Title:  Gutless (5/16)
Author:  Magdeleine
See Prologue for full headers; all posted chapters can be found at 
http://shannono.simplenet.com/gutless


GUTLESS

Chapter 5

The Mo-Z Inn
2:17 AM

The night was cool and windy, and the storm clouds were still rumbling 
occasionally, withholding their rain.  The only sound besides the wind and 
the dull thunder was the crunch of the parking-lot gravel underfoot as 
Mulder and Scully walked to their motel rooms in silence.

Scully was exhausted.  Her thoughts had taken on that peculiar merry-go-
round quality, each one cycling back to the front in turn.  Autopsy in four 
hours.  Sleep.  Better have the field office in Kansas City run an analysis 
on the blood.  Sleep.  Make sure the blood samples from the previous victims 
went out, too.  Sleep.  Might be a good idea to take apart the plumbing and 
look for traces of visceral material in the sink traps, especially the 
garbage disposal.  Sleep.  God, autopsy in less than four hours ...

As they reached the sidewalk, a particularly strong gust of wind nearly 
caused her to lose her balance.  She flailed for a brief moment; Mulder's 
hand shot out and grabbed her elbow, steadying her.  "You okay?" he asked.

She shook his hand off.  "I'm fine, Mulder."

Mulder held up his hands in mock surrender.  "Okay, okay."

"Good night, Mulder," Scully said, too worn out to rise to the bait.  She 
pulled the room key out of her pocket and headed for her door.

"Scully, hold on a sec."

Inches from freedom, inches from bed.  She put the key in the lock.  
"Mulder, please, it's late.  It's beyond late, it's early.  Can't we talk 
about it in the morning?"

"It'll only take a minute," Mulder promised, leaning against the wall next 
to Scully.  "Humor me."

She looked longingly at the door.  So close ...  "Fine," she said, and 
pushed her hair out of her eyes with a weary hand.  "One minute."

"I want to interview Uncle Fred," Mulder said, and shoved his hands into his 
pockets like a man bracing himself for a deluge.

She stared at him.  "You're joking."

He shrugged.  She could hear the fabric of his trench coat rustle as his 
shoulders shifted.

"God," she sighed, resting her forehead against the door frame.  "Look, 
Mulder, Fred Schmidt is delusional at best and possibly psychotic.  I very 
much doubt that you could glean any information from him that isn't either 
deeply flawed or completely fictional."

"Maybe, maybe not," Mulder said.  "Volney told us that Uncle Fred claimed 
that he was attacked by something shortly before Joshua's death.  Whoever or 
whatever it was that killed that kid probably made a try for his uncle first 
and for some reason Fred was able to fend him off."

"Him?"

"Him, her, it, whatever.  Fred may be an unreliable witness, but he's all 
we've got."

"Fine," Scully grumbled, and straightened up.  "I have to be at the hospital 
at seven to start the autopsy.  We can stop off at the psychiatric wing 
after I finish, and talk to Fred."  She reached for her key, still jutting 
brightly out of the lock.  "Goodnight."

"One more thing ..."

Her open palm slapped against the door and she leaned into it, straight-
armed, her head a little bowed.  "*Yes*, Mulder?"  She turned to see Mulder 
giving her his puppy-dog face, peaking his eyebrows and looking pitiful and 
hopeful at the same time.  "What is it now?"

"Scully, do you remember when we were talking about switching off nights 
with the parrot?"

"No, Mulder," Scully gritted out.  "I remember *you* talking about it."

"Just for tomorrow."

"No."

"Only the daytime hours, Scully.  I'll take him back at night, I swear."

"Mulder, the parrot is your responsibility," Scully told him in her most 
authoritative voice.  "I don't want it anywhere near me.  Is that clear?"

"Yes," Mulder said, without changing his expression.

"Do you, dare I ask, have anything else to talk to me about?"

"Not really."

"All right."  Scully was trying to look stern, but that stubborn curl that 
had been plaguing her all night slithered out from behind her ear and fell 
into her eyes.  She couldn't summon the energy to brush it away and instead 
blew at it, once, ineffectively.

Mulder smiled, a rare gentle smile that made Scully's stomach turn over.  
"Problems?" he asked, his eyes straying to that curl.

"Nothing I can't handle," Scully said, but it came out much quieter than she 
meant it to.  He was still looking at her with that smile on his face, and 
she couldn't think of anything else to say.

Mulder's every movement seemed to be twice as slow as usual, as if she was 
watching him move underwater.  He reached over and smoothed that errant lock 
of hair out of her eyes, tucking it gently behind her ear.  His fingers 
seemed to linger on her skin, burning a path across her forehead as he 
brushed back a few flyaway hairs.  That sweet little smile widened slightly 
as he took his hand away.  "Good night, Scully."

Scully realized she hadn't breathed since the last time she spoke.  She 
sucked in a lungful of air, trying to look as though her normal respiratory 
process hadn't been interrupted by the slightest touch of her partner's 
hand.  "Good night, Mulder."  She fumbled at the key and the doorknob and 
almost fell across the threshold.

Holy Mary, Mother of God.  She pushed the door shut behind her and managed 
to turn the dead bolt.  Her hands were shaking.  Actually shaking.  
Unbelievable.  She must be in worse shape than she'd thought.  A further 
personal inventory revealed that her knees were on the verge of buckling; 
she sagged against the door and closed her eyes.

Mulder's door closed, the impact of it making her own door rattle in 
sympathy.  Her own trembling, however, was starting to fade away.  She began 
to classify the phenomenon, her mind flinging pieces into different 
categories like a woman sorting laundry.  She hadn't really eaten since 
lunch.  She'd been up for almost twenty-four hours straight.  Whatever 
effect Mulder was having on her, it was obviously augmented by low blood 
sugar and exhaustion.  As a matter of fact, it was unlikely that much of 
this at all was due to Mulder's touch.

A breeze brushed her cheek with icy fingers.  She looked up, frowning, and 
saw the curtains billowing away from the open windows like a pair of lungs 
made of synthetic fibers.  Fresh air, very fresh, but far too cold.  She 
ducked under the curtains and closed the windows.  The scratchy curtains 
settled around her like a drift of feathers; she fought her way out and 
headed for the bathroom, hanging her trench coat neatly on one of the 
headless hangers in the open closet nearby.  She did a cursory tooth-brush 
and face-wash, changed into her pajamas, dug her travel alarm clock out of 
her suitcase and set it, hit the light switch, and crawled gratefully 
between the cool sheets.  

There was no further noise from Mulder's room, not even a squawk from the 
parrot.

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

She couldn't sleep.

At first she thought that it was the cool temperature of the sheets that was 
keeping her awake, but they soon warmed to her body temperature and she was 
forced to reconsider her theory.  

Perhaps it was just the way she was lying on her back.  She curled up on her 
right side, only to find that no matter where she put her elbow she just 
could not get comfortable, and her hair kept falling into her eyes.  When 
she tried the left side, her leg fell asleep.  She clenched and unclenched 
her toes; her leg began to fizz like a can of soda someone had shaken up as 
a joke, and she gritted her teeth until it subsided.

She twisted over onto her stomach, kicking at the covers -- the blankets 
were too heavy, that was the problem.  Too tightly tucked in.  Too 
oppressive.  She took a moment to peel off the synthetic quilted coverlet 
and the fleecy blanket beneath it, leaving her with just the sheets.  Now 
she was too cold.  There was a tiny draft coming in from somewhere, tickling 
her knee.  And the sheets were still too tight around her feet.

Scully kicked violently at the covers, thrashing around until she was 
wallowing in a pile of over-bleached cotton and slithery polyester.  Better.  
But the pillow was way too flat.  Maybe if she added the second pillow for 
more neck support ...

The pulse in her neck was fluttering too quickly.  She took a series of 
long, deep breaths, hoping to slow her heartbeat, but it didn't help.  There 
was a dry, fuzzy band of tension inching across the back of her skull, the 
kind of headache she hadn't experienced since the night she'd drunk eight 
cups of coffee at a 24-hour diner, trying to pry a story out of a skittish 
witness.  She was itching to check the clock, but hoped that if she just 
kept her eyes shut ... 

Just a little bit longer, that's all ...

Scully wasn't sure how long it'd been since she'd turned over onto her back 
again.  She was almost positive it had been more than five minutes, but then 
again, the early hours of the morning were always a case in point of 
Einstein's Theory of Relativity -- an hour could go by in an eyeblink or an 
eternity.  The light filtering through the curtains gave her very little 
clue as to the time.  She thought it was moonlight, since the shadows were 
cool and tinted with blue, but that may just have been wishful thinking.

The hell with it.  Scully turned over and grabbed the alarm clock, clicking 
the little button that lit up the time so that she could see that it was 
almost four in the morning.  Four.  Two hours until morning.  She glowered 
at the little clock and barely resisted the impulse to hurl it across the 
room.  

Insomnia.  God help her.

Scully rolled out of bed, pulled on her robe, and paced the room.  It was 
insane how awake she felt; by all rights she should have been sleepy.  By 
all rights she should have been *sleeping*.  She was so tired that her bones 
ached, but she seemed to have completely lost the ability to fall asleep.

Work, perhaps, would dull her chattering brain and let her get a few 
precious hours of sleep.  She turned on a small lamp, not quite ready to 
illuminate the whole room, and sat down at the small table in the corner.  
The case file was tucked neatly into her laptop case; her notebook, however, 
was missing.  She found herself stalking around the room like a frantic 
mother with a carpool of children outside and the car keys nowhere to be 
found.  It wasn't in the laptop case, it wasn't on the bedside table, it 
wasn't in her suitcase, it wasn't on the bed.  Could it be in the car?  Had 
she left it at the hospital in Leotie this evening?

She stood next to the table and dug at the base of her skull with one hand, 
trying to ease some of that dry ache while her mind spun in circles.  At 
that moment, there was a parroty squawk from the next room, and Guido's Hit 
Parade came back on the air.  "EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY, SOMETIMES ..."

"Oh for God's sake," she groaned, and slammed the laptop shut.  She switched 
off the light and stared into the dark while her eyes adjusted.  Her hair 
fell into her eyes again and she automatically shoved at it, not really 
noticing the movement of her hand until her fingers brushed her forehead and 
she was jolted into memory.  

Mulder's touch, Mulder's gentle smile.

A tiny sound slipped from her lips, like the whimper of a sleeping infant.  
She blinked, and shook her head violently to clear it.  This was ridiculous.  
She was a responsible adult who ought to be beyond adolescent fantasies, and 
certainly shouldn't be letting this sort of thing keep her awake all night.

At any rate, a responsible adult ought to have some kind of medication in 
her suitcase that would make this subject moot.

Scully was not a great believer in sleeping pills.  She was well aware that 
they served as a poor substitute for relaxation and the natural sleeping 
process; she had read all the documentation on the side effects and come to 
the logical conclusion that it was better to tough it out.  Nonetheless, she 
found herself digging through every nook and cranny of her suitcase, hoping 
that she'd ignored her own conclusions and brought something along, anyway.

<*A few drops of chloral hydrate will do the job every time.*>  She'd been 
joking when she said that, but now the joke was on her.  There were no 
sleeping pills in her suitcase.  The closest thing she could find was the 
box of motion sickness medication she'd used on the plane -- one of the side 
effects was drowsiness.  She weighed her options, rolled her eyes, and put 
the box back in her suitcase.

She almost wished she *had* a few drops of chloral hydrate.

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY SOMETIMES ..."  

Correction:  She wished she had a few drops of chloral hydrate for *Guido*.  
Damn that bird.  Damn Marjorie Bailey for only teaching him the first line 
of that song.  Damn Mulder for insisting they bring him back with them ... 
and while she was at it, damn Mulder for being so sweet to her tonight.  
Damn her hormones for making so much of it.  Damn this insomnia.  

Damn, damn, damn.

She found herself hovering near the connecting door.  Any moment now, Mulder 
would wake up, she was sure of it.  He'd get up, and go over to the 
birdcage, and shut that bird up.

Her brain was spinning, conjuring up unsolicited fantasies of what her 
partner might be wearing.  A T-shirt and sweatpants, probably; that was what 
he usually wore to bed.  Maybe he'd left off the T-shirt.  Maybe he was only 
wearing boxers.  Or maybe ...

She tried to push away the last thought, tried desperately to keep it from 
creeping through the crack in her mental brick wall, but it slipped out 
anyway.

Maybe, just maybe, Mulder was about to walk across that room with no clothes 
on whatsoever.

Dana Scully was no voyeur.  She did not glance through windows when she 
walked past people's homes; she did not put her ear to the wall to listen to 
her neighbors' arguments; and she certainly didn't peek through the 
connecting door to her partner's room in the hopes of catching him wandering 
around in the buff.  So why in the hell was she standing by this door, 
straining her ears, listening for any hint of movement?  

She felt ridiculous.  She felt like a cheap cliche.  

She felt like yanking the door open and looking in because she wasn't 
hearing a damn thing that meant Mulder was awake and how on earth could 
Mulder *not* be awake with that parrot making so much noise?

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY ..."

Her hand gripped the doorknob.  She stopped, her adrenaline-driven heart 
pounding in her ears so loudly that it almost drowned out Guido's crooning.  
What was she *doing*?

Curiosity warred with common sense.  A rationalization crept up in her mind, 
the cozy thought that she just really wanted to check on him, wanted to make 
sure he was all right.  She could say that the parrot was keeping her awake 
and she wanted to make it shut up.  It was close enough to the truth that 
she wouldn't choke on it as a lie.

"... SOMEBODY SOMETIMES ..."  The damn parrot sounded like a broken record.  
How could anyone sleep through that?

She knocked softly and listened, expecting to hear Mulder's footsteps 
approaching the door.  Nothing.  Guido's serenade continued unabated.

She waited, and knocked again, a little louder.  Still no response.  Scully 
took a deep breath and eased open the door to Mulder's room.

He was on the bed.  Lying on his back.  Sound asleep.  Snoring very softly.

Fully clothed.

She honestly didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

The light was still on in his bathroom, seeping over Mulder's sleeping form, 
illuminating him with a dim yellow glow.  He had removed his jacket and 
loosed his tie before falling asleep, and undone the top two buttons on his 
shirt, but that appeared to be all.  The bedcovers were pulled back and he 
was sprawled out on the sheets.  One arm was draped over his chest, the 
other dangling off the edge of the bed; he was still wearing his shoes, 
although one seemed to be untied.

She could not stop looking at him.

The opening of the door had brought an abrupt halt to Guido's staccato Dean 
Martin impression, and the silence in the room was almost eerie.  Scully 
could hear Mulder's breathing, and her own heartbeat, and that was all.

She stood there for a long time, watching the slow rise and fall of his 
chest.  Paralyzed.  Her arms were wrapped around herself as if she was 
straitjacketed, holding herself back from causing damage.  She breathed 
shallowly, her brow furrowed in something like pain as she stared at her 
sleeping partner.

He looked like a little boy.  Sleep erased the tension from his face and 
touched his lips with the ghost of a smile, a faint echo of the way he'd 
smiled at her outside a few hours ago.  

She meant to leave.  She couldn't.

Mulder moved.  Just a little.  The hand dangling over the edge of the bed 
twitched, and her partner shifted on the bed, frowning, murmuring something 
unintelligible.  Scully's heart rate shot up into the panic zone, despite 
her brain's efforts to shut down the flow of adrenaline.  Her paralysis 
broke.

What was she doing here?  What could she possibly be thinking?

Her eyes flicked over the room in confusion, her gaze caught by the 
fluttering curtains at the window.  His window was open.  She suddenly 
realized that it was cold in Mulder's room, cold enough to see your breath.

She took a step into his room, and then another.  The rough carpeting rasped 
against her bare feet like steel wool.  She developed a plan of surgical 
precision: go in, shut the window, go back to her room, shut the door.  
Swift, precise, no wasted movement.  She programmed it into her bones, 
banished every thought of any other action.

The window was stuck.

She gaped at it in shock for what seemed like forever, unable to process the 
concept.  When the realization finally registered, she yanked at the wooden 
frame as hard as she could, but there was no budging it.  It might have 
responded well to a good *whack* with the heel of her hand, but this was not 
the time to find out, not with her partner sleeping peacefully ten feet away

Shit.  She glared at the window and chewed on her lip, trying to develop a 
new plan.

She could ...

She could tuck him in.

She'd done it before, of course.  Several times.  She'd put him to bed after 
his father had been murdered and had sat beside him for most of the night, 
cooling his face with a wet cloth and soothing his nightmares with her 
voice.  Such a long time ago.

She'd stripped him down to his boxers, that time; in comparison, tucking a 
few blankets around him tonight was nothing important.  Certainly nothing to 
hesitate over.  Nonetheless, she stood for long moments like a girl at her 
first dance, shifting her weight from foot to foot, hands twisting together 
hard enough to mark her skin with her nails.

One deep breath.  Another.

Scully crossed resolutely to the foot of the bed.  Her breathing sounded 
much too loud in the hushed room; she tried to be quieter, but her chest was 
already so tight with tension that the added action made her feel like she 
was suffocating.  She moved slowly, lifting Mulder's feet one at a time, 
easing each shoe off with a care she usually reserved for adjusting the 
focus on a microscope.  She set the shoes on the floor, side by side, and 
gently tucked Mulder's feet under the rumpled covers. 

He was still asleep.

Scully crept around the edge of the bed, still walking on the balls of her 
feet like a cat, and reached over her sleeping partner to grab the sheet and 
blanket.  It was a stretch, especially considering her determined effort not 
to lean on the mattress for fear of waking Mulder up; she found herself 
hovering over his chest for an endless moment, breathing him in.

He smelled of leather and warm cotton and sea-salt.  

She finally managed a two-finger hold on the elusive bedding and inched her 
way back, trying not to let the covers brush against Mulder until they were 
finally in place; she let them settle over him, drifting into place with an 
almost imperceptible whoosh of air.  There.  Done.  Mulder's hand was still 
dangling over the edge of the mattress; as an afterthought, she gently slid 
her fingers around his wrist and lifted his arm, moving it so that it rested 
on the bed, his hand palm-up, fingers curving in the soft relaxation of 
slumber.

Scully stood next to Mulder's bed for a long moment, watching him sleep.  

She knew that she ought to leave.

She didn't.

She reached out without really thinking and touched his hair, the barest 
hint of a caress, much in the same way that he had touched her a few hours 
earlier.  Her other arm was wrapped around her stomach again as though she 
were holding her insides together from a gunshot wound.

His skin was a shock against her fingertips, his warm solidity a shock to 
her mind.  He was here, and she was touching him.  This was not a dream.

The breath rushed out of her as reality hit home.  She hitched in more air 
and swallowed hard. She was shaking all over; her nails bit into her ribs as 
her left hand tightened convulsively.  She watched in awe as her fingertips 
ran lightly over his cheek, traced the line of his stubble-roughened jaw.

Touching him was like holding a lighted match.  It threatened to burn her 
but she could not let it go, not yet.  Not yet.

She brushed his lips with her thumb.  Soft, slightly chapped, curving in a 
gentle smile.  Her throat seemed to lock up as she traced the shape of his 
mouth, the memories of each time those lips had touched her cheek coming 
hard and fast and threatening to topple her over.

Slowly, her spine creaking at every centimeter, she bent over him.  Closer.  
Closer.

She could not breathe at all.

Her lips were inches from his.

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY, SOMETIMES ..."

Scully had never moved so fast in her entire life.  One moment a breath away 
from kissing Mulder in his sleep; the next thing she knew, she was almost 
six feet away from the bed -- six feet in the wrong direction, six feet 
further away from the connecting door.  

Shit!  

She came to a sliding stop, the carpet burning her feet with the friction, 
her veins pumping almost pure adrenaline, trying to get enough control over 
her shaking limbs to make a similarly rocket-propelled journey back across 
the room to the door --

"... Scully?"

OH, SHIT.

Mulder sat up, groggy, blinking and running a slow hand over his face.  
Scully froze, her heart was going like a trip hammer, trying to take a 
breath that would fill more than a quarter of her lungs.  A shrieky little 
voice in the back of her head kept screaming *Caught! Caught! Caught!*  It 
made it impossible to think.

"Sorry, Mulder," she said in something near her normal voice, "I didn't mean 
to wake you."  That was for damn sure.  "Go back to sleep."

"What are you doing in here?"  Sleepy, but not stupid.  Mulder was still 
rubbing one eye, but she could almost hear the neurons in his brain firing 
up and working through this new puzzle.

"I ..."  She couldn't remember.  All she could remember was the way his 
eyelashes had curved across his cheeks, a tidbit of information which was 
absolutely no help under the circumstances.  "I ..."

Guido chose that moment for a repeat performance.  "WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR 
EYE LIKE A BIG-A PIZZA PIE THAT'S AMORE ..."

The memory of her cover story hit like a thunderbolt.  The parrot, right.  
She indicated the cage with a tilt of her head, raising her eyebrow and 
starting to feel a little more like herself.  "I couldn't sleep."  She 
crossed to the cage and made a great show of pulling the cover over the 
cage, effectively silencing Guido's serenade.

"Oh, sorry about that," Mulder mumbled, pulling back the covers and swinging 
his legs off the mattress.  "I fell asleep the minute I got in here.  I 
didn't even take off --"  He broke off, looking down at his stocking-clad 
feet and at his shoes parked neatly beside the bed.  "Huh."

Scully stiffened.

Mulder stared at his shoes, a strange look on his face.  "I could have 
sworn --"

"I -- I --" she stuttered.  The vague, unfocused fear of discovery had 
suddenly sprouted teeth and bitten her heart in half.   "Mulder --" she 
croaked.

"Hmm?"  He was still pondering his feet.

"-- I'll take the parrot tomorrow."

He looked up.  "What?"

The words had fallen out of Scully's mouth so quickly that she had to 
backtrack to remember just what those words *were*.  "I said ... I'll take 
the parrot tomorrow."  It didn't make any more sense the second time.  "Just 
for the day.  Like you said."

Mulder stared at her, a sleepy smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.  He 
stood up and ambled towards her, yawning, and extended one hand as though 
for a handshake.  "I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met.  Fox Mulder.  And 
you are ...?"

She swallowed the remnants of fear and waved his hand away, acting her 
normal part.  "Mulder, it's obvious you're having trouble with Guido.  If he 
keeps this up we're going to get thrown out of the motel.  It's in both of 
our best interests if I help you out."

"Scully ..."  He was smiling.  That puzzled, delighted smile that meant that 
she'd surprised him, that warm smile that spread across his face and lit up 
his eyes and made her feel irrationally pleased with herself.  He was 
smiling, and she felt herself starting to smile back, and she hated herself 
for it.

She had a brief eyeblink vision of reaching for him, tugging his face down 
to her own.  His arms tight around her.  Their legs tangling together as 
they tumbled onto the bed ...

She turned away.  If she had looked at him any longer, she might have melted 
down like a candle and not have been recognizable when she cooled.  "I'd 
better get to back to bed.  I've got an autopsy in three hours."

He shrugged, and started towards the bathroom.  "All right.  Good night, 
Scully."

"Good night, Mulder."  Scully walked through the door and closed it behind 
her.  She could hear water running next door -- probably Mulder brushing his 
teeth, or washing his face.  She sighed, and stared through the dark in the 
direction of his bathroom.

She focused, and found herself staring at her trench coat.  A thought 
squirmed through her pounding brain, and she walked over and put her hand 
into the pocket.

Her fingers recognized the cool lines of the little notebook but she pulled 
it out to stare uselessly at it, in the dark.  Next door, Mulder's 
bedsprings creaked.

She crossed the room in ten blind steps and looked at her alarm clock.  It 
was four-fifteen.  She didn't feel the least bit tired.

It was going to be a very long night.

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

End of Chapter 5  (5/16)

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