TITLE: Some Books About Crooks
AUTHOR: Sabine
ARCHIVE: Anywhere
CATEGORY: S/D, some Mulder
RATING: NC-17
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, don't pay me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: For JHJ Armstrong and EPurSeMouve who laughed through the
pain, and for Sophia Jirafe who's on my side. Further beta by YV, inspected
by #1287-E, #4522 and #90210, aka M. Sebasky, Kelly Keil, SE Parsons and
Punk "View" Maneuverability.

SOME BOOKS ABOUT CROOKS

"It's a nice place," she said, though she had no idea if that was true and
really wasn't paying attention. But she kicked off her shoes and sat down in
a chair that turned out to be rocking. She yelped, and then couldn't believe
it. "Sorry," she said, for no good reason.

"You want some wine, something to drink or something, anything?" He picked
up her coat from the arm of the chair, shook the rain off it and hung it on
a metal hook by the door.

"I think that's a good idea," she said. "Whatever you've got."

He chuckled, low and gravelly. "I got everything," he said. "I'm a regular
Stop'n'Shop."

"Red wine, then," she said.

Twenty minutes ago, he'd paid for dinner. "You come back to my place and
we'll wait out the rain," he had said. "No reason to try and find a cab when
I live just right up around the corner."

She'd opened her mouth to turn him down, standing there on the sidewalk with
rain in her collar and mud on her heels and the words were just so easy:
"No, I'd better not;" "No, I've got to get home." She'd said them a thousand
times to several dozen men over a dozen years. It had been a mainstay since
way back when she was young enough and attractive enough to just expect the
next guy to come and stare at her, spellbound, until she turned him down
too.

Mulder. Even Mulder she'd turned down once, twice, ten times, enough times
that he wouldn't think she was just playing coy. Mulder was different, seven
years different, and they'd started breathing in time, but even so, she had
never said yes to one of his advances. And then a point came when she didn't
have to, when she found herself already in that place with him, as if it had
been happening all along. And still, when they'd go out to dinner, they
would split the check.

Tonight Doggett had stood there, his mouth pushed to the side in the
beginnings of a smirk and his hands out, big enough to wrap around her neck
and strangle her. "Yeah, okay," she'd said. "That's probably a good idea."

They both knew what was going to happen. They went into it like adults.

He returned with the wine and set her glass on a short bookshelf beside the
rocking chair. She looked at it but didn't pick it up.

He sat down on the coffee table facing her, met her eye, reached out and
wrapped a hand around her calf. She shuddered. The chair was too tall when
she leaned back into it, and her wet-stockinged feet dangled a good six
inches from the floor. She tipped forward, rocked into him as he slid his
hand down her ankle and started massaging her toes. Again she thought about
pulling back, tucking her feet up underneath her like a child, but his hands
were broad and warm and she reached over and took a sip of wine.

The light in the room was dim and ambient, coming from everywhere and
nowhere, from a little standing lamp over by the window. It lit the rain
against the glass with a noirish sort of glow, and as her eyes adjusted
Scully saw that it actually was a nice place, old and dark with crown
moulding and heavy doors and bookshelves on every wall, packed with
yellowing '70s paperbacks. It smelled like a library. She took another sip
of wine.

"You know, Agent Scully," Doggett began, but she interrupted him, edging to
the front of the rocking chair and placing one foot on the floor.

"Dana," she said.

"Dana," he said with a smile. "You know, Dana, you're a real attractive
woman. You ought to go out more, enjoy life. It's a shame to see you so
unhappy all the time. I mean, I know you miss your partner and all, but it's
just a shame. That's all I'm saying."

"Go out with you, you mean?" she said wickedly, her fingers curled around
the stem of her glass.

He shook his head. "Me, not me, anyone. Go out by yourself, even. You seen
any movies, lately?"

She laughed. "Not a one."

Mulder had been gone three months. Her pregnancy had started to show, just
barely, though no one mentioned it, and she secretly wondered if Skinner had
told them not to. It was possible no one had noticed, though she doubted it.
Three months was a long time. The last movie she'd been to was with Mulder
almost a year ago, and even at gunpoint she wouldn't be able to recall the
title.

"You should," Doggett said.

She nodded. "Okay," she said.

She reached out, wiped a raindrop off his temple before it slid into his
sideburn. He leaned into her hand just slightly, just enough, and she
allowed her thumb to streak down his cheek before pulling her hand back and
letting it fall in her lap. She picked up her wine glass again and peered
into it.

She hadn't drunk since she learned she was pregnant, but tonight she'd
decided a glass wouldn't hurt, and in the medical community the merits of
red wine were still being debated, anyway. She'd said no at dinner, even
after they'd finished discussing the case and had moved on to more personal
topics without mentioning Mulder once, but now it was different and she was
here with her shoes off. A glass of wine couldn't hurt. She hadn't had wine
in a long time.

A kiss couldn't hurt. She hadn't been kissed in a long time. Even longer.

"Are you, uh, tired, at all?" he asked, his thumbs moving circles on the
bottoms of her feet. She knew what he meant.

"Yeah," she said, finishing her wine. "A little."

"Okay," he said.

It had been so long. Her breasts were swollen, her skin hyper-sensitive, her
moods deep and disparate. She was lonely, hungry, desirous, antsy. So when
he got to his feet and extended a hand down to her, she took it, and
followed him to the bedroom.

This man had saved her life, more than once, she thought, feeling the
strength and the weight of him pressed against her as he threw her back
against the mattress. She looked up into his heavy-lidded eyes, bluer than
hers, the soft pink arc of his lower lip coming toward her. Her stockings
were on the floor beside the bed, her skirt unclasped and hanging on her
hipbones. She kissed him.

His strength was familiar and unsurprising, heavier than Mulder, rougher,
stronger, too. His hands scratched up under her blouse, getting tangled and
awkward and his weight shifted so he wouldn't crush her belly. She thought
about the baby but his fingers were delicate across her skin there, delicate
up across her ribs and inside her bra and then rough again as they danced
across her nipples which were more sensitive than she could remember them
ever being. She inhaled through her nose and kissed him hard.

"You're incredible," he said to her mouth, and she knew he meant it. Not in
the way Mulder had, but in the truest sense of the word: unbelief, pure,
undistilled awe.

"So are you," she said, and meant it. He had come to her when she needed
someone, no matter how much she didn't want to admit it. He wasn't Mulder.
He never tried to be. And for that she didn't have to kill him, and didn't
want to.

He straddled her, knees on either side of her midsection as he unbuttoned
his dress shirt and let it strip away. His chest was streaked with tight
curls, darker than she'd expected, and she raked her fingers up across it,
enjoying the way it caught on the webs between them. His shoulders curved
down in perfect spheres, dipping evenly into tight, smooth biceps that
flexed as he peeled her shirt away, her bra, brushed her hair out of her
face.

He was a dangerously attractive man, this savior of hers, and she wanted
this. And, she knew, he wanted her.

"Here," she said, pulling herself lower and fumbling with the belt on his
dress pants. "Here."

She pushed against his thigh and he slid off her, rolling onto his side. She
felt for his erection, rubbed the heel of her hand up against the underside
and enjoyed the tug of the taut skin against the solid shaft underneath. She
stroked him, slowly, raising herself up on one shoulder so she could look
down at him. He shuddered and gripped the headboard and her thumb was wet
with a drop of fluid that rolled down her palm. She licked it off with the
tip of her tongue.

"You all right?" he asked on an exhale, and she chuckled. Of course he'd
asked. Trusted her up until now and hadn't even said "Are you sure?" but
this came as a reflex to him, just as she knew it would.

"Yes," she said, flicking out her tongue and catching a bit of foreskin. He
wasn't circumcised. "Yes, I'm all right."

This was new, totally new and yet totally familiar, this man who was her
partner stretched out and shivering under her touch. She took him into her
mouth, rolling the tip of his penis around on her tongue before leaning in,
pulling back, letting her bottom teeth scrape just a little bit against his
veins and feeling his back arch off the bed and into her. Mulder was
circumcised, and he'd told her that before she'd ever had the chance to
learn it for herself, and in some way she begrudged him the element of
surprise.

It was moments like that she was so bereft of, the tracing and learning and
exploring of a new body, moments like that she was so lonely for. Ten years
it had been, maybe more, since a totally new lover had thrilled her with
something new and unexpected. She wanted some unfamiliar man to claw at her,
to scratch and pant and bite and hold her and remind her she was human. Just
a man, a body, anyone whose childhood home was a mystery to her, anyone
whose siblings she'd never met and might not exist.

And he'd appeared, John Doggett, with an excess of masculine energy and
enough chivalry to throw his coat over a puddle for her, and he'd taken her
home. Her body was wild, and on its own it had followed him here, but now,
it brought Scully to meet him.

Her thighs tensed and a shock of electricity traveled through her gut, made
her fingertips tingle and her toes curl. She felt his hands on her
shoulders, her ribs as he drew her toward him, pulled her across his chest
and she kicked off her skirt and reached down to guide him inside her.

"I got you," he said, like he was taking a bullet. "Don't worry," he said,
brushing her hands away from his chest and cupping her breasts with two
palms. "I got you."

Please, she thought. Get me.

She drew her weight down into him and it hurt, her thigh muscles clenched
and it hurt. She slid forward and he pushed her back. He was smaller than
Mulder, harder, tighter, stronger, pushing against her and drawing back like
a pugilist at a punching bag. She closed her eyes.

It was too slow, too slow and she gripped at him but he shoved her hands
away again and she felt for the pillow and clawed at it, begging for him to
give her more, harder, faster. He wanted to linger, she knew, he wanted to
enjoy every minute of her because she knew he knew this chance wouldn't come
again, that she was allowing him this because she needed it, now, just this
once, and he wanted every second of it to be his.

"It's okay," she said, because it was all she could think of. "Yes," she
said. "Yes, please."

She ground into him and it hurt and she clutched at the pillow and it hurt
but it was wonderful pain, life-pain, body-pain. For the first time she
wondered if she should have brought a condom, or asked for one. But he drove
up into her and clapped his lips over a breast and and it hurt, and she
loved it, and she trusted him. He was taking care of her and she trusted
him.

"Yes," she said, more loudly. "Uh huh."

"Uh huh," he said, and he was faster, now, and she whipped her head from
side to side and reached for the headboard but it was too far away and her
toes carved into his calves as he slid his right hand down her back and his
left hand pressed into her stomach, gently, as he flicked against her
clitoris with his thumb but he was losing his rhythm now, she was losing her
rhythm, she was losing her mind...

"Please," she said, "uh huh," she said and then she couldn't speak anymore
and she swallowed hard and he bit down on a nipple too hard and it hurt and
she swallowed again and it hurt and she was flooded, she felt like she was
bleeding, like she was drowning in blood and he lifted her up like she
didn't weigh anything and set her down on the pillow beside him and she
buried her face and she had tears in her eyes and he exhaled, once more,
before collapsing beside her.

The window was open, and the cool, peaty smell of rain-thick air called up
gooseflesh on her arms. She shimmied up a bit and slipped under the covers
and curled herself into a fetal ball.

"You good?" he asked, quietly, fitting up beside her and resting his hand on
her shoulder. "You cold?"

"I'm okay," she said. "I'm good." She didn't say "I'm fine," because that
meant something else, something she had been a long time ago but wasn't
anymore. "You?"

"Yeah," he said, and she could hear the smile as he crawled under the
blanket behind her. "Yeah, I'm good."

For the first time, she noticed that this room was bricked in with
bookshelves as well, floor-to-ceiling high and stacked double-deep. "You
have a lot of books," she said.

"Yeah," he said, looking around in the faint light like he'd never seen the
room before. "They're just old pulpy cop novels. I'm kind of a collector.
You know, Rex Stout, guys like that. Just some books about crooks."

"I wouldn't have thought of you as the type," she said, not meaning to be
insulting. She could feel him shrug.

"I'm full of surprises," he said.

"Yeah," she said, reaching behind her back, taking his arm, and bringing it
up to rest against her ribs. "You are," she said.


THE END

feedback goes to my head: sabine101@juno.com