By Oracle
apollostemple@yahoo.com

Classification: VRA
Rated: PG-13
Key Words: Mulder/Scully Romance
Spoilers: The Gift, Dead/Alive
Disclaimer: They're not mine, I'm just
using them for my own evil purposes.
Archive: Gossamer, please. Email me before
archiving elsewhere. I don't see why I'd refuse.
Summary: "I don't care what happens when we wake
up. I just need to be with you. I need to be warm."

Comments: First and foremost, thankyou
to ArtemisX5 for her fabulous beta. This
story owes a lot to her input. Plus, her
encouragement and support has increased my
confidence online tenfold!
Also, thanks to everyone who sent me feedback
for my first story, and everyone who
recommended it at ephemeral. You guys rock!

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"Oh, lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white,
  alas!
My heart beats loud and
  fast!
Oh, press it to thine own
  again,
Where it will break at last."
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'The Indian Serenade'
 

Sleep came rarely, if at all, and for the
first time in Mulder's life he began to take
sleeping tablets. Round white pills, swallowed
dry. When he placed them on his tongue they
tasted of burnt plastic and cigarette ash, and
he would try not to cry. He couldn't say why
this affected him. Consuming the pills
shouldn't have hurt him so deeply. But almost
everything was painful now - only his fingertips
and heart remained immune, because they were numb.

His heart seemed to beat softer and slower than
it ever had before. He could hardly hear it.
Sometimes he would press his hand against his
chest to feel it beating, and sometimes he could
feel nothing at all.

He woke up one morning with a craving for greasy
French fries. He thought of Scully and how she
would steal them in roadside diners. The first
dinner he'd tried to cook for them had been a
huge bowl of fries. It was the only thing he
could make. The fries had burned, anyway. She
had howled with laughter. When he rolled over
to remind her of it and make her laugh like
that again, he wondered why she wasn't there.

He ran to her apartment, knowing that this would
exhaust him and make him a melodramatic figure at
her door, but he couldn't bring himself to get into
a cab. It was raining, and the cold drops beat
against his face. He took them like a well-deserved
punishment.

When he knocked she opened the door and let him
in without saying anything. For the first time
he could remember, her apartment was messy.
Used coffee mugs littered the dining table and
were lined up on the mantelpiece. There was a
pasta-sauce stain on her living room rug. Papers
and files were stacked around the sofa and on the
coffee table. He looked at them and saw himself in
the creased cushions and the cobwebs that hung
from the corners. Because of him, she no longer
cared for her home. He had worn her down.

"I lied," he said, "I lied to you, Scully. I knew
I was dying, but I didn't tell you."

He was shivering, because it was raining and because
he was afraid. He wasn't sure what to say. He'd
always been articulate, but now his tongue often
felt thick and clumsy. It felt like a piece of meat
that got in the way.

Maybe it would be better, he thought, if he just
stopped talking altogether.

"Mulder," she said, and immediately began to cry. It
seemed he'd become an expert at making her cry. Before
he had been an expert at making her laugh. He thought
of tickling her feet while watching Caddy Shack, and
how she'd been giggling and telling him to cut it out,
and then how she'd dumped the popcorn bowl over his
head, and hadn't been able to stop laughing.

He still couldn't hear his heartbeat. Though he'd
run as fast as he could, and taken the longest
strides, his chest felt empty. "I know it's too
late to apologise. But I'm sorry."

She tried to take his hand, reaching out for it
feebly, like a child reaching for an unlit candle
in the dark.

"Don't do that," he said, deciding he shouldn't
have come, "Don't forgive me. I needed to apologise.
I don't need forgiveness."

"I forgave you already," she whispered, barely able
to speak through her tears. "I had to forgive you
because -"

"Because I was dead," he said flatly, nodding. "It's
no use being angry with a guy who's six feet under.
Bad karma for the afterlife." He was always making
jokes like that now. They made her look nauseated, but
somehow he couldn't stop them coming out of his mouth.

"No, no you're wrong." She struggled to keep her
words coherent.

"Then why, Scully? How?"

"Because I love you...because I know why you lied.
You lied because you thought you could cure yourself.
You thought you could spare me the pain of ever
knowing you were sick."

"I'm a hypocrite," he said, the words grating so
harshly that he felt like he'd been chewing broken
glass. "Do you remember what I told you, when you
were sick? I said that you had to tell me the truth;
otherwise you were working against me. And then I
lied to you. Why can't you hate me? I want you to
hate me, Scully."

She shook her head, "I can't," she paused, wondering
if she could go on. "Once I tried to hate you, Mulder.
About three years into our partnership I would dream
about making love to you, almost every night. When I
woke in the morning I would try to make myself hate
you. I wanted to stop living beside you and being
without you. I wanted to leave you, but I couldn't
do it. I could never hate you."

He wasn't sure how to speak now - his tongue was so
heavy. He wanted to tell her about a dream he'd had,
before he'd started taking the sleeping pills. In the
dream he awoke in pure darkness, and his body was
freezing. So cold he was entirely numb. He could feel
nothing, physically or emotionally. But then he thought
of her and a tremendous pain flared deep within him.
He started screaming her name, even though somehow he
knew she couldn't answer. He had woken up wondering
whether it was a dream or a memory.

He wanted to tell her that there was no nameable emotion
left inside him except his love for her, but this love
was burning him. He was dried and hollowed out,
and love was consuming him. He opened his mouth.

She spoke instead. "I can't tell whether you were lying,
when you kissed me that second time, when we made love
in your bed." She confessed all of this while cringing,
as though he might slap her for such a revelation. "So
I need to ask you. Did you love me?"

He looked into her eyes. "Yes," he said, hoping that
the one word would be enough.

Her smile was so sad that he wanted to pull her
into his arms. He wanted to tenderly kiss her
eyelids until she stopped crying.

"You don't love me now," she whispered, placing a
hand on her rounded belly. "You don't love me,
Mulder. Is it because of the baby? If you loved me
then you wouldn't hurt me like this. You would touch
me, if you loved me."

She would never have said something like that before,
but now these words spilt out easily, like her tears.

"I don't deserve you," he said, "and you don't need
me. You want me to fit in with you, to be part of
your life. You want me to be a father to your child.
But I don't deserve it."

"It's your child, too." She was angry now, and her
anger lent her strength, as it always had. Her
anger comforted him, for it showed she hadn't
entirely lost her fire. "Why won't you accept the
responsibility?"

"I don't deserve the responsibility."

"Stop it!" she screamed. She had never screamed at
him before. "Damn your guilt, Mulder. You have no
right to tell me that I don't need you!"

He couldn't meet her eyes so he looked at her feet.
They were smooth and small, delicate as though
sculpted in marble, and his eyes shifted to stare
at his own feet instead.

"Look at me, Mulder. See what you've done to me by
not being with me. I thought if you came back I'd be
happier than I've ever been in my life."

Her words broke bonds in him, and he didn't try
to tie them together again. He had wanted her hatred
but he could do nothing but accept her love, painful
though it was.

So he kissed her, running the tip of his tongue
between her lips. Her taste was both familiar and
new, and he remembered being addicted to it. As
he stroked her warm mouth, relearning her sweetness
and bitterness, he became addicted once more.

"I love you," he said, in between kissing her
neck and her ear, "I love you, please, don't cry
any more, don't shout at me. I don't know what to do -
I don't know how to act," he kissed the tip of her
nose, then her mouth again. "Everything I do is
wrong. I want to be with you too. I just don't
understand how you can still want me."

She wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled
him against her belly, which he cupped with his
hands. Her hands slid beneath his damp shirt, and
tugged it off, over his head. She caressed his chest
and tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling away
from his mouth to nuzzle his neck.

Completely overcome, she could say nothing but
his name. He scooped her into his arms and carried
her a few feet to the sofa.

"We're both so cold," she managed to whisper, as
he sat her down and knelt in front of her. She
curled her arms around his neck and kissed him
so passionately that even his teeth felt bruised.

When they needed to breathe she pulled away to
speak. "I don't care what happens when we wake
up. I just need to be with you. I need to be warm."

He reached up to press a finger against her
already swollen lips. Then he trailed his hand
down her neck to rest it against her heartbeat.
He could feel her heart throbbing, loud and
vibrant, and his own pathetic heart ached like
a phantom limb.

And then, suddenly, he heard it beat. It was so
unexpected that he wrenched away from her in
shock, and stared at her, wide-eyed.

His heart beat softly at first, then louder and
quicker, straining its muscles. Its ache became
an ache of passion. It hurt so much he thought it
was going to tear itself apart. It was the most
wonderful feeling he'd ever experienced, and he
took her hand and pressed it to the centre of
his chest.

"Can you hear it?" he whispered, gasping for
breath. "My God Scully, I can hear it. I think
it's going to burst."

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