it could be sweet by wen MSR valentines day no redeeming value fluff fluff fluff. for kate, because we've been friends a year now, and i'm so glad that we have, and for the boy, who once swept me off my feet, literally. and for livia, because i have to rebuild her romantic illusions so that she won't put a contract out on me. the phantasmic beta crew, all of whom i probably terrified: kelly, punkm, lorrie, and livia :) thank you guys so much. it could be sweet * like a long forgotten dream... 'it could be sweet' portishead ~*~ On the first day he left a pastel pink candy heart on her desk, and the words Be Mine wrapped around her heart like a satin ribbon and tugged tight. Be Mine. Too late. On the way home after work, he stopped the car in the parking lot, and each time he moved for her she moved away slyly, like a snake, with her teasingly ominous Scully Look, Serious Scully, What-are-You-Doing-Mulder Scully, until he caught her, clasping his hand at the back of her neck. Then they kissed very, very slowly, hesitating, tasting each other achingly as if the touch were unbearable. Each time the edges of their lips touched they trembled and she thought that she might break open like a wakened flower and bleed light. She was shocked at herself, at this sudden abandon, at the wildness and fight within her. She fought him by kissing the soft simplicity of his throat, his cheekbones, the soft skin of his eyelids, but never his lips. His lips she would only graze lightly before tearing away to shower his face and throat and neck with polarized heat, one hand buried behind him underneath his shirt, discovering with her fingers the easy lines of his back, her memories and eyelids flickering upwards and downwards in little flashes of storm, her heart caught up like a snowglobe tipped upside down and shaken almost violently by him so that the whole world became stars and light drifting down around them. She was suddenly afraid of this frantic passion between them, at the dizziness he was pushing like stars through her skin. Every inch of skin he touched, kissed, and worshipped glowed with his fingerprints. She was dusted all over with candy heart dust for evidence of him, and it glowed, it glowed. On the second day he left a pastel blue candy heart on her desk, and she was afraid that the little white letters URZ 4-EVER would either make her cry or smile until she wouldn't know what to do with him. They worked quickly that day, Mulder sifting through old newspapers looking for stories of malignant faeries. She didn't ask; he didn't really tell. They ignored each other largely by working their way around it, tugging softly at the folded over strangulation of their almost matching turtlenecks bent over their covered-up kisses. Half way through the day she put her hands on either side of the desk around him so that she had him caught between the desk and her, and they said nothing while her shoulders touched his forearms and she buried her face in his soft shoulder. When they went out to lunch he bought her ice cream despite the fact that it was thirty degrees outside and she let him feed it to her and steal bites while she actually laughed at bad jokes about fat-free ice cream alternatives. She memorized his incredibly beautiful smile for the first time with her fingers, soft and sticky from Rocky Road ice cream. She adored this gentleness about him and let him kiss her, very long and very soft, his mouth and tongue tasting of very rich dark chocolate and marshmallows. She was captivated by this first real kiss in the middle of a Ben and Jerry's with at least four other tables staring at them. She thought about rocky roads, she thought about marshmallows, and she thought about them. On the third day he left a pale white candy heart on her desk. I love you. She felt herself shiver and crack. She waited for the dream to end, for the long winding hall to push her back into life with an angry snooze-buttonless alarm, but all she could taste was a smooth shiver on her tongue, a creamy white valentine and Mulder's love melting slippery down her throat down into her. This was real, this strangeness - that she wouldn't believe Mulder from a hospital bed, but would believe a white dusty candy heart. They were working for a equilibrium between them, a point of grace to dance around, and Mulder had the romantic sense of a rock. When she told him that, he straightened the papers on his desk and wiggled his eyebrows at her, saying "Love doesn't come cheap, Scully. Actually, it comes at about fifty-nine cents a box, except you get stuck with a lot of green and orange hearts that say things like 'UR COOL' and 'E-MAIL ME' instead of the things you really want to say, like 'MARRY ME'." She could tell from his face that he'd expected her to be shocked, like a movie starlet, to faint and drip into his arms like syrup. Instead, she just smiled. "Are you trying to tell me something, Mulder?" she said, coyly, surprised that she could flirt with him this way, and almost sad that she had so rarely done it before. She liked the effect her voice had on him when she curled a special brand of Mulder Honey into it. It went straight down his throat and made him melt to the knees. He cleared his throat and tried to tip his head sideways, match her grin. "Actually, I'm trying to ask you something." "You're going to have to try better than candy hearts." "And like you said, I have the romantic sense of a rock. It doesn't get much better than this, Scully." "Well, if it doesn't, then no." "No?" "No." He didn't really looked crushed when she said it. He just looked sort of interested. "Okay then." "Okay." After the drive home, she kissed him in the car, her leg scraping his, and he followed her up. They fought against each other in the way that only they could, seducer and being seduced, lover and being loved, and his hand slid lower, continuing the soft strokes and light kisses his fingerprints made wi th her skin, and he continued to slide, lower, lower, faster, hotter, slicker, sliding breathless and terrified down into a place where she just closed her eyes and told him to keep running fingers through her soul. And he did. They both won and lost for the first time on her living room floor, looking for respite and spite, curled up together and breathing hard, fingers sticky with sweat clasping and unclasping. When she woke up again she found that he'd carried her to the bed, and that he was on the other side sort of hogging the blankets. As she moved to get closer to him, to that warmth, she realized that he had planned this as he wrapped her up in his arms, and she hated realizing that she liked it. They were denial and denied dancing straight around each other, and he kissed her just beneath the chin, distracting her, stripping her of the hard won It's-Not-True Scully, stripping her of the hard plated armor and leaving nothing but a heart, Be Mine tied with a satin ribbon, wrapped up with him. By the time they were done making love again she was so dizzy by the everything feel of him inside her that she even thought it was romantic when he sleepily said "I'd make frogs fall from the sky for you." On the fourth day she woke up curled around him, the new romance fluttering between them on sticky wings like a justborn butterfly. She hated the word 'romance' but she let it come to her in a swarm of words in the dark, as she thought about Mulder and tried to place what she'd call him. Friend, Partner, Lover, Boyfriend? No. Definitely not boyfriend. And, she decided, definitely not romance. The man fast asleep in her bed with his beautiful smile was just Mulder, and he was worth more than flowers or wooing or anything else. They were a bent-over ratio, 1:1, a sometimes perfect two, and humans were meant to go through life by twos. She ran her fingers through his short soft hair. When he stirred lightly she whispered "I wish you'd grow out your hair." "I wish *you'd* grow out *your* hair," he whispered back, and she smiled, and he wrapped himself around her and felt warm. "Will you marry me?" he whispered. She stretched slightly, pulled the blankets with her, and curled up against him, her arms around his back, her face against his throat. "Maybe," she said. "Maybe." When they finally pulled themselves out of bed about three hours later, Mulder tried halfheartedly to make her a waffle and ended up just promising to make a stop at Waffle House to feed her pecans and syrup. By the time they got to the Waffle House, Scully ignored her watch that told her how late to work they really were, and let Mulder eat three-fourths of the waffle he'd bought for her, stealing chewed-up bites straight out of his mouth, while he groaned "Scully! That's disgusting!" She had no idea how they would end up and where, but she kissed the side of his mouth and licked the not-too-sweet syrup from the sides of his lips while he laughed a tiny Mulder laugh, nuzzling her face sticky, and she thought, It could be sweet, like this. It could be sweet. ~*~ finis. ~*~ and there you go. happy valentines day. :) @kate- woooo! go us! we've been friends a year, we better be friends for much longer than that hey! catch the 'resilience' reference, i dare ya. this is your warning. if i don't get more of FLV soon, you're going to keep seeing evil fluff like this. @caz- damn you for my new triphop portishead obsession!!!! ;) @livia- is the contract revoked yet? please? :) i swear i'm more afraid of you than you are of me. nocturne@mailandnews.com http://luperkal.simplenet.com/wen/