TITLE: Air Supply/Having You Near Me

NAME: Mik

E-MAIL: ccmcdoc@hotmail.com

CATEGORY: SRA

RATING: NC-17. Sc/O. M/Sk. This story contains slash i.e. m/m sex. So, if you don't like that type of thing - STOP NOW! Forewarned is forearmed. Proceed with caution. Of course if you have four arms you can throw caution to the wind.

SUMMARY: The real definition for 'getting lucky'.

ARCHIVE: Only with my permission.

FEEDBACK: Feedback? Well, yes, if you insist...

TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING: This is an AU, very vague spoilers for multiple episodes, nothing current.

KEYWORDS: story slash angst Scully Skinner Mulder NC-17

DISCLAIMER: Dana Scully, Fox Mulder, Walter Skinner, and all other X-Files characters belong to Chris Carter, Ten-Thirteen Productions and 20^th Century Fox Broadcasting. No copyright infringement is intended and no profit is being made from their use. I'd rather say that they really are mine, but I've been advised to deny everything.

Author's Notes: Needed a schmoop fest. If you're diabetic, my apologies.

If you like this, there's more at https://www.squidge.org/3wstop

If you didn't like it, come see me, anyway. Pet the dog.

Having You Near Me

by Mik

I still can't believe it.

Even lying back in this bed, listening to her breathe, feeling the warmth rising off her small body, even rubbing the place where this brand new ring fits against my finger, it's still hard to assimilate. Even after a night of more romance than I have ever attempted, after a night of abandoned ardor, I can't quite take it in.

I always thought I'd be one of those men who moves through life single-oh. I've always stuck to the road, never tempted to turn off to explore a path, or even a bit of underbrush. I was groomed for the military from childhood, just as my father was, and his father. There was supposed to be this very small window of opportunity for me to marry and carry on the family line. And since I didn't marry one of the available heiresses loitering around the gates of Annapolis when I graduated, it was expected I'd just have discreet relationships and devote myself to God, flag and country.

Then I met her.

It was a Christmas party at the Officer's Club, and her brother introduced us. All the other women were wearing long gaudy Christmas-y get ups of red or green or a combination thereof. She was dressed in something simple, straight, soft and black. I remember it was soft because it brushed against my hand as she turned and said 'How do you do?' I was thunderstruck. Small, sparkling hair, sparkling eyes, wise but sad smile. That was what caught me. There was something about her that made me want to know what she'd seen in her life to make her smile like that. For the first time in my life, I wanted to peer into the underbrush, do more than just glance down that darkly wooded path.

It only took a couple of dates to know she was the one.

And could a woman be more perfect for me? She was everything I wanted. A medical education, a military childhood, a newly revitalized Catholicism. She was demure with a subterranean passion that threatened to turn me to ash and bone. She worked for the FBI, which fascinated me, but she assured me her work was dull, mundane. Yet she hinted that she had once been involved in so much more. She never gave details but I asked around a bit and discovered that she had, at one time, been assigned to some obscure, top secret investigation of paranormal activities; ghosts and aliens and that sort of thing. I could never coax a confirmation from her, but I found she was so much more open to unexplained events than anyone I'd ever known. It frightened me a little. After all, there was one thing I understood. America. America's military supremacy. The world's biggest guns, making the world's biggest holes. Dana saw things I couldn't believe in.

But it wasn't that willingness to believe that put a shadow in her smile. It was something else … or more accurately someone else. I'm not the world's smartest man, but it didn't take long for me to ascertain that there was a someone in her life, an unrequited love, a 'should have been that never was'. It was, so far as I could see, the only obstacle between she and me becoming a we.

It took me a long time to get the nerve to ask her. She never paraded her feelings before me. She was remarkably considerate about that. She always smiled for me when I came near, she never called anyone else's name in the peak of desire, she had no hidden cache of love letters or photos or odd little trinkets to suggest a fire where embers still glowed. But there was something. Maybe it was just the way she sighed when we finished making love. Or the way she looked up into the night sky. Or maybe it was the complete dearth of love letters, photos and trinkets. A sure sign that she was 'starting over'.

But I did ask. I had to. There was something else, you see, something bigger that I wanted to ask her and I had to clear this ex lover out of the road before I could proceed. And she smiled. That smile. She talked. In little sentences and smaller gestures, she painted a picture of a man who never saw, or wanted or needed her love. She painted a picture of a fool.

So I blundered ahead. I asked her to marry me. And he still stood between us. She accepted, but I could still feel him there. That's why I insisted that she see him, talk to him, invite him to the wedding.

He turned out to be one of those tall/dark/handsome types with a permanent sneer and a nice suit. A really nice suit. And a boyfriend. Affirmative. The man was gay. But even so, he stood between us. I was sorry we invited him to the wedding.

The wedding. We're married. I did it, we did it. And now I have her beside me. I hope some day to take the shadows away from her smile.

- END -