Mulder awoke to find Scully's hair in his mouth.

He wasn't sure how it had happened, or when; but apparently at some
point during his slumber he'd taken a mouthful of Scully's hair between
his teeth and chewed. It rested there now, tickling his tongue, tasting
of hair spray and, well, hair.

He didn't even want to consider what Freud would have to say about
all this.

Instead he reached up with his left hand and pulled the heavy lock of
auburn strands from his mouth, then scraped his tongue with his teeth,
trying to banish the taste of chemicals from his buds. It didn't help. He
debated getting up and rinsing out his mouth, but his right hand was
trapped beneath the pillow upon which Scully's head rested and he
wasn't about to wake her. They'd had a stressful couple of days and
she needed as much peaceful sleep as she could get. Mulder's heart still
sped up a cadence or two whenever he remembered the look on Scully's
face as she'd walked into the basement office on Tuesday afternoon,
following her latest doctor's appointment. A routine checkup, she'd told
him that morning with a dismissive shrug.

"There was an anomaly," she'd said that afternoon, her voice dry and
strained, her eyes equally dry and strained as they met his.

"Anomaly?" he rasped. "What the hell does that mean?" He recalled
dropping the pencil he'd been holding, the wood clattering dully on
the linoleum as it hit the floor and rolled under his desk.

"It means they don't know anything yet," she said quietly. "They're
running some more tests, and I'll know either way in a few days." And
then she had scooped up the forensic report she'd been compiling earlier
that day and went right back to work, her expression indicating quite
clearly that she didn't want to discuss it further. Not until she knew for
sure. He'd had no choice but to respect her wishes - after all, what else
could he do?

The waiting, he remembered grimly, had been torturous. They'd both
stumbled around in a fear-induced fog for the rest of the week, a gray
cloud with ebony edges that lurked on the edges of their consciousness
and put up even more of a barrier between them. Finally, her doctor called
Friday afternoon and gave her the news: there was nothing wrong. A blot
on the x-ray. Happened all the time. Common mistake.

And the fog lifted. Scully got a giddy grin on her face that he had
previously only associated with her consuming too much alcohol,
and then they embraced, kissing each other hungrily, right there in the
middle of the office, heedless of anyone who might stop by and catch
them in such a compromising position. And then they had gone back to
her place and fallen into bed and screwed like a couple of sailors on shore
leave.

Bringing them to this morning. He nuzzled the top of her head with his nose,
feeling the ghost of a giddy grin on his own face. Scully had been so vibrant
lately, so alive, that he'd hadn't been prepared to hear that it could still all
be taken away, and so soon. Over the last year or so, as she had gotten
progressively stronger, he had doggedly denied to himself that aspect of her
cancer -- that remission part. That part that was not cured, or healed.
Just remiss.

Life is fragile, and you break things far too easily, his father had once
told him. People's lives are the china shop, and you are the bull.

Mulder had never thought to question this, and throughout his own life
had probably, in retrospect, taken it too much to heart. Scully would kill
him if she knew. He had resolved never to repeat the sentiment aloud.

But still, it rankled, and festered. Because he knew that it was true.

With an effort of will he turned his attention back to the matter at hand,
that being the warm length of Scully's body pressed up against his. They'd
fallen asleep in this half-embrace, her back against his chest, their legs lined
up in a perfect silhouette until hers ended, leaving his hairy legs and oversized
feet to complete the extent of their bodies. His head was slightly above
hers on their shared pillows, giving him a perfect view of the top of her
head and, apparently, an ideal position from which to take a bite out of
her hair. His free hand went back to where it had been when he'd first
awakened -- wrapped around Scully's waist, his wrist resting on her
hipbone, his fingers playing at the soft, bare skin of her abdomen. She
stirred slightly in her sleep and made a low, wordless sound before stilling
once more.

Not quite ready to go back to sleep, but unwilling to get up and disturb her,
Mulder studied Scully intently, committing her to memory. In the heat of the
night they had kicked the top sheet off, leaving it in a tangle around Mulder's
feet, and so he was currently privy to a complete picture of his naked, beautiful
partner, laid out before him in the early morning sun, and he intended to enjoy
every minute of it.

He started at her feet, the delicate feet she crunched into designer heels every
morning. Her toes were startlingly tiny, the nails neatly clipped, but unpolished.
He knew that she paid for manicures on a fairly regular basis, just to keep her
fingernails smooth and short and nicely painted, but Scully had apparently
never been able to bring herself to place her bare feet in someone else's
hands. Except for his, of course. He smiled at a sudden memory, of a
cold winter night and a particularly erotic foot massage...

He wallowed in remembrance for a while, then swept his eyes over her
thin ankles, up her shins, to the smooth knees that he watched her assiduously
moisturize from time to time, to her shapely, not-quite-plump, just-a-little-firm
thighs. Scully had great thighs. He loved to feel them underneath his hands
or clenching against his hips, loved to dig his fingers into that soft, solid flesh
as he fed on her.

Which brought him to the juncture of said thighs. From his vantage point he
could only see a dark curling of hair, but he knew well what she looked and
tasted like underneath. He grew harder at the thought of it, at the temptation
to stroke her there, or to place his mouth on her and bring her to a blissful
awakening. But not yet. He wasn't ready yet, and she needed her sleep.

He forced himself to move his eyes further upward, to her lower abdomen,
where his fingers rested centimeters from her small, inverted navel. The
nearly invisible down of her hair there was soft against his fingertips, and
the small swell of her belly rose and fell as she breathed. He shifted his
body away from hers ever so slightly so that he could gaze at the small of
her back, too, at the lurid tattoo embedded there, the snake eating its own
tail, and wondered not for the first time what her state of mind had been
when she'd chosen that design. She had never been forthcoming with that
information, and he knew better than to press her. He wasn't sure he wanted
to know, in any case.

Up again, following the graceful curve of her spine, then back to her front, to
her breasts. Full, soft, and high, still endowed with a slight buoyancy that he
knew would continue to lessen with age. Her nipples were the palest pink
with just the faintest tinge of blue around the edges, and at the moment they
were soft and flat, but nonetheless beckoning. He suppressed another urge
to ravish her and moved on in his visual journey.

The next landmark on her ivory body was the gold cross around her neck,
which had slipped to the side of the chain in her sleep. The metal was dull
in the shadow of her body, and every time he noticed it he couldn't help but
see it as a reminder of just how much she had lost. It was always there,
lost or given away at the darkest moments of her life, yet surviving to make
sure she never forgot the reasons it was taken from her in the first place.
Considering that most of what had happened to her was indirectly his fault,
he was vaguely surprised the gold didn't sear his skin when he touched it.

He pushed those dark musings from his mind and focused on his lover's face
as she slept. Her proud chin was drawn close to her neck, her sumptuous
lips slightly parted. He grinned at the delicate dusting of freckles across her
cheeks and nose that she tried so hard to cover with foundation during the day,
then moved his gaze to her closed eyes. Her brow was slightly furrowed, her
eyes shut just a bit tighter than they should be, and he wondered if she was
immersed in an intense dream. She didn't look worried, or scared, just...
focused, as if she were concentrating very hard on whatever drama was
playing out behind her eyelids. There were remnants of eye makeup there,
too, smudges of shadow and mascara - there had been no time to wash her
face last night. They had been urgent and desperate and frenzied and had
both fallen into an exhausted slumber immediately thereafter.

All in all, he decided, taking in the complete picture of her, Dana Scully was
a paradox. Strong yet vulnerable, bold yet shy, indomitable yet fragile.

There was that word again -- fragile. Mulder suppressed a disgusted sigh.
She's a person, you idiot, not a Ming vase. And yet a routine trip to the
doctor had made him want to slip on the kid gloves.

He knew, in theory, that the implant was supposed to keep her well. The
smoking bastard had promised him that. But he also knew, in practice, that
Old Smoky didn't have a good track record for promise-keeping. Even when
Mulder had found out about Scully's remission, his reaction had been elation
tempered with a suspicion that he deliberately concealed from her.

He knew that it could all fall apart at any time. It could break, shatter, like fine
china during the bull's rampage. And someday, he realized, the point hitting
home especially hard this week, it would. The inevitability of it weighed on
him with a smothering pressure, like an anvil on his chest.

Scully stirred against him then, and he pressed his face into her hair and breathed
in the life of her as a loud of intake of breath signaled her wakefulness.

"You awake?" she whispered. She cleared her throat, evicting the sleep from
her voice.

"Yeah."

One of her hands found his, draped over her belly, and squeezed it gently.
"How long?"

"Not long." He scrunched down in the bed, still holding onto her hand, so
that he could bury his face in the crook of her neck. She lifted his hand up
to her mouth and kissed it. "Want breakfast?" he whispered against her ear.
He was a bit chagrined to realize he was starving.

She shook her head, and her hair tickled his nose. "Not yet." She turned
over and kissed him, stroking his cheek, her skin soft against the rough pebbling
of his five o'clock shadow. Her breath was warm and stale and he didn't give
a shit.They kissed for a long time, their naked bodies pressed against each
other, his hardness against her softness, hands and fingers questing, until the
wanting was too much for either of them.

He eased her back down on the pillows and she raised her hips to him. He
entered her gently, too gently, and his initial thrusts were tentative, tender
movements inside of her.

She clutched his ass and bit down on his lower lip when he kissed her. "Harder,
Mulder," she said roughly. "I'm not going to break."

But you will, Mulder thought sadly, even as he obeyed her. Someday, you will.

end.