It is hard to sleep within arm's reach of another person and not want to touch him. Dana Scully knew this from experience and it made her dread lying beside her partner in the one bed in the one dingy room they had come across in the dismal little town that was Elkin, New Mexico.
She had discovered this elemental human truth when she was in the twelfth grade, at an all-night party given by her best friend Angie. She had fallen asleep during one of the movies, curled up in a ratty orange blanket on the floor, her cheek on her jean jacket. When she woke up she saw him.
Marcus, the twelfth grade love of her life.
He was sprawled on his back on the carpet near her, his fine profile outlined by the flickering light of the infomercial on the television. Around her, other teenagers lay unconscious, snoring faintly, faces scrunched in sleep, but Marcus slept absolutely silent and still, his skin lucent and his lips slightly parted. He lay on his back. Dana couldn't sleep on her back--it made her nervous, as if she was wide open to the whole world--but she admired it in Marcus, who slept on the floor as if it were the perfect place for repose, sprawled and disclosed completely. He was breathtaking.
More than breathtaking, for seventeen year old Dana, Marcus Stevenson was tempting. His left hand rested not sixteen inches from her, palm up on the shag carpeting, open, fingers slightly spread, and she wanted to touch it, wanted to move her hand across the empty space that separated her and twine her fingers in his. She lay awake for almost forty-five minutes watching his hand and wishing for the courage to take it, and in the end settled for creeping forward (hardly daring to breathe for fear of waking someone and revealing her pathetic desire for this sleeping guy) and placing her hand next to his, palm down, close enough to feel the warmth of his skin. When she woke up the next morning, Marcus had not only taken her hand, but had thrown his arm over her and moved in close. They started dating that day.
But that had been over a decade ago, and desire was no longer so simple or straightforward.
Dana Scully rolled onto her side, facing the bathroom door. Mulder was in there, doing whatever it was that he did in there after getting out of the shower and before getting into the bed. She didn't want to know. Not what he did in the bathroom, not what side of the bed he usually slept on, not whether he snored or not, not anything. She didn't want to know.
Of course, she already did know most of it, just from spending the last five years of her life in Mulder's almost constant company. She knew, for example, that he only wore briefs when he worked out, although recently he had taken to wearing those hybrids, the boxer briefs made popular by Calvin Klein. Mulder didn't wear Calvin Kleins, he wore the knock-offs.
The door opened and she closed her eyes.
She heard the light switch click off, sensed Mulder's presence pad across the room, heard the television come on, felt the side of the bed tilt with his weight, then level out as he lay down. For a long moment she lay listening to him breathe, waiting for the inevitable.
"You awake, Scully?"
She sighed. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to drift off into oblivion, blissfully unaware of the body of her partner in close proximity and awake to find him miraculously transported to the diner in search of breakfast. She did not want to feel his warmth beneath the blankets, or his movements in his sleep, or the mumblings that arose from his dreams. She did not want to acknowledge that he was in the same room at all, let alone the same bed, but he had to talk. Mulder always had to talk. He always had to force from her recognition she did not want to give.
"Scully, you awake?"
"Yeah, Mulder."
"Something wrong?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
"You seem . . . frustrated."
Dana clenched her fist, digging her nails into her palm. Frustrated.
"Do I?"
"I just ask because if you were frustrated, which I am not asserting, I was wondering if you were, if it might have something to do with me, possibly. Perhaps."
Of course he would have picked it up--she could hear the conciliation in his tone, in the mumbling and stammering quality of his rapid question.
"What would make you think that, Mulder?"
"There was the incident at the front desk--"
"You mean the incident during which I discovered that you had not made reservations and we would have to be sharing a room for the second time this month?"
"Well--"
But she was on a roll, and there was no stopping her. "You mean the incident in which I called you irresponsible for not making the reservations in the first place or were you referring to my reaction to your assertion that I 'might just get lucky' if I behaved myself?" She sat up in the bed, hands still flexed tight. "Or were you talking about the moment when I questioned your judgement for bringing me out to the middle of nowhere during a rodeo festival because a man who we now know was on peyote at the time claims to have seen lights floating about his outhouse?"
"You called me a--"
"I know what I called you, Mulder. What I'm asking you is do you see any reason why I shouldn't be frustrated at this moment?"
"Has anyone ever told you you're sexy when you're angry?"
"Has anyone ever told you you're an insufferable asshole?"
Mulder smiled. Scully scowled, longing for the opportunity to slap him. She scooted back down into the thin motel pillow, folding her arms across her chest.
"Would it help if you thought of this as a slumber party rather than an inconvenience?
Slumber party. Marcus Stevenson. Desire.
"A slumber party?"
"I could find a bad horror movie on t.v. and we could have a pillow fight. You might have to loan me a pair of skimpy pajamas, but the situation has possibilities."
Scully, who was in sweats and an old t-shirt, smiled, casting him an irritated glance. One arm was stretched behind his head. Suddenly she wanted to reach out and touch his skin, right where the white t-shirt rode up on his triceps.
"You're not forgiven, Mulder."
He turned and met her gaze.
"I'm resigned to that."
Scully sighed and closed her eyes. This was going to be difficult. Her fingers tingled in denied anticipation.
"Scully."
She felt his body shift on the mattress and now he was lying on his side, too close, his breath washing over her shoulder. She kept her eyes closed, as if Mulder were a dream she could wish away.
"Hmm?"
"Does this mean I'm not going to get lucky?"
Her fist shot out and socked into the giving flesh of his stomach. The satisfying whoosh of air from Mulder's lungs brought a smile to her face. She hadn't even opened her eyes. Her smug satisfaction staggered, though, when she realized that Mulder had captured her hand, folded it in between both of his in the course of his wheezing, clasping it firmly, like a small animal. If she wanted it back she would have to struggle with him over it, and she wasn't sure that was a loss of dignity she could endure, not here, not now. And she liked the feeling, the solid affectionate pressure of his fingers around hers. She had always like holding hands with Mulder, although it so rarely happened. Briefly, she wondered what it would be like to be engulfed by that warmth, to be pressed not by his hands, but his arms and legs twining around her, encompassing her. She brushed the thought aside: it would probably be suffocating.
Mulder's breathing had subsided into some semblance of normalcy, his face still near her shoulder, his hands still engulfing hers. He was drifting off.
"Are you going to keep that?" she asked, wiggling her fingers in his. His grip tightened slightly.
"A man's gotta protect himself," Mulder mumbled.
That was all the answer she was likely to get. Mulder had violated some small fundamental rule of conduct--don't recognize that your partner has a body, especially when she's in the same bed as you -and she was permitting it. She supposed it was a tiny enough breach in their unspoken code, she could allow it. It would keep her from doing other things. From reaching out in the middle of the night, maybe, from stretching toward him while he was asleep, possibly, from obsessing until all hours of the night.
Lying in bed with her best friend, the only man she had let into her life since an empty relationship with her superior almost a thousand years ago in the timeless chronology of memory, Dana Scully thought perhaps she hadn't changed all that much since high school. She was still settling for too little, for shallow approximations of intimacy, for tiny gestures which were the only ones that could make it through her professional veneer. She looked over at her partner asleep in the pale shifting light of the television. It would have to be enough.
*****end*****