Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It is an old, mindless habit of hers that mostly goes unnoticed, which by no means means that her partner hasn’t carefully observed it throughout the years. Call it a profiler’s proclivity or simply a latent, evergrowing personal interest. By now, Mulder can tell Scully’s mood by it, just as by now he knows the personal interest is way, way more than that.

As she sits opposite his work desk in their cramped basement, round glasses hooked up her nose and eyes laser-focused on what she’s typing, Mulder watches, trying his best not to be noticed. The dry noise of the keyboard cutting through the dead-silent office, louder and sharper than usual, is the first indication that she’s not happy about writing that particular report; her furrowed brows, the second. But then, Scully licks her lip.

It’s a fleeting gesture that Mulder would’ve missed if he wasn’t staring right at her face, but every single time he catches it, it’s like the world stops spinning: slow-motionly, her lips part to reveal the sneaky, pink little tip of her tongue, which right now slides exactly through the middle of her lower lip and, just as swiftly, retreats to the confines of her mouth. Oh boy, she’s pissed.

Where the tip of the tongue lands is precisely what gives away Scully’s frame of mind. He’s learned that every time it quickly flicked the left corner of her lip, she’d be either concerned or somehow bothered, and Mulder chastised himself for this appearance to be the most frequent one, no matter how adorable he found it to be or how flustered he got.

For obvious reasons, he’d deny it vehemently if he ever got caught, but there was something so innocently erotic about that tic, it made him feel… things. On days it would send a flush to his face, on others it would make his hands clammy, but if he had too little on his mind, he’d get dangerously aroused and have to recur to ridiculous resources to disguise it, be them using his suit to cover up a protruding boner, or creating a decoy like, let’s say, drawing attention to the dozens of sharpened pencils in the office ceiling.

One of these dangerously moments of arousal happened just a couple of hours ago, when Scully did the second variation of the lip lick: the one in which she sluggishly crawls the tip of her tongue to the right corner of her mouth, occasionally leaving it there for a few seconds, usually accompanied by a pensive, faraway stare. The lick that tells she’s intrigued by a thought or situation, and is rummaging through it. That’s exactly how it happened when her gaze was on his poster on the wall and she talked about getting one for some guy… Jack, if he remembers his name. Well, of course he does. He’s still thinking about the guy she wants to send a gift to, a copy of HIS poster, of all things. He tries to ignore the jealousy as much as he tried to ignore the hard-on he sustained then, which those proverbial pencils falling over his head prevented her from noticing.

“This is BS… bunch of crap…”

Mulder is leaned back with his feet on the desk, rummaging through his thoughts, his own pensive faraway stare on Scully across the room, when she mumbles to the computer screen and disrupts the moment. He almost falls back. That is when the most fearful lick, the third one, the one that she keeps for particularly annoyed moods and that says “I’m fuming and I might rip your head out” shows up.

“Why, Mulder? Why do you make me suffer?” Scully puffs, moving her sore eyes from the light of the monitor and pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Scully, I’m sorry! How could I know Skinner would want a report on your case, when you were…”

“On vacation, Mulder! I was on vacation, it wasn’t my case! I was just a consultant… you didn’t have to tell him about it, and you certainly didn’t have to say you got involved when I called for your input! But no, you have to act like a kid with too big of a mouth… ‘Skinner, sir, you’re not gonna believe what Scully found in New England, classic X- File!’ Geez…”

“Now, that was a very poor impersonation of me, Scully. I’m sure you can do better!”

The teasing lands flat, and Mulder regrets the stupid remark the moment it slips from his mouth. The way she’s looking at him right now might be drilling a hole right through his forehead, and then, the deadly lick through the middle of her lower lip makes an appearance for the second time in five minutes, followed by her tightening her lips into a thin line. He knows he’s doomed, her tiny feet are going to kick his ass.

He’s thankful, though, that his panicked face registers no emotion whatsoever, because right now all his efforts are concentrated in not keeping his erection. Behind the blank stare, he forces images inside his mind: a soft alien head being zipped off during an autopsy, Lord Kimbote walking like a stop motion monster from “Clash of the Titans”, Clyde Bruckman lying naked in a field of red tulips, Dana Scully lying in bed in nothing but Chantilly lace, her pretty, pink little tongue dancing around his… damn. Down - and up - go his efforts.

“Mulder, are you alright?”

“Sorry, what?” Mulder slides his chair below the desk as further as possible without breaking his legs under it, trying to hide the undeniable proof of how much his partner messes with him.

“You look a little flushed.”

Scully moves across the room and approaches his desk, already stretching her hand to feel his forehead for a fever. If she touches him now, be it a medically-cold, detached touch or not, he’s going to self combust and that’s not how he wants to prove this phenomenon is real.

“I’m alright, I’m alright!” he waves her away, her movement stopped mid-air “Look, it’s past five, let’s get out of here and I’ll buy you dinner. Least I can do, I guess.”

“Okay, let me just finish this. Oh, and you’re buying dessert, too. You owe me!”

“Fair enough. It’s a date..! I mean, it’s a deal!”

*****

It’s half past six when they manage to leave the Hoover building, the infamous report finally finished, proof-read and emailed to Skinner so that Scully doesn’t have to give it another thought - at least until their boss reads it and comes back asking about collective self immolation and witchcraft and jujus. Mulder can tell she’s still quite upset when she huffs a sigh and mumbles she’ll need another vacation soon, as she puts on her suit and grabs her purse to leave. He, on the other hand, removes his own to carry it in front of the now almost fading tent in his trousers, and rolls up his shirt sleeves to try to convey he’s in reality bothered by the heat. That’s the reason he’s flushed, alright: the heat.

They enter his car and Mulder drives away, thinking about a nice, casual place to take her. What does she like, what does she like… she likes super healthy, super boring salads, definitely not an option… diner food, no, they have that far too many times on the road… she likes ribs. Finger-licking, dripping in sauce, barbeque ribs… oh, damn. The flashback his eidetic memory retrieves of a baby-faced Scully, all business and still barely marred by the spookiness that is now her life, too, licking sauce of the corners of her mouth just before he goes to aid her with the task, sends yet another rush of blood down south. The tent is back up, and he feels his mouth very dry all of a sudden.

“Sc… Sc… sorry.” he clears his throat loudly and focuses his vision straight on the street, avoiding eye contact at all costs “Scully, can you reach my suit in the back seat?”

“Sure. Feeling cold all of a sudden, Mulder? Are you sure you’re alright?”

They stop briefly at a traffic light that goes green within seconds, yet Mulder can’t help but to look at her, who seems genuinely concerned about his current health condition. With his hands on the wheel, he can’t dodge her caring hand when it’s placed gently on his forehead, then on his cheek, then the back of it on his neck, just above his Adam’s apple. Her skin on his feels like electricity and he steps in the gas with a little more enthusiasm than necessary.

“Well, you’re still a bit flushed but don't seem to have a fever… Mulder, you’re shivering! Is this some kind of… withdrawal? Are you on something that I, as your doctor, don’t know of?” she raises an inquisitive eyebrow, and bam! there it is, the concerned lick to the left. Doomed; he’s doomed.

“What? NO! I’m sure it’s nothing, Scully. Maybe I just need to eat something, I skipped lunch today.”

It was a very poor excuse but his tone, kind of frustrated, kind of desperate, tells her she should not push him right now, so she reaches behind for his suit without another word. Since he’s driving and there are no other traffic lights in sight, she moves to place it on his lap, and that’s when she sees it. He’s forcing himself to look at the street ahead, so he misses the way her eyes pop out of the orbits and her eyebrows shoot up to her hairline in astonishment.

Oh God, he’s aroused. He’s so aroused it looks like it’s painful in the confines of his underwear and pants. And oh God, he’s big.

Scully is well aware she shouldn't be staring and that he’d probably try to kill himself if he ever caught her doing so - perhaps throwing a ridiculous innuendo at her first, but he’d invariably end up embarrassed to death, so she drops the suit on his lap matter-of-factly and diverts her sight to the passing cars by her window, while he’s still unaware of her indiscretion. With the piece of clothing falling over his boner, he can’t help the hiss the weight of it elicits from his mouth; both feign sweet ignorance, looking at opposite ways.

Minutes later Mulder stops at a gastropub he knows midway to Georgetown, that he thinks she might like. It’s not too crowded, casual but elegant enough so that Scully fits perfectly into the ambience, and the food is quite good. Amazing ribs. Before leaving the car he dresses the suit with a few deep breaths and the mantra “Frohike on a Speedo, Frohike on a Speedo” on loop inside his head, along with the image he so desperately hopes to help him soften quickly, but then she calls at him from the other side of the car and urges them to get inside, frustrating his preparations. So he inhales deeply again, drapes the suit to cover his modesty as best as he can and goes, choosing not to guide her with his hand on her back this time. She, of course, notices the change in behaviour and wonders what the hell is going on with him today; she won’t confess, however, not even to her own heart, that she misses the familiar gesture. She missed it since she left for the weekend.

They find a booth in the end of the room, far from the door and from the hustle of the bar, and in a flash a waiter is there to hand them the menus. Scully scans through the options with a smirk when Mulder tells her to choose, that he’d have whatever it was she’d like to eat. For a moment she thinks of punishing him with a big bowl of crudités and a salad, but in all honesty, she’s in the mood for some greasy, vein-clogging self-indulgence. She had enough penitence for one day and wouldn’t linger on it just to make a point. He was trying to make it up to her after all; why not enjoy it, right?

“Welcome to the O’Malley’s, what can I get you, folks?” the young waiter reappears to take the order.

“Lady’s choice!” Mulder points with his chin at Scully, who smirks again without taking her eyes off the menu.

“We’ll start with the truffle cheese fries, and… oh my God, they’ve got ribs here! And then the barbeque pork ribs! And two Shiners, please… Jack!” she ends the order, turning to the waiter and reads his name on the tag with a toothy smile.

“You got it! I’ll make them extra special for the lady!” Jack the young waiter answers with a grin of his own and a wink, before turning back to the kitchen with the menus. Scully lies absentminded for a while, genuinely basking in the innocent flirt, when he comes back with the beers. He places hers on the table first, then Mulder’s, without even looking at him. “Cheers!”

Scully lifts her opened bottle to Jack, then to her partner, who clearly is not either partaking or enjoying their interaction. He clinks his bottle with hers then takes a sip of it and tries not to sulk. Which obviously doesn’t work very well; he seems to be lacking his usual pokerface skills today.

“Mulder, what is it?” Scully asks after downing a third of her beer in a single swig. “You’ve been acting weird since I came back. Gosh, since I was away, as a matter of fact!”

“I have not! I had a wonderful time on my own!” he replies indignantly, yet hardly conveying what he’s just said.

“Oh yeah? Tell me what you did on your weekend, then. Apart from tossing pencils and watching those tapes that aren’t yours. What did you accomplish without my, how did you say?, incessant meddling? ” she asks after another hearty gulp.

“That was The World’s Deadliest Swarms. But anyway, tell me about Jack.” the name sounds ludicrous coming out of his mouth. Scully could swear there’s a hint of jealousy in his tone of disdain.

“Tell you what about Jack, we’ve just met him!”

“No, not this Jack. The other Jack. The Jack from Maine, the one you want to send my poster to.”

“Your post… oh, that Jack! Yeah… nice guy. Completely clueless, but nice!” a few more gulps and her beer was gone. At the very moment, Jack the waiter came with their food.

“Truffle cheese fries, with extra cheese AND extra truffle for the prettiest lady in the house, and our signature pork ribs.”

“Thank you, Jack, you’re very kind! You’re becoming my favourite Jack! Can you bring me another one of these? Thanks!” Scully hands him the empty bottle, checking with Mulder if he wants one, too, which he doesn’t.

With the advent of a second beer, Scully’s annoyment from earlier begins to dissipate, and between gooey fries and sticky ribs, she talks about the weird little town of Amma Beach, Maine, where she ended up without planning to and didn’t enjoy as much as she would’ve liked to. As she tells him of her weekend, her mind wanders through the salty breeze of the shore, calm streets, lobster lunches and the boat ride she didn’t get to do, strategically forgetting to mention the whole evil doll affair not to fuel Mulder. He listens to every bit attentively, and relishes the fact that she’s so chatty tonight.

“Sounds like a place I’d like to visit! I do like unremarkable towns, a bit outside the map.” he nurses his currently lukewarm beer and grabs a couple of fries, not really hungry or thirsty.

“Yeah, I guess you would… wish you’d been there.”

The last bit of the sentence is whispered so lowly Mulder almost misses it, yet it rings, much like Scully’s ever so rarer laughter, like glass bells in his ears. Right now, he’s grateful the messy food hasn’t yet brought her tic back; he hasn’t even felt his arousal fading little by little, his heart is warm and his face is flush for entirely different reasons. A boyish, if not slightly proud smile lightens his face, and that he cannot or would not hide behind a pokerface. That smile, he wants her to see.

“I don’t know, Scully… wouldn’t you prefer to be alone, and enjoy Jack’s company?” he teases with a wiggling of his brows.

“Oh, shut up, Mulder… like I said… he’s clueless.”

Food’s gone, and Mulder’s still wondering how the night is ending with him safe and sound from embarrassment. How did Scully even manage to eat all of that without not so much as one little lick to her lips? He almost resents it. He pays the bill, and Jack the waiter says goodbye with his toothy grin staring directly at her. He leaves an incredibly low tip for the guy at the table.

They are stepping outside when Scully stops for a second.

“Are you still buying me dessert?” he nods “Good, I think I saw an ice cream parlour just around the corner.”

She grabs his arm and hurries through the sidewalk to the hole-in-the-wall Italian gelato parlour. He takes a New York egg cream, amazed to find a place close to home that makes it, and she has two scoops of fragrant vanilla beans on a waffle cone that’s still warm from being freshly made. As they walk outside back towards the car, Scully sees a free bench on a small square and drags Mulder along.

When they sit, the tricky waffle cone’s already melting a bit of her ice cream, so she eagerly licks around it, first one side then the other, and with a giggle collects in her tongue the creamy dessert that’s leaking, before swallowing and humming in delight.

That’s it. Game over. Mulder’s finished.

He chokes on his egg cream, practically drowns on it. His pants suddenly feel extra tight again, and he instinctively closes his suit in a hopeless attempt at hiding his erection. His face turns purple with all the coughing and the utter shame of the situation. At this point, Scully’s reaching for his back and tapping it lightly to try to relieve him from the choke, as she would with a baby.

“Geez, Mulder, are you alr…”

“IT’S YOUR TONGUE, SCULLY!”

She freezes her motions, and the ice cream almost falls from her hand.

“What?”

“I’m SO sorry, Scully… it’s this… ridiculous tic that you have, whenever you’re intrigued, or worried, or angry. You lick your lip. It does… things.”

She’s still frozen, her brows up her hairline for the second time this day, and she's not sure about what to say or even do with that information. When she does say something, it almost gets stuck.

“Mulder, I don’t even… know I do that. I’m sorry that it… bothers you.”

“Don’t be, Scully. I’m just a jerk, I guess. It doesn’t bother me, I find it… endearing, for the lack of a better word. But today was… I mean you were gone for a while, and… I’m sorry, I hate to make you feel uncomfortable. It won’t happen again, this, I mean. I promise.” he tightens his suit to try to cover himself better.

“Well, by the looks of it, I guess I’m the one who’s making you uncomfortable…” Scully turns her head away from him to take a lick at the ice cream.

Until now, she’s never really stopped to think about her effect on Mulder. Of course, she was well aware of his own effect on her: the innuendos, the borderline overwhelming care when she was abducted then sick, the childish excitement over their cases. God, he even has his own tic, the sunflower seeds he incessantly chews on and makes her all… flustered. Well, guess Mulder’s not the only one with a tongue fetish, after all.

“Mulder… can you drive me home?” she asks, knowing he’d do that all along.

She stands up, grabs the half-drunk egg cream from his hand and tosses it in the trash along with the rest of her ice cream, then they walk side by side to his car. The drive home is dead-silent just like their office was this afternoon, but now it is not entirely uncomfortable. She’s no longer mad at him, and he’s feeling lighter now that his secret was out. It even helped his boner fade, which he was most grateful for; the whole up and down throughout the day was really wearing him out.

“That’s it, returned safe and sound.”

“Thank you, Mulder.” she unbuckles the seat belt, but before opening the door, she turns to him and softly holds his cheek in one of her hands. Leaning on, she places a tender kiss to the corner of his mouth, and playfully caresses it with the tip of her tongue. She can feel him shivering against her hand, and coyly smiles without parting from him. A few more seconds that feel like eternity and she finally steps back with a flush of her own.

“Good night, Mulder.”

He doesn’t reply, he can’t. He’s frozen and up, once again, all Jacks and Maine and reports forgotten. And he’s doomed from the moment his flesh kept the memory of Scully’s pretty, pink little tongue engraved for life. He’s in love.

Chapter Text

Scully arrives Britishly on time at their office the next day, expecting Mulder to be there already with his pencils or a slide presentation for her, but finds it empty instead. The door’s locked and when she opens it, the lights are out, there’s no sign of his suit in the hanger or a cup of coffee on his desk except for a cold, sour one from yesterday, that of course he forgot to throw away. She frowns in confusion; he’s hardly ever late, on the contrary, his lack of proper sleep usually drives him earlier to work. Mindlessly she flicks her tongue to the left, but now she’s very much aware of the gesture and tries to refrain from it with a startle, and her hand immediately covers that corner of her mouth - even if Mulder’s not there to see it. How silly of her, she thinks.

Little does she know that her partner lies, at that very moment, drooling on his couch, his face glued to the leather, having passed out in the wee hours of the morning after spending the night wide awake, lost in rampant naughty thoughts about her, and such a masturbatory frenzy that left him exhausted, barely skinned, even more embarrassed and slightly disturbed by the prospect of having to face her the following day, and carry on with the work as if nothing had happened. It’s definitely not the first time he spends the night with her image on his mind and her name on his lips, but how would he cope with the knowledge of the way her tongue felt on his skin?

Just as slumber took him away, he was seriously thinking the world would end after that kiss.

Back at the basement, Scully sits at his desk, swinging in his chair and staring at the pencils in the ceiling, to give it a moment longer before she calls to know his whereabouts; it’s been only thirty minutes, after all. She decides to browse through a few files on his chaos of a desk, to try to get a glimpse of what he has in mind for their next assignment: there’s an extensive one on successive sasquatch sightings between the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and the Canadian border in the past six months - which makes her smile in amusement; then a report on the death of a guard linked to alleged paranormal activity, “possibly poltergeist” noted in Mulder’s handwriting, at Fort Stark, a historical building in New Castle Island, New Hampshire - suspiciously close to Maine, she muses, and wonders if he dug that one while she was there or when he learned she would be; and the last on the pile, one that was opened back in 1985 on a few people gone missing, after bright lights in the sky throughout Route 211 in Virginia were reported, in which there was a more recent entry - and this one gives her chills, so she closes it without reading; she doesn’t even want to think why he’s been reviewing that, but memories of Emily immediately come to mind, and she has to distract herself from them.

She opens a drawer, looking for nothing in particular, and finds two empty bags of sunflower seeds. Why the hell he doesn’t just throw them in the trash, she thinks, but when she collects them to do so, she sees the price tags glued to them: her favourite organic market in Georgetown and a gas station convenience store from Leon County, Florida. Scully had bought both of them for him on different occasions. An involuntary smile twitches her lips upwards when she realizes the reason why he kept them.

It’s already been a bit over an hour since she arrived and still no sign of Mulder, so Scully tries to call his apartment, but is greeted by his answering machine. She tries the mobile, and it goes straight to voicemail. Consciously, but not really caring that she’s licking her lips again in concern, she gets her car keys and drives away to Alexandria, not bothering to warn Skinner of her absence - or Mulder’s, for that matter.

When she gets there and knocks on the door, she can actually hear a low snore coming from #42, and rolls her eyes in disbelief. She gets in using her key and walks into the living room to find Mulder in his boxer briefs and a ragged t-shirt, literally dribbling, with his face squashed onto the couch. He’s laid on his stomach, which makes his butt temptingly available, and Scully ponders for a moment if he’d wake up if she pinched it, not with too much strength, just enough to feel how firm his buttcheek is; she aborts the mission, though, when she hears him growl.

“Mulder?” she calls and crosses her arms. “Wakey, wakey…”

“Humpf… wha… Sc-Scully!?” he jumped all of a sudden, sitting straight and pulling a cushion over his lap, still not awake enough to be aware if he’s got his usual morning boner, but very conscious he’s in his underwear. “I must’ve.. wha-what time is it?”

“It’s almost eleven, Mulder.”

“Geez… and you came all the way here just to wake me up? Do I get a kiss?” the pun lands kind of flat when she rolls her eyes, but the rosiness in her cheeks doesn’t escape him, so he grins.

“You’ll get your ass kicked if Skinner doesn’t find us in the office. Come on, go get dressed!”

Mulder takes a speedy shower and dresses the first clean work clothes he finds in the wardrobe. It’s a grey suit and pants with a white shirt, which would be more than elegant if he hadn’t reached also for the first tie he could grab: a hideous pattern in blue, burgundy and mustard that could’ve easily been the carpet of a 1980’s hotel’s meeting room. They leave the apartment with him still tying the knot on it, Scully locking the door with an exasperated look on her face.

They’re almost at the Hoover Building when she sees a small grocery store with a coffee window and decides to stop.

“Scully, aren’t we supposed to…”

“I’ll be right back, Mulder.” she leaves the car and within five minutes comes back with a styrofoam cup and a small plastic bag. “Thought you would need something better than the cafeteria’s percolator today. And, I think, you ran out of these.”

He grabs the coffee and places it between his knees to check the bag, and finds three packages of his sunflower seeds there, which instantly grants Scully the boyish smile that she loves so much, the one that reaches his eyes and makes them twinkle.

“Hey, Scully?”

“What?”

“Marry me.”

“Shut up, Mulder…” she scoffs while starting the car again “It’s the second time you… Mulder, are you sure you’re gonna have these with the coffee???”

Scully looks appalled at Mulder, who instantly opens one of the bags of seeds and begins to unshell one, cracking it between his teeth and twirling with the tip of his tongue to get to the tasty, meaty center.

“Can’t help it, Scully!” he says before he spits the shell through the open window and swallows, then reaches for a second one.

By now, he’s so focused on his beloved seed he’s completely oblivion to the fact that his partner seems to have forgotten how to drive and has the car stopped over a green light, utterly mesmerized by the skilled way with which he handles his oral fixation. A nervous honk from the car behind them pulls her out of her reverie and she screams an apology through the window, as she drives them toward the parking lot entrance.

“What was that about?” Mulder turns and asks. CRACK, he unshells a third seed, and Scully doesn’t reply or even look at him. Is he doing this on purpose? Damn.

They enter their office and sit opposite each other. Mulder can tell something’s different and grins at Scully - who doesn’t look back and pretends to be reading a medical journal; anything to take her mind from the tingling between her legs all that sunflower seed handling was inflicting - when he sees the files he’s been reviewing are neatly organized on his desk, along with the perfectly sharpened pencils that had fallen and are now laid methodically side by side with them. He also sees the old coffee cup has been discarded.

“Have you been redecorating my desk, Scully? You take such good care of me…” he says with a teasing tone, slightly grumbled by the seed he’s chewing on.

“I was bored.” she replies without looking, and turns a page of the magazine strongly enough to rip it a tiny bit.

“Well, did you take a look at the intriguing cases I’ve specially selected for us? I’m pretty sure we…”

“We’re not going sasquatch hunting, Mulder.”

His face falls instantly. He was sure Scully was feeling guilty enough about last night’s situation that she’d agree to yield to pretty much anything - wasn’t that what she was doing with the coffee and the seeds and the desk? - but her dismissal feels like a bucket of ice water down his head.

“We’re not going ghostbusting, either.”

Mulder takes a sip of the now lukewarm coffee, and believe it or not, it still tastes good, sweet and strong, like his Scully. Like her tongue. His logic tells him it’s because she bought it for him so thoughtfully, and even if he feels quite frustrated, he can’t get annoyed at her attitude. So he just replies with a shrug and an “okay”, then moves toward the files cabinet with his bag of sunflower seeds to dig something else for them.

Crack. Slurp, slurp, slurp. Ptui. Crack. Slurp, slurp, slurp. Ptui. Crack. Slurp, slurp, slurp. Ptui. CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.

Scully is trying not to squirm on her seat, the attempt at paying attention to the reading long forlorn, so as the expense report, the speech to a lecture at Quantico, the Easter lunch menu her mother wants ideas for. Mulder’s been right beside her on that freaking cabinet, chewing and swallowing and spitting freaking sunflower seeds for hours, and she wants to scream. She crosses and uncrosses her legs over and over, and the feel of her panties getting wetter and wetter as her mouth gets drier and drier is maddening.

Mulder turns when he hears Scully puff for the gazillionth time and notices her utter discomfort, just in time to see her tongue travel to her lip: the fearful annoyment lick. Only this time, he smirks when it is followed by a swift crossing of her legs, which apparently are damn restless today. Could she be…?

“Excuse me.” she whispers and runs out toward the corridor. She flees to the restroom in the basement and locks the door, taking deep breaths as she leans on it for a moment. Sitting in the toilet, she draws her panties just to freak out at how damp they are; thoughts of Mulder smelling her, being so close the entire time, make her embarrassed and flustered. She can’t remember the last time she felt that aroused around him; it isn’t uncommon, but surely it isn’t always like this. Maybe it’s the consciousness brought by his confession last night, maybe it’s how she missed him close to her when she went away… it was just for a weekend, but damn it! By the way, she needs to go back soon, otherwise he’ll be suspicious.

When Scully steps foot in the office, Mulder’s leaning on the closed filing cabinet, with crossed arms and a smirk, and a seed between his teeth, just playing with it. She can actually feel the flush creeping up her cheeks.

“Everything alright, Scully?” he asks, wriggling his brows.

“Yeah, just… went to the restroom.” she says, quickly getting to her chair, when CRACK. Mulder pops the seed.

“Oooooh, God…!”

He knew it. The toothy, debauched smile that springs on his face just confirms it: of course Mulder knew it, he must’ve known all along. And now Scully can’t even deny everything, the moan that just escaped from her irrefutable proof that yes, his tongue also does… things to her. She instantly hides behind her hands, ashamed of her lack of self control.

“Hey, Scully.” his voice is suddenly so low and so close it scares her, then she feels his fingers on hers, trying to pull her hands “Come on, look at me.” she finally gives in and lowers her hands. He’s squatted in front of her, and now holds her hands on his, and it’s so so soothing.

“I feel ridiculous, Mulder.”

“I feel flattered…! Hey! It’s okay.”

“Gosh, I’m so embarrassed… I mean, if we can’t even control our own… drives… what does it make us, Mulder?”

“I guess it makes us… even?” she huffs and rolls her eyes at the remark, and he laughs. “Come on, Skinner’s suspiciously quiet today and there’s nothing to do right now. Let’s get out of here before he drops a bomb.”

They grab a very late lunch and she drives him home. Slowly the mood feels less and less heavy, and they end up at his place to catch a movie on tv with a couple of beers; there’s a Hammer marathon on and between “Rasputin the Mad Monk” and “Dracula A.D. 1972”, Mulder tries to make an argument on why Christopher Lee is one of the greatest actors of all time, but can’t really engage Scully in unworried conversation and he’s not having that.

“You’re awfully monosyllabic, Scully.”

“Hm? Oh, sorry.” she shrugs.

“You overthink things…”

“Oh, I overthink?”

“Yep… hey, do you trust me?”

“Usually.”

He lets out a scoff laugh. “Close your eyes, Scully. Come on… now. Open your mouth…” he smiles at her frown “Okay, now stick your tongue out. Just the tip.”

It’s ridiculous. Scully feels ridiculous, but has butterflies in her stomach all the same. When she senses the heat of his breath she almost moans again, but then she feels his teeth skimming the tip of her tongue, very very softly, and then CRACK: he bites her swiftly, yet much more lightly then he would a sunflower seed, it’s just for her to get to know the drill. His tongue comes out to play, and twirls her own pink tip as he would do to unshell a seed. The taste of coffee and salt in him is mindblowing, and right now, she’s trying so hard not to move, not to shove her tongue down his throat, not to straddle his lap - she’s wondering if he’s aroused as much as yesterday - but way too soon he’s pulling away and she sighs in frustration.

When Scully opens her eyes again, Mulder’s staring at her, just as flush and out of breath - and apparently very much frustrated to have ended the demonstration.

“So…”

“If I may say, Scully… you taste better than the seeds. Way better.”

“Then why did you spit me?”

“Would you want me to… swallow?”

Before she can answer the bantering, they’re interrupted by her mobile ringing.

“Scully.” damn, she’s pissed “Oh, good evening, Sir… yeah, I think his battery died… okay, we’ll be there… okay, thank you, Sir.”

Scully tells him Skinner needs them at the Metro Diner downtown. Multiple murder case, something to do with organized crime and a missing person. They grab their things and leave his apartment with unfinished business and an uncared for sexual tension, that Mulder tries to hide under his suit and Scully prays he can’t smell. Damn.