The Sea By RocketMan ===== Rating: PG-13. some psych stuff that's not too wonderful....XS, UST Spoiler for US5 ===== "And the ocean! If you talk about the ocean, sheesh! That's the biggest phallic symbol of them all!" --Someone trying to explain Freud to me after Psych class. ===== The Sea "Mulder, no." "Come on. I felt it." "No." "Yes." "Muler, stop!" She exploded upward and dashed to the kitchen, searching with her hungry eyes for something to distract him from her. "Milk?" she asked and got down two glasses. He came up behind her and grabbed her but she spun away, keeping her body out of reach. She poured herself a glass and gulped it greedily while he watched, his eyes hinting to deeper things below the surface. "Scully-" "No!" She slammed her glass down and stared furiously at him. His hands shot out and grabbed hers, clutching them with a tightness bourn of predators snatching their prey. She felt the ropes draw tight over her neck, the binding over her hands. She jerked violently away from him and it broke. She stared down at her fingers but they were whole, unmarred, only trembling. She glared up at him in violation and fled for the bathroom, Mulder following with apologies. She scrubbed her hands under the faucet, water burning away the tingling residue left from the contact. She watched Mulder in the mirror with a hurting, guarded expression. "Scully, I had to make you see." he whispered, breath breezing across her cheek as the steam of water vapor reminded her the water was scalding. She yanked her hands from under the stream and balled them up in a towel, biting the inside of her lip to keep from screaming at the pain. But it was worth ridding herself of that feeling - the sense that Mulder's very soul still lay in strands of spider webs across her hands. "Scully, you had to see...." "Isn't that the problem, Mulder? I see too much already!" she yelled and shoved him out of the way. He moved aside to let her by and watched in concern and eagerness as she slumped to the bed, admitting defeat: Dana Scully had no control over her own mind. "Scully. No. It's not a problem at all." "But I'm going crazy!" "You'd be the last one I'd call crazy." "Well, that really doesn't do me a lot of good, Mulder, since you're the first everyone else would call crazy." His face blanched, his eyes shaded to the darker end of the spectrum - she had hurt him by saying that. "But you're not." he said softly. "Simply gifted." She shook her head. "No, I'm not. It was some sort of mental anguish or something, Mulder. I know you too well already...." "What did you feel when I touched your hands? Huh? Was it excitement?" he said, coming to sit next to her on the bed. She looked releived. "No....no, it wasn't. See? That proves it. It wasn't excitement - it wasn't even a *feeling.*" He paused. "What did you feel then?" "I felt like.....no, no, it was nothing." "You don't know that." "I felt Samantha! Okay? Samantha, except I was you....feeling Samantha in my arms...." "And that's not excitement?" "What?!" He smiled. "That's exciting, Scully. You're seeing the associations, not just the emotions. To me, excitement would entail seeing my sister again, holding her...I didn't get to hold her last time...." Scully frowned. "Huh?" He shook his head; he had not told her of Cigarette Smoking Man's entire deal, had not spoken to her of meeting his sister. "Never mind. This is even better Scully. You can sense events that remind a person of certain emotions. That'd be great in interrogating a suspect. I could push his buttons, make him feel what he did when he killed someone and you'd get it straight from his head." She panicked and jumped off the bed. "No. You don't know what you're talking about, Mulder. I'm not psychic! That's ridiculous! I won't get it straight from *anyone's* head!" He inched his fingers closer to hers and she snatched her hands back, remembering the intrusiveness of their last contact. "If you're not, then let me touch you." he whispered. She stared at him. "I will not let you touch me, Mulder." "Then you're afraid. Why? Because you can sense something?" "No! I don't sense anything!" "It's because you're not touching anything." She grabbed his hands, wincing as she felt the stinging crash over her, pushing it far away, back beyond her images of Mulder. "See?" she croaked, eyes pressed tightly shut to keep it away. "Nothing." He leaned in and touched her cheek. She was grinding her teeth to keep it away, her enamel cracking and chipping away and her tongue bleeding as it was caught in her molars. She tried so very hard to keep it away that it fell over her in stronger force and exhausted more energy than ever. He pried his hands away and let her slump to the bed; he could not catch her or he'd be making contact with her mind. She shuddered and her eyes fluttered and she looked up at him with pain. "Stop it Mulder. Make it stop...." she moaned. He felt bile rise up his throat but he choked it down and reached out a hand to touch her, calm her. She shrank away from him in fear and her eyes roamed wildly. "Scully?" he said, feeling he'd gone too far, way too far. "Make it stop, Mulder. Make it stop.....Please...." He could feel himself being slammed back into the past: the warehouse and Linda Bowman swimming into his memory, Scully asking him to make her stop, gun pointing to her head, firing.....falling. "Scully....Come on, Scully. It's okay. You're fine...you're fine..." But she was not. Her eyes would not focus, her breath raggedly managed to keep her heart beating, and her whole body shook with the sweat pouring off her. He remembered what he'd been thinking. Deserts, hot things, feeling weak and weary.....hot...... He'd sucked her into that. She couldn't control the image.....it was his own darkness drowning her, suffocating her. Something new, different, needed to be given to her. Something healing, and harmonious, something peaceful and not too strong so that she could take back control. He leaned forward and kissed her lips, eyes tightly shut to block out any image that could pop into his head and make her worse. Her body stopped trembling, her limbs slacked, her breath shuddered to a stop before starting again, slower and more distinct. He moved away and sat back on his heels beside her bed, watching her mind resume its control. The sweating stopped, blown away like leaves on a windy day. He touched her hand lightly. She did not flinch. Instead her eyes opened and she looked at him. She was crying. "Why are you so afraid?" she whispered. He paled and moved away. "I'm not." "I *felt* it, Mulder. I felt it. Don't do this...." "I'm not....I'm fine." She sighed. "I thought you wanted me to be open to extreme possibilities." "Don't twist my words around on me, G-woman. That's not how I intended it." She glared at him. "So you get to use my words against me, my whole entire senior thesis, and I don't even get to say something?" she yelled, her voice still hoarse after the heat of the desert her mind had been trapped in. "Jeez, Scully. You deserved it. 'A New Intrepreatation'? I mean, come on, a little stuck on ourselves, aren't we?" "Don't you dare, Mulder. Don't try to hurt me because you need to change the subject. You're afraid of me.....of *me*.." "I'm not. You were just screwing it up. I was afraid for you." "No. Unh-uh. I was dark and *Fire* - you hate fire - and I was hurting you in that desert thing, hurting you. Don't tell me that wasn't fear." He grinned evilly at her. "Oh, no, only shameless porn, Scully. You must have tapped into my sexual fantasies." She shuddered and needed to throw up. Her body betrayed her and she rushed for the bathroom on trembling legs. He followed her and held her out a washcloth when she was finished. "That's sick, Mulder." she spat and he thought maybe that was the end of his problems. "I know that wasn't it. I would have felt that....using it like that, twisting it around....Mulder you're perverted." His lungs sort of deflated and he lost his breath as she turned her back on him. He hadn't wanted it to end like that. "Scully...." She turned heatedly to him. "Get out. Get out of here, right now." "But-" "No. You came in here and raped my *mind* and then when I admit it you make it disgusting, you make it something tainted and horrible. Get away from me...get away." She ran from him and to the door and threw it open. He walked to her, wishing he had not even pressed the issue, wishing he had just let her believe in nothing. He reached out. "Scully...that's not what I feel. I'm not afraid of *you* at all." He attempted to touch her, to show her somehow what he did feel. It seemed in slow motion as her head moved away from his imploring hand, her hair brushing his fingertips and sparking. He stood in the door. "I'm not afraid of you.....I'm afraid of us." She did not look at him. "I'm sorry. I would never hurt you, Scully. Never." "Well, you did. Now leave." He turned in the door and glanced back at her once before she slammed it in his face. She had felt his fear, and felt his lust, all mixed together like peanut butter and jelly, swirling between the sand like the sea and it was the sea she had longed for in the image. The sea. She shuddered. He was sick.....vile.... never again......never again. ===== "Scully?" A sigh and then her heavenly voice coming at him but it was cold and icy. "Yes?" "Look, I didn't mean to turn the whole thing into something bad....I was trying to lighten the mood, kind of, and it came out wrong..." "So?" "So, would you forgive me?" "No." And the phone crashed in his ear. That rang in his ears for hours before finally disolving into white noise and static from the television. He kept his mind busy with finding new ways of winning her over but came up with nothing. Scully wasn't an idiot and she couldn't be played with. He sighed and slumped farther into his couch, eyeballing the clock and wishing time would run away with him. ===== Scully spent the day trying to drain her mind of the sea that swirled around her body, never reaching but always alluring. She felt the lust and it made her shudder and she felt the fear and it made her retch. He was a sick little man. She typed a few things on her computer regarding their previous case and then attempted to figure out why she had seen such a vivid image from him when it was all a hallucination anyway. (Right?) Mulder called and she hung up, called again and she spoke two sentences that effctively told him he was not welcome. Then he showed up at her door, begging her to just hear him out. "Mulder, go home. I'll see you Monday at work." "You'll be there?" "I'm not going to quit because you're a dirty old man." "I'm not that old." She sighed bitterly and he groaned. "Scully! That was a joke!" "You are spectacularly lacking in humor today, Mulder." "Okay, no more jokes. Promise. Just let me in, all right?" "No." "Then why are you still talking to me?" "Oh, my mistake." She proceeded to ignore him for the next hour and a half as he cajoled her and promised her and went silently sullen, then raging mad. She made dinner, hoping that the aroma of food would drive him crazy and send him home to give her a rest and to let him feed his stomach. "This is cruel and unusual, Scully. Let me in." he growled, his voice take on a deeper rich quality that usually worked on women. Abruptly, she opened the door, causing him to fall onto her shoes in a sprawled heap of limbs that achingly reminded her of the desert image, the sea scape. "Mulder. Go home." she said as he stood. "Let me explain...please..." "No, go home." "Why not? What are *you* afraid of, huh? That it'll make sense and you'll have to like me again? Or even believe in me?" "Fine. Explain." she growled between clenched teeth. "You didn't feel fear, at least not associated with that particularly. You felt my fear that you would find out my secrets and hate me for them... that's what you felt. Not some sadistic fantasy. Fantasy yes, but perverted, no." "Mulder..." She looked at him like she did not believe him. "Here, do it again, you'll see. It's not. I promise. You can trust me, right?" She nodded without thinking, a natural response that was true. She did trust him. He nudged her to the couch, then sat down with her, taking her hands. The sting and the posion flowing through her blood, heating her body, erupted over her again. The spider webs tangling her hands.... Her eyes opened and she realized she had control over the image this time. "You changed it." "You healed it," he shot back. "Healed what?" "Me. My fear. I was afraid you'd figure out what was going on, hate me for it..." "I knew what was going on and your fear made it worse, Mulder." "I know. I realized that. Do you still hate me for it?" She sighed. "For simply having fantasies? No, I don't hate you. I couldn't ever hate you for anything." "Could you ever love me?" She stood suddenly and went over to the stove, clicking it off and stirring the food. It was as if she hadn't even heard him. "Could you --" "I heard what you said, Mulder." "Oh." He swallowed and looked down at his hands. "That's okay. I understand. You . . . you have better things than . . . anyway, I'd better go." She watched him shuffle to the door, loking very much like an old man, a sad and lonely old man. "Mulder, wait." He turned around. "I do love you...not like in your fantasy....but I still do. Is that enough?" He closed his eyes. "That's more than enough....more than enough." "So, come on and sit down, Mulder. You're starving." "You must be psychic Scully." he said and settled into the kitchen chair. She gave him a look and shook her head. "No, I don't think I really am, Mulder. It's only with you." His cheeks flushed and he cleared his throat. "How do you mean?" "I tried it with the man working at the grocery store. Nothing." "Are you sure he wasn't brain dead?" "I was laying it on thick, Mulder. Even you would've gotten it." He gave her a grin. "So, I guess I'm just special..." "Or psychic..." His eyes gleamed and she saw the sea in them, eddying and flowing around his excitement like seahorses dancing beneath the ocean's surface. "Psychic....I like the sound of that." He grinned. She rolled her eyes. That had been a mistake. "Look out Stupendous Yappi. Here comes Mulder." end adios RM