feedback: msnsc21[at]yahoo.com
email: msnsc21@yahoo.com
distribution: wherever fine fanfiction is read <g>.
Please just let me know where.
feedback: yes, please
rating: all ages
disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I'm only
borrowing them for non-profit recreational use.
or the BTT "Five-Finger Love Affair" challenge.
====
My hand has been in love with Scully longer than I have.
I know, that sounds vaguely off-color, but I can explain.
The very first case we went on together, when we barely knew
each other, Scully came to my motel room door in a fluster,
demanding I examine the small of her back. I knelt down
behind her and let my fingers drift over her soft skin, hardly
daring to breathe. When I was able to reassure her that the
bumps that had frightened her so were nothing serious, she
whirled around and hugged me. Balancing a candle in one hand
and an armful of grateful Scully, I barely knew what hit me.
Score one for Agent Spooky. Not only a partnership, but a
friendship was born that night. And, had I only known it,
love was born then, too. I knew it in my fingertips, if nowhere
else. It took my brain a much longer time to process that fact.
My hand gravitated to the small of Scully's back of its own
accord after that night. I didn't even think twice about it:
whenever we walked together, my hand was there, just above her
waist. Sometimes it just hovered, unsure of its reception;
other times, it nestled happily, if lightly, against her jacket,
guiding and being guided by her.
Lucky hand.
It's a good thing it took a while for my brain to catch up with
my fingers, though. If I'd known how long it would be before I
would experience more than a hand's caress, I don't think I'd
have been able to stand it.
That's not to say that there weren't a number of intimate
moments, though they came at great cost to both of us.
When I first realized what I was doing, I was afraid that Scully
would interpret it as a sexist gesture, and let me know either
by word or action that I should knock it off. But she never
did. She even returned the favor on occasion. She saved her
touches for the moments when they were most needed. As a result,
just the touch of her fingers could ground me, bring me back to
reality. A touch on my arm and a soft, "Mulder," was all it took
most times.
I can't count the number of times her touch has saved me. When
I was in despair over losing the X-Files the first time, not to
mention our partnership, her touch, just a ruffling of my hair,
told me that no matter what, I still had her. Her fingers in
mine at the close of the Modell/Pusher case meant more to me than
I could trust myself to express in words. I contented myself with
a brief return of the sympathetic pressure of her fingers on mine.
In turn, I comforted Scully when I was allowed to, holding her
close to me in the aftermath of too many terrible events. Like
Donnie Pfaster, damn his soul. Not once, but twice. And when
we learned of her cancer. I would gladly have lost all contact
with her if I could have spared her the pain of those and many
other encounters.
There were low points in our partnership -- times when I thought
I might lose the right to touch her at all -- we could barely
communicate verbally, what chance did my touch have? The one
non-verbal signal I seemed to get from Scully during one of
those times was "back off." That trip to Philadelphia, that
tattoo. The exact spot where she had the tattoo applied. At
the time, she couldn't have done anything that could have hurt
me more. Tell it to the hand.
And yet, when I finally understood that it wasn't necessarily
about me -- or my hand -- I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Every time my hand hovered at her waist, I thought of the snake
coiled there. It seemed to symbolize our lives at that time,
and it got worse before it got better. But better it finally
did get, both in my expectations and my hopes. Since then, I've
tried to prove to her that things aren't as futile as they seemed.
I think the jury's still out on that. But at least my brain --
and my heart -- have caught up with my hand. Although I still
enjoy the clandestine public touching under the guise of
gentlemanly behavior, I can now indulge in more than a five-finger
love affair. Now I can love with all five *senses* and it's
beyond anything my feeble imagination could have conjured back
in the day.
Now I can say not just lucky hand, but lucky me. Lucky beats
spooky any day of the week. Any day that includes touching
Scully, at any rate.
End.