(is Castiel a person? Perhaps a thought for another time -- he kisses like one, certainly, and every so often on very rare occasions he smiles like one, but he stares at her like...)
(she can't say 'alien')
Mulder has claimed his own personal real estate at the small of her back, the place where his palm rests light and thoughtless. He touches her more, she notices, after he catches sight of a tan trench coat. He touches her like possession.
Castiel only watches, and there is no jealousy to it. He is intense, puzzled; he does not understand her green tea, her lip gloss, her collection of designer shoes or the way a cooling wet heart feels in her hands.
Mulder asks questions; Castiel stares.
Mulder likes slide shows and blurry photographs; he likes to tell her things, secrets and conspiracies and last night's basketball scores, while he perches at the edge of her desk and his long leg flexes, a knee vibrating, a pencil tip tapping against scratched wood. He rambles to her in the car, rentals smelling vaguely like disinfectant, hours-long drives into nowhere, into danger.
Castiel's voice is a rasping rumble when he chooses to use it, but he breathes in the silences Mulder cannot endure. He does not think to tell her things, but once, when she asks him a question -- about the Israelites, about Egypt -- he touches two fingers to her shoulder and takes her there, in the sand and the brilliant sun, a hand beneath her elbow so she does not fall.
Mulder is anxious, demanding, impulsive -- he is the little boy Castiel has never been, but Castiel is the one who will study a spoon, or a porcelain cup, dissecting her kitchen with careful wonder.
They circle her in wary, separate orbits.
Even so, there are times when Scully glances up across the desk, surprised when the eyes that meet hers aren't blue; she slips past a trenchcoated shoulder and expects to feel a hand at her spine.
"You're both lost," she tells Mulder once ('I don't get that guy,' he'd said, not for the first time), but Mulder gives her a flat look and she lets it go, because maybe it was a stupid thing to say.
But Mulder chases the ghost of Samantha and Castiel chases the ghost of God (and of Dean, maybe, these days), and perhaps they would both worship at her altar if she let them, if they tried.
They do not make her choose; she is grateful. She isn't sure she can.
apropos of nothing
(is Castiel a person? Perhaps a thought for another time -- he kisses like one, certainly, and every so often on very rare occasions he smiles like one, but he stares at her like...)
(she can't say 'alien')
Mulder has claimed his own personal real estate at the small of her back, the place where his palm rests light and thoughtless. He touches her more, she notices, after he catches sight of a tan trench coat. He touches her like possession.
Castiel only watches, and there is no jealousy to it. He is intense, puzzled; he does not understand her green tea, her lip gloss, her collection of designer shoes or the way a cooling wet heart feels in her hands.
Mulder asks questions; Castiel stares.
Mulder likes slide shows and blurry photographs; he likes to tell her things, secrets and conspiracies and last night's basketball scores, while he perches at the edge of her desk and his long leg flexes, a knee vibrating, a pencil tip tapping against scratched wood. He rambles to her in the car, rentals smelling vaguely like disinfectant, hours-long drives into nowhere, into danger.
Castiel's voice is a rasping rumble when he chooses to use it, but he breathes in the silences Mulder cannot endure. He does not think to tell her things, but once, when she asks him a question -- about the Israelites, about Egypt -- he touches two fingers to her shoulder and takes her there, in the sand and the brilliant sun, a hand beneath her elbow so she does not fall.
Mulder is anxious, demanding, impulsive -- he is the little boy Castiel has never been, but Castiel is the one who will study a spoon, or a porcelain cup, dissecting her kitchen with careful wonder.
They circle her in wary, separate orbits.
Even so, there are times when Scully glances up across the desk, surprised when the eyes that meet hers aren't blue; she slips past a trenchcoated shoulder and expects to feel a hand at her spine.
"You're both lost," she tells Mulder once ('I don't get that guy,' he'd said, not for the first time), but Mulder gives her a flat look and she lets it go, because maybe it was a stupid thing to say.
But Mulder chases the ghost of Samantha and Castiel chases the ghost of God (and of Dean, maybe, these days), and perhaps they would both worship at her altar if she let them, if they tried.
They do not make her choose; she is grateful. She isn't sure she can.