From: ephemeral@ephemeralfic.org Date: 23 Nov 2004 04:02:55 -0000 Subject: Night Song - REPOST by Zuffy Source: direct Reply To: zuffynuffy@yahoo.com Author: Zuffy Email: zuffynuffy@yahoo.com Website: http://Zuffy.tripod.com/index.html Rating: PG-13 Classification: V, MSR Spoilers: *all things. Keywords: Mulder/Scully romance My date: November 2004 Summary: A woman awakens on a couch. Archive: Yes, but keep my name on it and let me know where it is, please. Disclaimer: They're not mine. Thank you to the stars who made this series live. Night Song Scully hesitated at the bedroom door, rubbing a kink in her neck. "I didn't know you were still awake." It was the obvious thing to say and therefore felt stupid, inadequate, redundant. She wanted to say only necessary things to him. It had always been like that. Necessary and complete, things that would make him think, things that would hold his attention. Neither he nor she was much for small talk. Mulder was sitting in bed wearing a white t-shirt and his old reading glasses, the same glasses he'd worn on the day they first met. The sheet was pulled up to his waist, a book lay face down on his lap. The light was too dim for her to read the spine of the old maroon binding. She thought it was also too dim for him to read anything unfamiliar, anything he didn't already know by heart. He pushed the glasses down his nose. "I'm not tired," he said. "You, however..." A smile twitched on his mouth. She crossed her arms and looked around the room. The furniture matched, which surprised her. There was a television opposite the bed, stereo equipment with a lot of wires, a pair of running shoes sticking out from under the dresser, a chair positioned under the window, and an old fan. The sheets on the bed were blue; a pale, striped comforter was bunched at the foot of the bed. Next to him was a nightstand where another book sat alongside an alarm clock, a phone, and a glass of water. In here, he looked less the reckless maverick than he had when decked out on his couch. Even so, his not-so-normal life was laid bare by the empty expanse beside him, stripped even of a pillow. She wondered if anyone had shared this bed. All these years and she'd never figured out his taste in women. Diana and that English tart, but had there been a parade of secretaries, lawyers and aerobics instructors to satisfy his boundless curiosity? There was never a trace: no skim milk in the fridge, Obsession in the air, or long hairs in the sink. She wouldn't admit it, but she had checked. Not that she held any bragging rights in that department. She'd just told him, more or less, that she hadn't had a love life in almost ten years. The clock blinked 1:45. Too late to stay, too late to go, too tempting to hang around and try to figure him out. She shifted her weight and leaned against the door. "So tell me, Mulder, why did you sleep on the couch all those years when you had a nice bedroom?" "I didn't have a bedroom." "And what about this?" "This was a closet." "You used your bedroom as a closet?" "No, it was just a regular closet with a rod for hanging clothes, a shelf, and a pile of junk. Then one day I came home and the closet was gone and this bedroom was here, outfitted pretty much like this, except there was a waterbed. I think I told you about that. With the leak?" He paused. "Let's see, there were tiger sheets, too. And a mirror on the ceiling." They both looked up. "So," she said, "you're suggesting that somebody with appalling taste broke into your apartment, cleaned up your storage room, bought you furniture, carried it up the elevator, filled the water bed, snapped on some tiger sheets...?" "Closet. Not storage room." He removed his glasses and set them on top of his book. "The interesting thing is, this room may not really exist." "Although all appearances suggest that it is quite real." She reached for the wall switch, flipped on the overhead light and then turned it off. "But it can't be. There's no space for it in the building. From there to there," he pointed to the door and the wall opposite. "Eleven feet three inches. If you go into the hallway, you can see that it's not that far from my door to the end of the hall." "If the room is here, there has to be space for it." "Don't think I haven't gone over this. Come on." He swung his legs out of bed. He was wearing lemon-colored pyjama bottoms that reached to his ankles and fluttered lightly as he strode across the room. He squeezed past her in the doorway, then took her hand and led her through the living room and entryway before opening the door to the hall. "You first." "Mulder, I don't need... this is ridiculous." "Evidence, Scully. Cold, hard evidence, isn't that what lights your fire?" The wall before them was a yellowish beige, a bit scuffed but not in altogether bad shape. The building was quiet, the other residents asleep or at least not arguing the finer points of existence measured in linear feet. Mulder rubbed something on his chin, a fleck of white. Under the bright lights, Scully could see that he had shaved and that the hair at the base of his neck was damp. He had stood under the shower and shaved in the middle of the night. There had to be a hundred reasons why men shaved but she could think of only two. One -- because they had to -- didn't apply at midnight. The sound of his hand slapping the doorjamb broke her trance. "Door. Inside, the wall's about a foot this way." His hand slapped the wall again. "The living room shifts over some more, if you've noticed. Three more feet. That puts it here." Fist on the wall. "Which leaves enough space for a closet. Ergo, no bedroom." "The building must cut over somehow." "It doesn't. The bedroom window. If you go outside, it's not there." He started toward the elevator; the movement of his muscles was visible through the pale cotton. She had never seen the pyjamas before in all their travels, in all those pre-dawn case consultations in drafty motels. She'd seen him sleep in his boxers or even his jeans. But never gauzy pyjamas. "Wait. You're not decent." He turned and smiled. His eyes flicked over her, up and down. He could do innuendo in a glance better than anyone else she knew. "We can check the window later," she said, feeling her color rise. "Let's go in before we wake someone." "Then you take my point." "The room is clearly real." "And yet it's not. It's a physical impossibility." He held the door for her and she walked back through the apartment, estimating distances, confirming for herself what he'd described. She stopped at the entrance to the disputed room. His body edged against hers as he braced his arm against the door jamb. Speaking of physical possibilities, his hovering had grown softer of late and more constant, not that she minded. She relaxed her shoulder against him, wondering if he tried to read her as she tried to read him. \tab "So, what's your best shot, Scully? Hypnosis? Hallucination?" His voice was low and seductive. "Unlikely," she said, "although some hallucinations seem uncannily material to those experiencing them. But, no." She turned and saw that he wore his smug look, the one reserved for his wildest fantasies. "What? You want me to say that aliens installed a bedroom in your apartment when they got tired of flattening corn?" "I like the way you think." "But it's insane." "Your theory." His eyebrows shot up once, quickly. It was way too late for aliens and spaceships, the incomprehensible actions of imaginary creatures. And way too late for verbal combat with Mr. Bright-eyes. In the morning, she'd come back and count windows. "So..." he was saying. "The living room here is the world as we know it. While that room either occupies another dimension or possibly an alternative universe that bumped against ours and wrinkled along its edge. And yet..." he stepped forward into the bedroom, "the docking is seamless. Try it." "Docking?" "Yes, just go back and forth." Scully stepped backwards and locked eyes with one of the mollies in the fish tank. It blew out a large air bubble as if it was laughing at her. Then she crossed her arms and walked across the threshold. "Well, what do you think?" he said. "Who knew space travel could be so easy?" "You know, the laws of physics might not apply here," he said. "Nice try, Mulder." He was leaning against the dresser watching her. She peeked behind the door, but of course there was nothing. The room was too small for a grand tour of discovery and she had already surveyed the contents in any case. Another woman, she supposed, would know what to do: stay, leave, inspect his posters, bounce on the edge of the bed, kiss him. What she most wanted to do was pick up his book and read aloud from the page left open. But that seemed like an act of impossible intimacy. She turned in a circle, taking her bearings, buying time. There was a low buzz in the floor, a warm current of air, the faint smell of earth, and the weightlessness of moonlight streaming across the floor. As she came face to face with him, he was humming off-key. He picked up her hand and twirled her under the arch of their arms. "Gershwin?" she said. "Starlight Ballroom, 1939. What good are cosmic harmonies if you can't dance to them?" He tugged her in for a two step at the foot of the bed. She missed the first beats and stepped on his toes. Leave it to Mulder to combine an alien ship with a time machine. She was going to say that, but their bodies had fallen into the same rhythm, fitting better with each step, tiny unconscious shifts of elbow and hip, the brushing of leg against leg and twining of fingers. His humming dropped off. She picked up a few bars before falling silent, leaving only the shuffle of bare feet. It was like breathing pure oxygen. "This is better than crop circles," he said, finally. "Warm, dry." Her head was against his chest now, the humming was the sound of his blood. "I have a confession," he whispered. "Since you told me yours." She pulled back to read his expression. His eyes, only half lit, gave nothing away. "I knew the crop circles were a hoax," he said. "Then why...?" Their bodies slowed to a sway as he searched her face. She loved him but had never said it.\b \b0 For so long, she had wanted a sign from him, but perhaps she had it backward. Perhaps he was the one who needed a sign. She laid her head against his chest again. Her fingers slid along his shoulders to touch the skin of his neck. At last he tightened his hold around her waist and rested his chin lightly on her hair. "I wanted lie in the moonlight with you. Count the shooting stars. Climb the fence at Stonehenge and wait for dawn." His hand stroked her back gently. "Beside you." He breathed the words into her ear. The two of them had reached the end of language, when meaning frees itself to lodge in the pressure of a hand, the length of a sigh, a shared breath, the gravitational pull of two bodies. Outside the illusory window, silver clouds raced across the sky, a thousand stars in their wake. She pulled back and stroked his jaw. He smiled and she drew him to her for a kiss. It was clear now: Fate had created the room, it didn't matter how. She would tell him that later. END Thanks for reading! zuffynuffy@yahoo.com