From: pdeniability@my-dejanews.com
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 00:46:01 GMT
Subject: NEW Momentary Lapses IV: Good Intentions

MOMENTARY LAPSES IV: GOOD INTENTIONS

Title: "Momentary Lapses IV: Good Intentions" (1/1)

Author:  Plausible Deniability

Address:  pdeniability@hotmail.com

Archive:  freely

Category:  S R A

Rating:  R (sexual situations; mature language)

Spoilers:  None.

Keywords:  MSR

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the television program "The X
Files" are the creations and property of Chris Carter, Fox Broadcasting, and
Ten-Thirteen Productions, and have been used without permission.  No copyright
infringement is intended.

Summary: Self-recrimination, comfort food, and a resolution.  Continues Dasha
K.'s Momentary Lapses series.

Thanks:  To Dasha, to Becky, and to all those kind souls who were good enough
to ask me to write this.

----

Something jars me awake.  I open my eyes, and confirm that something is,
indeed, different about my surroundings:  Scully is in my room.  She is
standing over me.  I am naked, and the bed smells like sex, and Scully is
standing over me.

Oh, my God, I groan inwardly.  I did it again.  What is *wrong* with me?

I don't care if Scully did come over to my room last night, this is
just...this is...I need to put the brakes on this, okay?  This isn't right. 
I work with her.  I respect her.  I'm not supposed to, to, to -- to do what
we did last night.

No wonder she's staring at me with a look of fascinated revulsion.

She's wearing running clothes.	I can tell that she's already been up and
about like every other intelligent, responsible adult in this part of the
world.	I, on the other hand, am lying here sprawled naked in a tangle of
twisted sheets. I try to start an apology, but since I have no idea how to
begin it just ends up a mumble.

She averts her eyes, and I follow the path of her former gaze down to my lap.
I'm sporting my usual morning erection.  Well, she's a doctor -- she must know
that that's completely involuntary, right?  Please tell me she knows that.

I rub my eyes and sit up.  "What time is it?" I ask, hoping to suggest that my
mind is really on the job.

"Just after seven."

Oh, shit, I'm screwed.	My mouth falls open.  "We have to go and interview
that witness in Allston..."

She shakes her head.  "Nope, Boston PD caught our man this morning."  She goes
on to explain how our decapitating killer tripped himself up.

But I'm not really listening.  I just keep thinking, oh shit, oh shit, this
has to stop.  I can't do this any more.  Maybe this time I got a reprieve. 
Maybe I'm not screwed after all.  But I could have been.  I could have really
messed things up, lying here like I've been drugged, sleeping off the effects
of another tryst that shouldn't have happened.	What was I thinking last
night? How did I let myself get out of control like that?  How did I
rationalize away all the one hundred and one important reasons that I'm
supposed to keep my hands off of my partner?

Or did I rationalize them away at all...?  As I recall, any claim I had to
rationality went flying out the door at the very same instant that Scully came
strolling in.

Face it, I am the biggest dumbfuck in the whole world.

Scully breaks in on my self-recriminations by holding out a Starbucks bag.  I
take it from her hand without thinking, in a conditioned response that would
make Pavlov proud.  Self-recrimination or no, I am starving.

"Thanks," I say, shoving my hand in the bag and encountering a muffin.	I'm
too hungry to bother peeling the paper off of the thing first.	I just
greedily eat it right out of the wrapper, cramming about two-thirds of it
into my mouth at once.	It's cranberry or something.  It's good.

God, I'm a pig.

Apparently Scully thinks so, too.  "Enjoy your breakfast," she says, turning
away.  "I just went running and I need a shower."

I'm not just a dumbfuck, I realize, I'm an unappreciative dumbfuck.  I reach
out and catch her by the arm.  "Not so fast.  Have breakfast with me," I say,
in a tone intended to promise self-control.

And I really mean to control myself, too.  Unfortunately I tug her back toward
the bed hard enough that she tumbles on top of me.  She is wearing nothing but
running shorts and an abbreviated little top.  Her skin is flushed and sweaty
from her jog.  She smells like Scully, only ratcheted up about five notches.

Oh, God.  I knew nature gave me these morning erections for some reason.

"Mulder," she says, turning her face away, "I'm all sweaty -- "

Or at least, I think that's what she says.  I'm not hearing too well right
now. It's hard for me to hear when pheromones are sounding red alert signals
in my head.  I tug her clothes off her and toss them on the floor, encouraged
when I meet with no resistance.

Amazing how a man can go from good intentions to lascivious designs in a
matter of seconds.  I'm so turned on that I wouldn't know a good intention
now if it showed me two forms of picture ID.  I take her hand and put in on
my cock. Yeah, smooth move.  Like she doesn't know where it is otherwise;
she's a fucking doctor, for god's sake...

"Admit it," I hear myself say.  "You want me.  You want this."

You want this?  What under-evolved corner of my brain did that come from?

She rolls her eyes.  "Mulder..."

I kiss her.  "Tell me," I urge desperately against her mouth.  "Tell me,
Scully."

She sighs in annoyance.  "Okay, I give up.  Uncle.  I want you, Mulder."

She said uncle.  I suppose that means I'm supposed to let her go.  Instead I
laugh a little breathlessly.  "I knew it," I say, or something equally giddy,
and blithely head south...

I can't believe she's letting me do this, I think as I bury my face between
her thighs.  It's the best flavor in the world, the essence of Scully, and
right now I'm the only person on this planet who gets to enjoy it.  I close
my eyes and trace slow hedonistic patterns with my tongue, savoring the sweet
soft wetness of her, as happy as a kid licking icing from a spoon.

It doesn't take long at all before Scully is squirming and breathing in soft
little gasps.  She's so quiet but so beautiful, her face framed against the
pillow.  I know if I keep going she'll come soon.  And after that happens I'll
cover her body with mine, and I'll slide inside her still-shuddering body, and
before you know it I'll be the one who's gasping...

No.

That's not the way it's going to happen this time.  That's too quick, too
abandoned. I've got to salvage at least some of those good intentions.

I lift my face and look at her.  Really *look* at her.  God, she's beautiful.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Too quick," I say.  I move up the bed to join her face-to-face.  Maybe I
lack the kind of willpower that would have allowed me to keep my hands off
her this morning, but at least I can show a little restraint -- enough
restraint that we can really enjoy this, enjoy it slowly and thoroughly.

Yes.

I have to go slow this time, I think.  That's the only way that I'm going to
get these insane impulses completely out of my system.

I have to go slow.  Because I promise myself that today is the last time, the
absolute last time, that I'm ever going to do this again.

Ever.



Durgin Park is the perfect place to take Scully for dinner:  it's a Boston
landmark set in a Boston landmark.  The restaurant has been around for more
than a hundred and fifty years.  It's part of a market complex in the shadow
of Faneuil Hall, the gracious pre-Revolutionary brick building in which
colonial Bostonians once gathered to undermine British rule.

It is also about as far from sexy as a restaurant can be.

Durgin Park is famous for the surliness of its waitresses, tart-tongued
authoritarians who talk back to the customers.	It's a place of clattering
dishes and noisy conversation, in which parties of diners are made to share
long wooden tables with perfect strangers.  They don't serve spicy dishes and
trendy wines at Durgin Park.  No, instead you get nice bland Yankee comfort
food, chowders and Indian pudding and New England boiled dinner, the kind of
food my mother used to serve me when I was sick.

Scully looks around at the tin ceiling and the mustard-colored walls.  She is
obviously taken aback by the way New England quaintness masquerades as dingy
utilitarianism.

"Nice place," she says under her breath.

"Yeah, we got plenny a chahm," a passing waitress agrees without a hint of
irony.

At our table we sit side-by-side with a family of tourists from New York and a
group of locals.  One of the local kids keeps bumping Scully with his elbow.
"Sorry.  This place is wicked crowded at suppa on a Saddadee," he says, in a
sort of all-purpose apology.

Safe, I think as I order the pot roast and the mashed potatoes.  I'm safe
here. I don't have to worry about the stirring effects of coconut oil and
rum-laced drinks, or even of pasta and red wine.  It's loud and jam-packed
and dependable. No man ever jumped a woman's bones in Durgin Park.

Since our little stray into carnality earlier today I'm pleased to report
that I haven't felt the slightest urge to overstep the bounds of partnership.
 Scully and I spent the morning together and once I got the sex out of my
system everything seemed fine again.  We interviewed our captured suspect and
still had time for sight-seeing, taking in the famous stops on the Freedom
Trail and the poetry of college kids rowing crew on the Charles.  We talked
and we kidded and we covered a lot of ground.  I never once felt like I might
do something I shouldn't.

I congratulate myself on my resolve.  Maybe that's all I needed, to go slow
and let the experience sink in instead of rushing headlong into passion.  I
worked with her for more than five years without a hint of anything sexual,
after all. Maybe I just needed to really take my time, once and for all, so
that we could put the tension and the sex behind us.

"Here you go," says the waitress, setting a platter of prime rib down in front
of Scully.  The enormous slab of meat hangs off the plate on either end.

Scully looks up at me in amazement.  "People really eat this much?"

"Wicked bizah, isn't it?" I say in my best Boston accent.

Oh, yes, I am back to my old self again.  I don't feel anything remotely like
passion.  I look down into my mashed potatoes and smile with relief.  This is
going to work out after all.



We take the T back to the hotel.  There is something about the Boston subway,
about the rattling way it shoots through the darkened tunnels, which always
seemed outrageously Freudian to me.  As a teen-ager I actually used to get
turned-on by it.  Of course, as a teen-ager I used to get turned-on by pretty
much everything.  The new me, the thirty-eight year old me, is fortunately
much more resistant to things like that.

Yes, this new resolve is working out pretty well.  Scully is sitting at my
side, balancing herself with each shimmy and swerve of the moving train.  Now
and then the car lurches unexpectedly and, in accordance with Newton's Laws
of Motion, she falls against me.  It doesn't faze me a bit.  She's just my
partner.

I'm feeling wonderfully sanguine right now.  I'm full of pot roast and Indian
pudding, and all is right with the world.  That restlessness I felt before
this morning, that driving hunger for Scully's body, has completely
disappeared.  I'm sane again.  It's a wonderful feeling.

We reach Copley Square, and the train slows to a stop.	We get to our feet. 
The doors hiss open and we exit together.  The stairs out of the subway
station smell like Boston subway station stairs always do, like a urinal. 
Even that is comforting.  It's a very nonsexual thing, trudging with Scully
up stairs that reek of urine.

We emerge onto Boylston Street and turn toward Huntington Avenue.  The cool
night air has that penetrating quality that belongs uniquely to Boston on a
Saturday night.  The lights of the city are bright, and Copley Square is alive
with people out on the town, sociable students and well-dressed urbanites.

"I had fun today," Scully says as we walk the short distance to the hotel. 
It is clear from the way she says it that she is referring to everything
after the hotel room and the sex.  And that comforts me, too; she seems as
resolved as I am to put our relationship back on safer footing.

"Me, too."

"Early flight tomorrow, huh?"

"Yeah.  Very early."

We take the elevator to our floor.  She stops at the door to her room and I
continue on to mine, the door beside hers.  I reach in my pocket for my card
key, and slip it in the electronic lock.  "Good night, Scully," I say, opening
my door.

"Mulder, I can't find my key."  She rummages in her purse, frowning.  "I must
have left it in my room."

I hold my door open for her.  "Come on, you can get in through mine."

She walks past me into my room.  I snap on the light, and she goes directly
to the connecting door.  She moves briskly, as if to emphasize that the
absence of her key is an oversight and not some romantic stratagem.

She disappears into her room.  As she does so, I spot her key on my dresser.
"It's in here," I call through the open door.  "I found it."

I pick it up and go through the connecting door.  She hasn't switched on her
lights yet.

I try to discern her outline in the darkness.  "Scully?  You okay in here?"

"I just stopped to take off my shoes, Mulder," she says.  I hear the thud of a
boot hitting the floor, and then another.  "My feet are killing me."

"Oh.  Your key was on my dresser."

My eyes are adjusting to the dimness.  I can just make out her small form. 
She approaches me, silent on stocking feet.

She stops only an inch or two in front of me.  "Thanks," she says, taking the
key from my outstretched hand.

"Sure."

"Well...good night, then."

"Good night."

But instead of turning around and going back through the door, I reach out for
her and find her mouth with my own in the darkness.  My arms slide around her,
and hers wrap about my shoulders.  She makes a soft sound in her throat, and
threads her fingers through the hair at the back of my head.

Minutes pass.  I'm not sure how many, but I know that it's minutes, plural,
that we kiss like that.

Finally I lift my head.  "This is wrong," I say.

"Yes," she agrees.  "Very wrong."

"We shouldn't be doing this."

"No.  No, we shouldn't."

I bend my head again, and kiss her.

She is so sweet, is my Scully.  So sweet and so soft and so unbelievably
beautiful.  So perfect in every sense...

One more night isn't going to hurt my resolve that much, is it?

****

END