Subject: NEW: 'Beg' (2/2) by Catwoman
Date: June 30th, 1998
Reply To: TheCatwoman@toosexyforyou.com
Classification: V, A, MSR
Keywords: Mulder/Scully Romance
Rating: PG

All other information in Part One.

<< She took several deep, open-mouthed breaths before she
said quietly, "If you'd have let me kiss him, I would've
known it wasn't you.">>

He was silent for a moment, and the fact that she'd stunned
him was comforting somehow.

"What?" he asked carefully.

"You heard me," she said calmly.  He was silent again.

"How?" he asked finally, his voice cracking.  He cleared it
immediately, and she could sense his discomfort from
where she remained standing.  The question in his voice
was genuinely curious; nothing of the harsh whisper he'd
barraged her with a few moments before.  The violence
was gone from his anger, and for that she was grateful.  She
gradually turned her head, allowing her hair to fall forward
onto her cheeks as she tilted her chin down, her eyes
sliding open into mere slits as she stared at the floor.

"I would know you in the dark, Mulder," she said hoarsely,
unable to keep the rough emotion out of her voice.  "I have
never kissed you, but I would know if it were not your
kiss."

"Why?" he asked, and she wondered idly if he would cover
the entire spectrum of standard one word questions.  "I just
told you," she said, repeating firmly what she'd said earlier.
"I would know you in the dark, despite what shadow this
incident with Mr. Van Blundht may cast on my abilities to
recognize my partner.  If I ever were to kiss you, Mulder..."

She faltered, embarrassed and frightened by the topic of
conversation.

"No, go on, Scully," he entreated her.  "I want to hear what
you have to say."

She took a deep breath. "If I ever were to kiss you, without
even needing to learn, I would know exactly how to kiss
you the right way to make you respond, and you would
know how to kiss me, and I would know you by the
intensity in your kiss.  If that man had kissed me, Mulder, I
would have known it wasn't you by the lack of...trust...in
the kiss."

She silenced, abruptly sitting down in her chair, her face
remaining down-turned.  She looked exhausted, he thought.
She rested her elbows on her knees, staring at the floor as
he considered her remarks.  "You have a great deal of
confidence, Scully, especially considering the
circumstances," he said finally, a touch of the mocking
returning to his tone.  She shut her eyes again, tears
re-assaulting her as he mocked her open confession.  "So
why is it that you would know my kiss in the dark,
something which you've never experienced, but you
wouldn't know my voice, or my methods of
communication, or my mannerisms, or even my smile?  For
God's sake, Scully, the look in my eyes?  I saw the way that
man was looking at you."

She dropped her face into her hands, and when she spoke
her voice was muffled behind her fingers.

"He looked at me with compassion," she said simply, a plea
for some form of understanding in her voice.  "He looked at
me like he understood me."

"He looked at you like he was determined to get you in the
sack," Mulder commented dryly in response, and she let out
a small, strangled noise from behind her hands.

"He was," she said, shaking her head.  She dropped her
hands away, rubbing them against her skirt to get rid of the
hot sweat in her palms.  "For all I know, so are you.  I
wouldn't put it past you, or myself.  But Mulder...that man
listened to me.  He came over with a bottle of red wine, and
he sat down on my couch with me, and he asked me to talk
to him, and he listened, Mulder.  He really, really listened.
He listened to me talk about my childhood and my family
and my first date and my prom, for God's sake.  He asked
me to tell him about my real life, and to stay away from
work-related topics.  All I ever talk about with you is work,
Mulder.  Sometimes, I would love to sit down and have a
good long chat about life, but with you it's always the
X-Files and the truth.  Eddie...he looked at me like he was
genuinely interested in what I had to say, and I could tell
him things that were normal, things that didn't have to be
melodramatic in order to be interesting."

She shook her head, smiling self-deprecatingly.  Her hands
were clasped together between her knees, which looked
almost like they were shaking.

"I don't know, maybe somewhere deep down I knew that
that man wasn't you," she said sadly.  "But maybe I've just
been so desperate for so long for some degree of normalcy
in the life I live with you that I jumped at the chance to get
a peek at the more relaxed side of your personality.  What I
found was really, really nice.  I'm very disappointed that I
still don't truthfully know that side of you."

"Very little about me is relaxed, Scully," he told her
ruefully, pursing his lips in a smirk.  "Almost everything
about me is tense and wound tight into a ball."

"Exactly!" she proclaimed.  "I jumped at the chance of you
opening up to me, Mulder.  I thought I was finally being let
in to some degree more than being the dutiful partner.  We
aren't friends, Mulder.  You call us that, but Eddie was
right...we never even talk."

"But we know things about each other, Scully..."

"That a partner is virtually required to know," she finished
in a clipped tone, and his silence seemed odd to her.  She
wondered if she'd angered him again, and sent up a silent
prayer that she hadn't.  "Agent Scully," he said then, in a
smooth, rich voice.  She heard him lean forward, and
visualized him clasping his hands together on his desktop.

"You prefer silk underwear to cotton even under the worst
circumstances, but despite that preference, which usually
indicates a wish to impress someone else, you're hesitant to
display yourself in anything close to nudity to anyone.
You're a romantic.  You love to sit at home after hours with
all the lights out and a ton of lit, scented candles spread
around your room, and sometimes you even bathe with
scented candles surrounding the tub...which is, of course,
always full of bubbles.  You prefer baths to showers, I
might as well say, because you find the chance to relax in a
long, hot soak too good to pass up.  You read romance
novels, but not the cheesy Harlequin kind; you read the
classics, like 'Breakfast at Tiffany's'.  You stay up so late at
night, obsessively working, that you drain your energy for
the next day to the degree that you sometimes fall asleep on
assignment, most particularly on flights and during
stakeouts.  You have a distinct addiction to caffeine,
usually in coffee form, but you consistently give that up for
the sweet release of chocolate.  You sometimes drink a
glass of warm milk before bed, stubbornly hoping each
time that it will help you get to sleep and stave off the
nightmares that plague you, even though you severely hate
the taste of warm milk."

He paused.

"Are these things a partner is required to know, Scully?
Would you like me to go on?" His voice wasn't even
mocking; he was simply trying to make a point.  She closed
her eyes, feeling all the more close to tears now.  She'd
never been more touched in her life.  For all the times that
she'd wondered that he didn't care in the slightest, that he
never noticed anything but how good she was at her job...

"No," she choked out finally, her voice a strangled whisper,
a mockery of itself.  She shook her head.  "How did you
know...?"

"Our first case together you showed your trust for me by
stripping to your underwear in front of me, allowing me to
examine you in case you'd been infected by the same thing
those girls were infected with.  Your underwear was silk.
After that, I noticed several times that you'd packed silk
underwear for out-of-town assignments and guessed that it
was a preference.  Several times when I've shown up
unexpectedly, you haven't had time to hide away your
candles or your books as you usually do, and quite often
you altogether forget to put away the ones in the bathroom.
Your assortment of bath beads and bubbles suggests firmly
that you much prefer a soak in the tub to a simple shower.

"You've fallen asleep on me time and again on flights and
during stakeouts, and I don't have to think very hard to
guess why that's so.  I see the circles under your eyes,
Scully; I'm not blind.  I also observe the obsessive way with
which you tackle your work, never stopping until you're
sure you've done it right and you've done it all.  Every
morning and several times during the day you drink a cup
of coffee, possibly to stave off the bone-deep exhaustion
you normally feel...particularly since the cancer.  I've found
your chocolate stashes in various places in your apartment,
our office, and our cars time and again, usually consisting
of Snickers bars, which, you may not have noticed, I buy
you packages of to refill said stashes time and again,
without your knowledge or consent.  The warm milk comes
>from speaking with your mother."

He almost smiled on that last comment, and she did smile.
"I guess that only goes to prove that what you say is correct,
isn't it?" she said quietly.  "You understand me, you know
me, and I don't know you as well as I claim to."

"I'm sure you would give me a similar list if you weren't
embarrassed by this conversation," Mulder said evenly, and
her smile disappeared.  "You are embarrassed, aren't you,
Scully?  Why?"

He leaned back in his chair again, this time folding his
hands in his lap.  She watched him now, her eyes slits,
turned gently towards him, watching him surreptitiously
while his eyes were elsewhere.

"I have the scene memorized in my mind," he said with a
smug smile.  "When I walked in, you didn't exactly look
like you were enjoying yourself.  You were leaning away
>from him, and the look on your face...you looked shocked,
and possibly even appalled.  Did you want that kiss, Scully?
If not, then why are you embarrassed?  If all you wanted
was to talk...well, we're talking, Scully.  We've said more
and revealed more substance in the last few minutes than
we have in four years."

"No, I didn't want that kiss," Scully said quietly.  "I didn't
want it to happen like that.  I didn't want to be tipsy, and I
didn't want a simple, friendly discussion like that to lead
into sex before we'd discussed anything.  I knew you
would've wanted the same thing, so I think it was when you
leaned towards me that I realized that it wasn't really you.
But I was a little preoccupied, for the most part by alcohol
and confusion, and I had no idea what to do.  However, as I
say, if he had actually kissed me, I think I would have
reacted violently."

"Kneed him in the groin?" Mulder asked, wincing to
himself.

"Probably," she agreed with a faint smile.  "So answer my
question, Scully," he said after giving him a moment.  "Tell
me why, if you didn't want that kiss, you're so reluctant to
speak about this topic with me now?"

"I didn't want his kiss, Mulder.  And if it was you, I didn't
want it to be like that.  It would be...different...if I were to
kiss you."

"Ah, so you have it all planned out," he said smugly.

"No, nothing like that," she smiled shakily.  "No, I
just...this is one time when I'm going on faith, Mulder.  If
you kissed me, it wouldn't be like that.  If you kissed me, I
would..."

She dropped silent again, and he cleared his throat before
whispering.

"Would what?"

"I would...want it," she finished awkwardly, dropping her
face into her hands again. "Do you believe that what
happened between you and Eddie was wrong?" Mulder
asked her carefully.

"Yes," she whispered.  "I know it was wrong.  I know I
should have been paying more attention, that I shouldn't
have let pretty words influence me.  I should've known it
wasn't you."

"Do you want my forgiveness?" he asked her then, in a
softer tone of voice.  "Does it matter to you?"

She nodded, unable to speak at first.

"Oh yes," she murmured.  "It matters immensely."

"Do you know what you can do to gain it?" She shook her
head.  He smiled to himself.

"Why don't you beg, Scully?" he said, the humor in his
voice tainted by the seriousness of his claim.  "Beg me."

Her head snapped up, her eyes flying to his for the first
time in many long minutes.  "You heard me," he said, and
his voice grew hoarser.  She could hear raw emotion in that
voice.  "Beg, Scully."

She opened her mouth to speak, failed, and clamped it shut
again, not knowing whether to be angry or to allow herself
to be numb.

"Maybe that's the wrong word," Mulder said, smiling at her
reaction.  But his eyes were strained.  He was as desperate
as she was, she realized.  That was where his anger of
earlier had come from.  "Maybe it isn't.  I just want to hear
a request from you, for once.  You ask me with your eyes
all the time for things I usually can't give, because a look
isn't substantial enough for me to prove to myself or you
that you actually asked the question.  I want to hear the
words from your mouth just once; I want to hear you ask
me what you need to ask.  You don't have to make a big
show for me; that's not what I'm asking.  I want to hear you
beg like you would beg...I want to hear you be honest."

She was silent, staring at the floor, in pain.

"I'm listening, Scully.  I'm listening like you want me to.
But I can't hear anything if you're not telling me anything,"
there was a note of pleading in his voice, and it made up
her mind for her.  Lifting her eyes to his again, she held his
gaze, and while he watched her, the raw need in his eyes
almost becoming a physical yearning in the bottom of her
belly, she rose slowly to her feet and moved across to stand
in front of him, where she dropped in one smooth
movement to her knees in front of him.  He jumped at her
sudden motion, and jumped again when her hands
smoothed over his legs, stopping on his thighs, fingers
splayed there.  Her head dropped between her hands, her
face against his legs.  He could feel her warm breath
pushing through her lips on his sensitive skin.  Her taut
body brushed against his knees as she curled over him.

"Mulder," she whispered, and he froze at the naked sound
of her voice.  "Mulder, please."

She meant it, he realized, shocked.  She meant what she
was saying.  She was begging him, and she was doing it
freely.  She didn't say anything other than that, but it was
enough.  Those words were enough to convey to him
everything else she couldn't say.  "Scully," he rasped, his
hands gripping her unceremoniously behind the head and
pulling her up to him, where he crushed his mouth over
hers, bruising her lips instantly with the force of his kiss.
She moaned into his mouth and weaved her fingers through
his hair, pulling her body to a standing position.  Without
breaking the contact of their lips, she straddled him, sliding
easily into his lap, dropping her shoes on her way.  She
knelt over him now, holding him firmly by the head to
deepen their kiss, her tongue reaching out in a desperate
attempt to find his.  She was right, he thought, amazed as
her tongue easily found and stroked the crevices of his
mouth and his returned the favor: they knew how to kiss
each other.  They each knew just how the other one would
respond to a certain touch, a certain intensity.  Their lips
felt familiar together, and their tongues tangoed like they'd
been practicing for years.  "You see," she gasped into his
chest when they finally broke for air and she collapsed
forward against him.  "That's what I'm talking about.  I
would know that kiss anywhere."

He simply nodded agreement.

"Am I forgiven?" she asked breathlessly, her breath warm
where it fluttered over his heart.  "Yes," he agreed between
gasps of breath, his point emphasized by the easy intensity
he pushed into the kiss he swooped in to place on her lips.
She was left panting after that one, leaning fully into him,
her strength gone.

"Are you all right?" he asked her.

"Fine," she said with a wry smile.  "I'll be fine."

*****
Won't let nobody bring me down
Telling you what goes around, comes around
Life is full of mysteries
That's exactly what you are, exactly what you are to me
*****
Go and give it to me
On the floor where I can see
On your knees and beg, if you're searching for forgiveness
*****

THE END-That one was fun for me.  How about you?

'Hey Scully, should we be pickin' out china patterns or
what?'

***Feedback is always REALLY appreciated***Thanks for
reading***Flames will be used to decorate the
Catacomb***

"Nathan, I, um, gotta go.  I left the water running in
the...stove." - Vic Mansfield (played by Nic Lea <g>), 'The
Director Files', Once A Thief

'Never the twain shall meet, it seems -- except on the
INTERNET, where fans who call themselves
"relationshippers" write and post stories in which Scully
and Mulder give in to their sexual tension. Anderson, for
one, is surprised that the near-kiss sent the 'shippers into
paroxysms of joy. "The circumstances were so
unattractive," she muses. "He was coming toward her with
such an odd face, and she had this look on her face like,
'What's going on here?' There was no passion in it
whatsoever! In a way, it put me off. If Mulder and Scully
were ever to kiss, it would be a completely different
situation. It would be just incredibly passionate. After all
these years, it would be *intense*."' - Gillian on the
near-kiss in 'Small Potatoes', quoted from 'The A to X of
the X-Files', TV Guide Online, by Rick Schindler and
Stephanie Williams