Fuck, she was heavy.

That was his first thought. And his second. By the time the edges of his vision started dancing with little yellow spots, he was too concerned with oxygen to keep track of his subconscious. When his initial attempt to push her off did not work, panic belatedly set in as he realized his arms were not strong enough to lift her dead weight. His grip on her shoulders slipped and he was hysterically begining to think he was actually going to die this way when his foot hooked in the bed clothes. Instinctively pushing against the resistance he heaved with his whole body. Surprise almost caused him to lose the advantage when his back muscles clenched in coordinated effort with his hips and thighs. 

Embarrassingly, she rolled easily to the side.

He sat up and glared down at her as her short-circuited brain cells flickered slowly back to life. Her eyelids fluttered a moment before opening, and she blinked rapidly several times to bring him into focus. He saw to the second the moment she remembered what had happened. Expecting humiliation he was unprepared for the sudden hoot of laughter that erupted from her side of the bed. Not completely certain he was unhappy the situation had not progressed where it had...well...obviously been progressing to, he still felt an unexpected surge of resentment as she rolled onto her elbow and looked up at him with sparkling eyes.

"Oops."

 A vague sense of humiliation swept through him as she snickered again. Then, abruptly, he found himself lying flat as she grabbed his hips and yanked. In one swift move she had him pinned back to the bed and was smiling down at him, a wicked curve to her grin.

"So... how long does it take for this body to recover? Ten minutes? A half hour?"

Pretty damn close to an hour, Scully. 

Thanks for asking.

Her eyes widened slightly as she read the answer from his face. She shifted and ran one hand lightly down his leg as far as her arm would reach and curled her hand around his thigh. Her voice was so full of good humour he almost missed the context of the words.

"Agent Mulder, have you any idea how many times that body can climax in an hour?"

She did not just say that. She did not...

He squeezed his eyes tight as his stomach muscles spasmed.

"Wanna find out?"

When he opened his eyes, a salacious humour completely alien to the Scully he knew gleamed back at him from laughing eyes. He pushed her aside and was off the bed before he consciously realized he had decided to move. He knew even before he turned that the laughter would be fading from her face. Knew, despaired that he was the cause, but could not stop the instinctive reflex to flee.

He came to rest against the dresser, hands gripping the veneered edges painfully. In the mirror he saw her sit up slowly, legs swinging over the side of the bed carefully. He could not see her face. She sat on the edge of the mattress, her eyes on the carpeting for several minutes. He wanted to explain, but what was he supposed to say? That he could do this while caught up in the physical sensations, but her laughter hurt? Her ability to enjoy what they were doing was rubbing salt in a wound he had not expected to take today.

What a mess. 

He had wondered occasionally, what it would be like if she turned to him one night. Just for the night. It would not have been...unexpected. Hell, the unexpected part was the fact it had not happened before this. Their jobs, the fact there was no one else in their lives and the fact that strangers could not be trusted pretty much left them without the options most people took for granted. It would not have been a sacrifice.

It would have been a gift.

He had refused to consider the fact that somewhere in the back of his mind he had come to see it as an opportunity. A chance to show her what he could offer. A chance to get his foot in the door. Somewhere along the line he had accepted that their lives would never be normal and in that loss, he had discovered opportunity. If she could not have the life she had wanted, maybe she would be willingly to build a life with him. Surely whatever the two of them could build together would be better than the loneliness they existed in apart. At least, that was what he had thought he believed.

As he stared at his partner in the mirror, a shadowed reflection of himself, he finally realized that he had been lying to himself. She was only taking him up on that unspoken offer. The confidence that their partnership was strong enough to encompass this. Maybe it was...

...maybe he was not.

He turned that thought over carefully. She was prepared to make this an issue of friendship. Something they could enjoy and then leave behind them when it was over. Was he prepared to fail as her partner simply because he now had proof that she could walk away? He closed his eyes as confusion swept over him. What was it that was truly bothering him about this?

The loss of what their first time could have been? They were lucky they were still alive to have a first time. Hell, they could have jumped each other after any number of particularly bad cases. The fact that it had not happened, had never negated his acceptance that it could.

The loss of opportunity? The fact that if he ever got the chance to take her to bed, he wanted her looking into his eyes, seeing possibilities for the future? True, but nothing that should cause this much pain. This much confusion. He could still work with what they had. Hell, this whole situation was more intimate than...

He paused.

More intimate. The wind in the Abyss died down and the whispers faded as the truth spread itself at his feet. For all the good it would do him. It would appear that the profiler in him had made connections that the rest of him had needed more time to see. More intimate. Not just physical. Mental. Emotional. All the things he liked. All the things that turned him on. All the things he would have shared as her lover, and she was still willing to walk away. No, not willing. Capable. She was more than capable of opening her heart to him in friendship and walking away in the morning.

The pain rippled slowly as the rejection she did not even know she had given struck him.

She knew him better than anyone. All those things would come out if they did this the way she wanted to do it. As an exploration. With laughter and discovery. She would drop all those walls she carried around, the same walls he had been bashing his heart against. She would offer him the unvarnished truth of herself and then she would take it away again. The friend could share.

The woman did not want him enough to give it to him to hold forever.

The pain should have sent him to his knees. He had not realized how much he had counted on finally breaking through those walls if he ever got the chance. Nor had he ever questioned his eventual success. Self-deprecating humour sneered at that unrecognized arrogance. He had truly beleived they were just waiting. That somewhere behind those walls, she loved him. Could learn to love him.

Could learn to be in love with him.

"Mulder?"

Jesus, what did he do now?

Beneath the worry in her eyes twisted a hurt and betrayal he had never thought he would put there. She had come to him as his partner, certain of his answer and he had turned her away. Worse, he had been the one to make the first move this last time. She had accepted him and he had failed her, rejecting the friend she had been willing to share.

He swallowed tightly. 

Her hand came up to touch the side of his cheek, and without thinking he captured her hand and turned his face into her palm. The movement caught his eyes and as he glanced into the glass his breath caught sharply. That was his body standing so close, head bent, hand captured in hers. It was her face turned willingly into his hand, trust and need etched on her face. Without willing it, he found his other hand rising. In the mirror, it was Scully who rested her free hand against his chest, fingers spread wide as she captured his heartbeat against her skin. It was foolishness, but he wanted that fantasy. Letting his emotions slip, he watched as an expression of desire and love slid across porcelein features. Caught by the fantasy he did not notice when his own features suddenly appeared in the reflection, bewilderment appearing in the eyes.

"I wish this was real," he thought sadly,"I wish this meant something to you."

When her hand clenched spasmodically around his painfully, he realized he had said that thought out loud. Dropping his head slowly, he closed his eyes and waited. When she stepped away, he let her go. He heard her move toward the door but did not have the courage to watch her leave. He heard the closet door open with a bang and flinched as a suitcase crashed to the floor. Hangers crashed and suddenly he felt fabric being pushed into his hands. 

"Put these on."

Opening his eyes, he stared in confusion at the blue suit hanging from his fingers. Whe he just looked back at her, she reached for the zipper on his jeans. Reflexively he knocked her hand away.

"Do it Mulder, or I'll do it for you."

Looking into her eyes in dull surprise, he discovered that she was furious. Arctic rage glared at him from an otherwise expressionless face. She was serious he realized. He looked again at the suit. It was one of her favorites - one of the ones she wore a lot when they were in the office. As she watched him exchange his jeans for the skirt and pull the jacket on over the t-shirt, she stared at him with flat eyes. For the first time in seven years he realized he did not have a clue what she was thinking.

Were they going somewhere?

"Stay here."

He would have protested if she had been one smidge less angry. As it was, an uneasy curl of fear frissioned down his spine. Scully was beyond angry. He had never seen her like this. When she returned she had changed into a pair of of his dress pants and the last of his white shirts. Wherever they were going she was looking for trouble because she was wearing his gun, handcuffs and bulletproof vest. Wondering what they were hunting he was about to search for his own vest when she threw a pair of shoes at him. 

He frowned at the height of the heels but did not protest. The shoes were the ones she wore with this outfit. Risking a broken ankle seemed the safer course of action than protesting at this point. If anything, her anger had spiked higher. He had barely straightened, tottering uneasily on the stilts she called shoes when she did something with his gun and clipped the holster to the waist of the skirt. He was about to turn for the door when she grabbed his shoulders and pulled him around to look at her.

Looking beyond the rage he suddenly realized he had hurt her with that unintended comment. Something he had probably meant to do, he acknowledged distantly. Whatever he had intended to be the result, he had never expected this focused fury. More fury than he would have thought his comment would have warranted.

"Is this real enough for you, Mulder?" 

Then he was spinning around until he faced the mirror, her hands on his shoulders the only thing keeping him on his feet in those damn heels. As her hands pinned his to the dresser top, he had a quick flashback to the motion of her hands as they moved over his gun. His unloaded gun. What the hell?

Scully met his gaze in the mirror. 

He froze. 

In the reflection, except for their hands intertwined on the dresser, they could have stepped out of their office in DC. No, he thought, they would have just returned. Returned from some case that had just tried to kill them. Her...no his...eyes were dark as he stared down at the woman looking out from the mirror. The darkness in those eyes stripped away pretenses. In spite of the suit, the civilized armour, those eyes looked past to the anger, to the woman beneath and wanted her.

Hands slid from shoulders and headed south.

"I bought those shoes a long time ago, Mulder."

The husky whisper did not disturb the scene unfolding in the silvered glass. Mulder shivered as the difference in their heights sent warm breath sliding across his skin. The baritone rumble of her voice vibrated across the shell of his ear, sending tiny ripples twisting down his spine. In the mirror, masculine hands slipped across the front of the woman's thighs and disappeared below the level of the dresser. In reality, heat from her hands burned through thin fabric as she pushed one of his legs out with her knee and used her hands to pull him back against her.

As fantasies went, he knew where this one was going.

What he had not realized, was how much height those shoes had added. He watched her eyes change color in the dim lighting and did not move when she met his gaze, eyes burning with some unknown emotion. His hands slippped as she thrust her hips forward and the bulge in her pants connected squarely on target this time. She tightened her grip on his hips until he got his hands back under him. Reaching for the wall he grunted in frustratration as he realized his arms were too short. Too caught up in the fantasy on the glass to care what part he was playing, he gripped the edge of the dresser and pushed back firmly.

The man in the mirror smiled.

Seeing his own desire for his partner ruthlessly exposed should have worried him. Should have made him wonder just what the hell she thought she was doing. Instead, the man in the mirror was doing what Mulder had never had the guts to do. Was doing, Mulder realized, what his partner wanted him to do. He watched as a dark head bent to nibble a path across the back of the woman's neck. In the mirror, the woman's lips parted in surprise as her back arched, pushing her hips back into those of her partner.

There were few preliminaries. The people in the mirror did not need them. In their eyes, Mulder saw raw hunger, a need to reach out and claim something from the Abyss. A need to deny the victory to the Abyss. Life, not lust drove his hands as the man wrenched up the woman's skirt, pressing himself against her.  Need  , not desire hollowed her back as she widened her stance and tried to draw him closer. Underwear frustrated the man for a moment before he solved the problem by gripping one seam in both hands and ripping until fabric surrendered.     

They paused just long enough for the man to undo his belt and zipper. A muttered comment about the wisdom of boxers almost had them smiling and then all smiles faded. Mulder stared at his own eyes looking back at him from the mirror.

"What did you want me to do next?" he asked softly, having long since gotten the point she had been making.

A brilliant smile appeared, then disappeared as eyes darkened. In the mirror, his hand disappeared beneath her skirt and Mulder nearly leapt out of his skin as long fingers traced a path over damp flash. Gasping, his hips jerked away from her and the dresser shuddered as he was pinned against it. Ruthlessly she ran her fingers around that same electric point that had shocked him earlier. Not pain. Almost pain and frustration shivered through him as his hips twitched again. He groaned as the muscles in his abdomen clenched and then groaned as her fingers danced away. Wanting her to stop, wanting her to apply more pressure he almost knocked her off her feet as he thrust back against her trying to get some friction where he needed it. 
Shaking his head he clenched his sweating hands as a more diffuse tension than he was used to started to coalesce. 

"Scully...?"

Confusion and a vague thought that they were doing something wrong passed through his mind as nerves endings twisted and sparked. In spite of the fact that her hand seemed to be everywhere, it wasn't where he wanted it and he was on the point of screaming at her when she suddenly gasped.

"Sorry, Mulder. I can't wait...".

He wanted to ask what she was talking about when something pushed into him. The unexpected sensation shocked him and he yelped, instinctively bracing for pain. Then he discovered that she had finally hit the spot. He moaned as she froze.

"Jesus, Scully. Move your goddamn hips."

There was a shocked silence, then a snicker. They both groaned as she pushed forward as far as she could go. Mulder had never understood why women felt the need to thrash their heads around. He figured it out as the tension returned with a vengence but hovered just out of reach.

"Shit." he gasped out. "Do something."

The man in the mirror open her eyes. "What would you suggest?" she ground out past gritted teeth.

He glared,"How the hell would I know? This is your body." He grunted as she picked up the pace, the force of their bodies slamming the dresser up against the wall. She returned to working her fingers across his clit.

He was going to need to some serious therapy when this was over, he though vaguely as the world suddenly contracted to a pinpoint. Without warning, it exploded. Scully echoed his shout as the contractions pulled her over the edge and her uncoordinated movements sent near painful aftershocks zinging through a thoroughly sensitized portion of his anatomy.   

For a long minute, neither of them moved as heartrates fell and breathing slowed to normal. Mulder began to notice the chill as various fluids dripped down his inner thighs. His hips were also beginning to cramp and his lower back was starting to ache. He shivered reflexively as she stepped back and he felt the unusual sensation of something withdrawing from his body. More fluid gushed down his legs and he wryly considered that women may have gotten multiple organisms, but they had gotten the messier end of the deal. 

He was conscious of her watching him. He wanted to ask her what this meant, but now that it was done, was not sure he wanted an answer. She shook her head when he asked if she wanted to join him for a shower. He knew they needed to talk, but he did not know what to tell her. Feeling strangely numb, not exactly certain what he felt himself, he let the hot water wash away the evidence.

When he returned to the spotless room, she was gone.

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