Chapter Text
Washington, D.C.
It's paradise to me
It's not because it is the grand old seat
Of precious freedom and democracy
No, no, no
It's not the greenery turning gold in fall
The scenery circling the Mall
It's just that's where my baby lives
That's all
When someone says Washington, D.C., the first thing that comes to mind isn’t exactly love and joy. One might imagine boroughs that are nothing but concrete mazes of government buildings, where people in ill-fitting suits carry briefcases and speak exclusively in acronyms. They walk around like the living dead; they haven’t had a night off or a date in a decade, and even in their dreams, they mumble about the Constitution.
Put simply: it’s a place where desire goes to die.
But lately, D.C. has felt different. The city is suffering through a brutal heatwave, and it’s as if the blazing summer heat has made even its most rigid inhabitants unwind. People linger on sidewalks, drink wine on stoops. They have picnics in the park and the traffic seems less aggressive. Hell, even the streets themselves have loosened up – just yesterday, Mulder’s best shoes were ruined by melted asphalt.
This particular night is especially hot and sticky, the temperature still hovering around 90 degrees even though it’s nearly 11 p.m. The air conditioning in the X-Files office gave up long ago, and Scully has shed her suit jacket and shoes, even rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. Still, sweat trickles down her neck, and Mulder finds himself wanting to lean over and lick it from her skin.
Skinner’s been breathing down their necks for the past few days; they’re trying to crack a particularly tough case. Scully licks her bottom lip unconsciously and wipes her forehead with a napkin. Because of the heat, her glasses keep sliding down her nose, and she keeps pushing them back up and he watches her hand, imagining it in other places.
He shifts uncomfortably in his chair, trying to focus on the article in front of him, but it’s really hard, frankly because... so are other things. Over the past five days, since the night their relationship changed character, it’s become painfully clear why they waited seven years to act on it: deep down, they must have known that sharing an office would become impossible.
During these days, they’ve been trying their best to sneak away from Skinner’s suspicious eyes to, well, do it like crazy. There’s no other way to say it. Several times a day, and still, it never seems to be enough. This summer he’s insatiable, he’s lovesick and single-minded, he’s the horny beast. On the nights he hasn’t stayed at her place, or she at his, he’s been jerking off at least twice. He’s turning forty this fall, but he feels fifteen.
She shifts in her chair and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. To do so, she lifts her arm slightly and he catches a whiff of her scent. Mulder takes a shuddering breath.
It’s been a long time since he’s had the opportunity to truly smell a woman’s sweat, but he remembers the difference during her cycle. When she’s on her period, it strikes him as poignant and heavy. Not repellent, exactly, but tangy, deep. It carries a kind of keep out element.
But tonight, Scully smells feather-light, like lemons and rainbows. Her estrogen might be peaking, and her scent makes him light-headed. An impulse crashes over him, a primordial; it raises from deep within and takes him over completely, he can almost feel his nostrils flare. He takes a deep breath. He wants to piss territory, he wants to mark her, to fill her up, make her bear his child. She's his woman.
Finally, his woman puts down the file and turns to him, suggesting they call it a night. Her eyes are hooded, she looks tired, but not too tired, he notices, and reaches out for her hand.
“Your place or mine?”
“Mine. I have a better shower.”
Yeah, he thinks. She does and that would be a first.
The car ride back to Georgetown is quiet and damp. Some hit song loops on the radio, I'm blue, da ba dee, da ba da , and his hands are sticky on the wheel. She rests her head against the headrest and glances over at him fondly. The skin on her neck sticks to the fake leather seat, making a soft, sticky schmuck every time the car jolts over a bump in the road. With only a few minutes left to her house, she puts her hand on his thigh and smiles.
It shouldn't be possible to get hotter but he melts from her touch, it radiates through his body and in the blink of an eye, his pants are tenting. She notices it, of course, and he thinks she likes it. She keeps watching him with that small, knowing smile, her hand rubbing slow circles on his thigh, casually but deliberately. His breathing grows heavier.
Inside, she toes off her shoes and throws her suit jacket over an armchair. It seems like these past five days – and him? – have changed her personality. Last week’s version of Dana Scully would never have dropped a nice suede jacket carelessly on an armchair like that.
Scully heads straight to the kitchen. He follows, watching as she moves, her blouse damp with sweat at the lower back. She opens the fridge and yanks out a beer, cracks it open and wolfs down a large gulp. When she turns to look at him, a wide smile on her face, he knows this image, this night, will be carved into his memory forever.
Dana Scully, from this night on and into eternity, his Dana Scully, is standing backlit by the open fridge, her damp hair a frizzy red halo around her head. Her face is flushed, her cheeks red and her forehead gleaming with sweat. She takes another drag from her beer.
“Ah,” she exhales, then cracks another open, offering it to him. He takes it gratefully.
“Did you find anything interesting enough to report?” she asks, leaning into the cold of the open fridge.
He grins.
“Honestly, my mind was elsewhere.”
“I could tell,” she says, taking another swig, her eyes flicking to his pants.
“Such a good deducer.”
She drifts into the living room and opens the window, then sinks onto the couch. He slouches down beside her, and for a few long, quiet moments, they just sit like that. He watches her profile, the movement of her jaw as she takes another gulp, then another. Her eyes close, and for a second, he thinks she might be too tired, but no: in a minute, she puts down her beer and kisses him.
He exhales and melts into the couch. She really does smell like lemons and pheromones tonight, and her scent sends a jolt down his spine. Even so, he wants to take it agonizingly slow. They're both tired and soft-edged, and that puts him in lovemaking mode – he likes it slow and sly. He wants to use his own softness to leave her boneless and spent.
They shift until they’re side by side. Her hands move slowly over his chest, and she hums into his mouth as he runs his palms up and down her bare arms – soft, steady strokes. Each pass brings him closer to her breasts, circling, teasing, not quite touching. He takes his time. And then, after what feels like ten deliciously drawn-out minutes, he finally lets his thumbs brush over her nipples. She lets out a soft whimper into his mouth and he does it again, and again. He could spend the whole night right here, just to hear that sound over and over, the sound she makes only when he’s got her like this: open, relaxed, wanting.
“God, it’s so hot,” she mumbles into his mouth. “Like, medically concerning hot.”
He huffs a laugh, his nose brushing hers.
“ You’re medically concerning hot.”
She pulls back just enough to raise an eyebrow.
“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”
“Of course it is,” he says. “You’re the hottest person I’ve ever seen nearly liquefy.”
If he’s not mistaken, she blushes at his strange term of endearment. She shifts slightly in his arms, and he pulls her gently onto his lap, scooting her skirt up as he does. She settles on his thighs, carefully avoiding touching anything, um, interesting, for now. He kisses her again. It’s deep but unhurried and his hands slide beneath her shirt, fingers gliding over her slick lower back. She arches into him with a small, satisfied noise that makes his already very hard cock twitch.
“You are going to ruin me,” he whispers, resting his forehead against hers.
He really means it; he’s never going to be the same. Over the past five days, it’s become painfully, beautifully clear: there’s no going back. Never again will he be Spooky Mulder, lonely Mulder, reckless, daring but not caring Mulder. Not Anno Domini Scully.
She drags his shirt up his chest and begins to unbutton it, slowly, deliberately. Sliding her hands underneath, she glides her palms over his chest, lingering on the coarse hair beneath her fingers. She pauses at his biceps, giving them an appraising squeeze.
“Nice and firm, huh?” he murmurs against her mouth.
“I’d say,” she replies, smiling.
He grins, heart skipping in a ridiculous way. He knows she secretly admires his body: she’d rather die than admit it out loud, but he can tell from how her eyes sometimes get that unfocused look when she thinks he’s not watching. He lets her explore, lets her take her time. Her touch makes him feel something long forgotten, something buried under years of lonely nights on his couch, under the sad, perfunctory jerk-off in the bathroom. It’s want. He’s wanted by someone, and it tears him up a little.
He blinks a few times and lets his hand find her sticky thigh and slide up under her skirt. He traces slow circles on her skin, and she trembles a little, heat radiating off her. She hitches when his fingers skim the edge of her underwear. He catches her eye as he trails lightly over her center. God, she’s wet. God, she’s beautiful.
“You’re soaked.”
“The fact that it’s hot has already been established,” she says, voice breathless. “And you sort of make it worse.”
He pouts.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
She leans back just enough to look at him. Really look at him.
“It’s not,” she says softly. “It’s the best thing.”
His heart lurches. Yeah. It is the best thing, her being like this for him, wet and open and all… accessible. He’s so turned on he feels dizzy, Probably because all the blood in his poor body is currently in his groin and he appreciates the prioritization but come on, body, leave a little for the brain, huh?
He kisses her again, slow and sly and returns to her breasts, weighing them in his hands, stroking, teasing, pinching her nipples lightly. She lets out a low noise and he does it again. She likes that. Yeah, baby. Filing that away for later, baby.
He buries his face against her neck, licking a slow trail of sweat off her skin, tasting salt and heat, rainbows and lemons. He continues kissing his way up to her ear and slides a hand up her back. The bra unhooks easily under his fingers, and she huffs against his jaw.
“Wow. Practiced?”
“Motivated.”
“And your motif is… undressing aid for the sweaty?”
“Motifs are rarely unselfish, Scully.”
Her bra slips down her arms and lands somewhere behind the couch. She’s bare to the waist, flushed in the low light, hair damp at her temples. She leans in again, mouth brushing his, then his cheek, then his jaw as she shifts in his lap. And then she moves.
Just once, a slow drag of her hips against his, but it’s enough to make his eyes roll back in his head and his neck go boneless against the couch. He grips her waist, hard which, of course, only makes her do it again.
“Jeez, Scully –”
She kisses the corner of his mouth.
“You’re killing me.”
She smiles shyly but keeps going, dragging herself against him in slow strokes. His cock is straining against his pants; there’s a dark, wet spot at the tip. He’s always produced a generous amount of pre-cum and it used to embarrass him when he was younger, more self-conscious. But the first time it happened with Scully, when his pants showed undeniable evidence of just how much he wanted her, she looked at it like she was seeing heaven.
She keeps rocking her hips against his and her arms wrap around his neck, pulling him in, her mouth grazing his ear. She bites his lob a little.
“Oh God,” he groans, “this is beyond perfect.”
She shudders at that. She likes him talking in bed, he can tell, and she grinds a little harder.
It’s hot and slippery between them. His pants feels half-soaked and her underwear, too, she’s rubbing herself against him and his hands are all over her: gripping her ass, sliding up her spine, fisting in the back of her hair. His head drops to her shoulder as he lets out a low, desperate noise and she's whimpering, breath coming faster, eyes fluttering closed. It’s not going to take much more for either of them.
It’s been a while – probably somewhere around twenty-five years – since he creamed his pants during a make-out session and from experience, he’s learned it’s polite to give notice before shooting, so to speak.
He grabs her hips, holding her still on his lap.
“I just got a call from Tabor Junior High,” he says, “and Fox Mulder wants to let you know there’s only one way this is going to end.”
She looks at him innocently. God, she’s beautiful.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. He says that if you want to enjoy the party outside of the pants, so to speak, now’s the time to stop.”
She mumbles something into his neck.
“What?”
She clears her throat.
“I like a pants party every now and then,” she whispers, not wanting to meet his eye.
Ah. Interesting. ‘Scully’s got a ki-ink,’ says a little sing-song voice inside his head, but he’s got a feeling that if that particular voice gets out, he probably won’t get to enjoy the little kink in question. Instead, he smiles and wraps his arms around her, holding her close.
“Of course, you don’t have to, Mulder,” she says, interpreting his silence as a no.
He feels oddly moved. She has something specific she likes, and now she trusts him enough to share it. It’s not even a kink, really, hardly even a strange request. Maybe for a Catholic girl it is, though, he realizes, and whispers in her ear:
“I’m more than happy to host a pants party for you.”
She huffs a laugh. Yeah. It's a ridiculous thing to say during sex.
“But, um…” she hesitates.
He waits. Doesn’t want to pressure her.
“You can tell me,” he says gently. “You know you can tell me anything.”
“Don’t you want to, um… be inside me?”
“Oh, but Doctor Scully,” he says, tapping her forehead. “Now you’re underestimating my capabilities. One thing doesn’t have to exclude the other.”
She smiles a little.
“Okay,” she says. “We’ll see about that.”
And he watches her as she slowly starts rocking again. She’s flushed all the way down her chest, sweat sliding between her breasts and man, she rocks, slowly and deliberately. This could be classified as a war crime, yeah, definitely, and he’d surrender in a heartbeat.
She’s close. He feels it in the way her thighs begin to tremble, in how she clutches at his shoulders. And he’s right there with her.
“I’m gonna –” he groans into her shoulder, eyes squeezing shut. “Scully, I’m gonna –”
She whimpers and grinds down one more time and he loses it. He bites at her neck and lets out a growl as his balls tense, hips jerking up while he spills into his boxers. The heat of it soaks through; it’s a lot. His cock throbs so hard it hurts.
Scully follows seconds later, letting out a muffled cry against his shoulder as she rides her high out on top of him, grinding down into the slippery mess between them. Her whole body clenches when she collapses against his chest.
They sit still for a few long minutes, just listening to each other breathing. He moves his hand up and down her back.
“Dear Miss Scully,” he whispers in her ear, “we were honored to have you as our esteemed guest at this evening’s pants party. Your presence was greatly appreciated.”