Title: Journey to the Moon Author: RocketMan >lebontrager@iname.com< Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is intended. ====== Journey to the Moon ====== "Dost dream of things beyond the moon? And dost thou hope to dwell there soon?" --Anne Bradstreet, "The Flesh and the Spirit" ====== She held the yellow and orange tinted photograph with two fingers, remembering that living room in that Navy base, and that pair of shoes the Dana in the picture wore. She was smiling at the bowler hat her father had tilted over one ear, and fingering the spot where her mother had spilled coffee on her favorite pair of jeans. Jeans she had worn anyway. It was a freeze of February 1978, and it was a good time, a beautiful time, in her family. Everyone together and living through disasters and watching their father every second of the day, knowing that he could be called away. Called away. She still felt a taint of that bitterness in her. The 1970's bitterness of knowing that soon, Dad would leave and wars would happen and things would die. She had hated America, hated being a part of such a country, even though she was young, and Vietnam was over, and things were getting back to normal by 1978. One year after that and she was okay again. Scully replaced the photo in the little drawer, then closed it. The living room she sat in now was a far cry from the wood-paneled walls, fake Oriental carpet, and dark cherry upholstered furniture of her mother's home. It was a study of blandness almost, but a kind of quiet stillness to the decor that made her breathe deeper, live longer. She could decide things here, and make things happen, and establish reasons for certain behaviors. She would sit on this comfortable, soft couch and believe in things she couldn't anywhere else. She could believe unReason, Silliness, or simple things like Joy and Stability. She would imagine Mulder and see only beauty, and the ugliness of Them was gone. She would sigh and he was there; she would smile and he would receive it. She would dream and he would not be amazed. But that was here, alone. And he was coming here soon. Scully stood swiftly from the couch, much like pulling a Band-Aid, and moved to the kitchen, settling her mind back to the reality of things. She opened her fridge and poured them tea for the caffeine, then set the glasses on the coffee table. Glancing critically to herself in the hall mirror, she moved into the bedroom and brushed her hair, then took off her suit jacket and shoes. Her bare toes wiggled delightfully in the carpet and she padded back out into the living room, smiling. "Hey." Her head snapped up to see Mulder standing in the doorway, one foot stepping over the threshold and one hand on the knob. His key dangled in the lock and he took it away slowly, tilting his head at her. "What's the smile for?" he asked. Scully glanced down at her toes, then back to him, shrugging. "I took my shoes off. You're here." He blinked and wondered whether she meant the smile was for the bare feet or his being there. It didn't matter because he was going to take it to mean she was glad he was there. "Yeah, I'm here. You ready?" She grinned wickedly at him and he had a sudden flash of latching his hands on her hips and crushing her mouth, that smile, into his lips. "Ready," he said, smiling back. She strode over to the couch, then grabbed the folders and faxes and other papers piled neatly on the coffee table so she could sit down with them. Mulder sat at her feet and stretched his legs out underneath the table, resting his head against the cushions. "Okay, here you go." He took the pile from her graciously, but wished they could be doing anything but organizing papers and sifting through rubbish. He hadn't thought there was so much stuff in their little office, so much odds and ends that needed new homes now. "Scully, if I start becoming a packrat again, you let me have it," he muttered. She gave him a startled look and watched him glance helplessly over the papers. When the office had burned, he'd tried for so long to reconstruct the files, but recently he'd given up on that chore. She was trying to convince him it was worth it. "Mulder, if you weren't a packrat, it wouldn't be you." He snorted and tossed the papers back onto her coffee table. "I don't think this is such a good idea. There's nothing here to save. It's all blackened and burned." "There's got to be something, Mulder. We can't have lost everything." This constant encouragement was wearing her thin; she felt her nerves crackling with this emotional weathering. She wished she didn't have to continually renew his enthusiasm, she wished he could pull himself out of those dark places he plunged into. But he turned to her and grabbed her wrist with a tight grip. "We didn't lose everything. You're still here. They tried to take us away from each other, but they can't do it. Sometimes I feel as if we're invincible." She shivered. "Invincible? Mulder. . .all that's happened most definitely proves we're not invincible." "Alone we're not, but together. . .that's just how I feel sometimes. So what's the point in rummaging through all this stuff, staining our fingers black, and finding nothing but blackened paper? What's important is already here. The cases we needed most are here. Except for the ones that I'm sure CancerMan stole. . ." She was still numb from his earlier words, but they just kept coming, one right after another. An endless flow of courage and excitement and genuine happiness. Where had this come from, and why now? Why not during the long months when she wasn't even sure he wanted her around? "Do you want to stop then?" she asked, at once lost and confused. It was a strange emotion for her, this not knowing what to do when she was around him. "Yes. Stop looking." She nodded and placed the folder filled with brittle and crisp remnants of their office, watching him with a guarded wariness. He responded with a smile and moved up to sit beside her, his genuine joy almost infectious. Almost. "Mulder-" "No. Don't be mad." She gave a sigh of frustration and shook her head. "I'm not mad. I just want to know what exactly we're doing here, or what you're doing here. . ." "I'm trying to figure that out myself. I mean, I know why *I'm* here. Not a clue as to why you're here." "Mulder, please don't do the self-pity tonight. It's not attractive." "Sorry, it's something I'm comfortable with. If I say I'm repulsive, then maybe if you just smile, I'll feel so much better about myself." Where had this honesty come from, this brutal, manipulative honesty? She could help but lean forward and take his face in her hands, shaking her head and trying not to smile, but knowing it was hopeless. "You're not repulsive, Mulder. Not at all. I wouldn't be here if you were." "I know. Really, I know that, Scully. But if I tell myself I am, then whatever you happen to offer me is good enough. Otherwise, if I told myself I was worthy of you, I'd have been angry at you, I'd have lost interest long before I could truly understand what love really is." "What?" She was breathing too fast, she was nearly panting on the couch, trying to recover from that emotional word-bomb, his eyes glittering as if he had planned this all out beforehand and was trying to knock her flat. "Yes, I said it Scully. Because I know I'm not repulsive, and while I could never deserve you, I do at least realize that you like me, you probably even love me." "I probably do," she said, replying before she had time to think. The elation on his face was strikingly comic, but she wanted only to kiss it away from him, place her lips to his parted surprised mouth, and swipe her tongue along his pearled teeth. His eyes seemed to see this in her because they grew dark and feral and he leaned in closer. "Mulder?" "Yeah?" he replied, leaning ever closer, those eyes hypnotic even as she was frightened for her life. "Did you plan this all out?" "The fire at the office, no. But almost everything else, yes. It took me a good week and a half to muster enough courage to even think about how you'd respond to this." "To what?" she asked, finding that her eyes had centered focus on his lips, two rubies, fraternal twins that looked just enough like for her to find the differences, and appreciate them. She wanted to appreciate them with her lips, not just her eyes and breath. Touch. She reached out and ran a light finger over the gems, waiting for him to finish his plan. "I wanted to know how you'd respond to this-" And he took his hand and rubbed her belly, skirted her breasts, then captured her chin. She was waiting, barely breathing, feeling a strange lethargy settling over her. This would happen, she would let it. She had no response. She felt the kiss on every level of her skin, every nuance of her nerves, the wetness of it like meeting his soul with hers in a soft ocean of excitement. "I like that response," he murmured, his hands skimming her like appraising a fine piece of material, over and over, light and faint, but sensuous and building in her. She realized now that she had inadvertently let him into her little corner of the world, here in her apartment. That part of her that could be a dreamer, or an artist, or maker of unReason, it was all here in her, bursting from her lips like from a dam, and he was drinking it up, soaking in it, bathing in it like a spirit-starved man. She was pulling him deeper from that bitterness of the yellowed picture, and further into the newness of her other self. "I always wanted to go to the moon," he said gently, afraid she would not understand, but wishing desperately that she would. "Mulder, if I knew how, I'd take you there to live together, forever and forever," she said back, still half asleep with the intense electricity climbing through her. "Ah, I knew it." She smiled and slid into his embrace, deeper into her dreaming self, further from the years of bad things and bad times. He cradled her with his arms and hips and she was more than herself and more than him. "The moon looks rather serene from here," he said. She nodded and closed her eyes, dreaming of that kind of peace, that landscape of beauty. ==== end adios RM