WARNING: NC-17 content from the very first line, and not the 
kind most people like to read, either.  Proceed with caution lest 
your sight be stricken from you forever!


Suttee
by Jintian
jint...@graffiti.net

Disclaimer: Chris Carter and 1013 own TXF, not me.  In addition, 
they're welcome to the fetus, which does not appear in this fic.
Archive: Yes.  Please drop me a note and link here: 
http://www.geocities.com/museans/jintian/suttee.txt
Rating: NC-17
Category: Scully/Doggett, smidgen of MSR
Spoilers: My first Season 8 effort.  Hoo boy.
Summary: The ascending stage of a cycle.

For Maren, who knows when it's better to laugh.

_____________________________

Suttee
by Jintian
jint...@graffiti.net
_____________________________


She likes to take it from behind, arching her ass out so the round 
buttocks gleam with the light from his bedroom window.  She 
always moans at his first push into her.  He has to clutch her hips 
for balance while she grasps the headboard, his fingers grazing the 
curve of her belly while his penis strains for release.  She's always 
so tight, gripping the aching length of him like a hot wet fist.

Usually her own hand will be between her legs, working at her clit 
while he locks his eyes on the empty infinity of the snake 
decorating her skin.  Somehow she has the strength to maintain the 
position.  It always gives his blood a jumpstart, makes him thrust 
harder, makes him think that maybe just this once, he can be the 
one to make her climax.

He doesn't know what she imagines as she brings herself to 
orgasm.  Or rather, he could guess, if he were willing to think 
about it.

Sometimes, not quite resentfully, he'll picture the two of them in 
the basement office.  He'll picture her naked and braced against the 
desk, flawless skin hidden from the fluorescents by his own body 
draped over hers.  Or he'll picture her splayed out on its cool 
surface, breasts thrust up toward the ceiling and her smooth 
abdomen tightening as he buries his head between her thighs.

Sometimes he'll think about the one time they did it facing each 
other.  The first time.  How DC was suffocating with the end of 
summer, how she had removed his clothes in the chill air 
conditioning of his house.  Pressed his shoulders into the cool 
sheets and ridden him until he cried out and felt her heat searing a 
brand into his skin.

Even then, he wondered what the hell he was doing.  He knew it 
could never end well.

~~~

On car rides when they have cases, she always pretends to be 
absorbed by the scenery outside her window.  At those times the 
silence between them lies thick, like a dead thing refusing to be 
bothered.  But this is just something that has to exist, he knows, 
something they don't acknowledge.  A corpse stumbled over in a 
pitch-dark room.

There was an ancient custom in India, called a suttee.  If a husband 
died, his wife was to throw herself on his funeral pyre, to burn 
along with the body of her beloved.  It was thought that once he 
was gone, her purpose for living was gone, as well.

Does she realize, he wonders, that she's enacting her own version 
of that everyday?

~~~

They're keeping secrets from him.  He watches Skinner with 
careful eyes, how the other man leans toward her when they talk 
and the way he tracks her movements from behind those steel-
rimmed glasses.  On his off-days he even entertains the suspicion 
that maybe the two of them --

No.  Skinner is a little too intimidated by her, he thinks.  Or maybe 
he's just too smart.  Too smart to try and resurrect a dying woman.

But maybe not smart enough to suspect anyone else might try.

~~~

Monday morning.  The sun has lit the road on fire and he has the 
truck windows open.  The air rushes in cold and biting, still in the 
grip of winter.  The snow has long since melted but the memory of 
it remains.

It's a new week, he tells himself, trying to move into the ascending 
stage of a cycle.  He's been at the bottom of it all weekend, 
slouching around his empty house waiting for her to call.

He's not in love, certainly.  He has been before, and knows the 
difference.  But what amazes him is how sex can still wrap a man's 
head up with his dick, even after all the things he's lived through.  

Of course she's not in the office when he gets there.  She follows 
her own hours, and they don't coincide with his unless she needs 
him to do something for her.

Lately that something has really only been one thing.

~~~

After lunchtime he comes back to the office and there she is, 
seated behind the desk, the desk with Mulder's nameplate centered 
at the front.  She's flipping through a file folder, her hair brilliant 
red against the stark black and white of her clothes.

He closes the door behind him and she looks up.  "Agent Doggett."  
That dry, matter-of-fact voice, as if for the past four weekends she 
hasn't been letting him fuck her until he can't see straight.  It rakes 
fingernails down the blackboard of his nerves.

"Agent Scully," he says.  "Nice to see you at work so early on a 
Monday."

She drops the folder on the desk with a flat, angry slap.  He 
controls a jerk at the sound, bracing himself as her eyes turn 
scalpel-like.  "Excuse me?"

He could pursue it, but he'd really only made the jab in reaction to 
her.  It grates on him that she unbalances him like this, that she can 
make him say things with just the sound of her voice.  He sighs.  "I 
apologize.  Forget I said anything.  Bad weekend."

But that, of course, makes him think about the long, silent hours he 
slept alone, surrounded by the smell of her on his sheets.

She's still glaring at him.  "Do you have something to say to me, 
Agent Doggett?"

And that second use of his name, still expressionless and unheated 
despite the fire in her eyes, makes him think about how she never 
calls him anything else.  Not even when they're in bed and he's got 
his hips churning into her while she gasps and moans toward 
orgasm, when she doesn't call him anything at all.

He takes a breath through his nostrils, lets it out slow and easy.  
"No," he tells her.  "I don't."

She stares into his eyes for another beat, and he almost believes 
she'll pick up the gauntlet again.  But of course, she's no stranger to 
guilt.  Even if she acts like it in the secret hours of night.

"Then let's get to work," she finally says, and drops her gaze.

~~~

Saturday night.  He almost stumbles setting his baggage down, he's 
so tired.  He drops his keys on the foyer table and heads straight 
for the fridge without bothering to turn the lights on.  The smell of 
sour milk hits him as soon as he opens the door.  "Shit."

Her case, her goddamned case, fucking morons in Minnesota 
thinking they'd been taken up to some mothership for the 
extraterrestrial version of a hoe-down.  Five days of interviewing 
people, nearly all of whom had the disturbing tendency to rip off 
their clothes and point to goddamn appendix scars, birthmarks, and 
moles as if they were actual honest-to-Christ alien fingerprints.

He grabs the milk with a savage movement and upends it into the 
sink, tosses the empty carton into the wastebasket.  Snags a Red 
Hook.

It's cold going down, thick and bitter, and his throat tightens at the 
initial taste of it.  He swallows half the bottle in a couple of gulps, 
sucking in breath when he finally lowers it from his mouth.  The 
kitchen smells like beer and sour milk now.  He heads for the 
living room and collapses onto the couch, setting the bottle down 
on the coffee table.

Fuck the water rings, he mumbles to himself.

When he opens his eyes again, the moonlight from outside has 
shifted considerably.  There's a sound echoing in his head, familiar.  
He sits up straight, searching the shadows and corners.

The doorbell rings, and he realizes that was what he heard, and 
what woke him.  His eye catches the digital clock on his VCR, and 
he realizes further that it could be only one person.

He stands in his front doorway, letting her eye him up and down 
from the other side of the threshold.  He has to suppress a shiver at 
the coolness of her gaze, but maybe it's just the winter chill.

"You still have your suit on," she says, brow raised.

"Too tired to take it off."

She just looks at him, and finally he pinches the bridge of his nose 
and moves aside so she can come in.

Under her dark coat she's wearing jeans and a sweater, definitely 
not lover-like garb, for all the tightness of her clothes.  He watches 
her circle his living room, touching a finger to his beer bottle, 
running a hand along the top of his couch.  Casual, unstudied 
movements, despite the sensual swaying of her hips.

A slow burn of resentment begins deep in his throat.

Finally she comes back around to stand in front of him.  Reaches 
up to the knot of his tie.

He catches her wrist.  "What are you doin'?"

Her eyes are shadowed.  He can hear her breathing, sharp and 
shallow.  "Don't tell me you're too tired."

"And what if I did?"

"I wouldn't believe you."

He drops her wrist like it's a live wire, and in fact it is, her whole 
body is, pressed up against him and setting off sparks he thinks he 
can almost *see* in the darkness.  Her hands fly along the buttons 
of his shirt, push the suit jacket off his shoulders, slip down to 
tease his cock awake.

"Fuck," he mutters, feeling his blood stir.

"Yes," she says, and guides his own hands under her sweater.

~~~

Eventually they're on the couch.  She's stretched out beneath him, 
nipples pressed into his naked chest as he gnaws at the fragrant 
skin of her neck.  His fingers slip through the wetness at the 
juncture of her legs, finding the tight bud of her clit and flicking it 
lightly.  She arches her back, sighing.

He slides off the couch, kneeling on the floor and dragging her 
hips to the edge of the cushions.  He lets his mouth linger for a 
moment at the peak of her breast, then traces a path with his tongue 
down the curve of her ribcage.

He nudges her legs apart again.  Moves them so they rest on his 
shoulders and bends forward, fastening his lips where she is hot 
and throbbing.

"Ah," she moans.  "Ah, God."

There's a tang to her, and a bitterness beneath that.  It's a taste he 
knows will always reside in a corner of his memory, no matter 
what might happen to them in the future.  He laps at her hungrily, 
wanting more and wanting to give her what she'll never ask for.

Her thighs begin to shake and she pulls back, lifting her legs away 
and causing his hand to slide down her stomach.  "Let me..." he 
mutters.

But she's already on the floor, turning to brace herself against the 
couch with her back to him.  The moonlight spills over her body, 
making the serpent stand out in silver and blue.  He can still taste 
her on his lips, and it seems like his entire being is aching for the 
ecstasy he could have with as much effort as it would take to slip 
inside her.

And yet he pauses first, studying the sight.  She's positioned like 
some obscene grotesque of a woman in prayer, legs spread and 
shoulders hunched over clasped hands, head down and face 
obscured by her hair.

That burn in his throat is back, tightening the air passages to his 
lungs.  He feels dizzy.  Dizzy with lust and a sudden, 
overpowering anger.

"I won't do it like that."

The words fall like a shattering vase.  She swings around to look at 
him, her entire profile gone stiff.  "What did you say?"

"Not anymore.  Not like that."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about *this*."  He stands up, feeling his knee joints 
crack.  He's too old for this shit, too old for head games and 
emotional bruises.

She stands also, and it strikes him how much smaller she looks 
without the armor of her clothes.  "You want it to end?"

"End?  What's there to end?  You coming over every weekend 
when you want someone to fuck?"

"If you're not satisfied with the way things are -- "

"And you are?"  He moves closer to her and she backs away a step.  
"Don't tell me *you're* satisfied.  You want someone else doing 
these things to you.  I'm just the substitute."

"Don't tell me you're just realizing that now," she hisses.  "We both 
went into this knowing what it was about."

"Yeah, I guess I did," he says tightly.  "And now it's over."

She's collecting her clothes now, bending down and searching for 
them on the floor, clutching a shoe and a pair of jeans to her chest.  
He stands there watching her, the fury suddenly draining out of 
him.  She's so small, dammit.  So fucking small.

He puts a hand on her elbow, catching it in a loose hold before she 
can jerk away.  "I'm sorry.  Look, I'm sorry I said these things."

"I'm fine, Agent Doggett."  Cold, monotone.

That makes him wince.  "No, you're not.  You're hurting.  You've 
been hurting.  It's just that...this was never the way to deal with it."

"What the hell do you know about it?" she hurls at him.

"I know plenty," he says quietly.  "Maybe I'm most sorry I let you 
do this to yourself."

"I knew exactly what I was doing."

"Then that's even worse, isn't it?"

She dresses without answering him, covering up her skin and 
gathering her coat.  But even with that armor reassembled, even 
though he's still naked and half-erect, she's the one in retreat.

She takes a breath, looking at a spot just to the right of his head.  
"On Monday, I'm going to ask to have you reassigned, Agent."

Truthfully, he was expecting that.  But it still claws at him.  And 
her voice, that goddamn voice ironed out so cleanly like the past 
hour hadn't even happened.  She's a professional when it comes to 
rewriting.

And she can still make him say things.

"I guess it's just closed season on Mulder when you're at my place, 
*Agent*."

He watches her shoulders jerk.  Opens his mouth to say anything, 
to swallow it all and somehow get her back on the couch again, 
back where he can try to resurrect her with his hands and his lips.

But instead, he stays silent while she pivots on her heel and yanks 
the door open, disappearing into the night.

And he realizes he was right about her taste.  It's lingering on his 
tongue.  Bitter, dry, and wintry, like a mouthful of ash.

______________________________

end


Notes:  This has been lurking in me for a while.  Thanks to the 
many people who saw parts of this story at one time or another, 
although it may be unrecognizable to them now.  Much 
appreciation goes to Diana for her usual wise (and wise-cracking) 
beta, and to Mish, LizardChyck and Kest for the good cheer.

Sophia Jirafe's "Deliberation" was inspiring, of course, as well as 
her pokes to get this story finished.  If only that worked in reverse!


jint...@graffiti.net
february 2001