Floating Compass by tree Email: nullipara@gmail.com Site: http://impudentstrumpet.org/x/ Rating: R Author's Notes: Written for Porn Battle VI: http://oxoniensis.liveujournal.com/363932.html. The prompt was The X-Files, Mulder/Scully, home. The title comes from the poem 'The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina' by Miller Williams. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to 'Theef'. Thanks: as usual, to lightlack, who provided speedy chat!beta even though the pr0n makes her laugh and I suck at finishing sentences. He calls her at the hospital, says, "Come home." So she does. Exhausted and tentative, her skin feels flimsy as paper, as easy to tear, scorch, mar. It's not enough to keep him out or her in. They exchange at a cellular level. She walks in the door and is enveloped by him, his smell, his warmth. It's not until he's taken her coat and wrapped himself around her that she realises how cold she is, inside and out. The tears rise up and spill without her permission, scalding against her cheeks. She scrubs at them, hating this woman she's become again, leaking saltwater everywhere she goes. Mulder releases her and stills her hands. "Bath," he says, tugging her gently. She wonders when he became a man of so few words. But she's too cold and too tired to argue. In the bathroom he runs the water, undresses her tenderly. His hands have always been the gentlest things she's ever known. The heat and the quiet of the bath leach some of the ache from her muscles. When Mulder returns with a warm towel, she is drowsy and limp. "Hungry?" he asks, drying her hair. "Not really." "Bed then," he murmurs, wrapping her in her robe. She is bemused by this care and attention, on another day might resent it. But tonight she's content to follow him as he leads her to the bedroom, puts her to bed. He strips off his shirt and jeans and curls up with her. They lie facing each other like two opposing question marks. "You know I can't let you go, Scully," he tells her. She nods, her hand reaching out to cup his jaw. "You know I don't want to go." And she sees in his eyes that he does know. This is what the last six years have given him, them. Once, he would have let her go for her own good. Now he knows better. He smiles a little and the muscles of his cheek move smoothly against her palm. He is so very beautiful to her still, so very precious. "We'll figure it out," his voice is a puff of air against her lips just before he kisses her. Oh, she's missed this. They haven't made love in weeks and the hunger rises inside her, burning through the exhaustion. Both hands on his face now to keep the hot slide of his mouth as close as possible. His hands tugging at her robe, peeling it away like the skin of a fruit to where she is ripe and juicy underneath. She's suddenly fierce and frenzied, like those first few weeks on the run. Trying to swallow him whole, to take as much of him into her as possible so she would never be without him again. She pushes him on his back and slithers over him as he moans. "You always keep me guessing," he mutters, trying to get a nipple into his mouth. She guesses he'd planned a slow seduction, something sweet and peaceful to soothe them both. But she's long past soothing, subsumed in the animal want of having him part of her, inside her, right now. She mouths him everywhere, wet inaccurate kisses, bites. She'd eat him up if she could, a delicious, wanton feast. They are not gentle. They both leave bruises, teeth marks. She shoves his cock inside her so sharply it hurts, and she's greedy for that too. "Jesus, Scully," he gasps. She is whimpering, clawing, so utterly unlike herself that later she'll be just a little embarrassed. But for now she's got to come, got to make him come, got to meld them together. His eyes lock with hers as his cock rushes in and out of her body, until she just can't stand it anymore and she is arching, flung up and over, down into the churning sea which smooths out gently as a ripple at the last. He is still rocking, heaving under her; then he's shuddering, moaning her name roughly as he comes. She smiles drunkenly against his skin as she rises and falls on his chest. He pushes back her damp hair and kisses her temple, her cheek. "I love you," she whispers into his neck, sweaty and joyful. They are one breathing body. "I love you." "Come home," he said. So she did.