My mouth went dry about two seconds after I called out the name of the next patient on my list. Two seconds. That's all it took to bring everything back to me: all the days of sweaty palms and nervous laughter as I sat in his class, all the nights of achingly obsessive teenage desire.

Officially, he taught ninth grade English composition.

Unofficially, he taught philosophy, religion, psychology, and the meaning of life. He demanded that we search our souls and pour everything out onto paper.

I think I fell madly in love the first time I heard him say, "Contemplate this deeply." It was the second day of high school and, thus far, no adult had ever spoken to me with words like that.


She glanced at me and we grinned at each other. I kept silent, waiting patiently for her to continue.

David Fisher.

I must have written that name a hundred thousand times inside countless spiral notebooks, on reams of lined yellow pads, and all over stacks of scratch paper. I would sit at my desk and doodle for hours, writing his name over and over, as if by doing so I could somehow conjure up his presence. I wanted him inside my house, inside my bedroom, and above all, inside me.

He really was inside me, in a sense. His words pierced my consciousness, penetrated my deepest thoughts, and entered me in every way imaginable -- except the way I wanted most.


I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. I could not believe she was sharing such intimate and personal details about her youth. This was a side of Scully I had never seen before, though I knew it existed.

Every woman has such tales of first crushes, innocent obsessions, and young love. It's part of the reason I adore talking to women beyond a certain age or maturity level. I love looking into their faces and seeing the beauty of their past. Every wrinkle on an old woman's face is an intimate historical artifact, every spot on her hands a heartrending romance. The immense secrets every woman carries in her heart are the roots of her wisdom. I have nothing but the utmost respect for that wisdom. When a woman speaks from her heart, I listen.

I felt humbled and, paradoxically, honored by Scully's present revelations.

She was lost in the memory as she continued.


Looking back at that time, I realized I had never desired anyone as intensely as I wanted Mr. Fisher in ninth grade. I was only 14. I had never even been kissed by a boy. And I was a long way from knowing what it meant to make love to a man, except from surreptitiously read literary accounts. Yet everything about him made my blood sing.

Instinctively, I knew what this was about. It was about countless millennia of evolution, the strength of our biological imperative, magical endocrinological processes, and somewhere -- in the middle of all that science -- it was about divine providence. God gave us bodies capable of experiencing such intense pleasure, a gift I was finally old enough to begin to appreciate.

I don't know about first love, Mulder, but he was certainly my first lust.


"Jesus, Scully."

It was all I could say, as I leaned back in my seat, loosening my tie and undoing the top button of my dress shirt. I needed air. Must breathe. She raised an eyebrow and asked if I really wanted to hear the rest of this.

"Hell, yes. Please continue."

That got me a smile.


He, of course, never even knew I existed. Not in any significant way, other than as one of the kids who got an A in his class. It was only his second year of teaching, he was young and good-looking, and he was wildly popular with all the kids. I doubted if he even remembered having me for a student.

As he lifted himself out of a plastic chair in the lab waiting area, I was struck by the fact that our 10-year age difference had dwindled to an insignificant number by then. The distance between 32 and 22 was a far cry from 24 and 14. I was no longer a shy teenager with braces on my teeth and freckles all over my face. He was no longer this distant, unattainable, out-of-my-league adult. Eight years later, I was in my first year of medical school, working part-time as a phlebotomist at a local hospital, and looking nothing like my ninth grade self. I don't know if I felt confident enough to flirt with him, but at least I knew it wasn't morally wrong.

On the other hand, he looked almost exactly the same. His dark brown hair was a little thinner and prematurely gray at the temples, but it was still attractive in that carefree intellectual sort of way. His face was more lined, especially around his warm hazel eyes, but it was the same face that haunted my dreams for years. If anything, the crinkly little lines around his eyes emphasized the kindness of his face.

I allowed my eyes to drift slowly over his body.

His physique hadn't changed much. It was still the tall, lean, muscular figure of a basketball player. He coached the boy's team, if I recalled correctly. I bet he still worked out with them, from the look of his shoulders and arms. I used to stare at those arms during class, imagining my hands gripping them in a moment of passion as I gasped out his name.


I'm going to regret asking her to tell me this story.

I already do.

There is no woman in this world I connect with more viscerally than Scully, but perhaps it is too soon to bond with her on this more intimate level of friendship. I'm trying like hell to rise above my base physical response to her words, trying to pull myself back up to that platonic place where I can view this exchange as the unparalleled opportunity to deepen our mutual trust, but Christ...

Squirming in the car seat wasn't doing much to make me comfortable or hide my growing arousal. A teenage Scully, young and innocent, having not-so-innocent thoughts about a teacher that looked a lot like me. Kill me now.


He caught me fantasizing about him once. I don't think he knew it was about him, but I think he was quite aware that I wasn't exactly thinking appropriate thoughts in his classroom, as he stood before us reading a Pablo Neruda poem. Thank God it was one of the last days of school. I couldn't look him in the eye afterwards. I actually avoided him throughout the rest high school out of embarrassment.


"I'm sure your innocence was incredibly charming, Scully."

She blushed and murmured, "It wasn't that innocent."

Uh-oh.


You have to understand, when I say he was reading poetry to the class, that this was no ordinary experience. It was...evocative.

He had that kind of thick, luxuriously deep voice that was made for reciting romantic poetry.

I could picture him whispering sonnets to me under moonlight as he kissed the curve of my neck. I imagined him mouthing the words directly onto my stomach, my breasts, and my hips. In my mind's eye, I could see him quoting verse in between licking my calves, nipping my ankles, and wrapping his lips around my toes. My God, I could almost feel his tongue caressing me. The way he enunciated each word was a sensual feast. I perceived him tasting each syllable as if he was tasting my core, and grazing each phoneme with his teeth as if he was biting my nipple -- not too hard, just enough to make me shudder. I was sitting in the back row with my legs tightly crossed, rhythmically clenching my inner thighs, pushing the thick inseam of my jeans up against my clitoris without any outwardly apparent movement. I closed my eyes to focus on his voice and bit my lower lip to keep from sobbing with pleasure.

I was about two seconds away from coming when I looked up and saw him staring directly at me. I will never forget it. He was leaning against the chalkboard, one ankle crossed casually over the other, holding the volume of sonnets with one hand. He finished the rest of the poem from memory, never once taking his eyes off my flushed cheeks and half-glazed eyes.

I tried to look away, tried to stop my body from reacting, tried anything I could think of to disguise the fact that I was coming, but I couldn't. It was too late, I was so close. I was already there.

My mouth dropped open into a little 'o' as he slowly removed his eyeglasses. It was the last straw; it pushed me over the edge and sent me silently soaring into one of the most intense orgasms of my life. Those glasses were so sexy.


She paused and tilted her head to one side, looking at me.

"They kind of look like your glasses, actually."

I just happened to be wearing them, a fact about which I was feeling extremely self-conscious until two seconds ago. I had no idea Scully had a thing for glasses, but now that I do, I think I may never take them off my face again.

Speechless, I stared at her in the close confines of the car. To hell with the stakeout we were on, which was a waste of time and Bureau resources anyway. Everyone on this detail knew they were here as some form of punishment. Forced overtime on a bullshit inter-agency exercise in futility was not my idea of an exciting evening, but all of a sudden I found myself wishing time would slow down. If she didn't have it before, Scully now definitely had my full and complete attention.

I was so aroused, and at the same time so appalled at my unbidden arousal, that I felt like opening the car door and running away. I wanted her to feel comfortable and safe sharing these kinds of intimate details with me. I wanted her to be able to tell me anything and everything without fear or hesitation. I wanted her to open the inner door -- the one that led to her most vulnerable, most honest, utterly unadorned self -- and let me in.

The prospect of possibly blowing it because I couldn't get my goddamn erection under control was dismaying. I told myself to get a fucking grip.

I held my breath as she continued.


Suffice it to say, Neruda's poetry has never been the same for me since.


I grunted softly and bit my tongue, filing that away for future reference.


As I stood in the cold, white hallway with my clipboard, all of a sudden I realized that I was going to be touching his bare arm, pushing his sleeve up and feeling his skin that day in the hospital. In minutes, I would be rubbing the inside of his elbow and watching his biceps flex. Even more amazing than that, I was going to be piercing one of his veins, physically penetrating him and drawing out his blood, like he pierced my consciousness with his words and drew out my soulfulness so many years ago.

The symbolism was almost dizzying. I could feel the blood rushing hotly through my veins. Like I said before, two seconds. That was all it took to transport me back to that classroom, to my chair in the last row, to his voice reciting that sonnet, and the throbbing... I literally felt my knees weaken for a moment.


I closed my eyes and groaned, "Uncle."

"Uncle?" she asked with genuine confusion.

"Yes. Please stop," I begged her in an embarrassingly raspy voice. "I can't take any more."

This was too much, far too much. It was torturous, listening to her describe her teenage crush, her arousal, her fantasies, and her surreptitious masturbation in public -- in the back of a classroom during class, no less. Then to have her describe coming as that lucky sonofabitch watched.

And now, to hear her making such erotic metaphors and reminiscing...it was just too much.

I couldn't figure out if I hated him or wanted to be him. Probably both.

"I know I asked for this. I wanted to know about your first affair of the heart, but you're a far better storyteller than I bargained for. If you don't want me to go crazy, you'll have to stop."

She laughed and said, "But I haven't even gotten to the good part yet. That was all just background information."

I hate him.

"I hate him, Scully."

She shook her head and smiled.

"You know, I kept pinching myself to see if I was dreaming. Have you ever wanted someone from afar for so long, someone you thought you could never in a million years get close to, much less get physically intimate with?"

I gave her a rueful little smile. Gee Scully, I was thinking, I have absolutely no idea how that feels.

"I felt like a groupie at a rock concert, in a private dressing room with the lead singer. He was the teacher everyone had a crush on in high school, the ninth grade lust of my life, the standard by with I judged every other guy I had met up till then. On the 'hotness scale' of one to ten, Mr. Fisher was a ten. And I could not believe I got him. Even in bed, I wouldn't let him turn me over for...well, you know..." Her lids drifted shut.

I recoiled from that explicit revelation as if I had been punched in the gut physically, instead of just figuratively. Yeah, I know exactly why he wanted to turn her over.

"...I wouldn't let him take me from behind because I wanted to look at him, to see his face the whole time. I had to reassure myself it wasn't just another one of my countless schoolgirl fantasies."

"So you slept with that asshole after drawing his blood?" I bit out.

"Well, yes. That would be the point of telling you the whole story, Mulder. He was my first."

She paused for a moment. "And, by the way, he was not an asshole. He was a brilliant, poetic, sensitive, caring man. I'm glad I waited until age 22, for him to be my first."

Have I mentioned yet that I hate him? Jealousy rages in me, unchecked by reason.

"This was right after you drew his blood?"

"Not right after, but yes. I asked him out on a date while I still had the needle in his vein. It was really unprofessional of me, I know." She sounded almost proud of the fact.

"I hope you bruised him up really badly," I sniffed.

"You mean in bed?"

"God, no!" I choked out, "I meant his arm, I hope you bruised his arm when you were drawing his blood!"

She was really laughing in earnest now.

Okay, I realized she was just toying with me. It was exactly what I needed to lighten up. The level of my intensity was killing me, just then. I rolled my neck and grinned.

"I will have you know that, despite my nervousness and distracted state, I was an excellent phlebotomist. Not that he would have noticed...he was pretty distracted, too."

"I'll bet."

"Apparently he remembered me."

"Christ, how could you think he'd not?"

"He remembered my name, that class, the look on my face, and even the sonnet he was reading at the time."

"No fuckin' kidding, Scully. It's not the kind of thing any man forgets."

She smiled enigmatically, then asked, "Don't you want to know?"

"Know what?"

"Which sonnet?"

"I don't think so."

"Don't you want to know which of Neruda's poems was my downfall?"

"If I knew, I would forever associate it with the mental picture of you in the back of that classroom..." I shook my head. "It's hard enough trying to suppress that image right now."

"You are too funny, Mulder."

Yeah, I'm hilarious. Him she thinks of as a ten on the 'hotness scale.' Me, she thinks of as funny.

"After all those years, did he at least live up to your fantasies?" I asked in a low, pained voice.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Well, he didn't have to do very much." She raised a hand up to her neck and touched her flushed skin. I couldn't tear my gaze away. "I was like a field of dry grasses, thick with brush over parched lands, just waiting for a spark to ignite a conflagration. All it took was one touch..."

I groaned and dropped my head down to the steering wheel.

"He did disappoint me in one respect," she mentioned. "He never recited poetry while making love to me. It had always been one of my most potent sexual fantasies, but I was too young and inexperienced to ask for what I wanted."

"So ask the next guy." It was a subtle hint. My eyes told her she just did.

"The sad thing is, none of the men I have been with since then were the poetic, drop-dead-romantic-in-bed type. I can't think of a single other guy that can recite a sonnet from memory."

"You can't?" I asked disbelievingly. How could she say such a thing? What was I, chopped liver?

"Well, perhaps one of Shakespeare's, but definitely not a Neruda sonnet. I just don't think there are that many truly romantic guys out there."

"Scully..."

"Especially not in the circles I travel, though it could be that's the problem. I really should broaden my horizons. The men I meet through work, they all see me as an 'ice queen' or whatever the term is. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, in fact I encourage it, except the label tends to haunt me even outside the FBI. What a tragedy it would be if the right man came along but never saw the real me behind the..."

"Scully..." I said her name again.

She stopped mid-sentence as I reached across and drew my index finger lightly along the length of her hand. I traced soft wavy lines from her delicate wrist to the tip of her finger, as I began in a low voice:

The light that rises from your feet to your hair,
the strength that enfolds your delicate form,
is not made of mother of pearl, nor chilly silver:
you are made of bread, of bread beloved by fire.

She gasped.

I chose this poem deliberately, to reassure her that at least one man saw beyond her carefully cultivated professional demeanor. I knew that her strength and beauty were far from hard and cold. She was as warm and nourishing as 'bread beloved by fire.'

And I wanted her to know that I knew.

The grain grew high in its harvest of you,
in good time the flour swelled;
as the dough rose, doubling your breasts,
my love was the coal working in the earth.

At this, she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. I wanted her to surrender to the sensuality of Neruda's words. When she slowly crossed her legs, I nearly lost it.

Oh, bread your brow, bread your legs, bread your mouth,
bread I devour, born with each morning light,
my love, beacon-flag of the bakeries.

She mouthed the word 'devour' after I said it.

In a low voice, she joined me in reciting the last few lines:

Fire taught you a lesson of the blood;
you learned your holiness from flour,
from bread your language and aroma.

"That was the one," she said quietly. There were unshed tears swimming in her wide blue eyes.

"Sonnet XIII?" I asked in disbelief.

"Yes. How did you know?"

"I didn't. Lucky guess."

"Right." She nodded and looked out the windshield, staring at everything and nothing.

Neither of us said anything for several minutes, each lost in thought.

Finally, she broke the silence.

"Sometimes, Mulder, I think there is a thread: a single, delicate, barely-visible filament that is woven through all the significant events of my life. It's like everything is tied together in a way that no one can see. Except now and then I catch a glimpse of the connections." She turned to me with a look so open and vulnerable that it almost spoke of fear. "And it takes my breath away."

"Now who's getting all spooky?" I quipped to lighten the mood.

She smiled.

"Alright, it's your turn," she said. "Who was she and how old were you the very first time? Don't spare me any details."

"Oh, Christ. This is going to be a very long night," I told her with a mischievous little wink.