Foxfire 
by Aloysia_Virgata 

Email: aloysiavirgata@yahoo.com
Rating: R

Season 11

Summary: For Perplexistan, who thought our heroes should 
be afforded an opportunity to acknowledge their own 
remarkable aging.

  
He wakes her just past eleven thirty, his fingers in her 
hair and her name in her ear. Her lips are parted in her 
sleep, but he does not kiss them. Her freckles look like 
gold dust.


"What's wrong? What's the matter?" Scully sits up, eyes 
wide and concerned. Her legs are nearly bare in summer 
pajamas. She prefers to keep the air conditioner off.

He smoothes her hair, shifting his weight on the creaky 
floorboards. "Nothing. Nothing's wrong. Just get up. It's a 
surprise."

Her eyes narrow now, suspicious. She bunches the light 
blanket over herself. "Mulder. You smell of fire."

"Do I? That's so weird. Get up, Scully." He holds his hand 
out to her, wiggles his fingers. They make shadows on the 
wall.

Scully rubs her face, yawning. "What time is it?"

"Late-ish." Mulder takes her hands in his then, tugs her 
up. She scarcely grazes his chin in her bare feet. He 
notices that her toenails are painted.

Scully grumbles her displeasure. "Mulder, if this about 
those raccoons behind the shed again, I'm going to be 
really irritated."

Mulder tightens the drawstring of his yellow pajamas pants, 
scratches his stomach. A breeze comes in through the window 
screen, stirring their hair. "It's not raccoons."

"Do I need to get dressed?"

"Thankfully not." He tugs at the little ribbon on her 
camisole.

Scully nudges her feet into a pair of slippers. Her 
footsteps slap softly after his as they head downstairs and 
out the back door. The screen door bangs shut behind her.

Outside, the world is still. The moon, nearly full, casts a 
clear silver light over everything. The air is warm and 
sultry, sweet with white flowers. Cicadas chirps from the 
trees, bullfrogs and spring peepers down by the water.

Scully wraps her arms around him from behind, peering 
around his shoulder. "What is it, Mulder?"

He takes a moment to enjoy the press of her skin against 
his, her hands clasped at his waist. Her silk pajamas are 
cool against his bare back.

"Mulder?"

"Come on," he says, and pulls her around beside him.

They walk through the lush grass of the back acreage, 
crushing pennyroyal and bee balm in their wake. Scully 
sniffs appreciatively, then frowns. "I smell fire again," 
she says.

Mulder shrugs. They pass the shed, weathered and gray with 
a rooster vane on the peaked red roof. A rainbarrel squats 
low and shadowed beside it.

"Raccoons," Scully says, pointing at two pairs of glowing 
eyes under the wheelbarrow. "Your trash-destroying pals."

"Don't hate the player; hate the game."

She smiles, shaking her head.

Down the dirt path behind the fir trees, onto a carpet of 
fallen needles. They are soft beneath his bare feet. Scully 
snaps a twig, and the frogs go silent. The red glow of the 
fire can be seen now, just around the bend, and Scully 
glances up at him, questioning.

"Midsummer night," he tells her. "Enchantment surrounds us, 
Scully. Will o' the wisps and fairies are about. Puckish 
elementals."

"Hmmm," she replies, stepping over a log.

They follow the curve to the pond, a low-lying depression 
fed by a spring in the hillside. Scully gasps when she sees 
the fire; it must be six feet tall.

"Midsummer night," he repeats. "Bonfires are customary."

 She's aglow beside it, her fair skin tawny, her hair 
scarcely distinguishable from the flame. She watches sparks 
kick out, spiraling in the updraft. They tumble down again 
as ashes, as pale gray snow. Her face is beatific.

He'd spent the better part of two hours moving rocks and 
hauling wood, earning at least four Indian Guide badges in 
the process. The fire is enclosed in a circle of large 
stones, well away from any tinder. Its twin ripples on the 
surface of the pond.

"Mulder," Scully breathes at last. Her eyes are very 
bright.

"They used to think the bonfires at midsummer would keep 
dragons from poisoning wells and springs," he says. "And as 
we have both..."

"It's beautiful," she says. "This is really..it's 
incredible."

He crosses his arms, beaming. "I have marshmallows."

Her laugh is a bell in the night. "Of course, of course you 
do. Where?"

"In the ferns. But how about a swim first, Scully?" He 
rocks back on his heels in the damp earth.

She looks at him for a long beat. "Okay," she agrees.

Mulder unfastens his pants, lets them fall around his feet. 
The fire feels good on his skin. He is acutely aware of his 
own nudity beneath her steady gaze, clear and unwavering as 
the moon.

"You checking me out, doc?" he asks.

"You look good," Scully says, her head cocked. "You've 
always looked good, Mulder, but pushing sixty makes it 
particularly impressive."

He glances down at himself, sees his ridged abdominal 
muscles, his well-developed quads. Exercise has always been 
his retreat, and the results are admittedly pleasing. "I 
wouldn't kick me out of bed, I guess."

She laughs again. "I certainly don't plan to."

"Your turn. Strip down, m'lady."

She whisks the camisole over her head, tugs her shorts to 
the ground. They fall in twin blue puddles atop her 
discarded slippers. Her foxy hair is tumbled over her 
shoulders like a mantle.

Mulder stares back at her. She is slim and lean and fierce, 
primal in this nexus of the four elements. She is gold and 
rose and crimson. The only soft parts of her body are her 
breasts, still firm and high. She tosses her hair.  
Boudicea, he thinks.  Artemis. 

"Well?" Scully asks, her chin tipped up.

"You look like Simonetta Vespucci," he tells her, admiring 
the dip of her belly by firelight, the tuft of darker hair 
between her thighs.

"Oh?" she says. "Am I your muse, Mulder?"

He blinks, surprised. "Is that really a question?"

Scully steps closer, an arm's length between them. She is 
backlit by the licking flames, tight-bodied and elegant. He 
thinks that, a thousand years ago, men would have fallen in 
fealty to her.

"Not for a long time," she answers.

"Good," he says. "Scully, I assure you once more that I do 
not think of you as old. Your denials of witchcraft aside, 
you have clearly found some decoction or cantrip to stymie 
aging. Centuries past, they'd have burned you in that fire 
for having the body of twenty-five year old at fifty-
three."

"Magic nothing," she retorts. "Some of us aren't blessed 
with your metabolism, Mulder, and we have to work hard to 
maintain our figures. Besides, I didn't look this good at 
twenty-five." Scully smooths her hands over her hips, 
preens a little.

"We're gonna be the talk of the old age home in a few 
years," Mulder says. "Roll up in there, looking so fine. 
All the other guys are gonna offer you their gelatin 
desserts and prune juice."

"If we'd both stop being so vain about our hair, we'd be a 
couple of silver foxes, Mulder." She leans forward, a 
conspiratorial gleam in her eye. "Silver *fox,* get it?"

He grins. "I get it, it's good. You're hilarious."

"I am," she says. "No one really knows that."

He takes a step forward and, in one fluid motion, hooks one 
arm beneath her knees and the other behind her head. She 
yelps in surprise, but offers no further protest. He 
carries her to the edge of the pond, then steps in. It 
feels delicious after the heat of the bonfire, and he wades 
in until the water laps at his thighs. He looks down at 
Scully, who is chewing her lip.

"Land woman," he intones deeply. "I have decided to take 
you to my kingdom under the waves."

"There aren't any waves here, really," she says. "It's too 
small."

He tosses her into the water.

She comes up sputtering, hair sleek as a seal. "MULDER!"

"You have disrespected my people," he tells her in the same 
deep voice.

She smacks a spray of water at him, then turns to swim 
deeper into the water, into the night.

Delighted, he follows, catching her easily. He's always 
been the far stronger swimmer. Her body is slippery in his 
arms, her skin milky as the moon again. Her breasts are 
crushed against his chest, her biceps gripped in his hands.

She pants, pupils dilated to capture the starlight. Their 
legs bump as they tread water.

"Gotcha," he whispers into the space below her ear. He's 
sure it has a name, an elaborate compound Latin one that 
Scully knows. He cannot break her down into parts so 
readily.

"Let me go," she murmurs, her voice so throaty that it 
makes his groin ache and stir.

He does, and she puts her arms around his neck, her legs 
around his waist. Scully shifts her weight slowly, 
admitting him by centimeters into the slick heat of her 
body. She gasps a little, settles her weight against his 
hips.

Mulder groans and steers them back to where he can at least 
get some footing.

Scully dips her head back, her hair brushing the surface of 
the pond. Droplets of water follow the long tendons of her 
neck, settle in the pockets above her collarbones. Her 
breasts are at the water line. "Look up," she tells him.

He does and above them is the Milky Way, the opalescent arc 
of a nighttime rainbow. They have both been among these 
stars. Mulder braces her with his hands until she is bent 
backwards at the waist, sprawled across the water like a 
naiad.

"The shortest night of the year," she says, gazing skyward 
still. "I'm so glad you woke me up for it, Mulder."

"Oh, me too," he breathes, kneading her shoulders.

"In all our years, Mulder, I can't believe you never found 
a mermaid," she says, fanning her pale fingers out. "A 
mermaid is so completely up your alley."

"They'll drag a man out to sea and drown him," Mulder says. 
"Far too risky."

Scully arches her back then, bringing her head and torso 
back up and against him. He grinds his teeth against the 
sensation it produces in his cock.

She wraps her arms around his neck again, rests her head 
against him. "I would have never let that happen," she 
says.

He moves them slowly through dark water, hands sleeking 
over her body, as the fire continues to burn.