Ancient Elements III: Ablaze
By Mesa (mesa98@juno.com)

Rating: NC-17
Category: V, R
Spoilers: None
Keywords: MSR

Summary: Scully discovers that surrendering to your fears is sometimes the 
greatest freedom.

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the X-Files are the property of 
1013 Productions and Fox Broadcasting. No infringement is intended.

Note: This belongs in the same universe as my stories Undertow and Weightless 
(in that order) and follows them. It is not necessary to have read them to 
understand this, though.

Acknowledgments: This story is all DA Prewitt's fault. She knows why. It's why I 
made her beta read. I hope she's learned her lesson.....(thanks, Deb)


ABLAZE
January 1999

I awake on fire. 

I am surrounded by his inferno, sparked from my sleep like a striking match by 
the scorching drag of his fingers, trailing flames along my skin--touching, 
dancing, caressing. 

I am transfixed by this sensation--sinking backward into the heat and hardness 
of Mulder's body and our connection. His hands sweeping over my skin, branding 
me with a casual possessiveness that I don't think he even realizes he has. 

I am helpless in front of the onslaught of emotion and pure physical need that 
he rouses in me. My body softening, responding, slipping further and further 
into his white-hot blaze. The intensity of his passion steals all the available 
oxygen, leaving me breathless with desire and abandon.

The sweet hard length of his body pressed along my back calls to me. Seducing me 
with promises unspoken, but nonetheless heard. Promises that are built on the 
foundation of now and then and forever.

His fingers gently slide down my arm, swirling languid designs as they 
move--ancient symbols of life and secrets foretold--until at last they reach my 
hand and our fingers mesh and tangle.

"Scully." A whisper only. Breath soft against my ear. Mere suggestion of sound. 
Yet, so much more than that. In his voice, my name is strangely beautiful and 
intimate. It is a plea and promise. I shiver with nothing at all like cold, and 
feel his fingers tighten around mine. Strong, tender.

I have no voice to answer him. My chest tight and heavy, I can barely draw 
breath to keep oxygen traveling through my blood. I can only sigh quietly, 
knowing he will understand my acquiescence, my answering need. I must speak with 
my body--my fingers flexing in his grasp, coded messages that pass along the 
wire that binds us. My legs moving against his, restless, seeking.

Mulder is what he most fears - fire. Dangerous, unpredictable, and once sparked 
to life, unstoppable. He will level entire forests, icefields, or bureaucracies 
in his search for what matters most to him--truth, justice, answers that no one 
else thinks to look for....or to find me. 

It was my fears of surrendering to that fire that held me apart from him for so 
long. Like the proverbial moth attracted to the candle flame, the instinctive 
animal part of me longed to throw myself into his all-consuming pyre. But my 
rational side always held me back just at the moment when I would have flown 
through that final boundary between air and fire. I relied on that rationality 
to preserve me. I hated it with a passion.

Shifting against him, feeling his heat and hardness pressed into my back, 
smelling the heady musky scent that is us, I cannot imagine why I feared this 
surrender so much. I thought it impossible to live in flame. I was wrong.

I turn in the narrow confines of his arms, and meet his eyes-- bright, clear, 
alight with a joy I had never hoped to see. My own eyes, I know, reflect a 
similar brightness. He has marked me. Seared through my soul to claim me as his 
own, as I have claimed him. I will never look for that joy in another's eyes. No 
other will find an answering echo in mine.

Then his mouth lowers to meet mine, and I must allow my eyelids to flutter shut. 
Concentrating solely on my senses of touch and hearing and taste. Oh. It is all 
still too much. Overwhelming. This wet, sweet softness of our mouths and tongues 
mating. Sliding, moving, testing. 

His lips against mine are like nothing else I have ever known. It is connection 
and communion. For endless moments we lie like this. Our hands intertwined, 
gentle pressure of our fingertips. Heated flesh pressed into welcoming heat. Our 
kiss silently speaking all the words we so rarely say out loud.

He finally releases my hand to allow his hands to rove body. Tracing the 
patterns of delight that he knows so intimately. That he has created in these 
dark, enveloping nights we now share. I arch into his touch, gasping, sighing. 
Seeking the oblivion and consummation that only he can bring me. Lost in my own 
greed for this touch, this feeling. I am awash in the pleasure of his sure 
hands, the ebb and flow of the rhythm of our love.

But I cannot simply submit meekly to this--our mutual need demands more. I bring 
up my hands to his shoulders, caressing the long, sleek muscles, the 
surprisingly soft skin. Feeling his response beneath my fingers, his body 
pressed into mine. Encompassing him as he encompasses me. Only together like 
this are we complete. 

Mulder is elemental, and requires an elemental response. No half-way measures 
will suffice. I feared losing myself in him. I thought my total capitulation to 
the demands of his passion would undo me. But in daring that surrender, I gained 
something I still can't look at too closely, because it is so bright it might 
blind me. It is the bright hope that sustains me, though, through all the 
madness and other uncertainties of our lives.

He is languid tonight. Patient, thorough. Focused with a laser- like intensity, 
but with no hurry, no rush. It is unbearably erotic--this slow gentleness. I 
bend my head to kiss his shoulder, to nip a little at his skin, feeling him jump 
a little, and then resettle. 

His eyes laugh down at me. He says nothing, though, catching my silence, and 
echoing it back, warm and familiar. A silence that hums with the slowly building 
tension.

Slowly he slides down my body, kissing each millimeter of my skin, something 
akin to worship. Pausing to run the tip of his tongue along my collarbone, 
fingers following in twin paths of pleasure.

He reaches my breast and tenderly kisses a nipple, his hand caressing along the 
side of my aching fullness. I fall back into the sheets, caught between this 
swirling, liquid present and a memory.....

Not long after the case of the pyrotechnic, which briefly reunited him with that 
bit-- Phoebe, we found ourselves at dinner in a restaurant much fancier than 
normal. I'm not sure how or why--it wasn't quite our style then or now--I have a 
vague recollection of Mulder steering me there, muttering something about the 
Washington Post's food critic's latest review, but I don't really know...

What I remember about that evening, though, was seeing Mulder by candlelight. 
Really seeing him, and realizing that he glowed. That the passion and fire I'd 
begun to suspect he contained was real. It warmed me in places I was hesitant to 
name, afraid that by naming them I would have to act on my knowledge. 
Recognizing even then how the flame would call me. Fearing, at that time, how it 
would consume me and leave me nothing but ashes.

There were candles on the table. Tall, white tapers set in slightly ostentatious 
crystal candle sticks. Their flames flickered and danced in the lightly moving 
air. I could see Mulder's eyes being drawn to their burning presence again and 
again as we talked. I don't recall what we said. What I remember from that night 
was his face, illuminated from within and without by flame. I lost endless 
moments to absorbing the picture of him in front of me.

And his long, elegant fingers finally reaching out, daring, challenging the 
flames. Sweeping through the cool fire of the yellow halo surrounding the 
burning wick. His eyes tracking their motions through and over and around and 
in. 

It's ok, I wanted to tell him. You can touch the flame, dive down into it. It 
will know you, accept you. You are kindred sparks.

I saw him testing the candles' flames that night, testing himself against his 
own fears, and the immutable laws of chemistry and physics. I could tell you 
precisely the reaction that causes a wick to burn, but I will never be able to 
diagram for you the chemistry and physics of our immutable bond, that which 
burns between us....

He has moved lower on my body, his elegant fingers still kneading and stroking 
my breasts, but his lips now traveling across the skin of my body--kissing and 
whispering spells that bind us into a time out of time. My hands trace answering 
talismans along the lithe lines of his shoulders. 

Each time we are together like his, I want to stop time. To disconnect from 
space and the progression of hours and simply drift forever on the currents of 
our immutable cadences. But I cannot stop time, so I must concentrate on holding 
on to each moment as it occurs. Cherishing these moments for the priceless 
treasures they are.

We nearly didn't allow ourselves this. Nearly lost something we didn't even know 
we had. I will be forever grateful that we dared take this gift. That we 
overcame our mutual pride and stubbornness and habits of solitude to meet each 
other across a beach one cold and unexpected night.

He reaches the crisp curls at my juncture, and reverently runs his fingertips 
along the line where skin gives way to hair. I quiver under the light touch, and 
then begin to tremble deep in my center as he gently parts my legs, and breathes 
in the aroma of my unmistakable arousal. 

A kiss on my swelling clitoris, and I can feel my body beginning to dissolve, my 
bones melting in this refining fire. I am helpless to do anything but accept his 
ministrations, letting the waves of arousal wash over me, following the 
inexorable rhythm of his mouth and hands, until I am crying out incoherently, 
dazed and shaken by the power of my release.

Finally, I can raise my head enough to meet his eyes--dark and smoldering in the 
dim light of my bedroom. His expression is momentarily unreadable, and then his 
face is transformed by a slow, deep smile. For a breathless moment our eyes lock 
and hold, the sound of our breathing the only break in the silence. 

Then he flows up my body again to kiss me once more, passing back my own 
essence, along with the smoky undertone which is uniquely his.

I can feel his erection pressing into my thighs--hard, insistent. I can feel his 
tension building, radiating through his frame, creating anew an answering echo 
in my core. I press up a little against him, restless again, ready.

He positions himself above me and then slowly sinks into me, filling me with one 
sure thrust. So tight and perfect--we fit together in ways that defy metaphor. 
We simply are, and will be.

A ragged sigh from him, and he begins to move in me and through me. My hands 
reach up to grasp him closer, deeper. Feeling him surge away from me, and 
against me again, I am caught in his paradox--Mulder as water and Mulder as 
fire. He is both to me. Essential to life, to warmth, to growth. He is these 
elements and more. 

He is an ocean of fire now washing over me with cool green flames that will 
drown me forever in his depths, changing me beyond recognition until I am wholly 
and only me, as I was meant to be. As I was meant to be with him.

He bends to kiss me once more. Moving a little faster now, a little rougher. 
Yes. Oh. Now. Deeper, harder, take me through this moment, Mulder, sweep me out 
to sea until I am lost forever in an endless fire. 

I can feel his breath catch and redouble. Feel my pulse speeding, stuttering in 
the fullness of the motion and moment. A bonfire builds in my core, spreading 
along my veins in quicksilver rivers of lightning. 

I am disintegrating into base elements, feeling only Mulder's hands holding my 
body together as they reach and pull me ever more tightly against him. 

A golden brightness winds up from our point of connection, the friction of our 
thrusts making it flare hotter and whiter. It coils through my stomach and heart 
wrapping us both in its embrace.

With a sob, I let go and fall into the force of my orgasm, letting it overtake 
me and sunder me into pure energy, feeling and emotion.

As I spasm around him, Mulder pauses for a moment, watching me, holding me, 
riding the crest of my waves with me, and then he begins his final ascent. His 
thrusts now rough, ragged, quick. Until he, too, is released.

We are flying now--weightless in each others' arms, spiraling through air and 
water and fire, until we transcend the known universe, and are scattered as 
points of fire across the night sky. 


I never believed in the transformative nature of love. It seemed to me the mere 
stuff of fairy tales, and cheap romance novels. The wishful thinking that love 
is the answer to all life's problems, if only we are lucky enough to find that 
"right person." I rejected the notion because I believe that we are who we are, 
and that we cannot change another, even with love.

But I have come to realize that in Mulder's fire, I have become steel--strong, 
enduring, flexible. My science and rationality were the raw elements tempered in 
the furnace that we created. Just as his fire was transformed into a crucible 
for refining his search for answers...the search that has become ours. 

It is not simply this--this physical manifestation of our need and love and 
connection that is this meeting of iron and fire. It is all that we are 
together--partners, seekers, lovers and soul mates. He...we have forged this 
blade between us. Because together we are the blade. 

END


All comments welcomed at Mesa98@Juno.com