"My Baby Just Cares ...For Me."
Another masterpiece
by R L Arlington.

STORIES ON THIS SITE ARE INTENDED FOR ADULTS ONLY

NC17: You know what I think? The real reason we cert stuff is to force ourselves to acknowledge that some of us are OBSESSED WITH SEX. I'd love to meet some of the people who write PG cert X-Files stories. They must be really nice, intelligent, well adjusted people. (I am 110 per cent sincere here.) They must love the X-Files because they are well written, thought provoking, clever stories, peopled by interesting multi-layered characters. They must also get it more often than I do. Who knows, they may even think that the most important revelations in "Tunguska" had to do with alien lifeforms and American-Russian antagonism; as opposed to the radiant new knowledge that now informs my life: ie. Krycek is even MORE gorgeous with a crewcut. Anyhow, NC17 for graphic sex. As graphic as I can make it.

DISCLAIMER: You know what else I think? I think the copyright laws and this practise of writing disclaimers is a kind of ritual humiliation imposed on us by Chris Carter's perverted desires. Over and over we restate the obvious - he's the smart son of a bitch who thought of the X-Files. Over and over we are forced to acknowledge that we don't actually own the characters. I don't know about you guys, but every time I have to write it down, especially with regard to Krycek, I get the same pang you have when someone you've fallen in love with says those fatal words: "I really like you, but..."

I know I don't own them. I know I can't have them. You don't have to rub it in. Very well, I submit. Chris Carter and 1013 own the characters associated with the X-Files. I am using them without permission, ruthlessly, recklessly, and without due care and attention. I'm committing literary rape. Pass the Mulder. Just read the story: there's something I got to go do.

PLOT: (What there's a plot?) The premise is that Mulder gets interested in the death of a Marine Corporal at a base in Arizona. Corporal Rosling appears to have commited suicide by tearing his own eyes out with his bare hands and then beating his head off a wall so hard that his skull caved in. Mulder, detained in Washington by a court case, asks Scully to go and take a look at the corpse. However when she arrives at the morgue of the local hospital she is greeted by a scene of confusion and cops - Rosling's body has disappeared. Scully calls Mulder to tell him that she is coming back to Washington, but Mulder persuades her to stay put till the following morning, so that they can both talk to Rosling's commanding officer, who is out of town overnight. Scully, kicking her heels with no corpse and nothing to do, accepts a very casual invitation from the Marine sent to meet her at the hospital, Lieutenant DeMont, to go for a drink at a bar a few minutes drive from the motel where she is staying. And where she has also taken a second room for Mulder - which is coincidently nextdoor to hers. Mulder gets through in Washington and manages to get a seat on the evening flight out.

VITAL INFORMATION: Lieutenant DeMont's full name is Jean Jaques *Lee* DeMont. (*Couldn't work Arlington into the story, but look out for my birthday.*) Also answers to Jack, Lee, and The Demon DeMont. He's about five foot ten, with that heavy compacted muscle that Marines have. He also has a sure self-contained grace that even the Marine Corps can achieve only when it is building on a boyhood spent with clean air and BB guns and helping to push your brother's piece of junk car up a dirt track road to start it.

He has blond hair clipped to a close bristle over a sleek narrow skull. Darker blond eyebrows, very straight, very smooth; and long eyelashes a shade darker again. Pale gold skin, and eyes the colour of rain. A short slightly snub nose, sharp cheek bones and small ears, set flat against his head. He also has one of those mouths where the top lip is longer than the lower one, so that when he speaks his top lip lifts a clear second before he actually says anything. The single thing you notice most about him is how still he is. When he looks at something his pale eyes seem to lock on to it: he doesn't glance from one thing to another, he really looks, and when he's seen enough he looks away. He doesn't fidget, he's capable of simply sitting still. Even his speech patterns have a simple directness, without hesitations or evasions. He's a straight arrow, and living proof that a man can be in every way the complete opposite of Fox Mulder and still be killingly gorgeous. The only ornamentation is in his voice - he has a Louisiana accent so heavy as to be almost French.

(Re.my rabid disclaimer: I OWN JACK DEMONT. I made him, he's mine, body and soul. If I catch him slutting around in other people's stories there'll be blood on the walls. He thinks I didn't see the way he was looking at Ellen Ripley, but...oh, sorry. I know, I'm raving.)

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My Baby Just Cares ...For Me
by R L Arlington

At last. THE STORY. OK, picture this.....

You come through a street door into a tiny vestibule, lined floor to ceiling with those old-fashioned mirrors with distiller's names painted on them, then through a half-swing door. The bar room is a long low dimly lit hallway. On the left is a row of plush lined booths with coloured glass light shades and red check oil-cloth on the tables. On the right is the long wood front of the bar with a brass boot-rail and a row of high wooden stools. At the far end of the bar beside the door to the backroom is a jukebox and beyond that, right in the corner, are the doors to the restrooms.

Lieutenant DeMont pushes open the street door and lets Scully go in ahead of him. It's Monday night and the place is pretty quiet: about half the tables are occupied but the stools at the bar are all empty. Scully walks half way down the room and hesitates in front of a vacant table. DeMont, from behind, touches her lightly on the arm.

"We can sit there if you'd prefer," he suggests, indicating the two stools at the very end of the bar.

"Okay, fine." Scully smiles, inwardly relieved to have escaped the enforced intimacy of a booth.

As they sit up at the bar the barman comes out from the backroom. He's an ex-Marine: you can tell, he has an ex-Marine build - heavy muscle blurring a little into fat; an ex-Marine haircut - an iron grey crewcut receding at the front; and an ex-Marine way of speaking.

"Lieutenant. Miss. Get you the regular Sir?"

"Yes, thank you Sergeant."

"And what can I get for you Miss?" This said with a smile and a twinkle that could charm a rat: Scully is entirely too much a Navy daughter to be immune.She suddenly feels silly and pretentious ordering mineral water in a bar like this.

"I'll...I'll have a beer please, very cold."

"Coming right up."

While the barman is putting down beermats and getting two beers and a shot, Scully is looking at the military memorabilia behind the bar. DeMont knocks back the shot in one, then takes up his beer glass and touches it to the rim of Scully's glass.

"Your very good health, Miss Scully."

Scully looks at him for a second as he takes a long swallow from his drink, then picks up her own glass and takes a demure sip.

Mulder is getting into a rental car at the airport: throwing his overnight bag on the passenger seat, fastening his seatbelt, tilting the rearview mirror to suit him.

The barman is putting down two more beers and another shot. Scully is talking about something, DeMont is listening intently and watching her face, but her gaze is on the beermat in her hands which she is methodically pulling to pieces.

Mulder, driving on a nighttime highway, his face lit up by the headlights of an oncoming car, then passing into darkness again.

Scully and DeMont, both putting down empty shot glasses. Scully has turned a little on her seat towards him. He's telling her some story - he makes a slicing motion with the flat of one hand past the side of his head, and with his thumb and forefinger makes a 'missed me by this much' gesture. Scully is laughing - she doesn't believe a word of it. DeMont leans towards her, turning his head to one side. Scully makes an 'ouch' face but she's still smiling as with clinical interest she touches her fingertips to the scar on his temple.

Mulder, pulling into the carpark of the motel and parking beside the car that Scully was driving.

Scully, leaning her head on her hand, engrossed in whatever it is that DeMont is telling her. The barman, standing further down the bar polishing glasses smiles in their direction.

Mulder, signing the motel register and taking the key; walking down a beige hallway, knocking on the door of Scully's room. No answer, naturally.

DeMont is laughing at whatever it is Scully is saying. She's laughing too, but emphatic. The barman, weeding out empties from the stand of glassess in front of them, is grinning broadly.

Mulder is back at the motel reception desk. The night clerk has just come on duty, but the slacker kid who overheard Scully's conservation with DeMont is still sitting in the armchair by the TV.

"Hey dude I think I know who you're talking about."

"Redhead, about yea high," Mulder makes a gesture just under his chin.

"Well yeah...maybe. I didn't think she was that tall."

"No, she probably isn't."

DeMont, his elbows on the bar, is in deep conversation with the barman. Then, catching the barman's smile, he glances back over his shoulder to watch Scully on her way back from the restroom. There's a loose sassy swing to her walk that's definately not usually there.

Mulder, parking the car opposite the bar and crossing the street. He goes through the street door, through the swing door, into the bar, feeling conspicuously overdressed in suit and tie and dark raincoat. He doesn't see her at first. When he does he stops dead, two or three paces inside the door. His lips make the shape of her name but nothing comes out. He realises what the word 'speechless' actually feels like.

Scully and DeMont are in the small space between the end of the bar and the jukebox, dancing slowly. His cheek is against the top of her head, one hand is on her back, the other loosely clasping her little hand to his chest. As they turn Mulder can see she's resting her forehead against her partner's shoulder, her eyes closed.

Mulder turns on his heel and walks out: gets back in the car, drives back to the motel, goes back to his room and closes the door behind him.

For a minute he just stands in the dark leaning against the closed door, listening to his heartbeat. Then he starts pacing, fast, between the door and the window. After a couple of minutes of this he sits down on the end of the bed, still wearing his coat. He's agitated and emotional- he's just not sure what kind of emotional. He's certainly not jealous - is he? He's sure he's beyond that by now: but at the same time, looking at it with a psychologist's eye he has to admit he's never been very severely tried. Through his work he's met a couple of guys who've dated Scully: but she was just the same with them as she is with everybody - pleasant but decorous, so that most of the time he'd forget they were her ex's.

There's that lab rat Pendrell. Mulder can honestly say that he likes Pendrell for no better reason than that Pendrell has such a terminal crush on Scully. So that proves he isn't jealous. Then again, Scully doesn't know that Willard Pendrell even exists except when she's glad to get a nice neat concise lab report, so it would really be too stupid to resent him.

In the midst of this rather unsatisfactory examination of his conscience Mulder hears the door open and close in the next room. His face breaks into a smile - she must have left the bar right after he did. He gets up off the bed and takes the case folder from the top of the bureau. He'll go next door, say hi, maybe ask her who the Kombat Karl in the bar was. No, maybe not.

Her laugh stops him two steps from the door. He could never imagine Scully making such a teasing, caressing sound.

"Wait...wait a second." It is her, it's her voice. The motel is late sixties' jerry built, and the walls must be made of compressed tissue paper - her voice is slightly muffled, but he can hear every word clearly.

"Girl I can't wait."

At the sound of DeMont's voice and his low hoarse laugh a single thought cuts across Mulder's amazement as if illuminated by lightening - he has known Scully for over four years: she's been in this town for eight hours max. How does this work? Did she take one look at him the day she first walked into his office and think 'No, no way, not to save my life', and no matter how long he has known her and no matter how strong their friendship, is she always going to feel that way? And what about the guy with her? Are there some men who were born part of a fortunate fraternity - 'The guys who get to make out with Dana Scully'? And if you're one of them all you have to do is ask.

What? The conversation went 'Hi. You don't know me but I'm entitled to sleep with you.'

And Scully replied 'Oh okay, fine, whatever.'

It's the silence that's making Mulder crazy. They're not talking: that means they're kissing. They're standing in the dark just inside the door and GI Jerk is kissing her. He's probably pushing his luck and handling her - putting his hands on her hair, her face, her neck, her -

No. Mulder's waiting for the gunshot. Scully shot him and he'd never laid a hand on her. There'll be one short at rollcall tomorrow. Instead he hears the creak of bed springs, quite soft. They're lying down together. Two little thuds - like two little size four shoes hitting the floor.

"You feel gorgeous."

Mulder is amazed that he has managed to live this long without realising he has a pathological hatred of southern accents. They have an easy, lazy, arrogant quality that makes him want to hit something. Or somebody. Or the guy on the bed with his hand in Scully's blouse.

"Let's take this off, shall we?"

The hoarse Louisiana voice causes Mulder actual physical pain. He puts his two hands over his ears, but even as he does so he doesn't really mean it - his hands are like claws, his rigid fingers lifting his palms away from his skull. There's another interval of silence - maybe he's having trouble with the fastening Mulder thinks, rather maliciously. Or maybe he isn't. Maybe he has nothing to say because his mouth is on her skin, kissing her, tasting her, feeling her heart beating under his lips...

Scully makes a sound half way between a gasp and a sigh. Horrified, Mulder realises that the head of her bed is against the head of his, seperated only by the thin partition wall. Scully makes another sound that is all gasp and no sigh. The noise seems to slit down into him, catching him in the groin, making him suddenly aware of his half hard erection.

He tears his hands away from his head and clenches his fists by his sides. The very awareness of his arousal seems to make his skin alive; there's a soft indeterminate sound from nextdoor that could have come from either of them, but Mulder feels it in his blood like a pulse and suddenly he's rock hard. His body seems to have reduced itself to two points of existence: ninety per cent in his groin and the other ten per cent beating in his temples. Inside his head he hears his own voice, very calm, very resolute:

"I am not going to do this." And the very calmness of the voice makes him, by contrast, aware that his heart is going like a trip hammer and he is breathing in little uneven shallow jerks.

"I have to get out of here." He's not sure if he thinks it or actually says it. But either way there seems to be a translation problem between his brain and the rest of him. He's lost contact with his legs and he knows he's going nowhere.

He's deranged enough that his uncertainty is in no way clarified by Scully starting to laugh in the next room, then suddenly stopping, and saying in a voice as slow and sweet as drugged honey:

"No...not yet."

Mulder is glaring at the wall as if hate could give him the power to see right through it.

What the fuck are you doing, you Johnny fucking Reb? Mulder is yelling inside his head. What do you think this is, Desert Storm 2? You just lucked out in the most major way possible - you're in bed with Dana Scully. You should get down on your knees and worship her before you even think about getting yours.

Mulder has a distant appreciation that he is clearly losing his mind. He doesn't know which would be worse: that Johnny Reb has sex with Scully and she likes it, or Johnny Reb has sex with Scully and she hates it. He is also rapidly developing an unfortunate Yankee streak.

"This way?"

Scully doesn't answer, but she catches her breath sharply, making a little snick of sound that hooks Mulder somewhere in the pit of his stomach and slides down, clear to the tip of his penis. It's worse if she likes it.

Suddenly that blank wall seems like salvation. There was a time when Scully featured prominently in Mulder's fantasy life, but friendship and familiarity have largely eroded that amusement - he always feels guilty when he lapses back into it, knowing that she would not appreciate it. And at this moment his imagination can only regurgitate frozen images from a bland diet of porn: blondes with button noses and collagen enhanced mouths and big breasts, squeaking and squealing in sexual gratitude, and mercifully the pictures of Scully refuse to be recalled.

Somewhere between the commercialised images in his head and the highly personalised throb in his groin Mulder moves on autopilot to the bedside table, looking for the car keys that are still in his pocket. As he leans down, his head hardly a foot from the wall, he hears the Reb suddenly gasp and then groan and say unsteadily:

"Oh God."

Mulder just knows. She's going down on him. Oh God is right.

Mulder knows he has no business hearing this. The muscles of his back tense and tighten. Even before he starts to straighten up he has decided that in necessary he will go sit in the lobby, or just walk out onto the highway and keep walking. And then as he lifts his head he hears her voice, as clear and close as if she were on this side of the wall.

"Don't move. Stay still."

There's a white flash inside his head and suddenly he's seeing her eyes, like pieces of sky, and the lift and sweep of her golden eyelashes, and the sardonic sensual curl of her lip, and the chocolate coloured mole between her mouth and her nostril.

"Hold still I said." Laughing at him.

Her hands, small and square and capable. Suddenly, as surely as he knows and hates his own name, Mulder knows that what makes a woman's touch truely erotic is not the easy taper-fingered skill of a hooker; it's the familiar fearless touch of hands that have cooled your forehead when you were ill, and held your hand when you were sad, and tried by main force to hold in your blood when you were hurt.

He hears them move on the bed again.

You don't know that you weren't wrestling the devil hard enough till after you're damned. Mulder doesn't realise that the turmoil in his head and in his stomach has less to do with his conscience than it does with his desire till after he carefully, quietly slips his coat off and sits down so gently on the bed. He puts one finger inside his collar and unbuttons it, and pulls his tie loose.

"You are just beautiful." Reb says it but Mulder feels like the words are his.

Scully makes a small uncertain sound, and Reb soothes her:

"It's okay, it's alright, you're okay."

Mulder holds his breath, every muscle suddenly coiling up. DeMont doesn't know it but right now his life expectancy can be measured in seconds. You hurt her, Mulder is thinking, and I'm going to -

Scully gives a little cry. It's worse than the worst Mulder thought could happen. It's a cry of pure pleasure.

For a second the images in Mulder's head falter, and then they crystallise again. The top of her glossy red gold hair, on a level with his shoulder. The angle of her head when she looks up at him, her eyes clever and so critical, but her sweet face lifted like a flower. Her little hands; her little feet, in another new pair of shoes. Had he really at some exasperated point refered to her as 'that poison dwarf'? Had he not really understood? That all her smarts, her courage, her gallantry, were encompassed in that diminutive frame so that a man could lift her and hold her and enfold her in his heart.

Carefully Mulder leans back, one elbow among the pillows, cupping one hand over his swollen crotch, stifling a groan of pleasure at his own touch. He has one of those hard ons that actually hurts it's so strong. Slowly he begins to move his hand, hooking his fingers under his balls and then sliding his palm up over his erection, then down again.

Scully makes a sharp sudden sound like a smothered scream, and Mulder knows it sounds like that because Reb has his mouth hard down on hers and she's screaming because the blessed bastard is collecting on his ticket to Paradise and and he has her, he's in her, pushing his cock into her small body in one slow mean thrust. And she loves it.

The image goes through Mulder like a red hot blade and for a second a sweet convulsion gathers in his thighs and he's afraid he's going to come in his clothes. He leans the heel of his hand hard down on his groin and gradually the feeling subsides. He hears that fatal unmistakable sound: the lift and decline of their bodies on the bed, the rhythm slow but certain. The sound of sex.

Working as quickly as he can (is he being quiet? He doesn't know: his ears are full of his own heartbeat and the creak of their bed and Scully making a little sound that can only adequately be described as a whimper, and the Reb giving a sudden gasp) he opens his belt, unbuttons his waistband, and unzips his fly.

As he eases his hand down inside his underwear he hears Scully breathe the word:

"Stop."

A hesitation of a second while his blood stands still in his vains, then he hears them shift on the bed, then beginning again, their movements stronger, more emphatic. Scully's voice, a long humming sigh that resolves itself into the words:

"That's better..." and then dissolves into lazy laughter.

Easing himself free of his underwear he close his fingers around his cock. Maybe that manover with the heel of his hand didn't entirely work - he's still rock hard and aching, but there's an awful lot of slick smooth wetness. He closes his hand tighter - seems she's built small everywhere. Gently, copying his rhythm from the sound of her movements, he slises his hand up and down the length of his erection.

"Are you okay?" Scully sounds breathless and giggly.

"Oh I'm just fine. I gotta tell you, the view down here is great." Reb.

Outside a car is pulling into the carpark. As its headlights wash through the gaps in the blinds Mulder sees the acid white bars of light curve and flex over the complex surfaces of her body.

Two days after he first met Scully he saw her in her underwear. But there was kind of a lot going on at the time and it was only for one blissful second that he thought she had turned up in his motel room and shrugged her robe because she was going to screw him senseless. And then he'd registered how scared and upset she was and he'd put the thought away from him. Pretty much. Sort of. Not at all.

Even through his suprise and concern and a dozen other things going through his head he was still acutely aware of her skin, so pale it seemed translucent, as if the light of the candle in his hand was actually shining into her skin instead of merely onto it. The sudden unexpected curve of her spine, her cunning little waist. His gaze had snagged on the fastening of her bra and for a bad second he had thought about opening it. He hadn't of course. But he hadn't really stopped thinking about it. Ever.

So he had started out with a pretty accurate image in his head of how she looked. But over time, in fitting her into his fantasies, the Dana in his head had transmuted into a red-headed smaller version of those blond porn starlets - blank faced, narrow hipped, instantly, easily gratified. Now, in the darkness, sliding into his own slick palm, lifting his hips slightly as the southern son of a bitch is lifting himself into her, Mulder sees her clearly, truly.

Her hair falling over one eye, swinging and falling back with her rocking movement. Her eyes half closed, glowing, catching up the dim light and leaving her cheeks in shadow. Her mouth open, her lips swollen and hot from his kisses. Her little hands flat on his chest, smoothing over and over his hard nipples, the thin light like moonshine on her pale fingernails. Her breasts under his hands, so soft, the skin as fine as silk; her nipples the same tawny pink as her mouth, their hardness tracing delicate patterns in his palms. The wicked way her waist goes in and arrogant way her hips go out. A figure that a business suit can only insult, and so shockingly erotic when undressed - as if she had been made for love, and then decided to keep that a secret. Mulder looks down at his hand and sees the sliding conjunction of their bodies: his cock sliding in and out of the hot tight wetness of her cunt.

He stifles a laugh, but smiles broadly. He's never been part of it, but he knows there's an ongoing 'Is she or isn't she' argument among the guys who work the front hall and the evidence room. And he isn't going to tell them, but it's nice to know. Agent Scully is indeed a real redhead. Everywhere.

Even if he was the kind of asshole who'd talk about it, they'd never believe him. They'd never believe she could look like this, or move like this. Sweet, demanding. Lifting, then leaning down into him, sending clean sharp spikes of pleasure through his nerves. And not the least of it is knowing that for all her honeyed eyes, and the blind hypnotic rocking of her body, she sees him. She sees his eyes and lips and hands, and could tell them from any other man. She knows him.

It's been a long time. Mulder has almost forgotten that there is pleasure of this particular texture. Not the long distance rapture of an actress, sending gratification across an electronic link to faceless numberless men she will never know. Not the calculating ecstasy of a hooker, trying by her own simulation of pleasure to cheat him into something approximating a harsh sense of release. Not even a woman met in a club or a bar and spoken to with the voice of some half-baked fantasy who, answering in like form, would allow him to put imagination to imagination, and imagine that was intimacy. And in the end, all of them reduced to his own appetite, his own responses, so all that he cared about was coming; so for one brief moment he could think himself satisfied, and not entirely alone.

Left to himself he would move his hand harder, faster, and come right now. But Scully only gradually picks up the pace and he stays with her. He feels the tension building in his thighs, in his balls.

Then suddenly, cruelly, she stops.

"Jesus, Dana. Don't stop." Mulder says it out loud. The only reason she doesn't hear him is that Jack, a little closer to her, says the self same thing at the self same instant. She moves on the bed. Mulder can't see what she is doing, but he can see her expression - that teasing, testing smile. That's her all over, isn't it? Lets you get so close to her, and then, just when you think you've got her, she slips away, steps back: laughing tenderly at you. You can have this, but it's hers to give, not yours to take.

"This way"- her voice, hoarse and shaky, but still in charge. Mulder flexes and turns on his side. His cheek, against the clean pillow slip, is buried in the fresh soap smell of her hair. As he starts to slide his hand again she gives a shuddering sigh.

"Yes. Just there."

The coiling tension between his fingers isn't his anymore. It's hers. It's her body that is lifting and then leaning against the mattress, her pelvis rocking into his hand, greedy, insistent; seeking only her own release, so that his pleasure is made out of the surplus of hers. For a single enraptured moment he understands. He is pressed against the rich white curve of her spine, his head bent so that his mouth is in her hair. Mulder feels her heart pounding, in his chest, in his mouth, in his cock. Her breathing is coming in ragged gasps deep enough to shake his body. When she comes he's gonna die.

"Please. Oh God, I'm so close." Who says it? Who knows?

A perfect point of pleasure. A heartbeat. A heart. I am. I love you. I know.

Mulder's lungs empty out in three jagged sobs. The last time his body was this out of it Scully had a smoking gun in her hand. This woman is going to kill him one way or another.

He starts to come. It's like something unwinding, unravelling. The tight closed tension in his balls just opening out, and his spine flexing so that he encircles her smaller body. The sensation of his semen pounding out is like something being torn out of him. The ice in his heart maybe. Get it out of me. I'm alive. I'm in love.

Scully on a single exhalation crying out his name -

"JACK."

On the pivot of a word, pleasure turning into pain, so that as his seed pumps out the first pulse is fulfillment, to give of his body into the sudden familiar mystery she is; the second a barren sharp pang, spilling onto cold starched sheets. Suddenly disgusted he wipes his hand convulsively against the pillow, then, his orgasm scarcely over, he sits up.

For a moment he just sits, trying to quiet his breath, trying to make his heart slow, trying to calm down. Trying not to scream. Or cry. Or go insane. Well, he's succeeding on two out of three, and at least they can't hear him going completely certifiably mad.

After a minute or so he puts one hand tentatively up to the dry anemic surface of the wall. His mind is looking for words, looking for a way to express to itself what has happened to him. No words. For the first time in his life the clever articulate dialogue inside his head just stops, and he experiences something without the benefit of language.

She isn't here. She never was.

"Dana, sweetheart, are you okay?" Reb is asking her. Reb has a right to ask.

"Umh. I have to go asleep. I died and I'm dead and I have to go asleep." Scully sounds like someone put her through a glass top coffee table again.

Reb laughs: a little low proud of himself sound. Mulder hopes the military use him for chemical weapons experiments and his dick rots off and he dies screaming.

"Go asleep." Mulder knows that even his hearing isn't good enough to hear a kiss, so he must be imagining that part, but the tender tone of Johnny Reb's voice is bad enough and that's definitely real.

You got what you wanted, Mulder mentally addresses him. You got yours, now do the decent thing: get out of the bed, fuck off and never come back.

"Goodnight, Lieutenant DeMont." Scully sounds beat and awful happy.

"Goodnight, Special Agent Scully." DeMont's voice has a smile in it.

They have a private joke. Already.

Goodnight Mulder. Put your head down on the pillow and close your eyes and pray to God who you devoutly don't believe in to make you die in your sleep.

Mulder puts his head down and closes his eyes.

The digital clock on the bedside table clicks on to eight twenty seven. Mulder is curled up on the pillows, his head leaning against the wall. His tie is off and his shirt is half open and his trousers are entirely open but otherwise he is still fully dressed - he's still got his shoes on.

He wakes up with a start and sits up. He has a crick in his neck and a bad taste in his mouth - physically and morally. The first thing that occurs to him is what is going to happen if Scully finds out about last night.

He's seen her mad and over the years he's known her he's learnt to weather the storms. Initially he wasn't above taking cover behind the towering piles of paper on his desk and acting busy, but she always found him, a swift little whirlwind sweeping carelessly past the precariously balanced stacks and lighting on him like a duck on a bug.

There are only two strategies that actually work. One is to grovel incoherently: after a minute or two you are graciously allowed to apologise. But she can tell if you don't mean it.

The other is to sit and stay sitting. If Scully is looking down at you when she's being mad at you, you can look up at her appealing, and after a minute or so she starts to feel that she's bullying you, and she would never bully anyone. If she has to look up at you to give out, she figures you're big enough to take it; and lays on with a will.

Mulder gets up, fastening his trousers, and makes his way rather unsteadily to the bathroom. Confronted by his reflection in the mirror he admits to himself that he needn't worry about what Scully will say if she finds out. She probably won't say anything. She'll just shoot him. Again. Only this time she'll put the round 'nice and clean' through his forehead.

The knock on the door startles him, and Scully's bright voice is like the call to judgement.

"Mulder, it's me."

Mulder opens the door. It's only when the door is open that he realises he could have climbed out the window, or hidden under the bed. Or shot himself.

"Hi. Are we - oh my God, Mulder. You look awful. What time did your flight get in?"

Mulder grabs at the line she has unwittingly thrown him.

"Late. Really late. We were delayed leaving Dulles, and then we were put in a holding pattern here....It was too late to wake you when I arrived." He's impressed - he can lie quite well when it's a matter of survival.

"Oh, okay. Well I'm going to get some breakfast."

"Yeah. Just give me a few minutes to clean up."

"Sure."

When Mulder walks into the coffee dock of the motel half an hour later he looks a hell of a lot better: showered, shaved, hair brushed back, pressed suit, fresh shirt, excellent tie. He feels like shit. The more he thinks about last night the lower he feels, and he can't stop thinking about it.

Scully is sitting at a small table by the window. A waitress is standing beside her, and the two of them are deep in conversation. As Mulder reaches the table the waitress takes up the plate from infront of Scully. Mulder catches sight of a smear of egg and a couple of bacon rinds.

"What, don't they have Wheetos?" he asks.

"I'm too hungry for Wheetos, I need real food." Scully looks incredible. Beautiful. You don't have to love to be able to see it; it's coming off her in clear hot waves - she's happy. Her eyes are a little red, but her skin is luminous and she's smiling like she knows just the best secret.

Mulder looks up as the waitress comes back and puts down a plate with two thick Viennese waffles topped with whipped cream and syrup. Mulder looks suprised at Scully, who smiles back radiantly. The waitress refills Scully's coffee cup and asks Mulder if she can get him anything.

"No. Just coffee's fine."

"I thought you always ate breakfast Mulder," Scully observes between bites of waffle.

"I don't think they keep cold pizza."

"What?" She's smiling at him. No. She's just smiling.

"That's what I eat for breakfast. Cold whatever dinner was."

"Mulder you're gross." Scully manages to wrinkle up her nose and still keep smiling.

Mulder turns his head, looking out the window, but he can't seem to see much. There's something in his eyes.

"I know Scully. Believe me I know."

THE END (ish)

Actually I have a complete episode worked out: Marines with wetwired implants, more weird suicides, a cute scene where Scully is going to do an autopsey on what is supposedly Jack DeMont; his face has been torn off but the corpse is his height, weight, build, wearing his dogtags and was lying in his bed. Scully is looking for a mark where she bit Jack on the shoulder while they were having sex (remember the whisper and the gasp?) and it isn't there. "This isn't Jack" she says. Mulder looks down at the corpse's naked genitals and says, bewildered "You can tell?"

Then there's a chase, and of course Jack isn't really dead he's just been abducted (no, not by aliens) but he gets away and then Scully gets abducted (no, not by aliens) and Mulder has to resort to asking Jack to help him get her back. And it turns out that Jack has a bigger gun than Mulder (and that's saying something !) 'cause Jack's a Marine and Marines are just the best. And then Jack gets shot saving Scully but he doesn't die because Scully isn't James Kirk and people can fuck her and live to tell the tale. (Never mind AIDS, it's Captain Kirk you want to be using a condom against.)

And then there's a heartbreaking ending which starts me crying every time I think about it, 'cause Jack and Scully are totally in love but they can't be together 'cause Scully has her work on the X-Files and Jack has to let the military keep souping up the hardware in his head so that when the aliens actually invade there will be hotwired Marines to kick their little grey butts. But Mulder doesn't realise that Scully is as dedicated to the X-Files as we all know she is, so when he leaves her at Jack's hospital bedside he thinks he's never going to see her again and has another angst attack (no more jerking off though). And then he's sitting in his office angsting when Scully walks in (good thing there wasn't more jerking off) and then he's really happy. In a miserable sort of way.

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