TITLE: Beginning
AUTHOR: Jess M
EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com
DISCLAIMER: If I did own them, David would be a much, much happier
man. Hell, they'd both be happier. And so would we.
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere, just let me know.
SPOILER WARNING: Deep Throat. No, really. This one will really, really
spoil you for that second episode, so if you haven't seen anything
past the Pilot, you better steer clear...
RATING: STRONG R, maybe more
CONTENT WARNING: Hmmm... some 'bation, and some swearin'
CLASSIFICATION: UST, baby. All the way!
SUMMARY: In the midst of her second case with Fox Mulder,
F...B...I..., Dana Scully reflects on her new job, her partner and her
past.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: HELP MEEEE... I CAN'T GET THE SECOND EPISODE OUT OF MY
BRAIN! They were so cute then. She was so plump and frumpy, but those
lips... Oh, the poutiness! The eyes! Has anyone on earth ever had
larger eyes than Season One Scully? The flirting. It was shameless...
shameless, I tell you! And him... the hair makes the Flowbee years
look like heaven. And, oh God, the clothes. Was Vancouver stuck in
some terrible time warp back to 1983? Now *there's* an X-file for you.
Butt-genies, my ass. Anyway, I have managed to turn a forty-five
minute episode into HOURS of reading. How did that happen? Again, it's
an... oh nevermind.

Email me. I love it. You know I do, baby!
 

Beginning.
 

The week after they returned from Oregon, Dana had her first argument
with... well, she didn't really feel comfortable calling anyone "Fox."
Mulder. She had her first argument with Mulder. He'd spent the
previous three days tossing file folders at her as soon as she walked
in the door, saying things like: "Take a look at this one, Scully. See
what your so-called science makes of it."

It was grating, to say the least. But she found absolutely nothing to
suggest that there was the slightest paranormal activity taking place
anywhere beyond Agent Mulder's well-gelled hair. It wasn't that she
was all about rationalism, despite what he had chosen to believe. She
had a job that she had been asked to do. Okay, she wasn't going to do
exactly what they wanted of her. She had a feeling that would push the
limits of her personal morals, but she knew what his partner was
supposed to do and she intended to do it. That did not mean validating
pig-men and sewage-eating mutants simply because he wanted them to be
validated. She needed proof, and she didn't see anything wrong with
that.

"Science," she told him, "would not necessarily up your solve-rate. A
little discretion might."

It was well-known that the X-Files division had one of the worst
solve-rates in the Bureau. Mulder insisted that was because the sorts
of things he investigated couldn't be solved, but Dana wasn't into
that kind of rationalization. They "couldn't" be solved because there
was nothing meaningful to find, as her father pointed out when she
told him about her new job.

"The taxpayer doesn't give a shinola about little green men, Dana,"
Ahab said. "Is this why you quit being a doctor and joined the FBI? To
look into UFO sightings? I thought you wanted to serve the people, to
make a difference. I didn't raise my little girl to be a kook, you
know. You've got a good head on your shoulders..."

It went on from there. And she knew he was right. Which made Mulder
glaring at her over the top of some ridiculous file about alien
technology being sold on the black-market all the more galling.

"A little discretion? Is that what they sent you here to provide?"

"Maybe," she answered, glaring right back. She liked Fox Mulder,
really she did. Or at least she thought she might like him, if he'd
stop being such an ass for five minutes. "Would that really be so bad?
God forbid you have to back something up."

"God has nothing to do with it, Scully."

She rolled her eyes and went back to reading. Pig-men. What was he
thinking?

"Well," Mulder said, leaning back in his chair with the alien
technology file spread out over his chest, "you let me know when you
find all the neat little scientific explanations for why I'm wrong,
okay?"

That did it. "For heaven's sake, Mulder. I wasn't sent here to prove
you wrong." He stared at her. "Okay, maybe I was, but that's not what
I envision myself doing for the rest of my career. Frankly, I have
loftier goals than spending my time at the FBI making a fool out of
you."

"Oh yeah? Like what?"

He could be so damn childish. She sighed. "Like being your partner,
and an investigator. I have a job, and sometimes I use science to help
me do it. Sometimes I don't. You need to review the file they sent you
on exactly what my position is within this division before you start
handing out little assignments like gold stars for my report card."

Mulder examined her for a moment before replying. "I've read that
report, Scully. I've practically memorized it. Just like I read the
reports for the last two agents they sent to work with me. I must
admit, your file is considerably more impressive, but that doesn't
change the fact that you were sent here to prove, not that what I
think is right,  but that what I think is wrong. So forgive me if I
find it hard to believe you when you say that isn't on your agenda."

"You say you want to believe, Mulder, but apparently that includes
everyone but me."

"I want to believe you, Scully. You have no idea how much I want to
believe you. And I'm sure, if you keep testing every damn thing I say,
I'm going to have to believe in your tenacity at some point, if not
your agenda."

"For the last time, Mulder, I don't have any agenda. I just want to
solve cases."

Mulder smiled and rolled his pencil up and down his fingers with
annoying ease. She sighed and he relented, sitting up.

"Then lemme have it, Scully. Solve that file in your hand. Tell me
what you think and I'll believe you."

A bit embarrassed, though she couldn't say why, she returned her gaze
to the report in front of her. "Mulder, while pigs may have many
systems in common with humans, this does not mean you could somehow
combine the two. DC General Hospital isn't the Island of Dr. Moreau."

"Shows what you know," he said, and they were back in business.

xxxxxx

He abandoned her the next day, left her sitting alone in the office
with her little pile of files. "Review those," he said, not even
taking off his coat. He had clearly just popped down the stairs to
give his new lackey a few instructions during his absence. "You can
sit at my desk, if you want to. I'll talk to you in two days."

"Where are you going?" she asked, hovering next to his chair, feeling
stood-up and stupid.

"I'm going to go look into a few possibilities. If anything legitimate
turns up, I'll call you. Keep searching for the science, Scully. The
science."

And with that, he dismissed her and disappeared. For two long days,
she sat in his chair and read the reports he'd left her, looking for
anything she could question, anything she could challenge him on.

On day number three, when he didn't reappear, she decided that perhaps
this wasn't going to work out. She was all for being the little
trooper, for putting in her time, but that didn't include sitting in
the basement of the Hoover building reading dusty, badly-typed field
reports from three years previous about the suspected mind-control
powers of bat guano. So when her friend Susan called with a rare day
off and offered to buy her a big, executive-style lunch at her
favorite steak house, Dana shut the files and left them in a neat
stack on Mulder's chair with a note that read: "Call me when you have
something substantial for me to do. I'll be at Quantico, brushing up
on my research."

It was cheeky, but she felt entitled. Besides, he seemed to respond
well to cheek.

Susan plied her for information over their chef's salads, and oddly,
it felt like a betrayal to tell her too much about Mulder. What could
she say that didn't make him sound crazy? Hell, she was beginning to
suspect he might be crazy, but admitting it to herself was a step
further than she was prepared to go, for the moment.

"He's... he's intense," she said, picking at a pale hard-boiled egg.
"I can't describe him any other way."

"Is he cute?" Susan asked. The perennial concern of any young, single
professional in the city.

"I suppose," she said, and considered it. He was tall, certainly, and
well-built, if you liked your men skinny. "He's not my type."

"In other words, he's not forty-five, your professor and married,"
Susan said.

"Fuck you," Dana replied good-naturedly. She'd known Susan for years.
Years she'd rather now forget.

"Mmm, I think we tried that once," Susan said and licked her fork
suggestively. Dana rolled her eyes.

"One drunken kiss on a dare does not a relationship make."

"Yeah, and frankly, Dana, I've had better."

"Really?" she asked.

"No, not really. Get serious. Tell me about this Mulder. Does he have
a first name?"

"Yeah, Fox."

"Fox?" Susan was incredulous. "No, come on. Fox? Did his parents hate
him?"

xxxxxx

Returning from lunch, she felt bad about the note. Particularly when
she saw his car parked in the Bureau lot. Perhaps it was too cheeky.
He was, after all, her superior. She arrived in the basement prepared
to actually apologize and to explain to him that she did take the
cases seriously. That she was a good agent. That she was worth having
around, even if all he was doing was investigating "possibilities."

The files were gone, and a note was folded on his chair. "Scully," it
read in messy cursive. Only Mulder would have left that, she thought
and tried to open it. It was taped shut on all three sides, in
decidedly paranoid fashion. She sighed and fumbled in his desk drawer
for a letter opener. She pretended not to see the rolled up girly
magazine in the back of the drawer. He had been in the office alone,
after all, for several months. Maybe it was a form of
isolation-madness, she thought, jamming the tip of the letter opener
into the tape and sliding it slowly through.

 "I'll meet you at Rorey's at two," the note read. "I promise to be
substantial."

It occurred to her, as she walked the several blocks to the bar, that
she'd told him she was going to Quantico, yet the note was in the
office. It was as if he'd known she would be back, that she would be
unable to leave it alone.

Or he hadn't really bothered to read her note, her mind supplied.
Either scenario seemed just as likely.

Rorey's was hot and crowded, especially for two o'clock on a Tuesday.
She elbowed her way through to the bar and ordered a soda water. The
bar was mirrored and she caught sight of herself, sitting primly on
the bar stool with her new hairdo and expensive new "desert sand"
suit. She pursed her lips and sighed. The woman in the mirror looked
wan and bored in her suit, which was really more tan than anything
else. At least her hair looked good. Behind her, two people laughed
and she looked up to watch them kissing deeply. She would rather have
died than shove her tongue down a man's throat in public. Was that
wrong? Was that maybe why her last boyfriend had so unceremoniously
dumped her? Was she bland? One more surreptitious mirror check. Just
Dana, as always. Not one for public displays, but certainly not bland.
Not with lips like hers. She smirked and looked away from her own
reflection. Suddenly, it occurred to her why Mulder had asked to meet
her at a bar. It was stunningly obvious and she blushed all the way
down to her toes.

This was it, he was going to make his move.

She'd heard a lot more about Fox Mulder since she started working with
him, and very little of it involved the nickname "Spooky" or any
speculation about the size of his brain. He was well known for
sleeping with his coworkers, from the gossip she'd heard. For a man
with such a highly-developed sense of persecution, he seemed to be
perfectly willing to hop into bed with whatever loose-lipped floozy
patted his ass at the Christmas party. "It was clear he wasn't really
into the mistletoe and secret Santas thing. I think he showed up just
to get someone into bed," Sheila Ward from violent crimes confided to
her one day in the third floor ladies room. "He's Jewish, after all.
Why else would he come to the Christmas thing?"

Dana ventured another peek at her reflection and noted that she was
hadn't eaten off her lipstick, at least. God, couldn't he have at
least waited until they were alone in the basement? Then she could
have gently, but firmly, rejected him and still kept working with him.
If she had to do it here, in public, it would end their so-called
partnership.

Which had to be why he was doing it. He hadn't wanted to work with her
from the start, and he'd finally come up with a way out. He'd just
meet her here, slightly drunk, make an ass out of himself over her
within spitting distance of the Hoover building and then that would be
it. She looked around carefully, using the mirror to scope out the
people crammed in behind her. Was that Clarke from Accounting? She
hoped not. Clarke was such a gossip.

And then he was there, his sharp, angular face intruding into her
space and she'd never even seen him approach.

"Hi," she said, startled but trying to appear chirpily pleasant. "I
got your message."

"Sorry for the run around," Mulder replied, smiling. "Can I buy you a
drink?"

When she reminded him that it was only two in the afternoon, he seemed
unfazed.

"It's not stopping the rest of these people." He motioned to the
bartender and she felt like a prude. How did he manage to make Dana
Scully, wild child of the Scully clan, feel like such a conservative
little girl? Sure, Missy was the obvious rebel, the one with the
hippie boyfriends and pink hair, but Dana had been the one who had
really thrown her parents for a loop. Good little Dana, always pushing
the envelope of what she could get away with, always defying them in
ways they couldn't quantify, couldn't prevent. And here she was, fresh
from a lunch date with a woman she'd once kissed, for heaven's sake,
and Mulder was making her feel like a prissy little Catholic school
girl. That was probably how he saw her. It was that element of
challenge that had attracted him, and now he thought that by being a
bit daring, a bit dangerous, he could get her into bed. Well, little
did he know about the proper Miss Dana Scully. She felt a
self-righteous straightening of her backbone.

"I've got something to show you," Mulder said.

"Something you couldn't show me at work," she said. This was it.

"Let's get a table," Mulder replied and she found herself being led
over to a table at the back of the bar by his warm hand at the small
of her back. Any lower and he'd be caressing her ass. Real slick. She
touched her hair self-consciously, then mentally chastised herself for
being vain. It wasn't like she noticed Mulder, not like that. He was a
good-looking guy, in a way. Once you got past the nose, and the chin -
or the lack of it - and that hair... She was still cataloging all the
parts of him she wasn't interested in when he handed her the case
file. She had the good grace to blush, which he didn't notice.

She flipped it open and saw the photo of a man in uniform on the top,
with pages of print-outs below. Oh God, it was all about work. She was
being impossibly foolish, and it was all Susan's fault for asking her
what she thought of his looks. Up until then, she swore, she hadn't
even noticed them. He didn't ask her to meet him at the bar because he
had some weird crush on her. He really was just that paranoid.

She was a fine one to talk, of course, about paranoia. Just because
she'd ended up in relationships with her prior supervisors or teachers
didn't mean that Mulder was going to hit on her. She probably wasn't
his type anyway, she told herself as she flipped through the file. He
certainly wasn't hers.

xxxxxx

He'd promised they would discuss the whole UFO thing on the plane ride
out, and she'd made the mistake of believing him. She knew she'd
sounded shrewish on the phone, telling him that they would appear
"stupid" if they went to Idaho chasing lights in the sky, but she was
sensitive to how this whole thing was going to pan out. If she didn't
stick to her guns, they'd pull her off the assignment and... and what?
She'd be back to where she was just a few short weeks ago, and Mulder
would be assigned someone else. Someone who really was going to spy on
him. She wasn't going to let that happen now, if for no other reason
than her own pride.

"Tell me this isn't about UFOs," she pushed again.

He was pretending to be asleep. She knew he was pretending because
every now and then his eyes would slip just barely open and he would
glance at her from beneath lashes that had clearly been stolen from
some unsuspecting young woman.

"It isn't about UFOs," he mumbled. "It's about a kidnapping."

"So the fact that we're flying out to a site described as a 'Mecca'
for flying saucer buffs is just a coincidence."

"Absolutely."

She snorted and turned back to the file. Colonel Budahas reminded her,
vaguely, of Bill. No doubt he had a similar photo in his personnel
file, all stiff blue serge and shiny brass. Why would the military
kidnap its own man? It just didn't make sense. They had to be missing
something, but from the way Mulder did research, it was clear to her
that she would have to find it on her own.

The Scullys were a military family, and not just because of her
father. Her grandfather, her uncles, her cousins, her brothers... it
was what the men in her family did. Some, like Bill, were well-suited
to the regimental life. Others, like Charlie, bucked against it. She
wished her youngest brother had chosen a career that made him happier.
Something more like what she did. She had the adventure, she had the
danger and the challenge, but she didn't have to get up every morning
at four to drive over to the base and get yelled at like she was still
in boot camp. Her father couldn't see it. "They have women in the Navy
now, Dana, if that's what you want." But it wasn't what she wanted.
Not really. At least, she didn't think so.

Mulder was making the oddest noise beside her. Turning her head to
look at him, she found herself eyes-to-nose with his considerable
schnoz. He was sniffing her hair.

"What the hell is that smell?" he said, his breath brushing the bridge
of her nose. Her skin tingled from the proximity. "You been shampooing
with DDT?"

"I just dyed my hair," she explained, leaning away slightly.
"Yesterday. That's the chemical smell."

That nose must be sensitive. She was using the low-ammonia brand.

"Dyed it? What color?"

She stared at him for a moment. "Red."

"What was it before?"

"Brown."

He examined a section, lifting it up and peering at it until she
jerked her head away. "It does look lighter."

"Lighter? Mulder, it's a whole different color. Some investigator you
are," she said, smiling. Such a man.

"Red-green colorblindness," he said, leaning back in his seat and
closing his eyes.

Surprised, she tapped his hand with one finger. "They let you into the
Bureau with that?"

"They didn't ask, and I didn't tell," he said. "So Scully, what does
your keen scientific mind tell you about the whereabouts of Colonel
Budahas?"

"I have no idea where he might be, Mulder, certainly not from the
information you've given me." She smiled and leaned closer to his ear.
"What does your keen scientific nose suggest we're having for lunch?"

"Greasy chicken and dumplings, possibly, or under-done salmon."

"You can tell that from the smell?" she asked, genuinely surprised.

He turned to her, then, his face just inches from hers. She could see
deep brown surrounding his pupil, fanning out into a soft, moss green.
He had lovely eyes, when they were open.

"Nah," he whispered conspiritally. "I read it in the in-flight
magazine. Gotcha, Scully."

Amused, she pursed her lips at him. "Not even close to getting me,
Mulder."

It slipped out and she felt like clapping her hand over her mouth. Was
she really flirting with her coworker? Again? He laughed and settled
back into his seat. "I'm sure that's the truth, Scully. I'm sure
that's the truth."

She wasn't sure at all what to make of that statement.

xxxxxx

Ellen's Airforce Base gave her the creeps. The old-fashioned,
hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-her-neck heebie-jeebies. All this talk
of people disappearing, stress-related madness and then Mulder with
his damn UFOs... she hated being lied to. And clearly he had lied, or
at least fibbed. He was indeed here to investigate a kidnapping, but
it was a kidnapping he suspecting involved U-Freakin'-Os, and she was
none too pleased. Especially now that they had been given the
run-around by the military, and there was a reporter on the same
story... they had to be careful, she knew, or they would come out of
this looking like idiots.

Still, she was a reasonably good-natured person, generally, so she
shook off her shivers outside the Flying Saucer diner and pulled out
her map. Dana liked to know where she was at any given time. It was
something Ahab had taught her when they were out sailing, but she had
held on to the idea throughout her life. "Know your position in
relation to everything else, Starbuck, and you'll never be lost." It
had seemed so obvious. She and Bill had chanted it to each other as
teens, using it as proof of their father's old-age-induced insanity.
"Know your position in relation to everything else and you'll never be
lost." Well, d'uh. Only recently had she figured out he wasn't just
talking about maps.

The thing about Mulder was that he made her feel... disconnected. He
seemed sane enough, really, and so she tended to be listening along as
if she expected nothing but sense to come out of his mouth and then...
aliens. Little green men. Missing time and abductees and suddenly her
whole world was off-kilter and she'd have to force it back into line
by beating down whatever he was speculating about. She could sense a
serious whacking about to happen as he stepped out of the diner with
his photo of his latest unidentified flying object.

Object being the operative word, she thought.

"Wanna see something weird, Mulder?" she asked as he stepped up behind
her. "Ellens Air Base isn't even on my USGS quadrant map."

"I know," he said, brushing by her and smiling a smile she definitely
didn't like. "Let's go."

"You know? Where are we going?" She felt that sense of skewed motion
again, like sea-sickness.

"We've got our own map, Sucker." He handed her a napkin covered in
scribbles and the world lurched beneath her feet.

"Mulder," she said as she slid in beside him. "We cannot just go drive
out there. Not where this map is telling us to drive."

"It's a public road, Scully."

"Says who?"

He pulled smoothly away from the curb. How could everything he did be
so effortless when he was walking around in a world of funhouse
mirrors? She didn't get it.

"Says our friendly waitress."

As they passed a warning sign, she shot him her best glare. "Public
road, my ass."

"What about your ass?"

She sighed and rolled her eyes.

"You're skeptical now, Scully, but wait till you see ET."

"I've seen 'ET,' Mulder. It scared the crap out of me. I couldn't go
in my closet for months."

"How old were you, Scully? Fifteen? And you were scared by a nice
little alien? How the hell did you end up in the FBI?"

She ignored him as they drove deeper into the restricted area.
Finally, just when her skin was really starting to crawl, Mulder
killed the engine and they stopped beside a wire-topped fence. Jumping
out, he headed around to the back of the car. Reluctantly, she
followed, half-expecting him to pull out a spray paint can and mark
the road like some sort of paranormal tom cat. He was retrieving
binoculars, which was remarkably normal, considering.

"Just what do you hope to see?" she asked, trying to look rational in
the face of Mulder's overwhelming irrationality.

"I don't know, maybe nothing."

He sounded annoyed, actually. She was getting to him, and before she
could stop herself, she kept on digging in her claws.

"Is this why we came out here, Mulder? To look for UFOs?" He didn't
answer her, instead scrambling up the hill beside the car. "Yeah," she
shouted after him, feeling bitchy. "This is gonna look real good on my
field report."

Apparently, he agreed, because he didn't ask her to follow him.

Instead, she fumed alone in the car. She could see him, up at the top
of the hill, gazing raptly at nothing for long periods before he would
allow himself to shift and reveal his actual boredom. Why, she wanted
to shout. Why are we here?

She could be home in bed. It was getting close to ten and she was
exhausted. The food at the diner hadn't sat well, she really had to
pee (and there was no way in hell she was getting out and heading for
the bushes now), and it was nearly one, east coast time.

How on earth had she ended up here, in Idaho with a fucking fanatic?
That's what he was, a fanatic. The Bureau should have kicked him out
years ago. Had the man actually been for any of the mandatory psyche
evals? Had he talked to anyone about this nonsense with his sister and
the bright light and the presence in the room?

Apparently not. She watched him lean back until only his raised knees
were visible. He was staring straight up, at the star-studded sky.
Maybe, a little voice whispered in her ear, he doesn't tell everyone
that story. Maybe he told it to you because you're special. Maybe he
likes you.

She felt like she was in third grade. She was going to have to start
carrying water and beef jerky in the car when they went anywhere,
because this low-blood sugar thing was making her crazy. Crazy like a
fox, the voice cackled.

Closing her eyes, she attempted to get some sleep.

xxxxxx

It must have worked, because when she awoke, she was screaming. Glass
was flying through the air and the whole world was rumbling. Mulder
yanked open her door and shouted at her, his face lit up with joy.

"Scully, wake up! You gotta see this!"

She was up and running, with him, up the hill. He stopped and turned
and she followed his enraptured gaze and then she saw them. Two bright
dots in the sky, dancing with one another, playing tag in the cool
night air.

"What are they?" she breathed.

"I don't know," he answered. "Just keep watching, it's unbelievable."

The lights met and danced away from one another, shooting off at
angles that would have put a pilot in a normal plane right through the
ground. Her heart was pounding.

"That's unreal," she said as they shot away from each other once more.
"I've never seen anything like it."

Mulder was grinning. "They've been going at it like that for almost
half an hour."

And he hadn't woken her, hadn't come to get her. Why now, she
wondered. Had he finally caved because he wanted her to see it? Or
because he didn't want to listen to her doubt him later?

"Well, it can't be aircraft. Aircraft can't maneuver like that."

"What else could they be?" he asked, but the annoyance was gone from
his voice.

She thought about it quickly. When all else fails, do we consider the
extreme possibilities? No. We don't. "I don't know," she admitted.
"Lasers maybe. Being shot from the ground, reflecting up off the
clouds." Even as she said it, the lights moved up together and shot
right through the clouds, leaving a boom like thunder. She couldn't
help it, the words slipped out before she thought of the connotation.
She looked at his delighted face and said: "Oh my God."

Mulder was looking at her with that same wonder, that same delight and
she had a sudden thought: it's because I believe him. He's happy just
because I believe him, not because he saw it to begin with.

She was stunned. He doesn't want to believe, she thought. He already
does. It's everyone else who matters now. Or maybe it was just her.
God, maybe it was just her.

"Here comes another one," he said, but the light was too low, too
slow. It didn't dance like the others.

"That's not a plane," she said. "That's a helicopter."

xxxxxx

She couldn't believe he was buying a word the kids in front of him
were telling him, but clearly he was. His face reflected everything.
She had thought him impassive before, but she knew better now.
Mulder's poker face came not from his ability to hide his emotions,
but from his inability. In his exhaustion and excitement, it all
spilled out of him and it was so obvious it was almost cute. Almost.

They dropped the kids off at the boy's house and she slid, weary and
still amused, into the passenger seat. Mulder slipped a tape into the
stereo and actually had the gall to look annoyed when she turned it
off.

"You believe it all, don't you?"

She wasn't sure if she was talking about the kids, or the whole damn
web of lies and manipulation. It didn't matter, really. She was tired
and it was warm in the car and Mulder smelled like sweat and something
good she couldn't name. His after-shave, perhaps.

"Why wouldn't I?" he asked, as if there were no question.

"Mulder," she said, laughing. "Did you see their eyes? If I were that
stoned..."

He leaned over, interrupting her with a grin that matched her own, and
upped her by a leer. "Ooo, if you were that stoned... what?"

She immediately decided not to answer that one, despite the fact that
he clearly thought she never had been stoned in her life. That was a
conversation for another day, when she was not tired and he was not
smelling so much like musk.

So instead, she argued with him. He pulled out photos of UFOs from a
folder she hadn't even seen yet, and tried to convince her that they
were real. He was sincere and vaguely desperate and she was touched by
it all, even though she didn't want to be.

Somewhere along the last few hours, he had become likeable again. It
was so hot and cold between them. No, not hot, she amended. Warm and
cool. Yes, warm and cool. Would it always be this way, or would they
settle into some dull routine, where neither of them really cared what
the other thought because they just knew? She hoped not, watching his
tired face as he drove toward the motel.

"I need a shower," she said. "And sleep."

"Agreed," he said and turned to smile at her. "Weren't they fantastic,
Scully?"

"Who, Cheech and Chong?"

He laughed. She had surprised him, she could tell.

"No, Scully, the lights. The lights in the sky."

My God, she thought. That is why we came to Idaho. He was glowing at
her, sweaty and pleased and comfortable.

"Yes, Mulder, they were fantastic. I'm still not convinced they were
flying saucers."

"Neither am I, Scully. Something more like flying arrowheads," he
said, speculatively, and she shook her head at him.

xxxxxx

She was really beginning to dislike Idaho. The whole Budahas thing was
making her nervous. She had grown up in a family where men went away
for months at a time and often came back altered... And then it was
like those kids back in Oregon. One minute she thought she knew what
was going on and then Mulder was off and running in some direction
she'd never even considered. The entire case sat badly with her,
though she didn't think it was UFOs or secret government conspiracies.
She thought it was a family falling apart and the similarities, the
could-haves with her own family were too close to ignore. She could
remember Ahab, returning after months at sea, and the way he didn't
seem to fit. Her mother would grit her teeth and say: "It doesn't go
there, Bill. It goes above the sink. Just let me do it." And then he
would shake his head and set his jaw and say: "No, Maggie. I live
here, too, damnit."

Maybe that was why she had avoided the Navy. She couldn't do that to
her family, couldn't disappear and reappear at the whim of the
government.

Mulder was talking beside her, trying to convince her that the
government had erased the Colonel's memories. She didn't believe him,
mostly because she didn't think it had to be that complicated. Maybe
she should tell him about Occam's Razor, when he was done.

"... I mean we're talking about a technology that is so sensitive and
advanced that it's taken almost fifty years to make it work. UFO
technology, Scully."

She opened her mouth to speak when she saw the cars up ahead. One was
passing the other, veering into their lane. Only it didn't seem to be
moving back over. Her stomach lurched.

"What the hell is..." She began to exclaim, but Mulder interrupted
her. He already knew.

"Hold on," he said, and slammed on the brakes. They plowed to a stop
just a few feet from the second car. Men in suits wearing ridiculous
sunglasses stepped out of the car. Aside from the moment in Oregon
where she had seen the lights and thought... whatever she had thought,
she had never been so frightened. One of them tapped on Mulder's
window.

"Please, step out of the car."

"You think if maybe we ignore him, he'll go away?" Mulder cracked, but
she could see the fear in his face, and it only frightened her more.
She worked to keep her own face impassive. It seemed to calm him.

"Please, step out of the car."

"Guess not." Mulder unfastened his seatbelt, and she followed him,
watching as they slammed him up against the hood.

"Federal agent," she reminded the men who were holding her, her heart
pounding. It came out authoritative anyway, but they ignored her. She
was annoyed when they dumped open her briefcase and took the clip from
her gun. She was more than annoyed when they punched Mulder, hard, in
the side.

Jesus, she thought, they hurt him again and I'm going to have to do
something. She was aware of the need to stay cool as she winced and
looked away. The men holding her did not react.

"National security," the first man said to Mulder. Scully glared at
him. What the hell were they? Chopped liver? "Now get in your car.
You'll be escorted back to your motel. You will pack and leave town
immediately, or assume the consequences of intense indiscretion."

Mulder nodded, and slid back into the car, wincing. Scully gathered
her empty briefcase from the ground and tossed it into the back seat.
As soon as the door was shut, she reached over and felt Mulder's ribs.
He sucked in his breath with a hiss.

"I'm okay, Doctor," he said.

"That was a hard hit, Mulder. I need to check it."

When she continued to press her hand to his side, feeling for any
especially tender areas, he gently removed her hand and placed it on
her knee, brushing his knuckles over her skin as he did so. "I need to
drive now, Scully. The presidential motorcade is getting restless."

"Was there anything on that film?" she asked.

"Just shots of my naked ass," he said. "I was going to post them on
the bulletin board outside Blevins' office."

She snorted, turning to watch the two cars as they tailed them toward
the motel.

"You okay, Scully?" he asked suddenly.

Startled, she turned back to Mulder, who was watching her with what
she realized was genuine concern. "I'm fine," she said.

"Good," he said. "Because I'd hate to have to go out there and kick
some ass."

xxxxxx

She wasn't particularly surprised to discover that the plates were
false. Men in dark suits with RayBans and guns didn't usually register
with the DMV. Mulder was lying contemplatively on her bed, hands
behind his head. Over the course of the day, the gel had worn out of
his hair and it was flopping rather attractively over his forehead.
She liked him like this, casual. No, she thought, carefully
sidestepping that one. It didn't matter how Agent Mulder dressed.

"I don't think it was those kids they were chasing away from the base
last night, I think it was us." He sat up and turned to face her.
"They knew we were coming before we ever arrived. And they returned
Colonel Budahas as a decoy. There's something I didn't tell you,
Scully."

Her warm and tender feelings toward him slipped over to cool and
annoyed.

"Something else?" she said.

He had the good sense to look sheepish. "I was approached by a man in
D.C. who warned me to stay away from this case. He didn't give me his
name, and my phone was being tapped."

"What?" Her body felt chilled, like drinking cold water on a hot day.

Mulder stood and began to speak rapidly. "Why would they go to all
this trouble? Out of a need for security? Security of what? I think
there's a huge conspiracy here, Scully. They've got a UFO here, I'm
sure of it. And they'll do anything to keep it a secret, including
sacrificing the lives and minds of those pilots, because what if that
secret got out?"

"If..." she hesitated. "If that were true, it would be a national
scandal."

Mulder's shook his head. "No, no, you're not thinking big enough. If
it were true, it would be confirmation of the existence of
extraterrestrial life."

That was it. Her rational side stepped in, shoved aside whoever had
been mooning over Mulder's hair a few moments before, and took
control. "Did you ever stop to think that what we saw was simply an
experimental plane? Like the stealth bomber or... this Aurora Project?
Doesn't the government have a right and a responsibility to protect
its secrets?"

Mulder was immediately defensive and self-righteous. "Yes, but at what
cost?" he asked. She stared at him. "When does the human cost become
too high for the building of a better machine?"

She wasn't about to go down that road, not with a man like Mulder. She
stepped forward and made her appeal. "Look, these are questions we
have no business asking. Our kidnap victim is no longer outstanding.
Let's get out of here, Mulder, while you still have a job."

It was the wrong appeal. Mulder plucked the bad diner photo from his
file and held it out to her.

"Aren't you even curious?"

She took the photo and for a moment, just a moment, considered tearing
the damn thing in half and saying something about how totally
ridiculous he sounded. Why couldn't he see himself as she saw him?
Instead she sat down. Mulder's face showed exactly what he thought of
her at that moment, but she was fooled anyway. Fooled by her sense of
having won. He agreed to go get his clothes and leave. It wasn't until
she saw him driving away in their only car that she realized how naive
she had been. Mulder was a fanatic, and for a moment, she had
forgotten that one, simple fact.

xxxxxx

She was fine until about two. Until then, her restless tossing had
seemed to be more about jetlag and tension and the fact that she was
still wearing all her clothes from the day before (just in case, she
thought), than Mulder. When she glanced at the glowing clock beside
her bed and read 2:02, however, the pretense dissolved away and left
her feeling horribly exposed.

Why wasn't he back? She could understand storming off. She could
understand driving around angrily. But it had been hours, and he still
wasn't in his room. A car pulled up outside and she sat up, hope
filling her. Two voices sounded outside her door then continued down
the hall. She sighed and lay back down.

The human cost. That was Mulder all over, concerned with the
individual. Her father had never been like that. Bleeding heart
liberals, he would say. For him it was all about duty, about country,
about the law. He would hate Mulder, she thought.

But he would be wrong, the small voice told her. Because you like him.

All her life she had sought out men who resembled her father. Men who
were dynamic and authoritarian and in control. The moment, however,
they had thought they controlled her, she was out the door. That sort
of man didn't worry about the human cost.

Mulder had no illusions about control. She could see that now. He was
battling against something, even if it were imaginary, that was big
enough to erase him and her and all of them, all their illusions in a
moment.

Where the hell was he? What had he gotten himself into? And why did
she just know it was bad? Men like her father thought they took risks,
and did nothing. Men like Mulder never considered the risks, and
consequently, got themselves killed.

She was being ridiculous. He was a grown man, and a trained member of
law enforcement. She didn't need to worry about him at all. She should
just roll over and go to sleep. That would show him.

2:10. Why were those clocks always red? Glowing at her like some
hell-clock. God, she was getting delirious. Two nights with little
sleep and she was a raving lunatic. Where the hell was Mulder?

She was far too warm. Tossing back the covers, she stretched out her
legs on the stiff sheets. From the wall that abutted the room that
wasn't Mulder's, she heard laughter and then a low moan. Did he pick
these sleazebag motels on purpose? There was another groan and a shout
of surprise and then a woman's giggle. Here she was, a federal agent,
and some girl was turning tricks in the room next door. Oh, the irony.
She rolled over onto her side and shoved her hands between her thighs.

Her body responded instantly. Hey, she thought, maybe that's it. I
could just... yeah, and then I'll drop right off. She lay back and
stared at the ceiling, running her fingers under the waistband of her
jeans, back and forth. This would clear her mind, too, of any thoughts
of a certain wayward Special Agent. Unbuttoning her jeans, she slid
her hand into the fly, underneath her underwear. So... what would it
be tonight?

The man on the train. That was a favorite, ever since a teenage trip
to Europe. She was in a train car, one of those ones with the
old-fashioned individual compartments. Yes, one of those. A man was
sitting opposite her. A blond man. Maybe she was taking the train
through the Alps, on a journey from Italy to France. Maybe. Anyway, he
was blond. Tall and blond with big, strong arms and a lean waist. She
liked that in a man, though she'd never actually dated anyone remotely
like her fantasy. Hell, who had? The man was watching her, just
watching her, the way she had caught Mulder doing that day they were
alone in the office and she was sitting there in a short skirt and...
what? No. Not like that at all. Agent Mulder was a professional. He
wasn't eyeing her legs like some Swedish lothario on a train.

Anyway. The man was watching her. He slid one large hand down over his
stomach to his crotch, and cupped himself. Her eyes widened. She
looked around. They were alone, of course, but she just had to make
sure. Slowly, he unbuttoned his jeans. One by one, the buttons went.
Did they have button-flies in Europe? She didn't know. She didn't
care. Oh, Sven, unbutton it. Do it, Sven. Do it. Sven obliged, sliding
his hand down his impossibly hard penis. Mmm, this was nice.

She swore that when he put his head between her legs, it was Sven, all
the way. It wasn't until her eyes stopped rolling back in her head
that she looked down and saw Mulder. His dark head between her thighs,
his curvaceous mouth smiling up at her, leering... his tongue darted
out to taste her and she jumped off the seat like she'd been shocked.
"Good thing I'm red-green colorblind, Scully, or I'd swear you're not
really a red-head," he said with a grin that set her heart pounding.

No, not Mulder. Sven, damnit. Sven. The nice Swedish boy. Swiss.
Whatever. SVEN. She quickly replaced her leering partner with good old
standby Sven, and kept going. But it seemed it wasn't that easy. The
closer she got, the more naked she and the man in her fantasy became,
the more easily he morphed into Mulder. Tall and lean and strong and
not-overly-gelled and whispering in her ear. "God, Scully, you're
short, but you're so fucking hot."

It was totally annoying. She actually got up and shoved his naked ass
out the door into the hallway, locking him out and Sven in, but then
he stood outside the little window on her compartment door shouting
"Scully!" and banging on the glass like Dustin Hoffman. Sven kept
getting distracted and frankly, he wasn't up to snuff at all after
Mulder. Sven's tongue didn't dart out over snidely curling lips,
Sven's eyes were boring old blue with no hazelnut corona in their
center. Sven didn't eagerly sniff her hair.

Fuck Sven. She opened the compartment door and shoved him out, pulling
Mulder to her with one greedy arm. Just for tonight, she warned him.
Just when you've run off and you're worrying me and I'm exhausted and
horny. How often could that happen?

Mulder just smiled and started kissing her, frantically. She let him
fuck her on the seat of the compartment. For a brief moment, it was
fantastic. Mulder pumped in and out of her, gasping: "I need you with
me. I want you to come. I need you to come. When you come, we'll be
together on everything and it will all be perfect. Come, Scully. Come
on. Come with me." But she couldn't, and suddenly, she knew it.

Gasping, she opened her eyes and was back in the room, heart pounding,
hand sticky, and so sexually frustrated it felt like her head was
going to pop off. This was insane. Tension, she immediately told
herself, lying in a pool of sweat and self-loathing.

Where the fuck was he? She made a vow, then and there in the darkened
hotel room, that come hell or high water or... or aliens, she was not
going to sleep with her partner. No way, no how. Not after what had
happened with Jack. And Daniel. And... never again. Never, ever again.

Now, what time was it?

xxxxxx

She dozed until six, when she awoke from a dream where Mulder was
telling her about pig-men as they lounged together in her bathtub.
Naked. She shook the dream from her mind and sat up. Her body felt
sticky and nasty, and she wanted another three, maybe ten hours sleep
but knew it was pointless even to wish for it.

In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face and redid her hair,
pulling it back from her pale face. This was ludicrous. She had never
been abandoned by a coworker before, and if she had her way, she never
would again. As soon as she got Mulder back, she was requesting a
transfer. The X-files division would be better off without her, and
she would absolutely be better off without Mulder.

Mind set, she picked up the phone to call DC and tell them her damn
partner was missing and could they please send someone out to help her
find him? She dialed the number for the Hoover switchboard and waited.
Nothing happened. She hung up and tried again, getting only static
instead of a dial tone this time. Fine, she thought, and dialed the
operator.

"Yeah, I'm trying to make a call to Washington D.C. and I can't seem
to get a long distance line."

The phone died completely at that point. Fruitlessly, she tried
calling hello into it, her frustration level rising by the minute. She
would never have been in this position if Mulder had just stayed in
the fucking motel. Of course, she knew, he might not have ditched her
if she hadn't so smugly dismissed his concerns. Not that any of that
excused him.

Abandoning her phone, she headed over to the motel office and tried
the phone there. It, too, was dead.

"Phones are pretty undependable around here," the manager told her,
shrugging. "People say it's the military interference, but they say
that about everything."

I'll bet they do, she thought, almost too pissed off to be polite. But
not quite. "Thanks," she said coldly, and started back toward her
room. The room where the reporter -- what was his name?
Moss-something -- the room he was currently letting himself out of.
Damnit, what could a reporter want in her room? Reaching behind her
back, she ran her hand over her waistband as if she were just
stretching her lower back. And in the end, that was all she was doing,
because her gun wasn't there. It was on the nightstand in the room.
Where the reporter had just been. This was looking very, very bad. She
smiled.

"Hi," the reporter said. "I was just looking for you. I knocked, but I
saw the door was open."

Right, she thought, so you just decided to waltz into a strange
woman's motel room. Sure.

"I was in the lobby trying to make a call," she told him. He started
on about the phones, but in the background, she heard a voice. A
metallic, static-filled voice, coming from the reporter's car.

"Base to redbird, can you give us your position, over?"

In the brief moment before she reacted, several thoughts went through
her mind in rapid succession. First, she wished Mulder were here,
because this was a case of Occam's Razor in action. Adding everything
up, the simplest explanation was that this man wasn't a reporter at
all. Second, was that Mulder was in serious, deep shit. Third, she was
about to join him.

She smiled more brightly. The reporter cocked his head, puzzled for
just long enough.

There was a rush in jumping into his car, and another in finding his
gun and ID, and an even bigger one in jabbing the hard edge of her
nail into the soft globe of his eye until she felt something start to
give. But it wasn't until she stood with her gun pressed to the man's
back that she realized her blood was screaming in her ears and that
she might, very possibly, be about to cost herself her job.

"Put the gun down, and we'll talk about it," the man said and she felt
like shooting him just for daring to question her authority. Who had
the gun, she wanted to shout. Who had the damn gun now?

He may not have respected her, but the two stoner kids certainly did.
She could see the surprise and fear in their eyes as they rode up on
their scooter. She jabbed the airbase security officer harder with the
gun, and they winced.

"I want you to get on that walkie-talkie and find out where Mulder
is," she shouted, and even she could hear the desperation in her
voice. She knew, in that moment, that she would do anything it took to
find him. Then she would get the fuck out of his life.

xxxxxx

The airbase security man was nervous, but well-trained, she decided,
keeping the gun aimed at his head as he drove. He tried all the things
she would have tried, were she in his position: pleading, threatening.

"There are other ways to go about this," he said, stiffly.

"Yeah," she shot back, knowing for the first time how ridiculous these
tactics seemed to the person holding the gun.  "I've already seen
where you get with tears and a sad story."

A few moments later, at the base, he tried again. This time it was the
threat.

"You do anything stupid, and this situation could get big in a hurry."

"Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that."

Her confidence grew slightly as she could see a jeep approaching. It
was going to work. Jesus, little Dana Scully had scared the fucking
United States military into doing what she wanted and all it had taken
was threatening to kill one of their people. Why hadn't she thought of
this earlier? She winced internally, glad the security man's back was
to her and he was intent on the jeep. What would Ahab think of you
right now, Starbuck? She could see her father's face, anger just
beneath the surface of control. How far will this Mulder ask you to go
before you say no?

She knew the answer the minute she saw him limping, dazed, from the
car. He had obviously been beaten, possibly tortured. He looked dirty
and tired and frightened and she wanted nothing more than to pump the
security man standing in front of her full of lead like
Dirty-damn-Harry on a quest for vengeance.

"Get in the car, Mulder." He hesitated, looking at her as if he
couldn't figure out what the hell she was doing there, in her denim
shirt and pony tail, like a bobbysoxer with a gun. She pleaded with
him. "Get in the car."

She could tell he was barely responding to her, but more to his need
to sit somewhere, quickly. As they passed, the security man stopped
him. Mulder stared at him blankly, and she knew what he was thinking:
why is Scully holding a gun on that reporter?

"I just want to say," the security man told him,  "everything you've
seen here is equal to the protection we give it. It's you who have
acted inappropriately."

Oh yeah? Mulder, her partner, this befuddled, dirty man, was worth
that protection too. Maybe she hadn't known that last night. Maybe she
hadn't known it until he stepped out of the jeep. But she knew it now,
and she wasn't ever going to forget it. They were equal to all the
protection she could give them both. Fuck the rest of the world. She
slid into the car beside her partner and drove away like the base was
about to explode behind them. She sincerely hoped it would.

Mulder sat silently beside her, his face dull and blank. Any spark she
had seen in the office, on the plane, even in the hotel room before he
ran off seemed to have been beaten out of him. Up close, she could see
the bruises and her hands tightened on the wheel until her nails were
digging into the plastic.

"You okay, Mulder?"

He seemed to hesitate, to think about it. "I think so," he said at
last and she let out a breath, slowly. "Scully, I..."

"What?" she said, holding her breath again. What had they done to him?
What the hell was she going to do if it was as bad as she thought it
might be?

"How did I get here?" he asked and she wanted to cry, with relief or
horror or maybe with both.

xxxxxxx

Her apartment was warm and quiet and dully beige, Scully thought. They
had been back for three days and the adrenaline rush hadn't completely
disappeared yet, still pinging in her chest whenever she looked over
at Mulder and saw the bruises around his hairline. Restless, she
tossed off the cream and gold afghan her mother had made her and that
had seemed so understated and nice last year. Why couldn't she have
something bright in here? It was as if she had been colorblind for
years, and the last few weeks had seen a gradual restoration of her
vision. She picked up the Spiegel catalog her sister had dropped off
and flipped to the furniture section. Indian batik pillows were just
starting to beckon when the phone rang.

"Scully," she said, and then felt stupid. What if it was Missy?

"Hey, it's me," Mulder said and the feeling disappeared. "I just got
back from a run."

"Yeah?" She stopped flipping through the catalog and tossed it back
onto her coffee table. Immediately, she smothered her need to
straighten it. "And I care about this because...?"

Mulder chuckled. "Because you don't want your partner to get fat and
lazy?"

"Wrong answer."

"So you don't mind if I get fat and lazy, Scully?"

"You're already lazy, Mulder," she said. "What difference would fat
make?"

"I saw that man again," he said, shifting the conversation so quickly
she couldn't keep up.

"What man?"

"Our very own Deep Throat. The guy from the bar."

"What did he say this time? He knows where Jimmy Hoffa is?" She leaned
over and straightened the catalog, giving in.

"He said they're here."

"Who?" she asked.

"Them, Scully. They."

"Say it, Mulder. Say 'aliens' and then tell me you don't sound nuts."

"You already think I'm crazy, so what's the point?"

She sighed. "Did he tell you anything else?"

He was quiet for a moment and she worried she'd offended him. "No,
Scully. I asked him about Ellens, but he wouldn't tell me what it was
I saw."

"You don't know that you saw anything," she said, settling back into
the couch.

"I must have seen something," he argued, "or they wouldn't have erased
my memories."

"Mulder," she reminded him. "They did not erase your memories. You
probably had a concussion. There was evidence..."

"Scully," he interrupted her and she paused.

"What?"

"Can I come over there? I hate having this conversation with you like
this. I want to see your face when I talk to you."

She felt herself blush and thanked heaven he wasn't there to see.
"It's Saturday, Mulder."

"I know, Scully. And you're probably busy, but..."

"I'm not busy," she said at last.

"So it's okay if I come by and ruin your weekend?" She pretended she
didn't hear the need in his voice.

"Just this once," she said, firmly. She almost, but not quite, meant
it.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx