Want and Need
TITLE: Want and Need (1/1)
AUTHOR: R Hartmann
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Its all good!
SPOILER WARNING: what's a little fluff between friends?
RATING: Mostly harmless (two bad words)
CONTENT WARNING: UST
CLASSIFICATION: MSR/UST
SUMMARY: What's the difference?
AUTHOR NOTES: Besides a juicy nectarine, I enjoy bologna.
DISCLAIMER: Blah blah, not mine, blah blah blah.
Want and Need
"Do two people experience sexual attraction because of familiarity or because of some inexplicable, some unforeseen force that draws the two together, despite common or personal interests?"
Mulder looked up at Scully with a frozen expression on his face. A limp noodle from his spaghetti dangled from his mouth. Its express trip into his mouth stopped at his dinner partners sudden frankness. He stared at her with his hazel eyes and after a moment, slurped the rest of his noodle inward. Clearing his throat, "I'm sorry, what?"
"Why is it that a man and woman, any man or woman when paired together for any reason will feel that recognizable tug of sexual want?" Scully had rested her fork at the side of her dish and placed her chin in her right hand. Her elbow propped up on the table, with her other hand she caressed the bare skin of her forearm. She had taken off her jacket and hung it neatly behind her and it exposed the bare, white skin of Dana Scully. He had managed, up to this point to direct his manly interest from her to his dinner only to be sidetracked. Scully could see that she caught him off guard, but the predator in her ignored it. She was truly focused on her sudden thought. Actually, sudden wouldn't be the correct word. Constant would be closer to correct. She asked again, "Would you know why that is, Mulder?"
His eyebrows crinkled forward. Mulder reached for his napkin and dabbed the sauce off his lips. With a deep sigh he leaned forward and said, "I'm sorry, what?"
"What part did you not understand?" She couldn't help but smile.
"I think I lost you at 'do two people experience sexual' and then it's a blur." Mulder smiled a sloppy grin. "What brings this up suddenly?"
"Have you ever noticed it?"
‘Noticed it? I live it’, he thought immediately to himself. "What part are you questioning? The inevitable sexual attraction or the legitimacy of it?"
That caught Scully off guard. Both her eyebrows perched up, "The legitimacy? What's the difference?"
"Oooh, big difference." He smiled again. "Let's say, hypothetically, specifically two people."
"Fine."
He shifted in his seat and started slowly. "You make it sound like the attraction between two people is more like horniness, not just natural chemistry."
"Wouldn't it just be because of close quarters and hormones?"
"I don't dispute that."
"You don't dispute which part?"
"The validity of emotions between two people."
"I never said anything about emotions."
Mulder flinched back, "You don't think emotion has anything to do with attraction?" Scully shrugged. "You don't think attraction can turn into something else with time?"
"How much time?"
"Enough time." Mulder leaned back in. "A couple of days, a couple of minutes."
"What can possible change lust into love in a couple of minutes? Love into lust maybe, but vice versa?"
"Physical touch."
"I see that having more of a reversal effect."
"Not that kind of touching."
Scully saw the ledge and decided, ‘what the hell’. "Like the way you touch me?"
"Exactly like the way I touch you."
‘What the hell indeed’, she thought. They sat quietly for several minutes. Mulder reached forward with one hand and let it lay in the middle of the table. No requests in it, he just gently laid it there. Scully looked at it for a moment and then back to his face, into his dark green eyes.
"Is that how you differentiate between love and lust?"
"No, more like the difference between want and need." With that he smiled and picked up his fork again, dipping it into the noodles. Scully watched him capture some noodles and raise the prize to his mouth
His mouth. Want and need.
"That's interesting, Mulder." He chuckled at her statement but continued eating.
END Part 1