Bloodlust
by Jennifer Stoy (jstoy@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu)
Disclaimer: If I owned them, well, then this kind of thing would make
me money and bring me fame, right?
Website: http://members.tripod.com/~j_stoy/writing.html
Rating: NC-17/MSR/PWP
Spoilers: 3, All Souls, The End. Pre-FTF.
Summary: Blood, masochism, mind games, and sex. The disturbing sort.
Archive: As you see fit.

*One. Two. Skip a few. Ninety-nine. One hundred.*

Underneath her skin is thick red blood, as warm and salty as her sweat
that stings my tongue and my eyes right now very much in the now now
now, and it's warm, my God she's fire against my body against my heart
against my skin. I try to swim into reality again, where I will regret
this in the morning one more time, but for now-- I can't wake up. And I
don't fucking want to wake up. All I want is her blood.

"Yes," I hear buzzing in my ears. Should be her voice, but her voice
doesn't buzz like that, like a tinny phone receiver, like a cell phone
about to break up. The sound is all screwed up. It's fuzz and buzz and
beat and I feel her press against me and I need her nails digging into
my shoulder like that, God, just like that--

She smiles, a strange and horrible smile that has nothing to do with
happiness. It awes me how distant the woman I love during the day, in
her slim suits and sober attitudes, is from this night creature. Scully
by night is flame and flower and blood, and as merciless and terrible
as any of those things.

And I am in thrall to her.

Her lips meet mine, in a kiss that burns my mouth, and we are in it hot
and heavy again, moaning and shifting and rolling in ways that only
drive thought further into the buzzing static that has captured
Scully's voice and Scully's soul and left me with this dark and
dangerous thing.

And yet I cannot stop. The pain has become a part of the game, as much
as the silence, the secrecy, and the sheer bloodlust that drives us to
secrecy, silence, and pain, mingled in the sweat and ecstasy of animals
that means death, underneath all the frantic delight.

What do I offer her? I don't understand what she sees in me as her
little teeth cross my throat and she bites down, pulling skin together
and drawing blood. And my God, I want her to keep going, to never stop
this ritual of agony and self-hatred and adoration and heat and blood.
She looks at me with unknowable, crystalline eyes, and we don't stop.

*Four. Five. Big fat jive. Six. Seven. Go to Heaven.*

Her teeth graze across my belly, enough to ache but not enough to draw
blood. I whimper, because I like it. I need the pain or the blood or
whatever demon offering is enough to tell her how sorry I am for all of
it. I am so sorry, for fallen angels on her earth, my earth, our earth,
and we let them go in our ignorance. I'm sorry for hundreds of files,
paper and ink, transubstantiated into blood and spirit and tears. The
files are our Gethsemane, our Calvary, and perhaps our road to Emmaus.
But we're the only ones gorging on each other in communion, clawing
towards an exaltation of sheer bloody flagellation of glorious
martyrdom.

We will fight. We may die. And if but ourselves will understand the
full value of it all, and this shock and pain is what sends us into the
other's arms over and over again, in a burst of fear and rage that
becomes desire-- what, then?

"He tasted my blood, and I tasted his," a fearful shadow whispers to me
out of a fever dream. "After that--"

And my woman-child-woman-angel draws blood, finally, in our passionate,
desperate fight that seems more pathetic than passionate, more lonely
than loving. She breaks the skin right around the shoulder, near where
she first drew blood. In a daze, I shy back, the survival instinct
overriding the one that wants to be hurt.

My hands convulsively grab her, pulling her away from the injury, while
my fever-stricken brain and the rest of my lust-drenched body shivers,
urgent, wanting it to keep going, to never stop. And in my ears, the
noise of my pulse shakes my ears and rattles my brain.

Then, from depths only as deep as hell, she looks up at me, and I'm
almost shocked by the recognition.

"Mulder?" she asks. It's Scully, the real and daylight Scully, the
woman who never mourns or lusts or shares my bed or her griefs. She's
always fine. She's a safe haven in my life. And yet--

I know what she's asking. We can opt out of this right now, stop the
spinning in my head, the tinny sound of her voice, the pain and scars
and sex and insanity that's consuming us right here right now. If I
want to.

For a moment, I'm even tempted. She is so beautiful, so pristinely good
and strong. Wouldn't it be something, if, for a change, if I repaid
good with good, with gentleness and beauty? Could I kiss away the scars
I'd left and those I'd let them leave? Could it ever be something good?

Then I pull her head back by the hair. A look of tranced-out, mindless
bliss crosses her eyes, and she licks her very dry lips. No and no
again. She doesn't want me, except as some sort of demon, some sort of
penance to satisfy a deep-seated masochistic guilt or something. We've
found some sort of understanding here, in this now. And when our lips
meet again, roughly, I crush her against me. This is not the Scully I
greet in the morning, not the Scully I long for in romance-novel
dreams. This is a shadow, worn and desolate and needy. At least what
she needs is me.

But she'll do. And what does she want? My blood my body my anything my
everything and I, God help me, will give it to her.

*Seven. Eight. Lay it straight. Nine. Ten. Do it again.*

It's no-holds-barred now. I offer her my wrists, my heart, my
everything to satiate the terrible hunger of hers that I see in her
eyes. I feed into the madness, the way she feeds into mine. We infect
each other with an affliction, an addiction that is so real and so
pathetic that I can't think of it now as she climbs on top of me,
stripping away the last vestiges of her clothing.

"Oh, yes," I say, closing my eyes. Oh, God, yes, if nothing else, if I
wake up and have only scars, yes. Her lips cross mine, and her hands
slip down my chest, leaving a trail of pale, invisible fire that throbs
in my chest as I reach up blindly to touch something of her, to caress
the pale, rounded curves that belong to my lover.

Lust binds us together now, bloodlust, in a fever dream of despair and
delight as I slide her down my body, feeling the friction build as we
move against each other, until finally I am inside of her, pressing my
cock as deep as I can. I need this badly, but when I open my eyes, I
think of the blood I originally wanted, blood that means so much as a
symbol, so much as an actual fluid. The blood is the life, exactly what
it means and I--

Am thinking too much. While I'm thrusting up into the woman I want more
than anything, while she bends down and kisses me sporadically,
peppering my face with love bites, and my hands reach up further,
trying to slow her down, because she's moving so fast and if she
doesn't stop I'll come and to hell with her then. I feel the smooth
skin of her back, and the fibers of muscles underneath, rippling. And I
almost imagine the blood, throbbing.

I just have to make it all instinct, heat and movement and my God, my
God, it feels good. Why do I think so many stupid things right now when
it's all about fucking her until we're both raw, and my hands are
around her hips, moving her, my fingers look like bruises on her hips,
I don't care, I squeeze tighter.

So we keep going, locked into a game that twists pain and passion and
makes them a rose of divinely sanctioned masochism. It shouldn't be
like this, it will be like this, now and forever, as we keep going
towards towards towards towards--. It shouldn't be like this, but will
I stop? Will we ever just stop?

The blood is the life is the blood of the life that I hold in my hands
and I'm thinking again and I want it to stop now but I'm going too
fast, too fast to do anything more than follow the path centrifugal
force has laid out for me--

She screams, a hoarse, passionate cry that signals her approval, and as
I follow her, coming hard and fast and filthy, I almost scream. But
instead, I just listen to my own breathing, and the sound of my
heartbeat. We come down slowly, privately, and I feel sick to my
stomach for the five thousandth time. Oh, Scully, Scully, God--

I stare at her back, the lines of her body becoming clearer as my eyes
adjust or as the planet rotates closer to the sun, I'm not sure which
but it could be any of the above. I've lost us our world, our sugar-
spun nightmare world that gave me any right to hold her with me. She'll
leave me sooner or later, and find some other cross to bear.

"Scully," I say into the silent night air. But is Scully really here?
Am I? Who are we when we claw at each other, overwhelmed by lust and
blood and pain and need in the dark of night? Are we the same people we
wake up as in the morning?

She rolls over and throws out her arm, opening her hand just slightly.
Considering it's Scully, it's a peace offering. I take her hand, and
knead it in my own. Then we lay there, silent and unable to do more
than breathe as morning comes.

The End
Muchas gracias to my charming beta readers, Laura, Reade, and Rachel.

And I like feedback. Please share some at jstoy@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu?