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ignis-scientia-estrogen-brigade · 7 years ago

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Because I am nothing if not an entirely raging narcissist, the last headcanon I wrote inspired me to revisit my redheaded OC and expand Ignis’ portion of it into a longer fic. At roughly 6700 words, it might be a little on the lengthy side for readers who like their smut in shorter, more consumable quantities, but at the very least I can guarantee approximately 70% of it is high quality genital-mashing.

Also, because we’ve established that I am indeed a raging narcissist, I drew a picture that you might’ve seen floating around these parts as supplemental material to help my followers visualize the naughty scene I’ve set. I’ve copypasted the fic in its entirety below the cut, but you can follow the link I’ve included to my AO3 account if you prefer getting your rocks off over there. While comments and constructive criticism are not necessary, they are more than welcome and always appreciated. Happy reading!

Idiotically NSFW

They have a routine, the strategist and the redhead; she waits in the shadows of his apartment landing near midnight, listening for the audible click of his front door unlocking to signal that the coast is clear; he greets her with a chaste peck on the cheek and a steaming cup of Ebony when she finally tiptoes inside; they seat themselves around the living room and chat politely for thirty minutes or so, about this and that and all sorts of mundane things, until they both silently acknowledge the real reason why she is here and discard their clothes in the hall on their way to the bedroom.

It’s a comfortable routine, something she has to look forward to after a long day at the Citadel, something that hasn’t changed in the weeks and months since she’d involved herself with the strategist. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee always succeeds at putting her mind at ease, as does the deep vibrato of his voice when he mutters the latest complaint against his royal charge. Even the slight narrowing of his eyes indicating his desire for intimacy is customary, for Ignis Scientia is nothing if not entirely consistent in his mannerisms, and the redhead knows the only expectation either one of them will have for the evening is just how long it takes for her to cry out his name.

Which is why it’s decidedly unexpected when she sees him pushing a large rectangular box across the coffee table in her direction. “What’s this?”

“A gift,” he says, in the clipped accent they both share. “Of sorts.”

She peers down warily at the violet ribbon wrapped around the package before turning a dubious eye on him. “For me? I scarcely would’ve taken you for the charitable type.”

“More for me, actually. Although it would be an added bonus if it was to your liking.” He takes a sip from his Ebony, and then nods toward the box. “Go on—see if it suits your tastes.”

She hesitates, somewhat puzzled by this curious break in their habitualness, but concedes to his request and tugs on the end of the ribbon. Once she’s removed the lid, she is met with a plethora of tissue paper; it takes her a few moments to unearth what lies beneath, and she laughs aloud when she finally recognizes the shimmer of satin and lace textiles. “Really, Ignis? Unmentionables?”

“They can’t really be considered unmentionables once you’ve mentioned them, now can they?”

The way the corners of his lips turn upward into a faint smirk is both utterly endearing and entirely exacerbating, and she resists the urge to sigh. “And what, precisely, do you expect me to do with these?”

“Wear them, I would hope. Preferably for me, but I obviously can’t stop you from entertaining lesser fools.”

She pegs him with a tart glance before returning her attention to the contents of the package; a pair of sheer black stockings is nestled between a matching garter-and-panty set, and she catches a glimpse of indigo silk beneath the lacy undergarments.

She then withdraws the purple article from the box and holds it up teasingly. “Your fashion sensibilities are certainly predictable. Did you purchase this from the same tailor who designs your dress shirts?”

The boned corset in her hands is indeed crafted from a similar Coeurl-print pattern the strategist favors in his own wardrobe, although this evening he is sporting a dark button-up shirt and necktie, likely due to a late night council meeting. “Not quite,” he replies. “I picked it up from the department store yesterday when I was with Noctis.”

She is almost positive he delights in the look of horror that crosses her features. “With the prince? What in Astrals were you thinking?”

“Come now, I’m more discreet than that.” He crosses one knee over the other and swirls his mug around demurely. “Umbra showed up just as Noct was buying new tube socks, and he asked me to bugger off for a bit. I took the liberty to make my purchases and was back before he could finish dotting his I’s with little hearts.”

“And you weren’t the least bit worried about being caught browsing the ladies intimate apparel section? Not concerned with any… assumptions the cashier might’ve made about you?”

The strategist shrugs. “Not at all. Even if someone were to suspect I was buying lingerie for myself, the whole Citadel knows I have nicer legs than anyone.” He then tosses her a wink. “Your included.”

She has half a mind to swipe her foot across the sensitive part of his shins, but the sight of multiple zeroes printed on the label affixed to the corset derails her malevolent intentions. “Goodness,” she breathes, and draws the label closer to confirm her eyes aren’t playing tricks on her. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to impress me.”

“Hardly,” he scoffs, draining the last of his beverage before setting his empty cup aside. “I merely wanted to ensure durable enough construction that wouldn’t fall apart immediately after putting it on. And besides—if you’d rejected my offerings outright without the tags, I’d be a few hundred credits lighter and nothing but aching testicles to show for it.”

She drops the corset back into the box with the other items and replaces the lid. “You could’ve always worn them yourself. Or perhaps your legs aren’t as shapely as you think?”

It’s admittedly one of her favorite aspects of entertaining the strategist, this delightful battle of wits; she cocks a mischievous eyebrow in his direction, poised and ready to counter his incoming barb with a pointed one of her own. But his green orbs soften behind his spectacles, and he surprises her—just as he did when he set the package in front of her moments ago—by reaching across the table and taking her hand in his own.

“I’d rather like to see you wear them,” he says quietly. “Won’t you consider humoring this stuffy chamberlain just for one evening?”

For a split second, the walls guarding her mind draw up; it was rather unlike him, the stoic personality he most often was, to reveal any signs of weakness around her, and the details of their arrangement never explicitly addressed the specifics pertaining to unusual fetishes or lewd requests. But his proposal wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for a lover—nor even particularly lewd, when the she really thought about it—and the earnestness in his eyes curbs her skepticism.

So she draws herself up from her seat without another word, the box of unmentionables tucked under one arm and her gaze trained on him as she strolls off in the direction of the master bedroom. When he’s out of her line of sight, she enters the on-suite bathroom and closes the door behind her; she then sets the package down on the marbled vanity beside the sink and removes the lid once more.

She hefts the bodice from the box and holds it against her torso, and her nose wrinkles as she stares at her reflection in the mirror. The redhead may have been the object of considerable desire within the walls of the royal palace, but she can’t even remember the last time she’d agreed to compress her organs for the sake of beauty. She wonders if perhaps the strategist is growing bored with her, dressing her up like a plaything in a final effort to coax the last remaining vestiges of attraction he still harbors for her, until she remembers that there are far more economical ways of getting one’s rocks off than dropping a few hundred Crown City credits on couture underwear.

She eventually discards the wardrobe she wore to his apartment and sets to work. The panties, stockings, and garter are straightforward enough, but the corset bindings are packaged separately from the bodice, and when she unravels them she finds herself tangled up in several meters of cording. She may be an expert at lacing a pair of combat boots, but ladies shape wear proves to be another beast entirely; it takes her ten minutes to thread the binding through the narrow grommets enough for her to squeeze herself into the overly complex garment.

When she moves to adjust it, however, she is left with an excessive amount of binding in both her hands; what the purpose was of having six feet of rope when she only needed two to hang herself with eludes her entirely, and she spends yet another ten minutes trying to figure out why only the bottom half of the bodice will tighten when she pulls on the end of the cords.

“Need a hand?”

She snaps her head around, and her eyes lock on to the lanky figure leaning against the threshold. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to recognize you haven’t the slightest clue how to lace a corset properly.” The strategist moves into the bathroom and stops behind her, gliding his fingers gently across her neck as he shifts her long tresses to one side. “Allow me to enlighten you.”

The tightening around her ribs eases abruptly, and her spine begins to tingle when she feels his warm breath on her shoulder. “It’s not polite to sneak up on people like that,” she says in a low voice. “I didn’t even hear you open the door.”

“I’ve made a career out of sneaking up on people. Are you really surprised?”

“Hm. I suppose not.”

His hands move quickly, tugging on the binding and rethreading them from the bottom up. When he reaches the grommets centered near her waist, he picks up the other end of the cording and begins lacing them through alternating holes from the top down. She studies his face in the reflection of the mirror while he works, his bespectacled features furrowed with the same razor-keen focus he would dedicate to any other task, imperative or otherwise; she has witnessed his awesome powers of concentration before, whether he is channeling the celestial magic of the crystal the sovereigns of Lucis have bestowed upon him, or taking notes in a boring council meeting, or even—nay, especially—when he is making love to her in the earliest hours of twilight.

“There’s a method behind lacing a corset,” he explains, tying off the ends of the cord at the two lowest grommets and tugging on the excess binding looped at her waist. “Pull on these ones”—he clutches at the bottom strands—“and it tightens the lower half. Pull on these ones”—his grip switches to the top strands—“and it tightens the upper half. Makes it easier to distribute the tension more evenly.”

As the compression surrounding her ribcage equalizes, the redhead surmises she learns something new about him every day; how he takes his coffee, what section of the newspaper he prefers to read first, how deep the rabbit hole of his perverted psyche actually goes. “You seem to be quite the authority on corsetry.”

He secures the loops of the binding into a snug knot; then he slips a hand around her waist, drawing her close and touching his lips to her ear. “I like my presents wrapped as much as anyone.”

Her eyelids flutter shut when she feels his arousal pressing against the small of her back. “Seems a shame to go through the trouble of putting everything on, only to take it all off again.”

“Who said anything about taking it off?”

Finally, she turns to face him. “You’re going to have to,” she says, gesturing to the panties that are trapped firmly between her stockings and garter belt. “Unless you plan on fucking me through my underwear somehow.”

Neither one of them was in the habit of employing vulgar language with any regularity; they both had reputations at the Citadel to uphold, and at times it seemed like they were the last two remaining consummate professionals amidst the likes of bawdier individuals like Gladiolus Amicitia and Libertus Ostium. Still, the occasional use of more… colorful vocabulary held a certain measure of gravity, and indeed her expletive has its desired effect; his cheek twitches as he takes a step toward her, and she can see the fire of lust flaring behind his emerald eyes.

“Is that a challenge?” he asks.

It’s rather unbecoming of her to bait him like that, and she knows it; he may be The Strategist, but he’s still just a man, and it was hardly fair of her to tease his ardor without giving any serious thought of following through with her insinuation.

But then she’s reminded of all the times he’s held the upper hand and delayed her gratification to agonizing lengths, and there was something about wearing a corset and thigh-highs that is making her feel empowered besides; she meets his gaze with a wicked one of her own, and reaches up to loosen the tie around his neck. “Since you managed to persuade me into donning this little outfit of yours,” she purrs, “I was wondering if I might make an inquiry of my own.”

His jaw clenches in visible restraint as she slips the tie out from under his collar. “But of course.”

“How much do you trust me?”

His gaze then drifts to the knot she is suddenly tightening around his right hand. “About as much as I trust anyone fettering my wrist with my own necktie, I suppose.”

When she is content with the strength of her makeshift shackle, she guides him to lean his lower back against the vanity countertop. “It’s just that you have a tendency to make sure my needs are met without ever giving any thought to your own. I find that rather troublesome.”

His face betrays the faintest hint of apprehension as she snakes the long end of the tie around the back of the sink faucet. “I’m certainly not feeling neglected, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Be that as it may, there’s a notable disparity between my efforts and yours. I was hoping to rectify that particular oversight.”

Only when she attempts to seize his unfettered wrist does he finally interrupt her machinations. “While I wholly appreciate your concern,” he says, raising his left hand away from her and out of reach, “I’m not sure if this is the best solution to an imaginary problem.”

She doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of watching her leap futilely after her target, so she levels him with a steely gaze instead. “Afraid of turning the wheel over to someone else, for once?”

“No, but in my experience, bondage without the advantage of forethought rarely ever goes as planned.”

The hairs on the back of her neck tingle in mild irritation; she drops the end of the necktie on the vanity and lowers her voice to nearly a whisper. “I never ask you for anything, Ignis. You’re the one who leaves your front door unlocked every night, not me.”

The words left unspoken linger like a specter in the tiled room; she had no way of predicting from the start where exactly this dalliance of theirs would take her, but she’d done all she could to play by the rules, her rules, the ones that explicitly stated this was merely an agreement between two consenting individuals, where they could express themselves privately in ways they otherwise could not. She certainly would never have been able to envision herself clad in nylon and expensive silk with her buttocks on full display, at the behest of a man who had cooked for her and shared his bed and had even engaged with her in the occasional lover’s spat, and who for all of Eos felt like a loyal and doting husband in everything but name.

He adjusts his spectacles across the bridge of his nose, and she can see the wheels turning in his mind, weighing her desire to please him against his need to always be in control. After a moment, he heaves a long-suffering sigh and extends his left wrist in her direction. “I suppose we ought to agree upon a safe word.”

She can’t quite conceal the smile tugging at the corners of her lips, and moves to secure his outstretched hand with the remaining slack of the necktie. “I’m not sure that’s necessary. The worst that could happen is you uproot your faucet.”

“And send a geyser flooding through the apartment?” He shakes his head woefully. “My renter’s insurance would positively skyrocket.”

When she is finished tethering his wrists to the polished brass fixture behind his back, and is confident he won’t be able to immediately break loose the instant her mouth meets any sensitive flesh, she traces her fingers lightly across his smooth cheeks and draws him close. “I’ll try not to be the reason for any permanent water damage,” she says, as the distance between their lips vanishes, “but I can’t make any promises.”

It’s a wholly unique experience, kissing the strategist whilst his arms are bound; his hands are usually everywhere at once, tangled in her hair, caressing her breasts, slipping beneath the waistband of her panties to massage her aching nub. But the tables have suddenly turned, the onus of his pleasure firmly in the palm of her own hands, and she almost doesn’t know what to do with herself now that she isn’t having to clutch at the walls just to hold herself upright under his devilish ministrations.

Almost.

His shirt is still buttoned and, without the present use of his limbs, it might’ve remained that way for a while longer if her desire to undress him hadn’t been entirely innate. But since the instinct to strip the clothes right off his back was as involuntary as breathing, she doesn’t even need to break their kiss for her fingers to find and unfasten the top three closures; two more, and she’s drinking in the flavor of Ebony and spiced cologne as she explores his tongue; the final two, and she’s parting his tunic like the curtains of a window and pressing her body tightly against his warm chest.

His mouth drifts across her cheek and follows the outline of her jaw, but his lips stop just shy of her left earlobe when his restraints prevent him from leaning in any farther. “I hope you don’t intend to imprison me like this for too terribly long,” he says.

His shoulders flex under the hand she is gliding over his collarbone, presumably testing the durability of the tie against the strength of his own wrists. She then trails her fingers down his abdomen, encircling his navel once before untucking the hem of his shirt from his waistband. “I loathe to disappoint you, but I’m only just getting started.”

A curious noise bubbles out of his throat just then, scarcely audible enough for her to hear, but sounding halfway between a frustrated whine and a carnal growl. The expression settling in across his features conveys a more telling tale; his lips are parted and his jaw is set, and he lowers his chin to his chest when she presses the palm of her hand against the bulging in his trousers. Her other hand is snaked around his neck and gripping at the base of his scalp—just the way she knows he likes it, because of course she knows, because tugging on his tawny hair only served to urge his arousal onward in the past.

But he can’t do anything about it like he could before, since the tie fettering his wrists has held up remarkably well thus far; he conveys his annoyance at being shackled against his will by biting gently on her lower lip. The hand she has resting on his groin moves to tackle his belt buckle, and she releases the zipper of his trousers with deft fingers before pulling away from him and dropping to her knees. The strategist didn’t spend several hundred credits on intimate apparel just to view the evening’s entertainment from the nosebleed section, however, so the redhead makes sure her posture is such that the lacy undergarment dividing her backside is suitably conspicuous from his birds-eye perspective.

“I just had a thought,” he says suddenly. “The bathroom’s not exactly the most hygienic place for this kind of activity. Perhaps we should move into the bedroom?”

“And spoil my fun? I think not.” She glances up and cocks a teasing eyebrow at him. “Besides—knowing you, you probably sterilized every square inch of this apartment with industrial strength bleach before I arrived.”

“Regardless if that were true, the floor tiles can’t possibly be comfortable on your kneecaps.”

She then threads her fingers beneath the waistband of his fitted boxer briefs and tosses him a wink. “Itching for release, are we? I’m getting there.”

He doesn’t get the chance to counter her argument before she is tugging down on the garment and liberating him from the constricting fabric. For a brief moment, her pride swells at the sight of his warm and rigid flesh; any and all doubts she had about boring him are quickly forgotten upon seeing his erection standing at full attention. She wraps her fingers tentatively around the base of his shaft and slips the other hand beneath the hem of his shirt, tickling his hip; her eyes lock onto his for half a heartbeat, long enough to enjoy his expression of pleasure mingled with sheer torture when she finally takes him into her mouth.

“Be reasonable,” he says hoarsely. “You can’t expect me to remain upright in this position if you continue like this.”

She subdues his protests by drawing him in closer; a silent gasp escapes his lips when the head of his shaft meets the back of her throat, and she can feel his right leg quiver slightly through his trousers. She drops the hand she has at his waist and squeezes his thigh to ease his trembling, withdrawing from him briefly to focus her attention on the sensitive tip. As she traces circles around it with her tongue, she catches a glimpse of his face out of the corner of her peripheral vision; his eyes are closed, his forehead furrowed in concentration—or is it dread?—and his lips are pressed together in a thin line.

She hears a soft clank when she returns him fully back into her mouth, and glances up to see his shoulders working against his restraints. “Please consider reneging on your proposal,” he whispers, his eyes still firmly shut. “I’m not sure how much more of this I can take before I break something.”

But she doesn’t consider reneging on anything, not even for a nanosecond, because it’s not often she has the chance to witness the strategist at his most exposed, and the look of pure, naked vulnerability on his face has lit a fire in her belly that is quickly turning into a roaring blaze. Instead, she redoubles her efforts and encompasses him nearly to the point of choking herself on his flesh-and-blood sword; the trembling in his thigh has grown more pronounced, and the muscles of his bare abdomen twitch furiously with every flick of her tongue. His spectacles have shifted and are creeping down the bridge of his nose, so he throws his head back and grits his teeth to stifle the cry of ecstasy clawing its way up his throat.

She is employing every tool at her disposal to please him now—she’s appropriated the fingers of her right hand into a makeshift cock ring, trapping his member between her thumb and forefinger to prevent the flow of blood from exiting the tissue of his shaft, while the ones on her left gently massage the delicate part of his scrotum. Her slow oral ministrations have given way to a more rigorous pace, and the copious amount of saliva that is currently coating his loins provides a suitably slick lubricant with which to prime her throat. She takes him in deeper, but he doesn’t thrust against her; if anything, he appears to be yielding away from her, and for a moment she wonders whether his reticence is a result of her accidentally nicking him with her teeth.

But then she hears the sound of ragged gasps rattling around in his lungs, and is alerted to other signs of his imminent climax approaching; his flavor on her tongue has changed slightly and the temperature of his skin has risen, and the base of his shaft is pulsating as his body prepares to conclude its natural cycle. Maintaining a steady rhythm is key, she knows, so she reaches for the pockets of his trousers and clutches at his hips—partly to balance herself from her increasingly vigorous movements, and partly to ensure the strategist has no way of escaping the inevitable.

She would’ve patted herself on the back for her near-record time it took to bring him to orgasm, had her hands otherwise not been occupied; the sound of his breath catching in his throat is drowned out by the clank clank clank of his wrists wrenching violently against the gilded faucet. “Darling, I—I can’t—”

She has but a moment to decide which way the next few seconds will go. Hold fast, and her throat might reject his milky offerings; withdraw, and he’ll spill his seed all over her expensive corset. It’s his own damned fault for spending such a ludicrous amount of money on lingerie, she thinks, but she’s far too pragmatic to allow fine silk to be ruined over a few teaspoons of semen; in the end, she takes her chances and silently prays her body won’t betray her.

It’s not so much the flavor that catches her off guard, but the heat; for a man christened after fire incarnate, it ought not to have surprised her to discover his seed ran as hot as his libido. She presses her eyes shut out of fear for how her mouth will react to the intrusion, but—mercifully—her gag reflex remains dormant, so she relaxes into him and allows the warm fluid to pool on her tongue. He tastes slightly bitter, but not overly so, certainly no more than a slightly unripened apple, and when last of his pelvic convulsions finally slow to a standstill, she finds she has very little trouble containing the bounty of her efforts.

He is slumped against the vanity when she rises to her feet, his head angled forward and his spectacles displaced halfway down his nose. She isn’t sure if the way his nostrils are flaring is simply due to exhaustion, or whether it is a more foreboding sign; she takes a tentative step toward him and places a gentle hand on his chest. “Is everything… all right?”

“Please untie me.”

He doesn’t look up when he says it, and the redhead surmises it’s about the most animated reaction she can anticipate from a man who practically sharpens his teeth on his rookie lance pupils without even breaking a sweat. She reaches behind his back and fumbles with the end of the tie, half-expecting him to recover his dignity and march out of the bathroom the instant his left wrist is freed; he remains stagnant against the marbled countertop instead, moving only to return his spectacles to their proper place across his nose.

The heat of the moment is quickly dissipating with his ominously silent mood, and she frowns. “Are you angry with me?”

He finally glances up at her, his head tilted to one side, his eyes betraying nothing. “No.”

Her frown deepens. She’s seen the strategist grow aloof in the aftermath of their relations before, but there is something wholly distant in his expression she can’t quite put her finger on. “Then what is it?”

The necktie is still knotted around his right wrist, and it trails after him as he reaches out to caress her cheek. “Come here. I want to hold you.”

A queer sensation trickles down her spine; a few harmless pet names and bending the hours of their arrangement was one thing, but he was far too steeped in his devotion to the crown to show affection outside the confines of intimacy beyond the occasional peck on the cheek. “Are you feeling all right?”

The corners of his mouth curve upward faintly, and his hand falls to her waist and draws her close. Her eyebrows are knitted at this unusual display of tenderness, but she nestles herself between his legs—his erection is still hard as a rock, she notes—and leans to rest her chin on his shoulder.

He then snakes his arms around the small of her back and buries his face in her red locks. “You look magnificent,” he says quietly.

Her throat tightens, and she bites the inside of her cheek to stifle the feelings that are threatening to manifest themselves into tears; she’ll never have him the way she wants him, not entirely, and not because of their duties to the kingdom of Lucis, but because she knows deep down that the Six did not breath life into a man of his talents without a having a greater calling for him in mind.

His hand glides up her spine and stops at her neck, brushing her hair away from her shoulders as he touches his lips to the soft skin beneath her ear. Her own hands tighten around his chest, and she leans into his embrace; there will be plenty of time to fret about divine destinies later, and the gentle nibbles he is trailing along her jawline are admittedly working wonders to take her mind off of the hypothetical.

So she nuzzles her nose against his feathery temple and breathes in his scent; her ministrations from earlier must have been more laborious on his resolve than she first realized, because she is only just now noticing the light sheen of perspiration that dots his forehead. He finally pushes away from the vanity and draws himself up to his full height, guiding her hips with strong hands to the bit of marble countertop he just vacated, and braces his arms on either side of her to corral her in place.

“Darling,” she whispers, as he rakes his teeth across her collarbone, “you don’t have to continue for my sake. You must be utterly exhausted.”

“What was it you said earlier?” His hand finds the waistband of her panties and slithers beneath them. “Ah, yes—‘I’m only just getting started.’”

She snorts softly against his neck, but her amusement at his cheeky turn of phrase is short lived when he presses his long fingers inside of her. Then her beguilement is all but forgotten, and replaced by the singular desire to feel his warmth fill her entirely; she locks one ankle around the back of his knee and grinds her pelvis against his hand, and her insistence is rewarded when he massages his thumb across her sensitive hood.

His mouth returns to her face and he brushes his lips lightly against her own; she has little time for his chaste and gentle probing, however, and chases hungrily after his tongue instead. She is unable to stop the whine of disapproval from bubbling out of her throat when his hand disappears from between her thighs, but the strategist has a plan—just like he always does—and it requires the use of both hands to grip at her hips in order to lift her onto the edge of the vanity.

At the back of her mind, she can’t quite help chuckling quietly to herself at how ludicrous they must look in that moment; his necktie is dangling off of his right wrist like a wet noodle, his shirt rumpled and unbuttoned, his trousers and briefs halfway down his buttocks as he claws at the infinitesimally small strip of fabric separating his cock infuriatingly from her cunt. In truth, though, the redhead lives for moments like this, when their guards are down and their humanity is on full display, because even though he addresses her with cool and cordial formality at the Citadel, she knows the strategist has the same needs and desires of any other hot-blooded man that has fire coursing through his veins.

He shifts her weight in an attempt to displace the lacy accouterment, but it remains firmly wedged in her backside. “This would’ve been a lot easier if you had just let me take off my stockings,” she laughs.

“Remove my favorite accessory?” His spectacles lurch as his face crumples into a scowl. “Not on your life.”

Finally, he manages to push the stretchy fabric aside adequately enough to gain access to her warm folds. Her hand is already between his legs and gripping his shaft, her urgency to end this lustful torment as great as his; he clutches at her thigh to steady himself before he is plunging his searing heat inside of her like a pike impaling a fleshy target.

The air in her lungs all but evaporates, and her fingernails dig into the thickest part of his shoulders. His reaction is more subtle—not even the faintest cry of rapture escapes his lips—but she can feel his body shudder slightly when the full circumference of his girth meets the edge of her resistance. For a long moment, neither one of them moves, and the only discernible noise coming from the bathroom is the sound of their hearts beating furiously inside both their ribcages; then he is withdrawing from her, slowly, gently, agonizingly, returning his lips to the crook of her neck and nibbling at the baby soft skin there, before driving his hips forward again and resuming his occupancy fully inside of her.

How he is still so hard is beyond her, but she doesn’t protest or complain; if anything, the way the elastic of her wayward panties is capturing her nub between the base of his shaft is a miraculous serendipity that sends chills firing down her spine. The strategist notices this little development as well, she realizes, which really shouldn’t have surprised her in the least—it was his job to extract knowledge from the most trivial pieces of evidence, after all—but her eyes widen just the same when she feels him angle himself against the garment for a snugger fit.

Is he competing with me? she wonders. Was this all just a wanton race to see who could bring the other one to climax the fastest? She would’ve admonish him if she’d had authority over her own voice, but the only thing she is able to utter in that moment is an unintelligible moan of pleasure. And it doesn’t really matter anyway, because the familiar pressure spreading throughout her lower belly is growing stronger with each passing thrust of his hips; her hands glide down the back of his dress shirt, unconsciously and autonomously, and clutch at his buttocks as her resolve frays like a quickly unraveling thread.

She can no longer see his face, because he is resting his chin on her shoulder now—bracing it, really—as he moves between her legs with methodical precision. But she can hear his breath shortening, his exhales breaking in time with the heart she feels thumping inside his chest. Her own pulse is screaming in her ears, but she ignores it in favor of focusing her attention solely on the sensation of his warmth grinding against the most tender part of her sex. When she closes her eyes, she can almost visualize her climax hovering on the edge of her consciousness; her nub throbs every time he eases away from her, only to glow like a star on the cusp of going supernova when the pressure resumes.

Two more thrusts and her vision begins to swim; another three, and the scales are tipping rapidly out of her favor; one final push, and she’s reached the point of no return. “Ignis,” she whispers, the thread disintegrating, the star finally exploding. “Ignis—”

He tightens his grip on her thigh, although whether it’s to balance himself or merely to calm the violent tremors ripping through her body, she isn’t sure. Each wave of her orgasm takes with it a piece of her voice, until her loud cries of ecstasy finally fall silent and she is gasping desperately for air like a dying Lucian carp. Her fingers are suctioned to his lower back like barnacles, as are her legs that have captured his slender waist in a vice grip, and she holds him close for what seems like an eternity as the spots of light dancing across her vision slowly fade.

“Drat.”

The strategist’s benign obscenity returns her to the here and now, and she finally loosens her grip over him. She then glances up at his face, only to see him staring down between her legs; when she follows his gaze, she sees the fabric of her undergarment clutched in his hand, tattered and ripped at the side seam.

“So much for quality,” he mutters. “I’d have thought for the money I paid, it would’ve held up at least a little better than that.”

A small smile touches her lips, and she traces her fingers lightly over his cheek. “I’m not quite sure lace is rated for this kind of strenuous activity.”

“Indeed.” He releases the scrap of fabric and readjusts his spectacles once more. “I suppose I’ll just have to take my business elsewhere next time.”

He then withdraws from her and helps her down off the vanity. She has to hold the two torn sides of her panties at her hip just to preserve her dignity, although considering he had himself buried to the testicles in her sex moments before, she supposes there isn’t much modesty left to be lost between them. He returns his own equipment to his briefs and zips up his trousers, but he leaves his shirt unbuttoned, and his necktie is still wrapped around his wrist; she is tempted to make a wry quip about his unusual lack of fastidiousness, but she knows his persnickety side will eventually spur him to cover himself, so she simply enjoys the sight of his taut abdominals on display for her viewing pleasure for as long as she can.

She then reaches for the binding of her corset to ease the tension in her compressed organs, until another thought suddenly occurs to her and stays her hand. “Do you mind if I stay for a little while?” she asks.

He is already at the threshold of the doorway, no doubt longing to excuse himself and his mild germaphopbia from lingering in the bathroom any longer. “Not at all. Don’t feel compelled to stay in that outfit, though—I’m sure your spleen is begging for mercy.”

“It’s not so bad, once you get use to it.” She releases the torn ends of her ruined underwear and lets them fall to the floor. “Besides—for what you paid, you ought to get a bit more of your money’s worth out of it.”

One quizzical eyebrow rises above his spectacles. “What precisely did you have in mind?”

They won’t always have this routine, the strategist and the redhead; the Empire was building garrisons across Lucis at that very instant, and the Astrals would undoubtedly intervene in her happiness once they finally revealed the celestial plans they had in store for the prince’s most loyal advisor. There were times when the reality of their fragile agreement cut through her heart like a cold dagger, its icy tendrils suffocating her with the same lethal proficiency Ignis Scientia reserved only for enemies of the crown.

But this was not one of those times, and their illusion of normalcy remains intact if only for a brief moment longer. “I don’t believe our arrangement forbids any party from brewing a pot of Ebony without wearing appropriate undergarments,” she says, as she struts past him and out of the bathroom. “How about another cuppa?”

#final fantasy xv #ignis scientia #ffxv fanfiction #ffxv headcanons #ffxv imagines #ffxv #ff15 #ignis #ignis stupeo scientia

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somekindofseizure · 8 years ago

Text

When the Ink Dries Part V

Rated: Explicit

Notes: Thank you @icedteainthebag for spending immense amounts of time working this through with me and for being brilliant. @gazeatscully and @h0ldthiscat for the hugely helpful early stage beta’ing that helped get it to this point.

And to all of you who’ve been so supportive and amazing.

Parts I-IV can be read here

* * * * * *

Chapter 11

The strident echo of Stella’s boot heels grew humbler come late afternoon as they clicked down the damp concrete sidewalks of London’s shopping districts. All morning long, she’d walked arm-in-arm with Scully in a mood seemingly unscathed by pain and weather best described as a permanent cold sweat. But now Scully could feel Stella’s arm growing heavy, leaning a little rather than leading, and beneath the buttery leather of Stella’s off-day civilian jacket was a tightly clamped fist, the humps of four bracing fingers visibly knuckling the black calfskin. Scully asked if she needed another painkiller.

“One last stop,” was Stella’s indirect answer.

“Are you sure because -”

And then Scully saw it. Secretive and svelte, a door tucked trenchlike down four wrought-iron steps--a place that looked as likely to sell James Bond his spygear as it did his girlfriends their racy underwear. Scully had been watching Stella fight to feel like herself all day, and one look at this shop said it was meant to be the pièce de résistance in that carefully drawn battle plan.

“Nevermind,” she said.

The first time Stella ever suggested they go shopping together, they’d just arrived in Chicago, one of their early girls’ weekends when they’d managed to make their paths cross amidst conferences and con artists (psychics, was Mulder’s word for them). A wicked midwestern wind had whipped past as they stepped out of the taxi and Stella promptly announced that she hadn’t packed appropriately. A bit of a rash declaration for someone who’s just arrived, Scully had thought, a bit like someone who, say, wanted to go shopping. In an effort to act fast, she’d offered to sacrifice up her own warm coat.

“Don’t be silly, what’ll you wear then?” Stella had asked as she slipped her shoes off and claimed the bed closer to the window. She liked to control the amount of light that got in. Which, during sleeping hours, was none at all.

“Your trench is fine for me.”

“No, the weave is too flimsy. Wasn’t built for this.”

“We don’t have anywhere we really have to go anyway.”

“All weekend?” There’d been an unusual lilt in Stella’s voice that Scully disconcertingly identified as glee. She’d kept her back conveniently turned to Scully’s pouting as she swanned into the bathroom. “Call down and ask the concierge where the nice shops are.”

Scully had closed her eyes and thought of the circumstances in which she usually went shopping: when a barbecue stain on her favorite shirt valiantly fought off a third tour of spot treatment, when the soles of her shoes disappeared into puddles of mysterious green acid, when she accidentally lost weight on Mulder’s diet of sarcasm and chewable seeds. Shopping did not represent release or self-expression or feminine bonding to her; it was a pilgrimage of debilitating necessity, a quest guaranteed to humble and shame her into austerity until the next time it needed doing.

Huffing loudly as she disappeared into the sound-proof vacuum of the rotating doors, she’d trudged out of the Chicago hotel that afternoon a martyr. But a few shops, a glass of wine, and a piece of cake later (cake!), and she was following Stella in and out of jangling doors with the slightly giddy buzz of a first-time rebel in a John Hughes film.

Now they were about to enter a lingerie shop decidedly more slick film noir than Breakfast Club. Scully found herself holding her breath a little as she opened the door for Stella. Stella took a step in and folded the umbrella behind the door. The clerks stopped what they were doing and smiled demurely, folded their hands patiently across their bellies. It was as if the Queen of England had just walked in. Did Stella come in here that frequently? Or was it just a trade secret the shopgirls had, a way of spotting a certain type of woman?

Once, in New York, she’d picked out a pair of jeans for Scully without her even trying them on. Scully had stood in the art deco hotel bathroom, pulling them up with the tags still on, stunned as she zipped and ran her hand over the normally denim-defiant curve from her waist to her ass. If she were patient enough for scheduling to permit, she’d realized, she might never have to suffer the agony of buying jeans--or anything else--again. All she’d have to do was keep a running list of things she needed in the back of her mind and save all her shopping for Stella’s weekends.

“Would you mind that?” she’d asked.

“No. But the list-keeping is part of your problem, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“You tell yourself you need something too many times, it’ll start haunting you.”

“That your big shopping advice for me?”

Stella had come into the bathroom for a little bottle of body lotion from the countertop. Scully’s suit was hung over the back of the door.

“My advice is stop buying up a size. You’re not going to grow into anything.”

She’d swatted Scully’s bottom on her way to the minibar.

Wherever they went, they always visited at least a couple stores. Stella would shoot withering glances at snot-nosed salesgirls while accepting their free glasses of champagne, criticize craftsmanship at twenty feet through a tinted window, effortlessly translate sizes from US to UK to Euro and back again. “You’ll get the hang of it,” she’d tell Scully, but Scully knew the implications of this were false. She’d never known Stella to, say, flip through a copy of Vogue, had never actually heard her entertain fashion as a topic of conversation. It wasn’t a learned skill for her. Some combination of confidence, pragmatism and hedonism had bred (among other things) a shopping savant in Stella Gibson.

And the clerks in the posh lingerie shop knew a master when they saw one. Scully watched them bat their eyelashes in Stella’s direction, biting their tongues with admirable restraint, knowing their help was neither needed nor wanted. Scully wondered how they even found the time to get ready for work--each one of them made up like Brigitte Bardot in the role of a French maid, little black dresses and heavy eyeshadow, veritable mission statements across their well-brassiered chests regarding the pursuit of fantasy. She felt compelled to stay close on Stella’s heels this far from realm and country, but that meant being included in the glow of their interest. Could they pick out the people who didn’t belong just as well? She began to fidget, play with her hair, clear her throat. A bell rang out relief and the Bardots turned their heads in unison, a kickline of painted pouts. The new customer paused under the doorway and shook water out of her hair with her fingertips.

“Is it properly raining now?” asked Bardot Number Three and Scully watched the customer smile and answer, but her mind saw something else entirely.

She’s in her grade school camp t-shirt, slightly preoccupied with her bralessness. Mulder stands soaking wet at her door, nervous, tall as a tree without her heels on. She’s thinking she should go change, grab a sweatshirt, but it seems presumptuous that she’d need to, or vain, or overly demure, or maybe she’s just too curious what he’s doing here to take the time...

Scully turned back to Stella, who had set her sights on a deep indigo piece of satin and was shoving it under her arm for future reconsideration. Then she picked up a simple black balconette bra, unadorned and unpadded, convent attire by this brand’s standards, and handed it over her shoulder to Scully without looking.

“Stop following me around and go try this on.”

Scully stepped into the bordello lighting of the dressing room, yanked open the black velvet curtain and pulled it shut behind her. It was more formidably weighted than she’d expected it to be, rooted like a native jungle plant, waving the past away as it welcomed her into its midst. She hung her coat on a hook, feeling slightly on edge, but she had yet to regret buying anything Stella had picked for her. Neither, for that matter, had Mulder, she recalled. One button on her sweater and he’s taking a pair of stilettos out of the box in awe, another button and he’s smoothing the wool felt of a pencil skirt over her hips as she marvels barefoot at its perfect length.

She began to move more quickly to shake the memories off, a driver who’s suddenly concluded she’s being tailed. She tore the sweater over her head half-buttoned and her long hair fell in a mess around her face. Slightly breathless, she grabbed the bra off its hanger, glanced in the mirror to see if she’d lost him.

His mouth is on her chest and she is taking off her t-shirt, the waves in her hair multiplying exponentially with every moment he stares up at her...

The bra seemed to clamber of its own will up onto her torso and she did the rest, quietly fastening her grip on the present moment as she tightened the straps, pinching each cup like the edge of a piece of spinning pottery, determined not to be spooked off course. Her hand automatically went over her belly-button, a tic she had at mirrors that Mulder sometimes teased her about, but he wasn’t there.

Yes, he is. He is holding her from behind, a hand on her breast and she is breathless…

Her throat suddenly tightened and her tongue went as thick as the curtain, feet sinking into the floor like quicksand. The air became too thick to breathe. Her skin boiled but her fingers froze, and her hands tingled as they thawed against the mirror. Leaning forward, she looked away from the surface, sought the solace of reason--panic attack, panic attack.

But his hand is here, tight…

Anger and terror swirled in her belly as she pictured herself stuck there overnight and forever, becoming one with the flora like the Amazonian curtains and dim lighting, forgotten and forsaken, and she tried to suck in more air but his hand--

“What’s taking so long?”

Scully tried to answer, but her mouth had gone dry, her teeth just beginning to fall into a rhythmic chatter.

“Dana?”

She managed to swallow and some saliva flowed again. The word came out hardened with effort.

“Yeah.”

The curtain opened with a sharp thwap, and in the mirror Scully could immediately see understanding scrawled in the ballpoint blue ink of Stella’s eyes. The tension in her shoulders began to release and her ankles wobbled free as Stella bent creakily to the floor and handed Scully her sweater. Scully held it up against her chest like a shield and Stella snapped open the back clasp of the bra.

“There,” she said softly, pushed the straps down Scully’s arms a few inches.

“I couldn’t breathe.”

Scully could see the effort it took Stella to lie.

“I was off on the size, probably.”

Scully nodded.

“Too tight.”

Scully thanked her the way she knew Stella liked her thanks best--quietly, refracted through as many insignificant elements as possible. It was exactly how they’d looked at each other in Ed’s psych ward bathroom, surrounded by 1940s kitchen-appliance-green tile and maniacs. There, in that pause, was the tiny satin ribbon of intimacy between them, a tight little bow, pulled evenly in both directions, a knot sewn securely through the middle.

“I’ll be waiting out there,” Stella said.

And when Scully came out, Stella was standing behind another customer at the register, true-to-form, as though nothing had happened. The violet piece of lingerie was now out from under her armpit and splayed fondly over two hands. Scully cleared her throat, relieved to have a lecture to offer.

“I thought you said you weren’t interested,” she said.

“I’m not interested in the doctor. I didn’t say I wasn’t interested in sex, period.”

“You’re not exactly in fighting shape.”

“I take offense to that.”

Bardot Number Two was wrapping and stickering a set of garters with the speed and gravity of a beknighting.

“You’ve got hairline fractures that could become clean breaks,” Scully pressed.

“I promise, I’ll tell them to be gentle.”

Scully lowered her voice to a modest decibel.

“When was the last time you asked a guy to go softer?”

Stella laughed, a low, evil chuckle that meant never and you know it.

“Why do you assume it’s going to be a man?”

Scully tried not to sound too curious, too invested.

“Aren’t they usually... these days?”

“Usually and unmemorably,” Stella murmured.

They both shuffled a little closer to the register as the customer ahead finished up. Bardot took the purple thing from Stella and gave her best now-here’s-a-woman-who-knows-how-to-buy-underwear hum.

“Sorry, I know you don’t want to hear it,” Scully said.

“On the contrary, Dana,” Stella said. “You know I like it when you play doctor.”

Bardot’s eyelashes twitched a couple times. Only Stella could scandalize someone who sold crotchless panties for a living.

“Anyway, I would be remiss in my duty if I didn’t say it,” Scully continued, swallowing her warning with a lick of her lip, scratching her scalp in quiet defeat. She’d have all day to negotiate exactly how long Stella was going to wait before she started taking strangers to bed. She’d rather do it without an audience.

“It’s not for me,” Stella said with an exasperated sigh. “It’s for you.”

Her eyes twinkled with mischief, her hand out to the cashier as the receipt chattered into existence.

“For Mulder, rather. He deserves a little something for letting me borrow you on such short notice, don’t you think? Why are you looking at me like that?”

And that’s when Scully started to cry.

The late afternoon light fills their bedroom with a penny jar haze, the sun picking up speed as it rolls into their old house and then spins to a stop on the stuffy closet floor where Scully is seated. She’s wearing a pair of faded blue track shorts, baking on a peel of of wood floor turned Mediterranean orange as the panels make stripes on the bottoms of her thighs like a beach chair. It feels like summer inside.

Outside, it’s light-jacket autumn, a day meant for reading with your head in someone’s lap, a Golden Retriever-led jog, taping leaves into notebooks. It’s the kind of day that represents the occasional success of the universe despite its many known faults--the kind of day you’d feel lucky to get if it happened to be your birthday. But Mulder hasn’t acknowledged the concept of luck in a long while, and Scully’s universe has been narrowed to the confines of their house’s termite-gnawed walls, its moth-infested closets like pock-marked moons round every corner. The things she needs to see die and be reborn are all here in her home.

They have a longstanding tradition on his birthday that he can talk to her about any one topic, anything he wants, for any length of time, and no matter how boring or ridiculous she finds it, she may not shut him down, ask him to stop, even politely change the subject until twelve midnight of the fourteenth. It began after a few years of Scully’s watching him mope through cakes and picnics and concerts, feeling like a failure as he willed the day to be over with. She had always felt deeply responsible for the success of people’s birthdays and he seemed to deeply relish hating his; this put them, as always, at a crossroads.

“You think you’re the only adult in the world with a birthday?” she’d ask crossly sometime around September twenty-eighth, the time of year she’d begin suggesting possible plans. Sports events and restaurants, desserts splashed up with promises of lewd frosting-themed side-events--none of it welcomed.

“Mortality and unmet expectations, I get it,” she’d say. “We’ve all learned to deal with it.”

“I’ve hated it since I was a kid, though,” he’d say with an edge of competitiveness in his voice.

When he finally told her what would make him happy, it was an accident, a bit of snark during his morning slideshow.

“Come on, Scully, act like it’s my birthday and humor me,” he’d said.

Yes. She would humor him. Come October thirteenth.

Initially, Mulder had doubted her ability to follow through on her offer, even for one day. But Scully proved herself that first year, regarding the eight lives of octopuses, no less (an obvious test). Her low tolerance for pseudoscience was outweighed by her determination and respect for birthdays; she’d nodded patiently with her best Red Riding Hood face, every so often asking a relevant question, and if Mulder could tell she was faking interest, he didn’t complain. Maybe it was that he liked her suffering for him, or maybe he was just that good at deluding himself - but either way, she knew he knew it meant she loved him enough to do it. And that, she would have lectured if given the opportunity, was the very point of a birthday.

After the success of that first octopus birthday, Mulder was sold. He spent the next October and the next making lists on the back of napkins and magazines in waiting rooms, carefully narrowing his options so as to choose wisely, make the most of his chance to fill her brain with the best of the nonsense that inhabited his own. Over the years, Scully perfected a series of false reactions. Last year, when he revealed the morning-of that he’d chosen something “cosmic,” she’d tittered cheerfully about Mercury in retrograde and Venus in her rising house. Astronomy, he’d corrected, you know, science, and she’d squealed science? Is it MY birthday? as he buried her in a smattering of toothpaste kisses.

Specifically, the topic was sun outages: the phenomena of communication disruption during periods following the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, when the sun’s apparent path puts it between Earth and a satellite, the power of its radiation hoarding and burying the signals. It could be happening, he said, right then.

“Imagine, Scully,” he said with typical Mulderian awe. “How powerful that is.”

And for the first time since they’d begun their tradition, Scully almost failed. She folded her arms across her chest, leaned back on the arm of the couch. Rain was pounding the roof and the house reeked of pizza as Mulder idly pulled at her socks. The day was almost over, she was almost in the clear. He had, of course, spoken of many more far-fetched things than solar episodes, but this was science and she, a scientist. It sounded fake to her. He leaned forward as she struggled to control her right eyebrow during the part about the effect of such outages on the Bombay Stock Exchange.

“You--should see--your face,” he laughed.

Really, but no, really she asked over and over, squinting and dubiously cocking her chin, and she learned that the only thing that delighted him more than her succeeding at her game was losing it. She was subjected to a punishing foot massage, wherein she moaned exaggeratedly when he squeezed a good spot. He mimicked her, making silly noises back. Each time she made her sound, she felt it originate a little lower down in her body, and then heard his response a little further up, and soon he was kissing her neck and sucking her earlobe and telling her she was the best girlfriend in the history of the world.

“Mm, I think you’ve found your topic for next year,” she told him.

“Hard science,” he mumbled and she didn’t even mind the wordplay when he used that voice and put his hand on her waist. It had been a hard year but a very good day.

By the following year, Mulder’s depression had deepened with the same steadfast intensity he applied to all things. She requested the day off anyway. Their tradition would revive him, and if he couldn’t get off his office chair, she’d spend it in his lap purring at him while he talked about forest fairies or vampires or anything really. As the day approached, he drew no lists on napkins, gathered no topics. Instead, he made clear his wish not to acknowledge another year’s passing at all. And come this morning, he banned her from so much as taking the ice cream cake out to thaw.

He doesn’t want her attention but she can’t leave because it’s his birthday. He’s given her no choice but to spend this perfect autumn day off like an accident, a misfiring smoke alarm or a snow flower, and now she sits with her legs crossed as she reaches into the closet and roots out the rot, makes piles she hopes will somehow make their life grow come spring. The leafy breeze momentarily muscles its way into the room, mulches the smell of her cotton-distilled sweat as it licks the underside of her hairline and the creases of her thighs, reminds her just how ripe she is--twenty seven hours since her last shower and four months past picking. She swallows the fresh perspiration off her lip, sinks a little deeper into the floor. She’s lonely and sweaty and Mulder is unshaven and in another room that might as well be another continent.

This is the state of things when she comes upon a man’s toiletry bag buried under a heap of shoes she doesn’t wear anymore, an archaeological strata that places it somewhere around the year they bought the house. She remembers Mulder used to keep something like this in the office for emergencies--the same place she kept her lipstick and sometimes a plastic egg of cheap pantyhose. The idea is bitterly funny now, of Mulder having ever cared that much about shaving, or for that matter, she about pantyhose. They have both stopped even turning the lights on in the bathroom most of the time.

Thin rolls of dead animal skin peel off into her lap like a bad sunburn and she almost tosses it directly into the ‘out’ pile, but there’s a vague whiff of sentiment about it. And what doesn’t have sentimental significance to Mulder? He is a walking collection of grudges and past associations, a pantry closet full of expired tea bags and spices still holding onto their spot on the shelf in case of the future. It is only the present he undervalues. This is the tiny, spiteful part of her that wants to throw the bag out anyway--the part that has turned her nostalgic as well. There are certain bottles in the bathroom that remind her of him, entire drawers of her dresser, types of chocolate bars and bottles of wine and dozens of songs she’s taken out of daily rotation. She keeps the kit in her lap, knows by now that these little spasms of cruelty pass quickly. She unzips it as she gives herself time to determine its fate kindly.

There are razor blades and a brush and a dark blue velvet-coated box. Its color is doubled, tripled, quadrupled in depth by the clamoring reflective surfaces around it, though the edges of the blades have gone dull from years of sifting against thick leather and a closet floor. It’s a color she might buy a sweater in to match her eyes, a classic soft-edged cube that snaps open and shut along a gold stripe, jaws threatening fingers like an alligator. The diamond it holds is modest in size though it shames the silver razor blades in luster, twinkling like a star in the sun. At first, she feels nothing, assumes it’s something he’s inherited, that it has nothing to do with her, an artifact. But when she turns it in her fingers, she sees an inscription inside the band. “S. My partner always. M.”

And then all the dust in the room is in her throat at once and she begins to cough, a single and then a series, a speeding treadmill of hacking she can’t seem to slow. She snaps the box shut and holds it tight in her fist as she moves to the bathroom, unable to drop it as she splashes cold water on her face with one hand and sips like a desert traveler right from the faucet, choking and spitting when it won’t go down. She is still doubled over the sink, catching her breath, when Mulder appears in the mirror over her shoulder like a phantom. She wipes her mouth with the neck of her grey t-shirt and notices the ears of dark sweat all over it. She becomes acutely aware of her shorts riding up her ass. These are things he might have liked sometime, but now he’s here for his ibuprofen or to pee, and she’s self-conscious about how she looks.

Except he doesn’t excuse himself or reach for the medicine cabinet. He raises his eyebrows in concern. This still happens, where she’s still aware of the stubborn and unconditional love between them, but the moments have become less frequent and more ephemeral. So she tries to hold on to this one with the grip of her eyes, a muscle once taut and toned from use in their partnership, now a bit atrophied.

“You okay?” he asks.

She nods.

“Dusty in there. Should take a Benadryl when you do that.”

And he turns to go.

“I was cleaning,” she says. This alone, when he was himself, would have started a conversation. Mulder rushing to her piles, quick to make sure she hasn’t discarded anything he considers important, which is everything. Was everything.

“I know.” He’s already down the hall. She’s alive. She doesn’t require CPR. He doesn’t realize yet the stakes are actually much higher than that.

“I found something.”

She can tell he’s heard the urgency in her voice in the way he looks over his shoulder. No signs of extraterrestrials here, just a velvet box held out in her open palm. She doesn’t care about the ring, not really, but she needs it, is counting on it, to get some answers.

Still he seems unruffled, saunters back with the mild interest of someone who’s just spotted a spider, still deciding whether to kill or it save it.

“What is this?” she asks.

He sniffs, both lips folded into his teeth, then pops them out.

“Come now, Scully, you haven’t been out of the FBI that long.”

“You know what I meant. When did you buy it? Were you planning to give it to me?”

“A year and a half, two years ago,” he sighs. And yet, at some point, he sat in some jeweler’s shop, discussing the circumference of her finger with a swooning saleswoman. Is it this small? Or more like this? No like this, but it’s slender. I don’t know, I’m torn, she’s very small but she has strong hands.

“But then this stuff came up.”

He always refers to it this way, his depression, like it’s a case or an event, a busy calendar, and not like something he has to own and admit to. She licks her lips, shakes her head.

“I… don’t know what to say,” she says.

“Guess I’m glad I haven’t asked then.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she says, eyes up, glare powered by the red circles forming on the apples of her cheeks. She is angry, not embarrassed now, and she hopes he damn well knows the difference.

“Mulder, ‘this stuff’ isn’t a thing that’s going to just go away. You have to address it, let people help you.”

Let me help you, is what she really wants to say, but say that and she might as well chase him from the room.

“That’s not what it is!”

He can’t even say the word.

“What is it then, Mulder?”

It’s not just August now, it’s August inside a volcano, August on Mars, and the sweat beads even faster on her cheeks, sends rivulets running down her sides and the back of her calves, but she doesn’t care. Whether he still likes it, whether it’s his birthday, whether she should have showered, whether she should be ashamed. This is the closest she’s come to solving the case in months and the only thing she cares about is not going home with an empty report.

“What--if not depression--could be so powerful you’d change your mind about that?”

“You want to get married, I’m sure there are plenty of guys better suited who’d be willing. Still got your looks, Scully.”

Before she can hear him finish her name, she throws the box at the wall like it’s something she’s trying to break; neither of them grants it so much as a glance when it lands on the floor in one piece.

“You know I don’t give a shit about that, Mulder. I have never asked you for a ring. But I am asking you for us.”

“I’m fine. We’re fine.”

“No. You’re not and I’m something you put at the back of a closet and forget about,” her voice is cracking now and she lowers it in order to glue it back together. “When was the last time you looked at me--”

“I’m looking at you right now--”

“Talked to me, really talked to me--”

“Stop it, Scully.” A sense that it’s coming.

“Fucked me.”

He nods, bites his bottom lip for an extended second, eyes coming into a scowl, vaguely self-righteous and jealous, and she feels a single cold tear steal down her cheekbone like an angry runaway out a window.

“That’s what it’s about,” he says.

Scully breathes deeply, a slight relief rippling through her. Stella has told her she should say fuck more often and in this moment, Scully understands why.

“This passion you feel for whatever you’re doing in there?”

“I’m--”

“I don’t care what you’re doing. You once had it for me.”

She can feel herself shrink with every emotionally impoverished word, sees her stores of dignity running lower each time she gives him another glimpse into her heart. He still knows her well enough to notice and cares enough to lower his voice a little, wipe the gleam of irony off his face.

“Scully, I just need a little more time. I’m right on the edge of something and it’s taking up all my bandwidth.”

She steps a little closer.

“Fuck your bandwidth, Mulder,” she tries and feels strong again. It’s a jackhammer, this word, and a lifeline. “You once had so much passion for me that you walked into a tattoo shop and had my initial painted on your body knowing it might make you clinically insane.”

Suddenly, he smiles--not sarcastic, just soft and familiar.

“Maybe it finally has.”

She steps closer, reaches into the sagging waistband of his pre-depression jeans, skating her hand down his lower abdomen. She hears him lick his lips and knows it’s more likely impatience than desire--how irrational that assumption would have seemed to her ten years ago--but she keeps her eyes on her own wrist, sliding down the rightmost edge of his red boxer briefs. She’s doing it blind but there’s a tendon that has always twitched under her fingers and if it’s still there, if he’s still him at all… and it does. She peels her face back up the sheet of his chest, but she’s not yet ready to risk seeing the dead look in his eyes, so she puts off identifying the body and scratches his beard with her fingernails, looks at it the way she did when it first grew in. Like it’s a novelty, like she could have some fun with it before she demands he get rid of it.

Kiss me, is what she would have said then, if she had to say anything at all, or just done it herself.

“You don’t fucking get it,” he says, but he’s whispering now and his muscle is settling against her hand and he’s grabbing her shoulder so that their chests sway together and apart as he talks. “You don’t understand.”

“I don’t fucking get it,” she agrees and takes his hand, puts it up the inseam of her shorts, rests it on her inner thigh, waits for him to make the rest of the journey on his own. It is a mere two inches, unobstructed by underwear, simple and straightforward, and if he can’t go that far for her--

“You think I’m not furious about the fact that I can’t make love to you anymore?”

But his fingers do travel.

“Then don’t make love to me.”

And one of them is inside her before she even finishes the sentence. She gasps, rises up a little onto her toes. The floorboards creak under her feet, pliant with the last of the year’s heat. He locks his knuckles and pumps her for moisture as she closes her eyes, afraid to look for him, afraid he won’t want her back. She’s ashamed that that matters to her, that it isn’t enough if he’s willing to devote his time and attention--that she needs his desire as well.

“That what you want?” he asks. “That what you want from me?”

“No,” she says, at the risk of losing her chance, of losing everything. But by now, the word is rolling off her tongue and she is reckless in her vulnerability. She can be rigid and distant again tomorrow, at work, or when she comes home to find him ensconced in his research, eating with her back against the refrigerator, going to bed alone. “I want you to fuck me.”

His finger slips away as she tears her shirt over her head, drops it to the floor and toe-heels backward toward the bed. Sweat molds her wild hair in one sloppy instant to her shoulders, her waist, her lip.

“Come on, old man,” she taunts even though they have agreed in the past not to make those kinds of birthday jokes. All bets are off, have been off for longer than she cares to admit.

His feet shuffle closer, and she finally finds the courage to look into his eyes. They’re following her too, nervous but hungry as she sprawls out on the mattress like the bride he’s never made of her. She runs her tongue slowly between the top and bottom edges of her teeth, drops her chin open when he finally planks his body over her like a starved wolf, bends on his haunches to kiss her tentatively on the mouth. Yes, he’s tentative at her mouth but he’s hard against her leg and thank God, she whispers aloud.

He laughs, and this fills her with such intense momentary joy that she feels she might float up off the bed. It is over. How many times has she has told herself it was serious, that it would need professional treatment. But she was wrong, it is over now, he will be fixed with this one simple physical reunion. The hope is weighty and uncomfortable, makes her breathe harder and writhe in the swooshes of sheets that lately only smell like her.

“It’s not because I can’t get hard,” he says and she can tell this is not one of his boyish jokes. “Or that you don’t make me hard. That’s not why I don’t come to bed.”

She hears the word hard and watches her fingers twist his shirt.

“Then why?”

He strokes the apple of her cheek and disappears behind his eyes for a moment.

“Forget it,” she says quickly. “Doesn’t matter.”

“It does. Dammit,” he says to himself rather than at her.

“Stay with me, Mulder. Stay, please.” But he’s shaking his head no and she can tell that her neediness is making it worse, but if it could be dismissed, it wouldn’t be need. Need, she has found, can only be shared or passed back and forth, never vanquished. “It’s just me. I’m right here. I’m right here.”

He angrily bounces the mattress under his weight, but she is not afraid of him.

“Don’t say that to me when you’re going to leave!”

“What?”

“I know your patience is growing thin with me, Scully, I can feel it. And it’s just like that time, with Philadelphia.”

She can hardly believe her ears, cannot believe he’s dragged this broken record out, and frankly is almost relieved. This? Not the absence of their son or the petty, pointless end to his life’s work, or the times she has accidentally but thoughtlessly embarrassed him in front of her family or the million shitty things they’ve said in passing to each other since he started pushing her away, cruel little lockboxes they’ve been too tired to bother springing open. No, this stupid thing, the faded tattoo on my back, let’s dust that one off.

“I was in Philadelphia because you made me go.”

“I know and you were right, I make everything about me. And I was right too, to hold onto you so tight. Because when I don’t, you leave me and you find someone else.”

“We weren’t even together then.” She’s landed safely in the past now, feels safer with every second she stays, is willing to pull up a chair and pour herself a drink there. And how ironic that at the time, it was the least safe she’d ever felt.

“You didn’t even try to be with me. You put it on me but you didn’t try either, you didn’t tell me how you felt.”

“I was dying,” she seethes.

“You were miserable and you’re miserable now.”

“Is that what you’re waiting for me to do? Fuck someone else?” She lifts her hips and rubs up against him, chooses her words carefully. “Because I can do that if you prefer.”

She turns over onto her stomach and turns out her hips, feels his straining jeans scratch peach splotches onto her salt-sticky skin. She wiggles the band of her shorts down to her hips and pulls her hair over her shoulder to make sure he can see the whole of her tattoo, the head eating the tail, going round and round as it intends to do her whole life, and she almost snickers at the appropriateness. How clever, how deep she’d thought herself the night she picked it out of a book of cheap designs.

“Fuck me like this so you can see it. Show me how much you hate it. Show me you think I deserve what happened to me.”

She is really gambling now, breathing hard into the mattress as she tosses her chips. He doesn’t touch her, but breathes harder too--she feels it travel like a hot steam iron up her spine. A drop of his own sweat falls into the valley of her back and she swallows with her ear to the bed, a decades-old fight held tight for dear life between her gritted molars as she speaks.

“I swear to God, Mulder, if you don’t do it--”

And his arm comes around so suddenly and lifts her off the bed with such force that she loses her breath. He squeezes her nipple so tight she knocks her head back against his shoulder. He fumbles with his pants with his other hand, his weight on his knees between her legs. She tosses her hair back between them and tries to look over her shoulder, but the sun glints a hard edge through the window, for a moment right into her eyes, and she thinks of the sun outages, of whatever has been standing between them for two years, powerful enough to suck the signal not only from their conversations but their silences, their touches, their pencil taps, eyebrows arcs. Then he leans forward with her packaged under his arm and the glare is gone, he fixes it just like that, a simple tilt on an axis, a shift in perspective.

“You belong to me,” he growls in her ear, and though this is the game they’re playing, she knows in the moment, he means it and in the moment, she wants him to.

“That’s right.”

“This how you want it, Scully? Pissed off and hard and rough? This what’s been missing for you?”

And then he’s smooth, so smooth, and straight against her thigh, poking at the white edge of her shorts and it has been so long she’d like to look, except that it’s too perfect, him holding her to him in one arm and pressing the bed away with the other.

“Yeah, hard,” she says.

“That how that homicidal asshole fucked you?”

The homicidal asshole was shy and careful with her in bed, a sweetheart right up until the moment he decided to try to kill her--but this, of all times, is no time for the truth.

“So hard. So much harder than you ever have.”

There’s a crackle of elastic losing its give as he tears her shorts down to her thighs with both hands. He grabs her hips and pulls them, dragging her back onto her knees. He pushes one rough hand into her hair and sharply claps her on the ass with the other. She moans and stretches her ribs as his giant hand travels from her scalp down over her face, capturing strands of hair in the swoop back to her breasts.

“Just fuck me, Mulder, I’m ready.”

And she continues to try to keep track of both his hands; a thumb down the center of her abdomen as she sucks it off the mattress, one kneading her hip and now one on her lower back as the other disappears and is he wrapping it around himself, she hopes? She exhales hard and spreads her knees a little. But no, he collapses her to the bed and starts to trace her tattoo, tickling and torturing her, making her wetter and wetter as she gets flashes of that finger inside her just moments ago, flashes of Stella’s hand up the back of her shirt in a bar their first night and she doesn’t even feel guilty for borrowing a little extra arousal there or stealing friction from the mattress because this is the most functional thing they’ve done in months.

The finger goes round and round and round, eventually too many times to be a tease. She ceases to squirm and moan and just waits, not sure what else to do, beginning to tremble as the air grows cold and the down stands up on her arms and legs. An angel passing, her mother used to say. His hand is casket-heavy the next time it flattens itself on her lower back.

“I can’t,” he says wanly. “I’m sorry.” He strokes her hair once, like she’s an oil painting he’s not supposed to touch, and not someone who just begged him to take her.

“You should go, Dana,” he says now.

And he says it with no more flair than if he meant to bed or to the store or to work so you’re not late. But she knows exactly what he means because he calls her what her mother calls her, and her teachers and her priests. The bed trembles when he leaves it, and she stays but just for now. This is where she’ll mourn the last of her resilience, cry quietly with her shorts around her hips. There’s a cake in the freezer. There’s a ringbox across the room. Yet another thing she never asked for, never had in the first place, and still managed to lose.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” Stella asked.

They were sitting at the only the two-top in a self-consciously rustic pub, a place that had undergone a makeover and tacked on the word gastro to seem fancy. Most of the patrons were concentrated at a long communal farm table splitting the room in half. In the back, at a rickety little thing where waiters probably stole meals between shifts, Scully could smell the parts they couldn’t reclaim--lime rind-swept kitchen floors, the slightly stale, slightly oversexed glaze of beer-soaked blonde bartop. One whiff took her back fifteen years and a body of water to where Stella, in a halo of gold liquor, first fingered the cross around her neck and silently absolved her of responsibility in any of the recent events that had almost killed her. Now here they sat, another country and another split brow bone, a penitent lingerie bag between their feet. Scully crunched her salad.

“I hadn’t really been thinking about it,” she lied, gulping.

Stella stared into her ketchup as she dipped three French fries at once, a miniature silent treatment. Scully was aware they came in various sizes; best not to upgrade.

“I didn’t want to make it about me,” she admitted.

“Does he know where you are?”

“I haven’t turned my phone on since I’ve been here,” she said.

“Mm, mature. He’ll be a wreck.”

Scully scoffed at this and Stella looked piqued.

“And by that you mean, what? That he wouldn’t notice you’re gone?”

“I moved out.”

“To come here?”

“No, before. I’ve been out of the house a month now.”

Stella balanced an uneven bit of lettuce and tomato in her burger before biting into it again, then wiped her cheek with a knuckle. She squeezed the last of a lemon rind into her Diet Coke and gulped it down, dropped one hand like a hockey puck in the center of the table as Scully waited to see which way this was going to go.

“That bad,” Stella mused.

Scully nodded and Stella took a measured breath, slightly louder than the others but not quite a sigh. She watched Scully eat, a reluctant referee.

“It’s not that I don’t love him anymore.”

“Then what is it?”

“He’s very difficult.”

Stella crumpled a napkin in frustration.

“Of course he’s difficult, Scully.”

Scully looked up at the sound of her last name, the realization dawning that Stella was going to take his side. Scully hadn’t even thought of it that way, as a thing with sides to be taken, until the moment Stella introduced the concept.

“What did you think you were getting? Somebody easy? Steady? Bloke who puts a ring on your finger, comes home at five-thirty and watches the game with his mates on Sundays? You’d scratch your eyes out in boredom. You like to think you’re traditional but you’re not. Or you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Scully didn’t know if that meant here with me or here in the existential sense, having made all the choices you’ve made.

“He’s not there,” she said, wondering if this was how couples therapy would have sounded had Mulder not refused it. Reductive little phrases they could bear to send forth into the room, unfairly burdening them with the significance of a much wider range of emotions and events. This could have summarized, for example, the way he’d begun to spin like a wayward compass after years of being her due north, how confident she’d been at the beginning of the spiral that they’d find their way out together, how sometimes she was so lonely and lost that she wished he’d just take her with him.

“Sex?”

Scully flickered her eyes up at Stella and back to her plate. Over the years, Stella had almost never asked anything about her sex life with Mulder. It was unclear whether the perceived danger was sadness or arousal. Either way, this was different, a metric.

“No sex,” she said softly. This, for example, would have summarized the events of his birthday last year.

“He’s depressed.”

Mulder had never allowed her that simple concession, the peace of having something to call it, something to treat.

“Yes.”

It was strange for Scully to have the focus lifted from persuasion. The lens turned inward and sharpened her guilt. Even in the worst of times, like the ones Stella had helped see her through, she had cried, screamed, shot things, wished she could shoot more things, prayed. But she’d still gotten out of bed, she’d still felt like some version of herself, still loved the things she loved and hated the things she hated. Her depressions had reasons, beginnings in horrific events and endings in coping mechanisms. She had no idea what it must feel like to have them start and stop nowhere.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she said, the shame in her chest bubbling up into her throat in the form of defensiveness. “I’m not going to apologize for saving myself.”

“Of course. I understand. So you’ve moved out of the house then.”

Ah yes, the impossibly passive aggressive custom of wrapping up unwanted bits of conversation by reiterating something previously mentioned.

“Yes, I got a furnished place. It’s fine.”

She shook her head at her plate as she picked over the carrots she’d parsed aside when she realized they were (inexplicably) pickled.

“Sorry. I’ve ruined our day.”

“That’s silly.”

“Keep that lingerie,” Scully said. “I’ll just get upset every time I look at it.”

“If you wish,” Stella said at a clip that indicated she found this kind of self-prescribed sentimentality patently absurd, but not worth arguing. She began to smolder across the table. Scully put her elbows on the table, hands clasped at her nose. I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t done anything wrong. The clues to Mulder’s moods were neatly filed away, but Stella’s were buried under centuries of breeding. There was no way to know what exactly had tripped the wire--was it that she’d left Mulder in his time of need, or simply that she’d put Stella through an unpleasant lunch?

“I’m getting dessert,” Stella announced brusquely as she waved a hand at the waiter. “I’d advise you to get your own if you want something.”

Scully bit her upper lip and raised her eyebrows, shook her head helplessly at the waiter as Stella ordered a dish of mousse and then formed a pensive letter L with her arms across her ribs, stroking her lips with her thumb. It was as if Scully had left the room. The shadow of Stella’s disengagement fell as cold as her attention did warm. Scully looked out the window and began to count the cobblestones in the street, starting over three times as she tried to develop a more organized method of keeping track. She didn’t look when she heard the mousse arrive.

A kick under the table, like the ones during breakfast. Eighteen cobblestones, Scully noted, for when she started counting again.

“You should have told me when you arrived,” Stella said, and then she paused significantly, as if to indicate how unnatural, how forced this kind of open communication felt to her. She raised a pinky and waved it in the direction of her stitches. “Regardless of this.”

“You’re right,” Scully agreed in a small voice.

Stella nodded, generally as uncomfortable lording any sort of moral high ground as Scully was mining the low.

“Sorry,” Scully said as Stella swallowed.

“I wouldn’t have had to sleep on my fucking couch.”

Scully sucked her cheek a second, not sure if she was meant to laugh yet. Stella scraped the mousse with her spoon.

“Did you see that he brought me an extra spoon?” Scully asked.

“Don’t you dare, I said get your own.” She took a breath and flashed her eyes across the table. “Fine.”

Chapter 12

Scully rested her chin on her arm as she watched the city go by from the cracked-open black taxicab window--the mighty Thames, rushing the past away and away, the windy little be-lanterned streets desperately holding onto it. This was, Scully told herself, as good a place as any to find yourself crying in public; stoic but generous in its sharing of burdens. Stella’s lunchtime tough love had softened into evening easy silence and about halfway home, she took Scully’s hand at a traffic light, folded it into her warm palm and held it there on the cool leather center seat between them. As the car lurched into green again, Scully let her fingers go slack beneath the weight of Stella’s wrist and looked back out the window, let herself be comforted by the lullaby of older and wiser.

“I’m getting hungry already,” she said absently as they rounded the corner onto Stella’s block. There was an old pub tucked into the end of the street, the kind with a crest and an animal in its name. Scully wondered how often Stella went in there to have her Scotch, her after-work glass of wine. It was possible this was too close to home for her to spend much time there at all.

“That’s what you get for eating salads,” Stella said. Their voices were sunrise rusty from the long lull in conversation. Stella paid the driver and looked past Scully at her front door, brow furrowing.

“You may be in luck,” she added curiously. “I think that’s a container of soup waiting for us.”

Scully turned and saw not only soup, but a person attached to said soup. She held her questions, worried the answer would take longer to give than the walkway would allow. She hesitated outside the taxi and waited for Stella to lead the way up to the door.

“Dani?” Stella asked, though she was clearly sure. The girl--actually, she was a woman, but young, no older than thirty--squinted and smiled close-lipped. Maybe thirty-two, now that she was second-guessing herself.

“Ma’am.”

She held her free hand over her eyes, though there was not--had not been all day--any sun to speak of. She seemed to hug the tub of soup a little tighter against her hip.

“What are you doing here?” Stella asked. Dani’s accent was different, though Scully couldn’t quite have described how.

“I thought you lived here, Ma’am,” she said.

“I meant in London.”

“Oh. Yes, Ma’am. I asked for a transfer. My girlfriend and I broke up and um. Yeah. Gonna be living here now.” The way she said ‘now’ almost sounded like it had a letter I in it somewhere.

If the news that this girl had moved to London meant anything to Stella, she didn’t show it.

“This is Dana Scully. She’s an old friend.” Scully caught the way she looked down, knew she was slightly unnerved by having to define it. “Dani and I worked together in Belfast.”

Dani shifted the soup from one hand to the other to offer a handshake. Her eyes were deeply hooded and soft-rimmed, squinted into narrow, friendly crescents when she smiled. She was nervous.

“Did you want us to take that?” Scully asked.

“Oh. Yeah.”

Scully reached for the soup and held it up like a lab specimen, mouth watering as she watched the noodles swish around in the cloudy broth behind the plastic.

“Looks perfect.”

She smiled at Dani just in time to see her looking back at Stella, a little sigh rising and dying on her chest. It would have been impossible to spot, had Scully not at some point also looked at Stella that way. Stella, oblivious or indifferent to any sighing or gazing, simply waited for further explanation.

“I thought you might like something easy,” Dani finally offered. “Recovering and all. I made it, act-u-ally.”

The girl looked down at her sneakers, pride and embarrassment and courage all funnelling down to the pear-shaped space between her Converse. Her pin-straight cinnamon colored bob poked forward past her ears. Scully bit the corner of her bottom lip to keep herself from smiling too broadly.

“But I can see that you’re fine,” Dani said.

“It was very kind of you. Thank you.”

Dani sucked up a breath, desperately trying to seem casual and failing.

“Right. I’ll be goin’ now.”

Stella nodded and smiled and Dani looked at Scully one last time, a plea for help, Scully thought, or an apology, she wasn’t sure.

“I hope you don’t mind if I steal some of it,” she said. “I’m starving.”

“Course not.” And with that, Dani backed down the walkway with her chin held up. “Bye.”

Scully had barely had time to grin when Dani turned back from the sidewalk.

“Ma’am.”

Stella turned stiffly on her heel and suddenly Scully was eternally grateful she’d never been put in the position of being Stella’s subordinate.

“Maybe we can have a coffee sometime.”

Scully could not imagine how long the pause felt to Dani--a bus ride, a lifetime...

“That sounds nice.”

Scully waited to make sure Dani was out of earshot. Stella unlocked the door and entered a code into an alarm system.

“I didn’t even used to set this thing,” she mumbled.

“Hey. Stella.”

Stella pushed her boots off and threw her jacket onto the staircase railing. She headed up the steps and Scully followed.

“What?... No, I did not sleep with Dani.”

Stella unbuttoned her jeans, tossed the little black bag to the furniture and collected her robe. Scully’s feet were street-swollen, and when she leaned on the bed and shifted her weight forward, the soles burned.

“How do you feel? Do you want me to bring up a glass of water and a painkiller?”

“No,” Stella mumbled almost inaudibly. “I have to be careful with them.”

“Oh,” Scully said, looking down to hide the surprise in her eyes. This is how she had always learned important things about Stella. Accidentally, in passing, and if she was smart, without further questioning.

“Soup then?”

“After I wash up, yeah? Need to get the city off me.”

“She’s awfully cute, isn’t she?”

Nothing from Stella.

“She made you soup,” Scully said. “You must admit, it’s cute.”

“She felt bad for me.”

“She asked you out. And risked hyperventilating doing it.”

“She’s a child--”

“Thirty is hardly a child--”

“And she’s a cop.”

“You’re telling me you haven’t slept with lower ranking police in your employ.”

“She’s a woman, it’s different.”

“Oh,” Scully laughed. “These are your principles?”

“Yes,” like she was being asked if she had milk in the house, or if she knew how to play the piano. “Don’t mock them just because they’re not the same as yours.”

Scully hadn’t meant to nudge any soft spots. She was here to tend to them.

“I know you have principles,” Scully said with careful earnestness. “But you can still be flattered.”

Stella shooed her out the door and Scully took no offense. This was something Stella did on all their weekends together, occasionally hid in the bathroom for twenty minutes or disappeared into the hotel bar alone for an hour.

“I mean, is it that all young women look at you like that or what,” Scully muttered rhetorically as she headed back down the stairs. Stella’s tossed-off reply was almost swallowed by the gulp of the door shutting.

“Only the redheads.”

Scully lay on the couch with bent knees, hands holding her ankles, a glass of red wine on the Persian carpeted floor beside her, book open face-down on her chest. She’d tried to read it and gotten distracted thinking about the conversation she’d just had with Stella. Was it Dani’s innocence that was sticking with her? A woman in her early thirties would have been through things, been broken by people and broken others. Certainly, Scully had. And yet, she’d seen nothing at that point, nothing at all compared to what was coming.

There was another possible explanation. She and Stella spent their time together in near-isolation, partially out of circumstance, but also because they were protecting their relationship from anything which might challenge it. She’d seen fawning shopgirls and cowed bartenders admire Stella dozens of times. But she had never seen Stella get a hug from a sibling or a parent, had never watched her friends laugh at a dinner party. Through Dani, she had gotten to see with her own eyes that Stella had other people who cared for her, and that felt good. At the same time, old friends was a very approximate categorization. Scully knew she’d been just a little relieved that Stella hadn’t returned the girl’s interest.

She finally got up and made her way to the microwave, hit the stop button before it beeped in case Stella had fallen asleep. The room filled with the scent of coconut, maybe lemongrass. She was sitting on the living room floor with her legs out and crossed at the ankles, blowing and slurping at a spoon when a pair of cloud-grey pants stepped into view. She hadn’t even heard Stella come down the stairs.

“I think it’s tom ka. Want some?” she gurgled, looking up.

“Is it any good?”

“There’s no steak or Scotch in it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Stella smirked and strode past Scully to the spot beside her, leaned one hand on the sofa and inched down to the floor. Scully moved to take the other hand, but saw it was already occupied with a half-full glass of Scotch. The deep V-neck t-shirt she’d put on shifted to reveal extra freckles as she settled in. Sometimes Scully forgot Stella had them.

“I was going to watch something,” Scully said, nodding up at the blank TV.

“It’s been broken for months.”

“I can put something on my laptop,” Scully said.

“Let’s not be desperate.”

“Months? What do you do when you’re alone?”

Stella bit her lip and looked up to furnish a good, if obvious, answer.

“Nevermind,” Scully said with a smile. “Don’t answer that.”

She thought a moment, eager to avoid slipping back into her own thoughts. The room hummed with silent, important questions she didn’t want to ask or answer. Paul Spector. Dani. Mulder. The comment about the pills.

“But talk to me,” she said more seriously.

“Okay,” Stella said. “What would you like me to tell you?”

“Anything frivolous.”

Stella sighed, as though Scully were purposefully being difficult. Scully gave her a gentle, blinking nod.

“No, really. I’d like it. Just tell me things I don’t know.”

Stella looked at Scully hard enough that Scully knew she was on her second round of Scotch. Scully, armed with only half a glass of red and some vegetarian soup, looked at her lap, pleased as Stella began to tell her things she’d never told her, things that didn’t matter at all and presently mattered the world to Scully. About the lush hills of Northern Ireland, so green after it rained that they looked spray-painted. About trying to manage bureaucracy amongst centuries’ old battles about bloodlines. Her voice was like stained glass, split into colors and slightly translucent, a window into the church where Scully had once briefly gotten the chance to kneel.

Scully stroked the carpet in varying patterns as she listened, turning the color over from its patted-down charcoal to the bright space-black hidden in the interior pile. When she was little, she would draw pictures in the rug in her bedroom sometimes--hearts and eyeballs and her name - and eventually, her fingers would go numb with carpet burn and--she accidentally brushed Stella’s hand and the electrical charge nipped them both. Scully startled and sucked her finger for a second as Stella gave a jungle cat’s grin, eyes doing all the work. She lifted her glass and let the ice cube graze her teeth, then tongued it, teasing it with the possibility of entry before she sent it on its woeful retreat back to the bottom of the glass. The glass landed on the floor and the ice cube spun like a time machine.

“Do you remember that first drink we had together?” Scully asked.

“That awful karaoke thing. How could I forget?”

“You were drinking out of a glass just like that and I was--I was…”

Scully reflexively touched her collarbone and squeezed the back of her neck. More than a decade and she still couldn’t explain whatever she’d felt in that bar dancing with Stella. The ice cube in Stella’s glass grew rounder as Stella swirled a current around it. It clinked when the uneven shores of carpet set it slightly askew.

“You thought she’d remind me of you, didn’t you? That’s why you were so interested.”

“Hm? Oh. Dani. Well…” she looked around and plucked at the rug again, now focusing on one of the tiny cartilage-pink rosebuds. “You know, the hair and… yeah, I guess so.”

She hid her embarrassment over her left shoulder, but she could hear Stella’s lips spread, wet and slow against her gums. It was the smile she’d been pushing for earlier, not a huge smile, but a smile worth feeling foolish over. She turned and caught the end of it just as Stella raised her drink and then eclipsed her teeth behind it--glowing, gone in seconds, not back for years. Her tongue made a noise like a can of soda opening when she finished her sip.

“I did meet someone who reminded me of you,” she said. “A forensic specialist.”

Scully brought her eyebrows to a suggestive half-mast. There was that word again: met.

“More redheads?”

“Actually, it was the reason I agreed to go. Ireland, I said, they have gingers there, don’t they? Plenty, Ma’am, they said.”

Scully chuckled quietly.

“No. Her hair was dark. But it was long like yours is now.”

She reached for Scully’s ponytail holder, hooked it under her nails, and dragged. Color spilled like a tipped can of paint: Crazy Crimson or Ruby Riot or Crisp-Apple Cranberry all over Stella’s muted living room. Stella stroked it a couple of times and then patted her leg as an invitation. Scully slouched down to put her head there and looked up at the ceiling as Stella’s fingers straightened ropes of hair across her lap, scratching lightly at the scalp and wiggling underhanded through tangles fermented by wool coat collar and cross-Atlantic morbid humidity.

“I meant she was like you, not looked like you. She was good like you.”

Scully would once have been able to accept this kind of compliment gracefully, but somewhere along the way, somewhere on the run or in their home in the middle of nowhere, she’d lost the ability.

“And what happened?” she asked, unsure whether she was rooting to hear a win or a loss.

“We had drinks a couple times, I got to know her.”

“And?” Scully’s fingers were picking at one another across her stomach.

“And she told me she was brought up in Croydon.”

“Should I know what that means?”

“It means she’s straight.” And then, before Scully could interject – “Straight, straight.”

“That’s bullshit,” Scully blurted, inexplicably irritated. She could not seem to decide tonight if she wanted Stella to have everyone or no one.

Stella started to laugh, but then gasped like a knife had gone through her chest. Her hands went to her ribs to apply pressure, her eyes blinking shut in agony. Scully kept her eyes on Stella’s hand, memorizing its placement as Stella tried to keep the pain from radiating. When the worst of it had apparently passed, Stella once again reached for her drink and Scully reached for something to say that didn’t involve nagging or MRIs.

“Noticed you didn’t bring me a glass.”

“You have wine. That’s enough for you.”

“You’re always so strict about how much I get to drink and you get to drink as much as you want.”

“You have the tolerance of a virgin on prom night.”

“Come on, just a--what’s it called with Scotch again--a little bit,” Scully said.

Stella’s hand went to her glass and in a moment, there was an amber-dripping knuckle over Scully’s mouth.

“It’s called a finger.”

Scully hesitated a moment, glanced at Stella to be clear what was being offered. A drop fell to her lips. She opened them and Stella’s finger hooked the roof of her mouth. Scully cushioned it with her tongue, closed her lips around it. The smoky brine of the liquor quickly gave way to the mine-salt taste of skin, and then Stella slowly began to pull her finger back. Scully playfully tightened her lips, held on tighter and lifted her head as Stella tugged the line. Scully finally dropped her head back to Stella’s leg. Stella placed both her hands on the floor beside her. This, Scully knew, was not usually how Stella worked--tossing the first one back, giving it a chance to swim away.

“Still want a glass?”

Scully shook her head no and licked the cocktail of grape and Scotch and Stella off her mouth. She rolled over onto her side to face Stella’s body, pressing her ear into the soft material of Stella’s pants. She lifted the cotton t-shirt slowly and began to trace the bruises along Stella’s ribs like a child learning a map, watching the evenly-charted abdominal muscles puff and contract at her touch. A boundary broken but easily mended, a doctor’s exam, if in a moment they decided they needed a lie to believe. Stella didn’t stop her and Scully had lied to herself enough for one lifetime.

So her face followed her fingers and she brushed her lips against the battered coasts of Stella’s ribcage. Irregular deep blue centers, ringed in violet and yellow, radar plagued by tropical storms. Fury rose in her heart at the person who’d done this to Stella, and a string of Latin terms scuttled across her brain, proper names and recovery estimates, all quickly washed away each time a wave of Stella’s breath pushed her skin to Scully’s mouth. This was the smell she associated with Stella--not the curated clouds of perfume that stuck to the cables of Stella’s sweaters and even made their way into Scully’s suitcases, but her skin--clean and alive, a warm, teeming turquoise waterfall, an unpredictable climate all its own. She breathed Stella in and felt a helpless collision of affection and desire barreling up her throat. She steadied that and spoke softly so as to protect Stella from the impact.

“Am I hurting you?”

“No, I like it,” Stella said in a whisper, the pace of it grave with responsibility, but the pitch sugary with pleasure.

Scully sat up, dragging her hair up across Stella’s lap until she once again felt the weight of it on her own back. She swept her hand around the side of Stella’s neck, searched her eyes for a yes, a no, anything. But none came. The side of Stella’s breast pressed into her arm and made a warm spot on her sweater. She blinked, moved her face closer, blinked again, spread her fingers, flexing up into the base of Stella’s hairline. Hovered.

“This is not up to me,” Stella began, eyes traveling over Scully’s nose, her top lip. “So either kiss me or knock it off.”

And so Scully kissed the first person ever since she’d first kissed Mulder, the only person she and Mulder had both ever kissed. This kiss was the reason she and Mulder had found their way to each other, it was the reason the room was spinning, and for the moment, she wanted to let it be the reason she was so far from home. No sad stories, not hers or Mulder’s or Stella’s, just this beautiful, perfect thing on a living room floor.

Her hand moved up Stella’s shirt, this time past the bruised territory, a little higher to soft, safe ground, and she smiled as she felt the satin of what she already knew to be the bra from the shop.

“Careful now,” Stella said. “You said you’d be upset to see this.”

It had been so long. So very, very long. She had always believed loneliness was a choice, and she couldn’t bring herself to choose it another second.

“I think maybe I’d like to be upset.”

Stella put her arms up and Scully pulled the shirt off. The color was even deeper here in the boat cabin light of Stella’s living room, and it set Stella’s eyes swirling like the innermost curve of a rainbow.

Scully whispered, didn’t want to have to hear herself say it.

“Sometimes it hurts to look at you.”

“Sometimes it hurts to be looked at,” Stella said and placed the heel of her palm in the hollow of Scully’s cheekbone. “But not by you.”

Stella’s kiss was as Scully remembered it, but more so--lashing and lush, elusive lips and a strong tongue. Scully allowed it, enjoyed it, patiently moving her thumb up and down the center seam of the bra cup, and when she caught the satin silhouette of a prickled areola, Stella paused long enough for her to take over. With Stella’s tongue sedated between her teeth, she fit their lips together like two bits of a lock, each more secure with each bit of torque. Stella swallowed the change of pace with a gracefully defeated hum, a sound that went down Scully’s throat just like the soup, warm and welcoming, the home she currently lacked despite the two actual residences held in her name.

Stella pushed Scully to the floor, but instead of joining her, knelt at her ears. She bent at the waist, breasts spilling forward into an upside down kiss.

“Take off your pants,” she whispered, then gently pecked Scully’s nose, her cheekbones as Scully wiggled around with her clothes. She was nervous, unsure what was coming next, but fairly certain she wanted whatever it was. And when she was at last lying still in her cotton panties and Jackie-O cardigan, Stella’s hands began to crawl ever-so-slowly down the front of her torso, working the pearly buttons of the tidy blue top open. Scully waited, kissing Stella back with her eyes open to take in the strange and disorienting view of Stella’s collarbones over her forehead. Perfectly constructed but fragile from this angle, a limestone statue, shadows settling into each lovely dip and even crease of bone. And then Scully’s belly was bare, her sweater peeled to the sides and Stella shifted forward. There was a rush of soft and strong and black and blue over pale everywhere, a phoenix from the ashes--breasts brushing Scully’s eyelashes and lips, fingertips diving head-first down Scully’s waist, tongue winging into Scully’s belly button. Nothing was where it belonged and it all felt right.

“You deserve this,” Stella said.

“Deserve what?”

Stella’s answer was a lick under the elastic of Scully’s simple cotton underwear, a pluck at it with her teeth. Scully’s hands went to her forehead to steady herself as red and black and gold bangle bracelets clasped and opened behind her eyelids. A few moments ago, Scully had felt as though she could simply kiss for the rest of her life, if only someone was kissing her like that, like there was no other room in the house they’d rather be in. Now she needed more, needed everything, and Stella was going to give it to her.

“So innocent,” she said and Scully could feel Stella’s bottom lip stick momentarily to her abdomen, a hand go down into the wet center panel of her underwear.

“And then this,” she said. Her knees came up against Scully’s shoulders and Scully grabbed them, both because she had been needing something to hold onto for a long time now, and because she wanted that thing to be Stella.

It was one finger and then two, and it was Stella’s body combing Scully’s with easy tempo, lips parted as they stroked her stomach, the well-mannered satin bra rolling over in the fray of skin-searching-skin until both Stella’s breasts were mostly undressed, one and a half straps falling down her arms, and all of Scully was buzzing and humming like a bumblebee. The back of Stella’s hand pushed against Scully’s underwear, eager to get it out of her way, and her nipple brushed over Scully’s pubic bone.

“Fuck,” Scully whispered.

“Mhm.”

It was nothing, a noise, a verbal tic used often in daily conversation, but it was also a glimpse of the relief that was coming, the way it would wash over her. She wanted it so badly her fingers dug into the tendons of Stella’s knees, wanted it so badly she almost felt sick. She’d come here to offer relief, not receive it.

“Lift your hips,” Stella ordered and she did, allowing the damp cotton panties to slide down her thighs, but she also reached up to the waistband of Stella’s drawstring pants and pulled them down, her fingers strumming the black satin triple T-straps over Stella’s hips. Stella shook one leg to get them off, grunting a little with the effort of balancing on three limbs instead of four. Once they re-framed Scully’s shoulders, they were strong as Greek columns, scars of various wars etched into them, soft and smooth around the curves, held together by a tiny flag of deep blue satin (a matching set, of course.) Scully ran her fingertips over the warm strip of fabric, thick enough not to betray any moisture. She smiled a little as she recalled Stella admiring it in the store and traced the lace pagan’s cross across the front with her thumbs. Smoothing her hands back down the outsides of Stella’s thighs, she then snuck her fingers back up under the triple black satin straps that held the panties to Stella’s hips. She watched the bands tighten around her fingers, the matching strap thong lifting a little as she played. She couldn’t decide whether to take them off or not.

“I’ve never done this before,” she said.

Stella had Scully’s cotton underwear around her knees now, and she crawled forward a bit for the next push. Her breasts brushed the tops of Scully’s thighs, the perfect, round split-center of her ass hovering right over Scully’s sternum.

“Done what?” Stella asked, clearly trying to make her say it as she stepped Scully’s now useless ankles out of her saturated cotton bikini briefs one at a time.

“I’ve tried it--you know, with men--but--mmm--good God, you feel nice--”

“You’ll figure it out.” She kissed her way back up Scully’s legs. “You’re a medical doctor.”

A low blow followed by a tongue jab to the clitoris strong enough to bring Scully gasping up onto her elbows. Scully laughed her cardigan down her shoulders a bit, dragged her nose up and down the Stella’s panties, then, decision made, moved them over with her fingers and replaced them with her mouth. Stella sighed and tiptoed into her like she was getting into a hot bath.

Scully had forgotten the taste, had told herself there wasn’t a distinct difference between men and women, that they were all just sweat and soap and human hormones, a single brand’s line of musks so similar they were not worth naming. But as she got Stella wetter, sunk her tongue deeper, it came back to her, a flavor she couldn’t imagine anyone else in the world having, part metal and part dessert, the remains of a bittersweet chocolate souffle stuck to a fork. She knew why she’d made herself forget this now, that she would never have believed herself if she remembered Stella tasting like cinnamon off a piece of aluminum foil, the sugary powdery inside of a bubble gum wrapper.

Scully’s hand looked for Stella’s waist and squeezed, wanting to pull her closer, wanting the weight of her whole body.

“I promised someone that I’d tell you to be gentle,” Stella said and Scully nudged Stella’s clitoris with the tip of her nose, kissed it in apology.

“Just testing you.”

Stella reached around and snapped open her new bra, shimmied it down her arms until it trapped Scully’s thighs under a tight band. The bottoms of Stella’s breasts hung soft against Scully’s belly, the rolling weight of them sending a moan straight up Scully’s center into her mouth, where it came out vibrating against Stella’s wet skin. Stella’s breath went backstage-curtain quiet as she sat her hips back a little further and dropped her chest a little deeper. Scully moaned again once for Stella, and then again for herself, and then lost track of who she was doing it for. Stella rolled her hips over the short distance of Scully’s tongue and reached for Scully’s breast, fingers sneaking under the slim cotton triangle bra she wore only on vacation. She rolled a bit harder against Scully’s mouth and at the same time took a nipple between two nails. Scully’s legs came off the floor momentarily.

“I’m going to come,” she said, consonants disappearing into Stella’s body, eighty bucks worth of satin cinched at the left side of her mouth. She tried desperately to hold out, tried to remember what Stella liked best. She liked Scully’s dirty talk, but that was currently impossible. A sharp, withholding tongue, was it? A puffy, swollen lip and the flat of her chin, and then oh yes, a finger up the crack of her ass, slipping it under the single strap of silk there.

Stella nearly collapsed, caught herself with a hand pressed hard into Scully’s sternum, heavy as the one Mulder had placed on her back as he sent her away, but this one called her back to herself, energy and desire charging into Scully’s heart through flexed, shaking fingers. Even with her arm trembling beneath her weight, even with her face bruised and her serial killer unpunished and her companion crying in underwear stores, Stella didn’t give up, kissed and sucked her, finger-fucked her G-spot like both their lives depended on it. It was possible, Scully thought, that theirs did.

Scully’s tailbone began to dig into the carpet so hard she thought maybe she could feel the grains of wood beneath it, and Stella’s knee crept almost over her shoulder, angling toward her armpit. She was just barely managing to keep the bruised, tender parts of herself from the friction, and she let her breasts dip deep into the hollow of Scully’s pelvis while Scully’s face reached up into Stella’s upturned hips. They were perfectly matched swoops of human being, a pair of slick cream-colored come-fuck-me high heels fit together in a box and separated by a single sheet of tissue.

“Dana.”

Anythinganythinganything she wanted to say but didn’t dare talk over this rare bit of feedback.

“Your mouth…”

Scully swallowed a groan to make sure she heard the rest, kept her mouth doing whatever it was that Stella seemed to like so much.

“It’s perfect, it’s so fucking perfect,” Stella continued, tip of her upper lip just under Scully’s clit, finger firmly circling that spot, oh god, that fucking spot is it even the same spot I don’t even know this spot perfect you want to talk about perfect. Her hand flailed from Stella’s waist to her thigh and landed on the arch of Stella’s foot, squeezing it tight overhead in lieu of a queen-sized bed frame as her back strained and stretched. She was trying very hard not to arch it into Stella’s ribs. Stella breathed like a ceremonial drum into Scully’s body, pussy fluttering like a snare at Scully’s mouth and finally, finally she was moaning and Scully’s body gave and gushed around Stella’s fingers and they were both coming in a closed circuit of electricity, each of them giving life and each of them swallowing it, end to end to end to end.

“Fuck,” Scully said and buried her face against Stella’s leg. There were tears puddling in her ears. “Fuck.”

Scully looked up to see Stella half-laughing, half-wincing, balanced like a wobbling sheet cake on her hands and knees, hair melting like butter frosting around her shoulders.

“That was fucking unbelievable,” Scully said, boneless as dough, spotting Stella’s thigh and calf with kisses.

“You’re fucking unbelievable.”

“The rug…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Stella gathered her breath and began to move gingerly, losing the tangle of the bra, bringing one leg back over Scully’s face and inching toward the sofa on her knees, slithering out of the remaining pant leg like a second skin. She swore under her breath and sucked her stomach in as she pushed herself up onto the couch and scraped the cashmere throw off the back of it. Scully watched and waited, feeling helpless as she prepared to be sent to the bedroom. But once Stella had settled into the back crease of the sofa, she held the blanket open and Scully sat up on her elbows. She slipped in carefully, filling the spaces left by Stella’s body as she tried not to press against any of them.

“If you say I told you so, I’ll kill you,” Stella said.

“Sssh,” Scully said. She’d located at least one of the misaligned ribs earlier, and now she placed her fingers strategically around it, compressed it just-so with the palm of her hand.

“Exhale.”

Stella did, and her lungs went completely still.

“You can still breathe.” And Stella gradually let her breath return to normal, trust growing as Scully caught each exhale. Minutes passed, full songs worth of breath.

“That feels so good,” Stella finally whispered.

“Better than what we just did?”

“Nothing is better than that,” Stella said, moving Scully’s hand so she could tuck her face under Scully’s chin. She slipped her arm around Scully’s waist. “Except you coming like a rock star on my two-thousand-dollar rug.”

“Oh my God.”

But her body had cooled to match the perfect temperature of Stella’s and as it turned out, it was difficult to blush at Stella’s temperature.

“Should we move to the bed?”

“I cannot move. You can go if you want.”

“Okay,” Scully joked and moved a couple of muscles for show. Stella’s arm tightened around her waist.

“Promise you’ll tell me if you need more space,” Scully said, but Stella was already drifting off.

The next time Scully heard Stella’s voice, it was already morning. Somehow, Stella had managed to climb out without waking her. Her voice was low and soft in the next room, a one-way conversation Scully could only hope, half-naked on the couch, was a phone call. Her sleepy brow furrowed. Mulder, she was almost sure she’d heard Stella say.

#wtid #stella and scully #msr #xfiles fic #the fall fic #myfic

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