Title: Learning to Breathe
Author: vegawriters
Fandom: The X Files
Pairing: Scully/Reyes
Rating: Adult
Timeframe: 9th Season.
A/N: In honor of the Prop 8 reversal, I am writing a series of slash and femslash fics. This story is long overdue, but is meant for own_the_sky.

Dedication: Thirteen years ago, I fell in love with a character. Not Dana Scully so much but Anne Kazmerowski, a beautifully written original character who seemed to complete Scully in ways Mulder didn’t for me at the time. In fact, the two of them together helped to bring me out of the closet. In the years since, I’ve thought about including Kaz in stories, in honor of the author who created her, but I’ve never done her justice. This story helps me do that and I make references to happenings in each of the stories, including Scully's second bout with cancer and the adorable Brandi. It’s a slight canon change – mostly the lack of a baby for Mulder and Scully. Kaz can be found in the Walking the Line series which is still up in its entirety at the ScullySlash archive. (Links to the first story and the ScullySlash home page.)

Summary: Her birthday came. Monica took her to lunch – a small bistro not far from Quantico. Monica ordered coffee for both of them; Scully picked at a salad she knew was supposed to taste better than it did.



On still shaking legs, Dana Scully walked into the FBI training facility at Quantico. With the mess and fallout of 9-11, the agents lost in New York and at the Pentagon, classes were starting late. Students filed in, silent, out of some reverence they all still carried. Not for the first time, Dana wondered if this was what the world felt like after Pearl Harbor.

Somehow, her hands held steady while she wrote her name on the board.

Standing in this classroom, in this dark suit, in her sensible low heels, talking to perfectly eager students was the last place she wanted to be. It had been exactly two months since the plane hit, since she’d geared up with her fellow agents to do whatever it took to take down the monsters who had taken down so many of their own. It had been exactly two months since Kaz had stopped answering her phone, since Scully had stayed up all night helping to sift through surveillance and mess, all the while checking her own phone over and over and over again. One month and twenty-eight days since Kaz’s paralegal had called her to let her know what had happened and he was so sorry she couldn’t get the same treatment and respect as the properly married soldiers who had been taken down in this act of terror against the Pentagon.

At least the last words she’d said to the woman she loved more than life itself were “I love you.”

Monica had been a surprising comfort. She’d taken up camp in the guest bedroom, walking Brandi and keeping the house clean while Scully went about the impossible task of sorting through her partner’s dress and casual uniforms and boxing them up. They went into storage in the basement. Jeans, pants, and shoes were packed away and sent to goodwill. Shirts gone through one at a time, some kept because Scully couldn’t bear to part with them others because they smelled forever of Kaz’s unique scent. Kaz’s ratted hoodie stayed in the dresser, her favorite bomber jacket in the closet. The dress she’d worn on their first real date hung next to Scully’s suits, always in its plastic covering.

Behind the suitcases, Scully found the Christmas presents and cried for three days straight.

Losing Mulder to the frightening truth that his life was in danger had been bad enough. Losing Kaz to the unspeakable horror that was daily life in the modern world nearly broke her.

She did not open Kaz’s studio. Inside, she knew, there were sketches waiting to be turned into oils and still drying canvasses. The door stayed closed and locked and Brandi took to lying in front of it, her head on her paws, waiting for her mommy to emerge and take her for a run through the park. At night, the large boxer crawled up onto the half empty bed and shared Kaz’s now abandoned pillow, a pillow Scully could not bring herself to wash.

For Scully, washing that last pillowcase meant Kaz would never again bound through the door and dart up the stairs to change before she filled the house with smells that made her Italian grandmother proud. It meant they’d never curl up on the couch and watch Hitchcock or sit out in the backyard as the sun set. In the end, at Scully’s insistence, Monica did the dreaded laundry. Scully took Brandi for a walk past the Christmas tree lots and remembered their second Christmas together and how Kaz had driven to the spot where the Scully family used to buy their trees and donated five-hundred dollars to the church’s restoration efforts. They’d had Mulder over that year and later, when all was quiet, had exchanged rings in the bedroom that had become theirs and was now hers.

Kaz’s estate was in turmoil. Despite very specific details of her wishes in her will, January dawned with Kaz’s less than accepting mother demanding the sale of the house and the money to go to “Anne’s real family.” More than happy to let the lawyers fight for her, Scully went through her motions – going to work, helping John and Monica to solve cases that had once been hers to solve. But for her, the loss of Mulder and Kaz really meant the loss of the X Files. It was so tempting to throw it all away and go be a doctor on an island somewhere. She could forget the FBI and the JAG Corps and the chocolate brown eyes of Anne Kazmerowski.

Her birthday came. Monica took her to lunch – a small bistro not far from Quantico. Monica ordered coffee for both of them; Scully picked at a salad she knew was supposed to taste better than it did.

“Thank you, Monica.”

The woman looked up and nodded and not for the first time, Scully was grateful for her intuitive nature. They shared a smile and sipped coffee in silence. Monica took her home. Scully curled up in front of the still locked studio and stroked Brandi’s head. When she cried, the dog licked the tears from her face.

“We met at the Georgetown Law Library. I’d gone to work on a monograph, she was there reading.”

“Why were you at the law library?” Monica was helping to pull weeds from the garden Scully had abandoned in the fall. Brandi watched from the screened porch. The Indigo Girls filtered through the speakers Kaz had installed after Scully’s second bout with cancer.

“It’s quiet there.”

Monica nodded, knowing nothing more needed to be said. Scully took comfort in the easy silence of the other woman and for the first time in the six months since the attacks, she could appreciate the way Monica’s tank top clung to her in the early heat of the day and how the long sweep of her neck curved down into slightly awkward but slender shoulders. She was beautiful.

Feeling guilty, Scully stamped down the feelings and returned to tilling the earth. Brandi whimpered.

Mulder reemerged, lost and broken. She helped break him free from his certain death and followed him to the very end of his journey with the smoking man. But it wasn’t until his SUV had disappeared over the New Mexico horizon that she realized she’d been clinging to Monica’s hand. On the trip back to DC, they sat together, almost touching. She drove Monica home and stumbled into her own house, curled up around Brandi, and cried.

Skinner was gentle. She had a choice. She could accept a desk job in DC or a field position in Chicago. Her ties to Mulder’s escape could not be proven, but the powers that be wanted her out of their hair. She knew they wanted her to resign. She took the job in Chicago – first taking six weeks of personal time to put her affairs in order. If they wanted her to move, she was going to do it on her time.

“Salt Lake City.” Monica leaned against the door of her apartment, hands shoved in her pockets. “They’re promoting John, but moving him to New York. If he stayed in DC, he’d be too close to the X Files.”

“They can’t split us up forever, Monica. Eventually, the X Files will be discovered again. They can’t bury the truth. We know too much.” She sipped wine and stared at her fingers and hated herself for being attracted to the other woman. It hadn’t even been a year and she was drifting close, so close, to this gentle, thoughtful soul who believed in “the powers of the universe” and things like chakras and auras.

“They can delay the truth until it’s too late …”

Scully shook her head, her eyes still focused anywhere but Monica’s shoulder length hair and tortured brown eyes. “Get out while you can, Monica. While you still have a career to save.”

“What if I don’t care about my career?”

“Mulder doesn’t need a disciple.”

“Why not? You’re one.”

Again silence but this time, Monica was closer. Long hands on Scully’s shoulders, sliding down her arms, and she leaned back into the other woman, cherishing the soft press of Monica’s breasts and the light smell of her favored perfume. She wanted nothing more than to turn and kiss her, to feel soft lips against her own. She wanted to lose herself in another woman’s curves, to taste the underlying musk that was Monica at her core.

But she wanted Kaz even while wanting to explore her own attraction to Monica. She wanted to no longer be lonely. She wanted to wake up next to someone and linger in bed. She wanted to not feel guilty for wanting companionship.

She wanted to kiss Monica.

Monica kissed her.

It was cautious, testing, but built quickly into a familiar fire. Scully slipped her hands under the other woman’s shirt, tugging upward impatiently. She needed her, needed this. She needed to feel cherished, just one more time, before she sold the last part of her life with Kaz and packed herself and Brandi up and moved to Chicago.

Monica reciprocated her actions, tugging her own shirt off and helping Scully out of the slacks she’d almost forgot she was wearing. Fast, hurried, both knowing that if they slowed down to think, they’d stop. Bras went flying, chests pressed together, and Scully found herself on the couch, her legs open, and Monica’s head buried between them.

The other woman’s skills and confidence proved to her that this was hardly a first time and Scully leaned back, helpless to do anything other than revel in the feel of Monica’s tongue as it pressed up into her core. The lithe muscle moved through her folds, licking and dabbing until Monica’s lips pressed against Scully’s clit, sucking and nibbling.

Exactly two seconds before her entire body tensed with the joy of release, Scully felt Monica pull back, just enough, and three fingers slid into her dripping entrance. She screamed at the pressure and when Monica again took her clit between her lips, Scully came, long and hard, gasping her lover’s name.

Long, naked limbs entwined with hers and Scully stretched full out on the couch, grateful Monica had not pushed them to the bedroom. It was a level of intimacy she was not yet ready to share, despite her need to be touched and loved again. Gasping her recovery, Scully trailed her fingers up and down Monica’s spine, moving lower and lower as her equilibrium returned. When she could breathe again, she moved her hand around to the front of Monica’s hips, stroking between the long legs and through the patch of curls at the juncture of her thighs.

She was wet. So wet.

And as Scully dragged her nails across Monica’s clit, the other woman gasped and opened her legs, clearly glad for the return of her own ministrations. Dana knew she did not have the energy to roll them, to part Monica’s legs and slide down to taste her, but she could do this. So she focused her task, her fingers moving easily while she found a breast and latched on, her tongue mimicking the movement of her fingers.

“So close …” Monica whispered and Scully doubled her efforts, sliding her fingers through Monica’s slick folds while her thumb pressed against her clit. Monica tensed and whimpered her name and as she came, Scully rode her through the aftershocks and then held her, trying to hide her tears.

This was what it meant to move on.

One scared step at a time.

“I should go …” she whispered, even as her arms tightened around Monica’s waist. The other woman held on.

“Stay. For a while.”

Silence. And then a nod. A hiccuping sob.

“Thank you, Monica,” she said for the millionth time over the course of the months. This time, instead of with a smile, Monica only responded with a kiss.