Charmed and Strange By: afg Website: www.ofnoconsequence.com Rating: NC17 Category: Angst/Quantum physics/Smut Spoilers: 'The Blessing Way' Disclaimer: Not mine and no money is being made Thanks: To Tali. Summary: At a fundamental level, everything is connected. Feedback: Would be lovely - siggy.63@btinternet.com Note: This was written for season three of Fandomonium's A Virtual Season of Smut Challenge. His cat was both dead and alive. 'Til Schrödinger's guests would arrive. Then he'd open the box. And toss in some lox- And the cat would both lay there and thrive. - Alan Alda Scully slammed the door of her apartment closed, she was exhausted and angry, a combination of emotions that did not meld well. She was exhausted because she hadn't slept properly in days and she was angry because she couldn't grieve and she couldn't grieve because she was angry. It just churned around and around in her chest giving her the worst case of heartburn that she could ever remember. She almost laughed out loud when she thought of it, "Mulder's dead and I get indigestion, how fucking appropriate is that?" "Mulder's dead." No matter how many times she said it, it just didn't feel right. Not Mulder, all that fire, all that passion, all that bullshit. Not him, with his stupid jokes and his baseball analogies. Not him, with his big feet and his sunflower seeds. Not Mulder, with his touches and his brown eyes, never him. "Fuck it! It's not fair. It's not right." Her voice sounded loud and flat in the stillness of her apartment and she sank down on her sofa wishing she could cry. It wasn't meant to be like this. The FBI, whom she'd once believed had honor and integrity, had let her down again and worst of all, they'd let Mulder down. She burned with the injustice of it all. Getting up, she went into the kitchen and rooted about at the back of a cupboard for her emergency bottle of Jack Daniels which she kept around for those moments when life was just too crappy to deal with sober. In recent years the bottle had had to be replaced more times than she'd cared to admit. In fact, since joining the X files, she'd gone through a bottle a year, which, for her, was almost tantamount to becoming a lush. Luckily, with her small frame and puritan body chemistry, two shots were plenty enough to make the world a slightly more agreeable place. Still possessing a modicum of decorum she allowed the bourbon a brief visit to a tumbler before drinking it in one go. It burned down her esophagus and sank like hot tar into her empty stomach then, miraculously, oozed down into her thigh muscles, which made her legs feel like wet spaghetti. She refilled her glass and made her way into her bedroom. She stopped short, as she realized that before she'd gone away with Mulder she'd made the bed. Sometimes she was so anal she even annoyed herself. She shed her clothes, deliberately leaving them in a pile on the floor. Walking into the bathroom she sat the glass of Jack Daniels on the toilet cistern, stepped into the shower and turned the water on as hot as she could stand. She stood for a long while, her arms braced against the wall of the cubicle, as the water ran down her body, replacing the paleness of exhaustion with a delicate pink flush. Eventually she mustered up the energy to wash her hair then she shut the water off before the cold could surprise her. She stood naked and steaming as she finished off her bourbon. The heat externally and internally made her eyes droop and her bed look like the most wonderful place on earth. She feels weightless, opening her eyes she gasps as she sees the universe spread out before her. Her vision is such that she can see far distant objects just as well as near ones and it is beautiful. The galaxies and stars no longer cold distant objects as seen from Earth but seething masses of unimaginable energy. Cradles of life, shooting out particles like rushing rivers of gold. She watches as stars die and new ones are born, sees great nebulas glowing with more colors than she can possibly count and far distant pulsars flashing like universal lighthouses. She should feel cold but she doesn't. Of course, she should be dead, her lungs and blood vessels rupturing in the vacuum but she's not. This environment should be hostile, alien, but it isn't. Since she was a little girl, lying on her back on the deck of her dad's boat, listening to him telling her about the constellations and how ships navigate by the stars, the Universe has always been a source of wonder for her. To the point that she took a degree in physics before the more earthly puzzles of medicine lured her. Physics was never a cold science for her, it bubbled with the heat of creation, the means to discover how everything came to be. It appealed to the aesthete in her, its beauty and its language. She immersed herself in event horizons, red and white dwarves, supernovas, and singularities naked and hidden. Now, right at this very moment, she is seeing it all, not in the form of lengthy equations in dusty library books but in its immense reality, throbbing and pulsing before her. Somewhere in a corner of her mind she knows she is dreaming, but the rest of her consciousness shouts to her that this is real, more real than anything she's ever experienced. She realizes that she can hear a faint pulse, like a heartbeat and suddenly she isn't alone. She can feel the presence of another close to her, she concentrates on the sensation and, as if a veil had been lifted, there he is, his body has a faint sheen of silver in the light from the stars. His jaw is lightly stubbled and his eyes are intense as they look at her. She's faintly surprised to see that he's naked. She looks down at her own body, so is she. "Mulder." "Scully." "You're dead." "Am I?" "I thought so." "Feel me." "Mulder, what is this?" "It's everything." "I'm dreaming." "Are you?" "You're dead." "Feel me, Scully." Scully's hand reaches for his and they touch; she can feel him to his blood and bone. His pulse keeps the same slow beat that surrounds them and as she looks at their joined hands she can see through the skin and muscle and blood vessels; she sees every cell, every atom that makes up the cell, every proton, electron and neutron that makes up the atom until she sees the very building blocks of life, the subatomic particles that make up everything in the universe; tiny particles of chaos that somehow bring suns bursting to life and cause babies to slip, slimy and howling from the depths of their mothers. She looks at him and smiles and he smiles back, understanding her joy in the moment. She had loved sub atomic physics, with its leptons, mesons and baryons but, most of all, the quarks who can only exist in groups of three particles which had the rather dull names of up, down, top and bottom, but then there were the other tiny components the charmed particle and the strange. As she looks at him she thinks that never have two words so aptly described her partner. "Mulder, why are we here?" "To connect." "I don't understand." "You don't have to." "Yes, I do." "Don't think so much, Scully, just feel." "But you're dead." "You said that already." "I saw the boxcar, the fire." "Nothing ever really dies." "Mulder, stop talking in riddles." "Am I?" "Yes." "Just feel me, Scully." Mulder moves towards her, enveloping her in his arms, holding her to his body. She can feel the heat of his skin against her, his hands moving over her back, fingers bumping over her vertebrae. Each touch is like a little burst of energy, making her skin hum and tingle. Feeling a deeper heat pressing against her belly she thinks she ought to be, at least, a little alarmed at this sudden turn of events, but she finds that she isn't conflicted at all. This is right and natural and so easy. When his mouth meets hers she is lost, softness and moisture and eager tongues. The taste of him is something she believes she will never forget and she can't get enough. They kiss with their eyes open, and it somehow makes the sensations stronger more real, she can see the cosmos pulsing with life beyond him and she feels as though everything is moving to the same beat, like some gigantic cosmic metronome. The rhythm picks up slightly as Mulder's hand moves to her breasts, massaging the soft flesh and stroking over her nipples, making her gasp with the pleasure of it. Her hands roam over his broad shoulders and muscled back feeling the life within him. His lips leave hers and he scatters kisses down her throat and across her collarbones until his mouth latches on to a tightly furled nipple and it feels like a sun has exploded in her body. Every sensation seems heightened. While his mouth works her, his fingers move between her thighs and touch the slippery flesh. She feels his fingers ease into her body and his palm presses against the most sensitive part of her. She gently bites his shoulder in glorious response; her hips bear down on his hand, feeling him much deeper than the few centimeters he inhabits. She takes a hold of his heat and slowly caresses him; the skin feels so incredibly soft. She grasps his wrist to still his hand and he looks up at her, understanding what she wants. She guides him to her and then there is only beautiful friction and slick heat and the quickening rhythms. She feels her body coalesce with his, the atoms melding into one being, so filled with energy and light that it can't possibly last for long, all things are finite, even universes. Yet, even as things die they transform into other things. She can feel a transformation taking place. She feels the beat of Mulder's heart as her own, she experiences his pleasure as hers, as everything gets tighter, more condensed until it's almost too beautiful to bear. She thinks that they might explode, their atoms spreading in a great rush across the stars but that doesn't happen, instead she feels themselves contract, smaller and smaller yet holding such incredible power and as they let go in a stream of pulsing joy they become an object infinitely dense, a singularity where time and space cease to exist, they are everything and nothing. Her perception shifts and she is alone, but she can hear Mulder's voice, he's trying to tell her something. She can hardly hear him, her body is still buzzing from their joining, he's saying something about a dangerous purpose and that he may be too late. She wants to call him closer but he becomes more and more distant until. Scully sat upright. The sudden change from horizontal to vertical, made her head spin; the harsh sound of her breathing sounded loud in the quiet confines of her bedroom. She felt heavy and most definitely earth bound. She tried to hold onto the dream but it became disjointed, jumbled like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, but she could still feel a heat between her legs. Touching herself she found she was slick with arousal and she could taste Mulder on her lips. "You're alive." ************************************************* End Notes: I had to watch the Blessing way on DVD for the purposes of writing this story, and I'm afraid I found it to be rather more amusing than Mr Carter might have originally intended. I shall look forward to popping my clogs and trolling around The Great Beyond chatting to my fellow afterlifers in the most incredibly turgid manner imaginable. I was actually looking forward to it being a little more relaxed, semantically, but who am I to argue with surfer dude.