Subject: It's Been 3 Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1998 23:13:00 -0500 (CDT) From: Laura Bontrager To: soconnor@mindspring.com Subject: It's Been. . .3 Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 00:04:50 +0000 From: Lyle Bontrager To: lbontger@wmcstations.com Title: It's Been. . .3 Author: RocketMan >lbontger@wmcstations.com< Disclaimer: Mulder and Scully belong to CC, 1013, and Fox. No fringe is intended. 'One Week' is by Barenaked Ladies. ~~~~~ It's Been ~~~~~ Part One: Predictable ~~~~~ "You just did just what I thought you were going to do." --One Week, B.L. ~~~~~ The air was muggy and cloying, making her skin feverish where Mulder was pressed against her. She wiggled her way out from under him and pulled on his huge white T-shirt with the words "Memphis in May Annual 108th Rugby Tournament" scrawled on the pocket in red letters. Neither of them knew what it meant. Mulder had gotten it free before an FBI auction. It had quickly turned into a personal joke. Moving to the air conditioner, Scully set it down a notch and pushed open the curtains to see the ocean. The air was heavy with storm clouds and the sea roiled beneath angry whitecaps. It didn't look like they'd be sunbathing that day. She was kind of glad, since their honeymoon was over and their work was just starting. Skinner had called just as they were about to head for the airport, telling them to stay there, he was faxing them a new case, one that was to receive top priority. That was predictable. At least Skinner had waited until after their vacation. Telling Mulder they had a new case was a job she dreaded, but he seemed excited, ready to start. She thought he ought to stay home, rest some more, especially after the attack he'd suffered. Snapping the curtains closed, she made her way to the kitchen, pulling out eggs and milk and bread to make French toast, a trick she had learned from her father the day before she had left for college. Mixing eggs and milk, then soaking two pieces of bread in it, Scully busied herself with breakfast, feeling a sense of domesticy settle over her, a feeling that seemed faked and unnatural. As if this was a sham, and she was simply playing a part. The toast finished and she rinsed out the pan, then padded back into the bedroom, a plate of French toast in one hand and coffe in the other. Making herself a space on the floor, Scully grabbed the case file and perused its contents, studying the crime scenes and details as if she would have a test later. She ate her breakfast slowly, while memorizing the burned out carcass of a male, then the husked remains of two children clutching the skeletal remains of their mother. All this carnage, raging fire devouring the entire home, and the police had three more cases exactly like that. In every instance, the houses were known to have working fire alarms and burglar systems in place, and it always took place at night, around midnight. She wondered if this was another fire case, like the one Mulder's old flame had called them on, another case where Mulder's own personal nightmares would haunt them. Sighing, Scully reviewed the autopsies, found the level of burning scores on the bodies to be extremely high. Too hot of a fire to be a simple gas can arson. She heard a small noise and looked up, toward the bed. Mulder was looking at her, one arm slung off the edge, almsot as if he were reaching for her. "Hey," she said softly, smiling at him. "Feel okay?" He nodded and blinked his eyes. "Whatcha doin?" She gestured to the case file. "Looknig this over." "It's seven o'clock in the morning." Her mouth quirked up. "Nothing gets by you, Mulder." "Well, the appointment with the PD isn't until nine." "Yeah, well, I couldn't sleep. It's hot." He smiled and patted the bed, shifting his body over. "Come sit." She scrambled up from the floor, setting aside her plate, and crawled onto the bed, tucking her legs up under her body. He was sprawled on his stomach now, his cheek pressed into her thigh and one arm slung around her waist. "I knew you'd be up early." She ran her fingers through his hair with gentle strokes. "You did?" "Yeah. I always heard you get up early, sort of mess around until it was time to actually get up and get moving." "I like the morning times." "You get to be alone, huh?" She nodded softly, still running her hands through his hair, closing her eyes in the silence, in the feel of his warmth cradling her. The echo of birds outside and the rumble of thunder and wave created an ambience that eased her mind and let her relax. She looked down at him, traced the smooth skin of his cheek to the parted mouth, then down his chin and around the back of his neck. He had closed his eyes and his breath was falling into a deep, slow rhythm again. When he had fallen asleep, she leaned over and grabbed the case file, carefully balancing herself so that she wouldn't wake him up, then quietly and slowly repositioned herself so that her back was against the wall and her feet straight out in front of her. She returned her hand to the contours of his face, and let the repetitive motion of her fingers gliding along his skin help her focus on their new case. ~~~~~ Part Two: Crazy ~~~~~ "It's been one week since you looked at me Threw your arms in the air and said "You're crazy!" ~~~~~ "This is nuts, Mulder," she whispered to him as they crawled through the wet grass towards the suspect's house. He suddenly stopped, gripped her arm hard, but his eyes were sparkling. "Didn't I warn you I was crazy before you married me?" "Actually, yes, but I seemed to have been temporarily insane myself." He flashed her a grin and continued on, pausing only when they got to the small window that peeked into the basement. While Mulder checked out the scene, Scully kept watch, remembering the details of the case and going over each point in her mind. The arsonist was a twenty year old man who had been orphaned when he was three because of an oridnary housefire turning into a blazing inferno. It turned out his older sister had set the fire on accident, playing with a lighter she'd found, and had later killed herself over it. The man, Nick Hazel, was setting fires to homes similiar in design to his own family's and then tying up the entire household so that none would survive the fires without the others. This was fairly straight forward, if a little psychotic, and she generally agreed with Mulder's assessment of the man. He was trying to control the fire that shaped his entire life, attempting to keep the family together, until death. Nick thought his family was supposed to have all died in that fire and that an act of Satan had kept him and his sister alive without their parents. And now, Nick thought he was doing Satan's will by keeping the families tied together, letting none escape alive. He assumed he was enslaved to the devil since the devil had rescued him from the flames. But that's where their theories diverged. Mulder attested to the idea that the man was recieving power from dark spirits that he called up, his only evidence to such a thing being some blackened pentagrams chalked into the front steps and a witness's testimony that he was known to talk out loud to demons, as he called them. Scully simply thought it was more evidence of his lack of mental facilities, rather than the power of the Father of Darkness. Except, right now, hidden on Nick's property, she had the sickening feeling that Mulder was right. Especially when it was the same feeling she'd had before, on another case where the PTA had turned out to be devil worshippers, and the devil? itself had come to kill them all. In that case, the substitute teacher had disappeared, and she and Mulder had almost been sacrificed in the gym's locker room showers. That horrible feeling of doom she had experienced in the locker room was now raging through her at full force. "Mulder, we have to get out of here." His face was riveted to the scene before him. She pulled on his shoulder and saw his pupils contract suddenly, then dilate again and his body shuddered. Scully felt her mouth run dry. Taking him by the arm, she yanked him away from the window, crossing herself out of an overwhelming fear. Mulder blinked and looked at her, then shook his head. "I have a headache." She glanced quickly into the basment, then stopped still, shocked as she watched Nick Hazel sway before an enormous fire, sweat and dirt dripping from him in a sensuous, serpentine motion. She felt herself being pulled into the hypnotic dance of the fire and closed her eyes, tight. Then backed away, grabbing for Mulder. "Let's get out of here, right now." she said, and only opened her eyes when they were turned away from the basement. ~~~~~ Part Three: Sorry ~~~~~ "And now I sit back and wait till you say you're sorry." ~~~~~ "You're right, Mulder." Scully groaned as she walked through the police station and in to the morgue room, pulling on latex gloves and a mask. Mulder did the same as she pulled back the sheet covering one Nick Hazel, burned to a crisp. "What was that again, Scully? I couldn't hear you." She glared at him. "I said, you were right." His eyes danced behind the mask and he helped her slip scrubs over her jeans and T-shirt, both of them having abandoned the suits due to the extreme heat. "Ah, yes. I believe I was." He sat down in the corner and averted his eyes as she did her prelim exam, scraping off some of the oxidized bone fragments and shaking them into a sample jar. His queasiness had not deterred him from staying right beside her in the autopsy suite, something she appreciated. She wasn't so sure she wanted to be alone with the man's charred husk. Scully tried not to look at the face, recalling only the extreme heat they had both felt that night, the panic as they'd been trapped in the house with the arsonist, the killer. Nick had lured them to a trap, locking them in, knocking them out, and tying them together, then stayed inside as the house burned, ready to meet his master. But Mulder had been right. There was no accelerant, no gas, only the prayer of a faithful man, and Satan's hell fires had descended upon them like a plague of locusts. She shivered as that night blurred around her. Nick had been consumed in the flames, and Mulder had squirmed beside her, panting, screaming at times as the heat grew unbearable, but always, always working to get free. In the end, it had been their own teamwork that had gotten them free. They had crawled to the edge of the room, then grabbed the letter opener from a desk drawer and sawed their way through the duct tape binding them. Scully remembered fainting at one point, too exhausted to continue, and too filled with smoke and carbon dioxide to work her muscles. She had woken up in the ambulance, Mulder's weary body slumped over hers, the face mask giving her blessed oxygen. She remembered that night and then glanced to the body once more. It was proof of what had happened, what they had seen. She finished examining the outside and then went for her surgical knife to make the Y-incision. As the blade bit into the charred flesh of the lower abdomen, a slithering mass beneath her scalpel made her gasp and jerk away. Mulder came up behind her and took her elbow as she stared at the body. Along the entry incision, thousands of snakes poured through, squirming out of the body cavity and dropping to the stainless steel table with a hissing, vulgar sound. She stumbled away, knocking into Mulder, and turned her head, feeling her breakfast rise in her throat. Mulder was white faced as the reptiles kept gushing from the blackened body, then turned and yanked her out of the room as they slithered to the floor and quested out warmth. They slammed the door on the brood of vipers just before the lead snake managed to catch up to them. Scully lay trembling against the door. ~~~~~ ~~~~~ Part Four: Satisfaction ~~~~~ "Like Snickers, guaranteed to satisfy." ~~~~~ He was lying in their bed, watching her as she came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her head and his shirt loosely hanging from her body. She strode over to the dresser and pulled out her brush, then took her hair down and toweled it dry. Mulder was suddenly behind her, taking the brush from her hands and guidng her to the foot of the bed, pushing her to sit down. He talked as he brushed her wet hair. "The police force has made a request of Skinner." She moved her head to look at him, but he took her chin and turned her back around, resuming his brushing. "They asked that we stick around for the rest of the week, until Friday. They want us to be here for a 'finally solving this case' party." Scully chuckled and held her head straight as he loosened the tangles from her hair. "Did Skinner agree to it?" "Actually, yes. I suppose he felt bad that our honeymoon had to end like this." "He'd better feel bad," she grumbled. His fingers worked through another tangle, and then the brush glided through her hair like water. It was making her already tired body even more relaxed. "So, we've got two days to do whatever we want." She smiled and turned around, taking the brush from his fingers. "And I know exactly what I want," he added. He smiled as her lips met his and used the moment to steal the brush away from her. He pulled back, smiled wickedly at her, then turned her back around and resumed his duty. She sighed and drew her knees to her chest and rested her chin there. The gentle motions of his hand soothed her and soon she was fighting to stay awake. Carefully he moved her under the covers and laid her down, kissing her mouth, her cheeks, her forehead, doing his best to seduce her. She murmured and opened her heavy-lidded eyes. "Sorry, Mulder. . .I-" "Rest, Scully. We've got a couple of days. You had the autopsy this morning, I forgot." "I'm sorry, Mulder," she murmured again, but her eyes were already slipping shut. He watched her fall asleep, then traced the path of her face, letting his fingers memorize her every surface. Then he drew her close to him and breathed in the smell of a Florida tan, shower soap, and Scully. It didn't matter she had fallen asleep. He was satisfied. ~~~~~ end adios RM