From: "DurriBakht" <durribakht@aol.

com>
Date: Friday, May 19, 2000 11:01 PM
Subject: NEW: Assimilated Campaign1/2MSR

Title: ASSIMILATED CAMPAIGN 1/2

Author: DurriBakht
Keywords: MSR
Rating: R
Spoilers: all things, missing scene
Archival: Please, consult with the author first.
Disclaimer: This is a fan written work for the enjoyment of other fans. It is
not intended for monetary gain. The X Files and its characters belong to 1013
Productions and FOX Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended.
Feedback: Anticipated and appreciated. Send to: DurriBakht@aol.com

****************
ASSIMILATED CAMPAIGN
By Durri Bakht
****************

How does one begin a journey on a moonless night with an anticipated

destination but no clear idea of a decisive direction?

Impatient for the coming day and the new equilibrium it would bring, Mulder's
thoughts gravitated among shadowed rooms with the consistency of a jiggled
compass, slipping from one illogical fancy to another. The warm current failed
to seduce him and, restless, his mind turned outwards, floundering, yet
organized, and propelled him back into the waking world.

Back to her.

He hadn't moved, had he? He didn't mean to. Sleep had dulled his reflexes,
but the awareness his bed accommodated another body tonight returned instantly
not only with freshly-minted memories but a physical wave of delicious lethargy
as well. His body felt good. Better than it should, given the jet lag that
forced him to lie down and close his eyes. His muscles hummed, exercised and
stretched and scored. He didn't even need to turn his head. Sinuous and
intoxicating, electricity arced across the few inches separating them,
completing the circuit despite his failure to close the switch.

The tiny hairs on his arms and legs stood on end, reaching for her.

She lay, as she did everything else, with customary stillness. Her breathing
deliberate, with little depth, did not characterize a dormant spirit. He knew
her blue eyes were open, somber and unseeing, staring ahead into flat, ebony
infinity. For this night his shadow-dappled bedroom encompassed the limits of
their world.

So they hadn't come as far as he'd hoped.

It was just as well.

There was work here yet to be done. So many discoveries stretched before them,
tantalizing and brimming with joyful potential. And devastation.

They had to be careful.

From the warmth beneath the downy bedspread, he pulled his hand, coated with
scent, still tingling in celebration of the flesh it had recently visited, and
finding, in the uneven darkness, the small curve of her shoulder, slid his palm
up to the side of her face.

Stalwart creature.

Did she think imperfection touched her alone? He had his own collection of
regrets. Some he had confessed. Some he hadn't. Some were on account of her.

It made no difference. She was his now. He knew it with steadfast certainty,
deep in the innermost recesses of his being with the same assuredness he knew
his name or his own face in the mirror.

Well, perhaps better than that.

Yet, what the future held for them was still as unknown as it had been a few
short hours ago. His mind knew where destination lay. Always out of focus but
relentlessly persistent, he received its call quite clearly now and recognized
its identical summons written on her face too.

He stroked the smooth cheek under his touch.

No muscles tensed to welcome or repel him. Miniscule reverberations emigrated

from the delicate blinking of her lids across supple skin to the sensitive pads
of his fingers. He heard her draw a breath, barely betraying the shudder that
must have shook her narrow, square shoulders. They fit perfectly under his
hands like every other part of her sturdy body. The knowledge thrilled him in
its newness. With its utter correctness. He'd almost grown used to the idea
that destiny had decided he would be alone.

Stubborn woman.

Even now he could not fully grasp what the two of them together like this
meant.

He moved his fingers up to the tender indentation at her crown then changed
directions, weaving down through fringed hair. Down to the airy tips then up
again to the crowded base. He petted her as he would a favored tabby. His
reward came when he heard her breathing deepen.

That's right.

He willed her muscles to release stored energy and relax their burden, oozing
into the warm nooks and folds blanketing her resilient, lithe limbs.

Long minutes passed. His touch, patient and steady like a metronome, coaxed
the rhythm of her lungs into a momentum of effortless coasting, easing her
surrender once more into sleep.

Sweet dreams, Scully, let the night guide our future.

His own lids bounced gently for a few moments to the tune of his bedpartner's
breaths, each time parting less wide till finally they too, lay together,
sealed in slumber.

From a distance, a voice he rarely acknowledged whispered a word over and over.

And then there was nothing.

****************
That odd dream looped itself again into bemused projection.

Mulder stood on the chipped wood trail, taking a moment to recover from the
Midwest summer heat, in the obliging, humid shade of leafy hickory, cottonwood
and white ash trees. He cast a quick, damp-faced look around for hikers.

It was too dammed hot to walk back to his own cabin to take care of business,
and Scully's cabin lay several hills away.

He was alone, so he stepped off the path and walked several yards into the
Kentucky forest. Zig-zagging, he brushed his way past arching fronds and
ducked low branches. He halted in a sun-dappled depression studded with
spiky, thin pine seedlings and discarded, hollow acorns.

A quick zip and his hand held a familiar weight. His bladder began to empty
itself. He closed his eyes, lightheaded with pleasure.

Thank God, he had been born a man.

Women had it altogether too inconvenient when it came to this function. And so
fussy about it, too. Driving across Kansas last year on the Sterns case,
Scully made him pull into four different truck stops when the restroom
facilities failed to meet her fastidious standards.

"I've done autopsies than were cleaner than that toilet seat." She huffed from
the passenger's seat. She wrinkled her nose in a rueful expression of disgust.

"How the hell can you hold it that long? We've been looking for a toilet for
you for over forty minutes now. Why don't you just pinch your nose and hover?"

"I can't. I'm too short." He laughed, charmed, when she frowned, puckering her
mouth in mock self-derision, and pushed out her lower lip. It was dark pink,
obscenely plump, and the spontaneous impulse to lean over and bite her almost
jerked the wheel from his hands.

He didn't, of course.

Mulder opened his eyes and looked down. Spread out at his feet, an archipelago
of bright, tender blossoms pushed their way through the padded forest floor.
What was the name of that flower? Search launched. Found. Ah, yes, a
buttercup.

To the right, a movement caught his eye. No bigger than a dime, a small, fuzzy
yellow and black soldier minced in the dark center of the petals on
filament-thin black feet, not two steps away from him. The jelly-bean sized
minion changed directions several times, exhibiting the steady precision of a
rusted weathervane as it made a thorough job of gathering.

Mulder blinked slowly, as if the action required planned deliberation. The

warm stream issuing from his body trickled for lack of attention. He watched,
with distant interest, as the marauder moved camp to the next flower to begin a
fresh harvest, and was transported back, again, to another place, another
circumstance.

Scully's forehead pressed against his in teary-eyed benediction. That

disciplined but deeply curved mouth finally raised to him in apprehensive
expectation ready, ready . . . jerked from him at the very moment of decision,
gone numb with pain. Her limbs turned liquid when he lowered her to the floor.
. . parted, those lips labored to bring oxygen into constricted lungs.

Five years. Five fucking long years.

Affronted, Mulder came back to himself. His vision cleared only to darken,
tunneling with rage. Common sense flared briefly and was summarily snuffed into
non-existence. He pivoted, redirecting a fresh stream at Scully's apiary
nemesis.

The assault washed the bee from the flower bowl. It landed on the ground
enraged, belly up.

Mulder set his shoulders.

Caught in the falls, tiny legs kicked in fruitless rebellion against the
unexpected deluge.

Little bastard. Mulder attacked with single-minded determination, bringing to

bear every skill of precision and steadiness FBI training had taught him.

His opponent struggled under the righteous glare of jaundiced eyes, stubbornly
waving wiry legs in an attempt to right itself and escape the liquid blast.

Jaws set, Mulder's nostrils flared with concentration.

Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!

He should have drunk another two bottles of water. Eight cups a day. Isn't
that what Scully always said?

Finally, the bee managed to roll over. Gossamer wings shook off moisture,
fluttered, preparing for flight.

The moment, with all its wonderful, terrifying possibilities, had been lost.

Mulder zipped, took a step forward, and brought down his heel.

"Shh . . . " Her fingers landed lightly, without warning, on his lips. Bounced
out of an unrestful sleep, his senses returned dutifully online, neither
alarmed nor hurried.

Leaning over him like a flight attendant, Scully was the color of scorched
bark. Colors did not exist during the twilight hours within his monochromatic
bedroom, yet random, gray light caught her, reflecting the plane of a muted,
high cheekbone. It was enough, and he could identify the expression on her
face.

She immediately lifted her fingers, signaling her intention to speak. Nodding,
he sat up, wary but forgiving, knowing the words she would say, the words he
expected. Any other night he would have beaten her to the punch, dropping
quiet, disappointed syllables into the circumspect air that chaperoned their
forays into deeply personal emotion. The two of them, they always found a way
to glide over inadvertent hurt, setting their relationship carefully back in
the spot from which it strayed.

But not tonight.

He had no words. So he waited with a sinking expectation, willed himself not
to telegraph to her.

Silence greeted him. Mulder frowned, waiting, tracing the folded sheet at his
waist.

Still, she did nothing, standing there at the side of his bed. The suggestion
of an outline of her tidy body made itself known to him only in varying degrees
of black. He couldn't see her face. Her blunt, rounded chin or her arched
brows or the direction the deep corners of her mouth pointed to. Seeping
impatience curled in his belly, threatening to boil into aggravation, and kept
him from reaching for the lamp at his side.

Would their time ever arrive?

A quiet rush of in-drawn air drew him forward slightly so that he could catch
all the understated nuances of her grave, measured voice that told him so much
more about the workings of her spirit than she offered voluntarily. No, that
wasn't true. He knew her. He'd had the measure of her for the better part of a
decade. Just as he knew her brow was furrowing now under the effort to
organize important thoughts, he knew to pay more attention to the declarative
value of her actions rather than the sparsity of her words.

Well, tonight he was human enough to need both. He cocked his head,
considering, preparing for her words.

Still she said nothing. A full minute passed between them.

Compassion nudged him. He reached for her wrist before she could move away,
before he realized he'd made the decision to touch her.

Within his grip, her wrist warmed through the barrier of her jacket. Her pulse
fluttered, thrumming her hesitation to make the definitive move.

That's what he needed. That's what they both needed. A latent shot of perverse
desperation sizzled its way down his spine, blooming till common sense reminded
him to behave like an adult. She had come to him. He wasn't importuning her.
It didn't matter that he wanted her.

He sent his thumb across her skin, silent testimony of his exoneration of her.

She surprised him, though. She wasn't going anywhere. She wasn't withdrawing
from him.

His heart chose that moment to declare premature victory over his brain,
pounding with hard contractions. His fingers tingled as his extremities filled
with blood.

He disengaged his hand then, drawing it back to his lap, to safety. A second
later his shoulders startled in her grip and her lips came down firmly upon his
open mouth.

When a need for fresh oxygen finally pulled his lips from hers, he drew back,
breathing hard. Her eyes were shadowed, as his must be also.

How the hell was he supposed to have known it would arrive tonight? He'd been
waiting and waiting and steadfastly watching for what felt like a lifetime.

It had been a lifetime.

Thank God --or more accurately, thank Daniel-- the drought was over.
****************

They didn't kiss when he pressed his way inside her the first time. Her eyes,
like his, were useless yet wide open as the invasion took place in slow,
halting increments. The first moments of their very first coupling --and that's
what it was--- were ethereal. Slow and careful and profound, as it should be
for first time lovers. Appetite and carnal demands temporarily withdrew from
shore, conceding preeminence to seven years of their special brand of etiquette
as they worshiped and completed one another, but now began to approach, an
inescapable wall of frenzied urgency.

Pressed on top of her tight body, hips thrusting gloriously with the implied
solidity of a hammer on an anvil, Mulder felt his lover's arms and legs coil
about him, creating a living knot of flesh. He wasn't in any danger of
retreating. He'd found his home.

Her scent radiated up to his flared nostrils from the slippery nethermouth
between her legs, beckoning him further inside. She was swollen for him.
Short, breathy female grunts rumbled at him from her throat. It was like lying
on the hood of a Corvette. He curled his fingers around her neck so he could
feel their vibrations. A shot of savage euphoria shook him from the inside
out, raising goosebumps across his flesh head to toe. He changed angles,
charging deeper, insisting her muscles accept his hard penis and relearn their
natural function. Deeper, more acute, till he bottomed out, triumphantly
reaching the limits of her body and his. He'd never been this far inside a
woman. Not since birth.

Her mouth was open, soundless, head thrown back toward the bed frame. He
seized a fistful of her hair and forced her eyes back to him. So that she would
see, despite the absence of light, and know he wasn't unmoved, either.

Madness took them both.

Breathing damply into the lee of her neck with catching, lung-taxing sobs,
Mulder returned to himself.

Where had she gone?

Her attention was focused, delicate, at his ear, tracing the molded skin
there.

He shivered.
**********

A few minutes before midnight he climbed into bed, awhirl with questions and
barely contained impulses. The clock, glowing large slashed digits on the
surface of the dresser, registered every moment since that he had failed to
find sleep. Why did she wake now if she had no problems resting through his
brief return to the kitchen with their empty cups? She even slept through the
quiet, decisive clicks of the locks turning in the front door, signaling
captivity for the night. Returning to the living room he thoughtfully placed a
pillow taken from his bed at the end of the couch and laid a soft tee-shirt on
the coffee table, next to her feet. In the bathroom he ran water and set about
his nightly ritual of preparing for bed, and still she slumbered on, exhausted
in the aftermath of emotional catharsis.

He took it as a sign. A sign that for once he had chosen the right course.
How many more hidden hurdles awaited them? He didn't tell her about Diana and
she didn't tell him about Daniel. He underplayed Phoebe and she underplayed
Ed Jerse.

**************

Neither was surprised when he hardened against her belly a third time.

Things that should be so rarely applied to them. To him and Scully.

She reached down and took his erection in her hand. He lay fierce and ready in
her palm. She closed her fingers around him and he was lost.

Afterward, when he reached to the floor to retrieve the pillows they had
scattered from the bed, her hand landed on his shoulder, preventing him from
turning back over. She tugged at his elbow and eased him to lie flat on his
belly then she climbed to lie on top of him, pressing her pebble-tipped breasts
and warm furry mound and smooth thighs against him. He allowed his arm to
drop, dangling empty over the side of the bed and turned his cooling face
instead directly on the mattress. Her cheek came to rest on his. They
breathed the same air, the shared the same heart beat. Her body was warm and
pleasingly erotic against his back and buttocks and thighs. A trickling of
regret found its way to him.

Oh, to be twenty again and charged full of an endless supply of testosterone.

**********
Assimilated Campaign2/2
By DurriBakht@aol.com
**********

Mulder rested at the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest, balancing on the
balls of his heels, and watched her sleep on his sofa. Tempered disappointment,
an emotion he knew he was not entitled to indulge concerning her, stirred
within him, defiantly churning despite his utter lack of intent to exert
proprietorship over her.

He wanted her all right, but not like this.

The signs of exhaustion lay on her face. Less than a year ago Diana Fowley had
sent him on a similar journey. It was not a pleasant experience, since making
him acutely aware how easily ego and self-righteous laziness and the seductive
lure of invited deception could trip him onto the wrong path. It left the
traveler elated but bone-tired. Tired in a way sleep could never alleviate.
Its only cure was to live life.

He banished the bittersweet memories, taking a few minutes to register the

unguarded sight of her.

The profiler in him quietly slid Daniel Waterston's name between her father's
and Jack Willis'. He didn't begrudge her the security of an authority figure,
something anathema to him his entire adult life. She deserved what comfort she
could get from any source. He would not assume a role for her though. The few
times awareness crept over him that she occasionally cast him as a domineering
presence had the lightning effect of pissing him off.

A little over four years ago they had snatched her from him, taken as
punishment for his curiosity. He'd grieved, furious and frustrated, yet
accepted the judgement passively enough with the passage of time. Though
angry, he had felt he had no choice. No recourse.

Since then, he had purposely made himself a player, thus insuring he would have
a starting place should the need ever arise again. And it had. His
acknowledged dependence on her allowed no such luxury of inaction now. If
Scully lived, anywhere on this planet or beyond, his every waking duty was to
find her. Neither overwhelming numbers nor pessimistic odds nor the faintest
trail excused him. Not long ago he had charged after her retreating figure,
hotly pledging to her, in so many words, the protection of his body and gifts
of intuition and intellect. Whether she understood it at the time was
unimportant. He'd meant it. He would make good on that promise.

And besides, not that it mattered in the least, he loved her.

Yes, their destinies were sympathetic orbits, but he'd be damned if he'd ever
demand anything of her she could not in good conscience offer freely. He would
be no better than the men who stole her. He owed her better and could not
accept less.

Seven years ago, in his basement office, he had been inclined to dismiss the
smug, tailored package assigned to him the first day they met face to face.
Even after reading her ambitious college senior thesis. She walked in to his
mocking and parried his venomously wild theories with a display of native wit
and cultivated intelligence that hinted strongly, not only her academic
credentials, but of what she might become given time, experience and the proper
stimulus.

Not that he himself wasn't above a naive, dogged insistence of justice or hero
worship or provincial clumsiness. He, at least, had the grooming of a few
years internship as the brightest up-and-coming star in the toughest, most
ambitious department in the Bureau. He knew how to play power games and
occasionally win.

Unrepentant in the face of her earnest declaration to help, he had delighted in

baiting her on that first case in Oregon.

She met his friendly contempt, his taunting flirtation with an arsenal of
scientific exposition and a faintly indulgent return of his mocking.

Right then, he decided, even though she was green as grass, he liked her. But
even more, he needed an ally. A friend. A peer who validated his chosen path.

It took him a while, all of two days if he remembered correctly, to confide in

her his hopes for the X-Files division and his motivations for investigating
the unusual. In a cheap, darkened Bellefleur motel room he put to her an
earnest--and what he thought--considerate, carefully-worded warning that her
new assignment would not be an easy or casual undertaking. Nor would he be. If
she were to stay, then it would be as an equal with a clear understanding of
the overriding importance of his mission.

To his amazement, she stayed.

Since that day, under his quiet, admiring eyes, Scully had completed the
journey to maturity, shedding the last vestiges of coy egocentricity that
medical school and Quantico training had failed to stamp out.

Shed or been stripped of it.

Her life as his partner would no doubt earn her a heavenly seat next to Job.
As his partner she adopted, at great personal cost, a cause not hers by
birthright, and weathered consequences that might have crippled a lesser
person. If she retained any echoes of grace and justice and managed to thrive
and grow, then surely that was proof of miracles.

Mulder felt his jaw tightening, flexing under the rush of emotion that always
bubbled when sober introspection gripped him. His eyes traced her again.
Seemingly frozen in the position he'd left her in, she was still sleeping there
on his black leather couch, breathing with long, relaxed breaths, lost to him.

He declined the urge to be carried along into temptation.

He tilted his head, gathering his thoughts, considering. If she spent the
night semi-inclined, neck tilted back, she would rise sore and stiff in the
morning. Courtesy suggested he wake her and send her home, or at least settle
her more comfortably.

In his bed even, if she preferred.

He would gladly return to the couch for a night if it meant she remained
exactly where she was supposed to be; in his apartment, under his care, within
the buffering cushion of his less than circumspect surveillance.

Damn. Where had that come from?

Yet he dared not touch her.

Coward, coward, coward . . .

Dangerous currents flowed between them tonight, and instinct told him now was
the time to do nothing. The words had been offered to him earlier in the day
with little hint of their significance. He was listening now, with more care
and attention than anything he had ever set himself to decipher.

He took his eyes from her, sending his gaze around his apartment. Opaque
corners and discreet, homogenized humming, from a collection of electronic
appliances, offered no sage advice.

Mulder looked down at his opened hands, palms up.

Here was no seduction. Nor plans for the execution of a campaign. Nor the
culmination of a common relationship. Theirs was an association written in an
arcane language, with a set of goals unclear to modern translators. Co-workers,
partners, comrades. Gender opposites, intellectual rivals, best friends.
Natural compliments, herald and witness, intimate strangers. Evolution took an
active role in their association; the pilgrimage theirs charter.

They were both adults, unmarried, intelligent and possessing an astonishing

ability to sublimate impulses that would have driven others into neurosis or
addiction. Dedication to a moral mission helped. It did not however, fill all
the nagging, more elemental dimensions of one's soul.

His mouth tingled and he realized, abruptly, he'd been stroking his lips. He
did not remember moving his hand or even thinking about kissing her. His lips
buzzed pleasantly under the lonely caress. Soft, swollen, ready.

He was glad she wasn't awake to catch him in the ignoble act of losing
self-control.
He forced his arm down to his side, clenching his fists in an effort to dampen
the next necessary wave. The hot glow of a blush burned like a slap across his
face as he registered the awakening energy in his body. The weight of his
sweater became a sensual attack upon the surface of his chest. His jeans grew
unbearably confining.

He wanted to writhe and moan just like the emancipated lovers in his video tape
collection. Wanted to put aside all other callings and obligations, consigning
the world to its own goddamned devices and live for nothing more than selfish
pleasure and sexual gratification.

The desire scared him when it took command of his faculties like this, because
he could never determine its source.

Sex had never been like that for him. Not even during his early twenties when
he'd been at his most energetic and prolific.

He and his flexible, aggressive bed partners had declared it their mutual goal.
To explore the limits of their bodies, pushing inhibition and capability to the
thinnest edge of pleasure. It hadn't been like that back then. And it hadn't
been like that with the few lovers he'd had since turning thirty, when he had
gained confidence and come to terms with the working of his body's
requirements.

Since Philadelphia and that bastard Ed Jerse, insanity enjoyed taunting him
with the occasional lick when he allowed his guard to drop while thinking about
Dana Scully. It forced him to take regular vacations, even while suffering the
cramps of missing her. If chaste limbo kept her at his side, then in limbo he
would live as long as he could stand it.

As if in protest to his thoughts, Scully stirred under the Navajo blanket he

had covered her with when it was obvious she needed a respite from the empathic
chaos triggered by Daniel's resurrection into her life.

His stomach fell like a stone as he watched, silently alarmed, heart beating,
feet frozen to the floor.

Her profile, bleached of its true, arresting, jewel-toned colors, turned toward
him slightly, illuminated by glowing, aquamarine 20-watt luster. He could make
out the set of her soft mouth. Her soft, giving lips were relaxed, absent of
lipstick or studied defense. His hand slid behind him, clutching the hard
corner of the door in an effort to tether his first instinct. The fish tank in
the corner threw just enough wavering light to reveal gentle fluttering under
her lids.

She wasn't waking any time soon.

Panting with relief, Mulder took a step away from the couch. Was it possible to
de-evolve?

Degeneration from thirty-something adulthood into unfocused paranoia? The

terrible revelations he'd uncovered of his family's involvement in the cover-up
that took his sister had shaken his grip on the concrete, rattling the
foundation of his existence. He used to know, or thought he knew, his purpose:
find Samantha, expose the forces that took her. He steered all his talents and
energies for more than twenty years into restoring unity to his broken family.
The FBI's crime labs, with its investigative authority, offered itself as a
natural tool in his quest.
That was what he had thought

The reality was that his efforts, once pursued in earnest, redirected his life
onto a new path, one outside normal protocol. A complex, violent path that
commanded every physical and mental capacity he could muster, where shattering
blows fell from directions he never realized he was vulnerable. Discouraged,
threatened, punished for his enquiries into an abduction more two decades old,
Mulder understood now, with soul-rattling certainty, that Fate had not been so
random. Each new horrid discovery brought the dawning knowledge that every
choice he had made since Samantha's disappearance carried the taint of
manipulation. Not one aspect of his life was coincidental or truly the result
of his own free will. Not even his introduction to Scully.

And the knowledge stung.

Worse yet, the consequences of his mission touched those with whom he'd
surrounded himself like a virulent fevered plague. Inescapable.

It kept him from reaching for her now. Scully was already too defenseless
against him.

Little wonder then that the past seven years reduced him to speaking in terms
of I. In a period when most men defined themselves in plural terms, he was
hurling into middle age unanchored, uncertain, and sexually deprived.

What galled him most was that it was by choice.

In retrospect, it came as no surprise that the only time Scully had balked at
following him had been when his own vision of himself was cloudy. He'd lost
his headwind and she'd been the one cast adrift. He knew what he was now and
what he wanted and what he had a right to.

She deserved better. She deserved to choose her fate, proactive, and with full
expectation she was gaining an unsplintered soul.

It would all be so much easier if she made the decision for them.

Mulder squelched the impulse to groan aloud in frustration and turned his back
to her, tight-lipped, resolutely ordering his legs to carry him to his bed and
into the awaiting oblivion of sleep. Scully occasionally visited him there,
but her behavior was sometimes more obliging.
***************

Three-hundred fifty thread count. Scully was right. The sheets on his bed
were cool and delicious against his skin. He allowed his palms to travel on
either side of her as he made his way inching to the foot of the bed. His
chest breezed over the sweet terrain of her rounded breasts. He could fit an
entire one in his mouth. He'd made the joyful discovery in a series of
fascinating experiments and focused observations of her pretty body. Scully
squealed, sparking the first true laughter of the night. They didn't talk,
though.

He would ask her to stroke the bottoms of his feet with feather-light passes.
It was a groin-tugging desire that embarrassed him when he'd been with past
lovers, and he'd never had the courage to ask. But this was Scully, and he was
hers now.

He drew his cheek across the sloped plane of her belly, turning this way and
that, seeking the soft, vulnerable spot favored by the hungry, where muscle
gave way to choice tissue. Under his moist, excited puffs she bucked gently,
renewing her tight grip on his hair. The request was silent but he received it
instantly. Down he went, brushing his long nose through the damp, springy hair
he found. Tangy and maddening, the air there slid into his lungs like
frankincense, coating his organs from the inside out. Its residue revisited
him joyfully every time his lungs expanded and contracted.

Intoxicating.

Turning at the last second, he directed his attention to the inside of her
thigh and suckled hard --a love bite like an artist's signature. Her heel
thumped him soundly in the middle of his back. He grinned then kissed her
squarely between the legs as if it were her mouth under his lips. He took her
with his tongue before she could snap her pelvis upward in reaction to the
direct assault.
************

When neither could stand it any longer, he pulled out. His hands fell
desperately on her shoulders, conveying a sensible command. Scully flipped
silently onto her belly, then raised her hips, nudging his erection. He
understood she wasn't conceding to failure. Neither was he. He ran his palm
down the smooth cheeks of her buttocks, reaching between her legs to cup her
warm mound. He dragged his fingers through the thick, damp hair. His touch
reassuring, the way he stroked the neighbor's silky cat those nights when he
returned home late to find it mewling forlornly on the front steps. Scully
arched, pushing into his hand. The heat emanating under his palm sent a
dizzying rush of savage pleasure up his spine.

He swayed with delight.

Sweet Scully. How did they ever live seven years without this?

She purred prettily for him, and, blinking in the darkness, he took her by the
hip and slipped between her netherlips again. As soon as her body settled
around him tight and snug he leapt to full sprint where he set himself briskly
to the business, coaxing climax to both their bodies. When it arrived, it was
with a sharp pang of sadness he barely managed to register for the euphoric,
ear-splitting thunder of blood pounding his head.
*************

Mulder sat back on his heels. He palmed her raised knees on either side of his
hips. She lay open to him, pliant as an over-fed kitten. He set his jaw,
willing his misgivings to hell along with the fluttering in his stomach. He
took hold of her hands and pulled gently, peeling her back off the bed, into a
sitting position between his legs. Taking a moment to gather energy, he
flattened her palms against his chest.

In, out. In, out. The feeling of light-headedness faded, but not the goosey
urge to scream.

He slowed his breathing, bringing his body to a complete standstill, as his

mind took inventory. Clarity whispered over his shoulder, and far off in the
corner of the room pride and hubris sat quietly, deliberately set aside while
he prepared to serve himself up to her. He did not seek, but rather offered
himself, a man opening the secrets of his soul and laying them bare at the feet
of the one person whom, when his life was tallied, would be identified as The
One. The one he loved. He loved.

Imagine that.
With a heartening thought towards posterity, he drew a calming breath, then
began to guide her hands across his body like a new-made visionary bathing in
the shallow waters of a pool.

Slowly, then swiftly. Softly, then firmly. Lingering, then worrying. He

taught her how to play his appetites, giving her this power over him to draw
his body to chaos then back to coasting arousal.

It was like masturbation, only far better.

He guided her touch to his waist, squeezed her grip hard around his straight
hips, dug her fingers into the dense muscles of his buttocks, as if he were the
woman, ready for taking, and she the man. Down his thighs where the short
hairs stood on end, shocked into life after her passing, like fresh grass in
the wake of a summer storm. Outside then in, and back along his calves.

Lifting her hands to his face, he turned his brow into her smooth palms,
delirious as they grew damp and irresistible, and he had to bring them to his
mouth for a taste. He sucked salt off her skin. The flavor sank like a stone
clear down to his penis. He wiggled and propelled his tongue across her palms
and bit at their unique, fleshy lay, where the mounts of Venus, Apollo, Jupiter
and Moon swelled. He swooped into the valley they shared, lapping his way,
thrashing to the creased center where taste grew more concentrated. Agitated
into mild frenzy, he had to apply his teeth there.

And his mind recorded and acknowledged. No other woman was like Scully. No
other.

It was time.

He tugged her hands from his face, down the length of his arching throat to his
ridiculously sensitive collarbone. Oh! He saw stars at that one. The journey
didn't end there, though. He urged her fingers together around the flat nubs
of his nipples, teaching her to pinch and pluck in rhythmic seduction. He
lingered a few seconds to enjoy the sparks. Then resumed his mission, herding
her across his quivering belly and still downward to the center of his
universe.
**************

They lay shoulder to shoulder, like comrades at a war, awaiting together a

return to a normal rhythm of breathing. He on his side and she on the right,
the side he would forever dub her place in his bed. Discarded blankets warmed
their ankles at the bottom of the bed. Cool, night air-dried evidence of
passion from the exposed surface of their bodies. His penis lay flaccid and
spent against his sore thigh.

Mulder took his best friend's hand in a polite grip, pulling it to his slick
chest. He placed a loud, solid kiss on the backs of her fingers, deliberately
breaking the silence. He wanted her attention.

He said, "We're still ourselves. You know, this changes nothing. I've been
waiting for us for a long time now. I think you have, too. " He tightened his
fingers about hers and gave them a shake as if the movement would impart the
profound conviction behind his words.

When she turned her head, the weight of her gaze cut through the odd,
liberating aroma they had created together. For a second the image of himself,
as he must appear to her eyes, reflected against his corneas.
He didn't hear her draw a breath or steel herself to form a reply. None was
necessary. He'd spoken only for himself and there was nothing to reply to
anyway. She would not be here when he awoke in the morning. He knew that as
surely as he knew his middle name.

An empty bed was not an indictment or abandonment.

Let her retreat back into the safety of polite distance. The prospect no
longer worried him as it used to. Like all canny navigators he'd left a trail,
marking the signposts along the way. The physical echoes of his visit upon her
body would fade after a few days. She'd be able to bathe and dress and move
about without the odd twinge or strawberry to remind her she'd chosen him for
her lover once. But the blazing path they'd burned onto the template of each
other's senses could not be unlearned.

How easy it was to communicate in wordless moments like this, when reality was
distant like the invisible prospect of a new moon, and the only barriers
between them were their own insecurities.

Indeed, all things were possible.

A tremor passed then, silent but not threatening.

No. All things were not possible. But some things were possible, and within
their reach.

He allowed her a full two minutes to digest this realization, then he relaxed
and gave her a friendly squeeze, conveying all the familiar goodwill and
unspoken assurances forged during their extraordinary seven years together.

"It is well." He was smiling, teeth bared.

And so was she.

***FIN***
Gratitude, as always, to my mother, the woman who answered a bored 12 year
old's complaint with the correct advice to go find a book to read. Fifteen
years later she insisted The X Files was worth watching.

For Deb, relentless cheerleader. This is down payment on a fiver. Four

hundred and ninety-nine pennies to go.

Mil gracias to DJ.**

===============================================================================
"Assimilated Campaign" by DurriBakht

This story was downloaded from the Gossamer Project on 7 July 2021.
Do not archive stories elsewhere without permission from the author(s).
See the Gossamer policies for more information:
http://tooms.gossamer.org/local/policies.html
===============================================================================