Title: A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
Author: Janet F. Caires-Lesgold
e-mail: jfc@freeshell.org
Feedback: Please, to the above address!
Archive: Contact me for permission.
Rating: NC-17
Category: SRH, MSR (schmoop alert!)
Timeframe: Approx. Season 6, but assumes certain lines have already been crossed, so sorta
AU
Spoilers: FTF
Summary: A day in the country...
DISCLAIMER: These characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and the whole X-Files gang, not to me. I promise to put them back when I'm done playing with them. This story is just for the entertainment of my online friends and myself, not for any profit.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story takes place in the same universe as my Thanksgiving story, "The F-Word", so I guess it's a sequel. Welcome to *my* old neck of the woods!
COPYRIGHT: (C) December 9, 1999, Janet F. Caires-Lesgold, jfc@freeshell.org
Please don't redistribute or alter this story in any way without the express permission of the author. Thank you very much.
DEDICATION: If the earlier one was for my mom, this one's probably for my Grandma (don't read this over my shoulder, Grandma! Thank you!)...
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"Welcome to succotash country, Scully!"
I had heard that the summers in the middle of Illinois resembled nothing so much as a sauna, but it was late in the season, and the weather was utterly perfect. Unfortunately, that was the only thing about this trip that was even slightly positive.
Once again, we had wasted several days on a wild goose chase, following up a report that the ghost of Abraham Lincoln had been haunting his old law offices in Springfield. As Mulder was slow to discover, the explanation was much more corporeal, namely that the locals were trying to drum up a little more tourism and had been using confederates to knock on walls during tours, rigging Abe's antique shawl to float through the air, and placing tiny items in the newspapers of the surrounding communities about "The Return of the Great Emancipator". If I hadn't hoped to be home in time for my mother's neighborhood ice cream social that Saturday afternoon instead of driving south down a cracked concrete two-lane past acres and acres of farmland, I would have considered this a pleasant outing through mid-America with an entertaining puzzle to solve.
I had no idea why Mulder had gotten us return tickets the next day out of Lambert Field in St. Louis instead of putting us on a puddle-jumper to Chicago so we could head back that same day. I wasn't hot, true, but I was cranky and tired of finding nothing more interesting on the rental car's radio than the Cardinals game. At least he'd let me change into comfortable clothes after our last meeting with the mayor and before we'd checked out of that tiny motel. I recrossed my denim-clad ankles under the dashboard and replied, sighing, "Succotash country?"
"Sure," he answered with a grin. "Corn on one side of the road, and beans on the other."
I thought about this for a moment. "Wait a minute. You make succotash with lima beans. These are soybeans, Mulder."
"Details," he dismissed, staring intently at the road before us as if we were going to meet another car.
We fell silent for a few minutes, the only sounds being a station identification from the radio announcer and an advertisement for commercial-grade herbicide.
"Why aren't we just taking 55 into town?" I asked, trying very hard not to whine and not being very successful.
"Side trip. You'll have fun. Trust me." He turned his eyes to me just long enough to let me see that boyish glint that makes me let him get away with most of the stunts he pulls with regards to planning my personal time. If I'd known that getting romantically involved with my partner would mean that all of my weekends were now fair game, instead of just the dozens that fell during cases, I'd have thought about it twice. Wait. Who am I kidding? I never did anything nearly as fun by myself as Mulder found for us to do together, even out of bed. This was not to say that I didn't enjoy griping about it from time to time anyway. At least the greenery smelled better than the pig farms we'd passed twenty minutes earlier...
I had been ignoring the small, red billboards along our route, but when I saw two of them within two blinks of an eye, I read the text carefully painted thereon: Edwards' Apple Orchard--Pick Yer Own.
"An apple orchard, Mulder?" I finally drummed up the courage to ask.
"Yup," he replied in his best imitation of a midwestern accent. "S'matter, Scully? Hain't you never picked yer own?"
"No... cain't say that I have," I echoed in my own drawl. Our eyes met briefly, dancing merrily as the tension broke under the sunny sky.
Before long, Mulder actually needed to turn the steering wheel to maneuver the car into Edwards' drive. About a quarter mile back from the road we discovered a large farmhouse, fronted with an open-sided shed, and a small parking lot bustling with pickup trucks, station wagons, and people of all shapes and sizes. We parked facing row upon row of trees whose limbs bent heavy with a bounty of Golden Delicious, just beckoning us to reach for them.
As we climbed out of our rental sedan at last, stretching, I perused our surroundings. "That's interesting. We've landed on the island where minivans are prohibited."
"See? I told you you'd like it," Mulder reminded me, guiding me with his familiar hand on the small of my back.
We moved into the open shed, where several dozen overturned crates bore peck bags and bushel baskets of the yellow beauties. A refrigerated case hummed in the corner with gallon jugs of freshly-pressed unfiltered cider huddled behind its glass doors. I was steered gingerly past tables populated with noisy families imbibing paper cups of the cider, and up to the cashier's counter.
"Can we still pick apples this afternoon?" Mulder asked the ponytailed clerk, who looked like she would step back into her Norman Rockwell painting when she got off work.
"Sure. Two?" she asked, to which we nodded in tandem. "The next tractor's not full yet, so you can fit on there. It'll be leaving in about fifteen minutes. Would you like some cider while you wait? Fifty cents a cup."
My escort dug a dollar bill out of his wallet, paid the girl, and handed me a cup as we took a seat at a table.
I sipped delicately at the murky brown liquid, finding it honey-sweet and redolent of fresh apples. "What's the matter, Scully? Don't tell me you're one of those wimps who only likes the filtered stuff."
"No, no," I reassured myself as much as I did Mulder. "This is fine. It's good."
"Yep," he agreed, taking a long swig. "Any worms they mash up in the process just add to the flavor, don't you think?"
I did my level best not to sputter, maintaining my cool exterior as I finished my sip and set the cup on the table. Suddenly the cider didn't sound as good as it had at first.
He crushed his paper cup with a handsomely evil twinkle in his eye. "Damn. Thought sure I'd get a spit take out of that, at least. I'm giving you a hard time--you knew that, right?"
"Yeah, I always know that."
We both eyed my half-full cup as if we expected a small creature to crawl out of it. "You gonna finish that?" he asked at last.
"Help yourself." As planned, he scooped up what was left in my cup and drained it in one motion. All I could do was grin at him, secretly delighted that he'd gotten his way once again.
Soon the tractor pulled into the side lot, and we joined the raucous group waiting to get on board. We all climbed onto a flatbed trailer, Mulder giving me a hand up, then settling me cozily between his legs away from the edge. The atmosphere was festive as the trailer bumped along behind the tractor to the section of trees we were being sent to pick. I knew I wouldn't fall off, as I was held fast in my lover's arms, his cidery breath tickling my nose from over my shoulder.
Following the instructions of our guide, I picked the apples from the middle of the trees nearest the path where the tractor had stopped, dropping them gently into my peck bag. Mulder was showing off for a pair of gangly eleven-year-old girls, reaching the apples from high up in the tree and putting them in their bags, apparently ignoring their smitten giggles, but getting a kick out of their adulation all the same. I will admit he cut quite a dashing figure in his jeans and blue cotton shirt, stretching up to snare the fruit above his head, and juggling three of them like a clown before taking a huge bite out of one and handing the other two to his audience.
"Having fun, Mulder?" I finally asked him.
"Sure. Aren't you?" He looked a little worried.
"Of course. I have fun watching you have fun." With that I leaned up and gave him a kiss, enjoying the way the juice mingled with his own unique flavor. "Have I told you lately that I love you?"
"Not lately enough," he replied, teasingly. "You'd better tell me again."
"I love you," I complied, kissing him quickly before I went back to picking apples.
"Hurray!" he cheered quietly, capturing my eye as he tossed aside one core and reached into my bag for another beauty.
"You'd better cool it with the apples, or you'll give yourself a bellyache."
"I'll be fine, Scully. I'm a big boy."
"Yeah, but you're a colorblind one. You keep eating the green ones."
"Oh. Oops," he answered sheepishly.
We climbed back on the flatbed trailer when our bag was full, short the few that Mulder had eaten, and rode back to the shed with our lively band of apple pickers. After we paid for our bag, we strolled back to the car under the watchful eyes of two familiar girls. "You gonna say goodbye to your fan club?" I asked, pointing them out hesitating beside their parents' car.
He spotted them and gave them one of his most winning smiles and a big wave, saying, "Bye, you guys!"
They answered by giggling and hiding their blushing grins behind their hands.
"Ready to go yet, Reverend Dodgson?" I teased, recalling the story he'd told me about the minister who'd written the "Alice in Wonderland" stories under the pseudonym "Lewis Carroll" to impress the little girl on whom he had a crush all of his life.
"Not yet," he cautioned, and turned to blow them a kiss. As expected, they screamed delightedly and ducked out of sight into their back seat, still giggling.
"You're just a glutton for female attention, aren't you?" I chided, scooting into the passenger seat as he fastened his seat belt.
"Just yours, Scully. The rest is just gravy."
We drove out of the country road and back onto the two-lane in a much more relaxed humor. As we passed the fields and farmhouses, I sat back to munch a rosy-cheeked apple and watch my partner, smiling to myself.
He caught the look on my face. "What are you smiling at?"
"You. You'd make a wonderful father, you know that?"
He tore his eyes from the road briefly to look at me as if I'd gone mad. "Me?"
"Sure," I argued. "You're great with kids, and you've certainly got the energy to keep up with them."
"True." He drove quietly for a moment and contemplated this. "But I don't think I'd want kids unless I could have 'em with you."
I'm sure my mouth dropped open in shock. We'd never discussed children, or at least having any of our own, especially since my options in that regard were fairly limited.
He registered my stunned look and smiled comfortingly. "You know if you wanted to have children, I'd be honored to do what I could to help. Maybe doctors could work a couple of miracles. Many things are possible, you know."
I shook my head, more in disbelief than in denial. "You'd want to help me with that?"
Grasping my hand over the gap in the bucket seats, he gave me an affectionate squeeze. "I'd do anything I could to help you with raising a kid, whether it was adopted or acquired by more old-fashioned means."
I sat back in my seat, still a little thrown by what he had said. "Thank you, Mulder. That's sweet. I... I knew there was a reason I loved you."
"Just one?" he asked playfully, his grin crinkling his eyes sexily.
"For starters," I trailed off, letting myself be mesmerized by the passing cornfield.
As we drove, civilization, or what passed for it in these parts, started to rear its ugly head. We passed a heavy-equipment sales lot, whose sole exterior lighting consisted of a string of evenly spaced hundred-watt bulbs hung between two steel poles. At night the effect must have been that of an under-decorated Christmas tree, a far cry from the halogen-floodlit car lots back east or further north. Around the next bend, which surprised me by actually *being* a bend instead of the gentle curves to which we'd become accustomed, a huge service station declared its presence with yards and yards of bronze-colored Mylar streamers that fluttered audibly in the breeze.
"I see diesel fuel's gone up," I commented wryly to my chauffeur, reading the plastic sign next to the road.
"Need any bait?" he rejoindered, his eye having caught the same sign.
"Nope. Cain't say that I do."
"You mean I can't interest you in a night crawler?" His eyebrows spoke volumes.
"Maybe later, Mulder. Maybe later," I smiled back at him.
Farms eventually gave way to houses, and houses to storefronts and parking lots. A pool hall and a package liquor store stood proudly side by side directly across the street from a clapboard church that had been converted into city hall.
"Lots of vacant stores for Main Street, huh, Scully?" Sure enough, more than a few of the buildings we passed were boarded up or otherwise empty.
"I wonder what's happened here..." We hadn't gone further than two blocks when the culprit was spotted.
"Yep, just as I suspected: Wal-Mart." There, easily the size of twelve city halls combined and practically breathing in its sea of parked cars, sat the scourge of small-town businesses, the great eraser of mid-American culture itself. "Care to stop in, Scully? Need any Shania Twain CDs?" he asked, in exactly the same voice he'd used to check if I'd required any bait.
"Nope. Cain't say that I do." Conversation ebbed as we drove out of sight of the monolith.
A little ways further into town, Mulder pulled the car into the graveled lot next to a beautifully-restored old house. "I didn't know you were into antiquing, Mulder," I began.
"I'm not."
"Well, then what are we doing here?"
"I'm hungry."
I pondered this idea to myself as he opened my door and handed me out of the car. Our feet crunched on the chalk-white rocks on the path to the concrete steps, and I wiped off the dusty residue on the welcome mat on the porch, still unsure of where we were.
Holding the door fitted with a huge oval of beveled and decoratively-etched leaded glass, Mulder ushered me into a vestibule where I felt I should be taking off a huge hat with a hatpin. Immediately, my nose was assailed with the smells of good country cooking. We stepped into a hall as far as the host's station, whereupon I exclaimed, more or less superfluously, "Oh! This is a restaurant!"
Sure enough, someone had gone to the trouble not only of refurbishing this very grand mansion, but putting in a commercial kitchen. We were seated at a table for two in a side parlor finished with period-style wallpaper and dark-stained woodwork. Couples and larger groups of diners came and went around us, some dressed elegantly, and others not looking much different than we did. Having asked for suggestions for local delicacies from the server, Mulder received a whole catfish, breaded and fried, but luckily (well, unluckily for the fish) having been divested of its head. I tucked into the proffered barbecued pork steak, which was of such a size that it could have been butchered from a full cross-section of a pig.
Picking apples must have given me quite an appetite, as I nearly polished off the entirety of my steak, and even enjoyed a sample bite of Mulder's fish, which was not nearly as greasy as I'd guessed it might be, instead having a light and almost sweet flavor. I must have enjoyed the food immensely, as I didn't particularly mind not having room for dessert.
I lingered over my tea, noticing that Mulder was taking a little longer than I'd expected when he went to take care of the bill, so I was not surprised at the mysterious twinkle in his eye when he finally returned to the table.
"Where have *you* been?" I asked, sounding somewhat more petulant than I may have intended.
"Just looking into some after-dinner entertainment," he answered cryptically.
I led the way out to the car, still whining a little. "I'm *tired*, Mulder. Can't we just get a motel room and go to bed?"
"All in good time, my love. Be patient." He revealed nothing of his plans as we drove to a nearby motel and checked into a room, but I noticed him take the blanket off of the bed and fold it into a tight bundle. As I unpacked my toiletries, he emptied the bag of apples, then selected four of the nicest ones (asking me for my opinion, for a change!), which he put back in, leaving the remainder on the dresser. "Ready?" he asked.
"Ready as I'll ever be," I retorted, trying to make my yawn sound like a beleaguered sigh.
Back out into the twilight we went, piling the blanket and bag of apples into the car, then driving back down the road where we'd come, turning at a lonesome-looking stop sign. The breeze in the car window was starting to turn cool.
"What's that buzz? I don't see any neon signs or nuclear power plants."
"Scully, you surprise me. In all of your travels, have you never heard cicadas singing?"
"You're kidding!" I exclaimed. "Bugs can make this much noise?"
"Potent, isn't it? It's a mating call. I wouldn't blame them if female cicadas looked anything like you." I hoped that the low light would hide my blush.
At last we pulled onto a mostly-empty gravel lot near a stand of cornstalks. Mulder turned off the engine, gathered up his gear, and offered me his arm as I stood looking at the crop before us.
"We're a little early. Let's take a walk." I looped my arm through his and walked as he led, stopping only when I saw that he intended to go *through* the corn. "What's wrong?"
"You want to go *through* the cornfield?"
"Yeah. It'll be fun."
I couldn't make my heart stop pounding, remembering a twilight run through a cornfield in Texas with black helicopters hovering overhead and a rogue bee taking refuge under my collar. "I don't want to."
"What's the matter? Scared?" If he associated cornfields with that terrible night the year before, he did not let it show. "I'll be there all the time. I won't make you stay if you don't like it, but give it a try. Do it for me?" He fixed me with eyes both loving and mournful. Had he had a puppy dog tail, too, it would have been at half-mast and wagging slowly yet hopefully.
"Okay..." I took a deep breath and snuggled tight to my guardian as he pulled my shoulders close to his side. We stepped bravely between two cornstalks and a few paces beyond, and--
Nothing happened.
The stalks closed around us, but Mulder held me firm and anchored me in reality while my harsh memories of a similar field drifted away. I looked around us, marveling at how the pale green leaves blocked our view further than a few feet on any side.
"Look up, Scully."
I did as he requested, and was amazed to see nothing but the tops of the corn and the blueness of the sky, which darkened as the sun set, leaving the first star twinkling in its wake. "It's beautiful..." I gasped.
"So are you." Suddenly, I was wrapped tightly in his long arms, being kissed thoroughly and passionately. No longer would cornfields mean terror and fear for my life. Now they would all be that beautiful place where Mulder wanted nothing but to hold me close and kiss me, his tongue coaxing mine to dance in the hot darkness of our mouths. My heart was pounding again, but this time for a very sweet and sexy reason.
Some long moments later, we hadn't moved, except to break the kiss and look longingly into each other's eyes, when I noticed the noises around us. "What's that? More cicadas?"
He paused and listened closely to the crackling and rustling that surrounded us. "Nope," he answered, grinning. "That's the corn."
"Lemme guess. You brought me all the way out here for an X-file. Whispering corn?"
"No, really. That's the sound corn makes when it grows."
We stood huddled together and let the sound wash over us. "Almost sounds like the corn is talking about us."
His eyes sparkled, even in the fading sunlight. "Better give it some more to talk about," he said, bending his head to kiss me once again.
Eventually, he remembered our walk. "We'd better get going, or we'll be late."
"Where are we going?" I asked, genuinely curious.
"You'll see..." he promised.
We followed the rows of corn, emerging at the end into a clearing with a farmhouse and a brightly-illuminated open-sided shed before which people gathered, arranging folding lawn chairs in somewhat orderly rows. A piano stood to one side, and next to it, a placard reading, "Tonight! The Marriage of Figaro by W. A. Mozart."
"Mulder, just what the heck *is* this place?" I asked, gawking.
"Opera in the Barn. They told me about it back at the restaurant."
"Opera? Seriously?"
"Well, this *is* one of his comic operas, but yeah. For real. I thought you'd enjoy a little culture after our adventures in the sticks." He spread the blanket on the ground and plopped down on it, patting a spot next to him for me to join him.
I sat down beside him, but noticed a small irritation under my butt, so got up and folded back the blanket to remove it. "The sticks, indeed!" I chided, displaying the short twig that had made my seat uncomfortable, before I rearranged the blanket and retook my place on it.
Before long, a tiny, gray-haired lady in bottle-bottom eyeglasses came out and sat before the piano, flicking on a small lamp by which to see her score. She began banging out the overture with more energy than I'd used all day, and the lights changed to reveal carefully-painted sets inside the shed. Soon the players appeared in approximations of period costume and sang their parts with gusto. The surroundings may have been bucolic, but the music was well-performed, and in English, so I didn't have any trouble following the plot of the servant trying to save his bride-to-be from the attentions of his master. The high point of the evening was a perfectly-sung quintet from the two romantic leads, the master and his wife, and the woman in the "trouser" role of the valet, all accompanied by nothing more than an enthusiastically-played piano. The pianist even turned the pages of her score by herself, not missing a beat in the jolly, intricate orchestration.
When the final chords had faded away, the polyester-clad folks in the audience raised a chorus of thunderous applause, which we tossed off the blanket that we'd wrapped around ourselves for warmth to join. Mulder spotted a compost heap, to which he added our discarded apple cores, and steered me back to the car, going *around* the cornfield this time.
"I love Mozart's music, but what a sexist plot!" I began the moment we were back on the road.
"Ol' Wolfie just used an existing story. It was a different time then..."
"Yes, but it was controversial even then! I mean, the *idea* of the lord of the manor thinking he had the right to take the virginity of any woman who married under his roof!"
"Why not? The class system was a lot different then, even as compared to your beloved "Upstairs, Downstairs" era. He *did* own everything he surveyed. I mean, Figaro was little more than an indentured slave!"
"That may be, but the woman's rights barely figure in this at *all*! The opera has a happy ending only because our hero gets dibs on the woman he loves after all. Big whoop!"
By this time, we'd returned to our motel, and rather than pursue our silly argument any further, I kicked off my sneakers, shimmied out of my jeans, and bustled my gear into the bathroom for a nice, warm bath. When I came out, my bathrobe tossed on over my t-shirt and panties, I said no more to Mulder than "Next!", though I thought I could hear the gears in his head working on having the last word after all.
I was propped on the bed reading my bestseller when the bathroom door was thrown open to reveal Mulder, in all his naked glory, sporting the blanket tied around his neck like a child's Superman cape.
"Ungawa! It is I, your lord and master, here to exercise my "droit de seigneur"!"
I rolled my eyes. "Ungawa?"
"Shhh, it's the mightiest thing I could think of. Now lie back, woman, and let me have my way with you. You are *mine*, you know..."
Nonplussed, I picked at the ratty blanket that swept across my knees as he crouched before me on the bed. "You've got a cocklebur on your royal cape, my lord."
"Aaaugh!" he shrieked, flinging the blanket over his head into a heap on the floor. "Stop toying with me, wench, and open your legs! I want to fuck you, because you belong to me!"
"Awww, you old sweet-talker! You know just what to say to a girl," I teased, sneaking a foot behind his thigh and surreptitiously kicking it out from under him while he was busy huffing and puffing on my t-shirt. He flipped over quite gracelessly, and I took my chance to sit solidly on his stomach, proving who was in control in this relationship.
"Ooof!" he reported, but apparently any protests had been knocked out of him along with his wind. I rode along as his chest rose and fell while he caught his breath.
"Are you done?" I asked, mock-threateningly.
"No," he choked out at last. "You're still dressed, and I'm still horny."
I peeked over my shoulder to get a glimpse of his sculpturally hard penis behind my ass, not letting him see my anticipatory lip-nibble. Oh, God, I wanted that inside me, but it was more fun to watch him squirm awhile longer. "I see what you mean, Mulder. Now, *what* were you just saying? Don't leave out any of the good parts." I could feel the hot tickle of his tip brushing at my panty-clad butt, so I eased forward a little, wringing a disappointed whimper from my handsome mount.
He chose his words with extreme care, remembering how a well-placed vulgarity turned me on. "Can I please fuck you, Scully? I want to show you how much you mean to me."
Making a big show of contemplating his offer, I counted to ten in my head, then gave him a forgiving grin. "Well, I suppose so, since you asked me so nicely. Help me out of my clothes, won't you?" I asked, raising my arms deliberately.
"Gladly," he offered, tugging at the hem of my t-shirt and pulling it up and away from my body as I obligingly bent and shimmied to facilitate being stripped. His hands slid back down to cup my breasts while I flung the shirt off my fingertips and brought my hands back down to stroke his chest muscles. Gently he fingered my nipples, making them pucker and harden under his touch. "For me?" he teased, moving his hands quickly to reposition my hips lower on his lap with a little help from me, judiciously avoiding his erection, then bending me towards his mouth, which he clamped carefully on my nearest breast to suckle appealingly.
I groaned appreciatively. "Yes, it's for you, Mulder. All of me is yours. Including the other one." He took the hint and gave equal attention to my neglected nipple, flicking an invisible switch somewhere low in my abdomen that set about raising the temperature inside my panties so high that something started to sweat.
Running my hands through his hair, I bucked so hard that I nearly yanked my breast out of his eager mouth. At once he reached for my head and engaged my lips with his own, forcing them open with his tongue, not that it required very much force. I ground my crotch against his upraised thigh, and felt the moisture of his pre-ejaculate spread between our stomachs. I broke from his kiss intending to make some wisecrack, but found it difficult to grunt out more than a breathy "Ready?"
"Yeah," he groaned in response, rolling us to one side to deposit me back on the bed. He scooted himself around to flop his shoulders unceremoniously on my pillows against the headboard, then growled, "C'mere. Lose the panties."
"Yes, my lord," I agreed, chuckling, complying quickly and kneeling beside him on the mattress. "How do you want me?"
Before I knew it, he'd grabbed the foot closest to his head, pulled it across his chest, and pushed me into a straddle over his lap, facing *away* from him. "Like this," he rumbled, his voice combining with the heat of his cock stretched beneath me to unhinge me completely. I reluctantly raised myself from my seat and adjusted his sex so it met the opening of mine. I slowly rode slightly forward, relishing the slide of his flesh plunging into me. He raised his knees, and I held onto them with both hands, using them to push myself back and forth on his hardness while he rolled his hips gently in tandem with my motions.
As I uncurled my spine and brushed against his chest, his fingers crept around to my clit and began stroking it, using the wetness he found there to lubricate me. With his cock filling me and his hand fondling my most sensitive nerves, I rocked as one with my lover, my voice gradually rising note by note until it broke into a gasping wail as I came as powerfully as a car plummeting in free-fall down the first drop of a roller coaster. I held my body still, wrenching the last delightful tremors from my depths until I felt Mulder's length slammed hard into me and his orgasm shoot up into whatever space was left between his organ and my inner walls. As he finished, he leaned up against my back, wrapping his other arm around my middle and clutching me to him desperately.
"How was that?" he asked, a shiver in his throat.
"Good, except..."
"Except?"
"Except I like to watch your face when you come."
"Sorry. Me too. I mean I like to watch *your* face when *you* come," he corrected, needlessly.
"That's okay," I reassured him, yawning and extricating my limbs from being splayed across his body. "Maybe next time."
"Sounds like a plan," he sighed, cradling my head on his shoulder as he cuddled against me and held me close. "Love you."
"Love you, too," I echoed, reaching up to flick off the bedside lamp and letting drowsiness overtake me after a long day.
Some time later, the sounds of groaning wakened me. The room was dark except for a light under the bathroom door. I was alone in bed, and my initial worry shifted to supreme annoyance at the fact that despite our heavy-duty coupling earlier in the evening, Mulder apparently still needed to whack off.
His grunts grew louder as I climbed out of bed and approached the closed door with more than a little trepidation. Did the man have no shame? I stood and listened to his baser noises for a moment, then rapped sharply on the wood veneer with an angry fist. "What the hell are you doing in there, Mulder?" I hollered, making sure he could hear me.
"Nothing, Scully. Ugh," he moaned, punctuating his lie.
"Like hell you aren't. Tell me what's going on."
"Leave me alone, Scully. Owwww..."
If I had heard him clearly, that had been a groan of pain. "Mulder, are you all right?"
"My stomach hurts. Ohhhh..."
"What?"
"Whatever you do, Scully, *don't* say "I told you so", okay? I was stupid and ate all those damned green apples this afternoon..."
My God. He actually *had* given himself a bellyache! I'd just been kidding around... I bit my tongue on the "poor baby" that threatened to pop out at any moment and decided to scold him a little. "I always say that you really *ought* to eat more roughage. Then this kind of thing wouldn't happen." I was repaid with another painful moan from behind the bathroom door. "Do you feel sick otherwise?"
"No. I guess it'll all move on by morning. It just hurts right now."
"Do you want me to go see if the motel office has a hot water bottle we can use?"
"I already called. I got a recording saying that the office is closed until six a.m."
"What do you want to do?"
"I kinda wanna come back to bed."
"Do you think that's wise?"
The toilet flushed, and the door opened, silhouetting my lover, who was holding his stomach, for the second before he shut off the bathroom light. "Maybe a hot Scully bottom would feel just as good. Can I try it?"
"I guess so," I hazarded, not letting him see my grin, as I crawled back onto my pillow and let him spoon up behind me. "How's that?" I asked, mouthing the words "poor baby" to myself.
"That's a little better," he admitted, wrapping his arms around me and squeezing himself tighter against my backside. "I'm sorry I spoiled your weekend by making you stay out here in Outer Slobovia, Illinois."
"That's okay. I had fun. I wouldn't have missed spending this time with you for the world. Besides, now we've got apples to eat on our flight home tomorrow..."
"Ohhhh..." he moaned, burying his nose against my neck.
Yep, it turned out to be a pretty good weekend in the country after all...
THE END
ADDITIONAL AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story takes place in the rural towns north of where I grew up. These are all places I've been, particularly the Opera in the Barn, which is a real phenomenon, and they really did Mozart that night. Corn *does* make noise as it grows, and cicadas are extremely loud. I renamed the apple orchard just in case...