cameras,” he mouths.

Her eyes widen and her cheeks redden. Mulder stands slowly, smoothing his hands over the front of his pants and adjusting himself. He offers Scully his arm and she rebuttons her coat as she gets up.

“So,” she asks smiling and running a hand over her mussed hair, “do you use that story on all the girls?”

“Only on the one who’ll appreciate it,” he replies, his eyes gleaming. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”