oyster 5

Scully. SCULLY!
A noise in the dark, and Scully is on her feet, stumbling across the carpet to the door. Still half asleep, she responds to the cry like a mother to her child, that familiar call reaching straight to a place that doesn't think, just feels the irresistible pull of need.
She pulls open the door between their rooms. Mulder isn't there, though she hears the echoes of him groaning in his nightmare, a strangely hollow, distant sound. She glances at the bed, the sheets flat and empty, and she rubs her hand up and down the wall in search of a light switch.
The light comes on, goes off, flickers like a strobe. And Scully's gaze, searching the room, returns to the bed, where Mulder is thrashing around, wrestling with the blanket.
The light stays on, calm, sane. Scully hurries to the bed and shakes Mulder's arm until his eyes pop open wide and he sits up, mouth open, gasping, and dragging at the tail of the gasp is a moan of pure fear.
"Jesus," he breathes, like he really means it. "Jesus Christ."
He gives her a look. That look. What can she do? She slides her arms under his and holds him, and he bends his head to her shoulder, his hot face against her ear, his hands flat on her back but gripping just the same. She can feel the trembling of his skin, the thumping of his heart, and compassion swells above all else as she holds him tighter, rocking him a little, making nonsense sounds of comfort.
"Scully." His husky voice is like a silk scarf pulled across her breasts, and she gives a little shiver and draws back. Aware of it and amused, or unaware of it and bumbling, Mulder has never openly acknowledged his ability to physically arouse her, and for that Scully has always been grateful.
She raises her eyes to the level of his Adam's apple, and he looks down at her for a moment, his hands holding her arms. Then of mutual consent she pulls back and kneels by the bed and he leans back against the headboard, one last deep sigh replenishing his oxygen supply to normal. He strokes the hairs on his naked chest with his fingertips as if searching for a heartbeat.
"Bad dream?"
Mulder rolls his eyes to stare at the ceiling. "Scully, to say my dreams have been bad lately is like saying Hitler bore the Jews a mild but persistent grudge."
Her lips quirk and she gets up and goes into the bathroom and runs the water in the sink to fill the small hotel glass. When she returns he seems calmer, but he is still unusually pale. She gives him the water and sits in the armchair by the writing table and looks at him while he drinks, the water pulsing the strong column of his throat until he has drained the glass.
"Want to talk about it?"
"I can't remember much about it," he says. He looks at her with his hazel eyes sincere and boyish. "You were there, though. And your little dog Queegqueg. And there was a big tornado..."
She sighs and starts to get up, but he moves his hand and says, "Wait. No, seriously. I do remember some of it. There was a kid. A blond boy." He twirls his finger over the top of his head in some semaphore signal she assumes she's supposed to understand. "And a man in a big black hat. And a woman."
"Ah."
His eyes this time are Mulder's, and not those of one of his masks. "Scully, there's something about these dreams I've been having. They aren't like any other dreams I've ever had. And I've had some DREAMS."
She settles back into the chair, drawing her knees up, watching his face.
Mulder begins to speak, and in a few seconds the sound of his voice, monotoned but somehow hypnotic, fills the room with the smoky atmosphere of dreams remembered and stories told in the middle of the night by a campfire.
She really should listen closely to what he has to say.
********
oyster six