Red Door, a x-files fanfic

Title: Red Door
Author: Amyhit
Rating: R (light)
Spoilers: For Syzygy.
Disclaimer: I'm not CC. I don't even surf.

Summary: This is her, this is you, this is your professional relationship – viscid and dark.

Author's Notes: This fic is a vicious little creature. It's crueler, sexier, and more judgmental than I usually write, which I'm not advertising as a good thing. I guess that's what comes from watching Syzygy at 3 AM. Whatever, I couldn't sleep.

And I'm looking for a woman
whose head's mixed up like mine.
– Bob Dylan.

The story of the Tell Tale Heart reminds you of Scully. It reminds you of you too but in different ways. The thing you remember most about the story is how the man covered that heart with enough junk to keep a full-blown conspiracy buried and yet his guilt was choking, damning. He gave himself away. One thing you can say for Poe, he knew where the monsters lived.

When Scully comes to work wearing perfume you know she's shared her bed with a stranger. After three years of steady workaholism on both your parts you figure you've spent enough time around each other, you probably know when she's ovulating too. Somehow though, it's the fact that you can tell when she's woken up that morning to a pair of whiskey tumblers on the dresser and a pair of hands around her waist that scares you. She comes in smelling like roses and you can't help it, you just know. Sometimes on those mornings the crescent circles under her eyes are almost blue and then you really know. Then you know they were up all night together, silk tied and half sober. She's probably bruised under her supercilious little suit. Sometimes you have to talk about Bigfoot or eat your seeds or something to keep from asking who he was – if he was the same man you know kept her up that night in February… if he looks like you, or nothing like you.

You're such a bastard. You really want him to look like you.

You remember February: the night of the rainstorm. You had a new lead and she had her phone turned off. You were in her neighborhood already anyway – sort of – so you swung by her apartment building and parked. You hadn't even gotten across the empty street before you stopped cold. She was in the window. She was in the fucking window and she wasn't alone. The blinds were drawn and the silhouette they were casting looked like something a private dick would use the zoom lens for and snap away with relish.

By the time you got home it was almost midnight and the rain had turned to sleet. There wasn't a shower you could take that was hot enough. You stood under the spray and pumped yourself like a man possessed. You pumped until you didn't think you could stand it but you still couldn't come. You wouldn't let yourself think about her. You came anyway, in your sleep that night and the next morning you couldn't remember your dreams so maybe… you just don't know.

When she entered the office the next morning she smelled like roses. It might even have been the perfume you remember your grandmother wearing – 'Red something' – but on her skin it made you feel like a chained down dog. A creature that wanted to bite. Or devour.

You guess the whole Catholicism trip gets to Scully after all because her voice is always different the morning after too – a little bitter. Guilt is a hard instrument to play in tune. You would know.

Anyway, you said you'd gotten a call from one 'Detective White' and now the two of you were going to Comity. You looked at the place where her legs crossed each other. Then she yawned and stretched a little so her suit shifted and you had to open a window, just to breath. She began to shiver because who the fuck opens a window in February? You pretended not to notice how cold she was, selective vision being one of the few things you have to your advantage. Mulder, she said, please can we shut that? It was spring, you said, and your eyes felt dusty. This is her, this is you, this is your professional relationship – viscid and dark. Whatever you felt, looking at her that morning, at least you were pretty sure it ended with '–usty'.

It doesn't happen very often, just often enough to keep you nervous in the mornings. She comes in smelling like a garden and walking as though maybe her knees are bruised. You talk quietly too her for the day. You touch her shoulder, buy her lunch maybe, and you remind yourself you don't even have a bed for a woman to fall into, even if – well, even if.

The sick thing, always, is how much you want him to look like you. You think maybe she pulls back the blinds some nights after she's worn him out and looks at the reflection of his lean back, moonlit from head to waist. Who is he in this dim light? And if he smells sort of right she can draw herself close to him in her sleep, dreaming of whimsy and leather and lights in the sky. He could be anybody. He could be.

If it were only jealousy, this devil's advocate act you're playing against yourself, you'd have kissed her by now. You'd like to kiss her so hard she wouldn't need lipstick for a month. This is something else – a licked and sealed invitation for her to be the company to your misery. You phone her at insane hours, extending your olive branch, and she all too often takes hold. It's a branch all right, a branch to a tree rooted in hell.

Sometimes you're afraid you can't love anyone who isn't lonely.

There's this trick you do that keeps your mind off her breasts. It's a guilty pleasure, you guess, though you'd be more inclined to call it 'the thing you do to torture yourself at night instead of counting sheep': You make a list of all the things she's lost. Some of them are because of you. Then you make a list of all she can still lose. Divestment is an ugly, ugly thing but sometimes you forget that. You understand things best when they involve pain, especially love. You've seen Scully grieve and she's beautiful.

There's a bullet wound in your shoulder and her family members are pulling up stakes around her faster than impaled vampires. You're shoulder is healing too fast. You don't want to heal without her. Meanwhile she's sleeping with inappropriate men whom she tells to call her Scully – just Scully. You think she's a quiet lover, the kind that will bite down on her own flesh too keep perfectly silent. Maybe he's got some vulgar necktie she can sink her teeth into. Afterwards maybe she brushes her teeth, hard, and tries to spit your name out of her mouth, again and again like a mint burn.

When Angela came to your motel room in Comity she had you down on that bed so fast you thought she'd been taking tips from a velociraptor. All you remember is the TV blaring black and white on every channel and the taste of Liquor in her mouth, stinging yours. Then Scully came in and saw you. She looked as though she'd been slapped under the harsh ceiling wattage and you would have happily thrown Detective White to the floor in atonement, would it have done any good. Still, the fact remains: nothing was turning you on until Scully walked through that door.

On hard days you just go home and watch reruns of Miami Vice. As if law enforcement were ever that cool. Occasionally you'll make yourself some kind of half-assed Caesar drink and think about how fucked up it is that we as a society have named a drink and a woman's cut open stomach after the same man. Then again, we seem to have that problem. Everything means something else. The one-night stands you've had, you can't really say involved much standing. Then there are the times you look at her – an impatient hourglass with a luscious mouth, standing there, waiting for you – and she's too much, she's too much, and you don't dare.

Sometimes you think 'partner' is what we call the person we can never manage to love without taking a step back from.

Fin.

Further Notes: For the record, I am among the school that believes Scully is probably a lot closer to celibate than the above writings depict. However, I have a love of self-destructive characters and sometimes that love gets the better of me. Feed me back, please.