Title: Shower Author: Pebbles Spoilers: One Son Archive: Anywhere, just please ask first Category: Episode Fill-In, Vignette, UST Rating: PG-13 for language and suggestion Disclaimers: They still belong to CC, Fox and 1013. But they have more fun with me. "Shower" - By Pebbles They are making us shower together, the bastards, claiming contamination from close contact with Cassandra Spender at Mulder's apartment. Led by the queen bitch of them all, they have fabricated a new lie to cover up their sins. She is in on it. I know it as surely as I know my name is Dana Scully. And now she has assumed control in a situation that forces Mulder and I to go where we are not yet ready to go. They are making us shower together. I stand under the water, separated from him by a thin metal divider and I can sense him even though I dare not raise my eyes. I stand with head ducked, refusing to chance the possibility that I might weaken and look up and onto the wet body of my naked partner three feet away. They are making us shower together and I hate them for doing this. Being naked together beneath a spray of warm, pulsing water is the stuff of fantasies. Being forced to strip and shower together in the coldly impersonal confines of the decontamination facility, doubtless being observed from the outside by my nemesis, is its antithesis. How I hate her for coming between us. How I hate him for trusting her as he does. They are making us shower together and an event about which I had often dreamed is transformed into something degrading and shameful, like being publicly flogged or put into the stocks. I cringe at the thought of how Mulder must be feeling about now. I hope he is feeling at least as uncomfortable as I am. They are making us shower together and in a moment they will turn off the water and then I will not even have it for cover. We will be separated by nothing but vapor, both of us naked and dripping in the hot, moist confines of the shower. Even as I think this the flow of water from the shower head slows and dies altogether. I run my hands over my hair, squeezing the moisture from it with my fingers. Blowing excess water from my face, I lift my eyes to find him looking directly at me. His eyes bore into mine in fierce challenge and I meet them unflinchingly. He holds the dare a moment longer before finally dipping his eyes and unabashedly checking me out from eyebrows to toenails and back up again. I dare not let my eyes leave his face. I focus instead on the spark I see glinting in his eyes as he takes his time with his visual tour. His eyes complete their journey and he returns them to mine. The gauntlet has been thrown and I know it. If I don't meet the challenge he will think that I fear him and what we could be together, and that I do not. I'm just not altogether sure of the timing. Conversely, if I start looking at him I'm afraid I will never stop and I don't want Diana Fowley to see me in my weakness. Mulder knows that he is my weakness, as I know that I am his. I start to turn away but as I do my traitorous eyes take control. They make a thorough sweep over his body from his broad shoulders and sinewy arms to the tiny wet patches of hair that cross a well-developed chest to meet in the middle and run down his sleek torso in a dark line, descending to an impossibly washboard stomach only to flare again at the apex of his thighs. Sharply I look away, anywhere but there, back up to his face and into his eyes where I catch my breath as I realize, dear God, he knows. He knows how I want him. My only salvation is the instinctive knowledge that he is experiencing a very similar affliction. It exudes from him like an invisible cloud. The promise is unmistakable. Soon. I can't look at him another moment or I will ignite, Diana be damned. I turn to go but can't resist one last look, knowing that he will see it but powerless to resist. The sight might have to do me for awhile and I don't have his eidetic memory. Somehow I think this is one sight I will have trouble forgetting. I can see me as a very old woman, in my rocking chair, recounting days of my youth to an elderly companion: "Yes, I remember the first time I saw Mulder's package, scared the hell out of me." And it does. Because as I look upon him in all his glory I can see us together, joined flesh to flesh, heart to heart, soul to soul, as we were always meant to be. As we shall be, someday. Soon. Knowing our time will come, I gather my dignity about me like a robe, turn around and leave the room. -END-