Title: Nightside (3/3)
Author: Lynn Gregg
Information and disclaimers in part one

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She took a long time before replying, scrying into her wine as if she could read
her future there.

"Utterly," she said at last, and the softness of her face and voice undid me.

"Dana, I--"

"I know what you meant. It's always been the $64,000 question around the
Bureau. I'm tired of...not lying, exactly, except maybe to myself. We've never
been--we've never had sex. But Mulder and I *are* involved--emotionally,
psychologically, physically, every way two people can be involved. I love him,"
she pronounced, "and he loves me. It's not just about the work anymore. It
hasn't been, not for a long time."

"This is none of my business."

"I just made it your business. It's actually a relief to get it out in the open, try
to--I don't know, make sense of it I guess."

"You haven't even discussed it with--"

"Mulder?" She laughed, like I'd just told a great joke. Maybe I had. "No.
Mulder and I don't...*talk*. Not about things like that. It's always just been
something unspoken between us--unspoken, but never unacknowledged."

"I envy you," I muttered, looking away from her. The thick night air settled
around us, an insulating blanket, producing an odd air of intimacy. We might have
been the last two people left in the world.

She seemed surprised by my statement. "Why?"

I drained half my wine in a gulp before I could collect my thoughts and present
them. "My marriage wasn't like that. I wanted it to be but it wasn't. I wanted it
to be about us, but it was really about him. And when he tried to force my hand,
make me choose between him and the career I'd worked my ass off for...I chose
the FBI. I couldn't see spending my life in eclipse, Dana. I didn't want to be
someone else's shadow."

"I understand." Her quiet voice and the feel of her hand closing over mine
brought me back around to look into the fathomless azure of her eyes. "It hasn't
always been about *us*, with Mulder and me. For a long time it was all about
him--his quest, his demons, and I was just along for the ride. I resented the Hell
out of him for it, too, even as I hated myself, for staying, for being part of it.

"But something changed. After I was diagnosed with my cancer."

The gut-shot I felt at her words must have colored my expression, because she
squeezed my hand gently, stroking her thumb across the back of it. "I'm fine," she
assured me, smiling. "But that was when it changed, when it stopped being just
about him. For a while, it was all about me. It changed again after I went into
remission; that's when it finally started being about *us*."

"Now I *really* envy you," I said morosely. "I don't regret leaving Steven--I
*had* to, you know?--but I get lonely a lot. I know I made the right choice, but
still...a good job doesn't love you back."

"I can't imagine you being lonely for long," she said generously. I noticed she
had yet to let go my hand. "You're very easy to talk to--I mean, look at me, I'm
spilling my guts to you and I've known you for less than a day! You're competent
and intelligent, your Bureau record is outstanding, you're very attractive--"

Whoa. Stop the music. Did she just say what I think she just said?

"You think so?" I croaked.

"Yeah. You have a wonderful look--classical features, those Katharine
Hepburn cheekbones--"

Me? Plain old Cory MacInnes? Tell me more.

"--And you have great hair. I could never wear mine long like that, it's too
straight." Reaching around, she pulled off the elastic band that held my thick wavy
hair in check, tugging her fingers through the tangled mass. "And the color's
beautiful. Can I ask *you* something?"

Mute, spellbound, I could only nod. Dana flushed a little, chuckling, then
asked, "Are you a natural redhead?"

Our eyes met and held, blue on blue, the hearts of four flames combined into
one sudden blaze. In a choked and wavering voice, I blurted, "Why don't you find
out for yourself?"

<>~<>~<>~<>~<>

Making out. On my glider, on my back porch. It was so high school--except
for the fact that I was making out with an incredible, intense, amazing *woman*. I
spontaneously combusted the instant her lips found mine. God, that *mouth*!
That lush, full bottom lip, the straight white teeth that nibbled so enthusiastically,
the way her tongue probed and danced against my own...I didn't care about being
an FBI agent anymore. I didn't care about anything but her mouth on mine, the
sweet feel of her in my arms. My heart was pumping triple-time and everything
below my waist felt like it had melted.

She was electric, writhing beneath my roving hands, and a note of desperation
informed her every motion. Something similar was driving me too. I'm not in the
least superstitious, but even the most ignorant of primitives would've instantly
recognized our actions for what they were. I'd just spent the day wallowing in the
twisted lusts of those who could not love the living; and Scully, so very recently
near death herself, was caught up in the agony of being unable to save the life of
that one person whose life meant more to her than her own. The fierceness of our
coming together had a little to do with personal attraction--and a lot to do with
spiting the encroaching darkness. We each needed to feel the other, awake and
warm and vibrantly *alive*. How better to do it than this?

Together we celebrated the triumph of life, and heat. We drank the wine of
each others' mouths, a thirst we couldn't seem to slake. Heedless of the proximity
of my neighbors we laid our bodies bare, pale and paler, custard and cream, skin
alabaster gleaming in the distant diffuse glow of the streetlights. We marveled at
each others's bodies, so foreign and yet so deliciously familiar.

My small high breasts, which had never given suck to a child, nourished her, as
her hands traveled along the angles and contours of my slim sturdy body. I
returned the favor, groping blindly along her more lush curves, thinking I'd never
seen anything more perfectly beautiful than her breasts, swollen with want, heavy
and ripe in my hands, the coral nipples hugely erect to my eager lips. One of her
hands thrust itself between my parted thighs; a finger slipped delicately past the
slick engorged folds of my labia and began to plunge in and out, the heel of her
hand bumping excruciatingly against the hard knot of my clit. Gasping,
shuddering, speech lost, I rode her hand furiously, aching, desperate for release.
And then she was gone, gone from my arms, gone from my side, and her mouth
replaced her hand and I was gone too.

When she resumed her place beside me, a smug triumphant smile on her face, I
oozed off the glider and onto my rubbery knees before her. I was determined to
give as good as I'd got. Pulling apart her thighs, I began to trail one finger along
the velvety petals, her soft encouraging moans sweet to my ears. I stroked her in a
way that I knew pleased me, slowly and deliberately, very gentle here, very firm
there. Seeing her wet and open to me was nothing short of a revelation; hesitance
fled I lowered my mouth to her, suckling her clit, tongue following the path my
finger had traced. Salt and honey and musk. Catching fire again from her
reception I buried my face deeply into the tangle of dripping red curls, breathing
her in, hands slipping under her and holding her in place. Stiffening my tongue I
plunged it into her, plundering her most secret depths, feeling her twist and buck
against me. Easing off I replaced my tongue with two fingers, working them into
her as I lapped and suckled her clit. With a strangled scream she came and I drank
of the overspill, bringing myself off again with my hand, astonished at both what I
had given and what I had received.

It was shortly thereafter that the phone rang--and rang--and rang. Stumbling,
tripping over feet unwilling to function, I caught it up on the seventh ring, listened
and felt the blood drain from my face.

Scully was right behind me, and if I live forever I hope I never see that
particular look on another human face. I grasped her shoulders hard.

"That was the lab. They were able to pull a partial from one of the notes and
match it to one of the suspects I identified. We've got to move, *now*."

We dressed in silence and in haste. But before we could get out the door, she
caught my arm, stopped me, pulled me back to face her.

"Cory," she said, searching my face, "I want you to know--this doesn't have to
be the end."

I gathered her to me, hugged her hard, buried my face in her hair. "I don't want
it to be," I whispered.

I kissed her again, one last taste before heading back into the darkness of a
world neither one of us were destined to escape for long. She smiled at me,
brushing a loving hand over my cheek. I pushed her ahead of me and shut the
door, locking the darkness out.

"Come on," I said, softly. "Let's go get your partner."

<>~<>~END~<>~<>

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