torch, Jan 1998
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Disclaimer: Who, me? Happy birthday, Anna. Do not archive this story without permission.
Playmate
She knocked on the door and decided to give him a chance to open it before she used her key. For someone who didn't sleep much, he was amazingly good at not being ready for early morning appointments. Dana Scully counted to twenty-five, then knocked again, rather more briskly. She dug into her pocket for the keyring, extracted it and had just selected the right key, when the door was opened a crack.
"Scully?"
The voice that spoke was sleep-roughened, and the bits of Mulder that she could see did not appear to be dressed. She edged around to one side, trying to catch his eyes. "Mulder, are you all right?"
"Oh, yeah — sure — 'm fine," he said in a suppressed yawn.
"In that case, maybe you should put some clothes on," she suggested.
"I'm wearing a," he paused for a moment as if inspecting himself, "sheet. Half a sheet." The door opened fractionally wider, and she could see that he was telling the truth; a length of bedsheet was wound around his waist, sarong-fashion, and the upper edge was ripped and fraying. "I'm going to write a letter to the manufacturers. These things should be able to withstand," yawn, "normal wear and tear."
Scully peered more closely at her partner, but couldn't make out much in the gloom of his apartment. "I don't think my mother will appreciate the sheet," she said.
"Your mother?" His eyebrows twitched and he leaned forward to look out the door. "Is your mother here?"
"No, Mulder, my mother isn't here. We're going to pick her up, remember? Take her to that new exhibition at the National Gallery?"
His face looked utterly blank, and then, "Oh! Oh, shit, Scully — I mean, I'm sorry, I totally forgot. Something came up."
"Well, why don't you let me in while you go get dressed, and if we hurry we'll still make it." She put her hand on the door, and was surprised to find that he was holding rather firmly on to the door knob.
"Scully... um."
About to ask him what on earth was the matter with him, she suddenly paused and looked more closely at his neck. And at his chest.
If those weren't hickeys and scratch marks, she'd never seen hickeys and scratch marks before.
"God, Mulder, I'm sorry." She took half a step back and jammed the key ring back into her pocket again. "You have someone here. I'll just leave."
"No. No, wait." Mulder scrubbed a hand across his face, blinked, and looked at her with an odd mixture of embarrassment and happiness. "It's all right. I, er, I'd like you to come in, actually."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure. Actually I've been thinking for a while that I'd really like you to meet this person, and, well." He waved one hand in invitation, and allowed the door to slide more widely open, enough for a small, slim woman to slip inside.
The apartment smelled a little musty, and she made a mental note to remind him to clean it up, but it would probably be more tactful not to do it right in front of whoever it was he wanted her to meet. Scully looked at her partner, taking in the rather impressive collection of dental imprints. Quite large ones.
"If you think it's a good idea," she said a little hesitantly. "And perhaps you'd better warn, um—"
"Ah. Yes. I think perhaps I'd better warn you. Scully, this — this person—"
Suddenly she added up his odd turn of phrase with the size of the bite marks, and could have smacked herself. "It's a man, isn't it." She looked up at him and caught the tail end of an embarrassed look. "Mulder, it's all right. Did you think I'd scream and run?" He shook his head mutely, a corner of his mouth twisting up in something that could have been a smile or an apologetic pout. "But maybe this isn't the right moment," she repeated, reflecting that not many people would like to be walked in on, bright and early, by their lover's female partner.
"It'll be all right," he said and then added, almost under his breath, "I think. Come on — into the kitchen."
She followed him, and hissed to his back, "What's his name?"
Mulder turned his head and cast her a bright glance over his shoulder. "Well, I call him Chewie."
"Chewie?"
And then they were in the kitchen, and there was someone sitting with his back to her in a kitchen chair. The kitchen smelled of toast and coffee and freshly peeled bananas. "Hey, Chewie, my partner's here. Remember I told you about my partner — Scully?" My God, he's got a hairy back, Scully thought, peeking past Mulder's shoulder. No wonder Mulder calls him— "Come on, stand up and shake hands."
Scully stepped up next to Mulder as the person sitting by the table pushed his chair back and unfolded himself to his full height of — not quite seven and a half feet, she estimated, even as her throat made a little squeaking noise. He wasn't hairy, he was furry, thick, rough, brown fur, and the enormous hand — paw — he stretched out towards her was possessed of intimidating claws. Her own hand reached out reflexively, but fell back again.
"Mulder—"
"We met in the park," he was saying, sounding a little shy. "About a week ago. I was out running late and we bumped into each other and, er. I guess we just clicked."
Scully looked at Mulder, and at the enormous furry thing standing in his kitchen, and at Mulder again, and began to back slowly out of the room. "Mulder — I'm — you're not — this is—" Reaching the hall, she turned and ran for the door. The first faster steps broke loose others, and she was sprinting down the hall towards the elevator, her outstretched hand slapping the button.
Turning to look over her shoulder, she saw Mulder in the doorway. "Scully," he called out pleadingly, and she fell through the elevator doors, and they closed, and she was safe.
* * *
Mulder slowly closed the door and leaned his forehead against it for a moment. Maybe he should have led up to it a bit more, talked to her more ahead of time instead of just springing it on her like this. Straightening up, he headed back into the kitchen. The torn sheet had started to slip and trailed behind him for a while like the train of a wedding dress before falling off. Chewie was still standing by the kitchen table and Mulder walked right up to him, into him, the warm furry comfort of his embrace. Long arms closed around his naked body, and clawed fingers stroked his back with surprising gentleness.
"She didn't quite understand," Mulder said into his lover's chest, and Chewie rumbled something back at him, and dropped his head to nibble gently at Mulder's ear. Gradually, Mulder began to smile. "Yeah, I think you have the right idea — we might as well go back to bed."
Their progression through the apartment was slow and full of the distractions they created for each other, little nibbles and licks, scratches and hugs, the occasional playful attempt at wrestling. Once they reached the bedroom they fell on the bed, on the mess they had made of the bed, and Mulder wrapped himself around Chewie, rubbing his entire body with voluptuous delight against smooth fur and growing hardness. "You feel so good," he whispered, "so good..."
They rolled together, waves of muscled flesh rising and falling to the sound of a deep, steady, infinitely erotic sound, not quite a purr nor quite a growl, a simple, straightforward demand that had to be met. Mulder drew his breath in on a sudden tingle of arousal, leaned his head back, struggled joyfully against the overpowering grip. To be so utterly at the mercy of another's strength turned him on more than he would have anticipated; this wasn't the usual sexual battlefield of males competing and mating at once, it was utterly different, it was thunderstorms and earthquakes, wind and rain, the slow unstoppable tectonic shifts that moved the world. He was in bed with a tender, musk-scented, rough-tongued force of nature.
"It's the way you touch me," he said, pressing himself closer in careful shifts. His hands moved, stroking, kneading, rubbing. "Yes." Teeth grazed the back of his neck and he bent his head, moaned. That scratchy tongue swiped at the top of his spine, moved around to the side of his neck. The smell was overpowering; after a week of sheer rutting, the sheets — what was left of them — were beginning to stink. And still that smell bypassed all his higher thought functions and rendered him babbling and mindless, desperately hard and needing.
"Let's... yeah... oh, oh yes," sudden breathlessness made the words short and light, they floated away on the bedroom air and he had to groan softly before syllables filled his mouth again, "the way you touch me right there and — yes — I need you now," he twisted, in the grip of the fervent lust that turned his mouth dry and tightened his balls, "yes, like that, oh God I'm so fucking sore, yes, God! I don't know why," he whispered, half laughing, half whimpering, "they named you after the feet."
It felt so good, he could suddenly start to doubt the evidence of his senses in the middle of ecstasy, when his thinking self came for a brief visit to his trembling, hardened, melting body. Reality could not hold something so powerful. His body could not support so much pleasure. "I'll die," he whispered, bucking back, forcing a deeper, rougher, painfully filling touch, "I'll die of this, fall to pieces, oh sweet Jesus, shiver apart, harder, fuck me harder!"
Sobbing, he gave himself over to the driving force that was using his body's delight to take its own pleasure, spread his legs wider and surrendered utterly, cursing, crying, tears running down his face as he screamed into the remains of a pillow. He was addicted, and he wanted more, "more, oh God, more, fuck, yes, oh God, G-g—" Howling and frantic, he felt the orgasm tear up his spine like fire along a spill of gasoline, and burst him open. His cries melted into the powerful roar that almost deafened him, as his lover buried himself one final time deep inside with a shuddering jerk.
Later, in the silence of a vanishing morning, he curled up in a warm protective embrace, face pressed against a strong shoulder. He felt amazed, and delighted, and utterly safe. "There's no one like you," he whispered, on the verge of sleep yet again. "I think," yawn, "I think I love you."