What Happened After That

This is an optional NC-17 continuation to "Dance Card." The NC-17 is not optional; the continuation is. Have no fear; it's very NC-17. If you want a nice, meaningful hint at MSR and a complete story arc in "Dance Card," stop here and DON'T READ THIS. However, if "Dance Card" left you craving smut, craving MSR in action, here's some fresh from the oven. AND, I don't think this piece makes sense if you haven't read "Dance Card," but I suppose you can be the judge of that. By the way, the song referred to herein is "Mother Universe" by the Soup Dragons, from their album entitled, of all things, LOVE GOD. I miss New York!
As always, for Aurora Vere and Sister Phledge. Also for EPurSeMouve, who asked.

Work Text:

I knew too many musicians. Their culture understood me; I understood their culture too well, chasing garage bands in college, bare-shoulder sweatshirts with torn-off necks. Even beyond the shoulder pads I was firmly ensconced in the eighties, swearing Reaganite fealty to yuppiedom now and forever. So I watched the band and wondered how much they were getting paid. And how much they were getting laid.

Most of the guests had left, those who remained gaggled together, a flock of Jennifer's girlfriends shooting back Goldschlager and plotting pregnancies. Mulder was off somewhere asking some Gunman to feed his fish; I watched the band.

They didn't care that this was a wedding; they didn't care whose wedding it was. Their sleeves were rolled up; a guy with wiry arms made love to a standup bass riffing jazz; the female vocalist improvised. I saw her turn heavy lidded eyes to the drummer now and again, watched her count on her fingers, heard her laugh to the beat. They had a familiarity among them; they jammed. They muttered to each other "bring it up a half-step; we'll do like we did that time at the Bottom Line," and "dude, you owe me a fat blunt when we get out of here." Thunk thunk thunk, slow jazz painted the room, a slow leak, and the three or four couples dancing held each other a little closer. "Fuck you, motherfucker," the vocalist said, laughing, to the sax soloist who was taking off without her. It was above and beyond the sexiest thing I'd ever heard.

Laura caught me from behind, squeezed my bicep. "Put your coat on and come have a cigarette with me before I go," she said.

"Mulder's..." I said, gesturing vaguely down the hall where Mulder had disappeared moments before.

"Mulder's what we're gonna gossip about, babe. Coat now."

I obeyed.

Outside it was very much New York, where snow was all smell and no action and the air was cold enough to snap my nipples to attention through blue satin that was a whole lot stiffer than I'd have liked. I pulled my coat around me, tucked my nose into my scarf and watched the cabs speed by, heard faint shouting from blocks away, the squeal of tires, the music of the band as the door to the Russian Tea Room opened and closed behind us. Out here it smelled like gasoline, like chestnuts in paper bags, like bits of pretzel ground in urine on the subway platform floor. Laura handed me a cigarette.

"I haven't smoked in years," I said, turning it over in my gloved hand.

"You're smoking now," she said. "It's that kind of night."

Every doctor, every patient's instinct in me shut up in the face of how right she was. I let her light it off a brass Zippo, and took a long drag, tasting New York as I inhaled.

We jogged in place at the corner, hopping from foot to foot, trying to keep warm.

"You gonna get a cab?" I asked.

"Not yet," she said. "Talk to me."

"About what?" I asked.

"About your partner. About Paul. About tonight." She beamed with an insider's knowledge and peered out at me under a Scandinavian print wool cap.

"You should have told me Paul was such an asshole," I said.

"I've told you that for years," she said. "I told you that in college."

"Oh. Yeah. Right," I said.

"When was the last time you had a one night stand?" she asked, rubbing her shoulder against the street sign like a cat.

"Embarrasingly long ago," I said. "Hundreds and hundreds of days."

"I think you need to," she said. "I think it will wake you up."

"You're probably right," I said agreeably.

"You still waiting for him to grow up?" she asked. I furrowed my brow. "You e-mailed me once about how you thought Mulder would be the perfect man if he'd just grow up."

"The same could be said about Leonardo DiCaprio," I said.

Laura laughed. "Hey, don't knock it. Little Leo gets more action than I do."

The cigarette was burning down and I took my glove off, held it between shivering fingers. I looked at the ground. "I don't know," I said.

"Look, Dane," Laura said. "You gotta stop looking for some sort of lifelong commitment and just get laid."

"I'm 35 years old," I coughed smoke. "It's not as easy as it sounds."

"Well, okay, here's another way of looking at it," Laura squatted on the sidewalk and squinted up at me in the streetlight. "You and Mulder have been together for six years, right? Now, if you'd been married for that long, one of you would probably have had an affair by now, right? Variety's the spice and all that shit? So have an affair. Don't you have, like, a sexy mailman or butcher or neighbor you really want to bone?"

"Can women bone?" I asked, not really intentionally changing the subject.

"Don't change the subject," Laura said, reaching a mittened hand out and swatting my calf.

"But it's not like I've been sleeping with Mulder," I sighed. "It's not like I'm tired of him sexually and need some variety."

"So have an affair with Mulder," Laura said, turning her palms up, eureka, I have found it. She'd wedged her cigarette into her mitten and was gesticulating with it so skilfully I couldn't help but be impressed.

"You think?" I said.

"What could it possibly hurt?" Laura said.

I crouched beside her, trying to balance on the balls of my feet as steadily as she was. I wobbled a little, braced myself on the street sign.

"Six years of friendship," I said. "An important working relationship."

"That's bullshit," she said. "Put it this way again. If you had been married for six years and one of you had an affair, you'd be able to get past it, right? You'd forgive each other?"

"We forgive each other a lot of things," I agreed.

"Just do it. Then call me and tell me how right I was. If I'm wrong, I owe you a beer." She stood up, held a hand out into traffic, hailing a cab.

"Whatever," I said, shrugging her off.

Poor brakes brought tires to a stop too close to the curb, and Laura turned to me, threw her arms around me. "CALL ME," she said, forcefully. "I miss you all the time."

"You call me," I said, hugging her back. "I can live vicariously through your sex life."

"Yeah, you should meet Robin," Laura said. "Next time you come up I'll make her cook for you."

"I love you, honey," I said, kissing her on the cheek.

"I love you more." She got into the cab, and it roared off uptown. I stood on the corner for a long moment, watching my breath spin tendrils into the thick air, and then I turned and went back inside.

Mulder was on the wrong side of the gold doors, coat on, waiting for me. "Where did you go?" he asked.

I looked at him. Flushed from alcohol he was glowing, slightly, his sharp features softened by the long night. Here before me was the most familiar thing in my life, the most familiar face I'd ever known, the voice I heard in my own head keeping me awake at night so often I'd force myself to fall asleep with the TV on, just to tune him out. Just so I didn't have to think about it.

Through the gold doors I could hear Paul's wife's friends laughing. Paul's wife. I reached out and took both Mulder's hands in mine. "Um, what?" I said, realizing he'd asked me something.

"I asked where you'd been, but I'm guessing Laura took you out and plyed you with cigarettes and subversive ideas."

"Guilty," I said.

"Very," Mulder said, his eyes wide, squeezing my hands in his. "So what's our plan?"

"I thought you knew," I said.

"Well, the trains aren't running and Frohike promises the fish will get a better meal than I usually do, so we're good until morning, as far as I can tell."

"I haven't done this in a long time," I said. "Gone to a strange city with no plans and no place to stay."

"Invigorating, isn't it?" Mulder pounded his chest, and I laughed under my breath.

"Yeah, you know, I'm sorry I dragged you into this," I said. "There was really no reason for you to have to relive my past like this."

"Scully," Mulder said, as serious as I'd ever known him to be, "anything that gives me more insight into that enigmatic head of yours is okay by me. Call it research."

"Consider it duly called," I smiled to hide my astonishment at his affection.

"So let's find a hotel, on me," Mulder said. "I think after what you've been through tonight, you've spent enough. Besides, we can expense it at the meeting on Monday, call it 'the case of the arrogant fuck.'"

Mulder's cavalier reference to Paul made me icy for a moment, but the initial offense past and left me feeling strangely close to Mulder, pleased that he could take up shorthand about my history. I tried not to think about Eddie Van Blundht.

"Got everything you came with?" Mulder asked, heading for the door.

"Nah, I think I left a little baggage behind," I said, immediately embarrassed at the weak joke. Mulder laughed appreciatively.

We walked for a while, uptown, toward the Central Park. The grass had frosted and was crunchy underfoot, the dark paths of the park stretching out ahead of us promising muggers and rollerbladers. We bumped arms, walking along the uneven ground in silence.

I looked up. "Oh my god," I said aloud, not meaning to. Panoramic, all around us, east-side-west-side skyscrapers freckled the night with glowing windows flickering on and off; the sky was clear. I was breathless; I felt tiny and elated.

"It's an amazing city," Mulder said.

"It's...Jesus, Mulder, even the midnight tour of the monuments has nothing on this. Makes me want to sing Gershwin."

Mulder chuckled. "Please don't," he said. "It's too nice a night, and I've heard you sing."

I don't know where they get that scarf – that brown and brown and blue plaid cashmere scarf all men have, that scarf that says model, that says I'm a man with a dog, that says I'm a man who knows how to sail a yacht – but Mulder had one and was wearing it and for some reason I hadn't noticed before, and for some reason, now, it meant everything.

"That's a great scarf," I said, sounding small even to myself.

"Don't know where I got it," Mulder nodded, flipping up an end and looking at it.

My breath clouded out before me. It was dark, here, just past the first hills of the park downtown and not quite at the meadow yet, and I shivered. "It's freezing," I said.

Mulder reached out and wrapped his arms around me as I knew he would as soon as the words left my mouth. I stuffed my hands in his pockets and he rubbed my back in circles, briskly. His breath was warm on the top of my head.

"Never stop doing that," I said into his chest.

"You got it," Mulder said. He held me tighter.

I pressed my chin to his chest and looked up at him after a moment. The west side grew up behind him like an ice sculpture, like gold; somewhere, in all of those apartments, liberal parents with kids at private schools were sleeping in beds from the Pottery Barn and would wake up to The New York Times, The New York Observer, The New Yorker, bagels, coffee, phone off the hook. A New York morning, from decades of Woody Allen movies and John Updike novels and Nora Ephron screenplays. My heart caught in my throat.

"Mulder," I said, not even believing it as the words came tumbling out, "let's have an affair."

He opened his mouth to make a joke, to make a comment, to hide his incredulity, and as quickly snapped it shut and kissed me on the head. Warm dry lips, five o'clock shadow grown out past midnight now. It was two in the morning.

He didn't ask "are you sure?" because he knew I was; he knew I didn't throw words around idly, and I knew he knew. He didn't say "okay," or "yes," or shout out his love to the heavens because I knew it was right with him, and he knew I knew. I swear it was because of the proximity, and only because of the proximity, because we were already on 59th street, but we went to the Plaza.