by Pares
En robe de parade. --Samain
Like a skein of loose silk blown against a wall
She walks by the railing on a path in Kensington Gardens,
And she is dying piecemeal
of a sort of emotional anemia.And round about there is a rabble
Of the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.
They shall inherit the earth.In her is the end of breeding.
Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.
She would like some one to speak to her,
And she is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.--The Garden, Ezra Pound
Scully was still wearing her coat. Mulder, behind her in the doorway with two cups of dark roast, hadn't realized what she was reading until she'd already tucked her red hair behind one ear and stroked the page with her fingertip.
"Is this what you think of me?"
Had Mulder been any other man, he could have stalled a bit by playing dumb, but in his mind's eye he could see the book splayed on its cracked spine, with pencil notations in the margins translating the title quote: "En robe de parade: 'dressed as for a state occasion'-- Scully."
*
They'd spent the morning in a silent car, returning from an interview with a woman who'd claimed her 6 year old twin sons had been abducted by a ship that sang.
It had become painfully apparent that they'd both drowned in a neighboring apartment complex's swimming pool while she'd been out of her head on metamphetamines.
On the way to the car, Scully had caught her heel on the doorjamb.
"I'm fine, Mulder," she'd said crisply, tugging her arm from his steadying hand.
She'd smoothed her hair, straightened her unwrinkled fitted taupe jacket and then, lowering her lashes, apologized.
"Sorry. I haven't been sleeping very well, actually. That's all."
"We can stop for coffee," he'd told her, unlocking her door. "My treat."
She'd settled herself in the passenger seat and nodded, quiet for the rest of the drive.
*
"Is this really what you think, Mulder?"
No.
Yes.
"Sometimes."
He was badly startled by the tears in her eyes.
"Sometimes," she repeated.
Scully tracked him as he walked to his desk and put the coffee down on top of the filing cabinet, out of her easy reach. Standing behind his desk, Mulder tried to meet her eyes, knuckles whitening on the headrest of his chair.
"Scully--"
"I won't say I'm always easy to deal with... but but... to know that you see me as some kind of--- bitter, barren... My-- How--?" She stared past him, blue eyes glassy and sightless.
His stomach knotted immediately, but he beat the guilt down, came up with malice.
"Jesus, Scully! You're always so remote, so fucking *strong*. Yeah, I think shit about you some times. Don't tell me you don't do the same about me."
Lovely, manicured fingertips dabbed at her eyes; Scully sniffed, composed herself so quickly that Mulder was nearly frightened.
"I won't lash out at you, Mulder."
"No, you'll just freeze me out until my balls fall off." He wondered if he was snarling-- his lips felt dry and tight.
She gave him a glacial stare.
"Beg pardon, Mulder. I'd forgotten I was talking to Mr. Communication."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"It mean's I'm not the only one who can lower the temperature in a room."
God help him, he felt the burn of bile at the back of his throat.
"A little of that chilly knack of yours must have rubbed off, then."
She took a small, controlled breath, and opened her mouth as if to answer him... and instead merely stared. It was then Mulder feared he was in for the real thing: the shitstorm that would swamp their already sinking partnership.
*I should never have loosened my tie.*
He could feel her find it, glowing like a brand behind his unbuttoned collar, her focus on his tightening throat. Incredulous eyes fixed on his skin, and burned.
There the post coital badge of passion.
The livid ring of teeth, the blood rose at the center-- Scully didn't need her medical degree to recognize a love bite when she saw one.
She wouldn't look at him.
Staring at the floor, she said, dully, "You're sleeping with him." She sounded beyond weary, beyond anger, beyond pain.
"No, Scully, I'm *fucking* him." A kind of black, brittle glee spurred him on, he could feel it dig at him, could feel the blood crowd into his cock, knowing she knew, and was imagining them together.
"Do you want to know why?
"Because he lets me. He wants me to. He begs for it. He lets me *touch* him."
He waited for her indignance, and she didn't disappoint him.
"Fuck you, Mulder. Fuck you." She looked as shocked as he felt. And then, curiously proud.
"Yes. *Fuck* you," as if she liked the taste of it in her mouth, like it tasted liberating.
"I should have told you to go to hell years ago, you bastard. You want to know how I feel about you? Like you're stealing my *breath*. There used to be days when I'd wake up with your name on my lips, I dream about you all the time, there's no place I can be where you are *not* and Jesus, God, sometimes I feel like you're sitting on my chest staring at me, just waiting, waiting for me to crack so you can smile and say 'I told you so'."
What had once been a solid wall of passive aggressive restraint had been worn to a white paper screen. Mulder could almost hear it tear, almost felt the floor heave when Scully finally let go.
"You're the poster child of Co-Dependency. We should both be... there should be posters, Mulder! Posters of us stapled all over the fucking... This fucking... city..." Dull eyed, her voice hoarse and flat, she continued softly.
"Sometimes," she whispered, "Sometimes I hate you so much I think I might kill you myself just to finally be rid of you."
Mulder couldn't feel his hands, and he couldn't remember what air even tasted like in his empty open mouth.
And Scully was glittering again, eyes still streaming, but the fight back in the line of her shoulders, the tilt of her head.
"*You* are my life Mulder, and this may be some kind of news flash, but I resent you for it. And it seems you feel exactly the same way. This is-- crazy! We subject each other to these ridiculous standards-- these expectations-- I don't--
"My uncle died in Korea. He was my father's youngest brother, his name was Harry and every now and again my dad would tell us stories about him. He said they'd called him Bottle Rocket-- that's what you are, Mulder. Built to burn, aimed at the sky, and all the Consortium had to do was set you on fire and follow the sparks and wait until you blew yourself up."
"Maybe," he agreed. He suddenly regretted every unkind thought he'd ever had about her, wanted desperately to backpedal and erase his words. He said the first thing he could that was both true and perhaps flattering.
"Maybe I *am* out of control, maybe I'm going to burn out, burn up. But you're the only thing that can stand the heat-- you hold it inside you, shield it from the outside world-- and you're tempered by it; steely."
Apparently it was the wrong thing to say. Scully went white with rage, mouth tight and furious.
"I'm so *sick* of this-- this 'strength' you keep giving me... I'm too tired to carry you any more, Mulder."
She was hyperventilating.
"I have lived for you, died for you, gotten *fat* for you--
"Oh, god, remember-- I got so heavy."
Nodding, Mulder looked faintly embarrassed.
"That was the time I was most afraid of you, Mulder. Your gravitational pull was yanking me right out of my own life and into yours, inexorably, and I didn't want you to *touch* me any more, I thought that if you did-- if you did-- I'd lose myself completely. Drown.
"I've seen it happen. While my father was alive-- I loved him, Mulder, love him still, but my mother-- she was so... concerned about him. Kid gloves. 'Let's not worry your father.' As if he were so much more important than we were, or so much more--fragile. And I didn't want to repeat the pattern, didn't want to *be* the strong one-- but after I came back, I knew that if I stayed with you, I'd lose myself one way or the other. Apart from you, I had no identity at all and with you I felt like-- like your animal trainer. Like you were Clever Hans the Wonder Horse and it was my job to see that you knew when to stop stamping your foot.
"I'm not making very much sense. I don't know what I'm saying.
"But it must be true. It *is* true." She shoved the open book off his desk, and it slapped the floor with the wet smack that heavy paperback texts make. After glaring at it as if she'd expected it to attack her, she lifted her swollen, hectic face to his.
He simply stood, swaying.
"I don't know who I am anymore. Maybe I do have some kind of emotional anemia. I want to blame somebody else, I'd *like* to blame *you*, but it has to be my own fault. But god damn it, Mulder!
"You're not the only one who lost a sister. Missy was the one person in my life that it was okay to be bitchy with, and I needed that, I needed to know that I could yell at her and that she could yell at me and that I could count on her, count on her to forgive me my indiscretions, to know that she knew I wasn't always right, that I wasn't always strong, and that she would forgive me for all my arrogance, all my weakness, all my pretense...
"I miss her! I miss her, Mulder, I miss who I was when I was with her, I miss feeling superior to her, I miss feeling foolish with her-- I'm so alone now. Bill and I never got along, and Charles is always so far away...
"Melissa was the only person who ever admitted that she could see through me-- everyone else plays along. My mother, Skinner, you. Sometimes it scares me, sometimes I forget and believe I'm stronger than I really am. " She looked pale and beset in her long navy coat.
Mulder pounded his fist against his thigh, gritting his teeth.
"I don't want to see what you don't want to show me, Scully. How can I win? I don't want to break you open and see how you work; that'd kill you, you'd never forgive me if I forced you-- and you'd be right to. I'm so used to just taking what I want in every other way... and I take you for granted, I know that, I know... God damn it Scully, I do the best I can.
"I don't know if it will ever be enough-- it'll probably never be what you deserve.
"I don't know how to show you I'm sorry-- I don't know how to show you that I love you, even though I know you know it. I can't reassure you. I'm not strong enough to be stronger than you are... to be the strong one."
"I'm not asking you to lift a car off a child, Mulder. Just... just... couldn't you just...
"You've crippled me, Mulder. I'm emotionally hogtied. And sometimes... sometimes yes, I think it would be better for me to leave you... Leave the X files... but it's not what I want. I want to stay with you. My feelings for you.... I don't think there *are* words for them... I never thought that two people could be this close and this far way... I mean, we're both so alienated... " She laughed then, a little congested chuckle. Then a searing focus again, almost accusing.
"I could live without you Mulder, but I choose not to. I won't let you go. I love you in ways that I have never even heard about."
Crossing the room in three steps, he hid his face in her hair and crushed her close.
"Did you ever know that you're my hero?" he whispered against her ear.
She coughed a smoggy little laugh against his chest.
"Shut up, Mulder. Just shut up. That's what I hate about you the most. You're only ever sorry about the things that aren't your fault, and that makes it almost impossible to get angry at you for the things you can actually do something about-- like your arrogance, your thoughtlessness. It really pisses me off. I resent you for that, too, by the way."
"Well, as long as we're venting, remember that time you watched me put my coffee on the roof of the car and then let me drive away? I don't think I'll ever forgive you for that."
She banged his arm with the flat of her hand, a little hiccuping sob interrupted by an outraged laugh. "Don't. Don't try and make light of this. Don't belittle me--"
He kissed her matted hair, hugged her again.
"I'm sorry," he said reflexively. She pounded him twice with a loose fist, too exhausted to even pretend resentment.
"You're afraid of me, Mulder. Admit it. In Florida, with those chameleon men, god damn it, you turned tail and ran. You tease me only when you know the odds are against me agreeing to anything-- every opportunity you've had-- after that whole Eddie Van Blundht fiasco, for example. I was on the couch with you-- with him-- about to-- and you never made a move. Never even spoke about it. How was I supposed to feel? You made it abundantly clear that *you* would never have plied me with wine and leaned over to kiss me."
He let go of her, stepped back to look at her, eyes dark with apology.
"I would have. But you're right. I am afraid of you." Mulder's chest ached when Scully tried to hide her disappointment.
"I count on you too much to fuck with what we have. And I couldn't be sure... I mean... I'm no prize, Scully. No one should have to put up with me. And let's face it, most people can't."
"Apparently Krycek can," she answered, and her toneless jealousy abraded Mulder's heart.
"Scully..." His hands fell heavily to his sides. "Alex... He's *nothing* like you. Women... Other women... I always feel like I'm betraying you, every time I meet someone, and she wears a color you'd like, or White Shoulders, or orders a *pizza* for fuck sake--
"I help you on with your coat so I can smell you on my hands. I watch you sleep on stakeouts so I can know what it's like to have you in my bed. I stand too close to you, I stoop so I can see if the hairs on your neck will stand up if I breathe on your nape, I think about what you'd taste like, Scully, but I can't touch you.
"And you can't let me."
Nodding, she crouched and picked up his book. She closed it, smoothed her hand over the fingerprinted cover.
"I know that." She took a deep breath and placed the book on his desk.
"Does he love you?"
Mulder stared at the floor.
"I don't know. I hope not."
Buttoning her coat, Scully smoothed her hair, fished a Kleenex from her pocket and blew her nose.
"He loves you," she said gently. She squeezed his hand, her eyes on the door.
"I'll be out tomorrow, Mulder. But I'll see you on Thursday."
"Thursday," he echoed. "I'll be waiting for you."
She tried to smile then, tried to hold his gaze.
"No," she said. "You won't."
END
"I learned to touch myself tenderly to give myself what I could not ask others for. I stroked my own cheek; late at night, I brushed the hair off my own tired, worried forehead." -Elizabeth McCracken, The Giant's House
