DISCLAIMER: Mulder and Scully and the search for the truth all belong to Chris Carter and Co. I'm just borrowing them. I promise to return them in no worse condition than Chris would.:) SUMMARY: Post-ep to "The Truth". Shadows and light and whispered words. The rest of the night in the motel room in Roswell. TITLE: ANOTHER NIGHT IN ROSWELL AUTHOR: Elizabeth Rowandale RATING: (R) CLASSIFICATIONS: Post-ep, Story, Angst, MSR KEYWORDS: MSR SPOILERS: "The Truth", "William", "This Is Not Happening", "TrustNo1" ARCHIVE: Just let me know. WEBSITE: http://rowan_d.tripod.com/elizabethr.html AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story was completed for the Secret Santa Story Exchange run by Bonetree through the E-Muse mailing list. It was presented as a gift to Emma Brightman, with whom it stayed for a week and was very well treated.:) This story is for Mim. Because she's waited so long and patien--well, so *long*, anyway, for a particular type of scene in "Water's Edge" and I'm such a horribly slow writer that she's *still* waiting, so this will hopefully pacify her for now.:) ANOTHER NIGHT IN ROSWELL by Elizabeth Rowandale Copyright (c) 2002 He didn't want to leave the warmth of her arms--ever again. But there were practical concerns. She had had her shower, smelled of generic motel soap and flowery shampoo--and Scully. He was still in his jeans and t-shirt, and no doubt a bit ripe. Not that Scully seemed to care at the moment, but he needed to wash this day off his skin. Mulder slipped away, and Scully's fingernails clawed lightly across the skin of his palm as she let him go. When he emerged from the cramped and noisy bathroom, Scully's eyes had slipped closed and her breath was deep and even. She was still in her robe and half on top of the covers. Her damp hair was spread in unruly waves across the pillow case. She was breathtaking. Scully. Here in his room again. *Their* room. He couldn't shake the suspicion that this was just another in the string of precious dreams he had had over the past months, only to wake from them hot and cold and alone. It had been amazing just to walk to the desk and check in tonight. One room, please. Yes, just me and the Missus. One room. How long had he waited for that? Nine years ago, Scully had come into his motel room in a white robe, just a kid. Full of idealistic notions and lofty aspirations. Long hair, creamy smooth skin, and slender hips. She had let her hair grow out again. He needed to tell her he loved it. Scully was pushing 40. That was something he would have to get used to. Not that she was any less beautiful. More so, if that was possible. But she took the physical side of the job a little harder. Getting knocked on her back left her stiff the next morning. Her arm twisted behind her back or her knee kicked out from under her, was more likely to leave a touchy joint in the days that followed. His forced time away had given him some perspective on their lives, on the changes that had taken place since that long ago adventure in Oregon. Wrapped up in the chaos as they had been for so long, the finer points of personal growth had been lost in the blur. There were fine lines around Scully's eyes. Too many frown lines, not enough laugh lines. He hoped her next forty years would reverse that result. The past decade had beaten them both up a bit. No escaping that truth. Mulder moved to the foot of the bed, vigorously rubbing his hair with a towel, gazing down at Scully's graceful figure. Their immediate future wouldn't be easy. Scully was amazing him once again with her resiliency, her ability to see the best in the darkest of circumstances. In his clumsy attempts not to break her spirit, he had nearly betrayed her trust. Some things didn't become clearer with time away. What she didn't understand was the heavy streak of selfishness in his protective actions. She didn't realize that her spirit was his as well. He had nothing to fight for, if it wasn't for her. But he was certain the reality of their present circumstances hadn't really hit Scully yet. She had never been in hiding for months, years. She hadn't realized that if her mother had a stroke and had to learn to walk again, or Matthew had double pneumonia and had to spend countless hours in the Pediatric ICU, or if Charlie was shot down in a live fire exercise, she not only wouldn't be able to go to them, she probably wouldn't even know it was happening. She hadn't realized that she might never see her apartment again, or anything in it. That if her single picture of Emily hadn't been tucked into her bra this morning, she might never look upon her face. If he told her any of this tonight, she would just nod and say she knew. But she didn't know. She couldn't, yet. He had gotten a taste of this life. He had learned a little something about his needs, his true priorities. There were only two things he cared about enough to make him mourn the losses. One was safe and sheltered somewhere far away. *He hoped*. The other was resting quietly a few feet from him. Scully was the one with treasures lost. She sniffed and shifted in her sleep. A narrow crease lined her forehead, tension wafting through her dreams. A few deep breaths, the line smoothed again, and she was quiet. Neither of them had anything to sleep in. Scully was naked beneath the motel robe. A thought that kept distracting Mulder from other tasks... He had grabbed a pair of smiley-face boxers for himself from a rotating display at the front of the corner convenience store. Tomorrow, once they had picked up the papers for their new identities from Doggett's contact, they would have to find the nearest Walmart and stock up on some of the essentials of life. Scully was thinking of dying her hair. Nothing says "find me in a crowd" like a shock of red hair. A dark blond, Scully had said. Something that looked healthy, like she had spent a lot of time in the sun. He guessed she had had her fill of shadows. The motel room was cold. Mulder crossed to the window and fiddled with the knobs on the localized heater. But the settings were already on high. The air booming out of it offered a little warmth, but not enough to break the chill. Mulder hurried back to the bed, climbed beneath the covers. For once in his life, he didn't want to turn on the TV. He just wanted to lie here, warming himself beneath the blankets, and watching Scully sleep. *Scully...* It seemed like it had been a million years. For so long he had preferred his own company to a world that didn't understand him and didn't seem to want him if they did. And then Scully had appeared. And alone had seemed like torture. Sitting and arguing with Scully had seemed like heaven. Mulder reached out and gingerly slid the edges of the bedcovers from beneath her body, spread them over her sleeping form. She shifted, and again there was a trace of tension in her brow. Mulder caught the hand that reached out toward his pillow, and Scully's fingers curled around his as she slipped back into deeper sleep. Mulder switched out the light and closed his eyes. ***** "Mulder?" He was instantly awake at the sound. "Mulder?" Her voice was soft with sleep, confused, dream-addled. "I'm here, Scully." Scully's beautiful warm body moved into his arms in the darkness. She was so tiny. So strong. Her fingers moved up to trace over his cheek, down his jaw bone. "You're here," she whispered, as though her words could test his form. "I'm here." They slept. ***** The explosions still rang in her ears. She hated fire now. Almost as much as Mulder had long ago. Images were blurring and crossing and flashing behind her eyes. She felt like the world was vibrating and nothing was concrete anymore. In a matter of days she had been thrown from near pure joy (nothing was pure anymore, not since she let go of William), to utter despair to fear and confusion and an odd kind of comfort. She had slipped back into a world she had once both hated and loved and now missed when it was gone, whether that was masochistic or just plain human. But Mulder was here. And her body followed on instinct. She and Mulder had always moved together without much need for words. Pull their weapons, circle the car, cloak the truth for Skinner, soft sell the witness. And in that regard, it was like something disjointed had finally slipped into place. She knew who Scully was when she was beside Mulder. She'd had no idea how lost she could be without him until he was gone. She didn't know when her independence had slipped through her fingers. Mulder snored softly, his breath hot on her ear. *Mulder, dead in the wet grass, body not yet cold, salvation just a stone's throw away but a million miles out of reach. Running like the wind through the cold dark trees, branches slapping at her ankles, heart pounding like a tribal chant, new life pulsing inside her--"THIS IS NOT HAPPENING!!"* Scully jerked her eyes open. She gasped for breath, locked her mind onto Mulder's steady breath behind her. Alive this time. Alive. Scully nestled into her pillow, pressed her back tighter against Mulder's chest. How many hundreds upon hundreds of nights had she slept in a motel room like this, with Mulder on the other side of the motel wall? And how many times had she jerked awake from tattered and bloody images woven into her dreams, only to feel the distance between them like an ocean? Some things were good tonight. In all the horror...some things were good. ***** At 2am they both lay awake, spooning in the darkness, watching the ripples of shadow on the wall as the parking lot lamp caught the window curtain, bouncing above the heater. "Tell me what it was like," he said, his mouth in Scully's hair. She was cold now, and he was cradling her close for warmth. "What it was really like." "What?" "When you had to give him up. Our little boy." "You don't need to know. Not that." "Of course I do. I should have been going through it with you, every excruciating moment. Hearing about it is only a fragment of what I need to know." "I can't. I just...I don't know what... I can't." "Tell me one thing. Just one thing about it. Something you thought or felt or did. Something that stuck with you, haunted you. Something you've had to carry alone." She was quiet for a long time. The shadows pulsed on the wall. "I slept on the floor of his room. For six nights. I left the crib standing. I put his favorite blanket and toy inside it every night. And I slept on the floor. Well...slept...mostly cried." Mulder didn't move, forgot to breathe. "My stomach muscles were sore. From the gut wrenching.... And all day at work...it would hurt when I would sit up or stand and I couldn't let it show and it was there with me all day...And in the back of my mind it just...it felt...like he had literally been ripped out of my womb. And I could still feel..." She faded out. Mulder buried his nose in the damp curls at the base of her neck, forced air in and out of his lungs. *Oh, Jesus, Scully. Jesus.* ***** 2:30a "Are you any warmer?" "Better." "Do you want me to check the closet for more blankets?" *No, Mulder. Whatever you do, don't let go of me right now.* "No. I'm okay." ***** 2:45a "Tell me what it was like, Mulder." "What?" "Where you were. Your life. Looking for the truth." "Eat. Sleep. Search. Lie in bed at night, hot as hell in the desert. Play your emails over and over in my mind. And when we lost that...remember the past letters. Play chess with Gibson." "But he knows all your moves before you make them." "Yeah, that was annoying." He thought she might have smiled at that. "He picked up a few other thoughts now and then when I thought he was asleep. We had some talks about those." "Did you warp a young mind, Mulder?" "I don't think so. But I'll bet he has some interesting thoughts about you, now." ***** 3:01a Mulder was on his back. Scully rested her head on his stomach, feeling the rise and fall of his breath beneath her, hearing his pulse pump and swish in her ear. He smelled so damn beautiful. *Mulder. I had almost forgotten how you smell. It was getting hard to conjure out of the air.* "Agent Reyes has a crush on you." "What? Mulder, what the hell are you talking about?" "I'm serious, Scully, have you seen the way she looks at you?" "Mulder, Agent Reyes is in love with John. Completely gone, actually." "Really?" "Yes, Mulder. And now, knowing you missed *that* banana boat completely, I'm even more trusting of your sexual radar." "Scully, this is not an off the wall comment, I mean--have you really not--" "Mulder...Monica and I are friends. Good friends. That is all." "I'm telling you, Scully, you could have her if you wanted her." "Sure. Fine. Whatever." ***** They slept. The next time he woke, she had moved away. Only half-conscious of his surroundings, Mulder reached out in the darkness for her skin, not wanting to be even these inches away, after so much time in exile. He made contact with her hair, her shoulder, but the moment she felt the touch, Scully caught her breath and pulled away. She moved back the covers. Before he could drag himself awake, she was on her feet and across the room. "Scully?" She didn't answer, but he could hear her breath. Shaky. He could make out her silhouette against the double window. She was perched on the edge of the easy chair, her body a taut contrast to the softness of the cushions. Mulder pushed himself from the bed, struggling to shake the heavy grogginess. "Scully?" His voice was thick. He shoved back the covers and staggered across the short stretch of carpet. He knelt before her, grateful for the warmth by the heater. "What's wrong? Scully?" He reached out and touched a hand to her knee, but Scully jerked like she'd been burned, lifted her hands to ward him off. The mixture of bewilderment, concern, and pain must have danced across his face clear as words. But she hadn't even looked. "I can't," she said softly. "I'm sorry, I just, I've...a lot has happened in the last few days, and I'm just...having a delayed reaction. I need a minute, okay?" He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her this strung. "Of course, it's okay," he said gently. "Scully, whatever you're feeling, it's okay. It's good that you let yourself feel it. But...I just...I don't understand why you have to do it...away from me." It sounded a little pathetic, a little desperate when he heard it out loud. But he felt like a lost child when she pushed him away. No use denying it after all these years. Her answer cut. "Because, you're part of it." "How?" "Mulder..." "Scully." He paused a moment, carefully sorting through the concept in his mind, struggling to string together the perfect words. "I know that we've been apart for a long time, and that you've been forced to deal with things alone that I would never have--" "Don't leave me." It was less than a whisper. He could barely believe what he'd heard. "What? Scully, what--I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere." *Dammit, let me touch you*. "Scully, you are the only thing I've been certain of in my life for...more years than I can count at this time of the night." The thin edge of humor was lost on her. "Yeah, well...it didn't work that way two days ago." "*What?*" Scully cringed, tensed her jaw, looked out the narrow break in the window curtains. "Mulder, for the first time...the *only* time...I asked you to put us ahead of this--" she waved her hand in an all encompassing gesture, wanting for a noun "--that we do. And you couldn't do it." Mulder nearly lost his balance with the impact of her words. "No. No, no, no, no. Scully, it wasn't like that. You know that. Look at me. I thought I *was* putting us first, putting *you* first. I was sacrificing everything, because I didn't want to hurt you, I didn't want to crush you. I didn't want to lose...my Scully. I was protecting you." Scully released a disdainful breath; still wouldn't look at him. "Well, stop it, Mulder." He was trying not to rise to the bait of her anger. He knew her tools for keeping him at arm's length (how could he not, after all these years), but it was hard to fall out of a decade of habit. "Scully, don't forget, *you* sent me away. You talked me into leaving, to protect *my* life. Isn't that exactly what you're accusing me of doing to you?" "No." "*No?*" "No, Mulder, that's just it. I sent you away from our son. From William. To protect him. Because that's how it works, Mulder, once you have a child. He has to come first. And, yes, I wanted you safe, but if that had been all there was to it, the least little resistance from you and I couldn't have made you go. Or I would have followed. Maybe true love is being able to let someone go at your suffering, but...true need. That outweighs... But it's just us now, Mulder. Just us. At a certain point, love is also respecting the other person's choices. And me being able to trust you to do so. And if I say to you, that I don't want to be safe...if it's without you..." She was fighting it with every fiber of her being, it was painful to watch--but she was starting to cry. She was shaking. Mulder watched, but didn't speak. She was focusing hard on some nameless point at her feet. She drew several careful breaths. Mulder breathed with her, willing the silence and nearness to pull them closer, pull them into synch. "I can't do this without you." Her whispered words closed his throat. "This...what 'this'? Going underground? Continuing our fight? What... Can't do..." Her tongue slipped across her lips. "My life." *Oh, God*. Two words; forming the most intimate thought Scully had ever expressed. Beyond the "I love you's", beyond the whispered words of need in the throes of passion. She sat quietly in the motel easy chair, eyes on the floor, eyebrows lifted. And he realized this was it. This was the moment he had yearned for, ached for, for years upon years of loneliness and need and closed doors and games of silence. Dana Scully, for this one beautiful instant, had dropped all her defenses, lain herself before him--frightened, vulnerable, and hurt. Needing him as badly as he had ever needed her. God help him, he was *not* going to blow this. If he ever got anything right in his whole fucked up life, it had to be this. Mulder pushed to his feet and reached a hand toward the woman he loved. "Come here." Scully blanched again, just barely, but he stayed with her, the intensity of his emotion playing more like anger, but ringing through for both of them as nothing but love. "*Come here*," he said roughly, and he pulled her to him, onto her feet and into his arms. She let him win, but she kept herself separate, arms tucked against his chest, holding that space between them. "Look at me..." She tried. Her resistance was crumbling into fear. She couldn't hold eye contact, but he stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers and coaxed her back little by little. "Dana Katherine. I will never leave you." She closed her eyes. "Never, Scully." The quiver of emotion in the timbers of his own controlled voice seemed to pull at her. For a long minute they stood together in the cold shadows of the quiet motel room. Her breath carried her words to him. So soft, so vulnerable. *Once-in-a-lifetime-Scully.* "...Promise me..." Mulder swallowed thickly, physically hurting for her. "I promise." A quiet beat. Then, "Ya know, unless you finally start to really annoy me." And that broke her. She started to cry. And he lifted her into his arms, carried her back to the bed and nestled them beneath the warmth of the covers. He let her tears fall. For the hundreds of things they ached for that they had been denied the right to suffer together. He didn't know how long it was before they slept. Only that he heard her even breaths before he let himself surrender. ***** They woke once more before dawn. This time he made love to her. His skin had been thirsty for her for so long, he couldn't drink enough fast enough. He feared he might drown. He had nearly stopped on the road to New Mexico and made love to her on the side of the road, squished into the back seat of a sports utility. To hell with the conspiracy, the end of the world, the car on their tail. But one glance at her serious expression, the set of her eyes as she gazed out over the road, and he had known she wouldn't let him make that kind of choice. As much as she might have wanted to do the same. And for the first time in his life he was starting to let himself believe she might have. Maybe...she loved him as much as he loved her. He was almost ready to believe. She was like silk in his arms. Her kisses were like no others he had known in his life. This was Scully beneath him. His partner, his opposite, his balance, his touchstone--his love. And when she cried out in aching pleasure, the intimacy of the surrender from the likes of Scully almost made him cry. This beautiful woman. This was his gift in life. For all the hell he had to live through, all the responsibility he had been forced to bear, all the loss he had suffered--this was what made him believe life was worth fighting for. This was what made him believe. ********** The days ahead would not be easy. The sun was lifting on the horizon, the ruffled curtains throwing flashes of genuine light across the cheap comforter like strings of tinsel. Scully should have been exhausted. She'd been on a roller coaster for days, and this night she had hardly slept. But her muscles were strong. She felt sleepy, but solid. Warm in her cocoon of blankets and tangle of limbs. Mulder was still sleeping. He would wake soon. He was always awake in the early hours. Or maybe not. Sometimes, when she was in his arms, he slept through the bird-song hours, dozed until the sun was fully overhead. She dared to let herself believe she was that powerful. That she made him feel that kind of peace. Her late night revelations of vulnerability hurt to think back on. But the memory of his words in return, of the tender touches of his fingers, left her trembling. Some moments needed to be remembered. Some moments needed to be fought for. Dana Scully lay in the early morning hours of Roswell, New Mexico, listening to the gentle sounds of breath, of life. Of wind against the eaves, and water in the pipes. Perhaps the truth was out there. Perhaps one day they would find it. Or maybe the truth, as Mulder had once said, was the two of them lying here together, savoring life for the miracle it could be. Maybe that was what they were fighting for. To save the future for every moment of human contact and beauty left to come. Scully closed her eyes, wishing she could surrender to a few more moments of blissful sleep. But her mind had turned on for the day and there was no going back. The sun was pushing its way into the sky, and they needed to push their way toward the state line. Mulder shifted a bit in his sleep, tightened his arm around her. His turn to be afraid. But she wasn't going anywhere. This was her life now. Nothing left to cling to. Nothing to hold her apart. *I'm here, Mulder. I'm here.* # bstrbabs@yahoo.com http://rowan_d.tripod.com/elizabethr.html