Shards To A Whole: Chapter 33

McGee centric character study/romance. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.


Chapter 33: Vanilla Beans, Collars, and The Truth Is Out There

He should be sleepy. He's usually sleepy after sex, unless it's morning sex, but that's a different story all together. But, even though that had been one amazingly, mind-blowingly intense orgasm, he was feeling mostly just relaxed and peaceful.

Tim checked the clock. The fact that it was 9:30 might have had something to do with the lack of sleepy.

He kissed Abby, got up, and grabbed a towel from the bathroom. He folded it neatly over the wet spot, and then snuggled back in next to her. She curled onto her side, facing him.

"What was your first time like, the real one?"

He smiled widely. "You remember, you were there."

For a second she stiffened and her eyes went wide. He kept grinning, and she poked him, hard, in the ribs. "Don't do that!"

"Apparently I'm a Horus. I've got an inexhaustible supply of virginity." He kissed her quickly, and then adjusted the pillow a bit. If they were going to talk, it'd be good to be comfortable. Then he took her hand in his, kissing it as well, and settled back down.

"So, really, how was it?"

"Amazing, the world stood still, time went backwards, and the angels wept." He shook his head. "I was nineteen and desperate to give it away. There was exactly one girl in my Cellular Bio-Chem class and she was my lab partner. I guess she sort of took pity on me. We went out three times, and on the third time, we got together. And, honestly, it was fast. I think I was more excited by the idea of having sex than the sex itself. I remember thinking, 'Oh, yeah, that's...' and we were done. It wasn't precisely the crowning glory of my sexual history." 

"Did you love her?"

"I think I had a crush on her. Or maybe I just really wanted to have one on her. Or it might have been she was a girl, kind of attractive, and willing to touch me. I was pretty disappointed when she wouldn't see me again."

"I'm sorry she didn't take you seriously."

Tim shrugged. "Long time ago. How about you? How was your first, I mean besides in a cab?"

She smiles, very pleased to see he remembered that. "I was kidding about the cab thing. Not nearly fast enough." Tim looked confused, when it comes to things women want, a real speedy ejaculator usually isn't on the list. "I was seventeen and had been dating this guy for about six months. Both of us college freshmen, and he was... Well, it felt like he was packing a cannon, but it probably wasn't that big. Just, first time and all. So I remember being extremely eager, very, very turned on and then OUCH. I was crying, but trying to be quiet because it was his first time, too. It took a minute or two before he noticed and stopped."

"That sounds horrible."

"I've had better times. And it did get better. We dated all of freshman year."

Tim really didn't know what to say to that, so he nudged the topic a bit. "I loved my first time with you."

She smiled. "That was a really good first time."

"I was so nervous; my hands were shaking when I began to unbutton my shirt. Afraid you'd get my clothing off, take one look at me and go, nope, too fat, too vanilla."

"Too vanilla? That was you, last week, who put the collar you had made specifically for me around my neck, bound my hands behind my back, had me kneel in front of you and get you off with my mouth alone, and then stood me up, freed my hands, supported my weight with your body, told me to get myself off while you pulled the collar tighter and tighter and tighter so that when I got off I saw stars, right?"

Tim smiled. That was a good memory. Not the kind of thing they did too often, but oh yeah, lots of fun.

"McGee, have you ever seen a vanilla bean?"

"In real life?"

She nodded.

"Nope."

"They're about this long," she held her hands about six inches apart, "and dark, dark brown or black. The really good ones have these tiny little crystals on them, so between the oils and those crystals they almost shimmer. McGee, if you're vanilla, you're one of those Tahitian vanilla beans, dark and shimmering, smelling sweet and perfumy with undertones of forbidden pleasures and desire. I like vanilla, real vanilla, not whatever it is they put in McDonald's ice cream, and you are real vanilla."   

"Dark and delicious?"

"In a pale and mostly blondish sort of way."

He ran his fingers through his hair. The longer he wears it and the more time he's in the sun, the lighter it gets, which is why it's pretty much entirely dark brown now. "I haven't been blond in years."

She stroked the hairs that began just below his navel and trailed down. "These still are."

"I hadn't really thought of that." He supposes those are sort of blondish, maybe, in the right light.

"Nope?"

"Nope. I don't spend too much time pondering my pubes. They're just sort of there."

She laughed at that, and he laughed with her.  

"The first time I saw you, I thought you were a vanilla bean. Still green, but there was a lot of potential there."

"Green?"

"They're the seed pods of orchids. They start out green, and then they do something to them, fermentation, drying, roasting, all three? I'm not sure, but somehow they turn black and delicious." Tim nodded. "I saw you and I just knew that under that suit and nervous exterior there was something tasty."

"I'm so glad you decided I was worth tasting."

"I am, too."

They lay there, holding hands, he's stroking her fingers, feeling the long slender taper of them, the slightly rough spot on her index fingernail where it broke recently, and the small callous she's got on her right thumb from capping the lids onto the specimen test tubes for Major Mass Spec.

"Which tattoo was your first?"

"You know the P on my wrist?"

"Yeah." His thumb slips down to touch it.

"I was fourteen, and my best friend and I hitchhiked to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We went out to party and drink, and we both had fake ids. So, we're in the Quarter, having a blast and she said, 'Let's get tattoos.' It seemed like a really good idea, so off we went.  Her name was Paulette, so I got a P on my wrist, and she got an A on hers."

"That's so cute."

"The next year we got the smiley faces on our fingers."

"Awww..."

"And the year after that we got the angels. I'd be looking over her, and she'd be looking over me."

"Did you get all your tats with her?"

"No, that was the last year. The next Mardi Gras I was seventeen, in college at LSU and she had gone to Ole Miss. We lost track of each other over the years."

"You ever want to find her again?"

"Sometimes. I've looked a few times, but no dice."

"I bet I could find her for you. I am a cop, and kind of handy with a computer, you know?"

She smiled wryly, "Yeah, I noticed that. The badge was a tip off. But... If I can't find her because something happened to her, I'd rather not know.  I don't want to know that I live in a world that doesn't have her in it." 

He lifts her hand to his lips and kisses it. "I can understand that. One of my grade school buddies died three years ago. And it wasn't like we were close or anything. Not even Facebook friends. But I'd think about him every year or so, wonder how he was, and now... Now I know. I never thought I'd have to know he wasn't around any longer."

"Yeah. I don't exactly miss her, but I like to think of her as happy."

He kissed the tiny smiley face on her middle finger. "And getting new tats and new adventures."

"Yeah, maybe telling someone special about how she got hers." She's touching his fingers now, mapping them by feel. "So my vanilla bean, how did you get into this?"

"This?"

"You know. Most guys don't just wake up one day and think, 'Collars. I really like collars. And maybe, if you put one on someone, and tighten it during sex, that might result in a really intense orgasm.'"

"Gotcha. And no, it wasn't like I woke up two months ago and out of the blue thought, 'Abby needs another collar. One from me. Ohhh and some wrist cuffs to go with it.' Well, I mean, yeah, two months ago I was thinking that, but it wasn't out of the blue.

"So, do you want to know about how I got into"—Tim doesn't much like using the word kink to explain what they do. Firstly, because it's not quite right. It's a kink if you can't get off without it, so for him and Abby it's more of a hobby than a kink, but there's not a really good other word for this.—"all of this in general, or collars in specific?"

"I was thinking in general."

"You'll laugh."

"Maybe, if it's funny. But if it's funny, you'll laugh, too."

He smirked a little at that and flashed her a self-depreciating smile. "Okay, so, it's 1998, I'm a junior in college, and this internet thing is really starting to attract some attention. And I was really, really into the X-Files. I had just started writing then, and I was writing X-Files fanfic."

"Good place to start."

"I thought so. Anyway, generally if you write a fandom, you also read it, and that's when I noticed there were people out there who had a much wider definition of sex than I had imagined could exist. Sex-ed as taught by my grandfather was... functional, and that's it. I was reading, and I noticed that I really, really liked some of the things I was finding."

"Really?" She's teasing him a little, but he's enjoying it.

"Yeah, really. Imagine this: I didn't have my own computer yet—"

"There was a time you didn't have a computer?" She sounds genuinely surprised by that.

"Shocking, but yes, that's true. I didn't have my own until senior year. Anyway, I had to use the school's computer labs to get online. So, there were times I'd be in there late at night, reading away, and end up jerking off in the men's room, thinking about Mulder tying up Scully or Scully doing it to him."

She closes her eyes and does seem to imagine that for a moment. "You would have been, what twenty?"

"Yeah."

"Tall, kind of gangly?"

"Yeah. '98 means my hair was long, down to about my jaw, and pretty light. I really was blond back then. I was wearing a lot of flannel and denim those days."

She thinks about that for another minute. "I can just see it. You'd be nervous, and worried someone could come in, but that'd be part of the fun. Way in the back stall, trying to be quiet. Scully in your mind while your hand slides up and down." She closes her eyes, thinks about it, and smiles. "That's so hot."

He pulls her close and kisses her for a long time. "I love you." 

"I might just have to find a red wig."

"Ohhh... God, that is so hot!"

"Call you Mulder." He closes his eyes and sighs. "You wear a suit and tie. I think I've got something that'll pass for the sort of clothing Scully wore. I'll handcuff you to a chair, and explain in vivid detail why you need to ignore the search for the truth for at least one night."

"Yes, please!" He kisses her again, thinking his current lack of erection is a testament to how intense the last orgasm was, because in any other circumstance this conversation would make him hard as a rock. "You're the first person I got to do any of this with."

"Really? After that first time, you never seemed nervous. I thought it was just doing it with a new partner, not that it was all new."

"I had figured out that I liked it, but there wasn't a lot of opportunity to do anything about it."

"No steady girlfriend?"

"I had one at MIT, but I think it would have freaked her out, and not in a good way."

"There's a good way to be freaked out?"

"Oh yeah. That little bit of fear when you're doing something scary, but you really know you're safe. Like a roller coaster."

"Okay."

"So, I was with Tony, and I saw you and just about swallowed my tongue. You were so beautiful, and dark, and dangerous looking, and already wearing a collar, and just... I was thinking that if I could get up the nerve to really talk to you, that maybe you'd get to like me, and if maybe you'd get to like me, you might decide sleeping with me was an option, and if that happened, just possibly you wouldn't run screaming away if I suggested tying you up."

"And I didn't run away, did I?"

"No, I think your exact words were something like, 'I've got some ribbons in the top drawer.'"

"Something like that."

"They were black, and silk, and about as long as my arm."

"Yeah. I used them for tying bows around my pig tails."

"I almost lost it, seeing you kneeling in front of me, holding your hands behind your back, waiting for me to tie you."

"Is that your favorite image of me?"

"One of them."

"One of them? How many do you have?"

"A lot. But seeing you do that... It's the closest I've ever been to coming in my pants."

She smiles kindly, but he knows the next words will be teasing. "Control's a good thing, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I've been enjoying it. Still, you've got to remember, I wasn't even twenty-five when we met, less than three months out of the academy, and you utterly rocked my world."

"God, I had forgotten how young you were. Now I'm feeling like a cradle robber."

He kisses her, grinning, and she knows the next thing he says will be teasing, as well. "My very favorite cougar."

"Hey, I'm not that old!"

"Just old enough."   

She smiles at that. "So... A Scully costume. I've got a black pencil skirt and a plain white blouse, think that'll work..."

Four days later, he's sitting in front of his computer, wearing a suit, jacket off, tie loose, top button undone, and sleeves rolled up, looking at a report on crop circles, and eating sunflower seeds.

"Mulder, it's after midnight."

He doesn't turn. He wants to turn. He's dying to see how she looks, but Mulder is obsessed, and not with Scully. Mulder stares at the screen. Mulder might indeed dream of sleeping with Scully, but he doesn't act on it, and he certainly doesn't think anything out of the ordinary is going to happen tonight.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead, Scully. Did you know..." and he's blathering on about cow mutilations occurring near crop circles in Oregon.

Abby walks up behind him, leans over his shoulder, turns off the monitor, and then turns his chair to face her. She's wearing a sensible business skirt, low heeled shoes, some sort of knit shirt, and a black jacket, she's even got Scully's little gold cross. But what rivets him, what he can't take his eyes away from is the chic red bob circa season six. Sure, it's a wig, but he's just staring.

"Who said anything about sleeping, Mulder?" She leans over him, pinning his wrist to the arm of the chair. 

God, he loves this woman!

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