The Wall II: The Sauna - carleton97
With a splash and a hiss, a cup of water hits the hot rocks and a billowy cloud of steam rises to fill the room. I roll my shoulders, tense muscles protesting even the slight weight of the water. Although the room is already swelteringly hot, I fill the cup again and throw another cup of water in the general direction of the rocks. I welcome the searing heat into my lungs with a wheezy cough. The thin hotel towel around my hips starts to slip a little and I grab at it, unwilling to bear my ass in the Howard Johnson. I sit on the wooden bench and try to relax against the blisteringly hot wall of the sauna. The steam quickly creates a fine sheen of sweat over my entire body, bringing all the filth and perversion I've touched in the last three weeks to the surface.
God, I hate VCS consults.
Every time one comes up, I'm excited to put my training to use, to make the world a safer place for the innocent. But somehow I forget the toll they take on me and, although I relish the challenge of out-thinking a predator, I hate what they do to me, what I become when I'm submerged in the madness.
Sometimes it strikes me as strange that I can hate something that had once been my life's blood, my reason for existing. Looking back with the luxury of hindsight, though, my first years with the Bureau are a blur, a confused amalgam of coffee and exhaustion, accolades and darkness -- a constant and pervasive darkness that had sucked at my soul and threatened to overwhelm me completely. Bill Patterson, Reggie Perdue and the rest of the Section had only seen the staggeringly high solve rate I had managed to maintain. No one had understood how deeply profiling affected me until Scully. Or, at least, no one had cared. Scully had taken one look at me and had known just how fucked-up profiling made me.
I really hate consults.
And I especially hate being awakened at 6 am on a Saturday morning when Scully is sleeping peacefully next to me. We'd been together non-stop since she'd waltzed into my apartment two weeks earlier, but I still wasn't used to seeing her first thing in the morning. I guess I should have expected the interruption, really. If the powers that be didn't care about unleashing a global armageddeon, why should they care about callously interrupting my love life?
I shouldn't have been surprised by the early morning wake-up call three weeks ago, but I was. By the time I'd hung up the phone, Scully was already half dressed, her professional mask slipping back into place. Two hours later we were on a plane for Illinois. One hell of a way to ring in our two week anniversary.
This case had been hard on both of us, but more so for Scully. For once, my profile had been relatively simple, if disturbing; the re-enactment of a vicious childhood trauma. I had nearly completed my part of the work by the time we landed in Chicago. I wasn't the one went directly to the Cook County Morgue to review the autopsies of four murdered children. I wasn't the one who oversaw the staggering battery of forensic tests in an attempt to find some clue to the identity of the murderer. I wasn't the one who performed seven more autopsies over the next sixteen days.
She spent our first forty-eight hours in Chicago in the morgue, foregoing both food and sleep. When I pulled my head out of my ass long enough to realize I hadn't seen her in a couple of days, I hightailed it over to the morgue to force her to eat and rest. It hadn't been easy getting her out of the lab, but I tell myself it was my logic and charm that convinced her to leave, not the fact that I had found her unconscious on the floor.
Waiting for us at the hotel was a stack of increasingly insistent messages from Skinner. I called him only because I was afraid he'd make good on his threat of hopping the next plane to Chicago. As I dialed his office, Scully slipped through the connecting door and into her own room, shedding the hospital scrubs smelling of formaldehyde and sorrow as she went. Skinner finally picked up just as the shower turned on. I don't really remember what I told him, most of my attention was focused on trying to hear something through the open connecting door besides the splash of the shower. With only the bare minimum of civility, I hung up on Skinner and let myself into her bathroom, convinced something was wrong.
"Scully?" When she didn't answer, I pulled back the shower curtain a couple of inches to make sure she hadn't passed out again. She was huddled on the floor of the shower, hugging her knees and letting the water beat down on her head.
I didn't even notice the scalding hot water soaking my jeans and gray t-shirt as I stepped into the shower, carefully picked her up, and carried her out of the tub. She just stood there when I set her on her feet, so I wrapped her in a big bath sheet and rubbed her dry with one hand while I peeled off my wet clothes with the other. When we both were reasonably dry, I carried her to the bed and wrapped her in a cocoon of warm blankets and warmer flesh, trying to pierce the despair clinging to her.
Eventually, her trembling ceased and we slept. Four hours later, I awoke to a cold and empty bed. After that, every few hours, I would bully her into eating something or taking a nap, but that was the last time she had allowed me to touch her. Sixteen days ago.
Even if this case had been mindless scut work, chances are I wouldn't have touched her anyway. Work was work, pleasure was pleasure, and Scully had been adamant. No nookie on company time.
It's not just sex I want right now, though that would be nice. I want -- no, need -- to care for her. To show her my love and concern without having to worry about unspoken regulations and prying eyes. It's frustrating, finally being able to touch her, but being more constrained than ever. Between Scully's natural reticence and the Consortium's unnatural existence, I sometimes think the world would screech to a halt on its axis if I so much as held her hand in public. I'm going to have to wait until we get back to D.C. tomorrow.
Damn.
The door to the sauna opens and I close my eyes in an attempt to maintain the illusion of privacy. Vision gone, my hearing comes to the fore, identifying and cataloguing the intruder. 'Hmmm...Light step, easy breathing, no noticeable reaction to adverse climate, bag on the bench near my feet. Must be a woman. Good physical condition, probably works out.' I am tempted to open my eyes to see how close my deduction is, but decide against inviting any conversation. There's a splash, then a hiss as a cup of water hits the rocks. Then another and another and another. My eyes fly open, all thoughts of privacy gone, as I struggle to pull in a breath, "What the fuck are you --"
My voice trails off when I realize it's Scully pouring water onto the heating apparatus. She glances at me over her shoulder, but doesn't turn around. I watch, enthralled, as a bead of sweat creeps between her shoulder blades and disappears underneath the towel she's wrapped in. When she has the room heated to her satisfaction, she sits down on the bench between my thighs and leans back, her hands curling around my calves. She sighs a little and at the mournful sound I begin combing my fingers through her damp hair, untangling the tiny snarls and massaging the tense muscles of her scalp.
It doesn't matter that her untiring efforts gave investigators the final pieces to the puzzle and led to the capture of the killer. I know the deaths of the eleven children weigh heavily on her mind and on her heart, piercing her with a thousand arrows, all engraved with the same name; Emily. We never speak of her, the little girl who never should have been, but she's often there, hovering around us like the specter she now is. Tonight more so than ever. I want to say something to soothe her, but words are useless in the face of such loss. Instead, I still my natural impatience and allow her the time she needs to distance herself from it all. The deaths, both recent and past, the fruitless anger and the painful self-recrimination, the unholy trinity of would've, could've, and should've.
We sit like that for a long time, taking simple comfort in the presence of each other. Eventually, Scully stirs. She turns her head and kisses the inside of my knee. She braces her hands on my thighs and pushes up, bringing her knees under herself and turning around to face me.
She pauses a moment to caress my face before resting her hands on my shoulders and leaning forward until her mouth is next to my ear. "Thank you for taking care of me."
She presses a tiny kiss underneath the hollow of my cheek and I can feel the dark shadow of my beard gently rasping against her lips. Her tongue flicks out briefly to capture the salty taste of skin before she pulls away from the hands I don't remember raising to her hips. She slides off the bench as gracefully as the slotted wooden planks will allow, trailing her fingers over my chest and down to my abdomen.
I feel my eyes widen comically as she yanks off her towel and turns to pour more water onto the sauna's rocks, sending another wave of heat shimmering across the small room. I will never, ever get used to seeing her nude. She tosses her towel carelessly onto the bench and I glance at the door, painfully aware she is butt ass nekkid in the Howard Johnson sauna at 1:30 am. The umbrella wedged in the door handle gives me pause. When I turn back to Scully, she is grinning widely, her hands propped confidently on her hips.
This is bad.
Still grinning, she leans forward to snag a bottle of water from the mesh bag she'd brought with her. She unscrews the top and drinks deeply, allowing the excess water to spill from the corners of her mouth and run down her chin and over her chest. She lowers the bottle and negligently wipes her mouth with the back of her hand before offering it to me. I consider rejecting it, but decide dehydration would put a pretty quick end to what ever she's planning. I carefully move to the edge of the bench to take the bottle, not wanting to get anything caught or pinched, aware of her eyes devouring me, the veil of humor doing little to disguise her desire.
Scully moves to meet me halfway, climbing up to sit next to me as I tip my head back and let the cool water ease my parched throat. Following her lead, I allow some of the water to seep out of my mouth and flow over my chest. It feels pretty good, so I tip my head forward and pour a little down the back of my neck. Over the salty landscape of my back, I can feel the tiny rivulets of water carving a complex system of deltas and estuaries.
Thirst quenched, I lean forward and rest my elbows on my knees, the water bottle dangling from my fingers, "So, Scully, what –"
What ever I am going to ask her disappears from my mind as I feel the flat of her tongue smooth up the middle of my back. When she reaches my hairline, she lifts her mouth and pushes at my shoulders until I sit back and she can straddle my hips. I drop the water bottle to the ground and automatically raise my hands to her waist.
"Have I ever told you what a great back you have?"
I shake my head, struck dumb by her audacity. It surprises me, even after her seduction last month. I can hardly look at walls without going into a lust trance.
"You do. Every time I see you in one of those gray t-shirts I just want to rip it off."
I feel my erection press against the prison of terry cloth held fast against my hips by her knees. She wriggles a little closer until we are eye to eye and rests her weight on my thighs. She takes my face in her hands and, as she captures my bottom lip between her teeth, all thoughts of the public nature of our venue flee my mind.
Conscious of the barrier she's left between us, I relax into her kiss. She delicately licks the fine layer of sweat from my lower lip before fitting her mouth completely to mine. Despite my eagerly parted lips, she seems content with her leisurely exploration of the fleshy contours of my lips. Again and again our mouths meet, narrowing my world to those few scant inches of pleasure and obliterating the oppressive heat of the sauna, the lingering stress of the past weeks, and even the heated press of her bare hips over my towel clad ones.
When it finally comes, the flick of her tongue against my lips is just that, a light flutter against the sensitive inner skin of my lips. Then it's gone. Before I have a chance to mourn its absence, Scully pushes past my lips and teeth, searching for my tongue with her own. Hands in my hair, she holds my head gently in place as her mouth plunders mine. Unable, unwilling to escape, my hands gild the cage of her body, squeezing and caressing every available inch. With my touch, I worship the damp strands of hair stuck to her neck, the smooth ripple and stretch of muscle in her back as she inches closer to me, the geometric perfection in the slope of her waist.
When she finally releases my mouth to test the skin of my throat and shoulders, I gently caress the line of her back, trying to slow her frantic pace with soft touches and quiet murmurs. Though I don't begrudge her the comfort of my body, I don't want our reunion to be such a frenzied coupling. She rears back and studies my face for a moment, judging my intent. Apparently satisfied with what she sees, she graces me with a tender kiss, savoring for a moment what we are together. Using her lips and tongue, she traces a line over to my ear. She tickles the lobe for a second before bringing her lips up to bathe the side of my face with her warm breath, "No time for love, Dr. Jones. I got us an earlier flight back home."
Before I can fully process her breathy whisper, she is shifting her weight and working her slim fingers underneath the edge of the terrycloth covering my hips, yanking it down, and settling herself over me. She carefully works the tip of my erection into the folds of her body, her sultry heat quickly outstripping that of the sauna. I close my eyes at the initial contact, so turned on by the bliss on her face that I can hardly breathe. Slowly, she sinks down on me, letting her body adjust to my entrance at its own pace. Eventually, a million years later, her pelvis comes to rest against mine.
Desperately clinging to the last vestiges of my control, I screw my eyes closed and think about multiplication tables and batting averages, Tooms and exsanguinated corpses, the Pope belly dancing and the Smoking Man prancing around in a tutu.
None of it works.
"Mulder? Open your eyes." The husky sound of her voice caresses me from the inside out, stoking the fire raging at the base of my spine and arousing me just as much as the minute circling of her hips. I want this to last longer than 35 seconds, so I shake my head and keep my eyes squeezed shut.
"Mulderrrrr..." Her voice ends on a low moan and I'm ready to resist her siren song until I feel her body begin to tense and clench around mine.
My eyes snap open and I don't know how she got to this point or how I got to this point but she's humming and writhing on my lap and valiantly struggling to keep her eyes open as a red flush begins working its way up her chest her beautiful chest and I've hardly even touched her but she's clenching and smiling and panting how can she pant the air is so thick and I try to pull back but it's too late and it's been so long and I'm coming and coming and holy jesus the world is going black...
Wow.
I don't know what Scully did to me right then, but I'm pretty sure it killed about 6 billion brain cells. And not just the weak ones. I'm breathing, though, so that's a good sign. I concentrate really hard and am able to raise my arms from her hips to wrap her in a sloppy hug. This seems to rouse her from her post-coital stupor. She raises her head from my shoulder and lands a damp kiss on the corner of my mouth. She props her forehead against mine for a second and, I don't know how she does it, but she manages to pull her body off mine and stands in front of me, stretching her arms above her head for a long moment before flopping over like a rag doll. When she's upright again, most of the shadows are gone from her eyes and she seems closer to being her usual, albeit naked, self.
She looks at her watch and begins gathering up her things, "Get a move on, Mulder, our plane leaves in just about two hours."
She takes a moment to throw my towel back over my hips and kiss me sweetly one last time before unwedging the umbrella from the door and striding out to conquer the world.
God, I love this woman.
FIN
Disclaimer: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, and all things X-Files are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 productions, and 20th Century Fox et al.
Created and maintained by carleton97.