• Rating: NC-17, het
  • Fandom:  X-Files
  • Pairing Mulder/Scully  (Cameo: Buffy/Spike)
  • Date Finished: August 24, 2003
  • Disclaimers: The characters herein legally belong to other Authors and Corporate Entities and are copyright by same.
  • Dedication: To C.M. Decarnin, without whom, etc.
  • Special thanks to Tehomet, for a super-duper beta job and for her patience beyond the call of duty
  • Summary: Someone's messing with the script, but who?
  • Feedback: carene@pacific.net

Taking Liberties

Out of Character

by Carene



 

Mulder pulled the t-shirt over his head and tossed it on a chair. He ran his fingers under the waistband of his blue bikini briefs, hesitated, then decided to leave them on. He liked the feel of the material stretching against him in the back when he put his hands down the front. The video was cued up. He climbed into bed, drew the covers up and reached for the remote. He pressed START and settled back.

And heard a faint click. Someone else was in the apartment.

Mulder put down the remote and reached for his gun. In one fluid movement, he kicked back the blankets and moved off the bed. Stepping cautiously to the doorway he stood to one side, listening. "I know what you want, babe" a male voice came from the TV. "I just want cool guys like you out of my life!" a female voice spat back. Mulder's head swiveled involuntarily to the screen but snapped back to the doorway when he heard soft footsteps. They stopped. He raised his gun.

"Mulder," a voice came faintly.

Mulder let the gun fall to his side and the air out of his lungs.

"Scully, what are you doing?"

Scully stepped through the doorway. She looked at Mulder, who was naked except for the scrap of blue spandex, and slammed backwards against the doorjamb, like an animal surprised by the bars of a cage.

"Scully, what's the matter? Are you okay?"

Scully made a sound like a growl and forced her eyes from Mulder's crotch to his face. What she saw in his eyes -- concern, worry -- seemed to make her wild. What he saw in her eyes made him flinch and take a step backward.

Scully moved forward, panther-like. She smiled, or rather, her lips curled back from her teeth. It wasn't exactly a smile. "No, Mulder, I am NOT okay."

Mulder took another involuntary step backward. He suddenly remembered how he was dressed, or rather, not dressed. He resisted an almost overwhelming urge to put his hands in front of his crotch and edged back another step. Muffled cries came from the direction of the TV.

Scully advanced, her eyes locked on his. Her body looked taut, electrified; the air seemed to crackle around her. Mulder retreated until the edge of the bed caught the back of his legs and he sat down heavily. Scully didn't seem to move but suddenly she was on top of him, pinning him to the bed, her mouth on his, her tongue seeking his tongue, her hips grinding into his. Mulder struggled half-heartedly.

Then stopped struggling.

He returned her hungry kisses with a hunger of his own. Wrapping his legs around her, he put both hands on her breasts and pushed her over backwards. Breathlessly, clinging, grasping, they rolled on his bed and she was under him. His cock was hard. The crackling electricity of her body transferred to his and he dove into her like a current seeking ground -- but suddenly she was fighting free and scrambling off the bed.

"Damn, damn, DAMN!"

Mulder turned over on his back, breathing heavily. His erect cock had escaped from the briefs and throbbed painfully and pleasurably. He thought: How can I get her to do that again?

Scully stood at the end of the bed, clothes awry, hands clenched. "This -- is -- NOT how I was written."

Mulder rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to catch up on the emotional swing from furious passion to plain fury.

Scully stood glaring down at Mulder, but he had a feeling she wasn't seeing him. He frowned.

"Mulder, you know that cartoon bit where one character runs off a cliff, but doesn't fall until he realizes he's thousands of feet above the ground and then the other character hands him an anvil?"

Mulder smiled. "But the upside is, if you paint a tunnel on the side of the mountain, you can run through it." His smile faltered a bit as he remembered how the next toon that tried it was flattened by a locomotive.

"This isn't funny, Mulder. Where are we?"

"Totally not in Kansas anymore, Scully."

"Oh, God." Scully turned away, running her hand through her hair.

"Over the rainbow," Mulder continued. "Down the rabbit hole. Through the looking glass. Cloud Cuckoo-land," he said, getting carried away. "The Twilight Zone, the Outer Limits," his voice dropped into a bad Patrick Stewart imitation, "boldly going --" then into an eerie whisper, "-- Where the Wild Things Are..." In a twanging Cajun sing-song, he added, "Wherever you is, dere you at."

"Shut up!" Scully whipped around, drawing her gun from its holster at the back of her waist. She trained it unsteadily on Mulder.

Mulder looked hurt. "That is not how you were written."

Scully stood uncertainly, looking down at the gun as if she had never seen it before. "Mulder, did you-- have you ever felt-- like you were being-- manipulated?"

Mulder sat up, unconsciously piling blankets around him. "Is this a trick question?"

"I mean--" Scully paced back and forth, pointing the gun aimlessly at the room, and Mulder was put in mind of a caged animal. "You and me, Mulder," she said. "We get so close to-- you know, just now-- and then it's like," she frowned, "fade to black. Tune in next week, where we'll watch our intrepid partners sublimate sexual attraction into blasting some godawful horror into deserved oblivion. You know what, Mulder?" She stopped and stared at a framed picture of Bigfoot on the wall. "I am fucking tired of these-- things from outer space or under the ocean, monsters creeping up from dank cellars after gestating for a hundred years or vampires rolling into town in RVs or things just-- just exploding full blown from the forehead of these writers who must have really diseased minds, Mulder. And we've got to track down and kill some suburban garbage demon. It's like some stupid dance." She grimaced. "Sublimation Tango. I drag you out of the cave of a sentient psychedelic mushroom or you rescue me from the clutches of a psychopathic killer -- and the whole time I don't give a goddamn if something is crawling out of the woods feeding on the living brains of high school kids, all I want to do, week after week is--."

Mulder held his breath.

But Scully wasn't finished. "And the movie! The big moment! Mulder and Scully in a clinch! Hah!" Her lip curled. "Meanwhile, back at the ranch. You're off abducted somewhere and I've got a baby -- apparently," she said bitterly, "via immaculate conception."

"Uh, but I thought that we, I mean, that he was, that I'm his--"

"Thought what, Mulder? That somewhere --" she made a vague, irritated gesture "--off-screen we had wild hot monkey sex?"

"Um," he said, "I guess not."

"You guess not. You don't recall, do you Mulder? Don't recall making love? Donating sperm in the traditional fashion? Do you remember any sex of any kind between you and me at any time in the nine years we've known each other?"

Mulder shook his head slowly.

"Mulder," Scully said slowly through clenched teeth. "Do you ever feel sexual energy pulsing from--" she hit her crotch with a clenched fist-- "outward through your whole body making it starfish with pain and desire so strong it shorts out rational thought and makes you want to rut like an--an-- animal? Mulder? Do you?"

Mulder looked at her a long moment, keeping his face carefully blank.

"Yes."

Sounds of skin thumping on skin came tinnily from the television. Scully jerked around, drew up her gun with both hands, and put a bullet through the screen. The television exploded in a gratifying shower of sparks. Mulder winced." That set cost me--"

Scully turned on her heel and fired again, at the wall behind Mulder's head. The bullets gouged a line of ragged holes in the wood.

Mulder raised his hands, palms outward, stretching his lips into what he hoped was a disarming smile.

Scully aimed again and a lamp on the nightstand exploded. She flung her arm sideways and in quick succession blasted a stack of books, a radio and Mulder's overcoat. Mulder felt a pang, but was just glad he wasn't in it. He waited for yelling, sirens, pounding on the door.

"This is an apartment, Scully," he said, trying for a reassuring tone, though his voice sounded a bit shrill to his ears, which were ringing. "Neighbors, you know? Phones? Cops?"

Scully sneered at him, drew a bead on a cardboard file box and plugged its manila folder heart. She shot a pillow to rags. She pivoted and brought the picture of Bigfoot into focus.

"Hey, hey, hey," Mulder protested. Scully lowered the gun slowly. "How many bullets do you have in that gun, anyway?"

"This is television, Mulder. I've got enough ammunition to last me until a critical dramatic moment."

Mulder considered this. "Ah. Right."

Scully stood staring down at Mulder. Mulder looked up at Scully. He was excited. In fact, if he were pressed to describe it, he'd have to say he felt sexual energy pulsing from his cock outward through his whole body making it starfish with pain and desire so strong it shorted out rational thought and made him want to rut like an animal. He cleared his throat.

"So, uh, are you gonna jump my bones?"

Scully walked around to the side of bed and sat down, scooting up close to him.

Mulder smiled.

Scully smiled.

"God Mulder, that is the stupidest shit-eating grin," she said, and cold-cocked him.


Mulder came to with a headache and the feeling that something was very wrong. He tried to put his head in his hands, but couldn't. Blearily he experimented and came slowly to the conclusion that the reason for this was that his wrists were bound. He opened his eyes and turned his head, wincing at the pain. Right hand tied to the bedpost. Okay. Gingerly, he turned his head the other way. Left hand tied to the bedpost. That probably meant -- yes, his ankles were tied to bedposts too. Different ones. Separately. Spread-eagled and tied to his own bed by -- a face wavered in his mind, a man's face. Intense, hungry, almost smiling but not quite -- no, that wasn't right. It was --

Scully's face swam into view, inches from his. "Hi Mulder," she said brightly. "Here's an ice pack."

Mulder winced at the cold pressure on his head.

"A-a-aspirin," he whispered.

"Thought you were made of sterner stuff, Mulder." Scully disappeared. Mulder curled his lip feebly.

Scully returned with pills and pulled Mulder's head forward so he could drink. She plumped up a pillow and stuffed it under his head.

"You are too kind, Scully," he said sarcastically.

"It's how I was written," she agreed cheerfully.

"Why do I hear a 'but' in that sentence?"

Scully gave him a sidelong smile.

"Uh," Mulder flopped his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.

"You've got a lot of interesting stuff in the closet, Mulder."

Mulder's eyes flew open. Oh, shit.

"I'm not sure, though, whether you used those things on Krycek or Krycek used them on you." She tilted her head, raising an eyebrow.

"Uh--"

"You've busted out of character before, haven't you? With Krycek?"

They looked at each other for a long moment. "Why do you say that?" Mulder said finally.

"Oh come on, Mulder, that 'hit me and it felt like a kiss' vibe you two have got going is obvious to kindergartners."

"Some kindergartners. They should be moved to the advanced class."

Scully ran her a finger softly across his chest tracing a figure eight around his nipples. "Krycek?" she asked again.

Mulder tried to breathe. Scully raised her eyebrow again.

"Yes," he said.

"Who else? Your femme fatale of a former partner?"

"No."

"Skinner?"

"God, no!"

"Hm."

"Well, maybe once." He paused. "Or twice."

"Ah. And that cockroach woman? What was her name --"

"Bambi," Mulder said too quickly and instantly regretted it.

"Ah yes, Bambi." She waited.

"Uh, no, I'm sorry to say."

"You tried, though?"

He looked chagrined. "It's not as easy to break out of character as you think. You have to really want it." She must really want it. He brightened at the thought.

"Mulder, don't tell me she preferred the company of cockroaches to you?"

"Thank you for putting it like that."

Scully moved out of his vision. Then she was back. She was naked.

"Something interesting from your collection," she said, easing onto the bed to sit astride him. The warmth of her bare skin jolted him. But not as much as the sight of the dagger she held before his eyes jolted him.

Scully turned it this way and that, reflectively. "I can't begin to imagine what you might have done with something like this, Mulder. It's not at all a nice object."

"Scully --"

"Oh, but," she said still in the bright, brittle tone that sounded far too cheerful to actually be friendly, "I do have a use for it." Scully slid slowly down the length of his body, sending warm shocks down through his skin at odds with the cold chill travelling up through his spine. Scully knelt between his spread legs. The dagger hovered over his genitals, which were doing their best to shrink up into his body. Scully tugged the waistband of the briefs and let it snap back, and he nearly jumped out of his skin.

Mulder's forehead prickled with sweat. She was so angry. At him? Episodes, seasons passed before his eyes. Had he done anything to really humiliate her? Hurt her so bad she'd --

Stretching the waistband again, she sliced through the flimsy material. Grinning -- with what Mulder felt was a very un-Scully-like grin -- she twisted around and deftly threw the dagger, where it chunked into the wall and vibrated with a slight twang. He shuddered.

Scully looked down at him and laughed. "Oh God, Mulder, your face. What did you think I was going to do?" With a mischievous grin -- a notch down from maniacal, Mulder thought, feeling a bit hysterical himself -- Scully leaned over Mulder's pelvis. Putting her mouth on his shriveled cock, she blew a loud raspberry. Mulder's body convulsed like he'd been hit by a cattle prod.

"Scully," Mulder said in a hoarse whisper. "Untie me. Please."

Scully looked up with a faintly amused, quizzical look. "Why should I?"

"So. I. Can. Kill. You."

"Yeah? Well, we'll see." She put her mouth back on his cock. Mulder could feel her teeth along his skin and tensed again, feeling a sharp prickle of dread in the small of his back. But as her tongue ran over the sensitive skin, a more pleasurable sensation took over. His cock began to grow hard again and he thought this might be okay. More than okay. He caught sight of the dagger sticking in the wall above the ruined television, and goose bumps rose on the insides of his thighs.

Still, what she was doing felt good.

"Oh, this is good, Mulder." Scully rubbed her nose playfully against Mulder's cock. "No fade to black." She took as much of him into her mouth as she could, then let it out slowly. "Mm. No monster exploding through the plumbing." Another long, slow, warm caress with her lips and tongue. "Just us. Oh, god Mulder, I want to do it all, all at once."

Mulder tried to find his voice. "Okay," he managed.

Scully ran her tongue one more time from Mulder's balls to the tip of his cock, and smiled up at him. Then she moved away, leaving him gasping.

"Don't stop?" he said hopefully.

"In a minute. Right now I need -- She was climbing on top of him. One knee pressed into his shoulder. "--Something else."

Mulder looked up at her, mentally clicking pictures he'd bring out and remember later.

"I think if you just scoot down a bit -- yes, that's it, very good, Mulder, you'd think you'd done this sort of thing before. Then I can, ohh." She gasped as his tongue touched her, as he sucked eagerly. Her hands gripped the bed post and she came quickly. "Oh God, yes, yes, yes."

She crawled off and curled away from him on the bed, hugging her pleasure to herself.

Mulder breathed. She must have been wound up real tight, he thought.

"Hey. Scully."

"Hm?"

"If you untie me now, I won't kill you," Mulder said softly.

"Oh?"

"Cross my heart."

Scully put her hand on his heart. It was beating hard. He smiled. "We'll both have a lot more fun if I can use my hands."

"Okay. Good idea." Scully worked at the bonds, pausing to kiss Mulder along his shoulders. Now she took her time, pleasing herself with his body, in an absorbed, almost dreamy way, as if filling in all the details of some long-held fantasy. He closed his eyes and lost himself to her touch, to the feel of her warm skin sliding against him, to her soft lips touching him all over. Finally she freed him from his restraints, and he pulled her down on top of him, running his hands down her back to cup her ass. Squeezing hard, he ground her hips into his until she moaned and moved over his cock. Taking it in her hand, she guided it into herself. She moaned again as he entered her, but her breath caught and suddenly she was laughing, her shoulders shaking even as she thrust her hips to take him deeper inside her. Mulder frowned up at her in mock dismay.

"She laughed at my mighty sword," he said sorrowfully.

"Shut up Mulder." Scully grinned and thrust against Mulder with a pure carnal joy, a hard, sweet pleasure that resonated with his own and amplified it. Fiercely, frantically, she thrust down on him again and again and again. It wasn't graceful. It wasn't shot from an arty angle or through a soft-focus lens. No, it was a lot of grunting and sweating and thrusting and panting until Scully's arched and straining body seemed to go boneless and she leaned over him, gasping as Mulder came. Then they lay sprawled in a sweating heap of arms and legs and bellies and butts.

Scully flopped over. "God. That was so good."

They lay side by side companionably. After a moment, Mulder guided her hand to his cock. It was hard.

"Mulder, you can't do that again already."

"Television, Scully. I have enough ammunition to last until a critical dramatic moment."

Scully turned to half lay across his chest, looking seriously into his face. "How long can we stay here like this?" Her voice was wistful.

Mulder stroked her hair back from her face. "We'll get drawn back into the main story eventually."

"But until then --"

Mulder rolled Scully on her back. "But until then I am going to fuck your brains out," he said.


"Mulder?"

"Hm?"

"You know that other cartoon bit, where Daffy Duck is being tormented by someone who keeps changing the scenery so he's sweating in the desert one minute and freezing in the snow the next, and draws him into a weird four-legged thing with polka dots and a flower for his head? And in the end it turns out to be Bugs Bunny?"

"What's your point, Scully?"

"Is that what just happened to us?"

"Unless there's a lot more to Bugs Bunny's subtext than I thought, no."

"I'm serious, Mulder,"

Mulder turned over on his side bed to face her, propping himself up on one elbow. "People just have to break out of character sometimes, Scully."

"I suppose."

They lay quietly for a moment, thinking. Mulder was trying not to think about Bugs Bunny.

Scully idly rummaged through the clutter on Mulder's nightstand, and tugged a black tie out from under a book. She drew it around her throat, expertly tying a businesslike knot.

"What do you think?"

"They'd let you in the Jockey Club."

Scully looked at Mulder speculatively.

"No, oh no. I'm not putting on your pantyhose."

Scully smiled. "I wasn't wearing any, Mulder. And I wouldn't let you put on my pantyhose. You'd just put a toe through them." She turned over and rummaged on the floor for her purse. Mulder admired her butt as she leaned over the edge of the bed. Nice change from Krycek, he thought. She's not nearly as kinky as she thinks she is. Vanilla is nice too.

Triumphantly Scully waved a lipstick in Mulder's face.

"That's not my color," he said, falsetto.

"Come here." She took his chin in her hands. Mulder poked out his lips and Scully deftly applied lipstick.

"No blotter?"

Scully pointed to a bare nipple. Mulder planted his lips around it, applying his tongue to the tip, making her jump a little. He left a dark red outline of his lips on her skin. He was hard again. He was going to be hard all night. He leaned closer, but suddenly Scully tensed and put a hand on his chest.

A split second later, Mulder heard it too, a sort of scrabbling at the window. They flew apart, each going for a gun on opposite sides of the bed as the window was flung open and a young woman climbed over the sill. She was slender, dressed in jeans and a short t-shirt, blond hair bound up in a jaunty ponytail. She dropped into the room with the ease and confidence of someone who would casually rappel down buildings into other people's apartments. Following behind her was a strikingly handsome man with dark eyebrows and short, almost white hair.

"Oooh, it's the Feds. We're so busted," the girl said, waving her hands in mock surrender at the guns pointed at her. "Wow. That is your color," she said to Mulder. Shaking her head briefly at Scully, she added, "Lose the tie. Really awkward fashion statement."

Scully pulled the sheets up over her nakedness, still holding her gun on the pair. Mulder very nonchalantly reached behind him for a pillow and placed it deliberately on his lap.

"Sculder and Mully," the man said under his breath.

"I'm Buffy," the girl said, crossing her arms over her chest. She jerked her head at the man. "This is Spike."

"I think someone's cable got crossed," Mulder said.

"Well, you know what they say, good girls can go to he--"

Spike looked sideways at her.

"--ven. And bad girls go everywhere," she shrugged and flashed a perky smile. "And even good girls go bad." Her eyes flickered to Spike. "In the right company."

Spike gave a small bow.

"I mean, not evil bad. Just a little bad around the edges. Mini bad."

Spike gave her a look.

"Babbling. Sorry." Buffy regarded Mulder and Scully curiously. "We're your upstairs neighbors. You make a lot of noise."

"You came to complain?" Mulder said.

"No. Sounded like fun, so we thought we'd check out the scene."

Mulder caught Spike's eye, who shrugged as if to say, "Well, what can you do?"

Buffy bounded across the room, stalked over to the dagger and jerked it out of the wall. "So. Let's see what's in that famous closet."

"Oops. So much for vanilla," Mulder muttered.

Spike eyed the pair on the bed with interest, his handsome features rippling just for an instant into something that made Mulder's fingers itch for a crucifix, or a stake. Preferably both. With garlic on the side.

"Monsters coming through the windows, Mulder," Scully sighed.

"But are they friendly monsters?" Mulder said in a cartoonish voice.

Buffy yanked something that looked like a leather harness for two from the depths of the closet. She tossed a black mask to Spike who caught it in one hand. The two of them turned open smiling friendly faces on Mulder and Scully.

Mulder tapped Scully's gun with his own. "So decide, intrepid partner. Do you want to go down fighting or --"

"Just go down," Buffy said brightly.

Scully looked from one expectant face to another, and suddenly brought up the Colt, gave it a complicated gunfighter spin, and emptied the clip into the shattered remains of the TV. She grinned, a bit ruefully.

"I guess I'm fresh out of silver bullets, Mulder," she said.


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