Archive of Our Own

The house is always too big these days. In the evenings, after the six o'clock news and before the ten o'clock edition, it takes him eight long strides to pace the length of the living room, newly polished boards creaking beneath his feet. He feels like a caged animal at night, prisoned by his freedom and all this empty space.

She might help to fill it up. He knows she'll help fill it up. It's just the problem of getting her here.

There are excuses, of course, and false pretexts, and very good pretexts. Dig up another murdering supersoldier and he bets she'll be right over. Anything he says would feel like a lie, though, a sham she'll see right through. Kobold stripped him bare, all his sad little feelings and silly hopes, and whether or not she was there to see, he's naked to her now.

Come to think of it, he probably always was. She cuts and probes everyone, delicately to be sure, but without mercy. She even does it to herself.

It's dark, and there's at least two thirds of a six-pack in the fridge, and "Gunga Din" coming on TCM in eight minutes, and it's Tuesday night like always. It isn't perfect, but it works for him. He's busted enough junkies to know what he is now, just another addict to the drowsy comfort of good beer and a good movie. Just another sad sack, single cop in his forties, stubbing out memories like cigarettes on the arm of a beat-up recliner.

It doesn't help, the way he keeps thinking of her. She'd match his furniture real well. She's hard, polished teak, warm colors, always holding her own shape. She doesn't yield easily, he thinks. It must've taken years of careful sanding to get her to bend the way Mulder did. He just isn't sure she didn't snap somewhere in the process.

Ah, fuck this metaphorical bullshit. She's just hard like him, just someone else who got hurt but didn't let it stop her from living. He wants to run his hands over her breasts, kiss her white neck until her blood rushes to kiss back, push her down on his bed and once, just once, really look her in the eyes. He can call her wood and steel and broken pieces, but she's just a woman, and he's just in love with her. If only it were that simple.

He quits pacing and sits down, feeling as useless on the couch as he does standing up. He's all elbows these days. Sometime last spring he figured out he was in love with her, sometime between bringing Mulder back from the dead and packing her off to Georgia, and his life has pretty much been shit ever since. He never stood a chance, not when Mulder was dead, not now that he's gone, and it hurts like hell to know that he can't even compete with the memory of the guy. Not that he should try. Not that this is his life. He never asked for any of this.

His head starts to pound, and he gets up and heads for the kitchen. Beer, best medicine he knows. He glances at the fridge door as he opens it, its smooth white bareness just one more reminder of everything he's missing. He can remember a time when there was a scuffed brown fridge with crayon scribbles magneted all over it. He'd rather not.

It takes a while to locate the bottle opener. That's a lie. It's right there on the counter, used more often than forks and knives. Getting like his old man. Too tired to think about that now. He flips the cap off, letting the bent metal hit the floor with a clink, and downs most of the beer in two long swallows. Starts for the living room, thinks the better of it, and brings the other three bottles with him. No sense in getting up more than he has to tonight.

Ten minutes and two beers later there's a knock on the door. It's too late for solicitors or religious nuts, and he doesn't seem to know anyone anymore. He's just buzzed enough to consider ignoring it, but his stupid stupid brain tells him it might be her, and on that flimsy excuse he gets up to face down whatever maniac is knocking at nearly midnight. Or maybe it's just his pain in the ass neighbor again, bitching about the way he cuts his hedges.

He opens the door to find Monica on his front step, smiling that sideways, guileless smile of hers, and his heart sinks. The woman's crush on him is painfully obvious, and it makes him squirm. Last thing he needs is a lovesick partner mooning over him day in and day out.

Ironic as that sounds, coming from him.

"Look, not tonight, Monica," he sighs, before she can say anything. "I'm not in the mood to hash out all the details of demonic possession. You'll have to save it for Mrs. Spooky."

She just smiles. He opens his mouth to say more, but she doesn't seem to be listening.

She steps toward him, eyes with their scary cat gleam fixed on his face, and presses her soft lips to his. Startled, he pulls his head back just as she slides her tongue between his lips. She follows his movement with her head, curling her tongue up behind his teeth, laying a hand on his chest. He draws a panicked, whistling breath through his nose, trying to push her from him, while she flicks her tongue back. Her lips go thin as she presses them harder, and then she leans away, his hands still on her shoulders.

"Taste that?" she whispers in his ear, the words wet and warm. "I've already given it to her."

He stares at her with pathetic confusion, mouth open.

"Want to hear about what I did tonight, John?"

##

The baby fell asleep around seven every night, a welcome bit of clockwork. She folded him away under layers of soft blue flannel, clicked on the Mickey Mouse night light, and shut the door most of the way, leaving a two inch crack. The baby was quiet on the whole, but at night he never made a sound until two, when he awoke and whimpered until she came to feed him. She should have been grateful, but wasn't.

The door cracking business, therefore, was for her. There were new locks on her windows now, and good strong glass in the panes, making the apartment into even more of a fortress than it had been. Four locks on the front door, five on the kitchen door, the one most of the monsters seemed to come through. She should have been more frightened, but wasn't.

Now it was movie time, fire time, classical music time. Grownup time, and no one to share it. She remembered being a kid, shuffling off to bed at eight, Charlie half an hour before, Missy half an hour later, and all three creeping out to peer enviously through the stairway railing at Bill, who got to stay up late enough to see the 8:30 show they had to miss. She couldn't even remember what it had been, probably some junky western, but back then, the pinnacle of desire.

"When I'm bigger, I'll never go to sleep," she'd told her mother in second grade. "Never. I'll never be tired. I'll stay awake until the sun gets up, and even then I won't go to sleep."

And she didn't sleep much, now. It took until at least midnight for her quick brain to settle down in the evenings, processing the flora and fauna of her days. Her dreams came in bright snatches, jagged, fearful chases through the recesses of her mind that left her restless. Often she lay half conscious, the dreams seeming real, and would wake herself with a jerk. The circles under her eyes grew large and her voice quiet, but she didn't say anything to anyone.

It wasn't that she was lonely, not really. New mothers always had it hard, and at least the baby wasn't colicky, or teething. And even a quiet, wide-eyed baby was more company than she was used to at night.

There was just an ache, sometimes. All the time. When she had a moment to herself it filled her up, toes to tears, and her breath came in little quivers, and if she didn't wrap her arms around herself she was fairly certain she would fall apart in pieces.

Post-partum depression, she told herself. Post-lover-leaving depression. Post-life-falling-apart depression.

She'd thought it would be all over after the baby was born. She'd see for herself that it didn't have green skin and six-inch claws, and then the strange distance between herself and Mulder would compress, enfolding their child between them. He'd understand somehow why she'd given up hope, and she'd learn how to love this reincarnation of a man she'd have given her life for, once upon a time.

Two weeks they'd had. Fourteen days to remember, to sleep with the baby in the middle of the bed, to eat cereal for dinner and lay on the couch watching daytime television and say the words that had been missing.

"Why didn't you tell me he was mine?" he'd asked one night, late. She'd seen the question coming in his hands, the way they'd slid over the baby's face, running the ski slope of his nose.

"I wasn't sure," she'd told him quietly, and there was so much more that she'd held back. The way she'd grown used to thinking of it as a fatherless child, hers alone, a baby who would never be born. The way it had been her secret and her burden, something she wasn't ready to share with anyone. And the fear, the strangling fear that had crept up cold on her at night, whispering terrible things in her ear. Alien. Foreign. Vessel. Used.

"You made me think...things I didn't want to think," he'd said, looking away from her. The moon had burned her eyes and she couldn't see his face. "I thought you were hiding something."

There had been nothing to say. Years ago, he'd lived weeks without her and barely held himself together, coming through a torn shipwreck, all loose ends and hollow eyes. She'd lived months without him and kept two lives burning, using herself as fuel. Neither he nor she were what they had once been.

And then there had been notes pushed under the door, and men watching them when they went to brunch one Sunday, their last Sunday together. She'd told him to leave. She. She who'd already been starting to drown, with the quiet baby and the new job next month and the things, the things that were always there waiting for them. The notes and the men who had become just one more thing she'd had to take care of, because he didn't know how to anymore.

Go, she'd told him. And had not known whether she dreaded more his protest or his acceptance. She'd gotten her fight, and his tears, and all the things she'd expected from him but not wanted. Go, she'd said. Before I start to really love you again, she'd thought.

The baby had been too young to notice comings and goings but had cried anyway, because Mulder did. She'd traded him the baby for his suitcase, full of clothes and toiletries bought the day before, and kept her face sad because that would make it easier for him. She hadn't let him tell her where he was going yet, only handed him a new phone and told him to call the boys when he got there. His hair had been wet from the shower and it had been this that let her cry at last, because water was all he was taking away from her. There hadn't been anything else to give.

She did this every night. It wasn't much to think about, the unsewing of the seams of her life, but she wrapped her memories around her anyway, like a comforting hair shirt. There was blame in there, and despair, and fierce self-immolating glee, and a kind of freedom too, if only she weren't weighted down like a tanker with all she had to remind herself to do.

Get up. Eat food. Breathe. Speak. Act like you care. Don't drop the baby.

She stared into the bowl of bitter, reheated miso on her lap, barely registering the brown liquid as food. The place was a mess. Her mother had offered to find her someone to help out, someonewho would leave dinner in the oven and swept floors and tightly made beds. She'd refused not because she didn't trust her mother anymore but because she'd been afraid of growing dependent that way. Someday, she was going to get it together again.

She got up and dumped the soup in the sink, along with the rest of the pot. It hadn't been very good two days ago, and refrigeration hadn't improved the flavor. She balanced the bowl on top of the other dishes in the sink, briefly contemplated washing them, then went in search of more palatable food.

The knock on the door caught her on her knees on the counter, rummaging without dignity through a cabinet full of burst bags of dried pasta and cans of kidney beans, and she turned her head so fast she whacked it on the corner of the door. Wincing, she slid to the floor and went to the living room to undo the four new locks and open the door to Monica Reyes.

"Monica. Hi," she said with false, stiff cheer, forcing a smile and preparing to disbelieve. "What's up?"

The other woman was slow in answering, first letting a sort of knowing smirk travel to her too sincere eyes. Dana wondered if she might be a little drunk.

"Just thought I'd spread a little holiday cheer," Monica answered, producing a red candy cane from the a pocket in her raincoat. "Season's greetings," she added, offering it. Dana took it before she thought, and tried to chase away the quizzical frown that crept onto her face. The hell?

"Well, that's very sweet of you, Monica," she said, in some confusion. "Um, is that really what you came all the way over here for? To give me this very nice candy cane in the middle of November?" she asked, expecting the woman to produce the ubiquitous case file.

"No, there's another early present for you," Monica smiled, and actually winked as she produced a glass flask of peppermint schnapps from another pocket. It was impossible not to notice that the plastic seal was broken and that several inches of the clear liquid were missing, but somehow Dana didn't think the woman was drunk. She was just...Monica. Weirdly optimistic and oddly childlike, and now apparently fixated on celebrating Christmas a good week before Thanksgiving. Well, worse things had knocked on her door before.

"Would you like to come in, Monica?" she asked, a little kindness finally creeping in. Poor woman was probably still dealing with the mountain of expense reports and unfinished casereports she'd left behind in her anxiety to disconnect from any and all things tinged by her life with Mulder.

"I," said Monica, "would love to come in."

The schnapps went down well in mugs of hot chocolate, and another one of Monica's coat pockets turned out to contain a rented video. "Didn't know if you'd gotten a DVD player yet," she explained, "with all the money going to formula and diapers." Dana didn't bother to tell her about the bank account that had quietly appeared one day last summer, with enough money in it to see the baby through to the private college of his choice and Mulder's name next to hers on the checks.

So they watched "Bring it On," which turned out to be about limber, adorable teenage cheerleaders, although a horrified Monica professed intentions of renting "Bringing Up Baby." Dana had her suspicions about the way a rental store was organized, but refrained from pointing out that comedies were not usually shelved with classics and for half an hour even managed to enjoy the ironic pleasures the movie afforded.

Monica was not subtle. Dana had never expected it of her. The two nubile stars crawled into the same bed for a sleepover, Monica took the opportunity to rest her head on Dana's shoulder, and a sudden flash of understanding chilled her.

"Are you comfortable?" whispered Monica, too intimately. "You know I just wanted to come over tonight to give you a little company. William's adorable, but sometimes you want to talk to a grown-up, right?" she asked, finding Dana's hand and squeezing it. Dana jerked upright, pulling her hand away.

"I do appreciate the thought, Agent Reyes," she said in cool tones. "And this has been very nice, but I'm afraid I really should be getting to bed now. I'm very tired these days."

Monica's hand went to her shoulder, making her flesh crawl, and she gave another one of those too-wide sympathetic smiles.

"I'm sure you are," she actually purred. "Let me go turn down your bed for you while you get ready. Do you have a heating pad or something?"

"I'm fine," Dana rushed to say, more uncomfortable by the second. "Really. I think I just want to go to sleep now."

"Are you sure?" asked Monica, leaning in.

"I'm sure. I'm -- afraid the baby might wake up with too many people in the room," Dana lied, thinking of her terribly well-behaved son. She put a hand on the arm of the couch to lift herself up and felt something crunch beneath it.

"Oh -- the candy cane -- I'm sorry, Monica," she apologized stupidly. "I didn't even see it there."

"It's still edible," Monica pointed out without getting up, fixing on her with her brown eyes. "Just open the wrapper a little and eat the pieces."

"No, really -- I'm about to brush my teeth," Dana rushed out, aware that she was dangerously close to babbling. Had the woman never taken a hint in her life?

"You might as well, since it's broken anyhow," Monica said, her voice growing more intense.

"All right, fine," Dana sighed, growing exasperated and desperate. Maybe if she ate the stupid thing Monica would stop trying to seduce her with those silly kitten eyes of hers, all warm pools of entreaty.

She peeled the sticky wrapper far enough down to expose a little bit of stick. A crunch or two would be have to be enough to get the woman out of her house.

"Lick it," Monica told her as she was about to bite down.

Rolling her eyes, she licked the candy, expecting the cool burn of peppermint, like the toothpaste her teeth ached for. Instead her mouth was flooded with cinnamon, a sharp, poignant taste. Her eyes flew to the other woman's face, where a small smile grew.

"Like that, Dana," she whispered, standing up and leaning over the smaller woman. "I'll taste like that."

And to prove it, she kissed her.

It was nothing to her, just soft melting lips and strange breasts against her own, like wet wood. Monica's ardor was nothing, her caresses were nothing, and it was only stunned seconds before she struggled to free herself from the hands on her shoulders and the other woman's hungry mouth.

"No," she said when she won some space. "I -- no." Monica kissed her way down Dana's pale neck, leaving nothing but cold where her mouth had been.

"Monica, stop," she said firmly, frustrated in her attempts to disentangle herself. A cool hand slid up her back, under her shirt, and the new stimulus drove her away with fresh strength, finally breaking Monica's embrace.

She wasn't afraid of Monica's gaze, only those searching hands, and she fixed her eyes into cold steel.

"Monica, I'm sorry if I've given you any impression that this was welcome, but I am simply am not -- not..." She fumbled for the right phrase, furious with herself for losing the momentum of her righteousness, but Monica made no move towards her.

"Not interested in me that way," Monica said calmly. "I know that."

"Then why on earth would you presume to -- behave this way?" she demanded, frowning.

"Because you are a lonely woman, and you could use a little comfort," Monica answered in the same maddening tone.

"Then take me out to a ball game," Dana snapped. "Buy me a puppy, but don't -- Jesus," she stumbled, native reserve betraying her again.

"Don't kiss you? Why on earth shouldn't I?" Monica asked, a little fire in her eyes. "I know you distrust physical comfort, Dana, but sometimes it's the most powerful thing one person can offer another."

Dana took a deep, slow breath, trying to keep down the panic that rose in her every time Monica looked at her with that calm lunatic's gaze.

"That's fine for you," she said more evenly than before. "You want to give physical comfort to whoever you want, be my guest. But I am not like that. I...I'm bound to someone. You know that. And if I weren't...well, Monica, you're just not the person I would turn to. I'm not..." she trailed off, giving up on feeling embarrassed over her reticence. This situation wasn't her choice.

"Of course you're not a lesbian," Monica said reasonably. "Neither am I. But I care about you, enough to try and do whatever I can. And sometimes a warm body --"

"Is the best help there is," Dana mimicked, letting a cruel mocking tone overmaster her. "Monica -- Agent Reyes -- please. This conversation is a complete waste of time. I haven't asked for your help, in a physical sense or otherwise, and while I appreciate that you care about me, I'm afraid you'll just have to show it in another way. Now, will you please leave and let me go to bed?"

"If you'll answer one question," Monica said after a moment.

Dana blinked once, exasperated. "Yes," she sighed. "One."

"Are you lonely?" Monica said, looking at her intensely.

The answer was no, of course. No, because Monica didn't, couldn't really care how she felt, what the night did to her, the ache that didn't stop. This whole thing was just some sick game the woman was playing, trying to justify her desires with false compassion. Dana Scully had lived very well without comfort for years, and tonight would be no different.

Was she lonely? She didn't even know. No one had asked her that since she could remember, and theknowledge startled her, breaking her composure.

"Yes," she said at last, relief a sharp flood. "All the time. In crowds, when I'm alone, when I'm asleep. I've been so lonely and cold for so long I don't think I know anything else."

Her words hadn't said Cross the room, but something in her face must have, because Monica was holding her in her arms, not asking for kisses, only sharing warmth. Dana's warmth, she soon found, consisted of the unwanted tears that seeped like groundwater down her cheeks, dredging up springs of hidden misery.

"Shhh," whispered Monica, only a soft voice in her ear now. "You can cry with me."

But tears were too often and too strong with her these days. Monica might have seen her give birth, but she wasn't going to see her cry.

So she kissed the woman instead, harder than they had before, trying to scratch out something to grasp onto in all this softness. She found it in Monica's hard shoulder, and slid her hand under her blouse to feel the warmth of her skin stretched over bone, digging in with her fingers. Monica pulled her back down onto the couch with a fierceness that caught her off guard and pinned her on her back, licking at her throat while her hand wandered over Dana's breasts and made her murmur softly in the back of her throat.

Clothes were soon wriggled out of and she was confronted with silky, heavy breasts, barely fitting her hands, and hot secret places that filled her mouth with the taste of cinnamon again. Monica groaned and thrust toward the fingers Dana pushed into her, her naked, golden body a shocking thing on the familiar couch as she tugged at the red hair spilling over her thighs.

She had always thought that sex with a woman would be all soft words, swipe and brush and glide. And she was right, in a way, until Monica pushed her onto the coffee table and began grinding four fingers in and out of her, with a thumb jammed up her ass. Then her murmurs weren't quite so soft, and the table edge dug into her hips, and when she bent over the cold glass touched her painfully pointed nipples and she gasped.

If Mulder saw me now...

Monica felt her go stiff and unresponding, and her hands stilled.

"You're thinking about him, aren't you?" she whispered, as the tears dropped onto the glass below. "I don't care if you are," she said fiercely, holding her tighter. "You do what it takes."

As her fingers began to move again, inching their way inside, the memories came.

##

Late night, crashed out on her couch after a case and she won't let him leave, not even to change out of his work clothes, because she's lonely and something about his tie-less dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up makes her weak. There's a bottle of wine on the table, because she had this half in mind, but she's wearing blue sweatpants and white canvas tennis shoes and old underwear. Nothing so definite as a plan.

They watch TV for hours, making all the desultory comments one has to make these days, to let the world know it's not really getting through. Beer ads are fodder for his wit, reality programming doubly so. She says something mocking about the weather woman's frosted hair.

When their eyes meet her heart skips and her gaze shies away, despite everything she tries. He's so intense all the time, and he won't let her take anything lightly. All or nothing. She gives up and goes for nothing in the end, because she can't make those six inches to where his arm has been draped over the back of the couch for the last hour.

Is she a maiden waiting for a white charger to carry her away? Or just a woman who can't remember how this is done anymore?

She yawns when she isn't tired at all, and gets up and away from the man on the couch, who would hold her if she could only figure out how to ask him. Turning away from him, she goes to the empty room at the back of the apartment, there to lie sleepless in her cold wide bed. He follows, but it's only to say goodnight, it seems. She's failed again.

Well, goodnight, she says, looking up, but it's in her bedroom doorway and it feels strange, wrong. He's looking at her, and she's holding her breath, but the string is still too taut. She lets out her breath and backs away and sits on the end of her bed to untie her shoe. It's dark in the room.

He hasn't moved from the doorway, either to come or go. She pulls her shoelace into a knot with nervous hands and picks at it. She doesn't even see him move, with her hair hiding her face, but he's on his knees in front of her now, holding her foot to pull off her shoe. Then he does the other one. Then he looks in her eyes and her breathing is all wrong again.

This is too hard.

She whispers, Please. She thinks, This is all I can do. His hands move to her face like they're going through water, his eyes on her all the time.

It isn't that they haven't done this before. Once, twice, lips brushing casually. It's just that it's so dark, and they are so alone. It's like crossing the arctic to get to each other, but once they start it won't ever, ever stop. That's okay tonight. Any other time she'd be thinking those thirteen steps ahead, keeping him off without touching him, but it's late now. It's very late.

His head moves too now and she's looking straight at him. When she does she knows it's still him, and her head spins from the strangeness of it all, and she can move to meet him. She doesn't even know if it's the kiss she wants; maybe it's only the distraction, something new. Something changed. Warm lips, she can't see him anymore, and when she closes her eyes she falls. After all, he's the only man she's wanted in years.

Oh god.

Hot, slippery, soft kissing. Dizzy, deliberate, heads turning and hands caressing. He pulls her closer, hands on her hips, she nearly sliding off the bed as she presses up against his chest, spreading her legs to hold him and opening her mouth to his. Teeth click and tongues brush as they clutch each other, her hands on his shoulders and his hands in her hair.

He lets go of her with one hand and pushes it up the front of her tight shirt, sliding it under the satin bra and onto her satin flesh. He scratches her nipple erect with a thumbnail, stinging pleasure through her, and wraps his fingers around the small mound of her breast, cupping it hard against her. His teeth pull at her lower lip while his tongue swipes it, and with the extra space her hand rockets between them and down to his crotch.

His dress pants are thin and it's the easiest thing in the world to hold him, pulling his hips up toward her by the hot, thick cock that jerks in her hand like it knows her touch. She tiptoes her fingers down his shaft while he goes for her throat, softly biting her windpipe sideways and groaning as she rolls his balls around in her fist. She pulls down on them, then darts up to pinch the head, already soaking through the wool of his pants, and finally grasps him again, tugging up and fast.

She can tell the moment he loses it because he isn't on the floor anymore, and he isn't kissing her. He's rising off his knees, he's devouring her, he's suddenly so much larger than her and hard and heavy and she's buried beneath him on the bed.

It would be nice to say that they made long, sweet love, looking each other in the eye and remaining themselves, but instead they're fighting to get their clothes off between sloppy kisses and she longs for him to crush her and this really isn't Mulder. He's the faceless warm body of her before-sleep dreams, the thing she needs to keep her going, like coffee, like air. He gets her naked and he's slamming up and into her before she can even think, before she can wonder why he wanted it this way too.

He finds her wrists and holds them above her head, and somehow she's never felt less frail in her life. They do it together, like everything, strength matching strength, as he pulls in and nearly out with long, hard strokes, gasping. His hips grind into hers, their bones sharp and bruising, and her legs rise to wrap around his back, begging him to come in deeper. Moonlight or streetlight, she can't think which, makes his face yellow and strange-featured when he draws close, and shadows reclaim it as he moves away. She doesn't know this man.

She groans when his hips shift up and over, rubbing the base of his cock against her as he drags it out of her, and the look on his face makes her do it again. She fills the room with her sounds, half words, because it drives him crazy and everything seems to get hotter and brighter. God, she moans to the man whose hands bruise her arms. Yes, she whispers to the man leaning down to lick her hard nipples with a pointed tongue. Harder, she begs the man who's shaking like the world is falling apart, like he's about to come.

Mulder, she gasps, and then it's him again. He lifts his head to stare at her with glazed, surprised eyes, and she comes from the shared intimacy of skin and shock, cold shudders taking her from head to foot. He moans as her helpless fierce squeezing pulls him along with her, and then he falls, slick and still pulsing inside her.

Love, he pants in her ear, but that's as far as he gets.

##

"Tell me what you're thinking of," Monica said from behind her, twisting a nipple.

She shook her head and drew in her breath sharply, arching her back.

"Tell me what you see," Monica insisted, moving her fingers down.

"Darkness," she whispered.

##

"So you fucked her while she thought about her lover," he asks from the couch, disbelieving.

"She kept calling his name," Monica tells him, curled up on the floor beneath him.

"She didn't," he whispers, sickened.

"She did," Monica confirms, her tone still flat. "That's not all she did, you know. I wasn't the only one doing the fucking."

"She wouldn't."

"What's wrong, John?," she taunts, scooting closer to him. "Can't stand that you're in love with a woman who'd lick my pussy?"

He recoils from the crudeness of her words, shamed by the titillating images they bring, while her hands go to his fly and she gets to her knees.

"We did it like this, John," she whispers to his turned face, pulling down his zipper. "She knelt between my legs and ate me out until I thought I'd die." Her cool hands slip in and draw him out, stiffening fast, and he sees beautiful, serene Dana on her knees, her red lips wet and swollen. He closes his eyes, imagining her leaning over him instead of dark, awkward Monica.

"It's only fair," she goes on, her breath tickling his soft skin beneath her mouth. "She fucked me thinking of Mulder, and I fucked her thinking of you."

He snaps his head back in time to see his half-hard cock disappear into the terrible mouth that says such things. Her tongue is nimble and rough, and in a few moments she's licked him to attention, hot blood swelling and thickening him. She sucks for a minute, delicious pressure, then pulls away, leaving him cold and stiff.

"I'll give you a choice," she says, low, her lips inches from his twitching skin and her dark eyes burning. "I can keep telling you about what we did, and you can drive yourself crazy listening, or I can occupy my mouth in -- " her tongue just flicks the wet tip of his cock " -- other ways."

"Of course," she continues, seeing him hesitate, "Keeping me talking is going to mean fucking me. And John," she adds, "You might be interested in knowing that she's a natural redhead." Her head dives and her hot mouth engulfs his cock again, but he's made his decision and stands up, pulling her with him by the shoulders.

"Keep your mouth to yourself," he growls, fumbling with the zipper on her skirt. "I'll be listening."

##

It was impossible to pretend that Monica was anything but what she was, and Dana didn't try. After she collapsed on the floor, weak and flushed with pounding blood, her cries still echoing in her ears, she climbed onto the couch and treated Monica exactly as she'd always wanted to, rough and coarse and fast. Her teeth worked more than her lips, and she bit her way down the other woman's body, making her flinch and gasp and moan for more.

##

"See this?" Monica whispers, sliding off her silk blouse and thrusting a shoulder toward him. "She bit me there. Hard. Her teeth are so sharp, John. You'd never guess from them how soft her mouth really is."

He sits up on his elbows, deftly avoiding the soft, heavy breasts in front of him, and sinks his teeth into her flesh. He imagines he can still taste her mouth there.

##

Her mouth found Monica's clit again, the sharpness of her teeth giving way to the painful tease of her sucking lips. She hooked a finger up and inside her, searching for that small, elusive patch of skin that would make the other woman writhe as she wanted her to. Pleasure turned Monica's face dark and foolish, her mouth hanging open, but Dana didn't see and didn't care. It was only this roughness that she wanted, using the woman's body as something to stand in for the pain, hating her for liking to be used.

An ache began in her neck and she slithered to her knees on the floor, pulling Monica by her hips into a sitting position. She reached underneath her to dig her nails into the soft flesh of her ass with one hand, while her fingers disappeared inside again, still searching. Monica began a long, irritating moan, her low voice quavering like those stupid whales she'd once imitated, and Dana decided to shut her up.

##

"Dana likes giving head," she breathes as she slides herself down onto his cock. "I can't tell you what she'd do with your particular equipment, John, but she knew what to do with mine. Her lips...her tongue...her teeth..." She closes her eyes and lets her hand slide between her legs, fingering herself.

"Tell me," he demands, shivering at the inner vibrations she's causing with her rubbing. "Tell me what she did to you."

"Sucked me," she sighs, lifting her hips. "I think all the blood in my body went down to my crotch. I saw stars."

"More," he groans, bucking upwards a little. "What else?"

"Mm, put her fingers inside me. Three fingers, naughty girl. And rubbed with the middle one," she says, her hand moving faster and her head lolling like a poppy.

"Naughty?" he pants, giving up and grasping her hips to pull her backwards and forwards, matching his thrusts.

"Very," she gasps, her head falling back.

##

She lifted her head, the loss of her warm mouth bringing a protest from Monica, and hauled her onto the floor with her, pushing the table away with her elbow. Monica sprawled on the floor clumsily, her hair tangling and her eyes still glassy, and reached to pull Dana down for a kiss. She licked away her own taste, and Dana recoiled.

She plucked Monica's hose from the tabletop, and wrapped them around the other woman's wrists with three quick turns, pulling it cruelly tight. The ends she knotted around a table leg, while Monica cupped her breasts beneath her, fingers reaching for her nipples again. She wrenched away from her grasp and found the gauze scarf she'd left on the couch arm earlier in the evening when she came in from work. Monica's eyes widened in a satisfying way, but she didn't move as Dana wound it over her mouth. The trust in her face only prompted her to tie it tighter.

##

"She -- she," she pants, riding him hard. "She took my -- pantyhose and -- tied me up -- and -- god, John," she moans, rubbing herself with abandon.

He sits up, pulling her hand away violently. She looks into his eyes, startled, as he grabs her shoulders.

"Tell me, Monica," he grinds into her face. "You don't get to come until you do."

"She," she gasps, trying to catch her breath. "She tied me to the table. She bit my nipples. She sucked me until I went crazy but she wouldn't me come. She tied a scarf around my mouth and wouldn't let me scream. And she left me on the floor, all worked up and naked, and got herself a glass of water, and when she came back she told me she hated me."

He stares at her, his mouth falling open, as her hand snakes back between them, rubbing herself softly.

"John," she whispers, lifting her hips towards him, and kisses him.

His body moves without him, and he rolls over and pins her to the mattress before he can think, fucking her past her orgasm, past his own, into a blinding black fog. He doesn't move off her for a long time.

##

Monica was unbound, dressed, and gone before the tears came. She spent them in the shower, sending them down the drain with the rest of the wasted water, arms wrapped around herself as she sobbed. She cried because she couldn't think why she'd done it, why she hadn't just let the woman go home before this sick cruel side of herself came out. She cried harder because she didn't care that it had.

The baby was still asleep by the time she crawled into bed, but it was close to the two o'clock feeding time. She kept herself awake for it, and laid there with her eyes open, waiting.

##

"Do you really think she'll ever love you?" she whispers in his ear, moist and intruding.

"Does it matter?" he asks without opening his eyes.

"She won't," Monica says flatly, sliding a hand onto his chest.

"I know. She loves Mulder. Old news," he sighs, as he rolls away from her.

"No," she insists, propping herself up on an elbow. "It wouldn't matter. There's something wrong with her. She doesn't love like anyone else."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he demands, finally looking at her over his shoulder.

"She'd never love you because you love her," she tells him. "She never wants anything good for her. That's what I was trying to prove tonight."

"You think you're what's good for her?" he snorts, a bitter laugh rising in his throat.

"Anything is better than what she's doing, trying to make herself disappear waiting for that bastard," she answers. "But look what happened when I tried to get in. She hurt me every way she could."

He's silent for a moment.

"I'd still take it," he says at last, quietly. "Because I love her."

"I'd take it too," she whispers, her intense gaze darkening. "Though I don't mean from her," she adds, clumsy as always.

"I know," he tells her. He could smile now, but he doesn't. Instead he turns away, looking out at the darkness beyond the half-curtained window. Behind him, she wraps an arm around his naked waist and kisses his neck, her hand wandering lower, but he doesn't look back.