Category: VRA
Rating: R for profanity, sexual content, and generally
disturbing themes
Summary: Bodies are even cheaper than you thought.

Author's note: This is the second part of the two-part vignette series begun
in 'Functional'. 'Red Herring' is the Mulder POV of the MS relationship,
while 'Functional' is from Scully's POV; reading 'Functional' is definitely
not required to understand this.

Fucking Scully should be a drug.

A restricted substance.

Banned.

Right up there with cocaine and heroin and LSD.

Except that she's far more potent than any of them--the way she sears the
flesh, leaving palpable trails of fire reducing you down to the barest
essentials, charred bones, flesh only the merest wisp of smoke. The way she
crumbles you up into tiny little bits and makes you yelp with delight when she
does it, all of these and some indefinable thing that is uniquely *her*
combining to produce something that is completely beyond words. Far more
potent.

And, well, outlawing cocaine hasn't done anything much, has it?

And fucking Scully is much more addictive.

Much more dangerous.

Burn you up from the inside.

Turn you into feathery grey ashes floating down in the vacuum that used to be
you.

And it's not so much the way she tastes--not how her skin is like crushed
almonds, not the way she tastes like a cross between marzipan and salsa, not
that, not the way her hands splay across your skin, not the way kissing her
will your eyes glaze and other portions of your body to do equally contrary
things.

None of that.

It's more the way she looks.

When you do things just right, when you hit all the buttons in precisely right
sequence, she gets this look of her face. Blissed out doesn't even begin to
describe it--it's like seeing her laugh and smile and cry and weep and scream,
all tied up in one big package, wild, crazy, like a soul shooting out of Hell,
headed straight up for heaven, blissful, the air crackling around her with the
sheer voltage of this emotion. She's lying there, body splayed on the bed,
nails digging into you, hair flying around, belly hot against yours, and she's
got this smile, this grin this sheer blazing *thing* that you've given her
that's making her happy, that you, you, you out of the entire universe, only
you have given her, and the thought is mind-blowing.

Absolutely.

Fucking.

Mind-blowing.

And at that moment, it's simply her.

It's just *her*.

No names, no titles, just her and she wants you so bad, so bad.

And she's completely open, vulnerable, with all her defenses and her
pretensions down, so that it's just her on that bed and for once, for once she
doesn't mind because she realizes that the only thing you want to do is make
her happy so it's all right not to be cool, calm Dr. Scully, M. D.

She isn't imagining you to be someone else, and she's not worrying about
tomorrow or the case-it's just her, no thought, nothing, just the sheer
essence of Scully blazing out from those eyes.

And she's there, so gorgeous that all you want, all you need for the rest of
your life is just to be there and just take in that fucking lovely sight, the
way her head is tossed back so the cartilage makes ridges upon her throat, the
goosebumps, and the soft fuzz on her belly, slicked and gleaming in the
lamplight as she arches upward, a catch in her voice, hands plucking at the
sheets, hips swinging up to meet yours as she rocks into a world of her own.
You're there, wanting more than anything, more than single thing you have ever
wanted, just to keep it there, to keep her moving on this plane of sheer
emotion and let her shut off her brain for this moment, see the way her eyes
seem pulse and contract and dilate like a fucking wormhole except it's not
ships she's disgorging--it's emotion.

It's pure emotion.

It's release.

She doesn't need to think about this.

She doesn't need to rationalize this.

She doesn't to justify this.

She just needs to lie there, just lie there and experience.

And then there's that smile.

And you feel good.

You can get high off that thing.

Some of that pleasure, some of that sheer wattage just leaks over and you feel
like you're going to explode. You feel so good, you love her so much, that
the two of you are so tight together that the world is going to be healed by
the power of your unity. The Red Sox are going to win the pennant and there's
going to be world peace, but you couldn't give a flying fuck because right
now, the universe is you, her, and that soft little mouth of hers.

Of course, it never lasts.

A second.

Two.

Three at most.

And that emotion, that feeling--it just sort of collapses; there's an audible
whoosh, and you can see, brick by brick, as the old defenses go up and there's
Dana Scully again who wears sensible shoes and wears sensible suits and wears
sensible shoes and always acts sensibly because she's a sensible person unlike
her unsensible partner.

That's when the universe smacks you across the face with a red herring.

AD Skinner is still going to ream you a spanking new asshole for rushing in
without backup, and you nearly killed Scully (again) by forcing her to rush to
your rescue. Your career is in the boonies, you haven't come any fucking
closer to finding your sacred Truth, and you've only managed either alienate,
kill or do both of the above with your remaining friends; your only
consolation is that you're screwing your partner and immediate subordinate.
Your sister doesn't love you anymore, your mother never did, and you still
have no fucking idea who your father is. And you're living from hour to hour,
from second to second, from drink to drink to fuck to fuck because you have no
idea where the hell you're heading ,and even less of an idea where the fuck
you've been because aliens who are really the US Government came in and stole
memories that you're not even sure are really yours, but the grey-headed
aliens took 'em anyway--or was it the oilens or the black cancer or the bounty
hunter?

But it doesn't matter.

Not now, now that you've got a big lump of smoldering charcoal where your
heart should be and an even bigger hole where your brains should be.

It doesn't matter because you're supposedly in love with Scully.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter that you're in love with that thin, cold chip of diamond,
that utterly perfect, so wonderfully precise, that unerring creature who, for
some unknown reason, has stuck to your worthless ass for five years and hauled
said ass out of the line of fire more times than you can count on all your
fingers and toesies.

And, so in the end, it always comes down to this.

Two bodies.

Two people.

Two souls.

And so, when done is done, you pull your zipper back up and you crawl back
into your clothes and you creep back to your room where you attempt to get
some sleep. You stagger out of bed the next morning feeling like Death barely
nuked over and she's standing there in her freshly ironed suit and freshly
ironed face. In complete grasp of her faculties and giving you the squinty-
eye-look-of-death, level three, like she doesn't remember fucking each other's
brains out last night.

It's all icy looks and frigid smile packages inside this perfect little DKNY
shell: she doesn't seem to care, to realize that those slim white fingers are
the ones that you kissed, laving your tongue across their salty points. Or
that last night, her mouth was a lax, panting sweetness, and now it's puckered
little slash that's perfectly set in her hard face.

It's like that.

We have sex.

We risk our lives.

We hurt each other.

We shoot each other, for Chrissake.

We spend twenty two hours a day together, and the two hours apart is the total
compendium of how long it takes to wash our faces, use the john and sleep.

But we don't talk.

We never talk.

It's one of the cardinal rules about our relationship.

We perform our tasks with a single-minded intensity--we don't play when we're
working, we don't laugh when we're in bed, for each task is carried out in a
separate sphere, a different state of being that has absolutely nothing to do
with everything else.

So, therefore, we don't talk.

We don't snuggle.

We don't whisper sweet nothings, aside from the usual 'fuck me' and 'my god'.

The objective has been achieved.

Emotions have been purged.

Hostility has been neutralized.

Fuzzy state has taken over and fatigue ensures good nights' sleep.

And it makes for a comfortable relationship--no recriminations, no accusations
of 'you don't pay enough attention to me', no sly inquiries into possible
birthday presents or jealousy over the pretty waitress because as far as Dana
fucking Scully is concerned, this relationship does not exist outside the time
it takes for her to come each night.

Hell, she'll even give me good pickup lines for the next pretty waitress, and
she has.

This relationship of ours, it has two emotions.

Three, if you count 'too-tired-to-come-again' as one.

There's lust.

And then there's rage.

Admittedly, the rage is mostly hers-the pent-up fury that this existence
causes her, that the destruction of her minivan-brownies-and-soccer-mother
dream, never fucking mind she'd never be fucking happy as a housewife.

But still.

It's clean. Uncomplicated, completely lacking in the shaded subtleties that
make your average relationship a minefield for the soul.

We just fuck.

No other words for it.

And frankly, personally, I like it.

I really do.

I do.

The expectations are set out, clear, defined, no fudgy emotional crap, no
hidden explosives, no fights, nothing, just sex on a creaky mattress.

And at the same time. . .

At the same time. . .

At the same time, I have to sneak back over to her room to see her sleep. I
have to crawl back into my lover's room, I have to gently push the connecting
door open and stand by the wall, plaster myself against the wallpaper in order
to see the way her skin luminesces in the darkness, or the blue pulse dances
in her throat, or the way she is so very soft and tiny lost amidst the rumpled
blankets, that she is curled into a tight ball, mewling, and whimpering, and I
am standing by the wall because she won't let me touch her when we're not
fucking.

And make no mistake, this is fucking.

There is not making love.

Fucking.

Making love implies the presence of the emotion.

It implies that that both of the partners care about each other.

And, this, this, this is only two bodies slapping together, two mouths pushing
into each other, this is put the ball in the hole and win a another round of
miniature golf.

This is so that we don't break down and say what we really think, so that we
won't reach out and beat the living fuck out of each other.

This is so that we don't take out our guns and blow holes in the other.

This is so that we can stay together.

There is nothing more to this.

Functional.

Sex is functional.

Sex is useful.

Sex is used.

Sex is vital.

She has had other partners, but from the fragments I can glean, those were
intellectual partnerships, meldings of the soul and sex was only an incidental
part of that relationship. If it even happened at all.

And this relationship, this one, it's nothing but.

Lust and rage, distilled to their bases, transmuted into the forms of two
agents who are too damn tired to dance to the formalities that usually precede
humping on a mattress. No time, no energy, no patience, no more endurance for
the non-essentials, only the basics, which are thus: our bodies, the bed, and
the fact that we can scratch and bite and slap, and it's all just playing
because it doesn't count that you're bruised and bleeding because you're
having in bed with her and this is just 'rough sex'.

And for now, it's enough.

It's enough.

It holds us together.

It's our form of Krazy
glue.

Krazy glue.

I laugh at the name.

How very appropriate.

But it's glue.

It's glue all the same.

It's this knowledge that tonight everything is going to be all right.

And if not tonight, then this afternoon or as soon Detective Anderson leaves
or whenever we can find a room with a lockable door.

It's her knowing that she can scratch and bite and hurt me as much as she
wants to, and it's all right because this is consensual, that all this sorrow
inside her can find a socially acceptable outlet.

And it's me knowing that all the problems and pain and bitterness are going to
be wiped away and that I can hold her as tight as I want and kiss her all I
want. As close as I want to, as long as I can draw it out. And when we're
simply two bodies, no minds, just flesh--I can touch her as long and for as
much as I want because Scully knows sooner or later, my mouth is going to
slide between her legs and she's going to get what she wants.

For my service, I get to touch her and I don't get to feel her shrinking away.

It's a big gift.

Tremendous.

So she gets to climb on top of me, and she gets to bring her sharp canines
down on my shoulder, and she gets to brace her palms against my chest when I
start up against the pain. With those nails slicing down my legs, there is
the rage over the time I ditched her in Kenoke, Washington; with the scratches
on my thigh, she vents over the Senate hearing, and when I am stretched across
the bed, limbs outflung and her lithe body clambering over me, I can only
think that she is mourning for the life I stole from her.

It's enough.

We present a single face to the world.

We survive.

And our. . . our activities are enough to hold us together.

So that she doesn't rat me out to Skinner and she drop-kick me out of her warm
little bed.

It's enough.

But what happens when it's not enough?

What happens?

What happens when she gets tired of me?

What happens when she gets fed up with her vibrator on legs?

What happens?

.end