El Quinto Sol by OneMillionAndNine

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El Quinto Sol by OneMillionAndNine

From: [email protected] Date: 2 Jul 2001 18:50:44 -0000 Subject: El Quinto Sol (01/03) by OneMillionAndNine (NC-17) by OneMillionNine Source: direct

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Title: El Quinto Sol

Author: OneMillionAndNine

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http://www.geocities.com/onemillionandnine/

Rating: NC-17

Summary: An explanation of Mulder’s sudden belief in ‘miracles.’ Arthur C. Clarke’s second law in action. A bit of Mytharc in the guise of a case file. But in the end it’s all about sex. Then again, what isn’t?

Archive: Archive this story. Read it. Sing it. Hell, yodel it if you want to. Send it to your friends and tell them you wrote it for all I care. I finally finished this story, which is all I really wanted to do.

Timeline: Mid season seven.

Disclaimer: The X-Files belongs to Chris Carter, to whom I bear not even the slightest resemblance. I’m not making a dime – no one is crazy enough to pay for stuff like this.

Note: ‘El Quinto Sol’ means ‘The Fifth Sun.’ This story has taken longer to write than any of my previous attempts. If nothing else, it taught me persistence and put in to use research and extrapolative skills I haven’t used since college. Both the Tantra and Seider are correct to the best of my knowledge. Additional

Note: Since I always write songfic, this story is no different. Songs mentioned in this story are LONG GONE by the now defunct LORDS OF HOWLING (from their album ALOHA BRO)and GOD SHIVA by MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO (from her album PEACE BEYOND PASSION)

Thanks to: MaybeAmanda – this story wouldn’t be here without you, and you know it. I appreciate your friendship even more than your spectacular beta skills. (Just look at these gorgeous margins!!) And my husband, for playing sensitive, guilt-ridden, porn-star Mulder to my psycho Scully.

+++

El Quinto Sol

El Quinto Sol 01/03 by OneMillionAndNine

It was time to have that talk with herself. Again.

The furnace was broken, stuck on high, so the basement was hot. Humid. The two of them sweating in that tiny space. He’d lost his jacket hours before. He’d loosened his tie and undone the first two buttons of his shirt. He was standing in front of the file cabinet with his back to her and he was stretching.

It should have been against the law. She wished agents would come in and taken him away. “Sorry, Agent Mulder,” they’d say. “You’re too sexy for the FBI. Regulations require you either lose most of your hair or gain fifty pounds.” They’d shake their heads sadly as they snapped the cuffs on his wrists.

It was time to have that talk with herself again. The talk about how it didn’t mean anything, how it was all biology. An involuntary response to countless generations of humans struggling to secure survival for the species. The reason she saw the lines of his broad shoulders and the hint of his muscular back and felt herself softening like chocolate in the sun wasn’t personal – just simple evolutionary expediency.

A male with shoulders like that could bring home more game than, say, someone with a frame like Langly’s. The long muscular arms and legs were further indication of hunting prowess. Big feet ensuring superior balance. She was imagining him naked on the savannah, clean shaven and short haired. With a spear. A very big spear.

Careful, Agent.

The primary reason to desire a large, healthy male was that a large, healthy male was likely to produce large, healthy offspring and she could no more help perpetuate those fine genes than she could sprout wings and fly to the top of the Washington Monument. But her body remained blissfully unaware.

The instinct to reproduce with a specimen like him might seem emotional, but it was really just simple biology. The imperative was strong because the continuation of the species depended on it. No different than salmon swimming upstream and dogs in heat – they desired blindly. She desired blindly, and against her best judgment. The want took place in the primitive underside of her brain. The stupid part.

Fuck you, Mulder.

She was uncertain whether that was an epithet or an honest expression of desire.

He turned his head slightly and even the face was designed by nature to appeal. Jaw, cheeks, forehead, all heavier boned to minimize injury in the event the male was required to fight for the right to mate with the object of his desire. Same reason the male proved on average 20 percent larger than the female of the species: same proportional difference as in other mammals where willingness to commit violence on other males sometimes determines the male’s access to the female.

The eyes next. The eyes were small, heavy lashed, heavy lidded. The merest hint of an epicanthic fold. To what end? A characteristic like that would evolve to protect the individual from harsh winds and blowing dust. Where? The Steppes, maybe? She envisioned him in a yurt for a moment and smirked involuntarily. It was a puzzle.

His name was Dutch, clearly Dutch, and his mother’s maiden name, Kuipers, that was Dutch, too.

When did he turn around?

She found her speculation boring and pointless when she realized she was staring at his crotch. A long, thick penis to increase likelihood of fertilization.

She tried to force herself to think about Anne Frank – the ultimate an anaphrodisiac – but she couldn’t do it: Poor Anne kept being replaced by Mulder. She wished she didn’t know the penis thing for sure.

Okay, time for a different tactic.

Let us enumerate his flaws. Us? Using the royal we now, Dana? Yoohoo, Agent Scully? Remember? His faults?

Oh yeah; his many personal flaws. A’s first. He’s self-absorbed, arrogant, alienated, angry, arbitrary, and finally, an asshole.

It wasn’t working. If anything, she was getting more turned on. Aroused – another A word. She was angry and aroused. It sounded like a demented children’s reader – A IS FOR AN ANGRY AND AROUSED AGENT.

Time to pull out the big guns: dissect and disparage him physically. She didn’t relish the thought, but it had to be done. Did he ever do this to her? Tell himself he really didn’t want her because her tits were disappointing and she had an ass the size of one of the lesser Baltic states? Sure he did, he had to. And she would, too.

His hands were small. Okay, not really small (much bigger than hers, of course) but not as big the rest of him. Small in relation to his feet. There, that was something – not exactly a wart, but an imperfection, nonetheless.

Okay, next: upper lip. The man was without an upper lip. Okay, not true. No fair lying. His upper lip was just thinner than its ruby, pouting counterpart. If they matched, he would be positively Jaggeresque. So maybe it wasn’t really a flaw.

Weak chin…Jackpot! He definitely had a weak chin. And an overbite. That, too. See? He wasn’t nearly as devastatingly handsome as everyone seemed to think. And she wouldn’t even start with the nose. It could go either way. An excellent secondary sexual signal, on one hand, and on the other…there was no other hand.

At that moment, she could have strangled Desmond Morris with her bare hands.

“What are you thinking about Scully?” He was rubbing his eyes and smiling. It really sounded more like, “Whacha thick i bou Scuuuully?”

Shit. He ‘was’ as handsome as everyone thought.

“For a member of the ruling class, you certainly do mumble, Vineyard Boy.”

He looked shocked for a minute, then his eyes narrowed and he decided to play. “Over-exact enunciation is an indicator of a lower middle class or upper lower class social climber, like an excessively precise watch. A gentleman does not NEED a second hand.”

She smiled at him in the way she knew tended to leave him unbalanced. It was only fair, really, after the way he’d been tormenting her that day. “Then you could be a freaking Kennedy.”

He was doing his my-aren’t-you-slow head shake at her. “The Kennedys ARE lower middle class social climbers, Scully.” He glanced down at the floor. “It’s almost time to see if Skinner approved those 302s.”

“Got any live ones?”

“Just in my pants.”

Was he trying to kill her? “Cases, Mulder. Anything likely to warrant further investigation?”

“One, maybe.” He held back his quip for once, but it looked like it required great physical effort.

“Want to share with the rest of the class?”

His head was tilted and he seemed wistful. “Just a little of this, a little of that.”

She did her best impression of a penetrating stare. “The case is a little of this, a little of that?”

“Yeah.”

“Mulder?”

He just smiled.

+++

One three minute phone conversation later and he was dancing – actually dancing. He grabbed her arm and spun her, accidentally running her into the edge of the file cabinet.

“Ouch! What was that about?”

“One: Skinner was otherwise engaged and we don’t have to meet with him. Two: He authorized our 302. Three: The suspect’s estranged wife contacted the bureau and not only personally requested the X-files division be involved in the investigation, but she also asked that we fly into Albuquerque first thing in the morning so we could take part in an important magical ritual. She asked for US, Scully.”

It was all she could do not to kick him in the shins in retaliation. “You mean she ‘asked’ for you.” She rolled her eyes. “And what’s this about important magical rituals on a Tuesday night in Albuquerque?”

“The ritual is at sundown Wednesday in Taos, actually, and according to Kimberly, you were mentioned very specifically.”

“Me? How would that be? I don’t lecture at UFO conventions. I don’t write articles for scientifically dubious magazines. I’m not a cult figure. I don’t have fans.”

“I’m your fan?” He did his sheepish look. “I’m pretty sure Frohike is your fan.”

“Frohike wants to see me staked out like a gazelle at a watering hole.” Where the hell did that image come from? Clearly, she had spent much too much time with her partner. “That doesn’t necessarily mean he idolizes me, and even on the slim chance he is my ‘fan,’ it still fails to explain how this woman knows who I am.”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I suppose a world-renowned pagan priestess is bound to have a few tricks up her sleeve.”

“World-renowned?”

“She wrote a book.”

“Have you read it?”

“Not yet. But that doesn’t mean…”

“Give already, Mulder.”

“I’ll fill you in on the plane. Our flight to the Land of Enchantment leaves bright and early. And it’s snowing in the mountains, so pack your longjohns, G-Woman”

She was not turned on any more. No, now she just wanted to strangle him with his obnoxious tie.

+++

She always hated night time flights. All these years together and she and her partner had yet to reach a mutual agreement as to what constituted morning. As soon as the plane strayed beyond the lights of the coast, it was as if the entire planet had been sucked into the void and she found herself stranded in a tin can full of bimbettes. And Mulder. Mulder in a can with bimbettes…and heavy syrup.

She’d just leave that thought on the shelf, thank you very much.

It was times like these that she was relieved not to be involved with him romantically. She hated the way he looked at women. Like a Tex Avery cartoon wolf. She could almost hear the sound effects, see his tongue roll down to his feet and his eyes fall out of his head. If they were intimate, she knew she’d end up shooting him again. As things were, she was just overcome with unreasoning fury.

“Hey, partner. Wanna hear about the case or not?”

“I thought maybe you were trying to encourage me to develop my psychic skills.”

He just raised an eyebrow at her. She wished he’d stop it — that was her expression, dammit!

“The year was 1982…”

“It was a dark and stormy night,” she interrupted him.

“No, it was sunny afternoon in L.A., and stop interrupting.” He settled into his seat and trained his gaze on her. It might as well have been a gun. He might as well have had a scope.

“Ruth Goldstein was a serious doctoral student from George Washington University attempting to compile a definitive work on the use of Scandinavian runes in the pre-Viking era. She’d come to interview one Morton Ivers, rather a Crowleyesque sort of a figure. The old man devoted fifty years trying to revive the worship of the old gods.”

“Which old gods?”

“The Aesir and the Vanir.”

“The who?”

“The Northern European gods.”

“Like Thor and Odin?”

“And Freya and Tyr and Bragi and Idunna and Heimdal,” he nodded.

“So what happened?”

“No one knows, but eighteen months later she abandoned her doctoral program, moved to the west coast, married Morton Ivers’ 19 year old protege, Viggo,” – he punctuated this with some very Vanna White hand gestures – “became Frigga Iverson, and did more to popularize the worship of Odin than anyone else in the last several hundred years.”

“Outside of the Third Reich …”

“Interestingly, and as may be guessed, Frigga has been an outspoken opponent of the racist garbage that has become associated with her particular religion. Despite these obvious ideological problems, the fact remains that several white supremist groups have made overt attempts to court her favor over the years, always to be summarily rebuffed. Until a year ago. Ace Jackson got smart and went after the weak link.”

She was dancing to his investigative song now, anticipating the story. “He went after Viggo, right? What did he use to seduce him? Money? Power? Or was Viggo a closet Nazi all along?”

“According to Frigga, it was sex.”

“The lure of an UberWoman?”

“Nope. Lieutenant of Jackson’s named Ed LaGrange.”

She answered him with a tilted head and an eyebrow.

“And according to custody court transcripts, he’s a cross dresser, to boot.”

“There are children?”

“A child, singular – Wunjo Iverson, age 7.”

“So where do we come in? I see some seriously bad judgment, and some plain stupidity, but I have yet to hear account of a single crime.”

“All in good time. Three months ago, LaGrange and Viggo kidnapped Joe, as he is more commonly known, and brought him to Jackson’s Camp near the Colorado border. Now Viggo and LaGrange have gone on a killing spree.”

“Still, it doesn’t sound like an X-file, just some depressingly confused people and an innocent boy.”

“Oh, but I haven’t gotten to the best part. Viggo has publicly taken responsibility for the murders, even made a list of intended victims and posted it on flyers around Santa Fe and Taos.”

That was confusing. “And he’s not in custody because…?”

“There is no possible way to tie him to the crimes by traditional means. Two victims were killed by a dog on a bridge outside of town, one knifed to death by invisible hands in front of a bar full of people, one shot by a leggy blonde in the supermarket and three cases of spontaneous human combustion.”

“The blonde could have been Iverson in drag…”

“Except that she was arrested at the scene processed, fingerprinted, and given a very thorough physical examination, which proved her female, by the way, and yet …”

“Yes?” She couldn’t believe she was actually on the edge of her seat.

“Around 3 a.m. the mystery blonde disappeared from her cell and was replaced by…”

“Viggo Iverson?”

He shot her with his finger. “Miss Scully gets it and the crowd goes wild!”

“But why hasn’t he been picked up for kidnapping?”

“The boy can’t be located. Viggo claims to have rendered him invisible.”

“Physical evidence?”

“Mom’s girlfriend was babysitting – she was apparently killed by a large dog with whom the son went willingly. The boy even turned on the alarm when he left the house.”

“So the perp could have a trained dog and the boy could be at another location. Depressing a thought as it is, he could even be dead.”

“What about the other murders?”

“There’s the dog, and we already know he has accomplices.”

“And the invisible assailant in the bar?”

“A thrown knife can turn into an invisible assailant pretty easily with a little alcohol and a vivid imagination.” She sighed. “Or maybe he hasn’t killed anyone at all and he’s just taking credit for a series of unfortunate accidents. Maybe the boy’s a runaway.”

“He’s taking credit for a series of unfortunate accidents BEFORE they take place?”

All she could do was shrug.

+++

There were some things he knew about Scully but consistently left unsaid, but not because he was overly decent. More like, he was afraid of what previously unspoken things she’d say to him in response.

He knew, for instance, that she got as excited as he did about going into the field on a case; she just felt compelled to protest every trip out of town on general principles. He also knew that where he saw magic, she saw either a)utter bullshit or b)the yet-to-be-scientifically-explained. He knew that, in her own way, she had begun to believe. But her way and his way were still very, very different.

He knew what she’d do on this case. First she’d exasperate him by exhausting every rational explanation before moving on to trying to quantify the unquantifiable. She’d use science to explain magic, or at least she’d try.

There were other things he knew about Scully. He knew she wasn’t flawlessly rational. He knew she had chinks in her armor.

He also knew that packed in her ever-present medical supplies were the following items: one baby bottle with unopened package of bottle liners, three diapers of various sizes, one can of powdered infant formula, one set of baby pajamas-size very, very small-with feet. She kept these things in a paper sack near the bottom of her kit. The receipt was still in the bag.

If he said anything, she’d tell him it was for emergencies – ‘you never know what’s going to come up in the field’ – or something equally sensible. And they had run into babies now and then, but that’s not what those things were for. His partner just wanted to be sure that if destiny decided to answer her prayers, she wouldn’t be caught unaware. She wanted to be ready.

To tell the truth, the whole thing made him uncomfortable. Conflicted. On one hand, he wanted Scully to be happy. On the other, he wanted to be happy, too. He sincerely believed that happiness for Scully would require a baby at some point, possibly some point soon. He knew for a fact that happiness for Fox Mulder required Dana Scully.

Now, there was the rub: a baby would ruin his life.

As soon as Scully got a baby, she’d have less time for him. She’d take a leave of absence, she’d stop flying and driving around the country with him. He’d be jealous and behave badly. She’d hate him, and rightly so. He’d probably be a bad influence on a baby anyway, and wind up banished on general principles.

Of course, they could get married, and then he wouldn’t have to be so afraid of losing her. Sometimes he thought that would be nice, waking up with Scully every day. Other times he thought it would be a new circle of Hell.

After careful consideration, he decided what he was probably most afraid of were the points between here and there. He would probably have done it by now if he could just wake up one day married without actually having to talk to her about it or make the first move. He was so fucked up that it would probably end badly, anyway. And he’d still be apathetic about the baby and she’d be pissed off.

At least he imagined he’d be apathetic about the baby. He didn’t like to think he could actively hate it. But since every scenario he ever imagined ended with Scully hating him, the best feeling he could conjure up for her imaginary baby was apathy.

Nothing.

Lack of feeling.

Emotional vacuum.

No.

The truth was, he wanted to be Scully’s baby; he just didn’t think he could fit into those pajamas.

He peered over at her. She was looking through the file, her headphones effectively shutting him out. He could hear the song faintly. She had this CD at home. There was a line, “I see the light at the end of the tunnel, someone please tell me it’s not a train”. If it didn’t hit so close to home, he would have laughed.

He knew some things. He knew Scully. He knew if she had an inkling that he made his initial travel request hoping to see ancient religious ritual likely to include live sex acts she’d make the pilot stop the plane mid-flight. No, she’d just shoot him in the other shoulder. If he didn’t stop irritating her, she might aim lower.

Suddenly he was curious again and he looked over to see what she wass studying so closely. A statement? Autopsy? Crime scene photos?

Nope. Family portrait.

Scully sighed.

Photogenic duo, he had to admit. Father and son. They looked happy, too. What a difference a year made.

Viggo didn’t seem anything like Mulder imagined he would, nothing like Dolph Lungren. He looked more like some familiar seventies guitar god, long hair in a mass of snaky black ringlets stopping a few inches past his shoulders. Beautiful face. There was something distressing about having to say that about another man, but there was no way around it. That face was beautiful and it bothered Mulder to realize Viggo looked something like Scully.

Same eyes. Exactly the same. Large, round, wet, and the strangest pale blue color, like the water in some cheesy brochure for the Bahamas. He was attractive in all the ways Mulder was not, his features straight and fine and even, bordering on feminine. Someone could have conjured him out of a pre-Raphaelite painting. Mulder would have hated him even if he wasn’t the perpetrator.

Usually pictures of perps revealed something to him, some hint of mania or evil, something discomforting, however subtle. But this one revealed nothing. Viggo gave off none of these things. In fact, he appeared pliant, sweet even, like he should be contemplating a single fucking perfect blossom in a silvery twilight garden, not planning to bury Fox Mulder and all the rest of the mongrel races in a mass grave somewhere.

Mulder had always considered himself ethnically challenged. He generally thought of himself as a Standard New England White Guy, unless there’s a Nazi in the immediate vicinity. He was never Bar Mitzvah’d; Hebrew classes fell by the wayside when Samantha was taken and his emotional life ground to a halt. His parents had almost seemed relieved. It had all been for his grandmother, anyway; his mother was never even slightly religious. Hell, come to think of it, his grandparents were only tenuously observant.

But this case made him feel like he might as well be Hasidic, like he might as well have had a mezuzah on the door frame at good old apartment 42.

He wished he were someplace else. He wished they both were.

He wished he hadn’t lied to her.

Skinner had never approved the 302. Both the feds and the locals agreed with Scully’s assessment that there was nothing to this case but a string of coincidences.

Mulder knew better, but he wished he didn’t.

He’d dipped into his ill-gotten inheritance to fund this trip, as per his standing agreement with Skinner who had just okayed the work. But he wished he had left bad enough alone.

Once again, Mulder the Paranoid, in the grips of ball-twisting fear, with no real concrete reason.

Once again.

+++

Schadenfreude, also known as shameful joy. Pleasure at another’s misfortune. She definitely had it.

Albuquerque rush hour traffic was snarled to the point of hitting dead stop and Fox Mulder had practically hopped out of the car and bought a burrito out of the back of a station wagon a few cars a head of them. She had made an honest effort to dissuade him but he said it was either a burrito or her arm. Threatened with cannibalism, she left him to the mercy of one of his less brilliant impulses.

Bad winner to the core, he then proceeded to declare said burrito delicious beyond words, veritable manna from heaven, most likely the best thing he had ever eaten. He couldn’t possibly spare her a bite.

Twenty-five minutes later they were pulled over to the shoulder of the road while the burrito and Agent Mulder had what seemed to be a rather rushed and painful parting amidst the sagebrush.

A weak voice called out to her. “Can I have that toilet paper you keep in your suitcase? And, um, I think you need to put a call in to the CDC.”

“I think I need to call out a hazmat squad.”

“How was I supposed to know?”

“Mulder, did you look at that guy’s fingernails?”

“That doesn’t m…”

“Save it, partner. I just think a sign written in ball point pen is a most likely a good indicator of pride in workmanship.”

She was definitely feeling better since the great state of New Mexico decided to work its enchantment for the greater good and put a tight rein on her partner’s appeal. It almost made up for having to pull over to every fifteen minutes. She even enjoyed the way his fingers gripped the dash.

+++

Fox Mulder never once considered the fact that being greeted by a cadre of friends from his adolescence in a bar thousands of miles from where he grew up could frighten him more than facing zombies or sewer dwelling mutants. But it did. And in response, he simply froze.

It had been a very long day and this last development left him in a strange blank state. The much-vaunted ‘panic face’ unfolded across his features and goosebumps rose across his skin. He was seized by the fight-or-flight instinct and the only thing he could think of as it suddenly occurred to him to stamp his feet to knock the snow off his Bruno Maglis, was swimming. Sooner or later, he was sure, his ability to form words would resurface. For that moment, he was still swimming.

Bright sun. Whipping wind. 1975. Wondering when the summer girls would start to arrive and he would have a little company, someone his own age who didn’t think he was crazy or a murderer or both. Too bad Ruth wasn’t going to be on the island that year.

Ruth White inhabited a gray area between being a summer girl and someone more tied to the Island. Her grandmother was a year-round inhabitant who had coffee with his own formidable granddame at 11 every morning, rain or shine. Bill Mulder and her dad, Greg White, were a matched set, though personally, he found Mr. White’s drinking a lot more pleasant. But because her dad was with the foreign service, Ruth and her sisters always came in during the summers from some place unbearably exotic, like Tehran, Iceland, or Budapest.

It was too much that year to expect Ruth to be coming. At 20, she probably wouldn’t want to spend the summer being followed around by a fourteen year old boy any more than she’d want to spend it languishing at her grandmother’s cottage. He remembered the sheer cold adrenalin of hearing her call to him from the beach.

“FOX!!!!!”

Forty four year old Ruth shouted from across the bar. With her in the booth sat two women who bore disturbing resemblance to Samantha’s friend Shannon Carver and Emily Ambrocini, the first girl he had ever, among other things, kissed.

He had to fight the overwhelming urge to turn around and run. The Land of Enchantment was conspiring to rip away his cool exterior no matter how hard he fought.

+++

He was baffled. Truly baffled. It had to be the weirdest thing he’d seen in his life. Scully, in a lesbian bar, dancing with the Priestesses of Odin. Weird weird weird.

Maybe he exaggerated a little. It wasn’t strictly a lesbian bar – they didn’t ask for their lesbian ID cards at the door or anything, and fully one-third of all the groupings seemed to be of mixed gender. ‘Groupings,’ because the common grouping of two, the couple, seems to be fairly out of favor in that place. Scully was actually dancing happily with a little group of women the way he’d seen little clusters of teenaged girls dance together sometimes.

That was what seemed so weird. Scully, who was so removed from other women most of the time (when she was not actively hating them) snapped into place with these women he’d grown up with as if she were some sort of human Lego. No one else who knew her would ever believe it. He didn’t believe it, himself.

At least they weren’t slow dancing. If they had been, he’d be forced to gouge his eyes out with a spoon.

If he didn’t know better, he would never believe she was coming up hard and fast on forty. She was…a betty. That was the only word for it.

She had not been a betty back in the day. Of that, he had proof, cold, hard photographic evidence. Melissa had given him the picture when Scully was missing. It showed her, fat and fifteen, braces behind protruding lips, sitting with her back to what must have been her locker. She wore a look he had seldom seen on the adult Dana Scully: defeat.

Every time Mulder dug that photo out from between his couch cushions, he wished there were some way to go back and give her a little shove in the direction of his teenaged self. “Here,” he’d say, “you two prop each other up, will you?”

He would have been 19, so he knew that, in reality, it would never have worked. He never would have given her a second look. Sounded terrible, but it was true. He had been, after all, not only a geek, but a damaged, shallow, arrogant geek.

Some things never changed.

Even when she started with the X-files, she had not been particularly appealing to him. Sure, he had noticed that she was pretty, but he hadn’t felt any particular attraction. He remembered thinking she looked like some Midwestern farmer’s daughter, like she should have a few errant pieces of straw dangling from her hair while she milked the cows.

She hadn’t looked like she belonged in an autopsy bay. She certainly hadn’t looked like she belonged with him.

She still didn’t.

And she was getting more beautiful by year. Pretty soon she’d be like Moses and have to wear a veil everywhere because mere mortals would be unable to look at her directly. Especially the mere mortal named Fox Mulder.

Mulder snorted, wondering where he came up with this horseshit.

She was smiling and dancing and she looked good.

That was all.

+++

For her part Dana Scully was both amused and intrigued to be afforded such an open window into her partner’s early life. She wasn’t at all surprised to hear that uninvited entrance to young Fox’s room was punishable by death. She was floored, however, to learn that his first girlfriend had been ultimately won over by his ability to dance.

At five, she discovered, her partner had carried the tiny plastic sow from his farm set around in his pocket. At six he had proposed to his twelve year old babysitter and dubbed her ‘Snow,’ a name that would apparently stick with her for the rest of her life.

It was sweet. And it amused Scully to no end that he found it all so mortifying.

‘Snow’ bore no resemblance whatsoever to her namesake. She was a shade away from platinum blonde and improbably tanned. Her eyes were pale green and her nose looked like Scully’s would have if it had bit more attitude – essentially the same, but bigger, bolder. There was a stickishly thin quality to her body that was incongruous when compared to her most striking feature – a wide, sensuous heavily lip-sticked mouth. Scully kept flashing on Carmen Miranda even as she considered the woman’s question.

What was the worst thing Mulder had ever done to her? He’d done so much. He’d done so little.

Angela White? Dr. Bambi? Even The Fowley Thing?

No. The more she thought, the more convinced she was that the worst thing he had ever done was force her to autopsy his mother.

Scully’s stomach had always been cast-iron but she had thrown up several times during the procedure. She had shaken with cold, her teeth chattering. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from imagining Teena Mulder’s body, young and pregnant, imagining him growing inside her from a single cell, imagining what it must have been like for her the first time she felt him turn inside of her, or what it felt like to give birth to the center of the universe and then be unable, or unwilling, to love him. Scully had cried into the Y-incision, and when it was all over, she had sealed her tears inside the body.

She had thought about it. Maybe Teena had loved him but had somehow been frozen out of the intimacy of love.

She wished, sometimes, that she knew for sure.

But she also wished he hadn’t made her do it. And she wished there had been someone else to be with him afterwards.

She knew the facts. They had arrived at the death scene, he requested she perform an autopsy, she attempted to decline, he persisted, she acquiesced, she performed the autopsy, she went to his apartment, she confirmed the initial ruling of suicide, she comforted him.

He had done nothing but reveal himself to her, but she felt violated.

Maybe it was a sign of how truly emotionally stunted she was that when he had trusted her first with his mother, then with his pain, his raw, human agony, all she felt was violated.

Honestly, he hadn’t come to her. She had gone to him, stayed with him through it all, let him cry all over her. She had listened to him scream, swear, had watched him throw things, then smiled when he told little stories. She had rested her arms on his back when he clung to her, kissed his forehead, said nothing when his nose ran all over her shirt. Said nothing when, despite his uninterrupted sobs, his touches had become more intimate.

She wished she could chalk it up to stoicism or wisdom or something – anything – but the truth was less appealing. She had been stumped.

There were some things she knew about Mulder, things she would never tell him for fear of what he’d reveal in turn. She knew he masturbated a lot. Teenaged-boy, a lot. At work, even. They were both careful to make sure she never walked in on him. She doubted it was even really sexual anymore. She knew its function was to soothe him. He had become so used to not getting his needs met that masturbation had probably become one thing he could do to make himself feel a little more human.

In any other situation it would sound insane, but she wasn’t sure if his sucking her breast through her shirt was personal or not. She hadn’t known if his crying while curled in a fetal ball yet managing to frantically rub his erection against her stocking-covered foot had indicated anything more than sorrow.

She still couldn’t bring herself to ask. And it was pathetic that she was so afraid. She still hadn’t washed the pants she’d been wearing when he came on her ankle. Every few days she just took them from the laundry hamper and stared, trying to figure it out. Ironically, she felt a certain sympathy for Monica Lewinsky now.

He had apologized. Of course he had apologized. He apologized for everything. His apologies meant nothing.

Frigga spoke. “Well?” she asked.

“Well,” Scully echoed, not sure what to say. “The worst thing he’d ever done failed to severe the bond between you. Like Viggo and me.” Frigga sighed. “I don’t know what it will take. I’m beginning to think I am going to have to do it myself.”

“How?”

“I wish I knew.”

For several minutes the two of them sat listening to the live music.

Finally, Scully spoke. “It’s not the same with Mulder and me.”

“Why is that?”

“We aren’t lovers. We aren’t in love.”

“Romantic love exists only in the imagination, darling. It’s a construct.”

“Maybe,” Scully tilted her head slightly to one side. “But Mulder believes in it.”

“With you?”

Scully thought it over. “I don’t know.” She steeled herself for the inevitable go-for-it-girl-he-loves- you speech, but it never came.

Instead, Frigga straightened in her seat. “Well, either way, it could seriously fuck things up.”

Scully nodded, surprised. “Sometimes I think, as much as I want him sexually, it would be like stacking plates.”

“The more layers you add, the easier it is to knock down? That’s always a risk.”

Scully stifled a sigh. “Exactly.”

“When I told you I don’t believe in love, I told the truth. I don’t. But in many ways, I miss Viggo. Before all this, he was my best friend, my truest ally.”

“Why did he give it up, really?”

Frigga exhaled markedly, shook her head. “I’m not sure I can explain it. I have always been the one people took seriously, the one with influence. And being younger, too, I think people tended to look at him as my, well, I suppose the word is ‘pet.’ But we had always been partners. I think, you know, I took him for granted. For his part, I think he’s just too susceptible to flattery. He’d been with Morton since he was a very young man.”

“How did he come to be with Ivers? Was he a runaway?”

“Oh no,” she laughed, rolling her eyes. “He was eighteen, but just barely.”

“So, do you think it’s a fair to say he’s seeking to recreate a his relationship with Morton Ivers?”

“Actually, I think what he would like now is to recreate OUR early relationship with Morton.”

“Why?”

“Apart from the fact that it was good, I think all this crazy hunting he is doing is wearing him out. He can’t play the woman’s part forever.”

“What do you mean?”

“What, hasn’t Fox told you anything about our magic?”

Scully shook her head. “Almost nothing.”

Frigga nodded slowly. “Does Fox often withhold information in order to attempt to control your actions? Is this normal for the two of you?”

Scully had really liked Frigga until that moment.

Now she hated the other woman for seeing the obvious, and hated herself for being weak enough to let Mulder manipulate her. For that, and for too many other reasons to enumerate at that moment.

“Dana, I just want to understand exactly what the two of you would do together before I ask you to get more deeply involved. My son is at stake.”

“What do you do?”

“Viggo and I, using personal experimentation as well as archaeological and literary research, have very successfully revived an ancient Nordic magic called Seider – it was a European sister to certain Tantric and Taoist practices.”

She couldn’t help herself. It was classic Mulder. Before she realized it, she was laughing hysterically, if a little bitterly. “Frigga, this case may be my partner’s idea of a dream come true.”

Frigga gave her a puzzled frown.

“Every other word he says to me is some sort of innuendo, but in seven years of spending at least 80 hours a week together, he’s kissed me exactly once. And immediately after, he apologized.”

Frigga said nothing. Hating the empty space between them, Scully started trying to explain. “He keeps porn in his desk at work.” The words tumbled out then, spilled out of her mouth before she could throw up her filter. She went on and on, trying to explain the anomaly that was Fox Mulder. She went through everything – Fowley, Phoebe, all his stupid comments balanced on the other hand by an almost Victorian circumspection. Laid out like that, she realized it was sickening, juvenile. He was like some awful 13 year old boy.

“So what was it, anyway?”

“What was what?”

“The worst thing.”

“His mother committed suicide. He made me autopsy her body.” She slumped backwards in the booth, forced herself to stare at the ceiling, tried not to cry. “And then afterwards, he…”

“He what?”

“He was more intimate with me than ever before.”

“Did he fuck you?” Frigga’s expression was so flat it reminded Scully of him.

“No.” She shook her head vigorously. “No. And I don’t really feel comfortable talking about this.”

“With me?”

“With anyone.”

“Dana, maybe the two of you should go home to Washington. I don’t think you can help get Wunjo back, and staying will probably only put you in danger.”

“Because I don’t want to share the particulars of our dysfunction with you?”

“Look, I threw runes over and over, looking for a way to stop this and everything pointed to you. I believe you have the ability to power a strike against Viggo, and I know that together you and Fox are even stronger. But you have too many cracks – too many secrets between you. You’d just wind up getting killed.”

“I don’t even know if it would work anyway … I’m not exactly a believer.”

“This isn’t Peter Pan, honey. You don’t have to clap your hands and promise to believe in fairies.”

Scully gnawed at the inside of her cheek for a moment. “He, um,…he sucked my breast through my shirt, and um, followed with assorted…frottage, culminating in ejaculation on the cuff of my pants.”

“Oh.”

“He cried the whole time.”

Soon they were laughing. “I don’t think this changes anything.”

+++

El Quinto Sol 02/03 by OneMillionAndNine

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Taking a break from interviewing every person in the bar except for the three most obvious.

He couldn’t believe Scully was telling her this. He couldn’t believe what Scully was revealing about the two of them. He couldn’t believe Scully found herself sexually distracted by him.

Him.

He couldn’t believe that while he was pathetically crying and rubbing himself against her like someone’s dog, she was fighting off the desire to ‘take advantage’ of him.

He didn’t know Scully had those sorts of feelings for anyone, let alone him. He’d never even considered it possible that she could get, well, horny. Scully? No, she might pine for romance, but she could never ache for a good, hard fuck.

Sure, she hadn’t been laid that he knew of since the night she got her tattoo, but he couldn’t think too hard about that; that way lay madness.

He could, with a little stretching, imagine Scully wanting a transcendent erotic experience but not a “good, hard fuck.” His head was pounding and he felt a combination of shock, lust, and dismay, like there was a whole turkey lodged in his throat, preventing him from swallowing.

But Scully said it: “Much as I really could use a good, hard fuck, I just…I don’t think I need anymore complications in my life. And Mulder is nothing if not complicated.”

True to form, he slid out of the booth where he was recuperating and slipped about half-way through the bar, then made a point of coming back to Scully as loudly and conspicuously as possible.

Yup, the very picture of a cool F.B.I. man, alright.

He gave them his best smile. “Any room for a member of an inferior race at this booth?” Scully looked annoyed and totally puzzled. “Mulder, you’re Dutch.”

Mulder blinked, realizing suddenly that Scully had no idea he was Jewish. Nearly seven years and she didn’t have a clue.

He wanted to say something, but he has no idea what. “Want me to sing Hava Nagila?”

“Mulder, you’re not Jewish.”

Why he wondered, would she say that?

“Sure I am.” He would have been relieved to be swallowed up by the earth rather than continue the that particular conversation, but it didn’t seem to be an option. “Wanna see my circumcision?”

“Hospital circumcision has been routine since the late 40’s. Besides,” she gave a disinterested half-shrug, “I’ve seen it.”

His mouth was open. He looked like a fish. He couldn’t decide if Scully was joking or if she’d lost her mind. Sccccccuuuullllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeee!” He couldn’t help that it came out as one of his horrible whines.

“I had you there.”

“No, you didn’t”

“I did, Mulder.”

“Bullshit.”

“I had you.”

“Dream on.”

“Delude yourself all you want; I had you going good.”

“You had nothing.”

“Mulder, you were horrified. You kept opening your mouth and no sound was coming out. I had you.”

+++

Fox Mulder decided about two hours before that, if it were at all possible, he would very much like to go into shock. Unfortunately, since shock didn’t seem to be forthcoming, he was now bent on trying to will himself to vomit.

He was in hell. The Sangre De Cristo mountains were clearly the fifth ring of Hell. Dante missed the one where you rode through skinny, unrailed mountain roads jammed into a pick-up driven by a no-nonsense valkyrie wannabe, sandwiched between a woman who, as a girl, had had giggly sleepovers with your long-slot sister and a girl you had finger-fucked twenty three years earlier, who also happened to be the suspect’s sister. Never mind the one who rode in your lap.

Dante had never been deposited hours later in an isolated farm house, liable to be put on the spot by one or all of there women at any moment, either.

Lucky Dante.

Since the plane touched down, it seemed like every woman he saw was gorgeous and inviting and intimidating enough to frighten Vlad the Impaler into impotence, with Scully starring as queen of them all. How could she have been anything less?

Even in this farm house with the others she took her natural place of authority. Sure, they all made him want to change his name and move to Paraguay, but she was Scully.

It became obvious he was not going to puke. Maybe he could open up his wrists with the spring he found poking up between the couch cushions?

Somewhere in the back of his head, Mel Brooks started singing a song about the Spanish Inquisition and Scully came in with her best Joe Friday.

“Look, the FBI wants to get to the bottom of this but we can’t unless you come clean, tell us everything.”

Frigga, a.k.a. Ruth White-Goldstein, spoke up. “I meant to tell you everything; the bar, however, was not the place, and it was vital that we all be present.” She gestured to the group.

Mulder’s face was still buried in his hands. “The FBI doesn’t give two shits about this case, Snow. Scully, the FBI says there is no case. We’re here on my dime.” He was very unconvincingly trying to feign tiredness. “I’m sorry I – lied. I’ll understand if you want to go back home.”

“Fox, before either one of you make a decision, you should know some things.” It was Emily, the first kiss, talking. Scully couldn’t decide whether or not she looked any closer to forty than Mulder. She did have three prominent locks of white hair, but her face was almost completely unlined. And she was beautiful, with elegant bone structure apparent under fairy princess skin, and …

That was it; she looked like a fairy. She had nothing in common with his usual type except for her long, dark hair. Tiny, delicate – smaller, even, than Scully herself. Emily was way out of Mulder’s league by virtue of sheer perfection and she was suddenly, inexplicably, lifting her hair and turning to bare her neck. As if on cue, the rest followed suit almost like synchronized swimmers. Scully held her breath without conscious effort, realizing they all had matching scars. Matching implant scars.

“Are you a MUFON group?” Scully pushed the words out.

Frigga answered. “Not exactly. I did first hear about Dana’s work on the X-files from Penny Northern, though.”

Mulder leaned impossibly forward. “So the Seider stuff is all a front?”

A smile spread itself across Frigga’s face. “Not at all.”

“We think maybe at least part of the reason for the abductions is tied up with a certain human potential. Trying to exploit it or destroy it or shape it in some way. Now, thanks to the Seider, we just fly under the radar.”

“Most of us were already studying the Seider,” came Emily’s high voice.

“The Seider itself is just our method. There are others that work; Tantra, the Tao, the Yoruba people have a strict discipline that works very well… “

Scully leaned in close. “Works to do what? To what end?”

“We think it works by activating the dormant portions of the DNA, thereby engaging little-used portions of the human brain,” Frigga explained, crossing her arms behind her head.

It struck Scully then how similar many of Frigga’s mannerisms were to Mulder’s. Scully wondered if she herself shared physical gestures and nervous ticks with the children she had known on myriad military bases?

“Or maybe,” Frigga continued, “it’s the other way around; maybe it achieves its aim by causing the brain to produce certain hormones. It could be a chi thing. It’s a chicken/egg thing at this point.”

“The purpose of this being?” Scully stared intently as she asked the question.

Emily spoke up. “Most importantly, we are able to stop ourselves from being re-abducted. The homing abilities of the chip can be disabled with enough practice.”

“And we can perform miracles, too,” said the skinny blonde, milk leaking from her breasts and through her overalls.

“Miracles?” Scully scowled, nonplussed. “Such as?”

“Kirsten is a romantic,” Emily grinned.

“And a literalist.” Mulder was smiling. He was beaming, in fact, all embarrassment lost to fascination.

Scully found herself growing increasingly irritated. She arched a brow. “Meaning?”

“It’s common belief that when the Kundalini Shakti uncoils from the base of the spine and rises to join with Shiva at the crown of the head, the individual has achieved enlightenment and is able to perform miracles.” He scanned the group. “So, what can you do?”

Kirsten answered. “Pretty much all the same shit as Viggo: invisibility, vox anima, telepathy, remote viewing, telekinesis, physical healing, the appearance of shape-shifting. You know.”

Mulder frowned. “So why don’t you stop Viggo? Is he too strong?”

“My brother is a fucking kamikaze, is what he is,” Emily spit out bitterly.

“And another thing; we’d have to leave Frigga out of it.” Shannon tilted her head to one sided and sighed.

“Why?” Scully asked.

“Is it because you and Viggo are holding opposite ends of the same stick?” Mulder blurted.

“Viggo and I are opposite ends of the same stick, Fox.”

Silence settled over the troubled group. Finally, Scully cleared her throat.

“Why are they doing this?”

“It took us a while to catch on.” Frigga looked uncomfortable but continued. “But look around. Those sons of bitches have killing all our male members because they want to take us and use us to bring about their Aryan Utopia. It would be funny if it wasn’t actually working.”

“So what are you going to do?” Mulder wondered.

Frigga’s reply was sardonic. “We contacted a branch of the FBI with expertise both in matters of the occult and in extraterrestrial experiences.”

“Shit.” Mulder balled his fists. “So now we should…?”

“Well, I say we throw some runes.” It was Emily and it somehow sounded both right and completely crazy to Scully’s ears.

What Frigga produced were not the standard New Age shop rune stones, but something else entirely. Thin, unvarnished slices from the slim branch of a pale fruit tree, worn and discolored from human hands, carved with thin, decisive lines. The grooves were dark, stained with what he knew must be menstrual blood – he’d read the articles; he knew the ‘correct’ method of production as set down by Frigga herself.

“Pick three, Fox.”

He’d had his hands in much worse places but still, it gave him pause. Gave him pause while everyone waited, staring.

“Oh, yeah, sure.” One-two-three, without thinking. He turned them over and everyone stared. They didn’t seem happy.

“Three more, Fox,” Emily piped up.

He was slightly more thoughtful the second time, carefully pulling each piece from another part of the mass of tiles. Turning them over quickly, he desperately wished that he had taken the time to learn to read runes. Hell, he could have done it on the plane.

“When were you going to tell us?”

“Does your partner know about this?”

“How long?”

“Huh?” he floundered.

“Is it Tantra?” Frigga’s voice was louder than the rest.

Mulder responded with a series of rapid blinks only to meet Frigga’s slow, clear, questioning gaze.

“How long have you been studying Tantric yoga?”

“Six, umm, six years, off and on. But alone. By myself, I mean.” He waited for the chorus of smirks as he added, “from books,” but they never appeared.

“You realize, Fox, that this changes everything, right?” Emily asked.

“How far have you gotten?” Shannon inquired.

“What is your Kundalini experience?” Frigga wondered.

“Ummmmm,” he shook his head like a wet dog. “It’s incomplete. It tends to stick at the vishuddi chakra and I can’t seem to get past that.”

“The throat chakra?” Emily smiled, as if she should have guessed as much.

Kirsten closed her eyes and agreed. “Let me see. You live chiefly through your words, but have a seeming inability to express the things most important to you, right? Your voice’s got that strained quality that you usually hear in somebody living with almost continuously repressed emotions.” She made a tsking sound. “You poor man.”

Great, they were all looking sorry for him. Fox Mulder, pitied by women everywhere. Only he could make a hobby of masturbation then manage not to get it right.

“You know we can fix that. We should fix that tonight. The rest can wait.

He hadn’t been introduced to this one. She had a heavy southern accent and wavy grey hair, an angular face completely free of make up and glasses perched on top of her head. “My name is Eve, Agent Mulder, Eve Brooks. Somebody oughtta finish doin’ the introductions, I ‘spose. You know you are not meeting us at our absolute best, so I hope you’ll over look any lapse in manners. I believe you already know Emily, and Shannon, and our fearless leader Frigga. This is my daughter Kirsten,” she gestured.

He nodded, feeling like the toy Chihuahua in the back window of a beat-up Lincoln.

He followed the head bobbing with a strangling noise in the back of his throat. “I’d like the chance to confer with my partner, if I could.”

“About what?” A twangy voice attached to a heavy-set blonde emerged from the kitchen.

“Shit, Vivian! I forgot you were in there!” Eve craned her neck.

“Well, thank you, Eve, for making me feel so freaking special. As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” Vivian smirked, heading directly towards Mulder, “what do you have to say to Dana that you’d rather we didn’t hear?”

Eve half-snorted half-laughed, her shoulders pitching forward.

“Why me? Do you need a male participant to complete the ritual?”

A tittering laugh rippled through the group before transforming into a full fledged guffaw. Eve and Frigga were wiping their eyes. Emily turned her face away. Shannon hid her lips behind the fingers of her right hand.

Frigga was still chuckling. “Historically, male participation in the Seider was extremely rare and if we did need them, we still have a few functional males left.”

Eve winced. “To tell the truth we’re a little concerned you might prove to be something of a weak link.”

“Sorry, Fox.” Emily looked down at the coffee table. Vivian leaned over the back of the couch. “I hate to have to break this to you, but you aren’t exactly necessary.”

“Fine. So you don’t need me. Why are you ignoring Agent Scully?”

“We just assumed Dana would take her sister’s place, at least for the next few days.”

“What?” Scully’s voice was strained.

“What is this about Scully’s sister?” If these were Melissa Scully’s old friends then it could go a long way toward explaining his partner’s strange behavior.

“Miss was one of our founding members Agent Mulder. She’s the one who came up with our name.” Vivian wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

“Name?” Mulder blinked. What would that be? SeiderChick Incorporated? SexMagik Unlimited?

“Women’s Enterprises of Taos. W.E.T. You thought this was all we do? We’re a collective, sweetheart. We’ve got a boutique, an espresso bar, a private elementary school, not to mention counseling services…”

“Vivian,” Eve broke in archly, “this is not time for the chamber of commerce spiel. Save it for the newspaper. Fox, yes, Melissa Scully was a member of our group. Unfortunately, she felt compelled to go back East before we perfected the Seider and recognized its connection to the implants. But that is neither here nor there. It’s got nothing to do with whether or not you’ll let us help you or not.”

“Sound like this is right up your alley, Mulder. We can always interview witnesses in the morning.” Scully turned to face Frigga. “You won’t hurt him, will you?”

Frigga met Scully’s gaze. “He may be hurt, but he won’t be injured.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Shannon spoke up. “Can I examine him first?”

Mulder’s panic dropped from his mouth to his stomach as Scully nodded and Shannon crossed the room toward him. He had no idea what he should have expected but it definitely wasn’t a long, moist feminine hand moving mechanically from his groin to his forehead, pausing briefly at a point between his navel and sternum, then again in the middle of his chest, and finally, at his throat.

He could handle this; he’d had holes drilled in his head, right? He had had his fingers broken by Nazis and more ass beatings than anyone else he knew. He could handle a few housewives armed only with their kundalinis and no intent to harm him.

He released his breath slowly counted down …

10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1

“The block is in his vishuddi chakra, alright.” Shannon backed away slowly. “It’ll hurt when we work on it. It’ll hurt a lot, but when it’s over, you’ll be better off.”

Scully searched their faces. “Define ‘better off.’”

“With some work, he can do what we do: he can help you turn off the chip’s homing capabilities; he can become more integrated, a whole person. He’ll talk less. What do you say, Dana?”

The fact that the question was directed at her took her by surprise. She had explained their relationship – or lack thereof – ad nauseam.

True, Mulder had never been shy about making decisions for her, whether medical, personal, or professional, but it occurred to her that the converse was not true. For a moment, before reason slapped her upside the head, she realized that turn-about was very fair play, indeed.

A small part of her warmed, but she did her best to respond appropriately.

“I say it isn’t my choice to make. You need to ask Mulder.”

“Well?” Eve pulled her mouth into a tight purse. “The question is, Agent Mulder, will you let us work on you?”

He closed his eyes and smiled with just one corner of his mouth. “Bring it on.”

Scully couldn’t help sighing audibly. At least there were no hallucinogens or invasive procedures involved.

+++

She never imagined it would be anything like this when she boarded the plane for Albuquerque: Fox Mulder, naked and nervous, stretched out on a rug, firelight glowing hot off his winter tan. In different circumstances, she could imagine being very aroused by this. He was even wearing the much-vaunted Panic Face. She always imagined sex would be accompanied by the Panic Face.

At least the first time. At least.

She couldn’t seem to stop herself from stealing glances at the untanned triangle sectioning his unbearably toned ass.

Had the years of frustration done this to her? Apparently so. Apparently she was so warped that resenting his affect on her was like breathing. She had no idea how to stop it, short of death.

She tried to convince herself that she should be able to look at him without falling prey to that tugging throb between her legs. It was pointless; she could barely even keep her hormones down to a simmer when she was in close proximity to a clothed Mulder, lately. In a situation like this, it was hopeless. She was simply out gunned.

That would have made him laugh. If only she could have told him. If only things were different.

Suddenly, she was shocked by the familiar feeling of sinking giving way to soaring. The only reason things were that way was because they had manufactured their own particular hell. If she wanted him, there was nothing in particular stopping her. She honestly couldn’t tell herself that it would be worse than living on this fence, even if, in the end, it blew them apart.

She was overwhelmed by the realization that she just plain didn’t want to live this way anymore. And she didn’t mean the X-files; she meant Fox Fucking Mulder, her own personal Tantalus in Armani. He might get off on wallowing in a sea of sexual tension, but she certainly didn’t want to. And, she realized, she didn’t have to.

The time had come for him to either put up or shut Up, toe ither have sex with her, or step out of the way while she got on with the task of finding someone else to give her what she wanted, which was some semblance of a whole life.

And all it had taken was the sight of his naked ass to bring about her epiphany. She was almost as pathetic as he was.

No. No no nonononononono! He didn’t want her; she didn’t want him.

She refused to be left twisting in the wind this way. The flesh might be detestably weak, but the will was strong. How was she ever supposed to find out? She would have been better off asking the Magic 8-ball Mulder had taken to keeping on his desk.

“Dana honey, why don’t you take your place up here at his head?” Eve gestured, sliding her glasses off her head and into her pocket.

“This will be painful for him. If you let him, he will certainly project it on to you. You cannot let him. Your job is to keep him from disassociating from the pain,” Frigga told her pointedly.

With the entrance of the first males since they arrived came a brief flurry of snow and activity.

“You rang?”

Mulder had no idea what he was expecting, but the guys at the door weren’t it. The speaker was of average height but slightly built, and had an accent that would be more at home in Blessing, Tennessee. And he was wearing overalls.

Oh shit.

“Junior,” Emily said as Shannon slid her arm around his waist, “This is Missy’s sister Dana and her partner, Fox Mulder. Fox and I grew up together in Chilmark and you and Fox share an alma mater.”

Mulder studied him as he spoke: wide brown eyes, furiously pointed nose, soft adolescent cheeks, waist length chestnut hair. There was also something feral about him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Great, just what we need. We may be fucked, but we’ll have excellent footnotes. Or maybe we can analyze our Aryan buddies into a stupor, then sneak into the compound.”

He was cut off by a glare from several of the women.

“Nice to meet you. I’d offer to shake your hand but I make it a rule not extend anything to nekkid federal agents.”

Shannon growled low in her throat, “Junior…”

He frowned briefly, duly chastised and plastered an insincere smile on his lips. “Thank you for coming, Agent Mulder.”

“Bit premature, don’t you think?” Mulder tried banter, but all he met was dead air.

The other man was still hanging back against the wall. Taller and lankier than Mulder, with incongruously elfin features.

“Are we going to do this or what?” His voice was low and pissed-off, but he seemed untroubled, as if a nude man on the living room floor was no more shocking or unusual than morning traffic or any number of small irritations.

And there it started. They closed in around him in a tight circle and a low note sounded, then two notes higher up. A chord. It was vaguely reminiscent of a Buddhist chant.

“Well, Dick,” Mulder droned, “I give it a seventy two – you just can’t dance to it.”

He couldn’t help it. Suddenly he was terrified of being turned on and just as terrified of being hurt.

Then the men began drumming. The elf with the hyperactive thyroid was beating a drum that looked suspiciously like the one Ricky used to play on ‘I Love Lucy.’

Then the hands closed in on him and he lost all conscious thought.

He spent the next hour screaming in pain.

He had always told himself that his father had knocked him around a few times, but now, reliving it, he knew it had been far more often than he ever wanted to admit to himself. And he knew from the beginning what the piece de resistance would be. Still, when it came, he was not prepared.

It was hell. As if every bit of suppressed rage was bearing down on him like a train. Even though he thought he had run that particular experience as far into the ground as it could go, the night he lost Sam came down on him, more complete and exact than ever before . The lingering household smell of cigarettes and Lysol; the gritty feeling of lying face-first on the carpet; the pain of the scream stopped inexplicably in his throat. And somehow, it was followed by his father’s death.

Bill’s familiar liquor breath, the crazy hum of thoughts derailed before hitting their destination All-I-want-to-do-is-understand-all-I-want-to-know- is-what-happened-why-I-have-to-lose-everything-good- I-ever-had.

And then Bill was dead. Everything left hanging. Nothing resolved. Nothing answered. A severed limb screaming a resounding “NO!!!!”, cut off forever. If anyone other than Scully had shot him, it would have simply been a coup de grace, but no such luck.

The sear of unreasoning rage was followed instantly and inexplicably by what he had always referred to internally as ‘the Ed Jersey incident.’ In a split second, he looked up into Scully’s face and hated her. He loved her and what did she do but shoot him and fuck some stranger?

Fuck her.

A strange surge of colors pressed before his eyes. The first impression was one of unaccustomed speed, and he had the distinct feeling of rising up and out in all directions at once. Jeezuz Fucking Christ! He looked down and realized he was having an out of body experience.

“Come back, Fox.” It was Emily and she sounded slightly put out.

“Dana, touch his face. It’s not working. Vivian?”

“Agent Mulder, stop it. Now Dana, I need you to put your lips to his forehead right where the third eye goes. Okay. Good. Listen closely.” Her voice was sharp beneath its twang but measured, almost military. “You need to focus on the idea of his consciousness, of pulling it up to you. You don’t need to literally suck, but it’s a sensation like that. You need to pull him to you. Let your conscious mind make contact with his conscious mind.”

He was shocked as he watched Scully comply, and felt the bizarre sensation of being pulled back into himself, drunk like a glass of water and spit back in his body. Did she really just do that?

Suddenly aware of every nerve ending in his body, it felt like someone was trying to rip his throat out, but no one was making skin contact at that point. He would have sworn his larynx had just broken loose and he turned his head to let the blood he expected come pouring out of his mouth. Instead a sound not unlike a roar escaped and Scully was hurled backwards.

“I warned you, Dana.” Frigga frowned. Then she whispered, “I hate when that happens.”

+++

Later, fed some porridge seasoned with honey and almonds, bathed, and set down like a child in a big fluffy bed, all Mulder really wanted was a TV, until he heard someone speaking in the living room. It sounded like Scully.

“I hope you can understand, Frigga, if I remain skeptical.”

“Even after what you did?”

“What did I do?”

That was Scully, alright.

Then he found himself listening to someone singing and playing the guitar in the room beside him. It managed to be both compelling and jarring.

Don’t believe him if he says that he loves you Cause Lovers are talkers or liars He’ll sleep beside you and steal your wallet And be long long gone”

He had to strain his ears to catch the words again.

Take a train to your weaknesses Let those weaknesses shine

He moved himself off the bed to hear more clearly

What did I pay to get to sleep beside you? I waited on angels unawares all of my hating, spent and stolen Long long gone

It was strange and it didn’t make much sense, but there he was. At that moment, all his hating did feel spent and stolen, long long gone.

If his body didn’t feel exactly as if it had been constructed of wet crumpled paper, he would have gone and explained it all clearly to Scully and topped it all off with a declaration.

Maybe.

Though, honestly, a declaration of what he couldn’t say. It was all just too fucking complicated. He loved her. Over the years, their world had shrunk down to just the two of them, and they had had just about every emotional experience two humans could have with each other: love, hate, resentment, betrayal, disgust, jealousy, disappointment, surprise, cruelty, tenderness, rage. Every bit of it had drawn them closer. It was more than desire, more than friendship – somehow, she had become his other self. She would shake her head, but it was true. They were married. Losing her would be not unlike losing himself, or some deep form of amnesia.

All that was left was all that was left. To say it. To do it. To stop pretending it wasn’t true. It would make sense to ignore it if it was something terrible, but it didn’t seem terrible to him.

Were they so truly emotionally screwed as to be afraid of the best thing in their barren little lives? It was certainly starting to look that way.

He should have told her about the eggs. He should have told her a long time ago. He wished he could give her what she wanted. Chances were he would die and leave her with nothing. Nothing but money.

Wouldn’t it be nice to spend the next year or so in wedded bliss?

There were leads. Things he could try. Or would it be better to give up and make the best of the time left? If he told her, she could help him find a solution, or kill herself trying. If he didn’t, he could be with her finally, completely, totally – give her something in the time left, even if it wasn’t the thing she wanted most. Take something for himself, too.

Not too hard a decision when he looked at it that way. Spend his remaining days with a grim and determined Scully bent on saving his questionable life, or make a genuine stab at being happy?

+++

El Quinto Sol 03/03 by OneMillionAndNine

April 3 2000

Taos Police Station. 8:35 a.m.

To quote the old saw, the lights were on but no one was home. No one awake, anyway.

Mulder and Scully stared at the young officer sleeping on the other side of the counter behind the Plexiglas shield. It took a full minute before Mulder leaned into the slotted metal oval.

“Ahem,” he cleared his throat.

He would have preferred no reaction at all, but the man behind the partition began to snore softly in reply.

“You know Mulder there are some situations where any attempt at subtlety is wasted.” She craned her neck to catch sight of the officer’s badge before barking, “Officer Concha!”

Mulder felt himself snap involuntarily to attention, so he fully expected it when the hapless officer fell out of his chair. It happened so quickly that Mulder had no idea he’d pressed his nose against the glass in an attempt to get a better look at the police man sprawled out on the floor on the other side of the counter.

Concha had a Marine’s high-and-tight hair cut and a vaguely cricketish face. Behind his glasses round eyes blinked furiously. He looked young. He seemed to be just barely stifling a yawn. Poor guy.

“You people need somethin’?” He still looked startled and had not quite finished blinking.

“We’re Mulder and Scully, FBI.” Flashed their badges; same old drill.

“What you come here about?”

“You have a series of murders, The Iverson murders I believe,” Mulder began.

“Those?”

“Are there others?”

“We’ve had six unsolved murders in the last twelve months. Six other deaths. People, ummm, not on Viggo’s list… “

“Is that unusual for this area?” Scully wondered.

He looked down. “No.”

Scully raised an eyebrow. “You have six additional unsolved murders in a population of 7,000?”

The young man looked her squarely in the eye, causing Mulder but not Scully to notice how very short he was.

“Yup that pretty much sums it up. You got any idea how many strangers pass through here every day? The Chief’s havin’ breakfast up the block with everybody Else, if you want talk to him”

+++

On her way out of the bathroom winding through the restaurant’s three large dining rooms, Scully heard a disturbingly familiar conversation.

“So Agent Mulder, if you’re asking me if I believe the world is eternal, I honestly can’t say. But if those fellas up at the Ragnarok Ranch got the date right, I’ll eat my hat. Think about it. Seems to me since the beginning of the world people have been predicting the Apocalypse.” He took a bite of his eggs and chewed thoughtfully.

Mulder nodded.

“Looks mostly like a kinda grandiose reaction to individual mortality. We do get more than our fair share of the nuts, too. You know those Heaven’s Gate guys started out here? The leader, Do, ran the concession stand at the Taos Civic Auditorium for eight years before he decided to devote himself full-time to the Apocalypse. They thought little grey men were coming to get them, too. These guys aren’t much different. And we’ve got no evidence they are doing any of this. You prove to me it’s anything other than bad luck and the power of suggestion and I’ll go pick ‘em up myself. Otherwise, you’re on your own.” The Chief took a sip of his coffee.

“And the blonde woman who shot Scott Mackenzie?”

The man shrugged. “You got any idea how many people pass through this town in a year?”

“A lot of ‘em change genders in a jail cell? Because that’s quite a trick. Usually, you have to go to Sweden for that, and even then I think it takes more than 10 minutes.”

Scully would have crossed into the side dining room and found her seat at the table beside her partner, but it seemed a life sized Ken doll was barring the way.

“You must be Agent Scully. My name’s Jet, Jetsun Rinpoche Loew, actually.” He drew his speech out as though he were a television announcer. “I’m the DA’s special investigator into cattle mutilations – that makes us colleagues.”

“Nice to meet you, Detective Loew. I was just trying to…” Despite her best attempt at pleasant professionalism, he grinned and cut her off, determined to be chatty.

“Jet, please call me Jet. And your first name is?”

Exasperated, she responded, “Dana, Dana Katherine.”

“Well Dana, it’s out of my limited jurisdiction and against the unspoken wishes of my superiors, but I’d like to help you find a way to stop what’s happening.”

“Why?” She felt herself getting a cramp in her neck. He was bigger than Mulder, much bigger, and fairly young, thirty at the very most. It would be at least ten years before he started to get beefy. She found her mind straying from the case, straying, even more notably, from her partner. She was unsure if she should be relieved at this apparent sign of vitality in her libido or if she should be swimming in guilt. Both responses seemed irrational.

“Isn’t a concern for the public welfare enough?”

Scully involuntarily felt her eyebrow rise.

“Okay, I suppose not. Look the first victim, Kathy Brencis, was a friend of mine.”

“Oh?”

“Besides, I was wondering if I had a shot at your partner? He’s certainly very…”

“Attractive?”

“The word that came to mind was ‘exquisite.’” Jet gave her a significant look. “So, do I have a chance?”

This definitely wasn’t Mulder’s fault but she was ashamed to find herself wanting to make him as uncomfortable as she was at the moment. “Let’s just say my partner prides himself on being open to extreme possibilities.”

“You’re quite attractive, too, of course, but there are so few really appealing gay men in the area I was just considering adding variety to my dating life. It’s been awhile since I…this is too much information, isn’t it?”

Dana Katherine’s eyes had grown fairly large in her face but she managed a weak smile to go with the nod.

+++

Fox Mulder was developing a pounding headache, though he doubted it was the fault of the damn whatever it was that was eventually going to kill him. No, he traced it directly to the fact that he had surveyed the evidence photos several times before and after arriving in New Mexico and never once had he recognized Kathy Brencis as the porn star Kitty Cream. Perhaps the lapse itself had been attributable to the black magic worked on his brain by CGB’s terrified doctors, but the ache between his ears was definitely, unquestionably caused by missing such a vital piece of information.

On top of everything that had already gone wrong on this case, now Scully thought he’d known about Brencis’ former occupation all along and had just neglected to mention it to her and was thus suitably miffed. The whole thing made him feel vaguely panicked -he owned both video taped and photographic depiction of the victim with a mouth full of cock, and yet he had failed to realize it when the crime scene photos slid across his desk. Any pretense he made at not objectifying women was lost.

He tried in vain to calculate the number of times he had pulled his cock as he watched her choke down some behemoth, all the while trying to force the image of Scully on her knees out of his mind. It never worked. By the time he came, it was always her face in his mental beta-max smiling wide, spattered with semen. It was a wonder he didn’t have to scrub with Comet every night before bed.

He looked up to see that Mr. I-Screw-Porn-Stars-And-Now-I’ve-Come-For-Your-Partner was still talking, pouring charm like maple syrup all over Scully. She must have just been giving him a hard time earlier because Jet Loew was looking at Dana Scully in a downright heterosexual way. Mulder looked at her at least four times a day that same way himself and he didn’t appreciate anyone else muscling in on his territory.

The fact that he was suffering from smoldering jealousy still didn’t lend him enough raw will to pay attention to what Mr. I-Investigate-Nothing-But- Cattle-Mutilations was saying. He considered how to address his rival. It was a rare occasion on which he internally thanked his parents for the name Fox, but being a male model-looking asshole named after a Tibetan saint – that took the cake. It had to be worse than being a goofy-looking guy named Fox. It had to be. Jetsun Rinpoche Loew, indeed.

He couldn’t bring himself to concentrate on the exchange no matter how hard he tried – if his mind hadn’t been wandering regularly for the past few months he would have immediately suspected that he’d been drugged. He still did not rule the possibility out entirely.

It was not until that afternoon back at Frigga’s ranch that his head felt really clear.

+++

Junior pulled the axe off the wall beside the back door and headed out with Mulder tight on his heels. Beside the back porch sat a mountain of half stacked wood and Junior looked appraisingly at it, axe dangling from one hand.

“Mind if I ask you a few questions, Jun?”

“Ask away.” He set a piece of wood onto a stump that seemed to been set up especially for the purpose. “That’s what you’re here for right? You might want to stand back a little bit, Agent Mulder.” In a few blinks he had spread his feet apart and swung down hard, wedging the axe deep into the standing log. A few breaths later he lifted the ax, log and all, and brought it down harder still, splitting it into three roughly even pieces.

Mulder jumped back involuntarily. “I want to know about Kathy Brencis. I think if we can understand why she was the first hit, we can understand how to stop Viggo.”

Jun was huffing, already on his fourth log. “That’s easy.” He brought the ax down again. “She was a fucking powerhouse, Seider-wise.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“You know, the first time I saw Kitty in person she was sitting in Michael’s Kitchen having a cup of hot chocolate with Harry Reams. They were here skiing. About half an hour later, he put his car right in the middle of a snow bank. As luck would have it, yours truly was there to pull ‘em out. Eight years we were friends – good friends.”

Mulder nodded. “So I understand.”

Jun snorted. “I have a good guess at what the local cops probably told you, but never once in those years did I so much as fondle her genitals, nor did she fondle mine. Kitty and Frigga had been going at it pretty hot and heavy ever since she moved here. She had a couple of guys she was in the habit of seeing from time to time – the principal at one of the private grade schools and a guy in the DA’s office. But there are other women who get around a lot more.”

“But none of them ever took a face-load of come on camera – not that you can rent down at the local video store. That makes all the difference in the world.”

Jun brought down the ax again. “That pretty much sums it up.” The wood cleft perfectly.

Mulder drew his inadequate coat up tight around him and did his best to remain nonchalant about stamping his feet to keep warm.

“You wanna swing for a while?”

“Excuse me?”

Jun proffered the ax handle. “It’ll warm ya up. ‘Sides, you know what they say.”

“What’s that?”

Jun answered him, squinting peevishly, thickening his accent to point of self parody. “Ain’t nobody chops wood like ‘em boys from Oxford.”

The slightest of smiles spread itself across Mulder’s face. Who was he to refuse such an offer? Stripping off his coat for mobility’s sake, and his tie for safety’s sake, he took the ax.

He was not out of shape. Compared to the gelatinous forms of most other 15 year veterans, he was practically Jackie fucking Chan. Nonetheless, miles of running and swimming every day were not perhaps the ideal preparation for log-splitting. His first swing was so poorly aimed it glanced futilely off the side of the log.

Jun sucked his teeth and hoped his second shot was better. More than that, Jun concentrated, staring as Mulder took two more tries to breach the upturned wood.

“You know there’s some old deep magic in sex, right?” Jun began. “You got the driving force of the universe right there. It’s obvious women have more of it, the power, I mean. You see it all over nature.”

“Yeah?” Mulder breathed heavily. If he weren’t both cold and frustrated, the conversation would have been a lot more enthralling.

“Like ants – the male mates with one female and dies. He’s got a lifespan of maybe a few weeks. The Queen, on the other hand, mates with dozens of males at a time and can live for years. When some kinds of snakes breed they form what’s called a ‘mating ball,’ with one female and any where from three to upwards of a dozen males.

“Right,” Mulder agreed, not sure what the point was, but hoping Jun was planning to get to it.

“Same deal. The female orgasm powers the Seider. Pretty much any woman can come three or four times a pop. Find a man that can pull that off and I’ll show you somebody’s who’s worked at it for years.”

Mulder wisely chose to swing the ax again rather than attempt to comment.

“I’ve seen Kathy come fifteen, sixteen times in one ritual. If Viggo and LaGrange left her alive, we would have shut their asses down as soon as they started pulling this shit. Missy’s sister or not, your partner has some pretty big shoes to fill.”

Mulder grunted in shock, missing the log he was swinging for entirely and burying his ax deeply in the stump below. “You expect Scully to join the Seider?”

“That was the general idea. Ah, what say you gimme that ax before you cut your fucking leg off?”

+++

“You’re joking, right?” Dana Scully surveyed the serious faces. “Mulder, tell me you’re not a party to this. God, look who I’m asking.” She closed her eyes. “Of course you’re a party to this.

This was, as Mulder would say, un-fucking-believable. He was asking her not only to participate in, but be the center of some orgiastic new age clap-trap, the kind of thing even he would normally dismiss.

So what if it purported to potentially grant her a certain amount of control over the chip in the back of her neck? As far as she could tell, there was no way it could work. There was no way it could bring Wunjo Iverson home to his mother.

Sure, sexual activity in general and the female orgasm in particular were known to produce certain hormonal and enzymatic responses that could, theoretically, effect the microchip, depending on its programming and composition. So, maybe, on a very hypothetical level, it might work. Not that that obligated her in any way to participate. It was so preposterous that she gave the only answer she knew how to give.

“No. Absolutely not.”

Mulder’s focus was intense, as if he was mentally laying out his beads and rattles in advance. “Like I said, it’s your call, Scully.”

She felt her temper move from a simmer to rolling boil. “I am so glad you are choosing to recognize my right to self-determination today. It really is a refreshing change of pace after the last seven years. But then, everyone knows you’re full of surprises, among other things.”

Part of her twinged with guilt that he was shocked into such a nervous silence in front of an audience, but another part raged on. She should have known Eddie Van Blundht was an imposter the moment she first saw the bottle of wine. THIS was Fox Mulder’s style; hokey and improbable, with plenty of wiggle room, so he could claim it meant nothing.

Frigga was twisting the silver ring on her thumb. “Do you know why your sister, Melissa, left Taos?” she asked quietly. Mulder put his hand on shoulder as if to quiet her, but she shrugged him off.

“She felt it was time to move on.” Scully’s gaze challenged Frigga to contradict her. “She was like that.”

“Two months before your sister left she lost a pregnancy under very mysterious circumstances.” Frigga remained calm as she spoke, in hope that Scully would relax and listen.

“My sister was never pregnant.” Scully’s expression was flat.

“Your sister had had two normal ultrasounds and was just entering her second trimester when the fetus she was carrying simply disappeared, without so much as a leak in the amniotic sack. If we’d known then what we know now, we could have stopped it.” Frigga licked the corner of her lip compulsively.

Some how this horrific information was restive, almost soporific, giving Scully the chance to operate as a doctor and an investigator, to feel back on an even keel again. In her element. “Stopped what? There’s no conspiracy at work here. I know it seems odd but re-absorption of fetal tissue happens. If what you’re describing did occur, there was no alien involvement. It was a rare but explainable form of spontaneous abortion where, instead of being expelled, the tissue is absorbed by the mother.”

Internally, Scully pleaded with Frigga to stop trying to make this personal.

“Your sister was a multiple abductee, just like you,” Frigga said slowly and clearly and too close to Scully’s face for comfort.

“Frigga, alien abduction is not a proven phenomena.”

A pleading quality entered the other woman’s voice. “What happened to her could happen to you.”

And an edge entered Scully’s. “No, it couldn’t. My ova were harvested.”

The razor Scully cut with came back at her in Frigga’s voice. “During one of those pesky abductions you won’t admit actually happen?”

“I don’t care to discuss this.” Rather than hurt, Scully simply sounded dead.

There was a forcefulness close to anger in Frigga’s voice now. “You could use the Seider to stimulate your ovaries into producing. You could have children.”

Again the tone caught hold of Scully. “How do I know you aren’t saying this just to get me to agree? If you’re at the point I think you are, you’ll say anything, do anything, if you think it has the faintest chance of bringing your son home.”

Frigga’s pitch escalated. “And I think you’re afraid to admit that anything that’s happened to you is real.”

Scully teetered on the brink of screaming. “I really don’t want to talk about this. It’s a waste of our time.”

After his partner had all but sprinted for the door Fox Mulder was heard to mutter, not quite as under his breath as he imagined, “Stonewall Scully rides again.”

+++

Dana Scully, as usual, was stuck between a metaphorical rock and a hard place.

She knew they did not have the back up, the firepower, or the tactical expertise to go knocking on the front door of Jackson’s compound and demand custody of a boy everyone claimed was now invisible. Neither did they have the authority – really – as two lone agents. All they would do if they were to attempt a direct confrontation was draw the bureau’s wrath. Well, that and get herself and probably several others killed.

At the same time, her conscience would not allow her to return to DC. Clearly these people needed her help and no matter how much she argued that no evidence of foul play existed, there was still the matter of six deaths. And this Seider stuff…

How could it be true? It seemed ridiculous that her ability to have multiple orgasms would save anyone. Old deep magic, her ass.

She stirred her latte clockwise then counter clockwise, hoping to come up with some solution, some middle ground where justice was served, the boy was returned safe and sound, and everyone kept their pants on. It was not working.

Even if she managed to conjure up enough doubt to force herself to go home, Mulder would not be moved. He’d swallowed it all hook, line, and sinker. Besides that, he was tied to these people, these friends of Melissa’s. It made her wonder for a minute exactly what led them there. They had made similar choices, all of them desperately looking for a road less traveled, all of them trying with varying degrees of success to shuck off their affluent backgrounds.

The day before, in fact, she had bitten her tongue as she watched Frigga fill an exquisite crystal bowl with water, only to set it down beside the kitchen door for the collection of scraggily dogs that seemed to have free run of the house. It was so Mulderish of her, so like him. Just like Mulder, Frigga seemed bordering on naive, as if she knew the value of everything and the price of nothing.

And what exactly, she mused, stirring again, was the price for one Dana Scully? Had she cost Mulder too much or too little? Did her even want her? Or had he long ago decided she would spend the rest of her life amongst the window dressing? It was painful.

And what if she did lose her mind and agree to partake in the ritual? Was he expecting to be ‘the one?’ Or could she take the easy way out and choose one of the other women to be her partner in the Seider? Of course, they had made it clear that the choice was entirely her own. But Mulder – what was going on in his head?

They had spent the entire day up to that point in utterly fruitless investigation, at her behest. It was clear there was no physical evidence to be found, but he remained pleasant, obliging, supportive, even. Why? Was he trying to get in her good graces? Did he want to experience the ritual with her? Did he hope she would stand fast? Did he just want to have sex with any willing female? Had she been misreading him all these years? Did Loew actually have a better shot at him than she did?

No, she stirred more determinedly, that was one extreme possibility she just didn’t see Mulder jumping into head first. As far as she could tell, didn’t respond to men sexually – none of the dilated pupils and galvanic skin response in the presence of choice males that he got in the presence of even vaguely desirable females. Oh well, she’d cross that question off her list for the moment.

She glanced up at him. The table was too small for him to slide his knees under, so he sat pulled away, balancing a plate of irregularly shaped spice cookies on his knee as his coffee cup hovered ceaselessly in his hand. He was not sitting at the table as much as he was in a general orbit around Scully.

“Mulder?”

“Yes?

She tried to say it in the lightest way possible. “What should I do?”

Panic Face, followed swiftly by an attempt to drive all emotion from his voice. “You’re reconsidering. then?”

She exhaled. “I want to explore all the possibilities. There isn’t much chance of us taking the boy by force, I have been unable to find any forensic evidence that would help us get the law enforcement assistance we would need, and there have been six deaths, which is about five more than coincidence can account for.”

He nodded slowly, trying to remain calm. He stuffed a cookie into his mouth before he could manage to say something wrong.

“I don’t suppose you would have any interest in being my partner in the Seider if I were to rethink my position?”

He chewed and swallowed. He swallowed again. “Actually, yes. I already am your partner, after all.” He swiftly shoved three more cookies in his mouth to stem the tide of stupid things he was about to say. This was not the time or place for professions of love and desire.

“You want to have sex with me?”

It took all his inner resources to appear calm. “This is less sex than it is performance art.”

Satisfied with his response, he attempted to take a sip of coffee, as if it were perfectly normal to discuss the Tantric union of souls, to discuss not only having sex with his partner, but having sex for the first and quite probably only time with his partner, in front of other people with blazing fires and magical symbols painted on their bodies in – oh, wow, would they actually use blood? Cat or dove? Not human, surely? Even Snow wouldn’t go that…

The sip of coffee was not a success. He missed his mouth entirely and dumped scalding coffee onto his crotch. The cookie plate smashed dramatically on the floor when he jumped up in more shock than pain.

For a brief moment, it was pandemonium as time seemed to slow down. He became aware of the sensory minutae around him – the throb of the bass coming crackling through the radio at the counter, the citrus smell of Scully’s hand lotion, the taste of straight black Kona combined with anise and citron and cinnamon and clove cookies, with the sharp aftertaste of brandy, the fine grit of the last of the cookie crumbs in the corner of his mouth, the reverberating ring of porcelain against tempered-earth floor, the crack of the initial shatter, the heavy sound of Scully’s breath, the drone of the English girl reading tarot in the corner.

He even heard the burn of the paper as the customer, the fortune tellee, sucked hard on her cigarette. His pants felt scratchy. All his skin felt vaguely raw. It took forever for staticky singer’s words to form WE ARE IN TRUTH THE TRUTH WE SEEK. He could have sworn he felt the hair on his arms vibrating. He was shocked by a low voice.

“Everything all right in here?”

It was the Boris Karloff wannabe from behind the counter – say want you want about the Mummy the guy made a mean cup of coffee and the cups were reasonably clean.

Mulder blinked several times as his perception returned to normal – he guessed Ol Boris never took the time to learn Morse code. Scully’s mouth was open and she was blinking, too.

“I just…I just spilled my coffee”

“And tossed your cookies,” Scully muttered.

Boris sprinted nimbly toward them. “You can clean up in our bathroom if you want. We usually try to keep it employees only but you look like you need it. Here, I’ll show you.”

Before Mulder knew exactly what was happening, he was following ersatz Boris through what his imagination could easily have turned into catacombs, followed by three earthen steps. Behind a monstrous mechanical dishwasher and its hygienically-challenged operator, was a bright blue door.

Employees Only.

Inside, a huge list of things it was not advisable to attempt to flush down the ancient plumbing system, up to and including human waste, hung on the door. Beside that, a series of Natal Horoscopes of people he assumed were employees graced the wall, followed by snip of poems and bits of Camus, Sartre, Ginsberg, and others were stuck into the adobe with thumb tacks. Magazine photos. napkin drawings done in blue ball point pin all forming a huge collage that he scrutinized as he half-heartedly attempted to rinse the coffee out of his shirt.

He heard the peal of tires in snow and realized there was a window in the far rear of the long narrow room that looked out into the courtyard, even now not completely empty. There was something strange he could just barely make out behind the wall, almost completely obscured from view by the trees that ringed the far edge of the courtyard. He pulled his glasses from his inside jacket pocket.

Shit! Was that an eye?

He came barreling out of the bathroom, grabbed Scully by the hand, and attempted to drag her out the door.

Scully, however, was not prepared to be pulled out into the snow without her coat. She balked.

“Come on, Scully! There’s something in the parking lot…” For the moment, all thoughts of sex, performance art, and performance anxiety were gone.

“Do I have to freeze to death to see it? Just let me get my coat.”

He nodded, his left knee bobbing, not bothering to put his own coat on as she slid into hers.

As soon as she was ready, he ran through the enclosed patio, through slush and snow, with Scully trudging behind him. He stopped just ahead of her through the wooden courtyard doors, his face wearing the patented Mulder Look of Wonder.

What was it? Fairies? Flying Saucers? Vampyra doing a burlesque-style bump and grind?

Scully stepped over the snowy threshold into the parking lot and her eyes snapped wide with horror.

It was a bloody, severed horse head on a listing pole.

Mulder was circling the mayhem with downright glee.

“Can you believe it? I’ve never seen one before, only read about them, but look…”

“Well, then you’re ahead me on this one Mulder. What the hell is it?”

“It’s a Nithing Pole, Scully,” he responded, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world. “You know, a Pole of Insult?”

She just shook her head.

“Haven’t you read your Norwegian History? Egil? 12th century? Deposed the King and Queen of Norway by constructing a Nithing Pole? Beowulf? Any of this ring a bell?” He was circling more slowly now, his eyes still riveted to the pole laughing, intermittently at the sheer wonderful weirdness of it. He never imagined he’d see one of these.

“I must have been absent that day.” It made her flesh prickle. Every time she looked up, she imagined the screams of the horse as it died. She couldn’t get that sound out of her head. “What’s it supposed to do?”

“Well, this particular Pole of Insult gives me the option of leaving town or dying at the hands of Viggo and LaGrange. Hey, but don’t worry. According to this they fully intend to pay their blood debt to my loved ones.”

“Excuse me?”

“With inflation, that should come to a pretty penny. On the up side, you’ll finally be able to afford that new car you’ve been looking at.”

She looked and there along the pole was his name carved carefully in what appeared to be runes.

“See?” His eyes were twinkled as he pointed.

She saw. “Mulder, I just officially changed my mind.”

+++

She was really doing this.

She still couldn’t quite believe it, but she knew there would be no backing out. She had no intention of backing out, really. The clarity of her situation amazed her. She kept expecting things to go fuzzy at any minute. Instead as she practiced what Mulder called “The Cobra Breath,” an eerie sense of reality settled over her. She was going to have sexual union with Fox Mulder, not in a moldy vermin infested motel room, not in a rented car, not in his apartment, or hers, or even on the desk in their office, files falling to the floor around them like leaves.

No, instead they were in a huge adobe room with a fireplace blazing at either end. All the furniture had been cleared. She tried not to watch Eve and Emily arranging what appeared to be a pile of furs on the floor. The very idea of Mulder naked on fur made her breathe even more slowly and deeply to avoid hyperventilating. Maybe there was some way she could casually ask him to wear his glasses, too?

Junior, Dave and Vivian were preparing to leave. Some last terrified part of Scully wished she was going with them. They’d probably get slaughtered.

They had been elected to go and snatch the boy while the others engaged the enemy in less corporeal terms. They were carefully scratching a symbol into their finger nails with the point of a knife, some symbol called The Thorn. Frigga said it was generally considered the darkest and most dangerous rune. Some people held the belief it should never be mentioned at all, let alone used, but she maintained it was invaluable to a soldier with his back against the wall. She alleged it tapped directly into the deepest, blackest power of the Id. If that were true, Scully could use it herself. If only she could figure out where to put the mark.

Or maybe not. For once, her Super Ego seemed under control. Okay, maybe not exactly under control, but pulling in the same direction as the deep blue sea of her Id, psychic oxen yoked to the same purpose – consummation. And yet, some part of her hung back, lit a metaphorical cigarette, and turned up its metaphorical collar. She wouldn’t get emotionally involved.

Okay, honestly, she was already emotionally involved, so maybe she wouldn’t get any MORE emotionally involved.

And exactly how involved was she? It wasn’t something she could even begin to quantify, so how would she know if she became more enmeshed if she couldn’t even tell where she was with him to begin with? Still, a part of her remained separate.

For Mulder, things were not the same, but Fox Mulder, FBI Agent, Oxford graduate, Apparition/Alien/Mutant Chaser Extraordinaire, was not having an easy time of It, either He felt, in fact, like he was going to throw up at any minute. His cock was hard and his brain was racing. Junior’s minimalist words of direction were ricocheting around inside his skull.

“Look, you pretty much know what you’re doin’. It’s not complicated. Just raise both your Kundalinis through each chakra an’ up to Shakti at the top of the skull, then just try to make her come as many times as you can. Okay?”

Oh yeah, nothing much. Should he split some firewood while he was at it? That was the kind of thing some Taoist mystic might do. If you could accomplish something like that, after you died some guy somewhere would build a shrine to venerate a lock of your pubic hair. He was just a guy who jerked off for six years, stuck on Vishuddi.

So it started. An egg shaped ring was drawn on the Floor, encompassing nearly the entire room. Around its edge, runes spelled out their desires and intentions. Here and there Mulder could read a name, a word, occasionally more, but never enough to make any real sense. He breathed in slowly, filled his lungs until they could hold no more, then released, not in some desperate sigh, but just as slowly and as controlled as his inhalation had been, exhaling until his lungs were well and truly empty. When he began again he could feel the golden ray of light shoot up toward his navel. It occurred to him that the cobra breath was perfect. It worked. My God, if he hadn’t been doing it for the last hour he was certain he would have come half an hour ago when she’d removed her shirt, revealing her naked back and black bra.

By his side, she regarded him out of the corner of her eye as he undressed, already naked herself. His hands moved clumsily, opening his shirt.

“Scully, are you sure about this?” He was looking down at his fingers working the buttons, not at her.

“I’m fine with this, Mulder”

“No, really. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t feel good about.”

“Or maybe,” her voice was only a half-step above a whisper, “you don’t want to do this?”

His shirt was still on, hanging open, but the only thing he could think to do was push down his pants. “I know how you feel about tangible evidence,” he croaked.

She had never seen him both naked and turgid at the same time without feeling she should look away before. It was bigger than she expected, red to match his lower lip, and bouncing in the open air. She could practically see his pulse beating in the veins that stood out along his shaft.

She had never felt this way, never before felt the compulsion to take a penis into her mouth. Oh, she had certainly performed fellatio before and she had certainly enjoyed it, but she had never felt the urge to swallow down a man’s cock the second she saw it. It felt like a physical hunger.

She held back a wealth of conflicting emotions: the urge to suck his lower lip into her mouth, to wrap her hands around his throat, but they were too small. She had no idea where the sadistic impulse came from, except that she had always admired what was fragile in him.

And like that, the twisted desire passed and all that was left was an almost magnetic pull toward him.

He was consumed with self consciousness. The very idea of Scully standing there, openly staring at his erection, open mouthed, made his chest contract. He breathed in slowly. Did she realize her mouth was open?

Over the years he had always judiciously avoided looking at her mouth because he loved it. The ripeness of it, the wetness, the slight duck-ish quality of her upper lip paralyzed him with lust like the proverbial deer in the on-coming headlights.

He was filled with a vague sense of desperation when he realized he could kiss her now. In fact, he was expected to kiss her. The thought of even trying to imagine how to start made him want to cry.

Luckily, as he waffled, Scully pulled him down by his neck into a clinch of her own devising. She didn’t seem to be having the same problems he was. They both shut their eyes, but not quickly enough to avoid seeing Frigga kill a dove and begin draining its blood into a wooden bowl.

Scully felt vaguely sick, but continued kissing. A few minutes later, Mulder felt Frigga’s warm hand on his back, sticky with blood. He began to sweat.

“This is Eihwaz, the spine and the yew, it denotes the strength to take risks and the courage to act on your convictions.” As she drew a line of blood up his muscled back, he began to suck harder at Scully’s mouth. She continued making what looked much like a stylized letter z of both their backs.

It alarmed Scully that she wasn’t alarmed at all.

They parted momentarily so that Frigga could continue marking them.

Frigga still spoke as she worked, but Scully no longer cared to focus on much beyond Mulder’s body. She expected to be put off by the bloody characters, but she was not. She caught the names of some of the marks as she watched his chest expand and contract. Inguz, Dagaz, Kenaz, Ehwaz, Teiwaz, Sowulo, Algiz, Berkana, Raido, Wunjo. Frigga fell back and the drums began. The tattoo the women beat was hypnotic.

Scully surged toward him. It was such a cliche, like something out of Penthouse Letters, surging toward him, but that was the only description his brain could come up with. She was on him like, like… again, his intellect was against him. On him like…like white on rice, like ugly on warthog, like bald on Assistant Director Skinner. God, his brain would kill him if it didn’t stop soon.

Why did he keep distracting himself, like a joke at a funeral?

It wasn’t that he didn’t want her; god, how he wanted her. But he was so afraid. It was the End of the World. What the Hindus call the Kali Yuga – wasn’t that the name of the bar where this whole sorry mess had started? The Mayans called it El Quinto Sol, The Fifth Sun. In any language, it was Armageddon, and he was an apocalypso dancer.

He wanted it. He wanted her. And he was a traitor to be willing to risk everything. Kundalini and Nazis and miracles aside, he was a fool to be willing to trade everything in the world for a dive between those smooth white legs, to trade companionship, trust, the best friend in the world, for pussy, for cunt that couldn’t possibly be that different from every other cunt in the world.

Except, of course, it was wired into the best friend in question.

If he pressed the magic button, it would invariably send a jolt into her pleasure center. She would release endorphins, adrenalin, a cocktail of other chemicals.

Love? Did it matter? Did it exist? Could he get it from her? Chances were if he spun the wheel of fortune he’d inevitably hit BANKRUPT if he were lucky, maybe LOSE-A-TURN. Her lips brushing over his nipples felt like an electrified sweep of silk oh-my- god she was moving lower and he was going to die.

He pulled her up by her shoulders, whispering, “This isn’t how we do this. You need to, ah, let me lead this dance or, um, this is going to be a wasted effort.” It was the only way he could think of to express it, but jeez, how it stumbled along. “Lie down, Scully.”

His eyes ran over her again and again. He had a feverish desire to stare and stare and stare between her legs. He wished he had a speculum, a gynecological table, and one of those strong lamps from the doctor’s office. Now that he had her, was having her, would have her, he wanted to explore every square inch of her. He didn’t feel shy at all.

That didn’t make him any more certain than he had been a earlier; it just meant his inborn curiosity had won out. He wanted to tell himself ‘in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound,’ but it was a stupid, pointless, useless, hackneyed phrase after so many years of straddling the fence.

Suddenly, words he had no conscious memory of ever hearing ran through his head. ‘Put your secret longings in the river underground.’ It seemed fitting. He would let those urges, those pointless urges for romance and love and a little family of two wash out with the subterranean tide of his unconscious mind and fuck Scully like she had never been fucked before.

In the Tantric tradition, this was a bonding, the ultimate marriage, no matter what Scully thought or didn’t think, an intimacy beyond intimacy. What did it matter if she never said, “I love you,” so long as they were joined on etheric plane?

Who was he kidding? It mattered.

Suddenly, he felt the gold light rise as it never had before, and his spine went perfectly, divinely straight. Insane heat radiated from his skull and he felt a buzz above his head. He could feel the molecules around him reverberating. He could feel Scully’s skin, even though he was not touching her. He could feel what she felt. Her sensations were his.

She stared up at him and was IN LOVE, had been IN LOVE for a long, long time. On a subatomic, level he was laughing, and every electron, neutron, and proton that was Mulder jingled merrily and without rancor. She loved him. She had loved him all along.

He could do it now. More than that, he would do so much more than she imagined. Her imagination was so limited. He loved her and he would make certain it rang in her like a bell.

Gaze upon gaze, they remained. He ran his fingertips over her knees, so softly she could barely feel him, yet every hair on her body stood at attention. His palms grazed the swell where her leg turned into hip before his mouth followed. His forefingers traced the spiral of her ear, but it was his warm, ripe lower lip that caressed her earlobes.

His lips hummed at her neck, then went on to suckle, and finally to blow softly across the wet surface. She practically convulsed. He could smell her arousal wafting through the room in waves, competing with the resinous pine of the fires for dominance.

It took every fiber of will to lick the inside of her thighs without moving on to her pussy.

He moved away slightly when he was done so he could breath on the skin he had licked from a distance. Soft as the pressure from his mouth was, she writhed under it. Reluctantly, he shifted her onto her side and began on her back, the sacral-lumbar junction to be exact, and began his kisses. He felt her lower two chakras open like flowers. He was minutely aware when the skin on her body tensed like a drum. His tongue slipped down to the backs of her knees and he felt her begin to shiver. He felt the pulse of it in a strange place back behind his balls…

She was coming. She was coming from him breathing on the back of her knees and he felt it. His head was still on fire and for a second his vision went black at the center. Her orgasm felt like a train running up his spine. Sweet-Ed-Wood-In-A-Dress could he… could he eat her now? All the times he had sat in the office throwing pencils at the ceiling dreaming of prostrating himself just enough to get his head between her legs and here he was, the luckiest son-of-a-bitch alive.

Her name came out of his mouth, surprising her. “Scully?”

She stared. It all seemed unreal – Mulder’s fingers holding open her labia, his mouth poised over her straining clitoris and he was smiling. She didn’t know how to answer him, so she lifted her hips to his maddening lips in response.

He laughed. Laughed, sucked her clitoris, and sent a buzz shooting up her body that caused something above her navel and something else, something in the middle of her chest, to fly open like a window.

She was so wet that she made juicy noises when he pushed two fingers inside her. She felt vaguely embarrassed until he hit that spot with his fingers, that special spot, that made her whole body contract and expand around him, uncoiling. And something within her throat blew clear.

She was coming, again and again, gripping at his fingers.

He lifted his head. “Can I kiss you?”

It was not her partner who settled on top of her, not the man who dropped his gun and talked with food in his mouth, not an infuriating fool in love with the sound of his own voice who left her to do all the paperwork, but a golden god, glowing in the fire light. A god who would obliterate anyone or anything that hurt her. A god she would never succeed in pushing away.

His face loomed over hers. He was asking not to take her, not to possess her, but for her to take him, make him her own. In the split second that hung like an axe above them, she made up her mind, and flipped him onto his back in a smooth, swift move she must have learned at Quantico.

They were eye to eye, forehead to forehead. He sucked in her exhalation and felt gold sparks shoot out of his finger tips. Her last chakra, her third eye, blinked open and met his, opening to opening. Her wet crotch gasped against his belly and her mouth sucked at his. This had nothing in common with the New Year’s Eve peck. This had nothing to do with his lonely, painful clinging to her scared, stiff body when his mother died. His tongue connected with hers and the circuit was complete. The snake in her spine unfurled like a flag. He felt the rumble, saw her shine like rosy gold above him. There was an air of danger about her and suddenly, the strangest thing occurred – her hair was red. It was red and he could see it.

It was no longer a woman who went on fad diets, listened to incomprehensible music, and had a disturbing love of organization, with his penis nestled between her labia. It was a goddess made of milk and blood. There was an element of terror to his worship. He could understand the fear that led millennia after millennia of men burn women at the stake, he understood the maleus maleficarum when it said that woman was the closest companion of Satan. They had some link to the underlying power of the universe, the great dark mysterious, that men could never claim. Every day of his life he could smell it on all of them; now, he would just have to throw himself on her mercy and enjoy the ride. After all, he was golden and divine – he could probably survive. He’d taken larger risks with smaller pay-offs.

She shifted her lips to his ear, half a kiss, half a whisper, “My tit, Mulder, suck my tit.” Vaguely, he noted that she didn’t say ‘breast’ right before she shoved it into his mouth. He was delighted.

He opened his mouth wider, trying to suck in every bit possible, like a baby. He pulled hard with his mouth, squeezed her waist in his hands. Her nipple, wedged tight between his tongue and hard palate, made another circuit, and he could taste her Kundalini, like fire and iron and green leaves and sea spray wrapped with his own.

He felt the shock as another orgasm ripped through her and she pulled back, ripping her nipple from between his lips.

He expected her to say something. He had imagined it differently. He imagined her trembling underneath him as he penetrated her with infinite care. That wasn’t what happened.

Instead, she caught his eye and held it, nodding, nodding at him like she had when their office had burned, when she had her gun to the back of a killer’s head, when it was all she could do to shake back the adrenalin. She nodded.

With a sting and a shiver, he was home inside her. His hair was soaked with sweat as she shook on top of him, her too long fingernails cutting into his shoulders.

There was a painful and exquisite slowness to it now that they were joined. It was stupidly beautiful. Cock in cunt – any moron could do it, and frequently did. But it had taken the two of them, with their ponderous brains like planets careening out of their orbits, close to forever.

He was aware of every cubed inch of air in the room. It seemed like each subtle move he made brought another wave of harsh tremors through her. The flashes that accompanied each orgasm were becoming blinding, pink and gold and apple green ringed with violet. Her teeth gnashed and only the whites of her eyes were visible.

He could not believe how good it felt inside her. She gripped him in waves. His vision pulsed. He couldn’t hold out much longer. It hadn’t been a struggle before, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. They had been one piece for what seemed like days. The gold shone brighter and larger, like a balloon, reaching critical mass. With all the strength in his body, he lifted her up and off and she stared, mouth open.

He sat up, gesturing to her. “I wanna, I wanna come like this, Scully.”

Nimbly, she climbed onto his lap, facing him.

“Mulder,” she blinked, “this…,” she stretched up to his ear, “… this is good…” and proceeded to lock her ankles around his waist.

He gripped her head with both hands, “Really?” His voice was beginning to take on a quality she normally associated with hospital rooms. “I mean, I only got about half-way through the Kama Marmas… “

“Yeah?” Her voice sounded drunk and she tried fruitlessly to move forward enough to kiss him but she couldn’t get her head out of his hands without dislodging his penis and so thought better of it.

“The Kama Marmas are the erogenous zones used in Tantra to open the chakras and release the Kundalini.” His hips moved against her and she attempted to buck wildly again, but he pulled her tighter to him making it impossible.

“Umm humm…”

“It’s common belief that the Kundalini resides in its dormant phase at the base of the spine but that’s misinformation – it actually is in the brain, the lower sections of the brain.”

Her nipples were red and hard and she pushed them against him. “You have a big brain, Mulder, okay?” She slipped the tips of her pinkies into the corners of his mouth. “I’ve always loved your lips, Mulder. Now… ummm”

“Now what, Scully?”

“Mulder,” she mumbled, using her formidable thigh muscles to try to bounce on top of him, despite his efforts to subdue her.

“Scully.” It was an attempt at admonishment, but she proved to be less than cowed. He trembled despite his best efforts when she changed her tactic and ran her fingers down his back.

She pressed her forehead to his, the thin rind of her irises screaming blue behind her bloody hair, all crazed and curling in his fingers. “Come for me, Mulder.”

He could still smell the toothpaste on her breath. Was it like this for her, too? Could she see the air reverberate? Feel his thoughts? Were the colors the same for her? “I don’t… I don’t know if I’m ready…”

She screwed up her forehead. “Wha…?”

“… ready for this to be over, Scully. I don’t know if it will ever happen again.”

She bit her lip – gasp – “We’ll do it again” – gasp – “I promise.”

“I love you, Scully. Can I say that now?”

“I love you, too. Now fuck me.”

He thrust up hard against her, his nose pressed into her cheek, his lower lip thrust into her mouth, his hands still grasping desperately at her skull. She arched her back and pushed down with all her might.

She seemed to be beginning to regret both his size and her movement as he thrust three hard jabs that seemed to go past the mouth of her cervix. His final moves were graceless as he came inside her, clutching her to him, whimpering into her mouth.

Mulder and Scully never noticed when the drummers stopped.

They had fallen asleep where they lay before the hunters returned safely with the child.

+++

He seemed particularly bent on pressing his right knee against her left, but she wasn’t sure how much of his behavior she could attribute to the cramped conditions in coach. The accommodations certainly had little or nothing to do with his incessant smiling: of that, she was certain.

He grinned and cleared his throat. “You gonna register that as a deadly weapon?”

She practically jumped out of her skin. “Jackson and his group were disturbed individuals. There’s no evidence that anything Frigga’s people did – with or without us – affected them. It’s just fortunate they were able to get the boy out before they started killing each other.”

He smirked. “Strong coincidence though – a ritual aimed at directing their violence back on them and they obligingly shoot each other to death.”

She sniffed. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“Never said you did.”

“I believe your words were, ‘Are you gonna register that as a deadly weapon?’”

“Maybe I was talking about me. I think you’ve done permanent damage. I may never play the violin again.”

She frowned. “That would be a shame.”

He straightened his tie nervously and did his best to wipe the grin off his face. “Look Scully, by any standard, I mean ‘any’ standard, that was incredible. You were incredible. I’m not, um, I’m not the most, um, I’m no Eddie Van Blundht, but I’ve never seen anything – any’one’ – to compare to what I saw yesterday. You were unbelievable. Were you – have you always been like that? Or was it me? I mean, it was you, clearly, it was you, but, um, did I…?”

“Mulder?” She blinked at him over the tops of her glasses. What the hell was going on in his head?

All his jocular bluster was gone. “Scully, I…”

She waited. And waited. Finally, she asked. “What are you trying to say?”

He peered at her, wide-eyed, bit his lip.

And it hit her. Just like that.

Holy shit, for the first time in forever she thought she knew, she thought she had a clue.

“Mul-der,” she stretched out his name, “is this about what I promised you?”

He swallowed audibly. “Scully, you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to hold you to anything you don’t want to do.”

“Mulder, I… ” She was shaking her head in disbelief, at a loss for words.

His words rushed out. “It’s okay. You can dump me. No hard feelings.”

Dump him? She worked with him five days a week and spent about half her weekends with him, too. How effectively could she dump him? And furthermore, the man had maintained an erection for two and a half hours – why the hell would she want to dump him?

You can’t break eggs for an omelet then decide you want to raise chickens instead, she thought. And she didn’t want to. She just needed some time to think it all through.

“I meant every word I said, Mulder. Every one. I just need a little time to regroup.”

He nodded, but didn’t look convinced. “How much time? Seven years? Six months?”

“More than a day, less than a month – I’ll let you know.”

He looked down, not at his shoes, it seemed, but hers. “You honestly want this? Want me? Us?”

“Do you?” Her voice was quiet. “You have to answer me this time, actual words. I’m reasonably certain not even you would pull down your pants on a plane full of people, but…”

“Wanna bet?”

“Mulder,” she warned.

“Okay, Scully,” he nodded slowly. “Yeah. It’s what I want.”

“I do, too. I want this Mulder, I just don’t want it to come between us. If sleeping with you means putting our friendship in jeopardy, I’d just as soon stick to Friday nights with my vibrator.”

“You have a vibrator?”

Was he serious? She was a thirty four year old single woman who saw her gynecologist more often than she saw a live naked man. Did she have a vibrator?

“Mulder, I’m serious.”

“I know you are.”

She leaned forward, unable to speak, her mouth half-open.

Finally, Mulder looked up. “Are you afraid you made a mistake?”

There was no hesitation. “No.”

“You meant every word you said?”

“Every one.”

He nodded. “Even when, when you said you loved me?”

She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled. “Even then.”

“Nothing has to change, Scully. We can just be, just be, you know, there for each other a little more.”

She chuffed. “If you were any more ‘there’ for me, Mulder, I’d have one of your kidneys.” She smiled as she said it, a bigger smile than she had intended.

He smiled in response. “You’ll give me a chance?” and extended his hand

She nodded, extending her own hand. “You’ll give me some time?”

And they shook hands.

+++

The End El Quinto Sol

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