Deep Breath
by HTH


Sex has never been my favorite thing in the world, actually. Not that I 
dislike it. The sex part is actually fairly appealing. It's the end I prefer 
to avoid, when you lie in bed and wonder if he was thinking about any of the 
same things you were, if it felt even similar for him. Better, worse, what? 
You never really know, do you? And to be that close to someone, and to feel so 
inalterably removed, so totally separate.... I'd just rather not, most of the 
time.

Maybe I'm a romantic. Maybe I believe in Prince Charming -- the union of 
bodies and the communion of souls.

Maybe I'm an idiot. I think it would be different with Mulder.

It's the hands that do it, every time. He touches me like no one ever has, as 
if his hands were quiet birds, coming home to roost. Every touch is the last 
word in intimacy, and yet it never feels invasive. It's like a secret code 
language, as if Mulder were the one man in the world who really *can* speak 
with his body.

If anyone could.... I'm not a physical person. The body is just a machine to 
me -- fix, replace, maintain, do without. Life takes place in the surreal 
mazes of our histories, our fears, our aspirations. Mysteries for the 
psychologists, or the priests. Mulder is the opposite. To him, it's the mind 
that is the machine, every gear turning other gears, producing speech and 
motion, and he is the engineer, the profiler, master of action and reaction. 
Mystery, transcendence, that's in the body for Mulder. I've heard of the 
runner's high; Mulder is the only person I ever knew who lived it.

That could be why I've always allowed him to touch me so familiarly. To hell 
with it -- why I've always *wanted* him to. It is the way he speaks to me. I 
don't know what else to call it. From the first night, when he examined my 
mosquito bites with patient and respectful hands, I knew that this man was 
present in his body, in the places our bodies met, like no one else in the 
world. It's the only way to get at Mulder, to know him.

And there's the common, carnal thrill, too. When he touches me with that 
hunger in his eyes and his fingers, it burns straight through, and I have to 
take a deep breath to steady myself, no matter where I am.

He can be rough, too, pushed by his hunger. Not rough, but --possessive. His 
hands say, *Dana, don't push me away. Listen....* Ah, Mulder. I can hear it. 
But it's the afterglow I really hate.

I've learned, recently, not to fight the fantasies. Dying in denial isn't 
helpful for anyone. So I let them come now, cutting and pasting like a 
pagemaker program. His hands, not here but *there.* His long, reclining body, 
not in that bed but in *this* one. I know him well. I can be very realistic.

He begins explosively, because that first rush of enthusiasm is always the 
most overwhelming for Mulder. He crushes me, kissing me, saying, *Dana, what 
could ever come between us?* until I am quietly unbraided, falling lightly and 
willingly against him, subsumed in the chakra heat from his open mouth and 
from between his legs. (Subsumed... Well, that's the fear, isn't it, Dana 
Scully? That you might fall into him and never return.)

Mulder kisses my face, his hands all over my back, trying to speak, dazed but 
certain that at times like this a person ought to say something. It's my job, 
of course, to keep him on task, and so I reach up to touch his cheek, and kiss 
his lips with as much soft friction as I can manage. "Not with your voice, 
Mulder," I tell him. "Just touch me." That way, he knows that I understand.
He is the first large man since my father that I do not feel overshadowed by, 
as though I had to keep an eye out for any sign that he would try to cow me 
with his size. I love his size, the way his fingers can brush the back of my 
neck while my cheek rests in his palm. The way he shields all vision from me 
when he stands close by. I feel snugly tucked away from the world. Mulder can 
hold me, body and soul, and I heard his meaning a hundred times in his touch 
before he ever found the courage to say it aloud: *It feels so good to put my 
arms around you.* That was rare and lovely honesty from Mulder. It was worth 
contempt of Congress. (How easily you trade away your life, piece by piece, 
for kind words from this man. Admit it, Dana. You no longer own yourself. But 
dammit, I do! I must.)

His hand presses between our bodies, between my breasts, while he strokes my 
hair and fills my mouth with his slow-dancing tongue. That hot, organic taste, 
the taste of the body, which so often seems to carry with it a preface to the 
scent of decay, this time does not remind me of the operating theater, the 
medical examiner's office, at all. It only reminds me of Mulder, and I 
suddenly need to taste him all over. To put my signature on him. (You can't 
afford to lose, Dana. He must come away from this yours, or he will make you 
his. You are stronger than Mulder, but he is so vast.)

But I am doomed to lose. The passion shifts, and he is tender, not desperate, 
saying, *Dana, I adore you.* His lips are recreating reality all over my 
forehead, my eyelids, my cheek, and it is a cool, Monet watercolor kind of 
reality. Mulder kisses like water lilies. His hands push away my clothes, 
holding my limbs as I tense up slightly. He's saying, *I never wanted you to 
hide from me, and you never have,* and I'm agreeing, opening my stance, making 
sounds in my throat. He lies back on the bed, drawing me down on top of him.
Because it's Mulder, he sprawls. No self-consciousness at all, just a simple, 
very masculine, assumption that he deserves every inch of space that he can 
manage to occupy at once. I know that I have lost, because my fingers are 
making marks on his chest, lost in the dark hair, and my legs are shaking 
badly, and I'm forcing his mouth open with my tongue now, while he wraps his 
legs loosely around me and caresses the back of my neck and up to the base of 
my skull. Now my space is his, I'm breathing his air, and *Dana* must be my 
name, because he just groaned it, and he'd never dare forget my name, even 
though I have. *Mulder* is the only word I know now. For all I know, *Mulder* 
is the only word I've really spoken at all for four years now.

He gets inside me, finally, and as far as I'm concerned, *Mulder* isn't even a 
name now. It's a definition. It's the point where science and God meet, or 
maybe where they diverge, and didn't we always need a word for that anyway? 
Mulder fucks like a Georgia O'Keefe, in clean, stark, graceful sweeps.

It's the afterglow I hate. This time there would be no loneliness, no sense of 
post-coital isolation. This time I know all his thoughts, and the DNA coding 
of his whole life is burned into my body. I have become his gospel, and my one 
word now is *Yes.*

Even in my fantasies, you see, it ends in utter disaster. The world only needs 
one Mulder. And he needs a Scully. I would fail us both, completely, if I 
became Mulder's *yes.*

It feels good to have his arms around me. It feels complete, as though the 
circuit has closed and we suddenly share everything. And I want to share 
everything. But making love to Mulder is like sharing your trailer park with a 
tornado. I know him. I know how he is.

So I have the fantasy now, but then I take a deep breath, and clear my head, 
and remember that we have completion between us, where we both stand in 
balance, and I give him my love, and I choose to say *yes* to him sometimes, 
and *no* many others, and usually *Mulder, what are you *talking* about?* We 
are where we belong.

(You are, anyway. A warm and well-lit place, rich with the sensual mysteries 
of friendship and synergy. For him, it's a barren and clinical world; he 
reaches out for transcendence, for the grail of your body, and you condemn him 
to the machine. Your soul is his science, Dana. Only your touch transforms.)

Well, to hell with him. I'm giving my *life* for Mulder's desires. He can have 
my work or my body, but both is too much, too deep.

If he could just take my love for what it is. Mulder, you always did spoil 
things, wanting them to be more than they really were. For God's sake, Mulder, 
find something good and let it be, just once, *enough* for you.


The closest we ever came to fucking was that time in Hong Kong, and don't let 
him tell you otherwise. That grip on my wrists, the way he forced my arms 
back. I could feel his thighs, the muscles trembling against mine. Even the 
gun -- for shit, *especially* the gun, made it an erotic high like I've rarely 
had. He's so intense, and when he's focused on you, it's like you can die or 
you can come, but not much else. And he wanted it. Don't let him tell you 
differently.

I have a hundred and fifty fantasies about Mulder, and none of them are cute 
little Hollywood pieces; no goddamn way Tom Hanks is playing me in the 
big-screen version. Look, there are bars where you can get nice queers in 
suits who renew their subscriptions to *Genre* regularly and have satellite 
dishes and hang-ups, but you don't waste a man like Mulder on that kind of 
house-beautiful crap.

We're talking about a man who can grind you into a wall in a Hong Kong airport 
and have you twelve seconds from screaming *fuck me fuck me fuck me* in every 
language you know, simultaneously, if bonus points are involved. A man who 
goes on the prowl, when life gets to be too much for him, wearing black jeans 
and a turtleneck and a leather jacket, holding that handgun like it was a sex 
toy. Hey, if he says it is, it is.

That's one of my fantasies. His gun, cocked and ice-cold, raising goosebumps 
all over my skin as Mulder fucks me. Maybe him in a chair, and me straddling 
his lap, and the gun all over my back, up the back of my neck, right under my 
ear as the safety goes off. Click. And if he wants me dead, I'm dead. But he 
doesn't. He pulls the gun around, and I'm shaking as he puts it under my chin, 
tilting my head back, tugging at my hair to make me press down on him, take 
him deeper. Then it's on my lips, and I'm kissing the barrel of his gun, just 
barely, licking it tentatively. And he's growling, and tensed up to come, and 
death has never been this close. I've never wanted to live this much.

For this kind of fantasy, you can't just grab the Washington Blade personals. 
You need a man who makes your spine go to goddamned Ramen noodles, whose lips 
alone are a wet dream, who smacks you like he needs it to live. Oh, yeah, 
Mulder. You want me to bruise for you? Want to look at me and know you had me, 
any way you had the guts to take me? Sure thing. I've been bruised for many a 
less noble cause.

Let's get one thing straight, all you Junior Freuds. I am not suffering from 
some kind of penny-ante leatherboy masochism, where I want Mulder to hurt me 
because I recommended his partner's execution and I think I deserve it, or 
because I did some other damn thing and I want to be punished. For some of us, 
punishment lost all its charm *real early* in life. Put down the Cosmo Do You 
Have What It Takes To Be A Profiler? survey.

If I like it rough, it's just that you get inured to life so damn fast these 
days. After a couple of years on the run, you don't always notice things 
anymore -- things like the cold, or you bust your lip in a bar fight, or you 
get blown in an alley. Mundane things. It takes an extra shot of anything to 
get through the shields, or at least to wake you up a little.

There's one. I'd like to have him in an alley, some really filthy alley 
somewhere that no one speaks English, Buenos Aires or Athens or, hell, Hong 
Kong. I'd get his shirt up enough that his back would scrape raw against the 
bricks, and go down on him, right down on my knees. He's such a prince of a 
guy, he'd probably feel like a bastard for letting anyone, even me, do him 
like that, like a whore, and get nothing out of the deal. He'd worry about 
that one for days; why would I spontaneously offer to bring him to a screaming 
orgasm unless I had an ulterior motive? Paranoid fuck would go straight back 
to DC and offer up his sweet ass to the boys in Toxicology, demanding to know 
if I'd coated his dick in some kind of weird extraterrestrial poison.

It's the little things you gotta love about Mulder.

The blow job in the car is kind of a classic, but Mulder drives like a 
brain-damaged Rhesus monkey at the best of times. I'm sorry, by dangerous sex, 
I don't mean the kind where spears of glass bisect your skull. I got a broken 
beer bottle in the knee once, and that's as far as it goes. Of course, it's 
just a fantasy, but what is the point of imagining Mulder if he's not going to 
be, you know, *Mulder*?

Or how about a cavalry scene -- Cancerman's thugs finally run me down, and 
they're going to beat me into a coma before they kill me and go for a beer. 
Mulder shows up out of nowhere, plugs one of them, and they scatter. There I 
am, and this time it's some American alley, Miami, maybe, and I'm beat to 
shit, bleeding, my clothes all torn apart, without even the keys to my car. 
Mulder hauls me up, eyes like mountains, and before I can get halfway through 
thanking him, he just slams me into the hood of his car, bent over, and holds 
my head down with hard fingers in my hair, his thumb stroking the base of my 
skull in a kinky parody of tenderness, while he unfastens his belt with the 
other hand, and he does me hard and brutally, hissing something in my ear the 
whole time -- "How does it feel not to be the one doing the fucking, Krycek?" 
Something like that. It doesn't take long, and it hurts, but I'm still hard, 
because it smells like him and sounds like him and I love him so goddamn much, 
and I'm crying, really crying, like he just broke my heart.

But I know my G-man, and he's just a big pussycat. As soon as he's gotten off, 
he's all shocked with himself, and his arms are around my waist, and he's 
apologizing, over and over, and the back of my neck is wet now. "Don't cry," I 
order him, beginning to get pissed off now.

"Why not? You are." This guy has a weird-ass fixation with *fair.* It's like a 
damn fetish with him.

"Fuck off, Mulder. You don't even know why."

"So tell me." So gentle, so reasonable.

But I don't. I just shake my head. Mulder gets down on his knees and soaks the 
inside of my thighs with wet, soothing kisses that take my mind off the pain 
in my ass. I can feel his soft hair brushing between my legs, and I cry enough 
for twenty-seven goddamn years. His hand strokes the front of my thigh, then 
begins to pump my cock, not even saying a word about why it's hard when he 
just reamed me out like Joey the Mook from cell block nine. He's whispering 
against my ass; his lips are like feathers, and his voice is low and husky. 
"Why are you crying, Alex?"

And I can't help it, words rise in me, pouring into my mouth like the blood 
that's emptying into my cock. "Because I love you so much. Because I'd let you 
do it all over again, if it meant you'd stay a little while. Mulder...."

He brings me off while he kisses my ass cheeks all over, so tenderly. My cum 
is splattered all over the side of his car, and I've collapsed there, like I 
won't ever move again.

That's the kind of kinky shit I make up, lying alone in Dark Hotel Room 
#5,812, gun right beside my hand, wearing my jeans and a jacket with plenty of 
pockets, because there's always the chance you'll have to jump ship right 
fucking now, and no one wants to do that naked with no ID or cash or anything. 
On a good night, it's that kind of shit.

On a bad night, I don't imagine anything but his body covering mine, right 
there, in the dark. His arms go around me, under the jacket, and he's kissing 
my throat, right under the jaw, and when he sucks my earlobe between his teeth 
I'm gone, gone, gone, I can't even get a deep breath. It's him, and he's so 
relentlessly gentle, and all I can do is hang on and let him dry-hump me, slow 
like August afternoons, while his fingers play with my nipple, and I'm taking 
in the smell of his shampoo (Ivory -- I remember from the gym showers) and 
holding him like aliens are going to lock him in a tractor beam and pull him 
away any second. And even in real life I'm making pleading noises, and saying 

"Mulder, love you," in a chokey voice, because I can't fucking breathe.

Yeah, it's a real fucking comfort to have the ol' fantasy life when you're on 
the road.

I should've kissed him in Hong Kong. Who knows if there will ever be another 
time; Tunguska didn't turn out to be a real mood-setter.

Shoulda, shoulda, shoulda, Alex. Fucking tell me about it.


I guess I don't fantasize about him much. Well, I do and I don't. Every time I 
lay eyes on him, I notice. What does he think I am, that I'm not excited by 
those casual, feline stretches, or his slow, premeditated smiles, or the view 
from behind him? (Straight, Skinner. Or was that a rhetorical question?) I 
feel myself getting warm and nervous, and I have a choice between glaring at 
him more sternly than ever or running my fingers through his hair. Like a rat 
in a maze, I pick the same door every time: the one marked Don't Quit Your Day 
Job, Walt. The one with the food behind it, as it were.

But those aren't so much fantasies as they are passing moments, when I let 
myself be absorbed into the aura of sweltering sensuality he projects, let it 
play across my skin, under my clothes, raising my nipples and the hair on my 
arms and sometimes even my cock, if the day has been particularly stressful. 
If I'm particularly in need of Mulder's unique ability to break up the 
uninspired monotony of the 9 to 5 grind.

That's at the office. At home, I try not to think of him. I watch a lot of 
CNN, and I recently bought a Soloflex machine. I have hobbies: I build 3-D 
puzzles of places like Notre Dame and Buckingham Palace, and the occasional 
model airplane, too. I make my own pasta; I read Stephen King (though as a 
rule of thumb I prefer his Bachman work); I drink Scotch. What I don't do is 
fantasize about my agents.

Sounded pretty good, didn't it? Again, the truth is, I do and I don't. I 
*think* about him all the time. I stand out on my balcony and imagine him 
leaning over the railing (he looks distracting as hell in a dark suit, but oh 
*God,* his ass in a pair of tight jeans....) and rattling on about some cable 
special about how the Pharoahs probably had electrical generators, while the 
wind plays with his hair and gives him a flushed and exhilarated look. Or I 
sit in front of the tv with a plate of lasagna, imagining that he's sitting 
cross-legged on the floor in front of me, on his third serving, calling the 
*20/20* anchors government lapdogs while I run my foot up and down his bare 
back.

If I'm feeling especially masochistic, I fantasize about an alternate reality, 
where I can take him out for a night on the town, dinner and a show at the 
Kennedy Center, and maybe to a little piano bar late at night, where all the 
waitresses flirt with him until he moves his chair closer to me and puts his 
head on my shoulder. I put my arm around him; he picks up my hand to check my 
watch; we drink out of the same wineglass. I touch a light finger to the 
outside edge of his ear and say, "When did I lose my heart to you?" He smiles 
in satisfaction and says something flippant like, "I palmed it the other night 
while I was sucking your nipple," or, with perfect innocence, "I find the 
weirdest things sometimes." Yeah, Mulder would say something like that, 
something to make me laugh. And outside the office, I would let go and laugh. 
Show him how good he can make me feel.

Right, Skinner. You might as well waste your time dreaming about a commitment 
ceremony at the National Cathedral, or a tryst on the Orient Express, complete 
with a fedora and Mulder in his trench (trench coats were *made* for shoulders 
like his; the drape is geometrically perfect). Agent Mulder, I'll be 
accompanying you personally on your search for the Maltese Falcon.... I have 
to grin at the image of Agent Scully in a little black cocktail dress, with 
Derringer pistol concealed in her garter. All sheerest fantasy.

The point is that I don't usually engage in torrid skin-flick imagery. Sure, 
he's the sexiest man I know, and I get a wicked, shivering thrill every time I 
see him. But even in my wildest dreams, I don't really know how to approach 
him. What would he want, if he wanted me at all? Tenderness, to be reassured 
that *he,* at least, Is Not Alone? The kind of blitzkrieg passion that leaves 
no room for doubt or guilt or thought, release from the perpetual demands of 
his too-keen mind? Slow lovemaking, the kind that lasts all weekend and allows 
you to pretend there is no outside world, no problem in your life more 
pressing than the unhurried pace of your lover's hand over your skin? A chance 
to let his native playfulness run wild, to be awkward and needy and teasing 
and to overflow with words? Yes, yes, yes. I could do anything he wanted, 
anything he asked of me. Jesus H. Christ. We could make love on Mars, if it 
would make him happy. All I want is Mulder; the rest is slippery in my mind.
I do have a kind of...secret fantasy. It came out of nowhere, really, not my 
usual style at all. Here's how it goes.

One afternoon, maybe on a holiday weekend, when Agent Scully has left early to 
drive to a family event, I call him into my office. I'm standing up to greet 
him, and he walks directly up to me, suspecting nothing. "You wanted to see 
me, sir?"

"Yes," I say shortly. I move quickly, and because I have this planned and he 
is completely off his guard, he's flat on his back in a hot second, with one 
wrist in the handcuffs. His mouth is open in shock as I thread the cuffs 
behind the leg of my desk and snap them onto the other wrist. Now I am over 
him on all fours, watching the shock on his face dissipate into impatience, 
confusion, uncertainty, amazement. He wears them all well.

Mulder jerks his arms, testing the chain and cuffs to assure himself that this 
is all real. "Skinner, what the hell is this?" he demands. "Take these off of 
me." I shake my head, once. For the first time, he looks worried, and his tall 
frame tightens up, ready to struggle against whatever comes next. "What's 
going on here?"

"What's the problem, Agent Mulder?"

He can't help laughing, but it's in disbelief, not amusement. "I've been taken 
prisoner in the damn Hoover building. You need more?"

"You're so overdramatic. If I were trying to kidnap you, don't you think I 
would have knocked you cold, or at least gagged you? Did you lock the door as 
you came in?" He shakes his head. "Then I'm the one in a world of trouble if 
you start calling for help, aren't I?"

As he tries to puzzle through the situation, I begin to undo his tie. "That's 
my tie." The unfamiliarity factor is blunting his wit.

"You don't need it."

"I *like* it."

"I was afraid of that. Relax, Agent Mulder. You'll get it back." He lies very 
still as I unbutton his shirt and let it hang open along with his jacket. I 
begin to kiss his collarbone, and he cries out, very softly. "Hush," I say 
simply.

He is shaking his head. "This is *not* happening. Skinner, are you crazy?"

Raising my head, I meet his eyes. "Are you afraid?"

Mulder opens his mouth, and realizes that for once he doesn't have an instant 
comeback. I watch his eyes soften, turning inward, considering the question, 
and I give him time, brushing that shock of hair out of his eyes. "Not of 
you," he finally admits, looking as though this were an idea he'd never 
considered before.

"Ever been with a man before, Agent Mulder?"

And now he smiles. Sublime. "Not since my wild college days."

I'm unfastening his pants, innocently saying, "Didn't I hear something on the 
BBC several years back about a rash of broken hearts in the United Kingdom?"
He laughs, and it catches in his throat. He is laboring to breathe now as my 
fingers creep into the waistband of his shorts. Each deep breath expands his 
narrow, muscular chest. I'm transfixed by the sight. "Breaking hearts isn't 
really my game."

"Oh, you don't think so?" I can't help growling it a little as I pull shorts 
and pants together down his hips, freeing his erection to spring up against 
his belly.

His eyes are very wide, very dark. He shakes his head slightly. "Is this some 
kind of trap?"

"Agent Mulder, are you accusing me of blackmail?"

"No -- I just...." He licks his lips as I kiss just above his navel. "I didn't 
plan this," he falters.

Lightly, like a tendril of air, I brush up the underside of his shaft, and he 
jerks his head to the side, eyes closed. "Hush. Hush. I know. That's why I'm 
doing it. You would never...factor this into your schedule." It comes out wry, 
but not bitter, not really. "You have the time. Just lie back."

He is not used to indulgence, or to surrender. For a while he will relax, as 
my fingers stroke his chest and my lips kiss up his erection, then back down. 
Then he shies suddenly, trying to pull away, saying, "Walter, I can't. It's 
too much...."

I hold him to the floor, claiming him with my hands, nestling my own erection 
into his hipbone. "Shut up, Agent Mulder."

"It's not safe." I know he doesn't mean physically. He laughs crazily. "Does 
this mean I'm employee of the month?" I chuckle, and let my mouth sink down 
over him. "Fuck!" he cries out, startled by the pleasure. "Stop...."

My hand slips comfortingly up his side, gentling him. I suck harder, then 
pause to look up at him. His head is arched back, his hands flexing 
helplessly. "Stop?" I ask.

"Aw, shit." Mulder sighs, and draws a shuddering breath. "Just do it."

That's where the fantasy generally trails off, before his orgasm. Chickenshit 
of me, I know. But as delightful as it is, this isn't a line of thought that 
makes me...comfortable. I can't afford to be the rat with the low score. Have 
to remember to keep picking the door with the food, and leave the other door 
strictly alone. Fantasies are tricky, when focus is the key word.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I just can't. It's too much.... Not safe.
Goddamit, Skinner. *Stop....*