Title:  Gutless (16/16)
Author:  Magdeleine
See Prologue for full headers; all posted chapters can be found
at 
http://shannono.simplenet.com/gutless

GUTLESS

Chapter 16

The Mo-Z Inn, Room 121
Fifteen minutes later


"Gatorade, Sheriff."

"Gatorade?"

"Gatorade.  Playing host to the Tochok probably drained the
host's body of certain chemicals that were replenished by the
melted viscera of the victims.  Sort of like Gatorade."

Volney pinned Mulder with a look of patient irritation, the
expression of choice for law enforcement officers across the
country when dealing with Mulder in one of his more talkative
moods.  "Agent Mulder," he said sharply, "have I mentioned that
I was already sound asleep when Jeff Murray called my house to
tell me that you two were shooting up his motel?"

"Yes, you have, and incidentally, as *we* have already
mentioned, there was only one shot fired," Mulder said, straight-
faced.  Scully expected him to add 'and Agent Scully was the
only one involved in the gunfire' but instead, Mulder neatly
sidestepped the issue of the origin of that one shot and moved
on.  "A shot which, I might add, has effectively disabled the
murderer by separating the murderer from its physical host with
no means of reentry."

Volney studied Mulder with a long, suspicious stare.  "Tell me,
Agent Mulder," he said at last, "are you on any kind of
medications I should know about?"

Scully sighed.  It always came to this.

"I know how this sounds, Sheriff," Mulder reassured him, but
the reassurance was a joke.  She'd seen it before.  He was
already on Planet Mulder, thinking that he was sounding sane and
professional when in actuality he was too excited about the case
coming together to just *shut up*.

The fact that he was still barefoot and wearing his sweats and
FBI Academy T-shirt did not help matters.  

"I hadn't even considered that the host might not be human, but
in hindsight it makes perfect sense.  There have been studies
done on parrots that suggest that their speech is not just
mimicry, but that they can actually put together words and
symbols in a manner similar to language; if we take that as a
given, it's only a small step to assuming that the Tochok would
find a parrot just as hospitable as a human being."

Volney turned and pondered the mess in the parrot cage, chewing
on his moustache.  He glanced at Scully, his impersonal visual
inspection sweeping over her and taking in the robe and slippers
as well as the bed-dry hair and the spatters of parrot blood
which she could still feel drying against her skin.  She met his
gaze, lifting her chin a little.

"*You're* awful quiet, Agent Scully," the sheriff said
accusingly, as though he was checking on her sanity as well but
didn't have much hope for a satisfactory answer.  "Do you have
any thoughts on this?"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mulder lean against the
wall and fold his arms across his chest, apparently very
interested in her answer.

She cleared her throat.  "I have a slightly different theory
than the one that Agent Mulder subscribes to.  There was a
foreign organic substance discovered in the blood work from the
latest victims; I suspect that under further study this will
prove to be a kind of mutant allergen borne by the parrot which
only ... select people were susceptible to.  The allergen seems
to have created a complex reaction, the primary result being the
visceral pyrexia which was the cause of death for the four
victims.  There seem to be some lesser effects including
hallucinogenic episodes, such as vivid, violent dreams and some
residual hallucinations immediately after waking."

Volney looked so surprised and pleased to hear a sane theory
that Scully almost expected him to start purring like a big
tomcat in a patch of sun.  "Well.  Does this constitute a public
health hazard, in your opinion?"

"It might," Scully admitted, "but it would be an easily
contained one.  The body of the parrot should be handled as a
biohazard and properly packaged for further study.  Those people
who have already been affected by the allergen, including Agent
Mulder and myself, should be tested for the foreign organic
substance before being allowed to handle weapons or operate a
moving vehicle.  We may otherwise present a danger to the public."

Mulder shot Scully a surprised look.  She ignored it.

"While I was -- hallucinating -- earlier tonight, I imagined
that the parrot posed an immediate threat to myself and to Agent
Mulder, and I shot it," she said.  "This may or may not have
been due to some subconscious realization about the nature of
the recent deaths and the parrot's possible involvement in them.
Either way, I acted without thinking, and if any repercussions
result from my actions I will take full responsibility."

She gave this speech matter-of-factly, keeping a stone wall of
calm between herself and the creeping feeling of childish dread,
the feeling that she was going home from class today with a note
for her parents in her backpack.  Mulder was still watching her
closely, an odd color of concern tingeing the edges of his
expression.  

Volney appeared to be chewing on the insides of both cheeks. 
After a moment of deliberation he shook his head and snorted. 
"I don't know a damn thing about medicine so I'm gonna take your
word on this one, Agent Scully.  If you two just set tight I'll
get some people out from Bryan Memorial to take a look at you
and take the parrot away."  He rummaged through his jacket
pockets like a man contentedly scratching an itch and came up
with a sleek cell phone that looked to be the size of the big
man's thumb.  He punched a single button and brought it up. 
"Rob?  It's Mike Volney.  Yeah, I'll hold."  

Scully cleared her throat delicately.  "Er, Sheriff ..."

"Hmm?"

"About the parrot's owner --"

Volney brought the tiny phone down to the level of his
collarbone.  "If I may be frank, Agent Scully, I don't give a
damn about the parrot's owner.  That bird bit one of my
deputies, it tried to bite me, it's been a serious pain in my
ass and now you're saying it's the reason that four people in my
jurisdiction have died.  As far as I'm concerned, you did us all
a favor.  When Marjorie's sister shows up tomorrow I'll tell her
that the parrot died of natural causes and we burned the body." 
The sheriff crinkled his copper eyes at Scully.  "Does that
answer your question?"

<X><X><X><X>

The water was cold, but Scully splashed it on her face anyway,
scrubbing at the tiny shriveled patches of dried bird blood. 
The relief of getting it off her skin made her a little
lightheaded ... or maybe that was just a delayed reaction to
having to give a sample of her own blood.

The bathroom door creaked behind her and she jerked her head
up, startled.  Mulder was standing in the doorway, rubbing at
the bandage on the inside of his right elbow.  He met her gaze
and smiled sheepishly.  "Hey."

"Hey.  Can you hand me a towel?"

"Sure."  He ran one long arm out and hooked a towel off the
rack, tossing it to her with the casual grace of an outfielder
flipping a ball out into the bleachers.

"Thanks."  She dried her face and folded the towel in half,
then in half again.  "Are they done with you already, or did
Jean Denison show up with the death squad and scare you off?"

"Funny you should ask," he said, leaning back against the door
frame.

"They're *not* done with you?"

Mulder shook his head vigorously.  "No, no, they're done with
me.  Took my blood, took my weapon, the works.  Funny you should
mention Jean Denison, I mean."

Scully leaned one hip against the cold porcelain of the sink
and cocked an eyebrow at him.  "Is she here?"

"Nope.  And she's not going to be.  They caught her in Volney's
office reading those secret files he was keeping on this case;
turns out she's been the one leaking information to the media
all this time.  According to the hospital staff, Jean has a sort
of a thing for Volney and this was some kind of desperate bid
for attention.  Volney's so mad, he wants to bring her up on
charges for obstruction of justice."

"He'll have a hard time proving it on a case like this one,"
Scully said.

"Yeah, well."  Mulder shrugged.  He studied her strangely for a
moment, then turned a few degrees to fake a relaxed punch at the
door frame.  "They're coming back around ten tomorrow morning to
check on us."

"I know.  I'm the one who suggested it."
  
"You don't ..."  Mulder stopped, squinched his eyes a little,
and tried again.  "Do you really believe this allergen theory?"

Scully looked down at the towel in her hands and frowned
critically.  She shook it open and refolded it with slow,
careful movements.

"Scully?"

"I wouldn't have suggested it to the sheriff if I didn't think
it had merit, Mulder."  The towel was still not quite straight;
she flipped it open again with a sigh and started lining up the
corners.

Mulder reached out and captured her busy hands in his, gently
taking the towel away from her.  He was suddenly very close; she
could feel him looking down at the top of her head as she looked
down at her hands, stiff and awkward in Mulder's grasp.  "That
wasn't what I asked," he said, his voice very low.  "I asked if
you *believe* it."

She tried to say yes, but it stuck in her throat.  Instead, she
shook her head slowly and said, "You don't want me to answer
that, Mulder."

He made an indecipherable noise and let her hands slide away. 
"You're probably right."

She tipped her head up to frown at him and promptly forgot all
about doing so when she spotted the purpling bruise on his jaw. 
"Oh," she said faintly, and reached up, leaning to one side to
get a better look.  Her fingers skimmed through the air over his
jaw, not quite touching him; somehow, she couldn't.  Green heat
came off the bruise, bleeding into her hand through the
millimeters between them.  "Oh, Mulder," she murmured in soft
horror, staring at the damage she'd done.  "I didn't think I --
how does it feel?"

A wry smile creased his skin under her fingertips and she
looked up in surprise.  His gaze met and held hers, searching
for something.  His face was strained, somehow, and a little
sad; the out-of-place smile was heartbreaking, at once closed
off and vulnerable.  "Don't worry about it, slugger," he said
with a little shrug.  "No permanent damage done."

"I -- Mulder, I'm so --"

"I said," he told her, pulling her hands gently away from his
face, "don't worry about it."

She frowned at him in confusion, her hands still thoughtlessly
hanging in the air between them.  The grinding need to touch him
that had made her hands ache for days had subsided, but
something, some need, remained -- the need to reach out and
smooth the worry from his face, to step into his arms and hold
him as he held her, to speak gentle words of comfort.  These
were good things, partnerly things, but some new color had bled
into them like ink into tissue paper.  She wanted to touch him,
but she couldn't be certain of her reasons.  Somewhere in the
storm, her bold black borderlines had faded and half-washed
away; all the landmarks were strange, as if she was looking up
at the night sky in Australia, searching for Orion.

Her hands drifted down to her sides by themselves, lost.

"All right," she said.  After a moment she folded her arms
across her chest.

"Besides," he said indistinctly, "I deserved it."

She shook her head, not because it wasn't true but because her
guilt outweighed the reason.  "You didn't deserve *that*."

"Yeah, I did."  He looped a mirthless smile at her, exhaustion
printed around his eyes.  "I did."  They were both silent for a
moment, the shifting of Mulder's bare feet on the slick tiles
very loud in the tiny room.  Mulder looked at the floor.  "I had
a dream," he said in a quiet voice she hardly recognized.  "When
I was asleep before, I mean."

"Everybody dreams, Mulder," she snapped, more harshly than she
meant to, knowing where he was going and not wanting to hear it.

Intent on some interior goal, he didn't seem to process her
tone.  "This was different," he insisted, frowning.  "I think --"

"Don't."

He heard her then, looked up with some new expression mixing
with the hurt in his eyes.  "Scully --"

"Don't," she repeated, softer this time, unable to think of
anything else to say.

Mulder's mouth opened and then shut again.  He seemed to
deflate slightly, sagging back against the door frame.  He gazed
at the toilet and shrugged, the careless gesture of a man
berating himself for something.  "One thing," he said, "and you
don't have to answer if you don't want to.  What woke you up?"

"Oh."  It took a moment for her to stop bracing herself against
some unasked personal question and answer the one that *had*
been asked.  "I'd left the light switch on, and when the
electricity came back on, so did the lights."  She looked at him
warily, but didn't ask what was coming next.

"Ahhh," Mulder sighed, and his lips curved upward.  "I left my
lights off.  No wonder you couldn't wake me up."

"What?"

"The eye muscles are the only ones not frozen up by sleep
paralysis.  You told me that yourself, remember?"

"I don't see where you're going with this."

Mulder leaned back against the bathroom wall and gave her a
hollow smile.  "Every victim died in the dark.  That's where I'm
going with this."  He seemed to think of something and made a
face.  "Except for Fred Schmidt.  I'm not really sure how he
broke free; maybe the Tochok was so dependent on the mental
aspects of its victims that Fred was just too crazy to get
killed."  He looked at the toilet again, but she doubted he
actually saw it.

Scully studied his face for a long time.  She wanted to reach
out and take his hand; instead, she turned back to the sink. 
"Do you really believe that thing exists?"

He caught her gaze in the mirror, his eyes weary and too
knowing for comfort.  "Don't you?"

She looked away.

<X><X><X><X>

The parrot was long gone, removed from its cage with dead
rustling sounds that Mulder would have paid half a year's salary
to avoid hearing.  The cage was also gone.  The parrot food was
still there, sitting alone and forlorn in a sea of white plastic
sheeting where the remnants of the mess had been covered, just
in case.  Scully had packed and hauled her suitcase to Mulder's
room a few minutes ago, reiterating to all who would listen that
this was only a temporary stop on the way to whatever new room
the Mo-Z management would come up with.  A few eyebrows had been
raised among the people from Bryan Memorial, and a pair of
deputies had exchanged a significant look of knowing amusement,
but Scully hadn't seen it and Mulder didn't give a damn.  Let
them think what they wanted.

Mulder had been fighting idly with the connecting door for lack
of anything better to do.  It seemed to be loosening, although
that might have had more to do with the slackening rain than any
of his efforts.  He took a surreptitious look around the room as
Volney shooed the Death Squad out into the thin rain, letting in
another whirlwind of cold air.  The blood-spattered bedclothes
had been stuffed in a large Hefty bag, and the exposed mattress
lay staring at the ceiling, its belly patterned by brown
discolorations like sprawling birthmarks.

Cold.  Empty.  Mulder sighed, feeling disappointed for no
definable reason, and returned to wrestling pointlessly with the
door.

Behind him, Volney whuffed out a great sigh of relief.  "All
right, Agent Mulder," he announced in the tones of a bartender
declaring last call, "time to lock up.  I'll be by in the
morning to check in and get your weapons back to you."  He
shifted around, looking slightly guilty.  "I don't really think
you're a threat to the public, you understand ..."

"No, no, I got it," Mulder assured him, twisting the doorknob
as he wrenched at the stubborn wood under his hands.  "I've been
through it before -- Scully has a thing about covering our asses."

The sheriff gave him a look of bemused irritation.  "Can't
imagine why," he growled, and made a gesture toward the drizzle
outside the open door.  "You comin'?"

"Not yet, hang on.  I just want to --"  The door made a sharp
ripping noise, cutting him off.  Mulder gaped at it in surprise
as it swung serenely open.  He remembered Volney and turned to
give him a sheepish smile.  "It was stuck," he explained in a
vague way.

"Hmph," Volney snorted.  "Gonna go through that way, then?"

"Yeah."

"Right," Volney said, and something suspiciously like a smile
creased his face.  "See you in the morning, Agent Mulder."

"Night."  Mulder walked through the connecting door as the
other door shut and locked.

The room was dim, barely illuminated by the yellow light
peeking out of the bathroom.  At first he didn't see Scully
anywhere, just her luggage set neatly next to the outside door,
with her trench coat draped over it.  He shrugged, and turned to
shut the door.

Scully was curled up in the droopy armchair, fast asleep.  Her
cheek was pillowed on the left arm of the chair, just a few
inches away from a worn spot leaking a tiny cloud of stuffing. 
She was still wearing her robe, flannel pajama bottoms and thick
white socks poking out from underneath it.  One hand was loosely
fisted and burrowed halfway under her cheek like the last
remnant of a babyhood thumb-sucking habit.  Her hair curled in
every direction, twisting up to cling to the fabric of the
armchair back, falling over her cheek and obscuring her eyes. 
As he watched, her lips parted slightly and she sighed in her
sleep.

Mulder's breath caught in his throat as if he'd been punched in
the gut.  A stripe of queasiness that wasn't quite pain sliced
down the inside of his sternum, like a pathologist's scalpel
cutting him open from the inside out.  It pooled like blood in a
place slightly above his stomach, right where his center would
have been if he flung his arms and legs out like a starfish.

He could not stop looking at her.

A dismayed revelation unfolded in his mind like a magician's
flower.  He stuffed it back down as fast as it came up, but he'd
never really got the knack of folding the damned things up in
real life and he didn't do much better with the one in his head.
Party-colored shreds of thought were left over, too bright to
ignore:  thoughts of kneeling by his sleeping partner and
burying his face in her stomach, her hands touching his hair
like a benediction, the rest of the world flowing past them
unnoticed, unimportant.

Some kind of sound escaped him as he watched the dim light
gleam off her hair, making it glow like banked coals.  He knew
better than to go to her; he'd already done the rejection thing
once or twice today, thank you, and all he had to show for it
was a sore jaw with a bruise the approximate size, shape, and
texture of a kiwi fruit.  He knew better than to go anywhere
near her.

He went anyway.

It seemed to be a long trek across the rough motel carpet, and
by the time he knelt in front of the armchair he had a purpose
in mind, a goal of waking her up and getting her out of his room
before his mouth ran away like the gingerbread man and he ended
up with a matching bruise somewhere even less comfortable.  His
hand reached out for her without asking the brain for permission
and before he quite realized it he was brushing air-fine hair
out of her eyes.  "Hey," he whispered, unable to take his eyes
from her sleeping face.  "Hey, Scully."

"Mmm."  It was the barest hint of sound, accompanied by an
eyebrow twitch.

"Scully, wake up."

She slept on, her breathing slow and regular.

"Scuh-lee," he murmured, tasting her name on his lips.  His
fingers brushed over her warm cheek and she made another faint
sound, her mouth curving slightly in a sleep-smile.  "Hey," he
told her softly, "come on, this chair is going to give you a
sore neck if you sleep on it all night."

"Mmm."  

His fingertip traced her jawline with the most delicate of
touches, flesh painting flesh with a thread of blood-warmth.  As
he reluctantly took his hand away, that soft smile spread a
little further across her face.  Mulder watched her for a long
moment, caught in glass.

She was ...

She was so ...

Twin curves of lashes stirred, lifted, and her eyes focused on
him.  She made a faint sound and blinked slowly, once. 
"Mulder," she said, her voice rough with sleep.

"Hi."

She blinked again, yawning a little on the long downswing.  "I
fell asleep."

"Yeah," he agreed, adjusting his legs so that he was sitting in
front of the left arm of the armchair, his face level with hers.
"Comfortable?"

"Mmm," she rumbled, her eyes drooping.  "Not too bad."

She stayed that way for almost a minute, her breathing slow. 
He cradled her face with his gaze, expecting her to fall asleep,
but a sliver of blue appeared between the lashes of one eye and
waxed lazily to a half-moon.  He smiled at her, that odd queasy
pain slipping leisurely up his ribs again.  "Hungry?"

"Yeah," she yawned.  "Too tired to eat, though."  The blue
waned to a sliver again, kept from total eclipse by sheer
determination.  Mulder rested his temple against the arm of the
chair and watched her as though she might disappear.  Scully
arched an eyebrow at him, the one matching her single open eye. 
"What?"

"Nothing," he said, and closed his eyes, her warm sleep-smell
surrounding him and twisting in his lungs until it made his head
spin.

"Are you tired?" she asked in a voice too low for Mulder to
tell if the words were in her doctor tone or her partner tone.

"Yeah."  He opened his eyes and found her looking straight at
him with her most enigmatic expression -- sleepier than normal,
but unreadable due to the droopy eyelids.

She studied him for a minute or two and then a crooked little
smile appeared like a crack in an egg.  "Hmmmm," she mumbled
drowsily.  The pale hand stuffed under her cheek worked its way
back out to freedom, hesitated clumsily in midair for a long
moment, and then slipped over his face, cupping his cheek.  She
still smelled faintly of gunpowder.  He could feel each of her
fingers burning a separate and distinct furrow into his skin. 
"You should sleep," she whispered huskily, her thumb brushing a
hot, shallow arc near his jaw, inches from the angry bruise that
same little hand had given him only a few hours earlier.

"So should you," he whispered back.

Her eyes drooped and she made an amused sound that was thick
with exhaustion.  "Understatement," she mumbled, and her eyes
glided shut.  Her hand relaxed and succumbed to gravity, sliding
down to rest on the side of his neck.  "Mulder ..."  She sighed
his name as if she were already sleeping, and for all he knew
she was.

"Hmm?"

Her voice was almost inaudible, lips moving around a soft slip
of air.  "You said you had a dream ..."

Mulder's stomach flipped over and he exhaled hard.  "Yeah," he
managed, too aware of the bed behind him that still stank of
guilty pleasures and guiltier dreams, soaked into the sheets
with his sweat.  

She breathed out a slow stream of warmth that curled around his
face like fog.  "Me too."  

In the moment it took for him to go from puzzlement to
comprehension, she fell asleep.  

Mulder watched her sleep, thoughts buzzing around his head like
lazy bumblebees, the curve of her hand heavy and warm on his
neck.  He reached up and wrapped his fingers around her forearm,
anchoring her to him.

"I know," he whispered.

- END -