Red Valerian by Dasha K.

Archive wherever you'd like but please keep my name and 
email address on the story.  Telling me where you put this 
would be most considerate.

Summary:  When three lives intersect, a triangle is formed.
Category: SRA
Classification:  Skinner/Scully romance, Mulder/Scully 
romance
Rating: NC-17 for language and adult themes
Disclaimer:  Mulder, Scully and Skinner do not belong to 
me, but since CC doesn't let them play, I thought I'd take 
them out for a bit
Spoilers:  Fifth season
Feedback:  I'd love to hear what you thought of this.  
dakluz@stkate.edu

This is a compilation of all ten stories of the Red 
Valerian universe. You may wonder why I have put "Little 
Rock", the prequel, seventh in this collection.  I agonized 
over that decision, and then decided that the series as a 
whole works a lot better if the reader waits until then to 
get the full story about what happened in Little Rock.  If 
you disagree, I'd love to hear about it.

The Red Valerian Stories

Red Valerian
Everything But the Girl
Cleopatra
Two Voices
Friction
Hotel
Little Rock
Saturday Morning, Two Breakfasts
The Seasons
Resonance

The stories were originally rated from PG-13 to NC-17, but 
I have opted to not individually rate the stories, and just 
give a stern NC-17 warning to all the youngsters out there.  
I'm watching you.

The series begins in the spring of the Fifth Season but 
chronologically (with "Little Rock", the prequel) starts in 
January, after the events of Christmas Carol/Emily.  The 
stories end approximately four years later.  For the 
purposes of the story, the events of The End, the movie and 
the Sixth Season are ignored.


These stories are in memory of Scott Rothenberger, for the 
words he wrote and the words he left unwritten.
1967-1992



Red Valerian


He lies in bed waiting for her to come out of the bathroom.  
It's a pleasurable torture as he hears the water running, 
and imagines her scrubbing her face, combing out her hair, 
brushing her teeth.

Finally, she walks across the room with her no-nonsense 
gait, wearing one of his old basketball t-shirts that 
nearly hangs down to her knees.  Lacy lingerie is nice, but 
give me a tiny redhead in a ratty t-shirt and I'm set for 
life, he thinks with a smile.

Sliding across the bed, she flashes him a familiar look 
that never fails to set his nerves working overtime.  What 
is it that this woman does to me, he muses.  Is it the 
forbidden, that I am her superior?  Is it her partner's 
obvious love for her?  Is it the dreamy way she touches me 
with her eyes closed?

-------

She smiles to see him sitting up in bed, his reading 
glasses still on, a book in his lap.  Another World War Two 
history, she notices.  What is with men and their 
fascination with war?   Still, he lived through a war, came 
out on the other side alive.  He has the right to be 
fascinated.

His body, God, his body.  She knows that she could live to 
be an old, old woman and never tire of his golden skin, the 
tight muscles of his arms, even the garish scar on his 
chest from being shot.  It is part of him and she adores 
it.  Her only regret tonight is that she was in the 
bathroom when he took off his clothes.  There is something 
deeply erotic about the way he slides a crisp white shirt 
off his body and lays it on the chair.

There will never be enough of this man for her.

It all comes down to stolen moments for them.  An hour 
here, a rare night there.  They must necessarily live in 
the shadows.

If my partner were to know, she thinks, and files the 
thought away for later.  It's not time to think about him.  
She moves across the bedspread to her man.

-------

Shutting off the bedside light, he moves closer to her.  He 
can smell her almond soap.  It is the only thing of hers 
she keeps at his place, the only memento he has of hers 
when he is alone.  Sometimes when she is not there, he 
stands under the running water of the shower and smells her 
soap, the scent of her warm skin filling his mind.

He touches her fine hair.  Red Valerian, he thinks as his 
fingers move through the threads. Is Red Valerian a plant 
or a flower?  He has no clue, but he knows that she is a 
flower.  She opens and closes for him.  Closed, 
professional, brisk in the confines of the office.  Nary a 
stray glance from her as she sits across the desk from him 
next to her partner.  Her younger, handsome partner, he 
thinks and is immediately ashamed for the thought.  Who has 
this rare flower in his bed tonight?

-------
Like a blind woman, she closes her eyes and gently touches 
his face with her fingertips.  The rough stubble of his jaw 
line, the tender flesh of his eyelids.  Her hands run over 
the smoothness of his scalp, satin under her fingers.  He 
moans and captures her index finger in his mouth, drawing 
it in to her second joint.  Oh, the heat of his mouth, the 
wetness.

Finally, she gives into the temptation and instinctively 
reaches for his mouth.  Every time she kisses him it is a 
surprise, a new discovery.  They melt into one another in 
the space of a single kiss.  The barriers, the walls are 
shattered with their lips and tongues meeting.

--------
Her mouth travels a slow journey down his torso and he 
shivers in the air-conditioned room.  Grasping her head, he 
pulls her up to look at him.  It's difficult to say and he 
can only manage the beginning. "Could you ever?" he asks in 
a quiet voice.  He already knows that she won't say 
anything.  She never does.

--------
She knows what he is trying to ask, but she doesn't know 
the answer.

Instead of answering his question, she lowers her head 
again and continues her slow worship of his lean torso.  
Below his white jockey shorts she can see the bulge and 
strain of his erection and she smiles at what is waiting 
for her behind the cotton.  "Is that mine?" she asks, her 
hand running across the fabric.

"It will always belong to you." He gasps and pushes himself 
into her waiting hand.

With care and precision, she peels the shorts from his body 
and smiles to see his arousal.  It never fails to amaze her 
that he wants her so badly, that he wanted her all this 
time.  A master of many disguises, he never let the 
slightest hint slip until one late night in a hotel in 
Arkansas and then it all came out at in one blazing 
instant.

"Touch me," he says in the dark.  His voice is as low and 
thick as molasses, yet never as sticky sweet as the dark 
brown liquid.  She loves that voice.

But does she love him?

She doesn't know.  

What they have is enough for right now.  It has to be 
enough.

----------
Pleasure thrills up his spine as her lips surround him, 
bathing him with the wetness of her talented mouth.  The 
street lamplight trickling in through the half-closed 
blinds allows him just enough illumination to see the 
copper of her hair as she crouches over him, moving.

Mine, mine, mine, he thinks as his arousal wraps around him 
in waves.

But they are living on borrowed time, he muses.  It may be 
days, weeks, months, but this woman will leave him.  He 
knows this like he knows his own name.

He's prepared.  He'll live.  And in time, he may love 
again.  A secret optimist, he has to hope for that.

He knows all too well for whom she will leave him.  She has 
been promised to another. But until then, she is here in 
his bed, her mouth stroking his cock, his hands on her 
silken shoulders, guiding her.  Live in the moment, he 
reminds himself.  Live for this night.

----------
Pulling her mouth away from him, she tosses her head.  
"Your turn," she says, and licks her lips.  She knows all 
too well what that does to him and what he'll do for her.

His fingers creep down her body until they find her soft 
thatch of hair.  She can't help but groan as his fingers 
slowly circle her clitoris.  Yes, that's it, she thinks.  
He knows her well after all these months, knows just how to 
ignite her.

She wonders if he realizes how difficult it is to sit in 
meetings with him, her partner by her side.  Sometimes 
he'll stand up and take his jacket off and a low whining 
noise enters her mind.  No, don't do that, she'll inwardly 
scream, the sight of his muscular arms in shirtsleeves 
making her instantly wet.  She's had to make more than one 
trip to the ladies room for relief after one of those 
meetings.  And then she has to go back to the office and 
try to not look at her partner.  God, she detests having to 
lie by omission.

Destiny is a funny thing, she thinks, as his tongue traces 
her inner folds.  This man is not her destiny, she 
realizes.  She senses something else waiting for her, but 
she doesn't know what it is.  She can't think clearly 
anymore as his mouth sends her spiraling to the brink of 
fruition.  His long, thick fingers moving in and out of 
her, she comes with a strangled cry and arches her back.

----------
This woman, his love, even tastes like a flower.  Sweet and 
fragrant.  He is almost disappointed her orgasm came so 
quickly and ended his silent worship of her body.
Sometimes he just wants to barrel into her office and bury 
his head in her lap, part her legs and lose himself in the 
honeyed depths of her.  But she is never alone.  The other 
is always there.

She sighs with delight and reaches for his penis.  "Don't 
make me beg." She laughs and he laughs with her, loving her 
lightness in bed.  Their lives outside the bedroom are 
intense enough.

A small woman, he is always afraid he'll hurt her when he 
is on top, but his lover is a woman of hidden strength.  
Her legs reach around and grip his back and he grits his 
teeth as he enters her dampened vagina.  It's so good he 
has to surpress the urge to cry out.  He's not 
demonstrative like that but he is aware she knows how 
pleased he is.

He wants to devour her, to have his mouth on every part of 
her fragrant skin, but he is satisfied to taste her 
peppermint flavored mouth, to feel her tongue entering his 
mouth, to stroke her hardened nipples.  Control, he thinks, 
keep yourself in control, but it's too late.  The pace of 
his thrusting quickens and she seems to become deeper, 
tighter, wetter for him.  With a low gasp he spills over 
and for a moment the ecstasy threatens to completely take 
over, he's afraid he may black out from such pleasure.

----------
Their bodies reluctantly separate.  Her legs hum with 
afterglow, and she can feel the blush spread on her cheeks 
and chest.  She smiles as he traces her arm with his 
finger.

He loves her, she knows this.

She desperately wishes she could return the favor.

Let this be enough, she silently entreats him, gripping his 
hand in her own, her mouth moving against his damp chest.  
Just let this be enough.

Soon, he falls asleep.

After a while, so does she, wrapped in the heat and 
strength of his arms.

--------------
As the sun rises, he opens his eyes and watches his 
crumpled flower sleeping, her skin rosy in the morning 
light.

It isn't enough, he thinks.  He wants everything, all at 
once.

Sighing, he rolls over and tries to go back to sleep.

**************************


Everything But The Girl 


Skinner  sits back in his chair and turns his head to the 
window, idly watching the lights of the night traffic 
below.  Removing his glasses, he rubs his eyes, exhausted, 
but unwilling to get up and drive home.

He doesn't want to go home.  Not now.

The executive suite is silent on a Saturday evening, almost 
eerie in its stillness.  Just the faint rumbling of the 
air-conditioning system and the occasional sound of a phone 
ringing somewhere off in the distance.  The ringer on his 
own desk phone is turned off.

Reaching into his desk drawer, he pulls out a bottle of 
Glenfiddich he has secreted there.  He isn't one to drink 
at work, but there are times.  Yes, there are times when a 
stiff drink is necessary.  He uncaps the bottle and pours a 
couple of inches into his coffee mug, takes a long sip, the 
mellow fire of the Scotch filling his mouth in a strangely 
comforting way.

Just this morning he woke up to sunshine spilling in 
through her windows.  Such a pretty, feminine room, with 
its golden walls and framed prints of flowers, the air 
smelling of her vanilla candles.  She wasn't lying next to 
him, but that didn't concern him.  An early riser by 
nature, she was most likely making coffee or taking one of 
her long, lazy baths, her body draped in fragrant bubbles.

A smile crossed his face as he remembered the night before.  
He had come over with bags full of groceries and taught her 
to make a genuine Valencian paella, something he learned a 
long time ago on his honeymoon.  To fit in with the theme 
she put on a CD of Jessye Norman's Carmen and they spent 
hours in her little kitchen, companionably chopping and 
mixing.

Somewhere around 10:00 the paella was finished and they 
joked that they were now true Spaniards, eating so late at 
night.  They opened a bottle of Rioja and made a picnic on 
the living room floor, feeding each other bits of shrimp 
and clam, laughing at the mess of shells and rice they were 
making.

And her kiss, he remembered the kiss as she leaned across 
the plates, her mouth tasting of saffron and wine, her 
tongue thrusting into his mouth.  He acted the part of the 
romantic hero and swept her up in his arms and carried her 
off to the bedroom.

She made him feel like a gallant knight.

She brought out a streak of fancy in him he never knew 
existed.

Skinner climbed out of bed and found his jockey shorts 
strewn on the floor and slipped them on, along with his t-
shirt, not yet feeling comfortable enough to march around 
her apartment in the nude.  Out in the living room, bright 
with sunshine, he could see her sitting on the couch, her 
back to him.  All he could see were her radiant head of red 
hair and her bathrobe covered shoulders.

Her shoulders were shaking convulsively.  For one wild, 
hopeful moment Skinner thought she was laughing until it 
came to him that she was crying.

No, he thought.

Coming up behind her, he touched her shoulder.  Startled, 
she swung her head around and he saw her blue eyes were red 
and brilliant with tears.  Her mouth opened, but no sound 
came out.

He just stood there dumbly, unable to find words.

"I'm sorry," she whispered and a few more tears slid down 
her cheeks.  It was difficult for him to see her cry.  She 
was ordinarily so strong, so in control.

"I can't do this anymore," she said, wiping her face with a 
balled-up tissue.  "It's not enough."

He nodded.  This is it, he thought, I knew this day would 
come.

"It's not you," she sighed and her eyes were full of 
remorse.

"I know," he said, sitting down next to her and sliding a 
strand of her satiny hair between his fingers, feeling 
clumsy and stupid.  Why couldn't he have something profound 
and wonderful to say at this moment?

A long minute passed in silence between them, neither 
looking at the other.  Finally, he gained the courage to 
ask, "It's him, isn't it?"

Her face was still and she didn't exactly nod, but the 
slight dip of her pointed chin was enough of an answer.

Reaching out, he placed his large, worn hand over her 
small, white one.  "You love him."  It wasn't a question, 
but a statement of fact.

Again, the merest lowering of her chin in assent.

He stood up heavily, feeling suddenly drained of all 
energy.

Lowering her face into her hands, she mumbled, "I'm sorry."

Bending down, he kissed the top of her head.  If anything, 
he was going to do his damnedest to be noble about this.  
"I am, too."  He turned and walked into the bedroom to 
reclaim his clothes.

When he left the bedroom, she was no longer sitting on the 
couch.  He could hear the spray of the shower and her sobs 
over the running water.  It seemed an eternity for him to 
walk to the front door and even longer for the door to shut 
behind him with a decisive thud.

Tonight he can't bring himself to hate her, to be angry 
with her.  God knows, he'd love to.  It's blessedly simple 
to act the part of the injured party.  He is too aware that 
he was the interloper in something that has been building 
for a long time.  

He can't hate the other, either, having a strange affection 
and respect for Mulder.  His tenacity in his quest for the 
truth is something to be truly admired.

It doesn't make it any easier to know these things, though.  
Doesn't make it hurt any less.

Later that morning he arrived at his own place and spent a 
long time sitting at the edge of his unmade bed, one of the 
pillows still dented in the shape of her head.  Glinting 
golden on the white of the pillowcase lay one of her hairs, 
and he just could not bear to pluck it off and throw it 
away.  She slept here, he thought, she slept here and I 
loved her.

Finally, he stood up and went to the bathroom.  In the 
shower he found her bar of almond soap.  Taking one last 
sniff, he inhaled the sweet aroma of the soap and then he 
took it to the kitchen and unceremoniously dumped it in the 
trash can.

There is a tentative knock at his office door and he looks 
up, startled and praying it isn't her.  He can't face her 
just yet, although he knows he will have to during the 
week.  Instead, Mulder walks in, dressed in jeans and a t-
shirt, carrying a thick file.

"I say your light on and I thought I'd bring the Carrey 
file in while I had the chance,"  the younger man says.

"Working late, Mulder?"  Skinner's heart is beating 
rapidly.

Mulder ruefully shrugs.  "Don't have much of a social life, 
sir."

He tries his best to laugh.  "Neither do I."

Mulder walks over to the desk and sets down the file.  
"Well, here it is.  I have to be going."  He turns around 
to leave the office.

Putting his glasses back on, Skinner calls out, "Agent 
Mulder."

"Yes, sir?"  Skinner suddenly realizes that Mulder doesn't 
know, has no idea how lucky he is.

"May I offer you a word of personal advice?"  He sits up 
straighter, going into authoritative mode, finding it gives 
him the courage he needs to say what he is going to say 
next.

"Of course."  Mulder stands there expectantly.

"Love is a rare thing, Mulder.  Use it wisely.  Stop 
wasting time."  Skinner can't believe he's saying this to 
him, but those words needed to be said.

Mulder looks confused for a moment, and then realization 
dawns on his handsome face.  "Thank you for the advice, " 
he says evenly, the tone unreadable, "I'll be sure to use 
it."

Skinner sits back in his chair and raises his hand 
dissmissively to the younger agent.  "That's all."

Mulder flashes him an embarrassed grin.  "Good night."  And 
then he is gone.

Use it wisely, Skinner thinks.

It is not like him to be so generous.  He's a territorial 
man, used to defending what is his with a fierce passion.  
But she never belonged to him, he knows.  She wasn't an 
object to be possessed, but entirely her own entity.  A 
choice eventually had to be made, and she made it.

All along he knew who she'd choose.

It doesn't make him love her any less.  He respects her for 
being honest to the end.

The first time they were together it was a surprise to them 
both.  A freezing cold, drizzly winter night in Little 
Rock, Arkansas,  Mulder and Scully out on a terrible case, 
tracking a murderer of little boys.  Skinner had flown out 
in the late evening,  part of a task force there to 
investigate possible negligence on the part of the field 
office there, and arrived to find her alone in her hotel 
room, looking small and lost in her bathrobe.

Her vulnerable image didn't fool him.  He knew exactly what 
that woman was made of.

Mulder had already gone to sleep in his room down the hall 
and Skinner got slowly drunk with her on bottles of vodka 
from the room's mini bar.  Feeling suddenly possessed with 
the mad horrible wanting that had lain dormant in him for 
years, he took the potentially dangerous leap and kissed 
her.  He was surprised to find her responding with equal 
fervency.

When their fast, blunt lovemaking was over, she rolled onto 
her side and lightly touched his face with her warm hand.  
"I can't promise you anything, Skinner," she said, her face 
grave and young.

He simply replied, "I know."

But her warning didn't stop him from falling into the 
abyss, did it?  He just could not help himself; it was 
something akin to a reflex action.  I live, I breathe, I 
love Dana Scully.

He wonders if he'll ever cry over this.  When was the last 
time he shed genuine tears?

Finishing up the last dregs of his medicinal slug of 
Scotch, he gets out of the chair and stretches out his 
aching back and shoulders.  He feels old tonight.

Enough thinking for one night, it's time to go home.

In the back of his mind he pictures Mulder, driving over to 
her apartment.  She opens the door in her blue and white 
striped bathrobe, looking wan and tired, but she smiles to 
see his expectant face.  Ushering him inside, she sits with 
him on the couch and they begin to talk in the strange,  
coded language only they share.  Certain things are 
decided.

He knows this is what will happen tonight.

Locking the door behind him, he starts the long walk down 
the hall to the elevator.

******************

Cleopatra 


She is lying on her back on the floor of the living room, 
surrounded by candles.  There are enough of them lit for it 
to feel like a vigil, a seance.  Perhaps it is.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life, she says 
to herself, trying to obtain some small comfort from the 
well-worn maxim.  She desperately wants to believe some 
good will come of this.

Through the open windows she hears crickets chirping and 
cars rumbling past.  Off in the distance there is the 
merest reverberation of thunder, a summer storm brewing in 
nearby Virginia.  The room seems alive with static 
electricity; when she briefly sits up to change the CD from 
Mahler to Chopin, her hair crackles as it lifts from the 
rug.  She can feel the charge running up her limbs, setting 
her on edge.  She's on the cusp of something big tonight.

She realizes she's been in her bathrobe all day long, like 
some addled 1950s housewife zonked on Valium and cheap 
wine.  She's the woman who feels ashamed when she sits down 
to breakfast, alone at home, anything less than fully 
dressed for the day.  The by-product of a father in the 
military, she muses.

This is serious, she thinks, her arms stretched over her 
head.  I'm sprawled out on the loor in my robe and 
slippers, waiting.

Waiting for what?  She isn't sure.  Some answers, she 
guesses.  Something solid which she can grasp in her hands.

It was so tempting, she understands.  The love of a good, 
honorable man.  Skinner is loyal to a fault, a man who 
clearly comprehends the difference between right and wrong, 
who not only sees the black and white of a situation, but 
all the variegated shades of gray that lie between.

A dark night in yet another hotel room, this time in Little 
Rock.  She huddled on the bed, trying to forget the 
delicate blond curls of the boy she'd autopsied that day.  
So many bodies, too many innocents lost to the hands of a 
madman.  She'd had enough.  Then Skinner came and rescued 
her in a way.

She hates being rescued; she's her own woman, beholden to 
no man, but he walked in, bringing into the claustrophobic 
hotel room his aura of confidence and security and for once 
she reached out for the safety.  The safety of his arms and 
his mouth.  The power he had to make her forget the 
ugliness she'd witnessed and smile.  

Still, for her it was love in black and white.  Brilliant, 
sharply defined emotion, but she wants to love in color.  
She wants the full palette of lush, bright colors before 
her.  She's been through too much, denied herself too many 
times, to settle for less.

The night before was wonderful in a way, a comfortable, 
easy night of making paella in the cozy confines of her 
home.  There was a moment, though, when she glanced over at 
Skinner, intently deveining jumbo shrimp, and realized the 
basic unfairness of the situation.  He thought they were 
building to something, a fusion of two souls into one, and 
she was taking it simply one day, one night, at a time.  
Interesting conversation, an underlying respect and 
affection, fantastic earth-shattering times together in 
bed.  When she attempted to look forward one year to see 
their future together, there was only a hazy 
gray blur before her eyes.

You have to stop this, she thought, and the wooden spoon 
she was holding dropped to the linoleum floor with a 
clatter.  You'll kill him if you let this continue.

Never did she promise him anything, she reminds herself, 
trying to rid herself of the sour taste of guilt.  She sees 
Skinner's face fall as she told him it was over, the way 
his solid body suddenly seemed to slump.  It is an image 
that will always remain with her, chasing her with the 
other demons.

The living room flashes with white lightning and she sits 
up in surprise.  The storm has arrived.  Time to be a woman 
and face the undeniable truth, strip away the layers of 
denial shrouding her.

Melissa once jokingly called her Cleopatra, Queen of 
Denial.  She's never been overly comfortable with 
introspection, with questioning the desires of her own 
heart.  Now is the 
time to do just that.  It's now or never.

She knows what turned the proverbial tide.  Two nights ago 
Mulder came over, bearing a pepperoni pizza, a six-pack of 
good English ale, and a box full of expense reports they 
had to tally for a Budget Committee meeting.  It had been a 
long time since he'd been over to her apartment, and she 
furiously cleaned the place to eliminate all traces of 
Skinner's presence.  She turned the ringer off the phone 
and the volume down on the answering machine.  More lying 
by omission, she darkly thought at the time.

Halfway through the evening, as she and Mulder good-
naturedly argued over some missing motel receipts, she 
noticed they were back to a comfort level they hadn't 
achieved in nearly a year.  She understood that somehow 
they had gotten past the pain that had eroded the 
foundation of their friendship and again they were Mulder 
and Scully, sniping, teasing and flirting like days of old. 
They even smiled at each other.  Relief washed over her 
skin, relief that once again the tenuous bond between them 
had returned.

Later, they abandoned the project and popped a copy of Rear 
Window in her VCR. Lulled by the late hour and the two 
beers in her system, she fell asleep on the couch next to 
Mulder.  When she awoke, she noticed the dazzling hues of 
the sunset, visible through the open blinds.  Her head was 
resting on Mulder's shoulder, their legs touching under the 
blue crocheted afghan.  Gently, so as not to wake him, she 
disentangled from him and stared at his sleeping form, 
peaceful for once.  

He was the key.  Mulder was the reason why she couldn't 
give herself fully to Skinner.  She stifled a gasp at the 
realization, wondering why she had been unable, unwilling, 
to see the obvious before her.  Skinner wasn't her man, 
Mulder was.  He always had been, in a way.

I don't want this, she thought, muscles tensing.  I have 
the love of a good, kind man who will never hurt me, never 
let me down.

But can you give him your love?  She sighed.  She wanted 
to, she wanted that more than all the riches in the world, 
more than she wanted the truth, but she realized that 
wanting something does not necessarily mean it would 
happen.

All she wanted was for it to be easy.  Skinner loving her, 
she loving Skinner.

She got up off the couch and headed for the bedroom, not 
daring to look at the man dreaming on her couch.  Sliding 
between her flowered sheets she wondered, now how did my 
simple life become such a damn soap opera?

The summer storm has arrived in earnest, rain pelting the 
windowpanes with a steady drumming.  The candles flicker in 
the breeze, casting an eerie effect to the room, shadows 
dancing on the walls.  The tropical scent of rain 
overpowers the more delicate smell of vanilla and beeswax 
and she breathes deeply, filling herself with the uniquely 
heady scent of a thunderstorm.

This is the perfect night to make love, two bodies mingled 
in the flashes of lightning, rocking together in cadence to 
the falling rain.  She imagines his mouth on her, sliding 
across her nipples, greedy fingers touching her most secret 
places.  It's so easy to picture, too easy to feel his 
muscular back under her hands, to smell his skin, to feel 
the stubble of his cheeks scraping against her own, to 
taste his tongue in her mouth, faintly sweet.

It's not Skinner she envisions in her bed on this rainy 
night, it's Mulder.  Mulder moving against her, heated skin 
against skin.  Against her, on her, in her.  Her gasp as he 
slides in her and fills her warm center, their mutual cries 
of pleasure as the pressure builds.  Her hands gripping his 
shoulders as he drives into her, the two of them together 
at last.  Making love.

It saddens her to think that she has had sex before, 
wonderful, passionate sex, but she never has truly made 
love to a man. She's given her body, and never regretted a 
moment of it, but never her heart, her soul.

She longs for it.

Does Mulder imagine this, too?  Somehow, she knows he does, 
that he has mapped her body in his mind's eye, imagined the 
pleasure they would create together.

Her hand slides under the cotton of her bathrobe and she is 
not surprised to find herself wet.  Congratulations, 
Mulder, she thinks with a smile, you've managed to arouse 
me from miles away.  It doesn't take much effort to climax 
there on the floor, her own imagination becoming more 
three-dimensional with each stroke of her fingers.  Over 
the thunder and the chords of Chopin, she comes with a long 
cry and then her phantom Mulder slips away, leaving her 
shaken and satisfied on the rug. Alone.

She sits up, feeling strangely ashamed of her fantasy and 
wondering if Mulder truly wants her as much as she wants 
him.  No, she shakes her head, he does.  Now that she 
finally can see clearly, she knows this to be true.  She 
always did, somehow.

Oh Cleopatra, what have you done?

In the bedroom she washes her face and hands and brushes 
her teeth.  She doesn't want to look at her own face in the 
mirror.  This morning she broke a heart, and she cannot 
bear to see that woman staring back at her.

Skinner will survive, she tells herself defensively, he's a 
strong man, full of all sorts of internal resources.  It 
will be difficult, dealing with him on a professional 
basis, but that's what she gets for sleeping with the boss.  
They'll get through this, one way or another.  They're 
adults.

And Mulder, what to do about him?  She moves back into the 
living room and lies on the couch, staring at the rainy 
windows.  She doesn't know, but suddenly she feels happy.  
Happy for finally discovering her own heart.  Took you long 
enough, she hears Melissa tell her.  She nods her head.  
Yes, it certainly did.

A knock at the door startles her.  She knows that knock all 
too well.  Gathering her robe around her and trying to 
smooth her messy hair, she moves toward the door, feeling 
like she's walking underwater.

She flings the door open and sees Mulder; drops of rain 
glistening on his trench coat and hair.  Swiftly, he moves 
forward, lunging for her and they are suddenly enmeshed in 
a kiss so fierce and hard, she wonders if she'll ever catch 
her breath.

Mulder pulls away and looks intently at her, breathing 
hard.  She can't quite read the expression on his face.  
"Why didn't you tell me?" he says in a hoarse voice.

She finds it difficult to recover the power of speech after 
that kiss.  "Let's talk," she says, and leads him into her 
apartment.

******************


Two Voices 


Two voices in a dark bedroom, slowly sliding into a sleepy 
meter.

"Are you tired?"

"No."

"Come closer."

He is lying on his side, fingers lazily counting the bumps 
of her vertebrae, dazed at the contact.  Her closeness.  
She exhales a small sigh, not one of melancholy or 
dissatisfaction, but a thoughtful sigh.  In the blackness 
of the night, as rain spatters against the glass of the 
windows, he smiles.


Love is a rare thing, Mulder.  Use it wisely.  Stop wasting 
time.

Those words echoed through his mind in a loop, over and 
over again into infinity.  Skinner's deep voice saying the 
words, the voice he employed when giving a reprimand or an 
order. 

Love is a rare thing.

Traffic was obnoxiously jammed on a Saturday night in the 
city.  Seemingly everyone in the outlying areas had decided 
on that rainy summer night to come into Georgetown for 
dinner or a drink, but he wasn't heading there for 
entertainment.

Use it wisely.

Skinner's face was grave and still as he gave his 
unsolicited advice to Mulder, eyes unexpressive behind his 
metal-rimmed glasses.  Still, Mulder heard those three 
short, clipped sentences and immediately knew the whole 
back-story.  He even suspected he know when it had begun, 
during that terrible time in Little Rock.

Stop wasting time.

Mulder slammed his hand on the steering wheel, cursing 
under his breath at the driver of the moving truck who was 
taking his own sweet time pulling out of a parking space.

He attempted to form a mental picture of the two of them, 
Skinner and Scully, alone together, and found it 
impossible.  He believed it, yes, he knew it to be true 
now, he just couldn't see it.  Denial again, he told 
himself, and hit the gas as the truck finally moved ahead.

Little Rock.  A cold rain fell for eight days straight and 
everything constantly felt damp and moldy.  The hotel's 
sheets, though freshly laundered, never seemed quite dry, 
nor did his clothes.

It had been one of the bad days.  Scully spent the 
afternoon performing an autopsy on the latest victim, with 
blue eyes and  blond curls.  She walked out of the autopsy 
bay, wearing her blood-spattered scrubs, looking hollow and 
defeated.  Mulder was leaning against the institutional 
green wall when she emerged, waiting for her.

Scully stopped and faced him from the other wall.  Her head 
lifted to meet his eyes.  "Strangled, beaten and raped, 
just like the others.  Five years old."  Turning on her 
heel, she briskly continued to down the hall to shower and 
change.

They caught a quick dinner together at a Chinese restaurant 
near the Holiday Inn, but neither felt much like eating or 
talking.  Words have finally failed us, he thought.  We 
can't even hear each other through the high whine of pain 
ringing in our ears.

He realized, with a deep ache, that he and Scully had never 
been so far apart.

I want to give her what she needs, he thought, as he poked 
at his plate of ginger chicken with the chopsticks.  I want 
to laugh with her, take her dancing, to bring her flowers I 
swiped from someone else's yard just to see her smile of 
delight.  I want to be able to go home with her and shut 
the door, leaving the horror behind in the hall for a 
night.

But I can't.  I'm too tired.  These days I barely have the 
strength for myself, let alone her.

Back at the hotel, they paused at her door.  "Well, I'm off 
to bed," she said, not making eye contact, but instead 
staring over his shoulder at the wall behind.

"Will you be able to sleep tonight?" he asked, remembering 
equally terrible nights in the past when they attempted to 
dull the pain with cheesy cable movies and perhaps a beer 
or two from the mini bar.  That was before her cancer, 
before Emily, before his sister, before the bridge at 
Skyland Mountain.  Before they lost one another to grief.

Scully looked up, suddenly seeming years older than thirty-
four.  "No, I won't sleep tonight," she said and went into 
her room, definitively closing the door behind her.

In his own room down the hall, he sat on the edge of the 
bed and pressed his face into his hands.  I've failed her, 
he thought, she needed my comfort and once again I failed 
her.

Standing under the sharp needles of the shower, it hit him 
with finality.  I love her, he thought.  He wondered why he 
had been unable to see it before this night.  She was on 
her deathbed, Mulder, he said to himself, her life 
literally draining out of her body and still you couldn't 
recognize that elemental fact.  Call it my love dyslexia, 
he thought, I always get it wrong.

Mulder stepped out of the bathroom and wondered he should 
go to her, attempt to snap out of his own pain and comfort 
her.  No, he sighed, tonight he just didn't have the 
strength.

He vowed to change everything, starting tomorrow.

Of course, nothing much did change.

Months later, fidgeting in his car, still stuck in traffic, 
he understood the mistake he made that night in Arkansas.  
Scully found her comfort; she found a scrap of salvation to 
which she could cling, just not with him.  With Skinner.

Skinner gave him a gift with those words, a slap in the 
face to bring Mulder around to action, bring him out of his 
self-induced coma.  God, he admires Skinner for that kind 
of courage and nobility.  He didn't have to say those 
words, to lay himself bare like that.

Scully, what is it about you that brings two grown men to 
their knees?  Is it your clear eyes that still remain 
innocent and hopeful after all you've seen and done in our 
company?  Your low, musical voice that promises riches we 
can't even imagine?  Your unswerving, dogged loyalty?

He arrived at her apartment and miracle of miracles, found 
a parking spot down the block.  Pulling into the space, he 
turned of the engine and just sat there, listening to the 
rain drumming on the roof of the car.

Just one night ago, he sat in the elegant serenity of 
Scully's apartment, admiring the way she had created for 
herself a retreat from the chaos of her professional life.  
There was nothing in the rooms to indicate she was a FBI 
agent, no files or papers cluttering up her space like his 
place.  When he went home at the end of the day, everything 
surrounding him reminded him of his quest, of his 
responsibility to find the truth for Samantha.

He and Scully sat at her dining room table, gnawing on 
pizza and trying to sort out their expense reports, yet he 
felt happily removed from the horrors of the journey.  The 
Neville Brothers were singing somewhere in the background 
and a carefully arranged vase of irises sat on the table, 
calming him with their appearance of normality, of a life 
unblemished by darkness.  This is my home, he thought, as 
he reached for another report from the stack.  This is 
where I come to find peace.

The irony that he hadn't been there in months did not 
escape him.

Scully seemed different that night, stripped of her hard 
edges, the brittle pain that sometimes seemed to emanate 
from her body in waves.  Face scrubbed free of makeup, her 
hair in a ponytail, she looked as soft and young as she had 
the first day she had marched into his office.  Mulder 
looked up at her and smiled and she actually smiled back, 
teeth and all.  He wanted to weep with relief; perhaps 
things would be right again after all.

Much later, he woke up on her couch, slumped over with his 
head on the armrest.  He felt a weight pressing on his body 
and found it was Scully, asleep.  The intimacy of the 
moment made his skin tingle.  Her head rested on his 
shoulder and he could smell her clean hair and the faintest 
whiff of almonds.  Perhaps the soap she used?

He had the sudden urge to pick her up and carry her to the 
bedroom, to lay down with her, not for sex, but just to 
feel her close.  Hear her breathing and feel her back 
against his chest, rising and falling.  Sighing, he 
realized the impossibility of that course of action.  
Scully would certainty wake up and kick his sorry, pathetic 
ass all the way back to Alexandria.

Scully, do you ever wake in the middle of the night and 
want me, too?

Do you awaken disappointed because it was all merely a 
dream?

How do you taste, Scully?

Stealthily, he inched his way to a sitting position and 
moved her so her head flopped down onto the mound of 
pillows on the other end of the couch.  She mumbled a 
little, but her breathing remained even and deep.  After a 
few agonizing minutes of waiting to see if she'd wake up, 
he crouched over Scully's sleeping body and ran his index 
finger along her jawline.  She didn't stir.

In the dark of her living room, he stole the kiss he had 
long dreamed of, but hadn't the courage to give.  The 
merest brush of his lips against hers, tentative and brief.  
Scully didn't move under his lips, but it was still sweet.  
Sleeping Beauty, he thought.  Does that make me the 
Handsome Prince?  If only it were a fairy tale.

He stretched out his cramped legs and curled up as best as 
he could on the other end of the couch, falling asleep with 
a faint smile on his face.  It took that little.

It's time to face the music, he thought in the car, and 
steeled himself for the moment.  Mulder stepped outside the 
car and lifted his face to the rain, letting the water run 
over him in rivulets.  A baptism, he thought, now I am 
clean.  Time for my life to start anew.

With a determined step, he made his way to Scully's 
building.


Two voices in a dark bedroom, passion abated for the 
moment.

Her voice is soft.  "Mulder, I'm sorry."

He pulls his face away from her hair.  "Don't be sorry.  
Don't regret it."  He wonders when he became so mature.

"We just, we just need to try to be good to one another," 
she says. "Stop the games, the one-upmanship, work 
together."

His fingers find the still-hardened tips of her breasts and 
circle, mind still reeling in amazement, in relief.  "I 
think we work together pretty well."

This prompts a throaty chuckle from her.

He has to ask this question, just once.  Once he knows, he 
can put it behind him.  "Scully, did you love him?"

She abruptly rolls over and brings her face close to his.  
"I wanted to," she pauses for a second, thinking. "I tried 
so hard to conjure it up, but it just wouldn't come."

"Skinner is a good man," he whispers, flinching a little at 
the name.

Scully nods her head.  "He did a valorous thing for you 
tonight, for us."

"It's so like him."  The man once sold his soul to the 
closest thing to the devil on earth to save Scully.  "He 
loves you, doesn't he?"

She says nothing, but runs her hands though Mulder's hair, 
eliciting sparks in the darkness, bright flashes of 
crackling light.  We're magnetically charged, he thinks, 
positive and negative, cleaved together by our opposition.  
Now that we've gotten so close, nothing can pull us apart.

He's shocked at how hopeful he sounds.

Finally, Scully speaks.  "Mulder, the only thing that 
matters is that I love you."

He smiles at her words.  She loves him, figure that one 
out.  It's going to take a lifetime of trying, but he plans 
on deserving her love.

Slowly this time, they begin again.  If the first time they 
were together was a conflagration of two bodies igniting 
for the first time, this is a slow, controlled burn.  
Scully straddles his body and they move together with 
precise restraint, both sighing in mutual pleasure.  This 
time he is able to be aware of the nuances of their 
lovemaking, the soft sounds she makes as she takes him into 
her, the brush of her pubic hair against his, the utter 
completeness of joining with her.

This, too, is a baptism, a confession.  Scully has absolved 
him of his sins, and he of hers.  Now they are truly washed 
clean and can try to start a new life.

In the darkness of the bedroom, two voices become one as 
they cry out in joy.

*********************


Friction 


Body meets body and friction is formed.

It's like opening a long-awaited gift, tearing the wrapping 
paper aside and flinging the bow on the floor to find the 
Malibu Barbie with Special Curl Hair.  Ah, just what I 
wanted, Santa.  So what if I had to wait so damn long for 
it?  It's here now in my hands and it's time to play.

I'm tired of crying, of sitting alone in the living room, 
feeling helpless, trapped in the sucking whirlpool of my 
life.  Tired of defeat, of failure, tired of being thirty-
four years old and feeling so damn old, so weary by the 
evil we encounter.

Save me.

No, don't.  I can save myself.  But stay by my side.  Walk 
with me on this march.

Today is Sunday.  Don't want to think about toxicology 
reports, of secret informants, of budget reports.  I don't 
want to remember that Monday morning we have an 8:00 
meeting with Skinner.  Can't think about him right now, 
lying with my head on your bare chest, your hands tangled 
in my hair.

Today is Sunday.  God himself said in the Bible that this 
is a day of rest.  Last night's storm never fully left the 
area, and a fine drizzle mists the streets outside.  No 
need to go out today, no need to admit that there's a world 
beyond this little apartment.  There's a bed, a 
refrigerator full of food, a toilet and a shower.  What 
more do we need?  

Help me create an island today.  You and me, shipwrecked on 
this bed.  Our life raft has deflated and there's no way we 
can get off this sandy isle, not today.  Lie close to me 
and float in the warm water.  I can taste the salt on my 
lips, and realize it isn't seawater, it's my tears.

God, I promised myself you wouldn't see me cry.

It's just overload, too much of everything at once.  My 
life has been a series of careful, even steps.  Look before 
you leap has been my motto since I was a young girl.  In 
matters of love I have been the empress of judiciousness, 
choosing wisely, willing to go without if I cannot have the 
best. 

Now, take a look at me.  I did, about an hour ago, in the 
glare of the bathroom.  My hair a tangled brush of copper 
thread, my face rosy from razor burn, and oh Lord, was that 
actually a hickey on my neck?  A sudden memory flashed 
before me of trying to explain to my mother that the 
purplish bruise was actually a burn from the curling iron.  
"Just be glad your father is at sea, Dana."  Swollen, 
cracked lips.  Have I ever been so utterly, thoroughly 
kissed?

I looked beautiful.  A wild beast-woman, a woman who has 
had every inch of her skin explored and mapped by her eager 
cartographer.

Eager, that's what we are.  I can't stop now that we've 
begun this thing.  It makes me catch my breath in my 
throat, fear, fear of going too deep, of losing myself in 
your tawny skin and melancholy eyes.  What if we drown in 
our combined pain, its blackness washing over us in waves 
until we are irrevocably pushed down to the bottom, far 
below?

It's all about control, isn't it?  It's hard for me to let 
go, to just take each moment in my hand and savor it, roll 
the moment on my tongue like a fine Bordeaux.  My brain is 
always just going, going, thinking too much, trying to 
achieve goals, trying to see the pattern.  Help me let go 
of my control

I have to stop this incessant thinking.  You're here, 
sprawled naked on my bed in all your masculine beauty.  
Yes, men can be beautiful and you are.  I've seen you 
standing in front of the mirror dissatisfied with what you 
see.  "I'm too skinny, no butt, hollow and virtually 
hairless chest," your expression says to me.   Jeez, you're 
worse than most of my girlfriends with your self-criticism.  
Let me assure you, lover, I've seen all of you now, and 
you're beautiful.  I've seen you bleeding, sick, vomiting, 
crying, pointing a gun at me.  Now I've seen you standing 
before me, naked as the day you were born, wearing nothing 
but a hesitant smile and an erection.  You're beautiful, 
okay?  I lust for you, I am lying here with just my head 
touching your chest and already I want you again so badly 
my jaw aches from clenching it.

There's so much you don't know, can't know.  You'll always 
have that question in your eyes when you look at me, "Why 
him?"  How can I explain?  I can't, I won't.  You don't 
know him like I do, don't know the other side that exists 
in him.  To you, he's just the big, glowering guy who sits 
up in the executive suite, the man to whom we report, in 
his starched shirts and immaculate suits.  I've seen the 
other side, the man who loves opera, who taught me to make 
pasta, who once lay by my side and read me to me from 
Pushkin's "Evgeny Onegin", another story of an impossible 
love.  The man with improbably gentle hands, who purred 
like a kitten at my touch.  You'll never know that man, 
because I won't ever tell you.  That's my little secret, 
which I keep close to my heart, something entirely my own, 
which I won't have to give over to you.

You asked me if I loved him.  No, I did not lie to you.  I 
never did.

It's always been you.

Why?  I've been asking myself this all day, as we've made 
love, as I've been crying out from the sensation of your 
tongue stroking my wetness, from your hands on my ass, 
pressing you deeper into me, I've been screaming why why 
why why?  As I feed you raspberries and cherries from the 
bowl, your red-stained mouth closing over my fingers, I 
still am asking myself that question.  Now I think I know 
the answer, or something close to it.

We're elemental.  Hydrogen and oxygen make water.  Sodium 
and chloride make salt.  Mulder and Scully make love.  

Sound too simple?  It is, but there it is.  I've never 
believed in fate, in predestination.  We make our own 
destinies, but it's an undeniable fact that between the two 
of us there is something so strong, so unbreakable, that I 
am in utter awe at its force.  I felt it the first night we 
were in Oregon, chasing our very first set of little gray 
men, and I spent long, long years ignoring the pull, 
telling myself nice little dictums about trust, 
partnership, loyalty.  Bullshit.  I loved you then, as I 
love you know.

Call me a slow learner.  Call the both of us slow learners.

It's all about friction, Mulder.  I push, you pull, but 
somehow we get somewhere.

I need the stimulation.  You make me come alive, in 
infinitesimal ways.  We sit in rental cars in boondock 
towns in the middle of who the hell knows where and argue 
about who killed the boy found in the pond with his head a 
mile and a half away, and it's intense, infuriating.  I get 
colder and more logical by the minute, while you just sit 
there, smirking, so damn sure you're right, but the bottom 
line is, I am loving the conflict, the tension, the 
friction that is so thick in the air you could scoop it up 
with a spoon and serve it in a glass bowl for dessert.  
It's a high more powerful than crack, more addictive than 
heroin.  You and me, baby, we're better than drugs, we're 
pure adrenaline.

Mulder, we're a couple of junkies and together we can 
provide the fix.  Straight to the vein, no needles 
necessary.

Yet, it's more than that.  It can be tender, it can be 
comfort.  It can be you, holding me as I contemplate my 
death.  It can be me, sponging your feverish body to health 
again.

Can I tell you a secret?

On that night at the hospital, as I was so precariously 
close to death, I awoke to the sound of the door opening.  
I was so weak I couldn't open my eyes, couldn't speak, but 
I immediately knew from the sound of the footsteps that it 
was you, Mulder.

You knelt by my bedside, lay your head on the bed and 
collapsed in wracking sobs.  I don't  know if you were  
crying for me, for yourself, for the both of us, but it 
broke my heart to hear you so vulnerable and lost.  God, I 
wanted to gather you in my arms and soothe the pain, but I 
was helpless, paralyzed to the bed, an involuntary voyeur 
to this naked display of your ravaged soul.

Instead, it was you who comforted me.  Your tears subsided 
and you spent most of the rest of the night sitting in the 
bedside chair, holding my hand.  I now believe it was the 
warmth and strength of that hand that kept me anchored to 
the land of the living during that long, dark night.  
Towards morning, I was able to open my eyes and I saw you 
dozing in the chair, my hand still in your firm grip.

That is the moment I realized it was now my choice to make- 
to live or to die.

I chose life.

Do you see, now?  Do you understand what I mean when I say 
elemental?  We need each other, like water, like food.  We 
are the only thing that can save the other.

God, my therapist would roll her eyes if she heard me say 
that, but she's not me.  She's never bargained her own life 
for her lover's, she's never chosen her lover over her 
sister, she's never had to face the darkness like we have.  
Would she really blame us for wanting to create some light 
in our lives?  

Come here, now.  That's right, kiss away my tears and tell 
me jokes to get me to laugh.  Help me to stop taking myself 
too seriously.  Teach me to watch cartoons, to leave the 
bed unmade for the day.  Let's be normal people for a 
while, who go to movies, have dinner and go for walks, 
holding hands.  

Let me kiss away your fears.  I can taste the raspberries 
you ate, your mouth is tastes like summer.  We can take 
turns, I'll be the strong one for a while and then we'll 
switch, okay?  Let me hold you during the nightmares and 
tell you that you're here with me and everything will be 
just fine.

We can play pretend for a while.

Mulder, I'm sore as hell, but I want you again.  I need you 
inside me now, filling me, our skin touching, the two of us 
connected.  Oh, that's it, it hurts, but god, you feel so 
good, do it harder, shit, do you even begin to know how I 
love you?  I love your smell, the way your eyes get a 
little crossed as you're about to orgasm, how your muscles 
in your back become knotted.  The way you fuck me like a 
strong woman, not a delicate flower.  I'm tough, and you 
know just how tough I am, that I won't break in your grasp.  
You take these deep, sweeping strokes into me, until I feel 
like the bed is opening up, that I'm opening, getting 
deeper, pooling into fathomless depths of animal arousal.  
I love the way you aren't afraid to be noisy, to groan, to 
moan, to urge me on, to tell me what you like.  The way you 
say, "Oh yeah, like that, bring your knees up Scully, shit 
you're so tight and wet and Christ, I'm gonna come if you 
do that."  And the look in your eyes when I talk back to 
you, telling you precisely how I want it too.

Partners, in every sense of the word.  Working together for 
a common goal, whether it be the truth or the perfect 
orgasm.  I'd like to think we'll eventually find both.  
After all this, I still have my optimism more or less 
intact.

Tomorrow is coming precariously close.  I can almost hear 
the digital clock humming if I listen hard enough.  We have 
that dreaded meeting in the morning, and we're going to 
have to pull ourselves into our best facsimile of 
professional Mulder and Scully to get through it.

What comes tomorrow?  Where do we take this?

Questions, always the questions.  For once I'm going to let 
this one slide and just let myself love you.  I hope you 
can do the same.

I bend down to look at your face.  You're eyes are closed 
as if you are dozing, but the faintest of smiles plays at 
your lips.  Something inside me expands, and I realize it's 
the place in my soul where you belong.  

As the room becomes darker, we lie together, content to 
exist in the moment, breathing together.

Tomorrow will come soon enough.  I've set the alarm for 
6:00 am. 

************************

Hotel 


Met him in a hotel.

Met him in a hotel.


"You have reached the voice mail of Agent Dana Scully.  I 
will be unavailable until 2 pm. If this is an emergency, 
please call my cellular phone at 555-3564."


He's already in the room.  She can hear the clink of ice in 
the bucket and a rustling behind the door.  Key in hand, 
she pauses for a moment before going in.


So many hotels, so many motels.  Super 8.  Holiday Inn.  
Hyatt Regency.  The Sunset Motor Court.  Plush business 
hotels and seedy small-town motels with roaches and no 
television.  No matter the place, they always smell faintly 
of mildew, of the skin and clothing of strangers.

It's just a few hours stolen from a busy day.  Safety, 
behind that locked door; a simple universe of one bed, one 
man, just an hour or two to spare in their lives.  No 
distractions in those rooms.


He often was pacing the room when she arrived, always 
standing when she opened the door, standing so straight and 
tall, dwarfing her.  That military posture of his, still 
evident nearly thirty years later.


Check in separately, one half-hour apart.  Leave separately 
as well.  That's the drill.


He's hungry for it today, she can tell, lips constantly 
pulled back, as if making to growl.  She scribbles the name 
of a hotel down on a post-it note and passes it to him, 
feeling like a freshman in study hall.  He glances down at 
the scrap of paper and smiles at her; tears the yellow note 
into little pieces.  She's not ashamed to admit that she 
feels like growling, too.  One finger is raised.  One 
o'clock, only two more hours to go.  They both laugh in the 
confines of the dingy basement office, laugh at the 
convoluted games they are forced to play.  You never know 
who is listening.


Pull back the mildewy flowered bedspread to reveal the 
clean, white sheets beneath.  She loves the sight of those 
sheets, the promise they augur.


She glanced at her watch.  "Oh God, it's nearly 2:00.  I 
have to get back."

His finger touched her lips.  "Stay."

Shaking her head, "No, I have to go.  I told him I was 
having a crown replaced at the dentist.  I'm expecting 
toxicology reports back."

A hand closed over her wrist and his voice was nearly 
beseeching.  "Don't leave."

She got out of bed and started dressing.


A hot, humid August afternoon, holed up in a Comfy Inn 
somewhere in the bowels of Mississippi.  He laughs as she 
tickles his feet, his chest and stomach.  Abruptly, he sits 
up and looks at her, smiling broadly.  "I have fun with 
you, Scully."

Fun.  It's true, she realizes with surprise, they do have 
fun together.  They are able to forget.  She tickles him 
again, just to hear him dissolve in helpless laughter.


His eyes were dark brown in the gloom of the closed drapes.  
"Do you regret this?"

A flash of Little Rock, remembering how swiftly he moved to 
her and caught her in the deepest of kisses.  She shook her 
head.  "I don't do anything I regret," she whispered.



Brown hair is pillowed against white sheets, sweat coursing 
down his face.  It seems the air-conditioning system has 
decided to take a vacation.  The man cries out as she moves 
her tongue up and down his straining hardness.  "Don't 
stop, don't stop, don't-" he mutters.

She stops.

"Bitch," he groans, throwing his head against the pillow.

"Your problem is you're too goddamn impatient," she says, 
and starts again, moving her tongue and lips to the rhythm 
of his moans.


A few times, at the last minute, he couldn't make it.  
She'd walk into the room and find it distressingly empty.  
Her cell phone would ring twice and she knew that was the 
signal.  Kicking her heels off, she'd flop down onto the 
bed and stare at the ugly, stained ceiling.  What am I 
doing here, she'd think.  Sighing, she'd check out and 
drive back to the office.


At the Westin she realizes she's been here before, in this 
very same room with the dusty rose walls and matching 
drapes, the same view of the Washington Monument.  Only 
that time, she was with someone else.  Does that make me a 
slut, she wonders, grinning.  No, it makes me human.  She 
rolls over to kiss her lover, trying to banish the other 
from her thoughts, but he remains in the room with the two 
of them, an invisible specter tingeing the encounter with 
guilt.  Bless me father, for I have sinned.  I left one man 
for another.

His psychic fingerprints are all over the generic queen-
sized bed, branding her with the memory of gray February 
skies outside the window as they turned the heat up high 
and climbed under the covers.  Strong, strong arms wrapped 
around her shivering body as he abruptly entered her, 
roughly claiming what was his.

She can admit she misses him at times, misses his low, 
rumbling chuckle.  His broad shoulders under her 
fingertips.  His quiet intensity.

Her lover turns over and touches her hair.  "Scully, are 
you okay?"

Shutting her eyes, she smiles.  "I'm just thinking."


Rain tapped at the windows on their second night together 
in Little Rock.  The rain never stopped for the entire time 
she spent in the state of Arkansas, a state she always 
thought was supposed to be rather dry.  The Holiday Inn, 
mints on the pillows, the toilet sanitized for her 
protection, but she had found her protector, her refuge.

"Sometimes I just want to quit, to walk away from all 
this," she said in the dark.

He stirred, rising on his elbow.  "Why don't you?"

She imagined the face of her partner, and shook her head.  
"I don't know," she said quietly, "Something's keeping me 
here.  I guess I own the quest as much as he does.  There 
are things I need to know before I leave."  Her cancer, her 
sister, her daughter.

At that moment, she wondered what her partner was doing 
down the hall in his own room.  Who did he have to comfort 
him on a night like this?

"Let me," he whispered to her, "Let me help you forget for 
a night."

His hands methodically traced the curves of her naked body, 
as if attempting to memorize her form.  She shivered at his 
touch.


He's a restless sleeper, tossing and turning, stealing the 
sheets and blankets, fighting the death dreams.  Sometimes 
he calls out names in ragged desperation.

You can't save everyone, she thinks.  You can't save us 
all.


Sometimes he slept so heavily, nothing could rouse him.  
She shook his shoulder.  "Wake up," she said, "It's past 
4:00.  You have to get up and get back to the office."  
Blissfully, he dreamed on, looking vulnerable without his 
glasses.


Back at work, she briskly walked in, heels clacking on the 
linoleum.  She hung up her coat and put her briefcase on 
the desk.  Her partner didn't even look up from the file he 
was reading.  "How was the dentist?" he mumbled.

She shrugged.  "Fine.  It was, you know, the dentist."


Once she walked into a motel room full of garishly colored 
balloons.  "One for each time I've made love to you," he 
said, grinning.  God, how unlike him that was.  He was a 
man utterly transformed by his love.

She laughed, but was oddly embarrassed by the naked look of 
adoration on his face.


Her lover slides into her, hard.  "This-is-love-" he says 
between gritted teeth.

Pushing him harder into her, she nods.  This is love, she 
understands now.  Finally, she has love.


How did I ever resist this, she wonders sometimes.  How 
could she spend all this time by his side, not knowing of 
his hands, his mouth, his eyes clamped shut in abject 
pleasure?


He was late, so she started without him.  Couldn't help it, 
she'd been thinking of him all day, even as she wielded a 
scalpel during an autopsy, she could feel the texture of 
his neck under her mouth.  On the bed she touched herself, 
dreaming of what was to come.  As she orgasmed against the 
starchy sheets, he walked in, wiping rain off his scalp.  
He looked at her and her face turned read in shame.  
Sitting by her side, still wearing his dripping Burberry 
coat, he stroked her flushed breasts with his cold, wet 
fingertips.

She stretched her arm out to him.


There are times when she briefly falls asleep and awakens 
to see the generic paintings on the walls of ships tossing 
on stormy seas.  Where am I?  She's momentarily panicked, 
heart thumping wildly until she sees the man lying next to 
her.  


It's the briefest vacation from their lives.  In the 
bathroom she washes up, attempts to erase the signs of 
lovemaking from herself.  She feels refreshed, rejuvenated, 
ready to again lift her weapon and rejoin the battle.  
Sliding into her pumps, she marches on.


Once they didn't even make it as far as the bed, but 
collapsed in a heap on the bland beige carpet.  "Must have 
you now," he rasped into her ear, kissing her with his 
glasses still on.

She now can smile at what an absurd tableau they must have 
made, the large man still dressed in his gray suit and tie, 
riding the small woman, her wool skirt hiked up over her 
hips.


The sun is just setting when they get back to the motel, 
exhausted from a long day in the field.  Shutting the door 
behind her, the room feels like home, despite the orange 
shag carpet and the water stains on the wallpaper.  

She unknots his tie and slides it out from the blue oxford 
shirt.  "Are you suggesting something?" he asks.

Sometimes she thinks she's knocked him for a bit of a loop.  
She was so well known for her frosty, stoic facade, her 
buttoned and zipped primness, she believes he eventually 
took it for Bible truth.  Dana Scully is frigid.  She's all 
work and not fun, bet she's never gotten decently laid.

It just shows you, you never know someone until you get 
close enough.  Close enough to burn, be burned.


Only a select few have seen her cry.  She doesn't ever want 
to be seen as anything but strong, in complete control.  
Her mother, her sister, her lover have seen her cry.  Her 
former lover, only once, when she told him she was leaving.


Hurriedly, they strip each other in the chill of the 
Roadside Inn.  Trench coats are pooled together on the 
floor in a beige heap; jackets are strewn against the 
chair.  She smirks as their holsters and guns are tossed on 
the cheap laminate dresser.  Love in the FBI, indeed.

She stands before him, dressed only in her panties, skin 
puckering with goose bumps.  His mouth falls open.  
"Sometimes I forget."

"Forget what?"

"I forget how beautiful you are."

Despite the cold room, she flushes.  No, he's the one who 
is outrageously beautiful, she thinks, her man, her lover, 
already hard, ready to take her.

Her tongue traces the contour of his full lower lip, counts 
his bottom row of teeth.  He pushes her onto the sagging 
bed and kneels before her on the floor.  "I've been 
thinking about tasting you all day," he says.

She shuts her eyes, impatient for his mouth on her.  She, 
too, found it difficult to concentrate all day, when all 
she wanted to do was sprawl on this cheap, ugly bed and 
feel his face between her thighs, parting her and spreading 
her as far as she can go.

We really need to get a grip, she thinks.  This is so 
unprofessional.  Then again, she stopped caring about that 
a long time ago.


She had nearly drifted off to sleep when the sound of his 
voice jerked her back to consciousness.  "Why?" He asked, 
"Why me, Scully?"

Rolling onto her stomach, she rested her chin on folded 
arms.  "You saved me.  You're the light in my dark life."

It was a dark night as she sat at the window, watching the 
slow-moving Little Rock traffic below.  I can't do this 
anymore, she thought, I can't stand smelling death, the 
stench surrounding me.  Even though she had thoroughly 
showered, she could still smell it on her skin.  Unfolding 
her arm, she stared at the delicate tracery of blue veins 
under white skin.  It would be so easy, she thought.  Just 
then, there was a knock at the door.

His voice was measured, almost flat, months later in 
another hotel room.  "Now that you've been saved, what 
happens?"

She didn't have an answer to that.


Getting up to dress, she glances at her lover, still in bed 
and lying on his side.  Their mortality strikes her just 
then and she lifts her head up, to the heavens, she 
supposes.  Give us time, she silently entreats, don't 
separate us just yet.  She wonders how she'd survive, 
having finally known love.


In the bustling corridor, her former lover passes with a 
nod and a grunted greeting.  She stands in the middle of 
the hall dumbly, thinking, I wish I knew how to tell you 
how sorry I am.


Key in hand, she stands in front of the door, pausing 
before letting herself in.  For a second she forgets who is 
inside, waiting for her.


Glancing at the digital clock at the bedside table, she 
gasps, "I have to go, it's nearly 3:00."

He rolls over and throws his heavy arm over her body.  
"Stay," he whispers.

She sits up, the sheet sliding off her naked body.  "I 
can't and neither can you.  We have piles of work waiting 
for us."

A wet mouth moves up her spine.  "Stay," he repeats.

Sighing with pleasure and chagrin, she sinks back down onto 
the mattress.

She stays.


"You have reached the voice mail of Agent Dana Scully.  I 
have been unavoidably delayed in my return to the office.  
If this is an emergency, please call my cellular phone at 
555-3564."

Met him in a hotel.


Note-  If you were a bit confused, one man is referred to 
in the past tense and one in the present.  That should help 
straighten things out.

****************************

Little Rock 

Part I- A Flash of Red


And all the time, and all the time, my love,
You too are there, beneath the word, above
The syllable, to underscore and stress
The vital rhythm.  One heard a woman's dress
Rustle in days of yore.  I've often caught 
The sound and sense of your approaching thought
And all in you is youth, and you make new,
By quoting them, old things I made for you.

Vladimir Nabokov

On Saturday morning he wakes up and decides to go running.  
It is a warm October day, glorious blue skies overhead.  A 
run will be just the thing to lift him out of his funk, 
bring himself out of his mind by focusing entirely on the 
body.

Down silent weekend Alexandria streets he pushes himself 
hard, glad to see that at his age he is still in fine 
shape, can still effortlessly kick and glide down the 
street, eating pavement.  For the first time in months he 
feels content.

On a commercial street several miles later, he pauses, 
panting and sweating, and goes into a little market for a 
bottle of water.  Coming out of the store, taking a long 
pull of the cool water, a flash of red stops him in his 
tracks.

There they are, the two of them, having breakfast at an 
outside table at Michael's Cafe.  Run, Skinner, his 
internal voice orders him, get the hell out of here before 
they see you, but instead his disobedient body moves him 
behind the safety of a large tree.

This is so wrong, he thinks, I'm spying on them.

It doesn't matter; they'd never see him anyhow.  Mulder and 
Scully are utterly, completely focused on each other.  A 
nuclear bomb could go off down the street and they wouldn't 
as much as lift their heads.

She's wearing a blue oxford shirt that is huge on her, 
nearly hanging down to her knees; the sleeves rolled up 
above her elbows.  Mulder's shirt, he realizes.  Her hair 
is wet and slicked behind her ears and he notices that 
Mulder has a wet head as well.  They veritably glow in the 
morning sunshine, her cheeks pink, his eyes shining as he 
lifts a forkful of pancakes to his mouth.  They look like 
they just spend an entire night in bed together, and he 
realizes they did.  He's known this fact to be true for 
months, but he's never seen the hard evidence before him, 
with his own eyes.

Skinner's muscles tense as he watches them put their heads 
together, foreheads nearly touching.  Even over the noise 
of traffic and the thumping reggae coming from the t-shirt 
shop next door, he is able to hear her bell-like laughter.  
Scully's laughter, so rarely given, so gratefully received.

Get the fuck out of here, his internal voice repeats, 
louder this time, but he can't seem to find the strength he 
needs to move.  The scene before him bizarrely fascinates 
him.

She's happy, he thinks, bitterness rising in his throat.  I 
never could do that for her.  Even as she smiled and 
laughed for him, as she came so hard under him the muscles 
of her thighs nearly left bruises on his body, there was 
still an imperceptible miasma of melancholy surrounding 
her.

Good for you, he silently says to the woman sitting across 
the street from him.  If this is what it takes to make you 
happy, then all I can do is wish you the best.  Again, her 
laughter floats across the street and Mulder pushes a lock 
of hair out of her eyes.

Skinner dumps the half-full bottle of water in a nearby 
trashcan and begins running once more, a full sprint until 
he reaches his building.

After his shower, Skinner stands nude and dripping in front 
of the picture window in the living room, not even noticing 
that he's getting water all over the carpeting.

Three months, he thinks, it's been three months and what 
progress have I made?  Two steps forward, one back, he 
tells himself.  Today you took a step back, but it doesn't 
mean that tomorrow you won't take another step ahead.  Away 
from her, away from Little Rock.

--------

On the plane, Skinner grimaced as he tried to find a 
comfortable position for his long legs.  Whatever happened 
to the halcyon days of old, he thought, when an assistant 
director of the FBI traveled first class?  Curse those 
budget cuts.  He hadn't even been able to get a direct 
flight on such short notice, but was made to change planes 
in Atlanta.

It was Saturday night.  He was supposed to be at Bill 
Shepperton's, watching the basketball game on his big 
screen TV, but instead he was on a plane bound for Little 
Rock, Arkansas, of all places, to clean up one hell of a 
mess.

At least this time it wasn't the fault of his "pet agents", 
as the Director was wont to call Mulder and Scully.  It was 
Mike McGreavy, the SAC of the Little Rock office.  Evidence 
strongly suggested the chief suspect in a string of 
particularly gruesome child murders in Arkansas and 
Oklahoma was the SAC's brother-in-law.  A cover-up on the 
part of the Little Rock office was suggested, an unholy 
mess that Skinner was being sent to clean up.  He sipped at 
his ridiculously small glass of orange juice, thinking, 
when did I become the FBI housekeeper?  Still, duty was 
duty, and Skinner was a man who understood duty.

The plane landed and Skinner caught a taxi to the Holiday 
Inn, where his agents also had rooms.  A stingingly cold 
rain pelted him from the two seconds it took to bolt from 
the cab to the hotel's entrance.

After dropping his bag off in his room, he went up one 
floor to find Mulder and Scully.  He tried Scully's room 
first, knowing the two tended to camp out in her room on 
the road, hers being the neater of the two.  Not for the 
first time, he wondered if his two agents were lovers.  It 
wouldn't be the first time in the history of the FBI for 
that to happen.  Hell, the LA field office was known 
throughout the Bureau as "The Singles Bar".  Something told 
him no, though.  Something in the intensity of the looks 
between the two of them suggested that while there was a 
wealth of feeling between Mulder and Scully, those feelings 
were largely unspoken.

It took a long time for Scully to open her door, and for a 
brief instant he worried that he was terribly wrong about 
Mulder and Scully and had interrupted something.  Finally, 
the door slowly creaked open and she stood before him, 
wearing only a thin robe of blue and white striped cotton.  
Skinner was slightly disconcerted by the sight, never 
having seen his agent, save her hospital stays, less than 
fully dressed in one of her severe suits.  He stumbled over 
his greeting.  "Agent Scully, have I come at a bad time?"

She shook her head and it was then he noticed her eyes were 
swollen and red.  Well, he thought, the stoic Scully does 
cry.

"May I come in?" he asked.

Her voice sounded unusually hoarse, and he wondered if she 
had a cold.  "Of course you can."  She opened the door 
wider and ushered him in to her room.  To his surprise, 
Mulder was not there.  

As if reading his mind, Scully said, "Mulder went to bed a 
few hours ago.  He hasn't been getting a lot of sleep on 
this case."

The room was surgically neat, but still contained small 
touches of her presence- a blue silk scarf flung across the 
dresser in a diaphanous heap, three votive candles arranged 
on the small round table by the window, a paperback copy of 
Nabokov's "Pale Fire" on the bedside table, a pair of 
glasses resting next to it.  Skinner perched on the edge of 
one of the chairs and Scully sat on the bed, neatly tucking 
her legs under her.

He was the first to speak, his voice sounding unaccountably 
tinny and hollow to his own ears.  "How is the case 
progressing?"

Staring at her own hands, folded in her lap, Scully did not 
speak for a long moment.  "It's difficult," she finally 
said. "Even after all this time, I find the murder of 
children hard to stomach."  She looked up at him and for 
the first time Skinner noticed how blue her eyes truly 
were.

"At least David Mueller has been taken into custody."

She let out a puff of air, as if she had been holding her 
breath.  "That's what makes this case so hateful.  Mulder 
and I have evidence that the boys here suspected him almost 
five weeks ago, but McGreavy destroyed key evidence found 
at Mueller's home.   That's three children in those five 
weeks.  Two boys, both aged five, and a four-year old 
girl."

Skinner shook his head.  "I never thought Mike McGreavy 
could be capable of this.  I worked with him in Boston and 
he seemed an honorable man."

"That's the thing, sir.  I'm beginning to think there are 
no men of honor in this world . . ." Her voice trailed off 
as her hand traced slow patterns on the flowered bedspread.  
"It's just endless circles of lies, of conspiracy, of 
covering the truth."

What happened to the fresh-faced, idealistic young woman 
who was recruited for this project from Quantico?  The 
woman sitting before him was brittle with fatigue, sitting 
slightly hunched over, as if in pain.  He had an urge to 
take her in his arms and try to soothe her pain, but knew 
his urge was sheer lunacy.  Dana Scully was a woman almost 
entirely built on her own image of her strength and 
competency.  He would not sabotage the only thing she 
really had in the world.

Standing up, Scully said, "I'm sorry, but I don't want to 
discuss the case tonight.  Tomorrow, after I've had my 
coffee and some breakfast, yes, but right now what I want 
is a drink."  She cocked her head at him.  "Will you join 
me?"

He nodded, suddenly aware he was alone in a hotel room with 
her, not in the safety of his office or hers.  A room that 
only contained two chairs, a desk, a dresser and a small 
table.  And, oh yes, a queen-sized bed.  The proximity of 
the bed, the bed upon which she had just been sitting, made 
the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

You can't deny you've wanted her from the beginning, he 
told himself.  Of course he did, she was a beautiful woman, 
brilliant in her understated manner, but he had always 
desired her in the abstract, as if she were a model or a 
movie star, as untouchable as an Iranian woman wrapped in 
her chador.  Now Scully was three-dimensional reality, clad 
only in a thin bathrobe, rummaging through the minibar for 
something to drink.  He could faintly smell the sweet aroma 
of almonds radiating from her body.

She lifted her head from the fridge, golden-red hair 
falling across her cheek.  "Will vodka do?"

"Fine," he said, more of a grunt than the actual word.

Two little bottles of Stolichnaya were plunked down on the 
wood table, along with a bottle of orange juice.  "Could 
you get us some ice?" Scully asked in a low voice.

Mutely obliging, Skinner grabbed the ice bucket from the 
top of the dresser and headed out the door.  As soon as the 
door slammed behind him, he thought, get the hell out of 
here, go back to your room where you belong.  Instead, he 
shrugged and continued down the hall to the ice machine.  
He was a man who prided himself on his self-control.  This 
is safe, he thought.  Nothing will happen, nothing at all.



Part II- In the Drawer and Across the Table


Now I shall spy on beauty as none has
Spied on it yet.  Now I shall cry out as
None has cried out.  Now I shall try what none
Has tried.  Now I shall do what none has done.

Vladimir Nabokov

Back in Alexandria, months later, Skinner grimaces at his 
own naivete.  How little he knew her then, and how little 
he knew of himself.  He was about to embark upon one hell 
of an education.

While dressing, he considers the interesting fact that a 
man rarely knows when his life is about to utterly change.

In the locked bottom drawer of his desk at home lies 
Skinner's deepest secret.  Pushed behind his files of tax 
returns is a small velvet-covered box.

In a fit of unbridled optimism a few weeks after Little 
Rock, Skinner found himself at Tiffany's, blowing a 
sizeable chunk of his savings on a gift for her.  Now he 
holds the tiny box in his large hand, afraid to open it.  
Summoning the courage after several breathless moments, he 
snaps the box open to reveal a pair of small earrings, each 
a sapphire surrounded by an aureole of diamonds, set in 
platinum.

He never could find just the right time to give them to 
her.

Snapping the lid shut again, he returns it to its resting 
place in the drawer.  He can't bear to return the earrings, 
not just yet.

-----------------

When he returned to the room, Scully was sitting at the 
table, rolling one of the mini vodka bottles on the table.  
She looked up, and for a moment seemed surprised to see him 
there, holding the ice bucket.  "How do you like it?" she 
asked.

His mouth opened. What was she getting at?  Oh yes, the 
vodka.  "With the juice will be fine."

She grinned.  "Nice to see a man who is secure enough in 
his masculinity to drink a screwdriver.  A lot of the guys 
I know would drink it straight, just so they wouldn't look 
like a sissy."

Sitting down at the table across from her, he laughed.  
"And how does Mulder drink his vodka?"

Shrugging, she scooped ice into two hotel-issue glasses.  
"I don't know, I've never drank vodka with him, as far as I 
can remember."

For a brief moment, he felt special.  "How would he drink 
it, if he were to drink it with you?"  He wondered, where 
am I going with this? 

"Mulder?" She smiled, the first smile with teeth he had 
seen from Scully in months.  A shame, really.  She had 
beautiful teeth, even and white in her lovely mouth.  "He'd 
take the orange juice."

Skinner shifted in his seat and accepted the drink she 
offered him.  It was so strong he wanted to screw up his 
face, but he forced himself to keep still.  "May I ask you 
a personal question?" he asked, and immediately wanted to 
retract the words that had come out of his mouth.

She looked up and again, that smile.  "You want to know if 
we're . . . involved."  

"I'm just curious, although it's none of my business."  He 
desperately hoped he hadn't offended her.

This time it was a laugh that graced him, a curiously 
incongruous laugh coming from her still tear-streaked face.  
"Of course it's your business.  You're my supervisor and we 
both know it's not exactly procedure to sleep with one's 
partner."

"Should I take that as a `no comment'?"

One arched red eyebrow rose and she put down her glass with 
a thud on the rickety ersatz wood table.  "You can take 
that any way you'd like."

For a minute he thought he detected a flirtatious tone in 
her voice, but he shrugged it off as his travel-weary 
senses playing tricks on him.  He took another sip of his 
drink, feeling the warmth of the alcohol begin to spread 
across his chest to his limbs.  Skinner wasn't much of a 
drinker and the strong drink made him rapidly light-headed.  
Stop, he thought, you have to stop drinking this before you 
can use the alcohol as an excuse.  Then, to his horror, he 
realized he was getting hard, there at the table with 
Special Agent Dana Scully.  His subordinate, his agent.  
No, no, no, go back to your room, screamed his conscience, 
but instead he reached across the table and poured them 
another drink.

Scully leaned back in her chair and ran her hand through 
her hair.  I wonder how her hair feels, he thought through 
his growing alcoholic haze.  "I needed this," she said, her 
voice not slurred, but slower and silkier than normal.

This is an incredibly bad situation, Skinner rapidly 
thought, but there was nowhere else he wanted to be at the 
moment.  Tough choice, you can sit alone in your room 
watching CNN in your skivvies, or have a drink with a 
beautiful woman in her bathrobe.  But she's not just any 
woman, he had to remind himself, so think of a neutral 
topic, something that will defuse the charge that is 
hanging in this room between the two of you.  "This case 
seems to be especially tough on you."

The corners of her mouth turned down and the worry crease 
between her brows appeared.  Her hand thrummed a steady 
rhythm on the surface of the table.  "I thought I told you 
I didn't want to discuss the case tonight."

The heat rose up in his face, and he felt ashamed for 
bringing up what was so obviously difficult for her.

For a moment he was reminded of sitting across the dining 
room table from Sharon.  In the first years of his marriage 
he couldn't wait to go home to her, to share his day and 
hear about hers.  To simply exist in the comfort of her 
presence.  Slowly, every so slowly it became a habit.  He 
returned home to her for dinner because it was expected of 
him.  He was a married man and that's what married men did 
at the end of a working day.  In the last few years it 
became an uncomfortable exercise, having dinner with 
Sharon.  He couldn't share much about his day, since so 
much of his job had become, well, surreal and secret.  They 
moved the food around their plates and attempted to fill 
the stale air between them with bits and pieces of 
conversation.  One day, Skinner looked up at the woman 
sitting across from him and knew the connection that had 
bound them together for seventeen years was irrevocably 
severed.  There was nothing left to say.

Now he sat across from Scully and he suddenly, 
irrationally, wanted to tell her everything.  To tell her 
of his childhood, his tour in Vietnam, of the deals he made 
for her life, and Mulder's.

Once he even sold his soul to the devil for her.

He stood before the devil, hat in hand, and offered himself 
for her health and safety, not for love or honor, but 
because it was the only way he could mitigate the hell 
which she had been thrust into.  Because it was the right 
thing to do.

Scully gave him an appraising look, blue eyes cutting over 
him.  "Do you ever get lonely on nights like this?"

Again, he shifted in his seat.  This was too much; this 
wasn't an area for them to explore while alone in a hotel 
room.  His jaw ached from clenching it.  "Of course," he 
said.

She leaned back in her chair and the folds of her kimono 
slightly parted to reveal the beginnings of the soft curves 
of her breasts.  "I don't want to sit here and unburden 
myself to you.  I'm not good at that."  Scully cut herself 
off by taking a sip of her drink.

"You can tell me whatever you'd like.  I'm not here as your 
supervisor right now, but as your friend."

Cocking an auburn eyebrow, she gave a low laugh.  "I don't 
have many friends any more.  This life leaves little room 
for such luxuries."

Skinner reflected on the life she might have led had she 
not been assigned to the X-Files.   A prestigious position 
heading the Pathology department at Quantico, a nice, 
professional husband and a couple of redheaded kids.  A 
minivan and soccer practices.  

He cleared his dry throat.  "Nor do I," he said, "But 
that's how it is with a lot of men.  I have friends for 
golf, for drinks and sports events, but we rarely really 
talk."

Resting her elbows on the table, Scully smiled and he 
realized he could see right down the front of her robe.  He 
averted his eyes, not wanting that vision, not wanting 
proof that she was, indeed, a woman.  A woman with breasts, 
curves and sweet-smelling skin.  She parted her lips, still 
wet from her drink.  "What would you do if I asked you to 
kiss me?"

Heat again flooded his face.  My God, he frantically 
thought, I'm actually blushing.  He removed his glasses and 
rubbed his eyes.  What to say?  What to say?  Finally, "I'd 
think you were a little drunk and not considering the full 
implication of that statement."  Skinner had to force his 
voice to remain even.

Her blurred image shook its head.  "I know the implications 
and right now I don't care.  One of the most important 
lessons I've learned in five years is when to break the 
rules."

Skinner thought of her disciplinary file, nearly an inch 
thick, and Mulder's, at least three or four inches.

He stood, meaning to leave, his back aching from being 
crammed into coach seats for half the day.  "We can't do 
this," he said in a voice that came out gruffer than he had 
intended.  His inner voice protested, you can, you can, you 
can . . .

Scully rose and her face held no shame, no embarrassment.  
She stood with impossible poise, an amused expression 
crossing her face.  "Kiss me," she whispered.

And he did.  He took five broad steps across the carpet to 
her, grasped her small head in her hands and he bent down 
to kiss her.  In the end it was a simple thing to do.  
Armageddon did not rain down when his lips brushed hers, 
when their tongues met.  The hotel room was still there; 
the city of Little Rock remained intact.

Trembling fingers found the sash of her robe and the cotton 
folds fell open, her feverish body firmly pressing against 
his still-clothed one.  Scully broke off the kiss and 
lifted her face to his, her eyes glittering.

"I need to go," he mumbled, pained with the sheer force of 
his arousal.

She grabbed his hand and pressed it to her flushed cheek, a 
gesture he found ineffably tender.  "You need to stay," she 
said in her dusky alto.

He stayed.

Unhurriedly, she flicked off all the lights, save the small 
lamp at bedside.  With calm hands she flung back the 
bedspread to reveal a sea of white sheets and he laid her 
down upon them, feeling clumsy on top of her fragile-
seeming body.

With that, their leisurely pace ended and time itself 
seemed to fold and speed up for Skinner as their clothes 
were carelessly tossed, piece by piece on the floor below, 
until they were touching skin-to-skin.  He started 
laughing, low rumbles in his bare chest, at the supreme 
absurdity of being naked in bed with Scully.  Her hand 
moved to his mouth and his laughter abruptly ceased.

He began to devour her, and she him, a swirl of mouths 
moving across warm flesh, fingers and tongues discovering 
unexplored territory, discovering surprising areas of 
pleasure: his elbow, her instep.  Lord, the soft, female 
skin under his fingertips, her breathing in his ear, the 
fierce grip of her fingers on his ass.  Abruptly, she sat 
up and rummaged in her purse, which sat at the side of the 
bed.  She handed him a foil-wrapped packet and breathed, 
"Now."

Protesting, he said, "But I want to--"

Scully cut him off.  "Now," she imperiously said and 
flopped back down onto the pillow.

It seemed ages to tear the condom package open and for a 
second he worried he might lose his erection, until he 
glanced at the lush cream and pink curves of the woman 
waiting for him.  Only twice had he had the occasion to use 
a condom since those far-away R&R days in Bangkok, when 
he'd cruise the narrow, crowded streets of the Patpong 
district with a pocket full of G.I.-issue rubbers.  He felt 
like a fumbling teenager, smoothing the chilly latex over 
his cock, but he also felt unbearably excited.

Fully attired, Skinner moved into the soft cradle of her 
thighs.  "Are you sure?" he asked.

Scully's mouth quirked in a glimmer of a grin.  "I'm sure."

One slow push and he was inside her, and he was lost.  Lost 
to the sweet madness of the act, her heat, her depth.  Her 
legs moved up to hook around his back and he was drawn 
deeper into her.  He wondered if it was possible to lose 
one's mind from such abject pleasure.

She let out a soft sound that was neither a sigh nor a moan 
and his mouth found hers.  Oh, her sweet vodka-scented 
mouth, her breasts rising and falling against his chest, he 
felt the pressure rising to unbearable levels as he drove 
in and out of her.  No, he screamed to himself, it's much 
too soon, but his orgasm exploded across his body and he 
bucked against her one final time, muffling his moans in 
the satiny curtain of her hair.

Lifting his head, he felt mortified with shame.  "I'm so 
sorry," he said, head still swooning from his orgasm. "It's 
been a while."

Warm lips pressed against his shoulder.  "Don't worry about 
it," she said in a surprisingly sweet voice.  "The first 
time is never the best."

The impact of her words sank into his brain.  There would 
be a next time . . .

Realizing he must be hurting her with the weight of his 
body atop hers, he withdrew, rolled off her and disposed of 
the condom.  He pulled her warm and sticky body to his.  "I 
wanted this to be wonderful."

She chuckled, "Why, I do believe you're a romantic."

He, too, laughed.  "I can be."

Her features turned grave and she touched his face with her 
hand.  "I can't promise you anything, Skinner."

Sighing, he said, "I know."

"I have to take this on a day-to-day basis," she said, her 
voice slurring with sleepiness.

Skinner repeated, "I know."

Scully had fallen asleep, her head resting on his shoulder.  
The almond scent of her soap surrounded him.

Before he was pulled down into his own slumber, he felt a 
shudder pass through his body.  He visualized himself, 
helplessly falling down the abyss.

He had fallen in love.

He didn't know whether to rejoice or mourn.

And then sleep snatched him away.


Part III- At the Door

Although I conquer all the earth,
yet for me there is only one city.
In that city for me there is only one house;
And in that house, one room only;
And in that room, a bed.
And one woman sleeps there,
The shining joy and jewel of all my kingdom.

Sanskrit poem


The chiming of the doorbell breaks Skinner's train of 
thought.  Who could be stopping by on a Saturday morning?  
He remembers several times when he flung the door open to 
reveal Scully, her face wreathed in a smile and an 
overnight bag flung over her shoulder.  He knows it won't 
be Scully this time.  It hasn't been her in months.

Instead he opens the door to find Sharon, holding a large 
carton in her arms.  "Hello, Walter," she says in a soft 
voice.

"Sharon, this is a surprise."  It has been a long time 
since he's seen his ex-wife, since their tenuous 
reconciliation ended in failure.  She looks good, her nose 
sprinkled with freckles from the sun, her hair now 
highlighted with subtle strands of gold.  There is a new 
quality to Sharon, something alive and sparkling with 
energy.  This is what life without me does to a woman, he 
thinks dourly.

Sharon smiles in embarrassment.  "I'm sorry to just show up 
like this, but I tried calling a little while ago and got 
your voice mail."

"I was running."

"I thought that might be it.  The new people are moving 
into the house next week and I wanted to drop off this box 
of your things.  I figured that if you weren't home I'd  
leave it by the door."

He opens the door wider.  "Come in.  I just made coffee, 
can I get you some?"

She steps inside and sets the box down with relief.  "I'd 
love a cup of coffee."

While pouring the coffee, Skinner realizes he's glad to see 
Sharon.  In the end, they parted as amicably as two people 
can after nearly eighteen years together.  There were no 
ugly words of recrimination, just the understanding that 
their life together had quietly ended.

In the living room, Sharon is looking out the big picture 
windows.  "This is a nice place, Walter.  I'm glad to see 
you unpacked this time."

Oh yes, she saw that other place he'd had, during the most 
humiliating period in his life.  He hands her a mug of 
coffee and shrugs.  "It's okay, it suits my needs."

She settles on the gray and white couch, gathering the 
folds of her skirt around her.  "I brought you some of your 
books and the wedding album."

"Our wedding album?  Don't you want to keep that?"  The 
pictures of the two of them, young and flushed with the 
anticipation of a new life together, drinking champagne, 
cutting the cake with silly grins on their faces.

Sharon's voice is gentle.  "I had copies made and now we 
have two wedding albums."

"We were happy then, weren't we?"

She nods.  "The happiest.  We just grew apart, that's all.  
I'm trying to see it not as a failure, but as 
circumstance."

He, too, nods.  "How are you, Sharon?"

"I'm fine, better by the day.  Work keeps me busy and I 
have a lot of new clients."

"Glad to hear it."

She touches his cheek lightly with her cool hand.  Odd, to 
have her touch him and not feel even a stirring of desire 
on his part, just the comfort of the gesture.   "And how 
are you?"

"I'm here.  Like you, working all the time."

Shaking her head, Sharon says, "You look sad, Walter.  I 
can't put my finger on it, but you seem a little lost."

Sharon has always been so able to read him.  For once, he 
decides to tell her the truth, to share what is weighing on 
his mind.  Ironic, that he is only able to do this after 
their bond has been irrevocably severed.  "I've had a lot 
of disappointments lately."

Her mouth turns up in a faint smile.  "A woman?"

"Yes, someone I cared about left."

"I'm so sorry.  Really, I am."

Skinner sets his coffee cup on the glass table with a 
clink.  "I am too. I should have known from the beginning 
that it wouldn't work with her, but I was blind."

"No," Sharon says, taking his hand.  "You couldn't have 
known."

He sighs, a gesture rather new to him.  He's been sighing 
quite a lot these last months.  "How about you?"

"Me?"  Sharon points at her chest.  "No broken hearts yet.  
I've been dating some, but no one special."  She pauses.  
"It's strange to date again, isn't it?  It's been so long 
since I've had to get that nervous."

His first date with Sharon was in Minneapolis, where he was 
a young agent in the field office.  Funny as it may sound 
now so many years later, they went ice skating at Lake of 
the Isles.  Her idea, of course.  Later they went to the 
Black Forest Inn for dinner.  He can still remember Sharon 
in the parking lot shaking the snowflakes from her dark 
hair before getting in his car.

"It is strange," he echoes.  He and Scully never dated, of 
course.  They went from 0 to 60 in a matter of five steps 
across the floor and five minutes.  They never went to the 
movies or had dinner alone in a restaurant, never walked 
down the street holding hands.  Never were they even alone 
in a car together.  "I have a date tonight," he says, 
feeling sheepish telling this to his ex-wife.

"I'm glad, Walter."  She stands up.  "I have to be going 
now, I'm meeting friends for lunch."

Skinner rises.  "It was good to see you again."  He kisses 
her on her still-smooth, still-lovely cheek.

She places her hand on his shoulder.  "Take care of 
yourself."

And then she, too, is gone.

The apartment is once again empty.

Perhaps what he needs to do is move again.  These five 
rooms carry too many memories of the woman he loved.  
Scully couldn't have been over more than a dozen or so 
times, but her ghost still lightly walks the carpets.  The 
couch where she curled up with him to watch "The Manchurian 
Candidate".  The shower where her round bar of almond soap 
rested on the rack.  The stove where she once cooked a 
late-night cheese and mushroom omelet.  The white pillow 
where the last trace of her lay, a gently waving strand of 
copper.

He didn't want to love her, didn't plan on it.  Skinner had 
no time or energy for something as consuming as love.  
Especially loving the one woman he couldn't, shouldn't 
have.

It was my folly, he thinks with another sigh.  She was my 
great extravagance.

He doesn't claim to have any extraordinary abilities, but 
the night after she left, the same night he gave her to 
Mulder with a few guarded words, he got home and settled on 
the couch with a bottle of beer.  Halfway into the second 
beer, he was suddenly swept with a chill that turned his 
skin into a multitude of goose bumps.  He knew then, he 
knew that it was irrevocable, that Mulder and Scully were 
at that precise moment together as one.  He knew it was 
over.

For the first time in years, he bent his head and cried.

Two steps forward and one back, he repeats to himself, his 
new mantra.  It will get better.

Nearly every day he sees Scully, striding down the 
labyrinthine corridors of the Bureau in her high-heeled 
pumps, her face smooth and determined.  In meetings she is 
gracious and calm while sitting beside Mulder, listening 
attentively.  Nearly every day he sees her but they never 
discuss those seven months.

He can't hate her for leaving, he just can't.  He can't 
stop loving her, either.  Loving her prodigious 
intelligence and subtle humor, loving the worry line 
between her brows, the eloquence of her slender fingers.

In time, the love will fade away.  Soon, he'll begin to 
forget her smell, the taste of her, the sound of her 
laughter in the middle of the night.

Dana Scully will just be gone.


------------------

The hallway leading to the interrogation room smelled of 
urine and disinfectant, and of the sour bodies of the 
unwashed.  Skinner cringed as he headed down the linoleum 
path, realizing his years in the executive suite had made 
him forget of the daily realities of law
enforcement.

The guard opened the door and he saw Mike McGreavy, dressed 
in orange county jail scrubs, sitting at the scuffed table 
as if he were lounging in a bar, waiting for his first beer
to be delivered by the waitress.  McGreavy nodded, and 
Skinner pictured him, a younger man with more hair and less 
weight around his middle on the occasional nights they'd go
to a Red Sox game or take their wives out for seafood at 
some local dive.  It was disconcerting to see the once 
eager young agent, fresh out of the Academy, now the 
prisoner. The accused.

"Walter Skinner," McGreavy said with a languid wave of his 
hand.  "What brings you to our fair county jail?"

Skinner sat down heavily on the creaky metal chair.  
"Perhaps that's a question better asked of you."

McGreavy run his hand through his thinning blond hair.  
"Jail's not that bad.  Talk shows, three meals a day, get a 
chance to catch up on my reading."  His eyes told another
story, though, and the beads of sweat on his brow in the 
chilly room.

Ah yes, the confident words of a man who had been in jail 
less that twenty-four hours. Cutting to the chase, Skinner 
cleared his throat and said, "Do you want to tell me what
happened here?  Why you chose to protect David Mueller?"

The seat squeaked as McGreavy shifted his weight.  "I'm not 
telling you anything without my lawyer present.  I know the 
rules as well as you do."

"You have a hearing Tuesday with OPR.  What are you going 
to tell them?"

McGreavy shrugged, as if profoundly unconcerned.  "I'll 
tell them that blood is thicker
than water."

"Even when children are concerned?"

The prisoner looked down at the table, his body still.

"Look, Mike, I'm the only one who can help you right now.  
You're not just facing aiding and abetting charges, but 
accessory to capital murder.  That's life in prison you're
facing.  Can you really see spending the rest of your life 
living like this?"

Again, profound silence from the accused, who stared at the 
table as if it were the most fascinating thing in the 
world.

Skinner tapped his pen on the table.  "Okay, if you're not 
going to talk to me, be straight with me, then I'm leaving.  
I have to go deal with the press.  Your actions have become
the hot topic on the news and the Bureau has a nice little 
blot on its reputation."

He stood to go, hating sharing the room with McGreavy, 
hating the stench of the air and the dingy green paint, 
peeling shards upon the filthy floor.  "One more thing," he 
said, as he made to leave.  "Was it worth it?  An entire 
career, a whole life for this?"

McGreavy grimaced.  "What can I say?  It seemed like a good 
idea at the time."

Skinner walked out of the room.  Scully's face flashed 
before him, McGreavy's words echoing through his head.  It 
seemed like a good idea at the time . . .

Scully was right, there were no men of honor left in the 
world.

---------------
The remainder of the day was spent in numerous emergency 
strategy meetings with top brass, culminating in the full 
horror of a crowded press conference attended by the major
news networks.  He had been chosen as the Bureau spokesman, 
a duty he fervently hated, disliking the glare of the 
camera lights, the strident questions from the reporters, 
having to pretend that all was well and contained within 
the FBI, when all he wanted to do was return to the 
interrogation room and strangle the life out of Mike 
McGreavy.

After all he had seen in his years in the Bureau, what 
McGreavy had done shouldn't have appalled him so.  Betrayal 
was an everyday occurrence in his corner of the Hoover
Building.  Still, it did.  He had seen the autopsy photos 
earlier in the day, the bruised and bloody bodies of the 
nine children Mueller had allegedly murdered.  Flipping 
through the photos, the innocent eyes gone glassy and 
blank, Skinner tried to imagine Scully, wielding her 
scalpel on the little bodies.  Scully, reducing those 
unfinished lives to statistics and measurements on a report 
to be filed with the coroner's office.  The gentle hands 
that had run trails of pleasure down his chest, slicing 
that unblemished skin open. After seeing the photos, he was 
able to better understand her despondency of the night 
before.  

And to feel ashamed for taking advantage of a rare moment 
of weakness for her.

Around six o'clock in the evening, he returned to the 
Holiday Inn to change clothes, his heart firmly lodged 
somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.  He hadn't seen 
Scully all day, hadn't seen her since he slipped out of her 
bed like a thief somewhere around five a.m.  Mulder had 
been present at the press conference, but in the crush of 
people he had only exchanged the most perfunctory of 
greetings with him.

In the bustling lobby, he spotted her immediately, sitting 
at a table in the lounge area just off to the side.  
Wearing a black wool turtleneck and a pair of black 
trousers, her hair simply brushed back over her ears, she 
looked more like a bohemian graduate student than a FBI 
agent.  She was wearing her glasses and frowning at the 
book in front of her.

Heart pounding, he slipped into the chair opposite her.  
"You look so studious," he said, for lack of a better 
opening line.

She lifted her hear and smiled to see him.  "I feel 
studious.  This whole novel is like a giant puzzle and I 
have to keep on my toes to follow it and pick up all the 
clues."  It was the copy of Nabokov's "Pale Fire" that he 
had spotted in her room the night before.

"You like mysteries," he noted.

Scully shrugged.  "I supposed I have to, otherwise I 
wouldn't have chosen this life."  She leaned forward 
conspiratorially.  "I blame it on reading too many Nancy 
Drew books as a child."

Skinner guffawed.  "I was hooked on Hardy Boys, myself, 
even though all they ever did was catch smugglers.  I hope 
they grew up and became DEA agents."

The waitress, a plump woman with an awe-inspiring tower of 
teased blonde hair came over.  "What can I get for
you, darlin'?" she drawled in a honey-sweet voice.

"Do you have Laphroig?" he asked.

"Sure do," the waitress cooed.

"I'll take that straight up."

The blonde sashayed away, switching her rump as she went.  
Scully snorted in amusement.  "My, she's something else."

"What are you drinking?" he asked.

She pointed to her china cup.  "I'm being good and having
plain coffee.  I had enough to drink last night."

Skinner was amused to feel both desire and shame stirring 
in him at once.  It was too easy to remember the insanity 
of the night before, the feel of her soft arms surrounding 
him,the gentle cadence of her sleep breathing.

There was a faint smile on Scully's face as she said, "God, 
Nancy Drew books.  I haven't thought of them in years."  
She sipped at her coffee, the color of caramel from the 
cream she had added.  "I'd lie in bed on Saturday mornings 
as a girl, devouring the Nancy Drews I brought home from 
the library.  There's just one thing that strikes me as odd 
about those books, now that I'm old enough to look at them 
with an analytical eye."

"What's that?" he asked.

Her expression was serious for someone discussing the works 
of Nancy Drew.  "Nancy was always being abducted by the bad 
guys, usually knocked out with chloroform and bound and 
gagged.  Don't you think that as a grown woman she'd have 
one hell of a case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?"

Skinner had to bark out a laugh at that, but at the same 
time he envisioned the video capture of Scully in the back 
seat of Duane Barry's car, mouth gagged and eyes wide in 
abject terror.  He wanted to take her hand at that moment, 
but was too aware of the risks.  The hotel was crawling 
with press and other agents, not to mention Mulder.  
Instead he asked, "Does it ever get to you?"

Turning her cup this way and that, she said, "Of course it 
does.  It all gets to me, sooner or later."

"I'm sorry."

She said, shrugging, "It's the life I chose when I joined 
the Bureau.  I never asked for an easy life."

"Am I interrupting something?" said a male voice and 
startled, Skinner and Scully looked up to see Mulder.

For a moment Skinner had to hate Mulder, hate him for the 
time he was able to spend with Scully, the ease in which he 
dealt with her.

Scully shook her head.  "I was having coffee and Director 
Skinner was kind enough to join me for a moment."

"Sit down with us and have a drink," Skinner said.  "We 
should discuss this case."

Mulder sat down and ordered a mineral water from the blowsy 
blonde waitress, seemingly entranced by her backside as she 
retreated from the table to the back of the lounge.  
Skinner gave him a sidelong glance, wondering if the 
younger agent suspected anything untoward.  Scully was the 
picture of composure, calmly sipping her coffee, not a hair 
out of.  He, on the other hand, was on the verge of 
breaking out into a nervous sweat, unable to forget the 
softness of Scully's skin and the brush of her silken hair 
against his bare chest.

Clearing his suddenly dry throat, Skinner said, "Mueller 
has his bail hearing on Monday morning.  It's expected to 
be quite high."

"There goes the speedboat and Winnebago," Mulder said.

Skinner ignored that comment.  "He goes before OPR on 
Tuesday.   I spoke to him briefly this morning.  He offered 
no explanation besides, `Blood is thicker than water.'"

Scully rolled her blue eyes.

"You've done some fine work here, agents.  I can't think of 
many who could have uncovered Mueller's culpability."

Mulder and Scully both smiled, looking faintly embarrassed 
as they always did on the rare occasions he praised them.

Skinner rose.  "Call and book us a flight out in the 
morning.  Our work is done here."  Nodding at his agents, 
he strode off, only one thought paramount in his mind.

Would she come to him tonight?


------------

Skinner met some of the local honchos at a barbecue joint 
for dinner.  Mulder and Scully may have been able to 
studiously ignore local law enforcement, but it was his job 
to build connections and keep the lines of communication 
freely flowing.

After several hours in a room full of cigarette smoke and 
the odor of charred pork, his head was pounding by the time 
he returned to the hotel.  He considered stopping by 
Scully's room but quickly thought the better of it.  It was 
one thing to go there the night before; he had come on the 
behest of business.  This was different, he had intent.  
Shaking his beleaguered head, he went to his own room and 
headed to the bathroom for aspirin and a hot shower.

Feeling foolish, he lay on his bed in bathrobe, waiting.  
Waiting to see if she'd come.

His mind replayed every nuance and moment of the brief 
conversation he'd had with Scully down in the lobby lounge, 
searching for a sign, a flicker of flirtation or 
recognition of the night before.  To his dismay, he found 
nothing.  Scully had been her usual self--  
straightforward, forthright and a tiny bit humorous.  The 
grief and sorrow that had shadowed her delicate features 
the night before had been nowhere in evidence.

Scully was a master of disguise, he now knew.  Now he 
understood the wealth of emotion running beneath her placid 
exterior.

It all boiled down to one question, really.  Would she come 
to him?  

He had no idea.

Skinner dozed of to the blare and blather of ESPN.  
Briefly, he dreamed that he reached out with his right hand 
to touch the marble-smooth expanse of Scully's bare back.  
The minute he made contact with her flesh, his hand was 
seared with an intense burst of heat that ran up his arm to 
the shoulder.  With a gasp, he sat up, blinking in the 
unfamiliar surroundings of his hotel room.

For an instant, he thought the sound was his own rapidly 
beating heart.

No.  It was a knocking at the door, a light tapping coming 
from the other side.

It was Scully.


Part IV- Coalesce

I don't think I'm being manipulated.
But to do something one can't do anything about
as if by one's own will
is comical, sad and yet peaceful.
While lying by you like this,
waiting for our breathing to calm down.
What were they-
those smooth, hot and endless things?
Just because those odd things touched each other,
even my heart relaxed and breathed deeply,
my eyes looked at the starless darkness,
my ears heard moans that could not form words, 
and I was about to melt and cease to be,
when you became unfathomably gentle and rich,
and in the void where any relation between persons doesn't 
catch up,
the very thing of this world,
trying to be born, spurted out of me.
Out of this total silence now
what can I begin to say?
I simply rise to my feet in the darkness, for a glass of 
water.

Tanikawa Shuntaro

Scully stood in the doorway, small in her bulky blue winter 
coat, holding a paper wrapped bottle in her hands.  
"Hello," she said, looking fearlessly into his eyes.

"Come inside," Skinner said, wondering if he'd truly 
awakened from his dream.

She hung her coat in the closet and fumbled with the 
bottle, drawing it out from its wrapper.  "I went out and 
got some wine, a bottle of Cabernet.  I can't guarantee how 
good it is.  Little Rock isn't much of a wine town."

Taking the bottle from her, his hand briefly brushed 
against hers and electricity shot up his arm, making him 
nearly drop the bottle.  "I don't have a bottle opener," he 
said.

"Good thing I was a Girl Scout," Scully said with a 
sheepish look, "I have a Swiss Army Knife. After being lost 
in those Florida woods last fall, I learned to never leave 
home without it."

With surgeon-quick fingers she opened the bottle and poured 
them each a glass in the thick Holiday Inn tumblers.  
Skinner sipped at the Cabernet.  It was a bit sour but all 
in all, not a horrible wine.  "I didn't know if you'd come 
tonight," he said.

She moved a bit closer and he caught a whiff of her lemony 
perfume.  "I didn't know if I would, either."

He tried for some semblance of restraint, difficult when 
all the blood was busy rushing south from his brain.  "This 
is a dangerous situation," he said quietly. "I could lose 
my job over this, Mulder could find out, our enemies . . ."

The softness of her young hand brushed over his scalp and 
reached back to toy with the hair on the back of his head.  
"We can be discreet," she whispered.  "No one has to know."

That was the fundamental problem, he thought.  He wanted to 
crow to the world that this frighteningly beautiful, 
tremendously brilliant and eminently fuckable woman wanted 
to be with him.  How could he keep such a triumph, such a 
joy to himself?  His lips found the baby-tender flesh of 
her neck and he breathed in her personal perfume of almond 
and lemon balm.  "I don't even know what name to call you 
by now," he muttered.

She tipped her head back.  "Just Scully is fine," she said, 
half-moaning as his tongue reached behind her earlobe.  
"Only my family calls me Dana any more."

Her hands were busy unknotting the cord of his bathrobe and 
he saw that that night was a mirror image of the night 
before when he had come to her, fully dressed and had 
unwrapped her bathrobe.  Scully drew the flannel off his 
shoulders and it fell to the floor.  She gasped.

"What?" he said, feeling self-conscious in his nudity.

She smiled roguishly.  "My God, you're beautiful."

Beautiful.  In all his life he had never been called that 
word.  His cock twitched in appreciation as she trailed her 
fingers down the length of his chest.  Kneeling and 
pressing her mouth to his stomach, she said, "And what do I 
call you now?  Walter seems strange to me and sir is just 
too kinky in this situation."

Skinner smiled, nerves dancing as her tongue found the 
dimple of his bellybutton.  "Skinner it is," he said and 
twined his fingers in her bright hair.

Cool hands pushed his briefs down and she gasped, "Oh my."  
His knees buckled is he felt the heat of her mouth surround 
his cock.  He had to reach out and grasp the desk chair for 
support as her wet tongue swirled around his head.

My God was the only thought that was able to penetrate his 
thickened brain as he involuntarily shut his eyes and 
allowed himself to bask in the sheer pleasure of her mouth 
and tongue nimbly working him.  He heard himself gasping 
and panting and wanted to pull away from her and bury 
himself in her depths, but he could not summon the 
strength.  Harder and harder he gripped the chair until he 
feared the bones in his hands would snap.  The suction of 
her skilled mouth increased and for a flash he feared he 
might black out from the wonder of it.  With a low groan 
through his clenched jaw he came, an explosion of color and 
sound that lurched him so far forward he nearly collapsed 
on the woman kneeling before him.

Reluctantly he opened his eyes to see her, still fully 
dressed, the smile of the cat that ate the proverbial 
canary on her face.  Scully kissed each of his still 
trembling thighs.  "Did you like that?" she asked.

Somehow he was able to find the strength to tug her up and 
push her onto the waiting bed.  "Need you even ask?" he 
growled.

Scully raised her arms over head and stretched like a cat 
after a bowl of cream.  "Just making sure I'm appreciated."

Skinner joined her on the bed and quickly stripped her of 
her turtleneck and pants, so that she lay before him clad 
only in a white lace bra and matching panties.  "I'm the 
one who needs to say `Oh my'", he whispered.  "You're 
perfect."  He unhooked her bra and drew it aside.

"Go on, tell me another fairy tale."

His mouth, seemingly of its own accord, found her already 
hardened nipples.  He took his time lavishing each of the 
dark coral peaks with his mouth, rejoicing in each of the 
moans of pleasure his attentions emitted.  Scully struggled 
off her own panties.

As his hand parted her thighs and found her springy curls 
wet already, she arched her back for him.  She arched her 
back and sighed, a long drawn-out sigh of delight.  Skinner 
ran his fingers along her slippery satin interior, 
thinking, I forgot how this feels.  I forgot what a wonder 
a woman is.  His index finger found her swollen clitoris 
and circled slowly and she elicited a gasp of, "Yes, that's 
it . . ."

He wanted more.  He wanted to lose himself in her, bury his 
face in her warmth and stay there for the remainder of the 
night, just to hear her making those beautiful sounds.  
Crouching between her bent knees he took his first 
tentative taste of Scully with the tip of his tongue.  
Lord, she was delicious, more complex than the finest 
cognac, richer than a Cuban cigar, spicier than curry.  
More, he wanted more.

With tongue and fingers he worshipped her sweetness, 
lapping her juices like a man devouring his last meal.  
Scully's cries became higher and louder and her hands 
firmly gripped his shoulders as she guided his movements.  
Forever, he thought, I want to make her this happy forever.  
Suddenly her entire body went stiff and still and she came 
with fierce contractions that clutched at the fingers he 
had buried in her as she ground herself into his face.

Gradually, her movements slowed and stilled and with a 
little regret he lifted his head from her.  She sat up and 
ran her hands through her mussed tangle of hair, her face 
rosy.  "Come here, you," she whispered.

Skinner joined her at the head of the messy bed, realizing 
he and Scully hadn't even kissed yet that night.  Trust 
them to do everything backwards.  Mouths and tongues met, 
tasting of each other's pleasure, still hot, still hungry.  
I can't get enough of you, he frantically thought, what the 
hell do you do to me, Scully?

To his surprise and delight, he found himself growing hard 
again.  Her hand found him and firmly squeezed and he 
lightly bit at her shoulder at the sensation.  "I'm glad to 
see you're a man who keeps himself in shape," she said and 
they laughed together.

Scully scrambled for a condom and slipped it on him with 
practiced doctor's hands.  "Lie down," she ordered and he 
mutely obeyed, enjoying the power reversal they had in bed.  
In the world he was her superior but in the privacy of the 
hotel room he was entirely at her service.

With one swift movement of her compact body he was inside 
her and they both gasped at the sensation.  Scully crouched 
over him, gently rocking, her mouth open and a look of 
sheer wonder on her face.   Slowly, agonizingly slowly she 
moved his cock in and out of her.  It was torture, he 
thought as his mouth again found hers, but the best kind, 
the kind of torture he could happily endure for the rest of 
his natural life.  And again she came, her small hands 
pressing the sides of his face as she cried out.  Those 
sounds and the knowledge that he had pleased her were 
enough to take him, too, over the edge and beyond, biting 
his lip in the effort to keep himself under control.

Forever, he again thought, as they pulled apart.  This 
cannot end.

For a long time they lay together, waiting for their 
breathing to slow.

Scully kissed him on the neck and sat up.  "I have to go to 
the bathroom," she said.  "Why don't you pour us some more 
wine?"

He got rid of the condom and went to the desk for the 
bottle of wine.  In the half-light from the bedside lamp he 
caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror over the dresser.  
For the first time in many, many years he looked happy.  He 
looked like a man satisfied.

The bathroom door opened and Scully walked out, glorious in 
her lush nudity.  She came up behind him and rested her 
head on his broad back.  "Thank you," she whispered into 
his skin.

He turned around to face her.  "I should be thanking you."

She picked up a glass of the wine and took a small sip, 
shaking her head.  "No, you don't understand.  You saved 
me."

"Saved you?" he asked, not fully understanding what she 
meant.

Scully moved to the bed and sat up against the pillows.  
She bit her lower lip, as if thinking hard.  "Last night I 
was in a very dark place."

Skinner brushed his lips against the line where her 
forehead and hair met.  "Tell me about it," he said.

At that moment he wanted to know everything about her, to 
know her woman's heart.

She slid to a lying position on her side and shook her 
head.  He joined her so they were face to face in the dim 
room.   "I'm not good at sharing myself," she said in a 
small voice.  "I'm just no good at it."

"Why don't you try?"  He squeezed her hand.  "You can trust 
me, Scully."  Yet he remembered that night in Mulder's 
apartment when she trained her gun on him and ordered him 
to sit on the couch, the fear and hatred alive in her eyes. 
That was a long time ago, he said to himself.

She issued a long, trailing sigh and drank more wine.  "It 
was too soon," she said.

"What was?"  Was she speaking of their coming together?

"This case, the children," she said in a nearly inaudible 
voice.

Emily, he thought.  Her daughter, created without her 
knowledge or consent and now gone.  Sometimes he wondered 
how she bore it all.  Now he watched her walls crumble a 
bit and his heart ached for her trials.

She continued, fortified by another sip of the wine.  "I've 
never enjoyed performing autopsies on children.  Death 
doesn't bother me, I've never gotten upset at working with 
the dead, otherwise I never would have chosen pathology.  
It's just that working with children, it's so . . . 
unnatural."  Scully's voice was ragged with remembered 
pain.  "I had to perform an autopsy on a little boy last 
night, a beautiful child.  He looked like an angel, 
peaceful and innocent in his repose, despite the bruises 
and the blood.

"But as I cut him open, I couldn't get her face out of my 
mind.  Another lost child."  She buried her face in her 
hands.  "It was just too soon."

Skinner bent down and kissed her eyelids, her face.  He was 
not surprised to see she wasn't crying.

"I'm so sorry," he said, wishing for better, more 
comforting words to soothe her.

She lifted her face and blinked rapidly, as trying to keep 
the tears at bay.  "No, I'm sorry to burden you like this."

Skinner groaned in frustration.  "Don't you see?" he said, 
rubbing her back with his hand.  "I want you to feel able 
to tell me these things."  Somewhere he heard the 
omnipresent winter rain beating against the windowpanes and 
he shivered.

"Sometimes I just want to quit, to walk away from all 
this," she said. 

He rose on his elbow.  "Why don't you?"

"I don't know," she said quietly, "Something's keeping me 
here.  I guess I own the quest as much as he does.  There 
are things I need to know before I leave."  She didn't need 
to explain who she meant when she said the word he.  
Mulder.  He had been forgetting him all night long, but he 
existed, just one floor up.

It wouldn't be possible to always ignore Mulder's presence.  

"Let me," he whispered to her, "Let me help you forget for 
a night."

Forget the children, forget the terror, forget the things 
that had been done to her.  He wanted her to forget it all, 
if only for a little while.

He had to wonder if she thought of Mulder when he was with 
her, if she ever thought of him in a sexual way.  It was a 
question he didn't dare ask.

His hands reached for her and she sighed against his 
shoulder.  

------------------
Somewhere in the middle of the night, he awoke to the sound 
of her tears.  He was on his side with his back to her, but 
he could make out her soft, muffled sobs over the sound of 
rain on the glass.  Desperately he wanted to go to her, to 
ease her raw pain, but he couldn't move a muscle.  He just 
couldn't invade her privacy like that, to diminish her 
strength.  He knew she'd hate him for it.

After a few minutes the sobs faded into even sleep 
breathing and he, too, drifted down into sleep.

In the morning he woke and reflexively reached for her, but 
she was gone.

-------------------
And now, so many months later, it is too easy for him to 
see that he made his pivotal error that night in Little 
Rock as she cried in his bed and he failed to comfort her.  
Perhaps if he had reached for her and held her as she wept, 
the tenor of their relationship would have changed, become 
something more personal.  Something beyond the realm of sex 
and friendship in her eyes.

One of the hardest things a man has to do is to admit that 
his love is not returned.  He can hope that one day it will 
come, but for it to be so one-sided is torture.

For seven months he waited to see if she'd grow to love him 
as he loved her.

She liked him, she respected and trusted him, but the love 
never came.

Patiently he waited, until one day she admitted her love 
for the other.  She sat on her couch, the tears he had 
never seen before running down her face, and nodded when he 
asked if she loved Mulder.

He never doubted for an instant that the day would come.  
He knew it from almost the beginning, when his dreams were 
dashed on the way home to D.C.


Part V- Stepping Forward

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this 
flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened 
on blueness
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted 
September
to the sightless realm were darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone is herself but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense 
gloom,
among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding 
darkness on the lost
bride and her groom.

D.H. Lawrence


On the plane, Skinner tilted his chair back as far as it 
would go, closed his eyes and allowed himself to dream.

He thought of an impossible time and space where somehow it 
was not a crime to love Scully.  His dream unfolded before 
his weary eyes in soothing tones of pastel, as hazy and  
partially formed as a painting by Bonnard or Monet, and 
just as beautiful.  

In his waking dream, Scully left the Bureau and found 
herself a job at a hospital, something that allowed her to 
sleep in peace at night.  He asked her marry him and she 
did, she did, a quiet ceremony with her in a simple white 
silk dress, a white gardenia tucked behind her ear.  A life 
together, a whole life shared, for richer or poorer, for 
good times and bad, through sickness and health, until 
death parted them.  Making love, buying a house, perhaps a 
child or two.  He wasn't too old to become a first-time 
father.  He saw a little boy with dark hair and her light 
eyes, running up to him at the end of the day, smelling of 
cookies and apple juice.  He wanted to spend every 
remaining year by her side until he died with the gentle 
touch of her hand gripped around his. 

Skinner was a man who dealt firmly in the realm of reality.  
He was not a fanciful man, but for once in his life, he 
allowed himself to dream, and to hope.

Really, he didn't ask for too much.

He wondered if he should begin to pray again.  He hadn't 
prayed in a long time, since Vietnam, when he lost his 
belief somewhere in the jungles near Da Nang.  Trying to 
pray for a minute, he felt silly, praying there in the 
plane, like a man afraid the plane would crash.  It wasn't 
the right and proper time to begin again.

Opening his eyes, he stared out of the window at the clouds 
running beneath the plane, amazed at the multitude of 
emotions running through him.  Scully just made him feel 
everything, all at once.  She had the singular ability of 
making him feel alive, when he had been so sure that part 
of him was dead and gone.  He again felt like the young man 
who had stood in a parking lot and watched Sharon shake 
snowflakes from her hair.

Later, he moved to the back of the plane to use the 
bathroom.  Seven rows behind sat Mulder and Scully.  Mulder 
had his glasses on, reading what looked to be a psychology 
journal.  To his right was Scully at the window seat, 
wearing a pair of headphones and asleep with her head 
resting on Mulder's shoulder.  

Skinner paused before the two agents.  Mulder looked up 
from his reading and smiled in embarrassment.  "She often 
does this on planes," he said, running his right hand 
through his thick brown hair.  "Scully hates to fly so she 
takes two Sudafed, puts on some Mozart and conks out for 
the whole thing."

"I see," Skinner said dumbly, noticing that on the armrest, 
Mulder's large hand was draped over Scully's.  He pulled 
his eyes away with difficulty and made his way to the 
bathroom, which was blessedly unoccupied.

Shutting the door behind him, Skinner's knees buckled and 
for a moment he feared he might vomit.  A light sheen of 
sweat broke out on his forehead.

What a fool he was, dreaming away about Scully.

He might be the one who had her attention and her body, but 
he saw that her soul truly belonged to Mulder.  It was 
difficult to explain why he knew that from witnessing the 
little tableau Mulder and Scully made on the plane, but he 
did.  Something about the trust and vulnerability Scully 
showed in sleeping on her partner's shoulder spoke volumes 
to him.  And he didn't really need to explain it, anyhow.  
He just knew.

Washing his hands in the tiny sink, he sighed the sigh of 
defeat.

Back in his seat, he understood it was just a matter of 
time and he vowed to make the most of each moment he was 
allowed with her.  Then he sat up and again looked out at 
the clouds fleeting along.  No, he thought, I won't let it 
happen.  It can't happen.  I'll fight tooth and nail and in 
the end, she will love me.

If sheer force of will could make something happen, it 
would certainly become true.  She would love him.

----------------
He paces in front of his living room windows, watching 
early autumn dusk fall on the sky in tones of gold and red, 
purple streaking through in some spots.  He can't believe 
he spent the entire day brooding about her, but perhaps he 
needed to do that, instead of his usual modus operendi, 
which is to simply work too much.

At the window he whispers, "I loved you, Scully." 

He's never used the past tense before.  It pains him to use 
it, but he knows it's time to walk away.

Stepping away from the window he goes to dress for his date 
with Caroline Lohmann, a woman he met in the music 
department at Barnes and Noble.  They both reached for the 
same copy of  "Don Giovanni" and ended up in a spirited 
discussion about Maria Callas over coffee.  When they 
parted an hour or so later, she asked him if he were 
single, if he were straight, and if he'd like to have 
dinner with her.

He answered yes on all three counts.

She's nothing like Scully, he thinks, while putting on a 
fresh shirt and picking out an appropriate tie.  Caroline 
is tall and slender, dark curly hair down to her shoulders, 
 forty-two and divorced, with a ten year-old daughter.  
She's an art history professor at Georgetown and laughed 
delightedly when she found out he was an FBI agent.

He only knows the most basic facts about Caroline, the bare 
skeleton of the woman who lives, but he wants to find out.  
He thinks he just might be ready for it.

Fully dressed and ready to go, he stops for one last look 
out the window.  The moon is full and golden and casts 
shadows of the trees on the sidewalk below.  It's a 
beautiful night for walking.

With a deep breath, he takes two steps forward and walks 
away.

*********************

Saturday Morning, Two Breakfasts 


She's always hated mornings, always faced waking up with 
the dread of a prisoner awaiting his date with the electric 
chair.  As a child she loved getting up to see the presents 
under the tree on Christmas morning.  Easter, with the 
basket full of brightly colored eggs and chocolate bunnies, 
wasn't bad either.  Those were just about the only two 
mornings she could handle.

Now as an adult, she slams the alarm off and slowly sits 
up, squinting into her dark bedroom.  She always thinks, 
another day, another dead body.  It isn't until midway 
through her second cup of coffee that she begins to feel 
anything near human again.  They know her by name at the 
Daily Grind just down the street; know she takes the extra 
large cup of Italian Roast, with just a little room for 
cream at the top.

This, however, is the good kind of morning, she thinks, as 
her eyes open.  Sun is pouring through the blinds and glows 
golden on the freshly painted cream walls.  It's a rare 
Saturday that she doesn't have to work.  They just returned 
from a case in Tallahassee, Florida on Thursday evening and 
all that is left to do is the paperwork.

God, Saturdays are great.  The last free Saturday they had, 
she and Mulder spent the day painting his bedroom, trying 
to make it a habitable space once again.  The air still 
faintly smells of the paint, a strangely comforting smell 
to her as she rolls unto her stomach.  Forty-eight hours of 
freedom, she gleefully thinks.  Sweet, sweet freedom.

The best part, yes, the best part of waking up on a work 
free Saturday morning is waking to his mouth planting a 
trail of wet kisses down her bare back.

Mmm-hmm, it's going to be a good day today.

She wants to turn around to kiss Mulder, but decides to 
prolong the agony, to simply let the heat slowly build by 
grinding her buttocks into him, to feel his toothpaste-
fresh breath drift across her face.

Toothpaste fresh?  Damn him, he cheated and brushed his 
teeth! 

Scully gives into temptation and rolls over, pokes him in 
his considerable nose.  "You brushed your teeth," she 
grumbles.

A chuckle emanates from deep in his chest.  "The Thai 
curry," he says.

She pulls away from his octopus arms and stumbles to the 
bathroom, unwilling to kiss her man with a mouth that 
tastes of a night of Bangkok debauchery.  Crest is a 
beautiful invention, she thinks, furiously scrubbing her 
teeth while sitting on the toilet at the same time.  She's 
a master at timesaving morning techniques.

Back in the bedroom she pauses to take in the sight before 
her.  Mulder, in his bed, beneath the comforter she got him 
for his birthday, in his bare-assed glory.  It's better 
than presents and chocolate bunnies combined.

Sliding back under the warm covers, she tousles his dark 
hair.  He has fallen asleep again, but he'll wake up.  Oh 
yes, he'll wake up.

They are still a new enough couple that sometimes she 
awakens in surprise to see him lying next to her.  She 
thinks, what the hell are you doing in my bed, Mulder?

A few times, in the very beginning, she thought she was 
waking up with Skinner, and the brush of Mulder's hair 
against her back shocked her into realization.  I'm with 
Mulder now, she had to think.  It always filled her with 
surprising joy.

Joy.  It is a new emotion to behold, and she's learning to 
appreciate its red, orange and yellow colors.

She crouches over his still form and applies a gentle kiss 
to each silken eyelid, watching them flutter awake from her 
touch.  His lips twist into a grin.  "Teeth all clean and 
sparkly now?"

Baring her teeth, she growls.

Her hand crawls up his thigh.  "I love Saturday mornings," 
she says in his ear.

"Not half so much as I do."  His large hand grasps her at 
the back of the neck and pulls her mouth to his.  The first 
kiss of the day is the nicest, she thinks, as his tongue 
plunges into her mouth and finds her own.  She still 
remembers their first, surprising kiss in her doorway, his 
lips wet from the rain, his mouth tasting of the dark 
flavors of coffee and chocolate.  She had thought at the 
time that his mouth probably tasted that wonderful from 
something he had eaten.  Now she knows his mouth naturally 
tastes that way.  Delicious and sweet.

She could spend hours like this.  They did, just a few 
weeks ago while out on a case in Iowa.  It was a crisp 
autumn evening outside of Davenport and she parked the car 
off a rural road, surrounded only by the dark shapes of 
tress and the tapestry of a starry sky overhead.  She 
unbuckled her seatbelt and reached for him and they spent a 
few hours just kissing and touching in the moonlight, while 
the car radio sang the latest bouncy pop hits.  Feeling 
sixteen again, she imagined racing home in time for her 
curfew, lest she face her strict father's wrath.

With each kiss becoming deeper and hungrier, she feels her 
own arousal rising like a fever in the middle of the night.  
She's utterly perplexed to explain what Mulder does to her.  
She's known pleasure so extreme she thought she might go 
into cardiac arrest right then and there, she's had lovers 
skilled at eliciting shattering screams from her, but never 
this bone-deep pleasure.  Never this thorough satisfaction.

It must be because they love each other, she muses as she 
nips at his sleep-salty neck.  Never having been in love 
before him, she didn't know the difference.

Did Skinner feel this way when they were in bed together?  
She knows he loved her.

No, it's not the time to think about him.  Guilt has no 
business being in this bedroom right now.

Her mouth travels a lazy journey down his long torso, 
stopping off for brief visits at her favorite areas: the 
small spheres of his hard nipples, the ridges of his ribs, 
the darkened trail of hair that runs from his belly button 
to his pubic hair.  "The Treasure Trail", Melissa told her 
it was called when she was fourteen or fifteen.  She 
remembers her outraged giggles at hearing the term.

And of course, she reaches the best spot, her favorite new 
stomping grounds, Mulder's blood-stiffened penis.  Funny 
how she worked so closely with him for so many years and 
never stopped to consider that he had one of those hiding 
underneath his suits.  Sure, she had actually seen it a 
time or two, but it was under rather harrowing conditions 
and she herself had been in her full-blown mode of doctor's 
detachment.

The first time she became aware of the reality of Mulder's 
cock, not as a hazy part of a late-night fantasy, but as 
the flesh belonging to the man himself, was that rainy 
night in July when he came to her.

For a long time they sat on her couch, finishing a bottle 
of Shiraz left over from the night before, attempting to 
untangle the delicate threads of their relationship.  
Finally, she threw up her hands.  "Mulder," she said, her 
feet tapping on the rug with anxiety.  "Enough talk."

With that, he pulled her onto his lap and once again their 
mouths merged into a long, sliding kiss, redolent of 
chocolate and Australian wine.  Suddenly she felt it, 
pressing stiffly against her right buttock.  My God, she 
thought as her mouth pressed harder into his, Mulder has a 
penis.  Mulder has a penis and I made him hard.

She couldn't help but throw her head back in a laugh of 
wonder and triumph.

Fun is what has been lacking in her life for too many 
years.  Despite her ambition and drive in college, she knew 
when to amputate her nose from the end of a book and have a 
good time.  Dana and a pack of her girlfriends would make 
their hair big with gobs of styling mousse and head for 
Saturday night parties at someone's crappy little 
apartment.  They'd drink some beer, dance to New Order and 
Depeche Mode, engage in a little flirting with skinny boys 
dressed in black.  Laughter.  She remembers the laughter 
the most, barricading herself in the bathroom with Sheila 
and Kate, howling at what a fool Sheila was making over 
herself for some dorky guy.  Laughing so hard the blue 
mascara ran down her face and her sides ached.

After college she laughed less with each passing year.  For 
many years she has no memory of laughing at all.

With Mulder now her lover, it's a different story.  Their 
lives are still a desperate quest for the truth, but when 
they are alone together they can shed their layers of 
gravity and relax into more carefree versions of 
themselves.  He teases her and she actually smiles, rather 
than giving him the evil eye.  She tickles him, just to see 
his face contort into laughter.  Some nights they camp out 
in bed with take-out and simply tell each other stories.  
Scully has even learned not to bitch about crumbs in the 
bed.

This is a new lesson she's learned, that love is not always 
a deadly serious game.  Love can be reading the comics 
aloud, or burning the toast, or singing off-key with the 
theme to Cheers.

If her relationship with Mulder were to end today, she'd 
still be eternally grateful for that lesson.

Her hand grasps Mulder at the root and she squeezes, 
hearing nonsense syllables beginning to come from the head 
of the bed.  She loves to reduce her brilliant partner to a 
gibbering idiot with just a touch and the flick of her 
tongue.  Opening her mouth, she takes his cock in as far as 
if will go as he continues to writhe and moan.  What a kick 
it is to make him feel so good, to hold the power to please 
him.  Lazily, as if working on a particularly tasty cherry 
Popsicle, she licks and sucks at him, feeling the blood 
gathering between her thighs, her own arousal painfully 
mounting with each motion.

Mulder's hands, which have been buried in her hair, pull 
her head up, so that he slips out of her mouth.  "What are 
you-" she tries to ask.

His eyes are still clenched shut.  "Turn around, Scully."

She knows what he wants to do and her heart skitters at the 
thought.  She shifts around so that she is lying on her 
side, her head level with his crotch.  A gasp slips from 
her mouth as his rough hand parts her thighs and she feels 
his warm breath blowing on her curls.  Then, oh yes, the 
wetness of his tongue finds her clitoris and her back 
stiffens as if jolted by electricity.  Oh yes, he knows 
just what she likes, light teasing circles, not too hard, 
not too soft, simply the perfect rhythm.  "Mulder," is all 
that can come out of her mouth as her brain is occupied 
with the task of processing the pleasure invading the lower 
half of her body.

Somehow she is able to remember to bend her head to him and 
again take his cock into her mouth.  With a slide of her 
tongue along the tip, he increases the pressure of his 
tongue on her clit and she, too, sucks harder, trying her 
best to keep up as her body is slowly being driven insane 
by his tongue and fingers.  Mulder is twitching his hips 
now, a sure sign he's close to coming, shoving himself so 
hard into her mouth she has to grasp his buttocks to 
control him.  She, too, is dangerously close, precariously 
teetering on the edge. Suddenly she feels his balls 
contract and with a muffled moan he comes, emptying himself 
into her mouth.

With a swiftness that is impressive for a man who has just 
had an orgasm, he flips her onto her back, pulls her knees 
up and bends his face to her.  Her head hanging half off 
the bed, she throws her hands over her eyes to block out 
the sunshine, block out everything but the sensation of his 
tongue lapping at her, his fingers sliding in and out, 
block out everything that isn't pleasure.

And then she screams.

No, it isn't quite a scream, it's a sound that lies 
somewhere in the nebulous area between a scream and a 
growl, the definite cry of an animal escaping her lungs.  
Whatever it is, she's feeling wonderful.

There's nothing to hide from Mulder.  Dignity doesn't even 
come into play with him.  After all, he's seen her at her 
lowest, lying in a hospital bed with her eyes taped, and 
later in another bed, hollowed out by the cancer.  He's 
watched her aim her weapon at him and fire.  He's even seen 
her cry.

She can be anything, it just doesn't matter.  He's going to 
love her all the same.

Unconditional.

Now she understands the meaning of the word.

With heavy limbs she crawls to the head of the bed and 
settles herself in the crook of his arm.  Her hand reaches 
out to stroke his chest, covered with a light sheen of 
sweat.  "Morning," she sighs.

He kisses the top of her head.  "And a fine morning it is, 
room service and all."

"This is nice," she mumbles into his shoulder, sleep 
threatening to overtake her.

"Scully?"  The sound of his voice makes her open her eyes 
once again.

"Yes?"

His hand brushes her cheek.  "I just want you to know that 
I'm happy."

She smiles, understanding the impact of his words.  
Happiness has been an elusive emotion for Mulder.  She's 
actually surprised he can recognize what it is.  Briefly 
moving her lips against his, she whispers, "I'm glad.  I 
am, too."

His stomach chooses to speak for him at that moment, a 
reverberating grumble.  She pokes him at the source of the 
sound.  "You hungry?"

Mulder laughs.  "I don't know why, I already had my 
breakfast."

"Why don't we go to the kitchen and try to devise some 
breakfast?"

"Um, Scully," he sheepishly grins, "unless you want tuna or 
beer for breakfast, my pantry is kind of bare right now."

Typical.  Mulder doesn't know how to treat himself well.  
She wrinkles her nose at the thought of a tuna sandwich.  
"We'd better go to Michael's, then."

He yawns.  "Ugh, that requires too much effort."

Her own stomach begins to growl and rumble at the thought 
of French toast and a big cup of Sumatran.  She tugs at his 
hand.  "Come on, time to hit the showers, Mulder."

With a hearty groan he sits up and stretches.  "A shower 
for two?"

She stands up and tugs him off the bed.  "Conservation of 
water is an important part of saving the environment," she 
deadpans.

Her own bathroom may have more fancy-smelling soaps and 
shampoos, instead of the bottle of Prell and the bar of 
Coast she must contend with here, but showering is much 
more pleasant when Mulder is there to scrub her back. He 
makes happy sounds as she massages the green shampoo into 
his scalp and she snorts with laughter when he gets some of 
the bubbles into his mouth and starts furiously spitting 
out the soap.

Fun, she thinks.  I could get used to this.

Out of the shower she filches Mulder's blue oxford shirt 
from the night before, giving it a surreptitious sniff.  It 
smells just like him, a little of his sweat, a hint of 
aftershave and her own perfume.  

He turns from his own dressing and smiles to see her in his 
ridiculously large shirt.  "That's awfully sexy on you," he 
says.

"I feel like I'm wearing my boyfriend's letter jacket."

"Ah, the young Dana Scully, sitting in the stands at the 
football game.  I'll bet you were cute."

She rolls her eyes.  "I had a mouthful of braces."

"So did I.  We would have been a cute couple."

Impatiently, she puts her hands on her hips.  "Are we going 
to go eat or what?"

Side by side they walk the four short blocks to Michael's 
Cafe.  Holding hands in public would be tempting fate more 
than they already are, but it doesn't really matter to her.  
She couldn't feel any closer to him than right now, even if 
their hands were tightly gripped together.  She's wearing 
his shirt, smelling like his soap, her body is still 
humming from his touch.  It's enough.

It's one of those magical Indian summer days when a sweater 
isn't even needed and the light seems a deeper gold than 
usual.  People are out on the sidewalks in droves, trying 
to enjoy the last gasp of fine weather.  Couples push 
babies in strollers, joggers rush by, and dogs obediently 
trot alongside their masters.  A beautiful day and she and 
Mulder are a part of it.

Scully lifts her face to the warmth of the sun and grins.  
She now knows to appreciate these brief flashes of 
contentment.

At Michael's they get a table on the sidewalk outside and 
peruse the many options of the menu.  Eating breakfast here 
is like making love with Mulder- which pleasure to choose 
when they are all equally enticing?

The waiter ambles by and they order.  Blueberry-banana 
pancakes for Mulder and Scully goes with her original 
choice of French toast.  At this restaurant they soak stale 
baguette pieces overnight in a mixture of milk, eggs and 
Grand Marnier, turning it into something closer to a bread 
pudding that regular French toast.  Bacon for the both of 
them, and of course large, steaming mugs of strong coffee.

The food arrives in record time and Mulder jokes that 
perhaps the staff has a food replicator in back like on 
Star Trek.  She laughs so hard she nearly chokes on her 
mouthful of food.  This sends Mulder into his own gales of 
laughter and near choking.

"Hey," he says, putting his fork down, face suddenly gone 
serious.  "I love you, Scully."  Gently, he pushes a lock 
of hair out of her eyes.

It isn't often that they say those words to one another.  
To do so would soften the impact.

She feels surprisingly shy, casting her eyes downward 
towards her plate.  "I love you, too."

At that moment a chill runs through her body, to her very 
bones.  Her mother would say a ghost was walking over her 
grave.  Reflexively, she turns her head and across the 
street she spots a man jogging down the street.  A tall, 
muscular, bald man.

Skinner.

No, it can't be.  That would mean that he most likely saw 
her here with Mulder.

He sees them nearly every day, but in a work setting.  She 
knows how the sight of her having breakfast with Mulder 
would hurt Skinner.  That's the last thing she wants to do.

No, it wasn't him, she tells herself. Her mind is playing 
tricks, unwilling to accept being happy.

Mulder looks alarmed at the expression on her face.  "What 
is it?" he asks.

She turns to her lover and smiles.  "Nothing," she says.  
"It was nothing at all."

After breakfast they stroll back down the street, full, 
happy and caffeinated.  Mulder touches her shoulder.  "What 
do you want to do today?"

She smiles and shrugs.  "I'm not used to free time.  Maybe 
see a movie?"

A mischievous expression moves across his face.  "Could you 
go for a little nap right now?"

He has a one-track mind.  Then again, so does she.

"I'll race you to your building," she says.

And they're off.

*********************


The Seasons


Autumn

The scent of burning leaves drifts into the car as they 
speed down a New Hampshire highway.  Trees alive with color 
become a blur of gold and red with the motion.

For a brief moment he wants to stop the car and run through 
a pile of leaves, to hear them crunch under his loafer-clad 
feet.  But he can't.  They're late to interview a witness 
and besides, Scully is yelling at him.

Perhaps yelling is too strong a word, but she's most 
definitely angry, lecturing him in her patented 
schoolmarmish tone, her hands white-knuckled on the 
steering wheel.  "You were supposed to meet me at noon.  
Where were you?"

Chastened, he stares at the dashboard of the Taurus.  "I 
had a lead."

Her lips are drawn together in a thin line.  "A lead."  She 
pauses, most likely for maximum effect, and it works.  "Why 
didn't you call?"

She sounds remarkably like his mother, when she'd chew out 
his father for tracking mud or snow onto her Persian 
carpets.  "I forgot?" he lamely offers.

The car jerks off the road onto the shoulder.  Here's his 
chance, his big opportunity to fling the door open and 
escape, into the woods, into the leaves.  Instead, he finds 
himself staying to await his judgement.

Scully opens the driver's side door and dashes out and the 
next thing he sees is her, dwarfed by her beige trench 
coat, pacing in front of the car.  Her hands are balled 
into fists.

Outside of the car, the crisp October air smells more 
heavily of the musk of burning leaves.  It smells like 
Saturdays of enforced raking, of getting drunk in the 
stands at football games, of walking to school in the pre-
dawn light.  He touches her arm and she whirls around, her 
hair an aureole of deepest russet.  "I'm sorry," he says, 
his arms hanging limply at his sides.

A tiny breath of air escapes her, forming a cloud of steam.  
"You say you're sorry every time you do this, but nothing 
changes."

He doesn't know what to say to that.  Words have fled.

Another small sigh from her.  "Mulder, who am I?"

"Who are you?"  He's confused.  She has a tricky and deft 
touch with language, ever able to manipulate it like F. Lee 
Bailey, able to trap him with the most innocuous of 
questions.  It's a dangerous, dangerous path he's traveling 
here with her.  His heart beats in a staccato tempo and he 
finds his head beginning to pound in concert with his 
racing pulse.

"I'm your partner.  Let's forget about the other side of 
our relationship for the moment. " Her voice is even, the 
words clipped between her white teeth.  "I'm your partner 
and when you go off on your own like that, that tells me 
that you're not thinking of me as your partner, your equal.  
You aren't trusting me."

"It was last minute, I wasn't thinking."

Her eyes become sad and exhausted, the little lines 
radiating from the corners more visible than usual in the 
midday autumn sunshine.   "You don't think, that's the 
problem.  We've discussed this again and again and then you 
turn around and take off on me.  I can't provide you 
adequate backup when I don't know where you are and what 
you're doing."

His chest begins to tighten.  Accountability, that's what 
she's asking for.

Scully leans against the car and shoves her hands in the 
pockets of her coat.  "This is my quest, too," she says in 
a nearly inaudible voice.

"I know."  He bows his head, feeling shame.

"Then let me own it.  It's not yours now, it's ours.  It 
belongs to me as much as it does you and I don't want you 
to forget that, not for one second."

Damn her, she's right.

An index finger is raised in warning.  "It has to change, 
now.  I'm not going to make you promise me, but I'm telling 
you, what happened today, what has happened so many times 
in the past will happen no longer."

She doesn't need to speak the threat, it hides between her 
carefully chosen words.

Ditch me again and I'm leaving.

And that, to him, would mean the end of everything.

Damn her, she's right.

He smoothes the hair that is blown by the wind across her 
forehead.  "What can I say to make this right?"

Impossibly blue eyes lift to meet his.  "You can't say 
anything.  All you can do is the right thing."

She pulls away from him and gets back in the driver's seat, 
starts the car.

For a moment he stares at the technicolor leaves hanging on 
the maples, just waiting to dry enough to drop on the 
ground, where they will be swept away by winter.  Once 
more, he considers bolting away from there, to run in the 
leaves where he will be free, answerable to no one, 
untethered, scraping his way across the floor of the 
forest.

Instead, he gets in the car and he and Scully drive off to 
the interview, passing more fall colors on the way.


Winter


The sun is just setting behind Lone Mountain when she 
decides to wake him.  He's sprawled out on the puffy beige 
couch, his head propped by several pillows, a plaid wool 
afghan thrown across his legs.  For a minute she wavers in 
her decision to awaken him; his face is so at peace.  
Still, she knows she must and gently shakes his shoulder.  
"Mulder," she softly says, "time to wake up."

Without opening his eyes, he groans in protest.

Scully leans in closer, so that her lips are nearly 
touching the evening stubble on his cheeks.  "Open your 
eyes," she says.

His hazel eyes open.  "How are you feeling?" she asks.

"Head hurts," he moans.

She says briskly, "That tends to happen when you whack your 
head on a chairlift pole." Moving her index finger in front 
of his eyes, she notes that they appear to appropriately 
track her movements.  Snapping on the lamp, the light makes 
his pupils contract.  He's going to be fine, just another 
incident in the life of Fox Mulder, Accident Prone Agent.

It was his fault, of course.  This morning they were on the 
first run of the day, appropriately named Tippy's Tumble.  
She stood at the top of the mountain, gaping at the 
majestic view spread before her.  It was only their second 
day of skiing at Big Sky and already she was hopelessly in 
love with the rugged mountains of the Northern Rockies.

Mulder skied to her side and stopped with a flamboyant 
swoosh of snow.  "I'll race you to the bottom," he said, 
adjusting his sunglasses.

"Yeah, in my dreams," she said.  Mulder was a far better 
skier than she, having had the childhood privilege of trips 
to Vail and Snowmass.  She didn't learn to ski until 
college, when she spent several vacations with her roommate 
Sally in her hometown of Stowe, Vermont.

Taking off like quicksilver and skiing the fall line, 
Mulder quickly disappeared down the run.  Scully laughed at 
his typical derring-do and started making her way along the 
fairly steep and icy trail, forming the wide traverses of 
the cautious skier.

This was a good idea, she thought, as the snow-covered 
trees rushed past and the cold wind blew in her face.  
Christmas in Montana, far, far away from the chaos of the 
Bureau.  She could have spent the holidays in San Diego 
with her family, but the memories of the year before were 
still too raw and tender to return there just yet.  
Instead, she and Mulder cashed in some of their many 
frequent flyer miles and headed for twelve days of skiing 
and lolling in the Jacuzzi on the deck of their rented 
condominium.

Near the bottom of the mountain, she turned a bend in the 
run and spotted a navy jacket lying in a heap near the pole 
of the chairlift.  Her heart lurched painfully.  It was 
Mulder and he was lying perfectly still.

With as much speed as her shaking body could muster she 
sped to the bottom of the slope, images of Sonny Bono and 
that Kennedy brother tormenting her all the way down.  No 
no no, she desperately thought until she reached him.

Another skier, a young man in a green jacket, had stopped 
by Mulder.  "He's out cold," he drawled in a California 
voice.

Scully snapped into physician mode.  "I'm a doctor," she 
breathlessly said.  "Go get the Ski Patrol!"

The man nodded and skied away.  She was glad to see he was 
an excellent skier.  Stepping out of her bindings, she 
planted her skis in the snow and bent to Mulder.  "Mulder!" 
she shouted, attempting to rouse him.  Stripping off her 
gloves, she found a pulse.

His eyes opened and she breathed a sigh of relief.  He 
struggled to sit up and she stilled him with her hand.  
"Don't move," she ordered.

"Scully?" he asked, his face twisting in confusion.  "Where 
are we?"

A concussion, she rapidly told herself, short-term memory 
loss.  "We're in Montana," she said, removing her ski 
jacket and covering him with it, in case he was going into 
shock.  His pupils were dilated and his breathing rapid.

"Montana?"  He sounded as if he might begin to cry.  "What 
are we doing here, a case?"

She smiled to reassure him and took his gloved hand.  
"We're on vacation; it's Christmas Eve today.  You need to 
calm down, Mulder.  Take slow, easy breaths."  She mimicked 
breathing for him.

He shook his head against the snow and Scully was glad 
she'd insisted he bring his hat along that morning.  "I . . 
. I don't remember."

Squeezing his hand, she tried to smile again.  "It's okay," 
she murmured.  "You will."

Struggling to sit up again, his face turned a greenish 
shade.  "Oh God," he groaned, "I think I'm going to throw 
up."

"You need to stay still.  Calm down."

"But why?" he asked.  "Why are we here?"

It's just a concussion, she told herself, but fear still 
ratcheted at her.  God, couldn't they even have a vacation 
together without some sort of disaster?  Suddenly Christmas 
in San Diego didn't seem like such an awful idea.

Just then, two red-jacketed Ski Patrol members whooshed up.  
"I'm a doctor," she explained to them.  "I don't think he 
has a spinal injury, just a concussion.  He seems able to 
sit up."

With Scully's help, the two women loaded Mulder onto their 
rescue sled and headed down the mountain.  An hour later, 
Mulder and Scully were down the mountain at the Bozeman 
Hospital, where the ER doctor dryly commented that Mulder 
was their third accident from Big Sky that morning.  By 
this time Mulder was coherent and able to remember the trip 
to the ski resort.  After an exam and a CAT scan, Mulder 
was released to Scully's care, a pale, shaken and 
apologetic version of himself.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled as they headed back to Big Sky in 
their rented Explorer.

She patted his hand.  "It was icy and you were skiing too 
fast, thinking you were sixteen again.  It's okay."

He smiled and rubbed his eyes.  "I wanted this to be 
perfect.  It's Christmas.  Our first Christmas together."

"You're alive, Mulder.  That's all that counts."

Only Mulder could injure himself while on vacation.  He had 
to do everything to the hilt, she thought as she navigated 
the tricky curves of the road leading to Mountain Village.  
She couldn't be angry with him for his recklessness, that 
was how Mulder lived, at top speed.

Mulder sits up and grimaces.  "What time is it?" he asks, 
stretching his arms.

"About five," she says, adjusting the pillows against his 
back.

He smiles crookedly.  "Time flies when you ski too fast."  
A whack to the head doesn't seem to have impaired his sense 
of humor.

"Are you hungry?  I made some dinner."

"Yeah, I think so.  What did you make?"

"I put off the lasagna until tomorrow, when you'll be able 
to appreciate it more.  I roasted a chicken and made some 
mashed potatoes.  Good old fashioned comfort food."  She 
sits on the floor next to the couch and takes his warm hand 
in hers.

Mulder pulls her hand to his mouth and kisses it.  "Merry 
Christmas."

"Happy Late Chanukah," she replies.  They celebrated his 
holiday back home with a latke burning fiasco and eight 
presents.  Hers from him were mostly from Victoria's 
Secret.

After dinner Mulder perks up a bit and she lights a fire in 
the stone fireplace and turns the stereo to Christmas 
carols.  A woman with a meltingly sweet soprano voice sings 
"What Child Is This?" and a stab of pain for Emily shoots 
through her to the core.  This time of year will always 
remain bittersweet for the memories of her lost daughter.

In the corner of the main room of the condo is a blue 
balsam, covered with multicolored balls and lights, kindly 
provided by the management.  Scully lies down beneath the 
boughs of the tree and stares up at the glowing lights, 
just like she used to as a child.  Mulder joins her on the 
floor, so that his head is touching hers.

Scully shuts her eyes and smiles, inhaling the crisp 
essence of the tree.  "This is so . . . Christmas," she 
says.

"Scully, when did you lose your virginity?" Mulder asks.

She nearly sits up in surprise.  Is his concussion worse 
than she suspected?  She laughs low in her throat.  "That's 
a little out of left field.  Are you sure you're okay?"

He chuckles.  "I assure you, my brain is no more damaged 
than usual.  I just thought this would be a good time for 
us to, uh, get to know each other."

Oh, Mulder.  "After all this time, I'm surprised I haven't 
told you yet.  Okay, I'm game.  Let's see, I was nineteen 
and a freshman at Berkeley.  Josh Rosenblum, we'd been 
going out for almost a semester and I figured it was about 
time, best to just get it out of the way."

"How was it?"  She can almost hear the leer in his voice.

"Pretty disappointing, not too much fun at all.  How about 
you?  If you dish it out, you have to take it."

"Fair enough.  My first was Kelly Reilly.  It lasted all of 
thirty seconds and I was deeply embarrassed."

She laughs, not unkindly, picturing a younger, gawkier 
Mulder, eagerly fumbling his way through the experience.

"Hey," he says, his voice surprised.  "I just realized 
something."

"What's that?"

"Kelly had red hair.  I never made the connection before."

"So you're saying that your attraction to me stems from 
your first sexual experience?  Like Nabokov's Humbert 
Humbert, eternally searching for the incarnation of his 
childhood love?"

He snorts.  "Except for the part about being a European 
pedophile, you're exactly right.  No, I've never had a 
particular thing for redheads, just one redhead in 
particular."

She smiles.  "Nice play on words.  Okay, if you're going to 
ask me a question like that, then I get one."

"Shoot."

"How many times have you been in love?"

"Oh, good question.  I didn't love Phoebe, believe it or 
not.  I guess I loved Diana in my way, but I think I loved 
the idea of her more than the actual woman."

Scully grits her teeth at the mention of Diana.  One of her 
greatest failings as a person is jealousy.  She's trying to 
work on it, really, she is, but she finds it difficult.  
She remembers all too well Diana's striking face and the 
way she called him Fox in low, purring tones.  "The idea of 
Diana?"

He sounds uncomfortable, but gamely continues.  "It was 
nice having someone who understood me, who could believe 
what I believed and didn't think I was completely out of my 
mind."  He pauses.  "Do you mind me talking about her?"

Scully shakes her head.  "I wouldn't have asked you the 
question if I did," she lies.

"I loved her, but after she left, she didn't leave much of 
a hole in my psyche.  Diana was gone and I moved on. And 
you, how many times have you been in love?"

She thinks of Jack and her worship of him so many years 
ago.  Could that be called love?  No, she decides, she 
knows what love is now.  There is no hesitation in her 
voice.  "Just you, Mulder.  You're the only one."

His hand reaches up and smoothes her hair.  "I'm a lucky 
man."

"And don't forget it for a minute," she smiles.

"Okay, I have another question."

"I'm starting to feel like I'm being interrogated here, 
Mulder." 

"We can stop, then."

"No, I'm kidding," she says.  "Ask away."

He is silent for a minute and she wonders what he's 
formulating in that brain of his.  "Why Skinner?"

Scully opens her eyes and looks up at the tree's lights.  
If she squints her eyes they form a beautiful blur of 
color.  "I can't fully articulate it," she says.  "I never 
told you this before, but I made the first move in Little 
Rock."

His voice sounds surprised.  "You did?"

"Yes," she says simply.  "I needed to be close to someone 
that night and he was there."  Somehow it was easier to 
tell this not looking at Mulder's face.

"And I wasn't . . ."

"Mulder," she sighs.  "I don't think the two of us would 
have worked then.  I wasn't ready for what you and I have 
now."

"What made you ready?"

"Distancing myself from you.  You were too close to 
everything that was painful in my life."  A few errant 
tears begin to trickle down her face and she feels ashamed.  
She was raised to believe that crying was the mark of a 
coward.

She hears Mulder sit up with a small groan and he lays down 
by her side.  His voice sounds choked.  "I apologize for 
all the pain you've endured in your life with me."

Turning to him, she presses her cheek against the roughness 
of his whiskers.  "You don't need to apologize," she says.  
"I made the choice to live this life.  I have to take 
responsibility for my pain.  A long time ago I told you I 
wouldn't change a day, and I still stand by those words."

He kisses her on the brow, a chaste, tender kiss that 
reminds her of their kiss in the hallway of the hospital in 
Allentown.  Breathing in his smell, her heart expands with 
the rush of emotion she feels.

Mulder's eyes are drooping more that usual and she realizes 
he's getting sleepy again.  She runs her fingertip along 
the extravagant curve of his lower lip.  "We kind of grew 
on each other, didn't we Scully?" he slurs.  "Like moss or 
ivy or maybe lichen . . ."

"I think it's time to get you to bed," she murmurs.

"You promise?" he smirks.

She helps him up and he totters off to the bedroom like a 
man with one drink too many in his gut.  After changing 
into a t-shirt and a pair of leggings, she climbs in next 
to him and moves against his warm back.

Already half-asleep, Mulder mutters,  "You know what my 
greatest fear is?"

Nuzzling her nose into his neck, she says, "What's that?"

"Living without you . . ." His voice trails off and he 
breathes deeply in slumber.

I feel the same way, she thinks and listens to his 
breathing in the darkness.

After a few minutes she climbs back out of bed and pulls on 
her flannel bathrobe.  In the kitchen she pours a glass of 
Pinot Noir and takes it into the living room, lit only by 
the glow of the Christmas tree.  From the closet she brings 
out the bag of presents they hauled from Washington and 
carefully arranges them under the branches.

For a long time she stands at the window, sipping wine and 
staring at Lone Mountain, gleaming white in the dark sky.  
Give us time, she pleads with her God, a prayer as familiar 
to her now as the Hail Mary and the Our Father.  

Lord, give us time.


Spring


Scully's low moaning jolts him out of his sleep.

He leans over and flicks on the bedside lamp.  On her side, 
she is curled up with her hands covering her eyes, now 
whimpering like a wounded animal.  Heart pounding, he 
strokes her shoulder.  "Scully?" he says softly.  "Hey 
Scully, wake up."

Thrashing her head wildly on the pillow, she seems utterly 
disoriented.  "A bad dream," he says into her ear.  "That's 
all it was, a bad dream."

She sits up, panting from the adrenaline rush of her 
nightmare, tears streaming down her face.  "Wh-wh-where?" 
she stutters.

He leans closer and rubs her back, damp under her t-shirt.  
"You're here, in your bed," he patiently explains.  This is 
what she says to him when he awakens from nightmares.  
She's never had one in his presence before.

Scully lets out her breath in a huge whoosh.  "Oh God," she 
sighs, shaking her mussed head and blinking rapidly.

Continuing to rub slow circles on her lower back, he asks, 
"Are you okay?"

She nods.

"Do you want to tell me about it?"

A definite shake of her head tells him no.

"Come on, Scully, it'll help if you let it out."

Another shake of her head.  "I'm fine."

Ah, yes.  Her all-inclusive response to every kind of 
distress.  She's fine.  Scully is always fine, not a hair 
out of place.

She stands up, pulling her scrunched-up shirt down.  "I 
need some water," she says and walks out of the bedroom.

Mulder flops down on the pillow and glances at the glow of 
the clock radio.  It's 3:52 am, that magical time of the 
night when the nightmares like to visit.

Unlike him, Scully is usually the soundest of sleepers.  
The moment her head hits the pillow she's down for the 
count, rarely stirring until the alarm starts buzzing.  
He's the one who often wanders the night like a wraith.  
Many nights he gives up the idea of sleeping in a bed and 
camps out on the couch until the nonsense of late night 
talk shows lulls him back to sleep.  Scully has learned to 
not take this as an insult on the nights they spend 
together.  It's just how his body chemistry works.

It saddens him to think that perhaps sleep isn't a safe 
place for her either.  That the nightmares are part of her 
life, too.  Certainly she has enough material for the 
nightmares of several women.

Guilt stabs through his abdomen.  It's life with me that 
wakes her up moaning, he thinks.

Scully deserves better, of course.  A man who is her 
refuge, her safety against the encroaching danger.  Why she 
didn't stay with Skinner is a question he'll never be able 
to fully answer.

Over and over again she has patiently told him she regrets 
nothing, but it doesn't mean he doesn't carry his own load 
of regret upon his back.  Thanks to him she's had her 
health and happiness threatened, her safety stripped away, 
he fertility and memories taken.

He fails to understand why she stays.

If he were a less selfish man he would let her go, but he 
can't.  He needs her that much.

His contradictory self tells him to quit being such an 
idiot, that she chose him.  If she wanted to leave, she'd 
leave.  Scully has always owned an honest heart.

Calmed, he smiles in the glow of the lamp.  She loves him.  
God knows why, but she does.

Another glance at the clock tells him that fifteen minutes 
have passed since Scully left for her glass of water.  He 
gets out of bed and pulls on the sweatpants and t-shirt he 
earlier threw on the chair and heads out into the living 
room.  One of the lamps is turned on, but she's not there, 
or in the kitchen or bathroom either.

With a mounting sense of alarm, Mulder grabs his keys off 
the end table and heads out the front door.  He finds her 
sitting on the steps of her building, bundled in her red 
sweatshirt against the chill of the March air.

Knees drawn up, she is resting her chin on her cupped palm.  
He sits next to her and touches her shoulder.  "Hi," he 
says.

She turns her face to him, the tear streaks visible on her 
face in the porch light.  "Hi," she echoes.

"I wanted to make sure you were okay."

Scully nods.  "I'm just thinking."

"Care to tell me about it?"

She shuts her eyes.  "No, I need to be alone right now."

His hand reaches out to stroke her cool cheek.  "I think 
you'd feel better if you talked to me," he says, frustrated 
at her refusal to open up.

Abruptly pulling away from his hand, she sighs sharply.  
"Mulder, please, respect my need to be alone and go back to 
bed."

He, too, sighs.  "Scully, come on."

This time the anger is palpable in her face.  "Mulder," she 
says in an unmistakable tone of warning.

"Fine," he says, stung, and retreats back into her 
building.

In the living room he settles on the couch and reflexively 
turns on the television to Jerry Springer, where two fat 
women are screaming at each other over some skinny guy with 
a bad mustache.  He leans into the cushions and covers his 
legs with the wool throw.

He feels faintly ashamed for pushing her to give more than 
she could, but after so many years together he wishes she 
would not only trust him with her body and mind, but with 
her fear.  Scully is intimately acquainted with his demons, 
but he still knows little of what runs beneath her placid 
exterior.

Let me in.

The door opens and Scully walks in, passing him on the way 
to the bedroom without looking in his direction.  Mulder 
waits a minute and then clicks of the TV and dims the lamp.

The bedroom is dark and he can just barely see the lump her 
small body makes under the covers.  He stands for a moment 
in the doorway, wondering if perhaps it might be a better 
idea to just go home.  No, he thinks, it's time to act like 
a man and be there for the bad times as well as the good.  
He shucks off his sweatpants and climbs in bed.

Scully shifts, rolling onto her stomach.  He freezes, not 
knowing what to do.  Should he try to comfort her again or 
respect her need for privacy?  Sometimes he wishes his 
lover had come to him with an owner's manual so he'd always 
be sure of the right thing to say and do.  For a man of his 
age, he still has a difficult time deciphering the enigma 
that is woman, that is Scully.

"You left me," she mumbles into her pillow.

He wonders if he's hearing her right.  "What did I do?"

She raises her head from the pillow.  "My dream.  You left 
me."

"Why did I do that?"

For a long time she is quiet and her silence seems to fill 
the room, to become its own entity, living and breathing 
with the two of them.  Again she moves, rolling onto her 
back and covering her face with her arm.  Her voice is soft 
and curiously devoid of affect when she finally chooses to 
speak.  "I'm infertile, Mulder."

He sighs, sadness settling on his chest like goosedown.  "I 
know."  Of course he does, he knew long before she herself 
knew, another in his long list of crimes against Scully.

"Some day you'll leave me for it," she says in that flat 
voice.

Moving onto his side, he faces her.  "Do you really think 
that?"

"I know it."

"You can't possibly know that."

She sits up and runs her hands through her hair.  "Mulder, 
procreation is one of the most primal human instincts.  
Some day you'll want a child and I can't give it to you."

Sitting up, he pulls her towards him, so that she is 
sitting in the vee of his legs.  "Have I ever mentioned 
wanting a child?" he says into the nape of her soft neck.

Her head dips down.  "You will."

"You presume to know an awful lot about my motives."

"I'm being realistic."

He kisses her on the side of the neck and she flinches at 
the touch.  "No," he says, struggling to keep his voice 
even.  "You're scared and you have the right to be."

Scully's voice is ragged and exhausted.  "Mulder, I'm angry 
right now.  Not at you, but at the fact that my ability to 
have children was taken from me.   I never really gave it 
much thought, you know?  I assumed that if I decided to 
have a child, I would."  Her tone rises and he can hear the 
tears choking her throat.  "I don't even know if I want to 
have children, but now I don't even have that choice.  It 
was taken from me, against my will."

Wrapping his arms around her waist, he pulls her closer and 
this time she doesn't move away.  "I know," he says, trying 
to soothe.  "I'm angry, too.  You didn't deserve this.  No 
woman deserves this.  You can be as angry as you want."

She leans into his shoulder, smelling of her usual 
delectable late night combination of sex and almonds.  It 
takes all his willpower not to become hard at her nearness 
in this most inappropriate time.  "Loving you makes it 
harder, more difficult to bear, Mulder."

Guilt swirls about his head like a malevolent spirit.  He 
struggles to find the right words, but only the honest ones 
come to mind.  "I wish I had the magic words to make it all 
better for you," he says.  "I don't.  Nothing I can say or 
do will return what was taken from you.  There's no easy 
answer.  All I can do is reassure you that whether or not 
you can have a child, I will continue to love you."

"I wish I could believe that."

Hot tears spark his eyes.  Has she so little faith in him 
after all they've lived through together?  His arms wrap 
tighter and then release her.  "Scully, turn around," he 
rasps.

Wordlessly, she obeys.  He flicks on the light and she 
squints at the brightness.  Taking her shaking hand, he 
presses it to his chest, terrified by the words he's about 
to say to her.  "Scully, there's a very old vow and I want 
to make it you now, despite the lack of clergy or 
witnesses."  He clears his throat, heart beating madly.  
Slow and steady is what wins the race, he thinks and 
begins.  "For richer or poorer, in good times and bad, in 
sickness and in health, until death parts us."

Scully shuts her eyes and sits with infinite stillness.  He 
fears the worst, that she hasn't taken his vow seriously.  
Her eyes open, glassy with tears.  "You mean it," she 
states.

He nods.

Pressing her forehead against his, her voice is wistful, 
but he thinks he just may discern a note of hope there as 
well.  "Until death parts us."

He takes her into his arms and holds her.  She is always so 
strong, he thinks, the force that keeps me together, but 
now I know that I can do the same for her.  "Until death 
parts us," he repeats.  "My words can't mitigate your pain, 
Scully, but no matter where life takes us, I'm here."

She slides onto her side, smiling faintly.  "It's never 
going to be easy for us, is it . . ."

Snapping off the light, he lies down, facing her.  "We're 
on a strange journey together, but I think it's worth it."  

"It is," she agrees with a grave nod of her head.

Her warm body presses against him.  "I'm glad we're not 
alone."

Mulder's last thoughts before slipping into sleep are full 
of gratitude.  Tonight she shared her secret self, and for 
that he can only be grateful.


Summer


The screen door bangs shut as Mulder heads out to the back 
porch.  Scully stands at the wood table and surveys the 
damage they made with dinner.  It looks like they had a 
dinner party for eight, rather than two people feasting on 
grilled shrimp and salad.  How do they manage to make such 
a mess, she wonders with a grin on her face.  Her natural 
instinct is to start the cleaning, to do the dishes and get 
the tablecloth into the washer, but she shakes her head.  
Not tonight.  It's the most beautiful of summer evenings, 
warm but not muggy and the bugs don't seem to be out in 
full force either.  Instead she blows out the candles and 
cuts two slices of the lemon cake they bought on the way 
down to the Cape from Boston.

The hundred year-old wooden house, set on a pond on the 
Cape, belongs to her friend Ellen's parents, who kindly 
lent it to her for five days.  The back porch overlooks the 
shimmering water of Marble Pond.  Mulder is sitting on the 
old wicker couch, staring at the water.  He has the 
citronella torches lit on either end of the porch and the 
air reeks of the sharpness of the smoke.

She sits beside him, the wicker on the couch crackling.  
"You look pensive," she says.

He looks up, startled from his thoughts and smiles to see 
her.  "We're not that far from the Vineyard." 

Oh.  Somehow she forgot about that.  "I'm sorry," she says.  
"We should have gone somewhere else."

Funny how they always seem to get it a little bit wrong, 
just the tiniest millimeter off-center.  

He takes her hand.  "This is fine," he says.  "It just 
brings back memories.  Something about the way the air 
smells here.  I might be imagining things, but I swear I 
can smell the ocean."

She sniffs the air and catches the salty tang.  "I smell 
it, too.  We're only a few miles away."

Mulder pounces on the lemon cake and disposes of it in a 
few huge bites.  She's never failed to be surprised by how 
much food he can stuff in his mouth. He still eats like the 
rangy teenage boy he must have been and she imagines him 
standing in front of a full refrigerator, complaining to 
his mother that there is nothing to eat.  He swallows and 
grins.  "Not all the memories are bad," he says.  "Not 
everything in my life was horrible back then, even after 
she was gone."

She chews her more judicious bite of cake.  "What was it 
like then?" she asks.

He puts the plate on the floor and cocks his head, as if 
trying to conjure the memories.  "Quiet," he finally says.  
"It was quiet for a long time, all of us afraid to say 
anything to each other, for fear of saying the wrong thing, 
of opening the wounds."

Like I've done tonight, she thinks with guilt.  "I'm 
sorry," she says.

"For bringing it up?  It's fine, really it is.  It was a 
long time ago." 

But it's still close to your heart, she thinks.  

He speaks up again.  "I'm going to have to face it some 
time," he says.

"Face what?"

"My father's house in West Tisbury.  He left it to me, and 
it's just sitting there.  I have to go there one of these 
days, get it ready to sell."

"Is that what you want to do?"

He nods.  "The house has very few good memories for me.  To 
me it will always be the house where my father was killed."  
Oh God, the night he called her, his voice shattered and 
papery with fear and pain.  The way he stumbled into her 
apartment, fresh from the airport, covered in his father's 
blood and burning with fever.

Scully stares into the dark, at the bugs swarming around 
the light attached to the side of the house.  "We could go 
there tomorrow," she cautiously offers.  "If you're ready," 
she amends.

Looking down at his hands, he smiles in chagrin.  "I don't 
know if I am," he simply says.

She leans against him.  "If you're not ready, you don't 
have to.  The house isn't going anywhere."

He kisses her cheek with infinite tenderness.  "You 
understand," he says.

Nodding, she smiles at him.  "I'm learning to understand 
you."

He takes her by the hand and stands up.  "What are you 
doing?" she asks.

"Let's go down to the pond," he says.  They carefully make 
their way down the stone path to the dock and walk to the 
end, admiring the glow the other four pond houses make on 
the still surface of the water.

Scully again breathes in the faint sea breeze, mingled with 
the rich smell of the pond water.  He puts his arm around 
her.  "It's been a year," he says.

In the dark, her face flushes.  She hasn't said anything to 
him, but he remembers what July sixteen signifies.  Their 
coming together, after every trial and tribulation known to 
man and woman.  The night she took him by the hand and led 
him into her dark bedroom.  The night they each stood naked 
before the other and smiled at the sight.  The night they 
chose to forgive each other for the pain and start their 
lives over.  Oh, the night rain beat against the windows 
and she cried out at his touch between the flashes of 
lightning.

She rests her head on his shoulder and her mouth 
automatically turns up into a smile.  "A year," she echoes.

Three hundred and sixty-five days since they came together.  
It seems longer than that.  It feels like forever.

"Same time, this dock next year?" Mulder asks, his hand 
sliding under her t-shirt and up her bare back.

"I'll be the one smelling like Avon Skin-so-Soft," she 
chuckles.

He pulls her closer and kisses her with his lemon flavored 
mouth, his lips soft and giving.  She pulls away.  "What?" 
he asks, face twisting.

She takes his hand.  "Let's go to bed," she softly says.

Hand-in-hand they walk back up the stone path to the old 
house.

******************

Resonance 


The string quartet strikes up the familiar strains of Ode 
to Joy as he turns his head to watch his bride.  Slowly, 
she makes the journey down the white carpet, carrying a 
simple arrangement of lilies.  He admires the ease in which 
she travels, with a queenly posture that makes her seem 
much taller than she truly is.  She looks straight ahead 
with serious eyes and a hint of a smile about her lips.

The bride walks alone down the aisle.  Her father has been 
gone for several years and she wanted no other.  "I'm not a 
blushing twenty year-old," she told him when they first sat 
down to make wedding plans.  "One of my brothers could walk 
me, but I prefer to do it alone.  I want to come to you 
alone, an independent woman."

She reaches him and his heart pounds underneath the silk of 
his tuxedo.  Gracefully, she hands her bouquet to her sole 
attendant and takes his hand in hers.  Eternity, he thinks, 
his heart filling with awe.  This is eternity.

They turn to face one another.  Her eyes have never seemed 
quite as blue as they do now, standing in the Virginia 
countryside under the warm late afternoon sun.

The judge begins.  "Dearly beloved," she intones.  "Today 
we are gathered here for the happiest of purposes, to join 
this man and this woman in the everlasting bond of 
matrimony."

She squeezes his hand and he squeezes back.


After the vows have been said, the kiss cheered, the rice 
flung and the receiving line gotten through, Skinner finds 
a moment to slip away from the crowd.  The band is setting 
up under the tent and waiters pass trays of canapes and 
champagne, while caterers begin to light the chafing dishes 
at the buffet tables.  With his glass of Piper-Heidsieck in 
hand, he wanders behind a hedge in the garden of the Burton 
Inn.  It's late October but still quite warm down in horse 
country and Skinner longs to loosen his tie.

He hears a rustling of grass and leaves and looking up, he 
is startled to see Dana Scully walking towards him with a 
determined step.  Skinner smiles to see the woman he hasn't 
seen in almost two years, since he left the Bureau to head 
the President's Task Force on Domestic Terrorism.

Time has been kind to Scully.  She hardly appears to have 
aged a day since the night, four years ago, when they 
became lovers.  Her hair is still as glossy and red as ever 
and her face remains unlined, remarkable for a woman who as 
endured as much as she.

Scully's face blooms into a smile as she approaches him and 
she stands on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, her skin still 
smelling, as ever, of almonds.

She takes his hand.  "Congratulations."

"Thank you," he replies, smiling.  "I never thought this 
day would come."

"You deserve the best," she says with a grave nod of her 
head.

He chuckles.  "Today I feel like a lucky man."

"You are lucky.  I haven't had a chance to talk with 
Caroline yet, but she seems like a lovely woman."

Skinner lifts her left hand to his, noticing that it is 
still bare of rings.  "How about you?" he asks.  "No ring 
yet, I see."

Tipping her head back, Scully emits a low, throaty laugh, 
the laugh he only used to hear from her in bed.  "Mulder 
and me, married?  That'll be the day."

He lets her hand go.  "But, are you happy?"

The smile on her face speaks for her more than her words.  
"The happiest . . ."

"I'm glad."  And he is, that's the wonderful part.  

He reaches into the inside pocket of his dinner jacket and 
brings out a small package, wrapped in white paper.  "I 
have something for you, Scully."

Her eyebrow raises, a gesture so familiar to his eyes.  
"Skinner, the custom is that on your wedding day, I give 
*you* a present.  We got you a coffee maker, by the way.  
The kind with a timer."

For a moment he wonders if it is a mistake to give this to 
her, if she will misunderstand his motives.  No, he thinks, 
you have to give it to her, it is the final step toward 
closure.  "This is something I got for you a long time ago 
and never gave you.  Today seems like the right day for 
it."

Scully takes the present and turns it about it in her 
fingers.  "Can I open it now?"

He shakes his head.  "No, it's for later.  It's just 
something to remember me by."

She shuts her eyes and opens them again.  "Skinner," she 
says, voice wavering,  "I never got to tell you how sorry I 
was, how sorry I am."

Bending down, he kisses the top of her head.  "Scully, it 
was a long time ago, you don't need to apologize.  I'm 
happy and you're happy.  If I were Buddhist, I'd call it 
karma.  It all turned out the way it was meant to turn 
out."

Or perhaps we could call it fate, he thinks.

"Thank you," she simply says.

Scully slips her arm through his.  "Come on, let's find 
Caroline and Mulder.  Dinner is about to be served and you 
have a beautiful cake to cut."

Arm-in-arm, they companionably walk back to the wedding 
party.


In the ladies room of the inn, Caroline holds still as Leah 
fixes the white headband that holds her dark, curly hair 
off her face.  It amazes her that at fourteen, Leah is 
nearly her height.

"Perfect, Mom," Leah pronounces and stands back to admire 
her work.

"You're better than my hairdresser, honey."

Leah pulls out a tube of lipstick and applies deep pink to 
her pursed lips at the long mirror.  God, her baby, putting 
on lipstick with expertise.  Despite the fact that it's her 
wedding day, Caroline suddenly feels old.

Turning around, Leah says, "Hey Mom, do you know what 
Grandma just said?"

Caroline bends down and removes one of her white satin 
pumps.  She never had the time to break them in and her 
feet ache.  "What's that?"

Her daughter smirks.  "She told me now that you're married 
to Walter I have to call him Dad."

"Last time I checked, your Dad was alive and well and 
living in Wilmington, Delaware."

"Yeah, that's pretty much what I told her."

Caroline sinks into one of the chairs to take off the other 
shoe and reminds herself to have another little talk with 
her mother.  The door opens and a small woman with dark red 
hair walks in, wearing a pale green sheath dress.  Caroline 
pauses in mid-massage of her aching instep.  She knows who 
the woman is.

The redhead smiles hesitantly and approaches her.  "Hello," 
she says in a light tone, "we never got a chance to 
properly meet.  I'm an old . . . friend of . . . Walter's.  
My name is Dana Scully."

The first mention of Dana Scully came on their third or 
fourth date as she and Walter went for a Sunday afternoon 
walk through Rock Creek Park.  Caroline talked a bit about 
her divorce, the year before, from Tom and he spoke of his 
own divorce.  He talked of Sharon, his ex-wife, in easy and 
measured tones and she was glad, glad he seemed to be past 
the pain of his failed marriage.  His baggage was light, 
she thought.

They stopped to rest on a wooden park bench and passed a 
bottle of water back and forth.  Then he mentioned, in a 
transparently light tone of voice, that he had ended 
another relationship a few months before.  "She left me for 
someone else," he said, fiddling with the cap on the bottle 
of Evian.

Caroline noticed he wasn't looking at her.  She patted his 
large hand.  "I'm sorry to hear that."

He lifted his head.  "Well," he sighed, "it was a mistake 
from the beginning.  She was once of the agents under my 
charge, still is, as a matter of fact.  It was incredibly 
stupid for me to get involved with her in the first place."

She tried to smile in reassurance.  "These things happen 
all the time.  After all, Tom was one of my professors in 
grad school.  How are things now with her at work?"

Walter shrugged.  "It's been strained but we're trying to 
be mature about it."  He turned his head to look at her and 
she recognized the pain in his eyes.  "You see, the man she 
left me for is her partner."

"Oh my . . ." Her mouth opened.  "I never realized the FBI 
was so full of romantic intrigue."

"You have no idea, Caroline."  He laughed and squeezed her 
hand.

Walter stood and tugged her to her feet.  "Come on, let's 
walk back.  We have a movie to catch."

She managed to put the conversation at the park out of her 
mind until a week later, when he invited her to his place 
for dinner.

After a dinner of risotto and wine, he led her on a tour of 
his place.  Walter's apartment was spacious and modern, 
with large picture windows offering a spectacular view of 
the city.  It was neat and clean but sparsely furnished in 
the manner she had come to expect from newly divorced men 
in their forties.

The one room that looked truly lived-in was his study.  One 
wall was covered in shelves of obviously much-used and 
well-loved books.  The other walls held diplomas and 
commendations and one of Walter shaking hands with 
President Clinton and another of him with Janet Reno.  
Interspersed with these were framed lithographs of early 
Washington D.C.  The large wood desk was scattered with 
papers and files and held several silver-framed 
photographs.

She lifted a photo of a dark-haired boy with glasses and a 
missing front tooth, sitting with a slightly older girl who 
wore a large taffeta bow in her curly hair.  "That's my 
sister Cathy," he said, smiling.  "She lives in Chicago 
with her husband and three kids."

He pointed out pictures of his parents, his nephews and one 
silly picture of a shirtless Walter and another man, 
proudly holding up a large Blue Marlin.  The last 
photograph was of Walter and a group of people in evening 
dress sitting at a round table, all of them holding flutes 
of champagne.

"Where was this taken?" she asked, bringing the frame in 
for closer inspection.

She could feel his back stiffen next to her.  "One of my 
agents, Darlene Simons, was married last March.  These are 
some of the agents who work under me and I, at the 
reception."

Caroline scanned the faces of the seven people sitting at 
the table.  It was far too easy to pick out which woman was 
his former lover.  Walter was sitting next to her, smiling, 
and even though he wasn't touching the woman, his face was 
turned to her.  His lover was a small woman with bobbed 
auburn hair in loose waves, wearing a simple maroon dress 
that flattered her autumn coloring.  Of course she'd have 
to be young and beautiful, she thought with 
uncharacteristic jealousy.

She tapped the woman's face with her fingernail.  "That's 
her, isn't it?"

He grimaced and nodded.  "Yes. Her name is Dana Scully.   
The man to her left is her partner, Fox Mulder."

Turning her eyes to the man in the photo, she found him 
handsome, despite a large nose and small chin.  About ten 
years younger than Walter, she mused, a much more 
appropriate age match for Dana.  She noticed that while 
Walter was looking at Dana in the photo, Dana and Fox had 
their faces turned to each other and seemed to be grinning 
over a private joke.  The picture seemed to sum the whole 
situation up better than any words could.  Caroline set the 
frame back down into its place on the desk.

She smiled up at Walter.  "Why don't you show me the rest 
of the place?"

He kissed her cheek and led her out of the study.

Weeks passed and Caroline found herself happy.  After the 
disaster that was the final years of her marriage and a few 
aborted relationships, she had found someone with whom she 
felt simpatico.  They were both tremendously busy people, 
but tried to find the time to be together.  Walter was a 
good listener and the teller of fascinating stories from 
his years with the Bureau.  He loved opera almost as much 
as she, which was how they had met in the first place.  She 
found him to be knowledgeable about the things she held 
most dear-art, literature, history and politics.  God, he 
could even cook.

Walter was the kind of man who called when he said he 
would, showed up on time and sent flowers with embarrassing 
frequency.  For a woman whose last birthday present from 
her husband was an ironing board, this was heady stuff 
indeed.  After a time he met her daughter and she was 
delighted to see him treat Leah with a grave respect, 
rather than the cloying sincerity she'd spotted from the 
other men she'd dated in the past year.  Privately, Leah 
made a few bald comments but seemed to like him more than 
anyone else Caroline had seen.

And, in time, she discovered Walter to be a sensitive and 
skilled lover, a man who truly delighted in exploring a 
woman's body.  Caroline felt more content than she had in 
nearly a decade.  Co-workers and friends kept asking why 
she seemed to be glowing.  Her mother clucked about setting 
a date for the wedding.  Caroline told her to calm down, 
but inwardly she smiled.

Still, as weeks turned into months and winter hit the city, 
she started feeling strangely dissatisfied.  As wonderful 
and caring as Walter was, he rarely talked of personal 
things, what was close to his heart.  Caroline tried prying 
with a few pointed questions, but was met with a wall of 
silence and a deft changing of the subject.  I'm not needy, 
she thought as he slept next to her.  I have a full life, 
but at this point don't I have a right to expect more?  
Men, she moodily thought, always so afraid to open up.

There were more than a few times when she caught him 
staring off into the distance and she somehow knew he was 
thinking of the other woman.

It will pass, she thought.  Caroline tried not to dwell on 
it.

Then, one late night in his bedroom, as they were making 
love, she felt it.  Oh, it was good as always, he was 
thrusting into her and she was crying out from the sheer 
pleasure of it, but suddenly it all felt different.  His 
rhythm was one she had never felt from him before and the 
way he touched her was somehow softer, yet more possessive.  
Walter wasn't making love with her, his eyes were shut and 
he was with Dana.  He touched her cheek and she knew it 
wasn't her cheek he felt underneath his fingers, it was the 
cheek of the other woman.  She shut her eyes, the pleasure 
rapidly fleeing her body.  Caroline just knew.

After he fell asleep, Caroline pulled on the bathrobe she 
now kept at his place and went into the kitchen.  With 
shaking hands she fixed a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen 
table.  He didn't love her, he still loved the ghost of the 
woman who had left him six months before.  Tears welled in 
her eyes and she wiped them away with the sleeve of her 
bathrobe, feeling like a fool.

She heard his footsteps, padding down the hallway towards 
her.  Walter sleepily smiled at her, wearing only his 
pajama bottoms.  He put on his glasses.  "What are you 
doing up?"

Caroline looked up at him, trying to keep her voice even.  
"I can't be your substitute, Walter."

He sat down and blinked at her behind his lenses.  "What 
are you talking about?"

She sighed.  "You still love her.  Don't deny it, I know 
you do."  She sipped her tea, wishing she were back home in 
her own bed, not having this confrontation with her new 
lover.  "I care a lot about you," she continued.  "I think 
I could love you, but not with her ghost hovering around 
us."

Burying his face in his hand, he shook his head.  "I'm 
sorry, Caroline.  I'm trying."

"I know you are."  She stroked the roughness of his cheek 
and managed to smile.  "I know you are, but I can't be with 
you like this if you're still obsessing over someone else.  
She's not real, you know."

Surprised, he looked up.  "What do you mean she's not 
real?"

"What I mean is that she's your past now and you have to 
admit that to yourself."  Tears ran down her face and he 
wordlessly handed her a tissue.  "Dana is with someone else 
and she's probably happy, as harsh as that sounds.  You 
deserve some happiness, too, but you're not going to find 
it by hanging on to the memories of the past."

"I know, and for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

It ached, it burned to know that all of this time he had 
been pining for Dana while he was with her.

Caroline rose.  "I need to go home now."

His eyes were dark with sorrow.  "Don't go."

She shook her head.  "No, I have to.  You need time and you 
need to deal with this alone.  I can't help you with this, 
I only confuse the issue."

Walter stood and took her in his arms, arms that had only 
represented strength and caring to her before this night.  
"Is it over, then?"

"That's up to you.  I want to be with you, but I want to be 
yours alone."

She kissed his cheek, dressed and left him sitting at the 
kitchen table, his face again in his hands.

You did the right thing, she told herself as the tears 
threatened to blur her vision of the highway.  But if it 
was the right thing to do, why did it have to hurt so 
fucking much?

The following weekend Caroline drove Leah and a gaggle of 
girlfriends to the mall to swoon over the latest Leonardo 
Di Caprio movie.  After she let the girls out at the 
entrance, she decided to do a little shopping rather than 
return home to grade finals.

Walking through Nordstroms, she found they were having a 
shoe sale and her face lit up with glee.  Perfect, just 
perfect.  When a woman's heart is bruised, shopping for 
shoes is the only short-term remedy, she thought.

Better Shoes was bustling with bargain hunters, but 
Caroline immediately found a pair of strappy Joan and David 
sandals that called out to her with a siren's song.  She 
managed to find the last remaining seat and after an 
interminable wait a salesman went to fetch her a pair of 
size eights.

Caroline fingered the black leather of the sandals, trying 
not to think of where she might have worn the shoes with 
Walter.  Give it up, she told herself, you're not some 
besotted teenager.  You're forty-two, a full professor at 
Georgetown and there are indeed other fish in the sea.

"Those are nice," came a feminine voice to her left.

"Aren't they?  And only sixty dollars . . ."  She turned 
her head and her smile froze in place.  Oh my God, what a 
sick joke, what a horrible coincidence on the one day she 
wanted to cheer herself up.

Caroline's neighbor to the left was, without a doubt, Dana 
Scully.  She was casually dressed in jeans and a black v-
necked pullover but there was no mistaking the bright 
auburn hair, the small Roman nose and the line of her jaw.

The other woman smiled.  "I wonder if I should snap up a 
pair of those, too."  She pointed to the pair of 
conservative navy pumps on her lap.  "I never buy shoes for 
fun, just for work."

That was the galling thing, Caroline thought.  Dana Scully 
wasn't the evil harpy of her imagination, who heedlessly 
crushed Walter's heart with a twist of her stiletto heel.  
She was simply another pretty young woman taking advantage 
of a shoe sale.

The salesman returned, box in hand, and slipped the shoes 
on Caroline's feet.  She stood and took an experimental 
walk on the carpet, trying not to stare at Dana.  Damn, 
she's young, she thought, what was Walter doing with a 
woman so young?

"Wonderful," said the redhead.  "I wish I were as tall as 
you.  I'd never carry those off."

Caroline turned and smiled at her.  She's as insecure as I 
am, she thought, not a sex-goddess with bewitching powers.

"I'll take them," she said to the salesman.

As she stood at the counter, paying for the new shoes, she 
glanced back at her unknowing nemesis.  A tall man walked 
up to Dana and handed her a Starbucks cup.  The plot 
thickens, Caroline thought, now we have the fourth party in 
this love triangle.  Or is it a love square?  She grinned 
at her foolishness, put her Visa card back in her wallet 
and walked out of the shoe department without a backwards 
glance.

Winter warmed into spring and Caroline stopped checking to 
see if Walter had called.  She was too busy preparing to 
present at a seminar in Toronto and shuttling Leah to Girl 
Scouts and ballet class.  She went out a few times with a 
sweet orthodontist and found him insufferably dull.  As the 
leaves bloomed on the trees, she methodically cleaned out 
her closets and sent the rejects to a women's shelter.

Keeping busy helped her not dwell on things.

One night, after Leah had gone to bed, Caroline sat at her 
desk in the living room, preparing her lecture for Monday.  
The doorbell rang and she looked up from her computer, 
startled.

No, it couldn't be.  Things like that didn't happen in her 
world.

Caroline opened the front door and there he was, impossibly 
tall and imposing in his trench coat.  He was clutching a 
bouquet of spring flowers.

Walter smiled with uncharacteristic shyness and she opened 
the door wider.

She decided that perhaps happy endings were possible after 
all.

Caroline smiles at the woman standing in front of her, 
wondering if she'll remember their brief encounter three 
years before.  She rises and kisses Dana's cheek.  "It's so 
nice to meet you," she says.  "I've heard so much about you 
I feel as if we've already met."


Under the white tent, Skinner dances with his new wife to 
"Unchained Melody".  Sappy, he thinks, but that's just 
fine.  Tonight he can be as sappy as he likes.  It's his 
wedding night and he's allowed the indulgence.

Caroline smiles and rests her curly head on his shoulder 
and he pulls her closer, feeling her heart beating under 
the silk of her dress.  He is having a hard time believing 
she belongs to him now, and he to her.

From the corner of his eye he spots Mulder and Scully 
dancing.  He catches the flash of the sapphire and diamond 
earrings on Scully and hears her laughter.  Tonight 
Scully's laughter only brings him gladness, gladness that 
he knew her and loved her.

Scully is a part of him, as is Sharon, but they are his 
past, adding richness and resonance to his life.  His co-
workers, friends and family are the present, surrounding 
him with their love.  He kisses the top of his wife's head 
and moves with her to the music.

Caroline is the future.


End of story and of the Red Valerian series.

Sigh . . .



End of story notes:

Red Valerian was originally intended to be one simple 
erotic vignette, starring Scully and Skinner.  My dear 
friend Red Valerian (hence the name of the series) had been 
gently nagging me for a while for some Skinnerotica, so I 
reluctantly sat down to write the piece as a present to one 
of the dearest women in the fanfiction community.

I happen to be one of those Shipper types, so writing the 
piece turned out to be a revelation for me.  Where before I 
could not in any way, shape or form see a romance between 
Scully and Skinner, I started to understand the things that 
might bring those two together.  That's the beauty of 
writing, it leads the writer to open to new possibilities.  

After I posted the original story, I could not get the 
image out of my head of Skinner, months later,  having a 
conversation with Mulder in his office.  I began to be 
fascinated by the idea of a love triangle in the world of 
the X-Files, not a soap opera triangle of intrigue and 
recrimination, but a triangle between three intelligent, 
mature adults dealing with the very real issues of love, 
loss and pain.  Thus, one 10 K vignette grew into a novel 
length piece that took nearly five months to write.

Writing this series has been immensely rewarding and I must 
thank the wonderful people who patiently edited and shaped 
this work into something approaching readable: Alanna, 
Gwen, Plausible Deniability and Sharon.  Thank you for your 
time and encouragement.  And I must thank the readers who 
offered comments and flat-out bribes of Choco-Mulders and 
espresso drinks to hurry up.  Special thanks also to the 
boys and girls of JCLS, Meg, Jordan, Meredith, Annie, Dee, 
Deb, Sue, Journey to X, Kirsten (Come on honey, you can 
read Skinner/Scully, really you can!), David, Beth and 
Blueswirl for making me laugh and listening to my various 
rants.

This novel is dedicated to the memory of my dear friend 
Scott Rothenberger and to Red Valerian herself, for her 
boundless generosity and inspiration.

Dasha K., December 1998

dakluz@stkate.edu