Commissioned by the lovely @puddingandtame

Freckles

Rating:  PG Author: @kateyes224 Category:  MSR Summary:  Something I didn’t think I was capable of.  Complete and utter MSR fluff.  The equivalent of Shipper cotton candy.  Or maybe lemon meringue? A/N:  For an anon who asked me the following, and got me to thinking…Is Scully romantic in nature? We all know she’d die for Mulder but what trivial things does she do for romance?

They don’t sext.  

Never have, never will.  If either of them groped for a justification for this dearth of visual piquancy in their relationship, both would demur that at any given point during the past twenty-five years, any and all of their phone lines, land, cellular, or satellite, and all of their internet connections and servers, had likely been bugged.  

And as any conspiracy nut will tell you, being surveilled tends to put a damper on displays of affection, both public and private.  

Mulder had managed to quell his seemingly voracious sexual appetite early on, monasticized by her sudden, austere presence in his basement office and in his life.  After their few first years together, he appeared to be quite willing to forego the pleasures his magazines and videos had previously sated.  If he recognized that he was sexually unfulfilled, he chalked it up as a win in light of the fact that he was being intellectually nourished as never before.  

Intercourse, he figured, could wait, at least until she was good and ready.  

Besides, Scully had always had a rather demure, dignified sort of sexiness about her.  She wasn’t often wanton.  She wasn’t a screamer.  

She most certainly didn’t sext.

So the first time it happened, when she was going on hour 43 of a two-day on-call stint, Mulder figured she must have accidentally snapped a photo of some indiscriminate countertop somewhere in the hospital.  A pale formica or porcelain surface speckled with smudges left behind by some errant janitor.  But the following text message had him scratching his head:

Guess correctly and you get a prize.

Scully said nothing about it when she came home the following morning and crawled into bed at oh-dark-thirty.  Mulder figured it must have been a mistake, an accidental butt shot, perhaps.  She’d butt-dialed him before.  An incidental photo wasn’t that far-fetched.  He curled himself around her and fell back asleep, forgetting the whole thing.

A few weeks went by, and April slipped quietly into May.  The sun finally decided to come out after a long, hard winter, and spring exploded in Virginia in earnest, giving Mulder ample opportunity to clear and refertilize the garden boxes behind the house.  

One sunny Sunday afternoon found the two of them kneeling side by side in the garden palming delicate, bright green seedlings that would yield squash and corn and cherry tomatoes by the hundreds into the loamy earth.

Mulder glanced over and offhandedly remarked that she’d forgotten to wear the wide-brim hat that shielded not only her face but the slim bones of her shoulders from the sun.  Her skin was flushed pink and dusted with cinnamon freckles he knew for a fact hadn’t been there when she’d crawled out of bed that morning. She’d rolled her eyes and muttered something about a bottle of aloe vera he could make use of, later, if need be.

And, indeed, he’d concentrated on mapping each and every new freckle that had appeared that night, kissing his way over and across her body and putting that eidetic memory to good use.  

Memorizing her has by far been the most generous and worthy exercise of this talent.

When next his cell phone buzzed, it was just after ten in the morning the very next day.  This time, the photo that accompanied the text was a bit more clear, but the message itself still hazy and difficult to read.  

I’ll understand if you don’t recognize these.  They’re new.

The image is, yet again, the same paleish pink backdrop and the focus is distractedly blurred of the splotches that mar whatever surface she’s photographed.  

Mulder scratches his head, confused.  

When he texts her back with, Do you need me to pick something up at the store?, she immediately responds with, No, just tell me where these are.  If you’re right, you’ll get something extra special tonight.

Mulder studies the image for hours.  He brings up maps of the United States and the world, hoping he’ll recognize the spots for cities or countries or UFO sightings.  He brings up images of the stars, charts of constellations and ancient maritime navigational methods.  Nothing matches.

He’s settled onto the couch with a beer to watch the ball game and wait for her to come home when it hits him.  He can remember three of the seven spots he’d seen from a moment years before, when he’d wrapped himself around her and nestled his nose into her hair and murmured words into the pulse point behind her ear.  He’d made a study of that precious few inches of skin, her neck and her jawline and her ear lobe, and knew for certain that there was a beauty mark hiding just under the line of her lower mandible.

He grabs his phone and texts back, his thumbs typing away at a speed he didn’t know he was capable of.  

Your neck, just under your left ear.  I’ve kissed that spot enough times to know it by heart.

A few seconds for her to respond, but when his phone buzzes, he smiles at her message back.  It’s just an emoji, the smiley face one with heart eyes.  

That night, after dinner, she climbs on top of him on the couch and kisses him breathless, riding him until he’s sure he won’t be able to walk right for days.

It becomes a favorite game they play, on the nights and early mornings when she’s working past the point of exhaustion and he’s missing her so badly it physically pains him.  

She’ll text him a picture of some cluster of freckles or a lone beauty mark somewhere on her body, and he’ll rack his brain to remember precisely where it is.

Sometimes it takes him a few guesses, especially during those summer months when her skin seems to tan the remembered landmarks into oblivion as the freckles join forces in dense clusters on her shoulders and chest.  

By the time winter rolls around, it only takes him seconds to respond to the cryptic pictures she sends him.  

He saves them all, and to this day he can pull them up on his phone and recite from memory where each one is on her body.

one month with mulder and scully: (4/31)

those faces :’)