Treasured by Jori

Mulder explores Scully's past at her mother's house on Mother's Day. NC-17.

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Where does motherhood begin and end? I've never even thought about it much until today. Scully is sitting on the back porch at her mother's house, rocking in an old wicker chair, quietly watching the squirrels rob the bird feeders of their treasures. I sit opposite of her, wishing I could make it all better.

We are here to see her mother, on this day. My mother and I exchanged a few somewhat pleasant words this morning and went on our own separate ways. Again. Like most mothers and sons, there is a natural breaking point, where someone else takes their place in our lives. But mothers and daughters seem to be different. From what I can see, they are two people who are bound forever, a genetic twist of fate where one needs the other even more as they grow older. Whether it is love or hate, the need is still usually there.

I wonder how Samantha and my mother would be had it all never happened, if they had taken me and not her? Perhaps she would be celebrating Mother's Day, one child in her arms, another on the way. And Scully would be sitting here watching her children run around their grandmother's backyard instead of a passel of rodents taking advantage of human kindness. If it had only been me.

But Scully was a mother, if only for a few days. I got to see her as a mother to a child she didn't know, yet she opened her heart to. For her, it began and ended too quickly. But does it end? If a mother loses all her children, is she still a mother? If all her sons were killed on some foreign field of war, does she still bear the title of mother? Or does she deserve it even more for going through the worst possible ordeal a mother could go through? Just like Scully.

I will never be a father. I never really cared one way or another. Until now. My relationship with my own father was such an overburdened, tenuous thing. Perhaps it is better this way, considering what I have to model parenting after. Scully would have been like her mother. Tough, but understanding. Loving, yet not smothering. A good parent. So different than mine with their secrets and lies.

As I stand up and stretch, she doesn't take any notice of me so I kneel in front of her, and stop the constant motion of her chair. Her eyes meet mine briefly before looking over me and back out to that yard.

"I'm sorry . . ." I start to say, and she silences me by pressing her index finger to my lips.

"Don't. There is nothing to be sorry for, Mulder. What's done is done. I was just thinking, that if there are anymore . . . Emilys . . . I hope that they are . . ." she says, searching for the words her heart is trying to express.

"Loved?" I finish.

"Yes," she says, her voice barely a whisper. We stay like this, watching one another, imagining what could have been, if only they hadn't done this. Someday, we could have had a child. Would it have her perfect nose? Would it have those stunning eyes? I stop myself.

"Scully, show me what you looked like as a little girl. I've seen so few pictures. Surely there must be some here at your mother's house," I say, and she cocks her head and looks at me curiously.

"Why?" she asks.

"Curiosity. I want to see what you were before you became . . . you," I say, pressing my lips to her forehead.

"I think the old pictures might be in the basement . . ."

"No, I had Bill move them to the attic at Christmas. I was worried about the basement flooding this year," Mrs. Scully says, as she steps out on the porch. "Why?"

"Mulder wants to see them, probably so he can make fun of me," Scully says, smiling for the first time since we got here.

"Dana was a beautiful baby," her mother says, getting that misty-eyed look all moms get when they talk about their children as newborns.

"Mom, stop. I was all freckled and kids made fun of me because of my hair," Scully says.

"Oh, if they could see you now," I say, placing a kiss on her formerly freckled nose.

We have grown rather comfortable in front of her mother, happy that there is someplace where we can just be an 'us' besides our apartments.

"Well, you two can dig through the attic. I'm going to sit here, put my feet up, read a book and enjoy this day before I start dinner. Of course, Mother's Day isn't Mother's Day without some macaroni art presents, so if you two feel so inclined . . ." Mrs. Scully says.

"Mom, I gave you your present, " Scully says as I pull her out of the rocker.

"But I hardly doubt you made that necklace with your very own little hands," Mrs. Scully says, smiling.

"How do we get into the attic?" I ask.

"Dana knows. Don't you, dear?" she says, and the two of them share some secret 'mother-daughter club' smile.

"Come on. Follow me," Scully says, taking my hand and leading me away before her mother can tell any stories.

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The attic is as neat as the rest of the house, and everything is carefully lined up against the walls and clearly labeled. One bare light bulb spreads its 200 watt glow from corner to corner, dispelling any notions I had of finding something creepy up here. I'm sure if I looked closely, the Scully family probably has some kind of secrets hidden in the attic.

"So, Scully, what *did* you used to do up here?" I ask, as she digs through some of the organized cartons.

"Nothing," she says quickly.

"Right. So what is it you did up here? You were in your late teens when you lived in this house, right? Did you bring boys up here?" I ask. I spent the last few weeks successfully dislodging from my brain the image of her in bed with Phillip Padgett, but the notion of her necking with some geeky teenage boy doesn't bother me.

"Women need to have some secrets, Mulder," Scully says as she drags a box marked 'Dana - photos' over to an antique Victorian couch stored up here. "Here you go. Enjoy."

She sits down next to the box, but doesn't make a move to look at them herself. I sit down on the other side of the box and pull off the lid, and find that they have all been put into albums and dated with precision.

"Hmm. Do I want to see Dana Scully as a naked baby in the bathtub, or do I want to see Dana Scully as the wild teenager who did naughty things in her parent's attic?" I ask, as I look at the dates.

I decide on the former, and pull out the earliest album. She was a beautiful baby, and I quickly find the obligatory naked baby picture.

"I hate that one," she says, casting a quick glance at what I'm staring at.

"Your ass is still that perfect," I say, as I flip the page to what must be her first birthday. I guess that it is Bill and Melissa who are both trying to blow out her single candle and Scully looks baffled as to what is going on around her.

Suddenly, I feel a twinge of sadness. Neither of those two little girls would ever have babies of their own. All because of me.

"Don't," Scully says, as she looks at me.

"Reading minds these days, Scully?" I ask her as I close the album.

"No. I just know you too well," she says. I slide the book back into the box and decide to pull out one from the later years.

I open to the first page to see her in a softball uniform, holding the bat like a pro. That next one is her team picture, after they won the division championship.

"Scully, I though you said . . ." I say, remembering all too well our recent trip to the baseball diamond. The night I gave her another late birthday present.

"You said baseball, Mulder. You never mentioned softball," Scully says slyly. She was just amusing me that night, giving in to my male fantasies of teaching her to bat. But I don't care right now, not with the memories of making love on the hood of her car under the stars after the kid said he had to go home. We tried to make it home, really we did. But only made it to the parking lot.

"Let's see if we can find Dana Scully's geeky prom date," I say as I flip through the pages of her adolescent years. She had braces, I see, but besides that she looks almost the same.

I finally spot a picture of Scully in formal wear and with her geeky date . . . who is not a geek at all. He's tall and muscular, with a head full of sandy blond hair. He is wearing a tux with a cummerbund I'm guessing matches her dress. I look over to Scully quickly and she turns her head away.

Popping the photo out of the black corners holding it in the album, I flip it over. Her date signed it for her.

"'To Dana. Whenever I hear fire trucks coming, I will think of you. I love you. Marcus.' Fire trucks, Scully?" I ask.

"It is a long story that I don't feel like telling again," she says as she continues to look at anything but me.

"Is it as long as the story about the attic?" I ask.

"Longer," she says.

"So, was Marcus. Um, was he . . ." I say, realizing I wasn't bothered by this as long as it was some geeky teenage boy. Not Mr. Varsity here. Attractive and young, with the stamina possessed only by seventeen year old boys.

"Women have to have some secrets, Mulder," Scully says, with a slight grin forming at the corner of her mouth as she stares me in the eye.

"So, he was. Was he any good?" I ask, trying to not let any hint of jealousy enter my voice.

"He was an eighteen year old kid, Mulder. How good could it have been? Just a lot of moaning and groaning on his part and not much in the way of . . ." she says, her eyes looking away.

"Where did it happen? Did you do it in your mother's house?" I ask, not even able to imagine that she would do such a thing.

Her eyes look around the attic quickly as if she's looking for a way to escape.

"Here!" I exclaim, as I jump off of the couch, its old springs squeaking from the sudden movement. No wonder her mother has tales about the attic. Scully just smiles at me and shrugs.

"I was young once, Mulder. Young, curious, wanting to be a little reckless. To live a little," she finally says.

I look down at her as she smiles at some memory she has playing in her head. Probably Mr. Varsity going down on her for the first time. Jeez, Mulder. Don't even think about it.

"So, did you ever do it here after that? With someone who wasn't seventeen . . ."

"Eighteen," she corrects me.

"Whatever. Eighteen and all moaning and groaning?" I finish my question.

"What are you suggesting, Mulder? My mother is downstairs," Scully says, trying to sound like she isn't interested.

"Scully, I think she knows you aren't a virgin," I say, as I move the box of photo albums to the far end of the couch. Suddenly, I have to prove myself against that teenage boy from years ago. I don't know why.

"Mulder, I just don't think this is a good idea. The reason I got caught the first and the last time is because you can hear what goes on in here through all the vents in the house," Scully explains, "and that couch makes a lot of noise."

"She's out on the porch, probably taking a nap by now," I say, pleading with her, even sinking so low as to use that face that always gets her.

"It wasn't my mother who caught me. It was Bill," Scully says. "He told my mother."

"Does your brother Bill walk in on everybody, or just you?" I ask, remembering New Year's Day all too well.

"I think just me. Melissa did more than I ever did in this house, but she never got caught," Scully says.

I kneel down before her again, and push my way in between her thighs.

"So how did he seduce you? How did he finally convince you to go all the way?" I say, as I lean into her and kiss her on the neck. My tongue slowly draws a line up to her ear, and I pull the lobe in my mouth.

"Surely you must know what he did better than I do, Mulder. I'm sure at some point you convinced some sweet-faced, doe-eyed teenage girl to give it up to you," she says to me as I stop playing with her ear.

"The first time just happened. We were at a dinner party when Ramona Ashton grabbed me and dragged me off to her parent's room. We did it on all of the guests' coats. I'm just glad no one decided to leave right then, or else we would have been the talk of the town," I tell her, remembering feeling someone's scratchy wool coat under my knees as I thrust into Ramona. Good thing it didn't last too long. She 'borrowed' one of her old man's condoms and placed it on me before she spread her legs and pulled me in. Romance was not part of it, to say the least.

"That would be her convincing you to give it up to her, and it didn't sound like she had to do much convincing," Scully says. I'm now slowly moving my fingers up the hem of her shorts. Thank goodness for warm spring days.

"No, she didn't need as much convincing as you seem to. So, how did 'Marcus the Wonderful' do it?" I ask her again, as I move aside the little scrap of panties keeping me away from my desired target.

"It wasn't that imaginative, Mulder. We just did it. I don't know. He was on top, I was on the bottom . . . do you really want to hear this?" she asks me, and I realize that I really don't.

"No, show me," I say, as she gasps just a little as I find her clit and start to touch her.

"Well, let's just say he didn't do that," Scully says.

I lean into her, my finger still touching her, and she spreads her thighs even further apart. I kiss her, and our tongues meet somewhere in the middle, reaching for more, needing to taste more.

I pull my hand out of her shorts, and unbutton the one button and pull the zipper down. She lifts up her hips and I pull off the shorts and her panties in one quick motion.

"Move forward," I tell her, and she slides down the smooth velvet couch until I can get to what I want.

"I still don't think . . ." she starts to say, but she goes silent when my tongue meets her clit, and I tug it in between my lips. "And he never did that."

Good, I think as my tongue moves over her, enjoying that ever so female taste that is Scully. This could never get old, for she moves differently and makes a new sounds each time I do this.

I'm getting hard just from the tiny sounds she's making. My tongue delves between her folds and into her, where she is so soft and warm. All at once, it crosses my mind what this passage is meant for, and I stop for a second.

"Don't," she says to me again, for she knows me too well. Her hands gently push my face away from her as she slides back up on to the couch. I move with her, and hugging her body, her legs wrapped around me, holding me close. She motions for me to stand and her hand feels the hardness swelling up under my jeans, as she traces the outline of it through the denim. She licks her lips just a little as she unbuttons the fly, and I hear each button make a pop through this quiet room.

My pants drop down around my ankles followed by my boxers. Scully turns around, puts her hands on the top of the couch and wiggles her ass just a little.

"We never did this, either," she says as I tease her with the tip of my cock, feeling the heat that radiates off of her. I push into her slowly, and she adjusts her position until I can slip in completely. A half gasp, half moan escapes from her throat as I hit bottom and begin to thrust into her. I can see her fingernails dig into the wooden ornamentation on the couch, scratching in forever a reminder of what we did here.

We look like we are filming a porn flick doing it on this couch, half dressed and crazed. The box of photos is bouncing on the couch in time to our frenetic humping and the springs have about taken all they can handle.

My one hand steadies her by holding her hip, and the other reaches around to find her clit again. Our bodies pound together, making the sound of steady, slapping flesh. She slams back into me as hard as I slam forwards into her. No matter how quick and ugly it is, with Scully, it is still making love.

I can never last long this way, the stimulation too great, but I want her to come with me. I want her to forget for one moment what day this is. I want to make it Lover's Day instead.

"Scully, let me know," I say, and one of her hands moves to her clit, moving my fingers aside. I guess no one can do it better than yourself. She is always exerting her damn independence.

I slow down the pace, letting her catch up. "Tell me when, Scully."

Orgasm is so close that I can feel it, taste it flow through me, and I know she is close, too. Her fingers move faster and faster, tugging and grinding at herself.

"I love you," she says, as her body releases around mine, the twitching of her muscles being the last straw. I can't take anymore, and I fall gasping on top of her, transferring everything that is within me into her.

I pull out of her, all wet and sticky, and look around quickly for something to wipe us off with. Scully turns around, her cheeks flushed, her hair looking 'tossed.' She looks like she was just fucked good.

She finds an old towel covering the top of a piece of furniture and she wipes me off, carefully cleaning the last drops of semen still pulsing from my body. She looks at the towel and what it now contains before looking down at the floor.

"Don't," I say, for I know her well, too. "We have each other. Someday, we can . . ."

"Look into other options?" she says, with a snort. We both know the reality of that. Not if we both want to stay in this line of work.

I pull her close to me, both of us holding on tight to each other. This all we have, and it has to be enough.

"The ticking of your biological clock has nothing to do with children, Scully. You want your life to be normal, to be settled in one way or another. You want so many things that you think you can't have. But we will," I whisper to her. We stand in silence, letting our bodies come back to earth.

"It was much better this time, Mulder. Even though you aren't eighteen anymore and it's probably going to be several hours before we can do that again," Scully says into my chest.

"Again? Today? I'm an old man now, Scully. You will have to give me until tomorrow," I joke, and she laughs a little.

We hear the door to the attic steps swing open and we both scramble for our clothing, making a lot of noise in doing so. Great. I'm sure her mother doesn't want to find our naked butts up here.

"Dana, Fox, dinner is done," she says, without placing so much as one foot on the creaky stairs.

"Just a minute, Mom. We've got to put, um, away the photo albums," Scully calls out, and we hear the door click shut quietly.

"That was close," I say, as I finish buttoning my jeans. She carefully tucks her shirt in, trying to look like she did when we came up here. I think it is pretty hopeless. We smell like sex. I have the scent of her covering me.

We innocently walk into the kitchen, where Mrs. Scully is working on the finishing touches for dinner.

"Did you find what you were looking for up there?" she asks us, and I can hear more than just a little smirk in her voice.

I take Scully's hand in mine, noticing that she has tiny bits of stained wood under her fingernails.

"Yes, Mom. This time I did," she says with a smile.

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The End of Treasured

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