Tesla

Rating: R
Spoilers: None
Keyword: Angst, casefile
Archive: Anywhere, anytime
Disclaimer: Chris Carter and 1013 created Mulder and Scully. The
characters seem to have some time on their hands, so I borrowed
them.

Summary: Mulder and Scully chase a serial killer. Again.
Feedback: Tesla@hiwaay.net
Advisory: This story follows "Blood on the Snow"
and "A Thief's Diet"
Notes at the end.

Prologue: There is only me in my bedroom

Mulder knows he is depressed, but he tells the clerk that he has
seasonal affect disorder.

"We sell a lot of St. John's Wort for that," the clerk says
sagely.

"It's these damned florescent lights. Computer screens. Wrong
kind of light all the time."

Mulder knows he is depressed when he eats the same take out
Mexican food all week long, and when he stuffs his shirts, suits,
boxers, socks and towels in the laundry bag and drops them off.
He gets like that sometimes, when people die. When people keep on
dying in his arms.

He can maintain during the day, but it uses up all his air, and
he collapses like an old party balloon at home every night. He
eats, and watches ball games and re-reads some of his old books.

Scully knows he's not himself. If he let her, she would say
something like, "You can't save them all, you know." Scully likes
making these unanswerable statements. It's true. He can't. He
could just save some of them, though. The ones he's supposed to
save.

Mulder can get through a week at a time. He's practiced at it.
And on the weekends, he can pull his blanket over his head and
sleep.

Scully knows he isn't himself, because she brought them Starbucks
on Thursday. And in gratitude, he read her strange news stories
until he got that little snort of suppressed laughter.

Friday afternoon, she stood by his desk and patted him on the
shoulder. "I'll see you on Monday, then, Mulder, " she said,
smiling down at him.

What would she have done if he put his arms around her waist and
hugged her to him? If he'd fallen on his knees in front of her
and buried his head against her?

She'd feel sorry for him. She couldn't help it if she couldn't
give him what he wanted. No matter what they did together, no
matter what he said, the next morning, there she was, maintaining
the equilibrium. They were circus acrobats on the high-wire, and
he wouldn't be the one to fall off first.

Except he already had.

Mulder pulls the covers over his head. I'll feel better on
Monday, he thinks. I'm just a little depressed, that's all. I'll
get up and go running tomorrow.

On the television, Beckham scores.

If they just wouldn't keep dying in his arms.

******

The Quiet Glades of Eden

1.

Scully had resumed going to yoga classes. Something about Zen
Buddhism appealed to her. A Zen Catholic, she thought.

Sometimes it took several poses before she didn't think about
Mulder, or see his face when she closed her eyes.

"I wonder what he's doing," she thought. "I wonder what he's
doing."

Mulder was getting lunch. The Washington humidity was so thick
that is was almost visible. He wondered what the Colorado killer
was doing.

He had to be making a living doing something that allowed him to
travel - or he had a skill that allowed him to move about freely.
He had blended in at a ski resort, but he didn't leave a paper
trail there. The vehicle -

Mulder's train of thought stopped. His boss was standing, his
jacket slung over his shoulder, waiting for him. Mulder's forward
motion carried him easily up to A.D. Skinner. "Sir."

"Mulder. Walk with me? I'd like to see if you've been pondering
what I've been pondering."

They fell into step. "The Colorado killer is all I've been
pondering," Mulder said, resigned.

"Good," Skinner answered. "Oddly enough, I find myself interested
in your thoughts about the Colorado killer. The one that
assaulted and kidnapped a federal agent."

Mulder looked resolutely ahead.

"Because I find myself wanting to set you on his trail, Agent."

"To keep me away from the X-Files?" Mulder asked, finally giving
the larger man more than his profile.

Skinner had his military-style sunglasses on. "No, Mulder, to get
your ass out of the basement for a while. Get Scully out of the
basement."

They were at a little plaza, and Skinner stepped up to a hot-dog
and pretzel vendor. "Pretzel and a Diet Pepsi," he said, pulling
out his wallet. "Anything, Mulder?"

"Pretzel and a tea," Mulder said. "Thanks."

Skinner dropped his change in a pocket, picked up his purchase,
and nodded to a cluster of table and chairs next to a fountain.
They walked over, and sat down. Skinner let Mulder eat his
pretzel in silence, and then took off his sunglasses and polished
them on a spotless handkerchief.

"He's taken Bundy as the template for everything he is and
everything he wants to be," Mulder said, the words coming out
slowly and steadily.

"He's read the books and watched the movie, and watched 'Silence
of the Lambs' and sneered at it. Sneered at profilers, and
sneered at the people who tried to stop him in the mountains.
He's studied Bundy, and keeps on studying, because it's his
passion and his pleasure and his sexuality. He probably started
by taking prostitutes, teen-aged runaways, women that hang out in
bars who won't be missed." Skinner watched Mulder take the top
off the tea bottle, and screw it back on again, over and over, as
he talked. "But what he really wants, what he regards as his wine
of life, is nice middle-class red-heads with clear, beautiful,
carefully moisturized skin."

The Assistant Director nodded.

"It's the skin, sir," Mulder said, staring blindly at the women
coming and going in the shaded plaza. "He had the moonlight and
now he wants the sunlight. The tanned skin. He wants Bundy's
Florida experience, only without losing control. He won't go for
a dorm. He likes what he did in Oregon, Idaho, and what he wanted
to do in Colorado. He wants two of them at the same time. But
he'd like to have both of them alive, so he can see the
humiliation of the one victim as he rapes her in front the other,
and see the fear of the witness for what's to come next. That's
his vision and his new script. He may be practicing now with
transients, in Florida. And he's making them disappear so
quietly, so smoothly, that he's right under the radar, right
under our noses. He's waiting for the last of the summer wine."

Skinner nodded, again, and picked up his jacket from the next chair.
Reaching inside, he pulled out a fax. "I think he's setting up
shop in Panama City," he said. "Topless dancers are disappearing
in pairs from the whole beach area."

Mulder unfolded the fax. "Yeah, but have any bodies - oh."

"Yeah, a couple of bodies are turning up, back in the dunes in
Bay County. Off the highway. Out of the eyes of tourists.
Somebody down there actually reads national case reports, and
knew how to ask for help, and, even better, who to ask for."

Mulder smiled, as unpleasantly as it was possible for him to do.

Or maybe that was just the way his reflection looked in Skinner's
sunglasses. Even he wasn't sure.

2.

"We're going to Panama City, Scully," Mulder said.

"We are?" she asked.

"I know you'd probably prefer Pensacola, so you can walk along
the dunes of your youth and re-live those Naval memories, but
murders are in Panama City, so that's where we have to go."
He dropped into his chair, and canted it back, grinning evilly.

Scully took off her reading glasses. "Hmmm. Dolphins being used
in scientific experiments are attacking vacationers?" Best to
start off with a slow pitch.

Mulder shook his head. "No. Sounds like fun, but no."

"MTV is using the Sex on the Beach tour to brainwash college
students into mindless conformity."

"So that's how it's done? No, I don't think we can stop that.
It's too late." He sat down squarely on his chair, pulling a
legal pad towards him. "No, we're going to see if our Colorado
friend is having fun and games with exotic dancers." He bent his
head over the paper and began making notes.

Scully frowned. Something was off. He always gave her three
guesses. "I sunburn, Mulder. I don't have to go to the beach in
a thong, do I?"

"Your choice," he said, without even half a leer, "but I think
he's hitting his groove, so I wouldn't put anyone out as bait at
this point. We're going to do straight investigative assistance.
They've got two dead women, one a prostitute, the other a dancer.
Two other dancers are missing. Each pair went missing the same
night."

Scully flipped through the file he'd handed her.

"Besides," Mulder continued, "he's in place. He's going to be
someone's regular customer. He's found several places to cruise,
he's tipping, he's being a perfect customer." He looked up at
her, but he wasn't seeing her. He was already thinking about his
profile. "Your turn to drive to the airport," he said, then
stood up and left, catching up his jacket without looking behind
him.

Scully felt a aching behind her eyes.

********

//Did you ever believe in your dreams before
Were you always afraid of the dark
Is the edge of the world always in your head
Does the gun point straight at your heart?//

The bass line thumped inside Mulder's apartment that afternoon
when Scully came to get him. One day, she thought, as she pressed
the door bell, we'll have a talk about his taste in music. Right
after the talk we have about how we slept in the same bed on the
Colorado case, and how we had sleazy motel sex that I,
personally, thought was the best ride I'd had since the time
Eddie Sanchez borrowed his dad's Ferrari and let me drive.

She leaned on the doorbell again. Yeah. They'd have 'that' talk.

The music stopped. "Just a minute, Scully," she heard. If she
thought about the mechanics of the sex, if she thought about the
banality of 'sex while undercover,' and not how she could pick
his voice out of a thousand, how there was no one like
Mulder....then she could keep forgetting how much she still loved
him.

The door opened and there he was. Her defenses already in place,
she raised an eyebrow. He shrugged, and turned to pull his
suitcase out, and lock the door. "Why I bother," he muttered,
"when it's apparently on an internet data base of Good B and
E's."

"One suggestion: gated community," Scully said to his back.

"Yeah, you're so security minded, yourself," he said. "Good, we
can get the travel arguing started and save time."

Feeling that she was caught on the wrong foot, Scully said,
softly, "I don't want to argue at all, Mulder."

He blinked. "Okay. Then we won't." He waved her ahead, and they
went to the elevator.

*********

A few hours later, Mulder walked through a crowded, cool club,
still in his office clothes. It was only three in the afternoon,
and after the blazing heat of the parking lot beyond the blacked-
out glass of the entrance doors, the air conditioning almost
sucked his breath out of his lungs. Inside, Christmas light
strands swathed all over the walls of the bar area. Young women
in perky running shorts and shoes came in with him, dragging
*their* wheeled carry-ons. Shift change coming up, he thought.

Mulder took a slow circuit around the stage.

He blended in here. Plenty of local yuppies, with starched white
shirts and ties. This was more of a locals' strip bar than a
tourist area. It was a big enough bar, with a main stage and one
little one near the door. The back wall had cubicles and single
chairs for the "table dances".

There were no women in the audience, and he knew he had been
right to leave Scully to examine the recovered bodies. He ordered
a beer and sat back at a table, away from the railing and the
guys with their folded dollar bills. The music was like blows to
your head, and the girl onstage not the prettiest or best dancer
Mulder had ever seen. He took a meditative sip from his beer.

Well, there you are: the ones who aren't headliners, who don't
get the good tips - they'd be glad to have a customer give them
special attention - waitress in white running shoes that glowed
under the random black light. Dancer wanna-bes? Bouncers, very
unobtrusive, and a DJ putting on the music. He wouldn't have
chosen Big Eighties songs, himself, and he wondered if it was the
individual dancer's request or the DJ's pick.

A lot of things to look at, in this kind of club, not counting
the girl kicking her feet up to the top of the metal pole and
undulating down it.

He'd have to come back later, with the homicide investigator, and
talk
to the dancers. He had to get into this guy's skin again.
He had to walk where he walked. Since the killer already struck
here, he wouldn't be back. Right now, Mulder was prepared to
enjoy the show.

Smoked - he probably smoked. He would smoke, and have just enough
drinks to be unnoticed-

Predictably, his cell phone buzzed.

He looked at the caller ID. Scully.

How big a fool was he, that just seeing her name was like the cut
of a knife along his skin? He bit at his thumbnail for a moment.
Well, he should go back to the police department, anyway. He
needed to get Det. Brooks, the lead investigator, and start
questioning the dancers again.

"Yeah, Scully," he sighed into the phone.

"I can hardly hear you, Mulder," she said.

Tell me about it, Scully.

3.

Detective Brooks was a lean, wiry black man with a perpetual
narrow-eyed squint. He had been the one to ask the Bureau for
help, so Mulder didn't think the squint was at them. "I had
already interviewed the witnesses before I picked up the hair
color," he explained. He and the agents were eating steamed spicy
shrimp at a low-rent place called Joe's.

"It was a pretty good catch," Mulder said. Scully was momentarily
confused, and thought he was talking about his shrimp. Mulder had
inhaled all of his shrimp, cole slaw, french fries, and now was
sneaking hush puppies from Scully's plate. "Damn, these are
good."

"Any way, the two missing women are from the Booby Hatch, where
you went today. They were transients. They lived together at a
furnished apartment, and all their personal stuff was cleaned
out. The landlady thought they had skipped, but they were owed
another check from the club. Some kind of mix-up with the pay,
and they were supposed to come back when the owner was there to
straighten it out. Anyway, no missing persons report filed, no
one is looking for them. I've got the pictures from the club."

Mulder cocked his head, looking inquiringly at the detective. "Is
there a landfill anywhere near by? He cleaned out the victims'
personal items and threw them away. He's too smart to have put
them in the nearest dumpster. Of course, our guy could just have
a boat and toss the stuff out in the gulf." He bit a hush puppy
in half, and dunked one piece in catsup. "And the women who were
found? Were they from the same club, or were they prostitutes?"

"Prostitutes. So, you see how the local press isn't terribly
interested in what happened to them. The beach is for tourists,
and the rest of the county is still Bible Belt."

Mulder nodded, caught the waitress's eye. "You wouldn't have pie,
would you?"

"Yes, sir, chocolate pie this week."

"Let me have a slice, and a cup of coffee," Mulder said, beaming
up at her. With scarcely a change in tone, he said, as the
waitress walked away, "Was the furnished place all cleaned up,
did the landlady say?"

"Yes, it was."

"Think we could go take a look at it? Before the evening shift at
Classic Lady?"

*************

"You used to have red hair, didn't you, Amber?" Mulder asked,
neutrally. "Any reason for the change?" He sat lazily, holding a
cup of coffee he had gotten from the bartender.

The music boomed over their heads, unheeded, the bass line
throbbing with Scully's pulse.

"Amber?" The girl raised a shoulder in a gesture that could have
meant
anything.

"Did someone creep you out more than usual? I'm sure you get some
customers who think they have a relationship with you."

Scully could scarcely pay attention to what he was saying. The
club was too interesting. It was a big warehouse-looking place,
dark and smoky. There was no way to tell what time of day it was,
except by the lack of patrons. They were all sitting at the far
wall, near the women's restroom and the dressing room for the
dancers. This area had broad cones of light surrounding the pool
tables, and the usual tall bar tables and chairs around the
perimeter. At the opposite end, almost at the door, she could see
a tall skinny girl stepping up to the small stage, her white skin
a flash of pink under the red lights.

Two guys were wiping down the main stage's metal poles with a
roll of paper towels and what looked like Windex. Scully knew her
eyes were as round as Mulder's had been when Frohike sent him
that Kirk/Spock fanfic website.

She pointed her attention back to Mulder. "So you dyed your hair
black. Did that discourage him?"

"Not discourage, really. Like switched his attention off. Blank
screen."

"What color of red was your hair, before?" Brooks asked, leaning
forward. Scully heard the tiny creak of a leather holster.

Amber tilted her head to Scully. "Like hers."

Scully resisted the urge to touch her hair. "Did he say anything
in particular to you? Like one thing that made you think - "

"Whoa. That's what I thought. He was sitting in his van outside
our door, and he said, 'I had to watch you.' And the van. All the
serial killers have those murder vans."

Scully hoped Amber meant 'as seen on television,' because she
didn't think they could handle more than one serial killer in
town at a time.

Brooks was writing in his little flip pad. "A panel van? Do you
remember the color?"

"I thought it was a caramel. Like caramel candy."

Scully looked over at Mulder, did a double take. Behind him, the
club was suddenly full of men, gathering around the main stage.
Mulder, however, had his head cocked, listening to the music
blasting over the sound system. It seemed like an odd choice for
a lap dance, but she didn't recognize it for a moment.

//You always seem to find the sun
But this time, the sun is a fire
Bring down the rain
This house is burning again
Put out the flame
Bring down the rain //

Amber glanced up at the ceiling speakers. "Our DJ plays that in
between sets. It's the cue for someone to get their ass out on
the main stage."

Mulder had become completely still. "This is the right place," he
said to Brooks. His eyes looked black. "Let's go get some real
coffee and talk."

"The forensic team can meet us at the duplex in an hour," Brooks
said. "They're getting the Luminol now."

********

The twilight had given way to full night, and they followed
Brooks' unmarked police sedan to a Huddle Shop. They sat back in
the corner, and Mulder began twisting the coffee stirrers in
knots. When the waitress finally left them alone, he raised his
eyes from his busy fingers.

"Detective, we can do one of two things, but not both. We can get
the word out to all the sex workers and the dancers about a guy
who's fixated on redheads. That would stop women from going
anywhere with him."

Brooks was staring down at his cup. "Or we don't warn them, and
we let him snatch someone. Why don't you want to put a decoy
out?" His eyes flicked to Scully's hair, and back to Mulder.

"Well, we did that in Colorado. It didn't work well. But the main
reason is, he's already got his victims picked out." He bent his
head,
intent on tightening the knot in the plastic. "I can expand on
the profile after we see the crime scene." He looked up at
Brooks. "It's not your investigator's fault. A missing persons
investigation is not the same as a murder scene investigation."

"You think he killed them there?"

"If no one lived in the other half of the duplex, it's certain.
He's very good at the clean-up. Let's see what we find."

4.

What they found was a two-bedroom duplex. No one lived on the
other side. The owner was on the sidewalk, trying to explain why
she hadn't had it cleaned. "The season is almost over," she said,
"so I thought I'd do it myself. There wasn't anything in the
fridge, so I turned off the power."

"We've got a generator and lights," Brooks said over Mulder's
shoulder. He was there with one uniformed officer, and the panel
truck of Crime Scene technicians.

"Well, it's a good thing you didn't clean it up," Mulder told the
woman. "Can you put these footie things on and just tell us if
you moved anything?"

"I don't want to go in," she said. "All I touched was the closet
doors. I looked to see if their clothes were there, and if there
was anything nasty in the fridge." She touched her mouth. "The
poor girls."

"Then we don't need you," Mulder said, looking at Brooks.

"No ma'am, we don't need you to stay. We'll let you know if we
need to seal it."

Shuddering, the owner went back to her Cadillac and drove away.

"Let's get some lights in here and take a good look," Brooks said
to the techs. "Footie things," he chuckled, and put on the paper
socks, himself.

"Detective, I'm going to stay out of your way. I saw a Starbucks
back a bit. I'm going to go get some over-priced espresso. You
want one?"

"Nah, I wouldn't know how to process decent coffee."

Scully was, as she ruefully and inevitably thought of it,
snapping on the latex. "Latte, no fat."

"I remember," he said, and walked back to the Alamo rental,
jacket flapping in the sudden breeze from the Gulf.

Scully turned to the C.S. technicians. "What we're looking for,
especially, is signs where the perp had both of the victims tied
up. Process the bath tub carefully, since that's probably where
he would have killed them. Check the bedding for hairs and semen,
of course, or spermicide, and see if you can tell if he dragged a
mattress into another room."

They nodded, and, dragging their lights and thick orange
extension cords, went into the front door.

"Mulder thinks, and I agree, that the perp likes to rape,
torture, kill one victim so he can get off on the fear of the
other victim," Scully said.

Brooks nodded, thoughtfully. "And he thinks the killer practiced
this first?"

Scully shrugged. "I haven't seen his updated profile, but he
always says that the killer thinks of it as a script; the killer
keeps refining it. It's possible that he could have hired two
women at once, for a little S&M, and not killed them." She pushed
hair off her forehead with her wrist. "They may not have been
redheads, even, for the practice run."

"Agent Scully," said one of the technicians, from the doorway.
"Come see this."

Scully went swiftly inside, ducking around the bulky processing
kits.

The whee whee whee and click/flashes of a camera were straight
ahead.

"What it is?"

Someone had pulled up the linoleum next to the bathtub; there was
a solid border of blackened blood on the slab.

"We've got the murder scene," she said. Sometimes, Mulder almost
creeped her out.

5.

The hotel room was preternaturally neat. Mulder's belongings were
all stowed tidily away in the closet, and the second bed had all
of his paperwork in stacks.

He sat at the table with his laptop, looking like he was at their
office, his tie only slightly loosened, his shirt cuffs still
buttoned.

He looked up at her, his eyes behind his reading glasses looking
a little unfocussed. "I didn't hear you come in," he said.

"Mulder, what's wrong?" she asked, deliberately dropping her bag
among the stacks of paper.

His eyes went to the bag, as he automatically replied, "Nothing,
Scully." He flinched as she sat on the end of the bed, causing
the neat stacks to slide together.

"Cut it out, Mulder. What's wrong?" She was hoping for some
reaction, any reaction. "Or what's wrong now?"

He sat back in the chair and gave her a level look. "What's wrong
with you, Scully? I'm doing what I was brought down here to do.
You should be happy. I'm working on the profile, tweaking it a
little. There's nothing even faintly unscientific going on here.
I'm projecting what I think the Colorado killer is going to do.
He's going to pick off young women and kill them. We may be able
to find him before he kills them both. We may not."

With his shoulders slumping, he shut the lid of the laptop, and
sat staring at his hands.

"What do you want from me, Scully? Do you want me to be your
performing monkey? What is it you want?"

"I want you," she said, and felt her face reddening.

Mulder didn't see her blush. He smiled cynically, his heavy
eyelashes veiling his gaze.

"Oh, because you're tired and lonely and I'm the only one around?
Or you can't sleep? Or you're horny?" He raised his eyes. "Like
last time."

"I thought -" she began, her embarrassment giving way to anger.
She decided it was anger, because if she wasn't angry, she was -
what? She stood, her hands clenching and unclenching.

"What, Scully? I'm not the one who has to pretend things don't
exist." His _expression was stony, and he didn't move even as she
seized him by the shoulders.

She didn't know what she meant to do, but at the contact,
something inside her seemed to soften. She flattened her palms on
his shoulders and smoothed the cloth of his shirt. She slid her
hands up to his neck, and lightly touched the skin above his
collar. "I could choke you," she said, bending over him.

"What do you want from me?" he said again. "I'll do whatever you
want." The pulse in his neck throbbed against her palm.

"Mulder, you liar," she said, her voice breaking. "You never do
what I want, or what anyone wants, ever." She bent and brushed her
lips
against the mole on his cheek. The beard stubble grazed her
mouth. "You wouldn't be you," she said, into his ear. She felt
awkward, stupid, but she pressed her lips again to his cheek.

At that, she felt him sigh, and he pulled her down onto his lap.
"You say that now," he said, but his voice was gentler. His hands
were on her arms, bracing her so he could look straight at her.
"He's getting in my head. I won't look at your hair or
your skin and think, That's what he wants. I don't want
you to think that's what I'm doing."

She had never been this close to him in daylight before. She
could count every freckle on his face, see every faint line
etched around his eyes, see his lips part as he spoke to her. His
hands were loose on her arms. She was the one who was holding on.

"I'm not having sex with you now, Scully."

The operative word, Scully thought hopefully, being "now." She
couldn't think of a good answer right then, so she bent her head
and kissed him. He kissed her back, his mouth closed, once,
almost despite himself, then set her aside.

"We have to get back to work," he said, again with a half-smile.

She sat down in the other chair, looking at Mulder questioningly.

Mulder fanned out the Polaroids from the duplex. "The big photos
are being processed. I guess Brooks felt sensitive about taking
them in to the One-Hour place." It was as though nothing had
happened from the time she opened the hotel room door. "Luminol
shows up pretty damned good, though."

The break-down of the back bedroom had shown that a chair had
been used to contain one victim, tied up, and the bed used for
sex, and for possible post-mortem mutilation. The mattress had
been turned over, but the blood pattern showed faintly. "All the
sheets and towels were taken, so I'm betting he used them to mop
up. And if someone thought the victims had moved out, then it
makes sense that the linens were gone."

Mulder picked up what was probably his twentieth cup of coffee of
the day. "He had to have a lot of time to get everything just
right." He took a drink of coffee. "Worked out how he wanted
to do it, and how to clean it up. No neighbors. So I bet he
had done a twosome with the victims before. No signs of struggle,
you see? They weren't concerned when he tied them up and---I
don't know if he gagged them. Maybe
before. If he noticed that the other half of the duplex was
vacant, he may have wanted to hear them scream. I bet he has a
camcorder. They probably helped him set up. He probably had cash
all laid out for them, and maybe cocaine." He pointed to a piece
of paper. "Brooks saw the razor lines on the kitchen counter.
Field tested it, found very faint positive for cocaine."

Mulder leaned his elbow on the table, and put his head in his
hand. "It's very important to him to have the two women. Very
important to stay in control. Interesting to know if he used any
cocaine. Or - "

Mulder sat back to re-read one of his files, and Scully pulled
off her running shoes and crossed to the non-paperwork bed. She
sat down and read the Bay County Coroner's report on the
recovered bodies. Her eyes were tired, and she set the report
down to put her fingertips on her closed eyelids, just for a
moment, and. . .

. . .she is back in the duplex, tied to the headboard by her
wrists. She tastes the sodden cloth of a gag in her mouth, and
when she turns her head, she can see Amber, in her pleated
schoolgirl's skirt and white blouse, tied to a kitchen chair
beside her. Amber is gagged, and her eyes roll frantically at
Scully.

Save me. You're supposed to save me, Amber's eyes tell her.

Scully's feet scrabble on the bed, trying to plant them somewhere
and get some purchase. It is still afternoon, and Scully feels
sweat streaming down her neck and pooling in the cleavage of her
bra. The bedspread rucks up under her toes, but she can't move
her tied wrists.

Mulder comes into view, wearing a wife-beater and khaki pants,
and grips her right ankle. He says nothing, but begins wrapping
duct tape around and around her leg, and runs a long strip to the
bedframe below the dangling sheet. He jerks her left ankle,
spreading her legs wide, wide, and ties her other foot down.

She is not wearing anything below her waist, and she is pulled
open to his dispassionate view. He tilts his head as if mentally
checking the arrangement.

Mulder picks up Amber like a puppy, and - unties her hands? Or
are her hands untied already? Scully can't follow it, but she
sees him yank the gag out of Amber's mouth, and then he throws
Amber between Scully's leg. "Do it," he says.

Amber crawls up, and puts her mouth to Scully's clit. Her teeth
are chattering. Scully stares at Mulder, and he unzips his pants
as he kneels behind Amber on the bed.

Scully tries to scream, but it's a whimpering sob.

Suddenly, it was dark and she was in Mulder's arms - the real
Mulder, she thinks, not the nightmare Killer-Mulder.

"Ssh," he said, and pulled her face against the soft cotton of
his tee shirt. He had changed into his running clothes, and she
curved around him, holding on to him with both her arms. He
stroked her hair, rubbing her shoulders.

"I saw it," she said, hating her sobs. "I saw how he killed them
- and - I was tied up - and Amber - and you were the killer."

"That's why I didn't want -" he began, exasperatedly, and audibly
ground his teeth. He stroked the back of her neck. "You've
processed the information and visualized it, is all, Scully. You
know that."

She clenched her hands into his shirt, still crying.

"Breathe," he said, in a softer voice. "Breathe with me."

Scully's heart hammered like a trapped rabbit's.

"Scully," he said, and pulled her away from him, and looked at
her face. She sniffled, aware of her streaming eyes and nose.
Mulder rubbed the side of her face with the edge of his palm,
then leaned his forehead against hers, eyes closed. "I hate it
when you cry," he said quietly.

"You tied my wrists to the headboard," she said, aware that her
pulse rate had slowed. She showed him her wrist, almost surprised
that there was no ligature mark.

Mulder bent his head and kissed the inside of her wrist, holding
the back of her hand in his. "What else? What did he do?"

His eyes were almost all pupil in the half-light. She had a
dizzyingly feeling of deja vu. She touched her mouth, and Mulder
bent his mouth to hers, his mouth tasting of toothpaste. It must
be almost morning, she thought, sliding her hands up his shirt.
He let her pull the shirt over his head, and she bent her head
and bit the sweet spot between shoulder and neck. He caught his
breath, and fell back on the bed, taking her with him.

Time expanded, and her shudders of fear became shudders of heat.
She was hot and aching for him, and it seemed like he was inside
her as soon as she had pulled off her shorts and his. He only had
a few short but incredibly intense strokes before she clenched on
him and hissed like a cat. Mulder's hips jerked, and he came
right after her.

They lay together, stunned, for a few moments. "That wasn't so
terrible, was it?" she asked. She felt tremendously energized and
alert.

Mulder said something that sounded like "Gah," or maybe "Ngah."
He leaned across her, and picking up his tee-shirt, wiped them
both off as he pulled out of her. Throwing the shirt off the bed,
he closed his eyes and spooned back around her. "Fifteen
minutes," he said. And, incredibly, he was asleep.

The thing to do was not think too much about it.

6.

In a little more than fifteen minutes, Mulder awoke with a jerk.
She felt his eyelashes move on her neck. "Scully, let's go walk
on the beach."

She looked skeptically at the outline of light showing between
the blinds and the window. "Looks like rain," she said.

"Good. No one around." He blinked a couple of times, and then
seemed to bring her into focus. He sat up, slowly taking his
arms away from her waist.

"This isn't where you go into denial again, is it?" she asked.

"What would be the use? You already had the nightmare." He rolled
away from her, scrabbling for his clothes with one hand. "And it
felt pretty damned good," he said, giving her a lopsided smile as
he pulled on his shorts. Her heart turned over.
"Your shirt, I think...here's one shoe...I was going to go
running." While he piled her clothes and shoes on the bed at her
feet, he was dropping his keycard, keys,
and cellphone in his pockets. "C'mon, Scully, shower and
breakfast later. I want to ask you something."

"Let me go to the bathroom," she said, unrolling her underpants
from their tight curl and pulling them up. "Did I have a bra when
I came in?"

"Nope. Very considerate of you." He found a clean tee shirt and
pulled it on.

In the bathroom, she found herself grinning. All those months of
uncertainty and Mulder was Mulder. Maybe it was the codeine that
made him so paranoid before?

She washed her face and used Mulder's comb to smooth back her
hair.

**********

It was still very early, and only a few shell seekers were on the
beach. The skies were gray, and the surf correspondingly sullen.
After a moment, Mulder took her hand. She nearly started.

He turned and looked at her intently. "Scully, what exactly did
you see in the dream?" he asked.

She blew out a breath. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn't
that.

"I was in the duplex," she said. "It was in the afternoon, and
it was hot, like no air conditioning hot. I had a shirt on, and
my bra, but nothing else."

"And I was tying your hands?"

"Well, I knew it was him, not you, not really. I think my hands
were already tied."

"Anything else before the man moved?" he asked. He stopped, and
they stood and stared out into the Gulf.

"Amber was there. The girl from the club, yesterday. She was tied
to a kitchen chair that he had brought in beside the bed. Then,
he spread-" she swallowed. "Spread my legs and tied my feet down.
Duct tape. He wound the tape up into a rope, kind of, and
anchored it to the mattress frame at the foot of the bed."

Mulder raised their clasped hands, and stared at her fingernails
as if he was about to recommend a nail color. "What happened
after he got you - "

"Ready. He was getting me ready, and it was like he was checking.
Like he had a picture in his head, like a set decorator, and he
was setting up." Scully looked at Mulder's face. He was studying
her hand with great concentration, until he seemed to feel her
gaze. He looked up, and raised his eyebrows.

"He picked up Amber and said, 'Do it,' and slung her face to my
crotch. Then he unzipped his pants."

"Was Amber's hair red? Or the color we saw?"

"Red," she said.

Mulder's smile flashed, all too briefly, and he dropped her
hands. "Well, there you are. You're a profiler."

He turned, and walked a little way back up the beach, and sat
down on the wooden steps from the hotel behind them. "Detective
Brooks and I are going to have a news conference and warn the
women of the Gulf Coast of a predator," he said. "We're not going
to play around and do decoys, or anything like that. Brooks will
take my preliminary profile, and after the evidence is processed,
he'll investigate any leads. I just don't see the point in one
more women being murdered, Scully. This guy's imbedded here, and
he could be anywhere along forty different jurisdictions." He
looked up at Scully, as she leaned against the silvered wooden
railing. "Do you back me on this?"

"Sure, Mulder. You didn't have to sleep with me for that."

Mulder leaned back on the step, elbows propped. He looked impossibly
boyish in
his long shorts, tee shirt, and wind-ruffled hair. "Didn't hurt,
did it?" He rubbed his fingertips along his neck, rasping the
beard stubble.

Scully had the indefinable feeling that he had once again eluded
her. He was wanting her to understand something he couldn't bring
himself to say.

So what else was new?

7.

All the voices in Mulder's head told him he was stupid. His
conscious voice, the one uppermost as he saved the killer's
profile to disk, and the one from the lower level that said,
'She'll hurt you again.' He pulled a clean shirt from the dry-
cleaner's plastic bag.

This won't work. This can't work. Stupid to want the moon and the
stars. Stupid to delude yourself. Stupid to think you can
balance everything at once.

Detective Brooks had said he'd rather have live women than dead
bodies. They were about to get bodies. "This'll smoke him out,
you think?"

Mulder and Scully were at the detective's office. "Yeah, he'll
show us."

"No chance they're alive somewhere?"

"I guess there's a chance - " Mulder began cautiously, but Scully
was shaking her head.

"No, the Luminol lit up the entire place. There was a lot of
blood. And it would be difficult to take two live but severely
injured victims any where."

"And really, why should he?" Mulder said easily. "It was perfect.
He had everything he needed right there. He had rehearsed. He had
anything he wanted in the trunk of his car. Liquor, whips, gags,
speed - he would have been ready. He's been prepping for a long
time. He tried blood on the snow - " Mulder stood up suddenly.

He knew what his face looked like, because he could see their faces.

"He'll do it in the sand," Mulder said. "That sugar sand.
Somewhere private. The waves will drown out any screams that leak
out of the gag. He'll want to see the patterns the blood makes in
the sand." He looked around the office. "Map. Is there any place
- " He sat back down. "No. These girls are dead. He won't spoil it
by
dumping. He'll dump - " Mulder couldn't get the words out in time
with his racing thoughts. Jesus God, couldn't they see it? The
guy is here and now, he's here and now in Panama City.

He looked up at Detective Brooks, who was standing over him.
"Could someone hire a boat, load up a couple of those big
coolers, go out and dump the bodies out in the Gulf?"

"Sure they could," Brooks said. "Knock a hole or two in the
cooler for water, weigh it with a little, it could go down. Kind
of risky, though, with the currents." He reached for his
telephone. "We can call and get some of the rentals, if you think
it's worth pursuing."

Mulder shook his head. He felt like he had water in his ears.
He's here and now and he's driving around in a stolen car with
two bodies in the trunk.

"You know what? They're going to be in the trunk of an abandoned
car. He may even set it on fire first, but that would attract
attention. He'll just abandon it." Mulder opened his eyes. He
hadn't realized he was sitting there, talking while his eyes were
shut tight. "In a junk yard. That's what I would do. Drive up,
what the hell, park it in a salvage lot somewhere in the middle
of the night. Just outside the fence. No one will look until the
flies get thick."

Scully put down her coffee cup. "Well, then, let's give out the
profile to the press, like we planned."

"Did you see anything in the autopsies that would make me change
the profile?" Mulder asked, just to ask. Just to see if his voice
sounded normal.

"Nope." She stood up, and Mulder knew that she was thinking that
was their cue to leave, go back to the hotel, pack. That was what
they did; do the profile and leave.

He ignored her, looking at Brooks. "Well, let's go meet the
press." At Scully's surprised stare, he said, "What? We're not
undercover here. And the press will give it more coverage if
we're there. We won't make any statements."

*************

That evening, they were on the six o'clock news. Scully poked
Mulder, and he looked up from his steamed Cajun shrimp and beer.
Detective Brooks was front and center, with three microphones in
front of him, and they stood behind him. All she could really see
of them were their clip-on badges, the tiny blob of blue which
meant "FBI", and a flash of her hair as she pushed it behind her
ear. She shot a look at Mulder, but he just wrinkled his nose in
that disgustingly endearing way, and kept on eating.

She hoped he had some good mouthwash back at the hotel. She
picked up an onion ring and bit into it.

**************

There wasn't anything wrong with showing up with the locals,
quite the reverse. Good press for the Bureau, inter-agency
cooperation all worked well for the assistant director. Mulder
just didn't like doing it, that's all. Even worse, he could do it
so well. He had all the Bay County folks loving him.

No good could come of this, she thought.

8.

She was in her bathroom, brushing her teeth after her shower. She
would be a prune from taking so many showers. The humidity was
worse than D.C.'s, and she was going to have to go to Wal-Mart
and buy more underwear because she was damned if she was going to
rinse her underwear out and hang it to dry. Not with Mulder lying
on her bed watching television. He had fallen back from a
sitting position, his feet still on the floor. Let her start doing
laundry and he'd snap out of his catatonia soon enough.

She hadn't brought any sexy bras and panties, because she thought
that would have been tempting fate. After all, for months and
months she'd worn expensive bras to the office, and nothing
happened. Her
college roommate had been right - guys really did make their move
when you were wearing the granny panties.

She heard the television click off, and she put down her
hairbrush. Mulder stood in the doorway, shucking off his shirt
and pants without even a blink of self-consciousness, letting his
pants fall on the floor with change and keys and wallet spilling
out of the pockets, his boxers going with them, his feet already
bare. When he straightened up, she caught his face in her
fingertips and took his mouth. Yes, tasting of beer and spices,
but she didn't care. She didn't care about anything because he
was there, and he wasn't drugged and he wasn't a caffeinated
mess----and she stopped thinking because HolyMotherofGod his
erection was hard against her stomach and she was on fire.

Oh God she was on fire and she never wanted to stop burning.

Mulder picked her up and put her on the bathroom countertop. He
grabbed a towel from the shelf, and put it behind her. "Lie
back," he said.

Scully put the towel under her neck, her mouth dry. Her mouth
dry, and everything else hot and wet.

Mulder lifted her legs and rested her feet on his shoulders.
Putting his hands just under her hips, he said, "Arch your back
when I'm inside, Scully." He took one hand away from her hip to
adjust, and then with a slow thrust, he was in. He pulled her
hips until he was deep inside. "If I'm doing this right, you
should feel it - " Mulder said, in an almost 'Mr. Wizard,' tone.
She forgave him because he was saying it in a breathless voice.

She arched her back until he was all the way in. The feel of his
shoulders under the soles of her feet was incredibly erotic. Then
he moved, and hit her G-spot. Her mouth opened in an O of
astonishment, and Mulder grinned down at her. "I guess I'm doing
it right," he breathed.

"Don't....stop..." she said, almost choking.

He didn't for several mind bending minutes, and she gripped his
forearms so hard her fingertips are numb. His face contracted
suddenly, and it was enough to send her over the edge with him.

They crawled under the sheets, and Scully wanted to doze off, her
head on Mulder's chest, as he stroked her shoulder, her arm, her
back, in slow light strokes. She knew he was staring into the
darkness of the room, his mind working through the profile,
through her notes on the autopsies, impatiently wanting the
forensic results from the missing women's duplex.

She knew he was still staring up at the ceiling when she fell
asleep.

9.

The cell phone rang. "Mulder," he said, holding it to his ear,
without opening his eyes. Scully lifted her head from his
shoulder, and reached for her watch. Mulder tilted the phone
so she could hear the voice from the tiny speaker.

"One body," Brooks said. Scully sat up, and rolled off the bed.
"Dropped off at the dumpster behind the IHOP."

"A message," Mulder said, with real interest. "Can you keep it
out of the press?"

"I think we can for a while, but you know there's always leaks."

"Well, just until we get there. We need to see how the body is
displayed. This is the IHOP a couple of miles from here?"

Mulder clicked off on the detective's "Right," and turned to see
Scully zipping up her jeans.

"What?" she asked, face bland. "You think I can't get dressed in
two minutes?"

"Have to get a stopwatch on that some time, Scully," he said, and
threw the sheet back. He pretended not to notice that she dropped
her gaze away from him. Not quite used to him, yet, he thought.

His eyes felt grainy and tired. I can't do this, he thought. I
can't do this now. It's going to break me. He wasn't thinking
about the killer.

After he had dressed, and Scully gone to her room to get her
briefcase, Mulder settled down into a tension-free groove of
thought. In the car, he rolled down the window to inhale the
night air from the Gulf. He loved nights like this, even though
he knew he was on his way to a crime scene. It was why he had
joined the F.B.I., several nervous breakdowns ago - to get that
rush of virtue, of being one of the white hats swooping down. He
almost chuckled at himself.

Scully watched him carefully, pretending not to do so. How she
loved to doctor him. Misplaced maternal instinct, he thought,
then just as quickly reminded himself not to go there.

Even in the party-hearty Florida panhandle, two in the morning
was no-one's time. No customers were in the IHOP, only the
waitresses standing in the glassed foyer watching the police. No
traffic on the highway to slow and gawk at the police cars and
the ambulance, and no one except people who were paid to clean up
after violent death.

Detective Brooks' white polo shirt stood out in the dark, and he
waved an arm for them to park. A fine drizzle showed up in their
headlights.

Mulder and Scully got out, and followed Brooks around the yellow
crime scene tape to the shockingly white corpse lying on the
black asphalt.

"What is he saying?" Mulder asked himself. He dropped to a
crouch, six feet away, and cocked his head, studying the body.

I can do what I want, and I can do it better than anyone you
know.

I can pick my victims, and I can keep the bodies and bring them
back and rub your face in it like a bad dog. We're both bad dogs,
but I'm bigger and badder. I know what I am.

And this? This is a little slut. No good to anyone, no good to
herself. Be reasonable - she was going to be a victim sooner or
later. She turns tricks. You may have warned the girls here, but
I'll go somewhere else. I won't lose it and invade a sorority
house or pick up a twelve year old. I'll always pick someone that
does. Not. Matter.

Mulder stood up, and walked a circle around the dead girl. The
dumpster neatly hid her from the front parking lot. He could have
easily driven through one entrance, circled the restaurant, and
exited through the other. A light mist, and no -

He pointed to the asphalt. "Looks like an oil leak," he told
Brooks.

The photographer advanced at the detective's nod, and slowly
walked around, taking pictures.

"See how he spread her out?" Mulder said conversationally, as if
he was at an art gallery. "He's telling us that he saw her at the
club, spreading herself out. He put her beside the dumpster to
tell us that she's garbage."

The drizzle on his face felt like tears.

10.

"I bet we'll find that she was in a freezer. He'll have the other
one waiting for something---the next news conference, maybe?"
Scully asked, tying her scrub pants. Mulder had his back to her,
leaning on the modesty wall in front of the change room door.

"Mulder?" she asked, walking around to face him. He moved one
shoulder up in assent. He didn't quite have a thousand-yard-
stare, nothing that empty and frightening. His gaze was turned
inward, profoundly thoughtful, but he focused on her face.

"He's not in as much control as he likes," Mulder said. "If we
don't publicize finding this body - or let the public think it's
unrelated - he may drop the other body." His mouth twisted.
"Something. Something as a message." He stuck his hands in his
pockets, and rattled the change. He seemed to be picking his
words carefully. "The press conference smoked him out, rattled
his cage."

Scully raised her eyebrow. "I knew you had a reason for doing it,
Mulder, since you hate cameras. I just hoped you were sharing
with Brooks."

Mulder nodded. "It was his idea, so he's kind of pleased."

"Yeah, you made him think it was his idea," she said, brushing
past him to the door.

Mulder spread his hand on his chest, miming hurt surprise. "I'm
going to go back to the hotel," he said. "I'll get a ride from
Brooks. Here's the car keys."

"That's a good idea, Mulder. Get some sleep. I'll call you if
there's anything really unexpected."

Mulder stopped dead, looking at her with an _expression she
absolutely did not know how to read.

"Do that," he said.

11.

Mulder sat in the darkness of the motel room, the door unlocked,
and the blinds cracked. It was four. Day would break in about an
hour. He was waiting for Scully to return. He was waiting for
something that his mind told him was ridiculous, that he knew had
to be his nerves and the paranoia from days of insomnia.

He knew the bad thing was going to happen. He knew he had finally
cracked and would have to start taking his Zoloft when he got
back to D.C. Mulder had his Glock in his hand, his hand resting
on his knee. The parking lot was almost empty.

He heard a car.

12.

They had decided that the body would have to go to Tallahassee
and the State forensics lab. "We don't have the facilities," the
Bay County M.E. said.

"That's all right," Scully said. "I just wanted to see if the
signature of the killer is the same, and basically, it is." She
wadded up the scrubs and threw them into the dirty laundry bin.
"Could you copy us on the results?"

"Absolutely," the M.E. said. "I have your fax and e-mail."

Scully stretched. "Then I'll go back and see if I can get some
sleep before breakfast."

The motel wasn't far from the morgue, and she took it slowly,
feeling the weariness. She was going to have to corner Mulder and
talk, with a capital T. She had the unnerving feeling that he was
having sex with her to shut her up. Not that she minded, really,
because this way, she didn't have to embarrass herself - or
him - by sudden declarations of love and devotion.

Shit. The rain and the lack of sleep was making her sappy.

She pulled into the parking lot, and cut the engine. No lights
from the motel room: maybe Mulder was asleep. She got out, opened
the rear door to get her bag. Her tape recorder fell out of her
jacket pocket, and slithered under the seat. She bent down to get
it.

When suddenly everything went weird.

A door opened, and she thought it was Mulder walking up to her,
but she was roughly pushed down into the back seat, and her
weapon was pulled out of her waistband holster and there was
roaring and hot pebbles of broken window glass and blood sprayed
over her.

Scully thought she had been shot, as she heard the two gunshots
her brain processed. She pushed herself upright, and looked out
through the broken window to see Mulder in correct Bureau stance,
his gun trained on someone out of her sight. He moved forward,
and kicked.

Scully threw herself out of the car, she saw her gun skittering
away from the man on the ground, who was writhing and clutching
his right hands.

Clutching the shattered bloody mess of his right hand.

"Call it, Scully," Mulder said, in that dead level voice. She
reached for her cell phone. "And you, lay still. She's a doctor,
and if you don't let her look at your arm, you can just fucking
bleed to death. Save the state some money." He looked up at
Scully. Doors were opening and lights were coming on all over the
motel. Mulder took a deep breath.

"You are under arrest. You have the right----"

13.

After the police and the ambulance came, Scully sat in the motel
room and gave her brief report to one of Brooks' detectives. It
was pouring down, which reduced the rubber-neckers. The main
story was now at the hospital. Mulder had thrown his black
raincoat on over his jeans and sweatshirt and gone with the
police.

After they'd gotten everything that could be wrung out of her -
which wasn't much - the police left. She decided to shampoo the
blood out of her hair, and make sure she didn't have any bits of
glass in it. It was officially morning, and a business day, but
the storm had settled on the beach, and made it look like night.

When she came out of the shower, toweling her hair, Mulder was
standing in front of the television. He was still in his
raincoat, staring at the Weather Channel with an _expression more
than usually blank.

"He's in surgery," Mulder said, just standing there, dripping.
"If he dies, we won't really know where all the bodies are."

She stared up at him, arms akimbo, towel forgotten, and dripping
as much as he was. "Oh, so are you going to blame yourself and
think 'I shouldn't have shot him blah blah blah, nothing I do
ever turns out right,' and generally go into one of the good old
Mulder funks? Why can't you just get drunk?"

He turned to her, his face fractionally softer. "I already had a
couple of drinks. I don't like getting drunk."

"Well, Mulder, you've been through a lot. You've been in the mind
of someone that's evil. I know you hate profiling---"

"No," Mulder said, his voice getting low and gravelly. "I love
profiling."

Scully had been tightening the belt of the bathrobe, but she
stopped with the two ends in her hands. "Oh?"

"Ohh, I get both eyebrows?" Mulder asked. "That's my dirty little
secret, Scully. I get off on it. I get off on getting inside the
head of some stone cold killer and figuring him out."

"And bringing him in," Scully interjected.

"Yeah, but I still love it. That's why I had to find something
else to do. I'd do this all the time if I could. Walking into
some strange town like the Lone Ranger - " He pulled at the cuff
of his raincoat. "I risked you, Scully. I let you place
yourself at risk."

Scully felt impatient. "You didn't know he'd come after me."

"I had a pretty good guess," he said, his eyes cold.

Scully shrugged. He was so full of it.

"There," he said. "Now you know all about me. You
know all there is about what a sick fuck I am." He brushed past
her on his way to the door.

"Don't leave me, Mulder," she said.

She didn't even see him move. He was on her almost between
blinks, his hands on her shoulders, his mouth covering hers.

Involuntarily, her mouth opened to his hot tongue, and she
clutched at his shoulders like she was drowning, and he was her
only hope of salvation.

"Don't go," she said, as he kissed her eyelids, her nose, her
forehead; as he licked the droplets of water from her neck. "Stay
here tonight."

"I'm here," he said, and he hooked one arm around her waist and
pulled her back with him on the bed. She didn't think, she had no
time to think except to push his raincoat off his shoulders, and
he rolled to one side and yanked his sweatshirt off over his head.

He finally looked her in the eyes. "Scully," he said, and exhaled
as she rolled over to him and put her hands on his chest. "I'm so
tired."

She reached for his belt. "Let me," she crooned, and finished
undressing him as he submitted to her touch. At last, he lay back
on the pillows and reached for her. When he parted her robe, the
slight tremble of his fingers was the most eloquent compliment he
had ever given her. She shivered under the intensity of his eyes,
his pupils as dilated as if he had been smoking dope. He found
the remote control and, wonder of wonders, turned off the
television.

With more care than she would had imagined him capable of, he lay
back beside her on the bed, and began to slowly stroke her
breasts, her belly, her thighs. He teased one finger against her
triangle of curls then slowly began brushing his fingertips
against her clit, as he moved to flick his tongue against her
nipples. Then he kissed his way down her belly.

It was so good. It was Mulder, and when she opened her eyes and
saw his face between her thighs, she nearly came, even before his
tongue turned her into fire. She had a hard time not locking her
legs around his head.

He kept laving her clit with her tongue while sliding his finger
in and out. She involuntarily bucked her hips. She was so close,
so close - she hardly felt the difference when he left her, and
poised himself above her.

"Mulder," she breathed, and he pushed into her with an assurance
that made her go up the long incline, then with two strokes, she
was almost there. And he pulled slowly out, and then pushed in
again, bending over to kiss her.

"Oh, God, Scully," he sighed, as she came. And then shuddering,
came too.

He got up to clean off, and she heard him turn on the shower. Her
legs were still shaking. After a moment, she got up and walked
naked into the bathroom.

"Hey," he said, turning off the water and stepping out into her
arms. His chest was cool and slippery under her fingers, his
mouth taking on heat from hers.

14.

Once more, Mulder's cell phone rang in the semi-dark. Scully had
forgotten where they were. Were they still in Florida? She hadn't
fully closed the drapes, and the rain beat on the sliding glass
door in sheets. She was aching in places she hadn't remembered
had sensation. Mulder was on one elbow, turned away from her,
talking to someone, and she put one hand on his back. Swimmer's
shoulders, she thought absently, listening more to the tone of
his voice than what he was saying. He clicked off, and lay back
beside her, under her caressing hand.

"Don't," he said, catching her hand. "He's awake," and she knew
there was only one 'he' Mulder could mean, "and getting lawyered
up." He was talking in his normal tone of voice, as if they
always discussed cases naked in bed. As if, she thought
hopefully, they had got past all that angsty crap and were
together. She curled her fingers around his hand. He had been
staring out at the dark corners of the room, but at her touch,
his head turned to her. "We can leave in the morning."

Scully sighed. Mulder's eyes crinkled, but he didn't quite smile.

"You're killing me, Scully. I'm an old man."

She pretended to be surprised that her breasts were pressed
against his arm and that she had flung her leg over his thigh.
She let the bedclothes fall away from her shoulders. Mulder still
lay back, and Scully straddled him. He gave her a look hard to
read. He put his hands on her hips and slid down between her
legs. She instinctively grabbed at the headboard for balance, as
Mulder put his tongue on her.

Her hair rose on the back of her neck, and when he began teasing
her clit with the tip of his tongue, she almost yelped. All she
could do was hang on to the pressed wood headboard, especially
when Mulder pushed one finger inside as he laved her with that
insistent tongue. He held her leg with a tight, bruising grip,
but it was him brushing her lips with the edge of teeth that sent
her over the edge.

15.

Once again, in an airport. The old joke goes, you die in the
south, you have to connect in Atlanta. The storm system that shut
them down in Florida has Atlanta shut tight, with tornado
warnings out. Scully turned away from the concourse,
and studied her partner.

Mulder was slumped in one of the chairs, his raincoat still in
the crook of his arm as though they were actually going anywhere.
He was wearing his sunglasses, because the light seemed to hurt
his eyes. He has been going on adrenaline and caffeine for days.
Even after we had sex last night, Scully thought, I don't think
he really slept.

Mulder had done things to her that she hadn't pictured, and she
had pictured quite a lot, since Colorado. That countertop thing,
for instance, a couple of nights ago. Then last night. She
didn't know whether to blush or heave a sigh of contentment.

At any rate, after a too short night of brain-frying sex, she
woke up, to see him coming out of the bathroom, his hair not
quite dry, knotting his necktie. "I'm going to get breakfast," he
said. "Meet you down there, and we'll go to the airport."

It was the way he looked her in the eyes that was the signal; he
was too carefully casual. His smile was the same one he used on
waitresses.

Now, in the airport, she leaned her chin on the heel of her hand,
and studied him. She opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated.
The clerk at the gate picked up a microphone and called their
flight number.

"Thank God," Mulder said sincerely.

After the take off, he fell into an exhausted sleep. Upon
landing, she had to shake him to get him to get out of the plane.
He didn't look or say anything other than the obvious "That's
your bag" kind of things, from then until she dropped him off at
her apartment.

"'Bye," he said grudgingly, dragging his suitcases out of the
back seat and walking stiffly into the building.

Scully sat at the traffic light, gripping the steering wheel. If
she had realized that MulderSex was going to be a strictly out of
town event, she would have---would have stayed awake and watched
his face.

She would have held him all night.

She would have told him she loved him, she thought.

"This is ridiculous," she said, and turned right and circled the
block. When she was outside his apartment, she heard the same
music he had been playing when she picked him up, days ago.

//You always seem to find the light
But this time, the light is a fire
Bring down the rain
This house is burning again//

She used her key, and walked in on him. He was sitting, still in
his raincoat, on the sofa, listening to the stereo with a glass
in his hand.

He raised his eyes and looked at her. "Jesus, Scully, you just -
" he seemed to run out of breath, or thought.

Scully put one hand behind her and pushed the door closed.
"Mulder."

"What?" Mulder looked into his glass. "We need to talk?" he
muttered. He swallowed the rest of the liquor. "I can't do this,
Scully. I can't be your fuck buddy."

"What?" Scully sat down on the coffee table and put one hand on
his knee. Mulder's leg was thrumming like a plucked guitar
string. "I never thought of you like that, Mulder."

"Well, fine," he said. "I don't know what you think about me. I
mean, other than the 'oh yes' and the occasional 'oh god' and the
'shit' you said last night. But for all I know, that's what you
tell your vibrator."

She couldn't resist. "Mulder, you're way better than my
vibrator."

His face closed up, and he pulled his knee away from her hand.
"Don't come here and make fun of me. I'm not in the mood."

"I wasn't making fun of you. Last night was one of the best
nights of my life."

Mulder raised his empty glass to drink, realized there was
nothing left, and lowered it. "I try to please."

"Mulder, what have you got up your ass? I thought I was the one
who was supposed to have all the remorse, or embarrassment, or
whatever." Her voice was about to crack, and she stood up. "I
came in here to tell you - oh, never mind." She turned towards
the door. Bad idea, Dana.

"What?" Mulder said. His voice sounded thready and exhausted.

She felt a horrible pang in the vicinity of her solar plexus.
Scully squared her shoulders, and said, still facing the door,
"I'm in love with you, Mulder. Happy?"

She heard a small thud, and turned around. "Mulder?"

He had dropped the glass on the coffee table, and was sitting
there, his face ashy, staring at her. Oh, holy Christ, she'd
given him a heart attack. She went to him, and knelt on the sofa
beside him.

"Scully," he said, quietly. "You'd better mean it."

And then he kissed her.

Scully straddled him, snaked her hands inside his raincoat and
jacket to knead his shoulders. His mouth tasted of bourbon, and
he was bruising her lips. She didn't want to let go of him.
Mulder's fingers were tugging at her pantyhose, and she unclamped
her mouth from his to pull them off. He unzipped his trousers.
When she looked up after kicking off her panties, she saw the
head of his cock emerging from the trousers and raincoat like
some kind of pervert. The thought made her hotter, if possible,
and she awkwardly straddled him.

When she took him in, Mulder groaned, and took her by the hips to
move her up and down. Somehow, the angle was hitting her clit
just right on the downstroke, and the sensation of his clothes on
her bare thighs, rubbing her bare ass, was driving her wild. In
the middle of the afternoon-with her skirt hiked up around her
waist, with her top pulled up around her neck and Mulder's mouth
sucking at her nipples through the thin material of her bra---all
her muscles
clenched and she shuddered with sensation.

"Oh, no," Mulder said, and flipped her on her back on the sofa.
He put one foot on the floor and pulled her legs up over his
shoulders. "Not done yet, Scully."

He began to stroke harder. "Come with me, come with me," he
murmured, and then he made a non-word sound; she felt him coming
and wailed like a freight train.

Later, in bed, with Mulder's abused raincoat on the floor, and
both of them undressed, Scully lay stroking his back, his arms,
his shoulders.

"Aren't you going to make me say it?" Mulder said, the teasing
note back in his voice.

"Yes, you maniac."

"I love you."

Finis.

THE QUIET GLADES OF EDEN

by Robert Graves

All such proclivities are tabulated -
By trained pathologists, in detail too -
The obscener parts of speech compulsively
Shrouded in Classic Latin.
But though my pleasure in your feet and hair
Is ungainsayable, let me protest
(Dear love) I am no trichomaniac
And no foot-fetishist.
If it should please you, for your own best reasons,
To take and flog me with a rawhide whip,
I might (who knows?) surprisedly accept
This earnest of affection.
Nothing, agreed, is alien to love
When pure desire has overflowed its baulks;
But why must private sportiveness be viewed
Through public spectacles?
Enough, I will not claim a heart unfluttered
By these case-histories of aberrancy;
Nevertheless a long cool draught of water,
Or a long swim in the bay,
Serves to restore my wholesome appetite
For you and what we do at night together:
Which is no more than Adam did with Eve
In the quiet glades of Eden.

Note: the title of the Prologue comes from Anne Birrell's
translation of "For My Wife" by the fifth century Chinese
poet Liu Hsiao-Wei, as found in "Erotic Poems," edited by Peter
Washington.

Mad props to MaybeAmanda for speedy beta while in pain,
and for reading this as it took the long way around to finish.
And for reading Vols. I-MCM of "Why My Life Is Weird"

The title of the series of stories is from "Bring Down the Rain",
a song by the estimable Ronnie James Dio. "Blood on the Snow" was
the title of a BBC documentary on the German attack on the USSR
in WWII. I got the idea for a murder set at a ski resort from
just seeing the listing. I got the idea of a courtroom setting
from Kel, who needs to be writing again.

Also, thanks for the encouragement from my girls bcfan, Crats,
JennifertheLawyer, Kel, K-Mom, Michelle Kiefer and my big old pimp
Sybil. Thanks to Nan Dibble, MustangSally and RivkaT for making me
fall in love with writing fic again.