From: "phyre" Subject: "WITH A VENGEANCE" Rachel Lee Arlington. 1/2. NC17. MSR. Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 20:29:41 -0400 I DID NOT WRITE THIS. I am posting for a friend. Please send all feedback and comments to her at: Arlington@Irelands-web.ie "WITH A VENGEANCE" By Rachel Lee Arlington. Arlington@Irelands-web.ie Please forward to ATXC. Please Archive. NC17. MSR. Spoilers: includes a post 'Gethsemane' theory. Summary: after five long and eventful years, Mulder and Scully finally get to grips with each other (snigger). DISCLAIMER: In a thrilling development, the Supreme Court today awarded ownership of the X Files to the fanfic writers of the world. The characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully stated that they were delighted with the judgement, as they have a damn sight more fun with us than they do with Chris Carter. Mr Carter is currently awaiting trial on charges of maliciously defacing an area of outstanding natural beauty. (Though it is understood that Mr Krycek's arm has in fact been recovered.) AUTHOR'S NOTES: This story was inspired by a comment Gillian Anderson made to the effect that if Mulder and Scully *were* to get together after all this time, it would be intense rather than romantic. So when they come to film this, she'll be happy with her character anyhow. I should also acknowledge the people who wrote all those millions of K's of 'G' rated MSR on the Gossamer archive. If it were not for them, I wouldn't have been driven to write this, and I would missed out on all this fun. TIMELINE: This is a mid season five story, all difficulties re the body on Mulder's floor and Scully's cancer having been resolved. (Don't worry, the story tells you how, I wouldn't leave you not knowing.) Though for some reason Mulder's apartment has reverted to its season one floorplan. Spooky huh? DEDICATION: It'll be a sad day when I dedicate an MSR to anyone but my very own Agent Scully ... five foot two with red (or orange or pink or purple) hair and freckles and sweet curves and sceptical eyebrows. For Nina. "Oh Dana." "Oh Fox." Oh show some sense. Stand back, I'll do it. "WITH A VENGEANCE" By Rachel Lee Arlington. Part one of two. Afterwards, after the dust settled and the debris stopped falling, and they could find breath to speak, they used to make each other laugh by trying to work out how it had happened. Who had started it. Whose fault it was, as Scully would say. Mine, I take the blame completely, Mulder would answer in all seriousness, his eyes soft and contrite, and the shadow of a smile playing around his mouth would stay as merely a shadow till after Scully threw him a look of lofty criticism and replied: "Don't flatter yourself." But the truth was, they didn't know. Scully thought that it had been her because ... well, she was the one who had passed through the fire of believing that she was going to die: that her life was on loan only, and that the gift was about to be reclaimed from her. And when that black shade had passed from her, when she found that death was no longer on her heels, she like all careless mortals, felt as though its power had been taken from it not merely for a time, but for all time. So it must have been her, she must have been the one with the insight to see past thoughts and fears and even feelings into the elemental heart of things. But Mulder wasn't entirely joking when he claimed that it had been his doing. Surveying the aftermath rather ruefully, and measuring the damage against Scully's little frame, and the tiny span of her hands and her wonderful self control, he could only come to the conclusion that it must have been him. And of course, they were both right. And both wrong. Scully had wanted to spare him from her cancer as much as possible. She refrained from telling him even a little of the pain and fear and anger and bitterness there was in her. Her life was being taken from her, not by blind chance or the fortunes of war or the inevitable clutch of time; it was being stolen. Men without faces or names or mercy had reached into her, into her body, turned her flesh against itself and now she was dying and no one could help her. She wanted Mulder close. She wanted him to tell her that all these years, all the times she had risked life and limb and career and sanity for him had not merely flowed by him without anymore recognition than a smile and a 'nice work Scully'. But he wasn't there. He was still out chasing his dream; and she had taken refuge in telling herself that was how she wanted it. That she didn't want to see his quick relentless mind weighed down with her unhappiness. Here and there she did manage to salvage some scrap of warmth or admission of feeling from him, but death was coming between them as surely and inexorably as a tide, and already she could feel him drawing away from her. And then ... she was spared. And he had done it, during the weeks when he had been stolen from under the baleful watchful eyes of his enemies, when the only Fox Mulder the world knew of was the engineered chimera, perfect in every detail except that it had no spark of life, had never had. A dead thing with his face and form. And those who had created it, the young sons of human mothers, but of fathers who existed only as DNA sequences drawn from another species, had been able to show him such wonders, such riches of proof and certainty. He had found the truth. And then traded it away for her life. He would have given himself too into the bargain; but the young hybrids helping him had at least salvaged that much from the agreement. The lives of Agents Mulder and Scully for the documents and records, the specimens, the tapes and discs ... and the lives of the rebellious hybrids. Mulder had balked at that. But they, with majestic calm, had explained to him that his life was more important. As long as he was alive, armed now with something bright and new - certainty - there was hope for their kind. But his death would damn all of them to lives of dronelike servitude. All the proof they knew of had been traded away and destroyed, but there was more out there, if it could only be found. She had been in hospital, too sick and tired and heartsore to care whether she lived or died, crying for her dead partner when the doctors had come for her. She had felt the sweep of fear, wanting to cry out to them to at least leave her the few broken days or weeks that were all remaining to her, when she had seen that Mulder was with them: dirty and unshaven and exhausted, with eyes like burning stars. She wondered how on earth she had managed to die without noticing, because if he was there she must be dead. Then she wondered what he had found in the afterlife to chase, because it was clear that he was still running after something. Then the veil was lifted. Not into death, but back into the land of life. All that she had said goodbye to was suddenly around her again. She could watch a morning or an evening or a rainstorm or the sun shining into her living room and not have to count it as one less left to her. Her days were finite, but no longer numbered. She could ask the question 'when will I die?' with reckless courage, because the answer was the merely mortal: 'someday, but no one knows when'. He had done this for her. At first she had been so delighted with life, with every tiny detail and trivial incident that went to make up the dizzying heady blissful rapture that it was to simply *exist*, that she didn't realize he wasn't there. But time passed, she grew stronger again, and she wanted to work. This time it wasn't out of any academic interest or even the desire to shield Mulder from the worst of his own excesses or anything but the burning need for answers. They had brought her to the brink of the chasm, and Mulder had snatched her back. If she owed him her life, then she knew exactly how to repay the debt. She plunged back into the files with ravenous intensity. Mulder's fight was hers too. She had imagined that all these things would bind them together, tight, the two of them closer than ever, that he would see her now as transmuted into his own kind. She played with the phrase 'married in the spirit' in her head. But he wasn't there. He sat at his desk, or in the driver's seat of the car, or paced the taped off area of a crime scene, or sat in Skinner's office; and his skin was like molten gold, his hands had the power to destroy worlds though they rested on the arms of his chair. He spoke so little and that little so obtuse that he seemed to be stooping down from some high heaven and condescending to use the clumsy concept of speech out of pity for human weaknesses. His eyes had turned to steel, blind metal that was blasted by the sight of angels. He scarcely noticed she existed. Her revelations and determinations chilled and died in the cold of his aloofness. She found herself hacking away at the more prosaic aspects of their work, trying to construct some shelter of normality for their little department from the constant storm of official criticism and censure that Mulder brought down on them with more reckless indifference than ever now. The final straw was the poltergeist case. Mulder wanted to go to Pittsburgh the following day to talk to someone he believed had been involved in designing some of the tank equipment used to raise hybrids. But he had no intention of allowing the trip to feature in any report or any conversation with Skinner. He wanted Scully to look into a case of poltergeist activity for him, so that if any questions were asked about what the X files had achieved that week, they would have an answer ready. He had dropped the case folder on her desk, right on top the keyboard of her PC although she was in the middle of typing something, and said abruptly: "Here. I want you to take a look at this for me while I'm gone. It's a hoax, but if you string it out you'll get the rest of the week out of it, and with any luck a prosecution for fraud will stick, so Skinner will be happy. He does like to see *results*. I'm going home now, I need to organize some things for tomorrow morning. I'll call you if there's anything else I need you to do." And he turned around and walked to the door. She was so annoyed at his manner and his high handed attitude that she had to bite her tongue, and then she was glad she had because he stopped and turned around and she was sure he was going to apologize. "Oh and Scully, I'm expecting Frohike to fax me in a bunch of stuff tomorrow. Just leave it for me, I want to deal with it myself." And then he was gone. Scully took the file off the keyboard and threw it onto the 'in' tray. Anger kept her focused and bright for a few more minutes, her fingers rattling furiously over the keys, peppering her report with typo's. Then the text went fuzzy, and she smacked the side of the monitor vengefully before she realized it was tears in her eyes that were blurring the letters on the screen. She swallowed hard, and said out loud to herself: "Stop it Dana." The tears still hovered dangerously close to the surface. She read back over the last few paragraphs of her report and tried to fix her thoughts on it, but she could feel her throat growing tighter and smaller, the heat on the rims of her eyelids building, till finally she had to let it go. "It isn't *FAIR*." Her tears splattered down onto the keyboard. She pushed back from the desk to avoid shorting something out, then leaned forward and folded her arms on the desk edge and put her head down and cried her heart out. He was being so unfair to her. She was all too sure of what had put this burning distance between them, and he wasn't being fair. She was convinced in her own mind that he regretted bitterly the choice he had made. Sure, he had saved her life, and she wasn't so faint of heart that she thought he had done it out of a sense of duty. For one thing, Mulder's sense of duty wasn't the most developed part of him. She knew he had saved her life because her life was something he cherished, something he was willing to risk or even trade his own for. He had done it for her, for his partner, his friend, the person he most trusted in all the world. But now he regretted it. Now he was right back where he started five years ago, with nothing to show for all the work and all pain and all the loss ... he was still sitting in a basement with a bunch of files full of questions and no answers and Dana Scully under his feet. He could have had his truth, his proof. The world could have been different. She tried to imagine what new universe of revelations and scandals and all of us with our eyes torn open to the wonders around us, to aliens and angels walking in our midst, to miracles of faith and sins of sciences, Mulder might have created if she had not been in his life. The tears flooded out of her again. It was too much for her even to conceive. Somehow her existence, her illness, the obligations Mulder felt towards her, were a pivot on which the world turned, or rather had failed to turn: staying instead in its own accustomed orbit, turning the same worn round of lies and denials. She was sure he blamed her for condemning him to the same weary treadmill of searching and losing and endlessly hoping against hope which he had been on for all his adult life. Self pity has a short shelflife. Scully's comfortingly wretched appraisal of Mulder's attitude turned back into anger. He had no right to do this to her. He had made a choice, without consulting her, and now he was punishing her for his own feeling that he had been shortchanged. She pushed away from the desk, mopping her tear stained face with her hands, getting up and finding her jacket and purse. She switched off lights and PC's and pulled the door behind her and went home. She'd had enough of the X files for the moment. By evening she had regained some degree of equilibrium. She had taken a long hot bath, put on comfortable clothes, eaten something nice and watched inane TV shows, taking comfort in how very ordinary life could be if you only let it. When the phone rang she picked it up at once, hoping that it was her mother, feeling that half an hour's idle gossip about her brothers and cousins and when was she going to come for the weekend was just what she needed to finish the cure. "Hello?" "Scully I forgot to say, Skinner is looking for a report on the Lewis case. I need you to put something together. Just tell him your theory that it was a lightening strike and freak accident combined, any crap will do to keep him happy. I'll call you. And don't forget Frohike's stuff. Just leave it for me." The connection clicked dead before she had a chance to say anything. Which was a mercy, because the words forming in her throat were taking their time, blossoming and ripening, growing hotter and bigger and more swollen with every second that passed. She looked at the phone in her hand as if she held it personally responsible. "You ... BASTARD." The phone hit the corner of the TV and bounced off onto the carpet, neither it nor its target in the least injured. That was the final insult. If something had gotten smashed she would have felt better. As it was, her anger just boiled and rolled and stormed without relief. "BASTARD. Rude arrogant selfish ... " That didn't scan right. She got up from the floor in front of the couch where she'd been sitting, tried again. "Rude arrogant opinionated ... " That was more like it. She was pacing furiously back and forth. "Selfish. You *are* selfish. It's selfish to give someone something and then make them pay for it forever and ever." She scooped up her carkeys from the table and went to the door. There she hesitated for a second, but her anger strengthened her again, and she opened the door and went out, striding down the hallway and saying with great conviction: "Don't you speak to me like that. Don't you DARE." She managed to drive all the way to his apartment with scarcely a drop in the temperature of her anger. Her thoughts kept going over the very nastiest parts of his behavior, and she slammed her hand down on the steering wheel more than once, and leaned on the horn if anyone even looked like they were thinking about cutting in on her, and generally drove like a bitch. When she reached the corner of Hagan Street she swerved hard, parked right in the exitway outside Mulder's apartment building. She got out of the car and slammed the door hard enough to shake the chassis, and took the steps up to the porch in two bounds. She pressed the buzzer, kept pressing, though her fingertip turned white from the pressure. "YES?" Mulder's snarl was almost drowned out by the sound of the bell, but she heard him and let go of the button. "It's me." Mulder thought he recognized Scully's voice, but the sheer impossibility of her arriving unannounced at his home and then ringing the bell like some guy calling to repossess the furniture was proof that it must be someone else. "Who?" Scully had a white out. "Dana ... Katherine ... Scully." She ground out the words, each separate and laced with a different poison. "Oh." The sound came over as flat and indifferent on the little speaker at her side. Shock doesn't transmit well. She heard the lock buzz and thrust the door open. She slammed it behind her, hoping she was disturbing everyone in the building, then went to the elevator and stabbed the call button. The down arrow lit at once, but standing waiting for the car to arrive was impossible. She turned, turned back, turned again. Stalked out into the stairwell and threw herself at the stairs. She came through the firedoor at the end of the hallway like a SWAT team of one, and she actually passed her hand briefly over the back of her waist, half unconsciously looking for her holster, which was still on her mantlepiece at home. Luckily for Mulder. She slowed from a headlong run to a half jog to a long striding walk and stopped right in front of his door. She had her hand raised and her fist clenched to start pounding when she realized he had already left the door very slightly ajar. She thrust it open hard enough to bang it back against the wall. Mulder was standing at the table just inside the dining room packing something into a document folder and his head jerked up at the sudden explosion of noise. "Scully!" His hand went to the holster at his waist, but then he registered that her attention was focused on him, not on some would be assailant outside. "What's wrong?" He asked urgently, his face hard and keen. Scully strode in, the door still lying open behind her. Her gaze raked over the small room, with its bare table and some cheesy framed print that had probably come with the place. He never furnished this room because he never used it. He didn't eat. Didn't sleep. Didn't do anything that mere mortals do. "What's wrong," she hissed, "is your stupid poltergeist case, and Frohike's junk mail, and your report for Skinner." Mulder looked at her like he had no idea who she was. "I am sick to death of doing your typing, and filling in your expenses sheets and lying to Skinner on your behalf. I am *not* your secretary Mulder." She was feeling better already. Every word out of her mouth was making more space for her to breath. She should have done this a long time ago. Five years ago, something nasty inside her said triumphantly. For one second something moved in his eyes, something real and human and surprised. Then he closed down again, looked back at the papers in his hand as he answered her. "Look Scully, I don't have time to get to get into this now, I'm going to try and make the night flight to Pittsburgh. We can talk about it when I get back if you have a problem." He dropped the document folder on the table and turned his back on her, going into the little hallway between the living room and dining room on one side and the kitchen bedroom and bathroom on the other. Scully's mouth dropped open, and she felt her lungs ache and complain from lack of oxygen, but her whole body was focused on being furious, she had nothing left over to breath with. Her gaze darted over the walls and ceiling and into the living room, as if she expected things to burst into flame under the touch of her eyes. She managed to bite off enough air to keep from passing out, when her glance fell on the folder on the table. She lunged at it, snatched it up just as Mulder came back into the room, carrying his holdall. Just in time to see Scully open out the card cover and spill the loose pages inside out onto the table. A few more sheets were attached to the outside with a paper clip, and she yanked them free and threw them on top of the rest, then flung the empty cover in the general direction of the living room. "What the - SCULLY!" Mulder dropped his bag and came to the table, angrily scooping the pages into a rough pile. "Well while you're doing that maybe you can spare two seconds to talk to me." Mulder glared at her. "Scully I'm in a hurry, I don't have time for this. I told you, when I get back. You're too upset to talk to anyway." This last was said with venomous condescension. "UPSET?!?" Scully screamed at him. "You haven't seen upset. I'll show you upset." She pounced on his discarded holdall, which he hadn't zipped up. She plunged her hand in, grabbing up fistfuls of t shirt and sweatshirt and pairs of socks rolled together and flung them out onto the floor. The pair of folded denims took her whole hand to get free, so that was all she got out on the next trawl, but they left the bag empty enough that she was able to just turn it upside down and shake out a rain of sneakers and washbag and walkman and cassette cases. "Scully!" Mulder was trying to gather stuff up, but then he threw it down in disgust and snatched the bag from her, while she panted at him in reckless triumph. "What the hell is wrong with you?!?" "YOU! You're what's wrong with me. I'm sick to death of you." Mulder was crouched down, bag in hand, gathering up his abused clothing. He answered her with the indifferent patience of a shark being threatened by a minnow. "You're unhinged Scully, go home and get some rest." "Arh!" Mulder, with his eyes on the carpet looking for the contents of his washbag which had rolled under the table, didn't see her lock her gaze on the living room, so the first he knew was the flash of her black pants leg past him as she ran into the other room. He lifted his head, mostly puzzled, but maybe expecting the sound of her throwing herself on the couch and a storm of crying with it. He tightened his mouth. Better tears than this irrational temper tantrum, but he hadn't time for either. The crash of glass and metal and the thunder of books hitting the floor had him up off his haunches and through the door in no seconds flat. He got there just in time to see her straighten up after using the length of her arms to sweep everything on his desk onto the floor. Now she was wrenching the drawers open and out, emptying the contents onto the floor, skipping her feet back to avoid the drawers as she dropped them at the front of the desk. "Son of a bitch." Mulder was transfixed for a second. Scully had started to gut folders, throwing the contents in all directions: at the window, at the couch, at the wall, onto the shelves. A highly classified list of US senators who believed they had been abducted by aliens landed on the surface of the fishtank and sank slowly into the water, where fish with only minimal security clearance were freely able to examine it. But this fiddling work quickly bored her. She scooped her hands around the row of books on the window sill and yanked it over, hard covers banging onto the floor. Anything that landed on the desk she knocked off again. Mulder managed to get his powers of movement back on line, and strode over to her and pulled her away from the desk by the arm. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" He went to retrieve the sheet of sodden paper from the fishtank. "I'm getting your attention Mulder. Is it working?" "You're out of your mind." Mulder gave up on the sheet in the tank and crouched down, sighing over the debris on the floor. He clearly was not going to get to Pittsburgh tonight. He lifted the first book up off the floor, dusting its cover down, and put it back on the desk, reaching for another at the same time. Scully put her hand out over his bent back and got the corner of the rescued volume and flung it at the wall. Mulder flashed a look of pure rage at her and lunged upright. Scully took fright, turned and ran for the door. She gained a second while he thought she was bolting for the frontdoor, but she skittered a sharp corner into the little side hallway. The door directly in front of her was the kitchen. She powered ahead, slammed into the front of the cooker and turned. Mulder was still only at the dining room table. In a confined space his long legs slowed him down. She had time to lunge at the table and sweep the debris of dishes and glasses and takeout cartons onto the floor before he made it across the hall, and his cry of anger was drowned out by the crash of breaking plates. She made a dive for the plate rack on the drainer, but Mulder grabbed her from behind, his long arms wrapping around her and holding her own arms helplessly down at her sides. She squirmed and wriggled, but he wasn't giving her an inch, he held on tight. Scully lifted her right foot, drove her foot down as hard as she could onto his instep. The edge of her bootheel bit into the soft canvas of his hightop. He let out a roar of pain, let her go, and she flew out of his arms and attacked the plate rack, pulling it down and only narrowly missing her own feet as it hit the floor and everything on it exploded into a thousand fragments. "You BITCH!" Mulder managed to get his foot back onto the floor. "Bastard!" She spared a second for the rarefied pleasures of purely verbal abuse, before she caught sight of half a dozen wine glasses standing in two rows of three at the end of the countertop. "Not them!" Mulder tried to block her, but she ducked and twisted right under his arm, and Mulder was too used to scrapping with men to make an adjustment for her tiny frame, and he missed her entirely till after she swept the glasses onto the floor. Five smashed on impact: one survived somehow; but Scully with Mulder hanging onto her wrist swung round, careless of how her sweater was being dragged off her shoulder, and stamped on the last survivor, reducing it to even smaller pieces than the rest. "What the hell do you want from me?" Mulder shouted, trying to subdue her free arm, while she tried to get back the one he already had. She'd spotted the coffee maker. For a second she was too intent on escape to have time for talking, but he asked again, this time with more venom and less violence. "What do you want from me?" "I want you to stop tormenting me!" She found the right combination of twist and pull, and she swung her arm in a circle, and he had to let go or have his wrist dislocated. The coffee maker landed in the sink and did double duty, smashing itself and the pile of dishes there. "*I'm* tormenting *you* ?" Mulder could afford to get into the technicalities now. There wasn't anything breakable left in the kitchen and she was reduced to throwing the dishcloths on the floor. "YES." Scully flung the last dishcloth at him, hitting him in the eye. "I want you out of my house." What's left of it, he added silently. "I want you out of my LIFE," Scully hissed, with the same mental addendum. End of part one. Go to part two. Part two of two. "So go. No one's stopping you. Ask for a transfer, Skinner will give you one. Hell, he can't believe you're still working with me as it is." "I can't believe it either!" "Fine." Mulder's voice took on a thinner sharper edge. Something deeper than anger was stirring him. "I'm sick of you." "I'm sure you are." "I hate you." "I'm sure you do." That last was said with bitter defiance. Scully was gasping for air, her fingers flexing and unflexing at her sides. She cast a hopeful glance around, but there wasn't anything worth attacking anywhere. The only thing still in one piece in the kitchen was Mulder. She sprang forward, and he was so startled that he just stepped back, making no attempt to get his hands up to defend himself. Her hands clawed against his face, the nails of one hand catching his temple and cheek, while the other hand tightened on a handful of his hair. "I hate you." She screamed the words at him as he managed to get hold of the hand with the traces of his blood under the nails, and tried to prize the other one free from his hair. "Why did you bother? Why did you bother saving my life just so you could hate me for it? Why are you punishing me for still being alive? It's *your* fault!" "WHAT? I didn't ... I ... you're ... " Mulder managed to extricate her hand and only about half of his hair went with it. "You're the one that doesn't even want to ... look at me, or talk to me, or *anything*." "WHAT?!?" Scully lunged at him again, but anger made her incapable of planning an attack so she had to resort to just pounding on his chest with her fists. "I did my best Scully, alright?" He pulled away from her, backing to the door, his face a mask of rage and disgust. "I did the only thing I could. I had no time. You were dying ... really dying. I should have thought of something else. I should have hidden some of it, I should have done something. I should have been smarter. But I wasn't. Okay? I wasn't." Scully felt the tears scalding her eyes, and when she answered the sob caught in her throat made her voice sound twisted and cruel. "Well I'm sorry you made the wrong choice. I'm sorry you regret it." She took a deep breath, straightened up, her head lifted like a queen, and prepared to sail by him with cool disdain. But when she got to the door and he stepped back and out of her way to let her into the hallway, when it was so obvious that he was going to let her go without denying what she had said, something in her just exploded open, and the red hot rage she had taken out on his possessions was nothing compared to the white hot dragon that had her now. "I HATE YOU!" She swung at him, and the back of her hand connected with the corner of his mouth. "Ah! SHIT!" Mulder put his hand to his lips, took it away again, looking at the smear of blood there in utter disbelief. "You little ... " It was an unfortunate choice of adjective. Scully sprang at him, both hands reaching up for his throat, but Mulder had finally been provoked past the reach of his never supreme self control. He batted her hands to one side and shoved his palm flat onto the front of her chest and thrust her back from him. She stumbled back, almost fell, saved herself against the edge of the counter. "What am I supposed to do Scully? What more do you want from me? So I let them go. After everything they did to you, everything they took from you ... I let them go. I'm *sorry*. Should I have let you die? Is that what you wanted from me? I couldn't. I *couldn't*. But for Christ's sake, can't you see that I'm trying to make it right? I don't eat or sleep or breathe except to find them, to find some way of crucifying them. I can't try any harder Scully." Scully was hanging onto the edge of the counter as if she was afraid the sheer volume of his voice and the rage there was going to knock her off her feet. "I'll make it right Scully, if you just give me a *chance*. I can do it, I can find them and nail them to the cross. I know you think I can't, I saw the way you attacked the files when you came back to work, you think you'll have to do it by yourself, but you won't. You've given up five years of your life and your ... and so much, you don't have to do it again, I swear. I'll find them, I'll find them for you. I gave it all away, it's my fault, my problem." The sheer breadth of his misunderstanding of her actions, of her feelings, was stunning. Somewhere far down in the core of her brain, Scully knew that he was saying words that she should have been thankful to hear. But her heart seemed to be like a land made hard and cruel by long drought: now that the yearned for rain had come, it could find no way into the depths, but instead ran swift and destructive over the surface. "STOP IT!" She had to keep hold of the counter top or the force her scream came out with would have dropped her to her knees. "Stop making it my fault! No one is doing this to you Mulder. You're doing it to yourself!" Mulder blinked and rocked, as if her voice had mass and power and had hit him full in the face. "It's *you*. You're the one who wants to live like this. You're the one wants to be so alone, so driven, so far *above* us all." Scully was distantly aware of tears spilling over the rims of her eyelids, but she had no sense of them falling, nor could she feel them on her cheeks. They must be boiling away spontaneously in the heat of her rage. "That's the truth, isn't it?" She demanded. "You have to be so far away, so untouchable." "Goddamn you." Pain. Mulder knew it was pain by the way he bent slightly forward, his hand flinching to his stomach as if he expected blood and gore there, but by sheer force of will he superheated it and it turned charged and vicious and he could call it anger. "What do you care anyway?" Red rag to a bull, and he knew it. "Nothing! I don't give a damn!" Scully's fury was in no way helped by an acute awareness of how stupid it was to say that when she was screaming at him, standing in the debris of his kitchen with the evidence of just how much she *did* care crunching under her boot heels. "Then leave me alone." Mulder said it softly, with perfect poisoned control. Scully screamed. Just screamed, a jagged wordless scream that stretched the corners of her mouth and filled her own ears and sent fire down her nerves till she flung away from the counter and leapt at him. He put his hands out, trying to fend her off, but she was moving so fast and so hard he only succeeded in getting hold of her sweater and she kept coming, the garment getting dragged off her shoulders as she impacted with his chest. He cannoned backwards out of the doorway into the hall, his grip on her clothing dragging her with him, and he dipped his head and rounded his spine, trying to save himself from smashing against the wall behind him. He hit the wall hard just as Scully finally irretrievably lost her balance, tripping over his feet, and she fell towards him at the same time his head bounced off the wall. His chin and her nose met. Scully's head filled with a dark red spangled haze and she smelt the hot iron buzz of blood in her nostrils. Blinded and dazed she got her two hands up, flailing at him, trying to find him enough to do him some damage. She got a handful of hair and hung on like grim death. "Get - let - will you get off of me?!?" Mulder got his hand on her throat and tried to push her off. It was like fighting a crack crazed kitten. She was too small to get hold of. He couldn't just shove her away because her arm was shorter than his and she'd scalp him before she let go of his hair. "Would you get away from me!" This came out with a hint of desperation. There was a piece of broken crockery stuck to the heel of his left boot which was interfering with the grip of his sole on the floor and he could feel his foot sliding. Scully had abandoned all attempts at defense and had both hands fisted in his hair at either side of his head, and he could feel her tensing upwards, trying to get herself up high enough to headbutt him or bite him or some damn thing. His foot slipped, and the jerk of him starting to fall down the wall wrenched Scully's grip on his hair so badly that the pain made him lose the lock on his knees, and he crumpled and she fell with him. He managed to get his hand from the front of her throat, terrified that he'd break her neck or something in the fall, but he grabbed a handful of hair out of blind instinct and the will to survive. Scully, finding herself suddenly off balance and with Mulder dragging her with him as he slid down the wall, let go of one handful of hair and grabbed hold of his sweatshirt instead. Mulder hit the floor ass first, his legs splayed out in front of him. Scully's knee hit the floor and she fell onto her hip, then she scrambled back onto her knees, trying for height, for an advantage over him. Mulder still had hold of her hair, but the pain in his tailbone was distracting him from the battle. All he could do was squeeze his eyes tight shut and turn his head to one side to try and protect his face. The little bitch had hold of his hair and he could feel her straining up against him, trying to get her head to his. He stretched up, trying to get every inch of height out of his spine, trying to get above her, but she was in the better position, and tiny as she was she had enough height to get her hand onto the top of his shoulder. He could feel her little fingers splayed out, biting into his shoulder through his sweatshirt. The coiled up strength of her body against his chest, her arm next to his head where she had hold of his hair. Christ. She was up on one knee and he was on his ass and she still only came up to his level. He was conscious of his heart pounding and his breath pumping, and the shock waves of the fall still echoing and resonating along his muscles. Scully tried to turn his head by pulling his hair. She was going to make him look at her if she had to break his neck to do it. She was through with letting him preserve his precious distance. As if she wasn't good enough to get near him. She had to hang onto his shoulder to keep enough height, and she had to hang onto his hair to keep any control, so the only thing she could do to force him to move was to wedge her chin against the side of his face, trying to prize him towards her. Her throat smelt hot. He could smell the clean laundry smell of her sweater, and the metal tang of blood, but Scully smelt of heat. His temple lifted away from the wall, he turned his head. She shifted her chin, put the side of her face against his, kept pulling him around. Her cheek was very warm, and faintly downy, just like a peach. She took her face away, and his eyes flashed open, and her mouth was right in front of him. There was a smear of blood from her nostril down onto her lip. Mulder thrust his chin up hard. Scully hissed, militant, but she wasn't afraid of him. Kiss. More than kiss. It was impossible to tell if the pain of teeth snatching at lips and tongues, if the stab and thrust and gasping gulping frenzy was meant to be an attack or a surrender. Mulder broke first, trying to get to the mole between her mouth and nose, but she wouldn't let him get away, she had him again in the space of heart beat, and as soon as he felt her mouth under his again he wondered why the hell he had wanted anything else. She tasted of chocolate, and her mouth, the very crescent of her teeth, seemed so tiny, so cunningly crafted, a jewel of a woman, just like the real thing but smaller. Mulder let go of the handful of soft hair and caught hold of her head in his two hands, fanning his fingers out, appalled and amazed and enthralled by how much of her skull he could enclose in his palms. They were breathing for each other, each breath snatched through their nostrils and emptied out into their kiss and shared between tongues that flashed and danced. Scully's hands were raking over him, snatching at shoulders and arms and chest and thighs, looking fruitlessly for something that wasn't solid and lean and hard and a smooth expanse of muscle with the bright ridges of collarbone and wrist and breastbone and kneecap. Mulder pulled away from the wall, pushing her back with his jaw, with his hands on her head. One hand left her skull, reached past her. As she fell back and he moved forwards, still mouth to mouth, his hand on the floor took their weight, lowered them together onto the hard parquet. He leaned over her, not wanting to lie on her when he could have one hand eating her up, taking up her little shoulder into his palm, then curving over her ribcage, over her belly, cupping one side of her behind, lifting her so that she arched up under him and cried out into his mouth. He ran his hand down the back of her leg, hooking under the back of her knee. She bent her legs, let her thighs fall open shamelessly, whimpering into their kiss in the hopes of him touching her there. He didn't leave her to suffer. His palm cupped over her, fingers biting hard through the stretched taut crotch of her pants, finding the fabric already damp and warm. She gasped from the pleasure of receiving the touch, he from the excitement of giving it. Leaning forward like this, his sweatshirt hung away from his body in loose folds, and the touch of the air on his chest and nipples was like the stroke and tease of tiny fingers. Or so he thought, till he felt the real slick and claw of her hands, and realized what it was to feel the touch of fire. She grabbed up fistfuls of the soft cotton and dragged it towards his head, and he managed to break from her for a split second and tear it off, flinging it behind him. They fell back to each other's mouths again, gasping as if they were suffocating, as if they could breath only through their frantic fevered kiss. As if the only air that existed was the brief snatches they caught when their mouths moved from one angle to another, or when one or other would involuntarily jerk back from a particularly rough bite. Scully's hands devoured the endless expanse of his naked back and chest and shoulders. The hot smooth acres of skin, the fine haze of hair on his forearms, the wiry mist on his chest, the hard tips of his nipples. His ribs, his spine. She was in a fury of desire, her nails raking hard over his skin. If she could bear to have her mouth away from his she would have torn his flesh off his bones with her teeth. She hated every sweet heavy curve and perfect inch of skin and the gorgeous rank male smell of him. Hated it for every moment of five years that she hadn't had it. Mulder finally wrenched himself free of their kiss, his mouth attacking the side of her throat, while his hands went to the waist of her pants, looking blindly for a button, couldn't find one. He fumbled feverishly, found the slight difference in one side seam over the other, his brilliant analytical mind figuring it for a invisible zipper. The pull on it was tiny, neatly hidden in the seam. He hooked his fingers into the waist and yanked as hard as he could. The zip split, Scully arching up under him, lifting herself off the floor so that he could get hold of both sides of the pants and tear them down onto her thighs. She was wearing thin silk panties, and he treated them with the same callous disregard, pulling them roughly down onto her legs. She threw her head back, her fingers in his hair again, gulping down air. "Oh God, yes." The words tore out of her throat at the touch of the air on her bare skin, at the feel of his hands on her hips. She arched up again, begging with the movement of her body. "Please. *Please*." She wasn't taking any chances, she was going to ask any and every way she could think of. He put his mouth back down on hers, smothering any further words she had to say. Her knees were bound together by her half down pants, but he had space enough to insinuate his hand over her pubis and between her legs, his fingers finding out the swollen soaking flesh. Scully convulsed under him, screamed into his mouth. He snatched his hand away, and she tore her mouth from his. "Please!" "It's alright. It's okay." Mulder rushed the words out, hastily pulling back from her onto his knees. Scully whimpered in disbelief, rolled up onto her elbows. Then she dropped back onto the floor in heartfelt relief. Mulder was going to save her. He was tearing his belt open, yanking open the buttons of his jeans fly, his holster falling onto the floor with a thud. He was going to save her. Mulder got his jeans and boxer briefs dragged down to his knees, his eyes still rivetted on Scully's pale soft stomach, on the dipped shadow of her navel, on the floss of tawny brown curls between her legs, and the round flesh of her pubis, lifted and rocked by the arch of her body against the floor. He lunged back at her, groaning out loud at the overload of sensation as his cock was pressed between his own stomach and her sweet soft flesh. Scully writhed under him, rubbing herself against his hardness, and he knew he had to get where he was going soon. He tried to get his knee between her legs, tried to push them further apart, but of course the pants were in the way. They'd have to come off. But that meant the boots as well. Neither of them were going to have their sanity even half intact if they waited that long. Mulder lifted his weight a fraction off her. "Turn over." "Oh God." Scully rolled under him, pushing up onto her hands and knees, the crumb strewn dusty parquet floor of the hallway suddenly the most significant thing she had ever seen. His hands closed on her hips, drawing her back a little. One hand lifted and left, and she waited, either not breathing at all or panting so rapidly and shallowly that she wasn't getting any air. Silk. Fire. Steel. She felt the head of his cock at her opening, felt him press, falter, push. Felt him part her, then hold, draw back, in another inch, hold. She shoved back hard, only flinched and hesitated when it seemed there was no end to him, no sign of his hips fetching up against her ass. "Oh - JESUS!" That came out of Mulder like a lightening strike. He drew back one inch, then pushed home, and she realized she had given up within sight of the goal, there was only a little more, and then he was hard against her, her behind cradled in his groin. He pulled back, thrust home, did it again. Again. She rocked back, meeting him half way, a brutal counter rhythm, drawing away from each other, then slamming back to meet with groans and gasps. Mulder let go of her hips, grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her back onto her knees. She was too much smaller than he for him to stay deep inside her, she felt him slipping and tried to struggle away from him, back onto her hands. But he was stripping her sweater upwards, and he calmed her slightly by saying hastily: "Just this, take this off." She did, tearing it off over her head, letting it go as she plunged back onto her hands, and he went with her, surging up into her again. They found the thrust and counterthrust at once. His hands were on her hips, on her shoulders, then he leaned over her, and she supported his weight on her back when he sleeked his hands under her, squeezing her breasts through the tight rib of her top. They were in a headlong freefall, each urging the other on. They snatched at breath, hearts pounding. Scully's fingers clawed against the smooth floor, Mulder took her hips again and held her hard as if he thought she would escape if she could. Scully's nerves and muscles turned to liquid, she lost the lock on her arms, dropped onto her elbows. He went with her, as much as to say she couldn't hope to get away. She slid down flat on the floor, her face buried in her arms, muffling her gasps and cries. Mulder flattened himself against her, his hands closing around her wrists, hips thrusting and twisting mercilessly. Five long years he'd listened to her criticizing and sneering and carping, and now at last he'd figured out how to keep her quiet. "Oh ... no ... no ... " Scully writhed under him, and her protests were rather canceled out by the way she pushed her hips upwards, her legs open as wide as the damn pants would allow, and the way her body turned to pulsing fire around him, so that the rhythm of his movements was doubled and trebled and multiplied to infinity by the rhythm of her body, and that was way more than he could stand, and then he was rigid against her, harder and harder because she was growing more and more soft and liquid. And then he came. "Oh - God - YEAH!" Somewhere under him Scully was laughing weakly, amused by the sheer abandon of his shout. Mulder had to wait till his body refocussed, bones and muscles and skin and frantic heartbeat resolving themselves out of a universe of heat and pulse and seed and Scully's incredible flesh, before he could be sure. "Are you okay?" His voice was shaking. "I'm *fine*," Scully growled. "Good, that's good to know," Mulder panted, dropping his head into the nape of her neck, listening to his heart calming down somewhat. "Mister Mulder?" The firm rap on the front door jerked both their heads up. Mulder, wild eyed, realized that though they could see out into the dining room, the bulk of the still open front door was shielding them from view. "Shit. Shit." Mulder struggled away from Scully, gasping and trying to swallow a moan as he slid out from her body. He knelt up, tried to get enough of his jeans to pull them up. Scully sprang up onto her feet, her silky pants and underwear sliding up easily enough. "I'll go, you've no shirt on," she hissed, picking up her sweater and slinging it casually round her hips to hide the segment of naked skin where her zipper was broken. Mulder nodded silently, flattening himself against the wall to avoid being seen. Scully walked out into the dining room, tossing her head to try and get her hair out of her eyes. She came to the door just as the two men standing on the threshold grew tired of waiting and stepped into the room. They looked at her, she looked at them. The one leading, a tall well built black guy in his late twenties, reached into his jacket and produced his ID. "I'm Patrolman Bassom, this is Patrolman Connors ... " his fair freckled companion nodded once, as if to admit that was indeed who he was, " ... Alexandria PD. Is Mister Mulder here?" "He's ... he's busy right now," Scully guessed. She was absolutely right. Somehow in all the frantic struggling, Mulder's fly had lost two fairly vital buttons. He was trying to stretch his sweatshirt down far enough to make himself decent. "Is there a problem Officer?" Scully asked, in her very best crime scene voice. Patrolman Bassom might have been more impressed if her hair hadn't been hanging over her eyes, with tossed hanks sticking up at the back of her head from having been lying on the floor. Or if her face hadn't had the flushed look of someone who's been crying, and she hadn't had a streak of dried blood going from her nose to her chin, and her lips hadn't been swollen and red. "A neighbor of Mister Mulder's called in to complain about a disturbance. He said it sounded like a fight." Actually the phrase Mister Kabatsky had used was 'it sounds like a fucking war zone in there, and I'm just waiting for the gunfire'. "Oh. Well, as you can see, there's no disturbance here. I guess we must have had the TV up too loud. I'm sorry." Patrolman Bassom had noticed the scattered clothes on the floor of the dining room, and now his gaze traveled past Scully and into the living room. Even from the front door he could see the debris of books and papers and a desk lamp in the middle of the floor. "Who exactly are you, Miss?" "I'm Spe ... " Scully veered off. "I'm Dana Scully, I'm a ... friend ... of Mister Mulder's." "Well I think we'd really like to speak to Mister Mulder." Patrolman Bassom had turned his head towards the side hall, looking for any sign of the tenant. What he saw was the doorway of the kitchen, the floor thick with smashed crockery and glass and half a dozen dishcloths. "Hi." Mulder appeared from around the door, one hand raking through his hair, the other firmly on the hem of his sweatshirt. "Can I help you guys?" "Mister Mulder?" Patrolman Bassom asked, in a 'don't tell me, let me guess' tone of voice. "Yeah. Fox Mulder. Is there a problem?" "Well maybe you can tell us Mister Mulder. Your neighbor Mister Kabatsky was worried that there was some kind of ... dispute going on here." "Oh. Right. Eh ... no. No. We're fine. Everything's fine." "You're sure about that?" Patrolman Bassom was taking stock of the way Mulder's hair looked like he'd been dragged through a hedge, and the four little bleeding crescents on the side of his forehead, the blood diluted by a fine sheen of sweat, and the teeth marks on his lower lip. "Yeah. Absolutely sure." "Miss?" Patrolman Bassom looked at Scully, silently appealing to her to take her chance. "You're *sure* everything's okay?" "Yes. Absolutely." "I see. Well, in that case ... " The two patrolmen exchanged a weary look, and Patrolman Bassom nodded to them and stepped back. "You might close your door over," was his parting shot. Scully and Mulder stood frozen for a second, then they each scanned around, their eyes taking the same inventory of destruction as the patrolmen, then they looked back at each other, aghast. "Oh my ... " "Do you think he ... " They both exploded into laughter at the same time, Mulder staggering towards her, doubled up, while she tried to lift her arms to him but couldn't because of the sobs of mirth shaking her. Mulder leaned down on her, and she pressed her face into his arm, trying to smother her hysteria. Mulder pulled away for a second and kicked the door closed, before stepping back into her arms. Gradually their laughter gave way to smiles, and the smiles gave way to a long slow kiss. "I'd ask you into the bedroom, if you promise not to trash it." Mulder said softly. "Okay, but don't make out like this was my fault. You're to blame." "Me?" Mulder's voice was still low and gentle. He was only too happy to be held responsible for what had happened. "You're the one with the temper. Redhead." "Fox." "Dana." "What about Pittsburgh?" "We'll go tomorrow." "What about Skinner?" "He's okay, but I never found him that attractive." Scully punched him on the arm, hitting him square on the bicep and sending his whole arm numb. "Scully! That *hurt*." "Good. Get into that bed." "What?" Mulder was laughing, rubbing his arm and backing towards the door. "You heard me!" Scully pounced and Mulder bolted for the bedroom with her in hot pursuit. The door slammed and the bedsprings protested as something six foot one hit them at high speed. "What do you think?" Patrolman Connors asked as he fastened his seat belt. "I think that lanky bastard needs pistolwhipping. Did you see the size of her? He might as well beat up on a child. Bastard." "And she lied for him." "Yeah, poor thing is probably too scared to complain. Christ. I wish she'd stand up for herself." The End. 9/14/1997 Arlington@Irelands-web.ie