Fire From Ice
(Part 1 of 3)
© 2001 Anne Hedonia

RATING: As NC-17 as I wanna be.

SUMMARY: Fun with cliches! Snowed-in mountain cabin, wounded agent, nursing back to health, realizations of loyalties, bathtub.

SPOILERS: Your basic season 8.

ORIGINAL POSTING DATE: 6/13/2001

CLASSIFICATION: DSR, totally requited and without an ounce of guilt. Yes, I saw the season finale, and I don't care. To quote James Stewart in "Harvey": "I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it."

KEYWORDS: S/D, DSR, Smut, Scully POV, slightly AU

DISTRIBUTION/ARCHIVE - No to Gossamer and Ephemeral - I'll do that. Anybody else who wants it can have it - just please tell me where to go visit.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own 'em. My bank account reflects this.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: First off, if this were part of a series, I would call it the Conveniently Ignoring the Pregnancy Series. Scully's never been preggers in this universe. Otherwise, Mulder was abducted, Doggett was assigned, Mulder came back, that's where we are. Secondly, since I started this fic *way* too long ago, major elements in this have shown up in at least one fic and, most notably, "Existence", dammit. So, others have gone here before, but I'm both too lazy and too stubborn to change it. Finally, I don't think my representation of the condition of hypothermia is terribly strict - more like playing fast and loose. It's more fun my way, though.

MY USUAL FAIR WARNING: . Here we go again. 'Shippers or rabid Mulder defenders SHOULD NOT READ THIS. Those who do, even after reading my warning, are without question making themselves mad on purpose, and thus they confuse me. Those people who read my warning, *don't* read the story and THEN SEND FLAMES ANYWAY (bizarre but true) ought to have their tongues tied to the back of a soon-to-be-runaway stagecoach. Just my $.02.

Beta thanks to FirePhile, my main go-to gal, who does such a bitchin' job of keeping me honest. And to Horatio, for braving "S/D sex!" to give this a looking over. :-P Glad I could help corrupt you.

If you like this story and/or want to discuss it, send lots and lots of e-mails to ahedonia@yahoo.com. If you hate this story and everything associated with it, send virulent flames to georgewbush@whitehouse.gov.

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She is sitting in front of the fire, watching the flames leap and dance when she hears the *WHUMP* against the door. Before that, she was thinking warm and cozy thoughts. Or rather, what a warm and cozy situation most people would take this to be. A roaring fire in a secluded cabin deep in the woods, snow falling in blankets, the room toasty and quiet. Most people would think this was heaven, and would puzzle at her ramrod posture, and the iron clench of every muscle in her body. But then she, Dana Scully, is not most people, and her situation is rarely what it seems.

When she hears the *WHUMP*, she runs to the door and the small, frosty window set into it, stands on tiptoes and looks down. She sees the top of Agent Doggett's head, spiky with wet, short hair. He's evidently slumped against the thick wood.

She keeps her cool. "Hello?" she calls. "Who are you looking for?"

She's supposed to wait until he asks for Martha Blankenship, her old college roommate and their pre-arranged signal that he is who he appears to be. But after a short pause without an answer, she unlocks the door anyway, guarantees or no. He's been gone for so much longer than he was supposed to be. She is no longer inclined to wait.

She tries to open the door while simultaneously getting in place to catch him, tries to anticipate his weight falling into her, but when the door swings open he doesn't fall, rather lurches into the room unsteadily, like a man on board a ship that only he knows about.

"Agent Doggett, what happened? Are you all right?" Scully stares at him. His outer coat, the one he left with, is missing, and the other layers of his clothing are alternately ripped or carrying enough twigs and leaves to build a bonfire.

Doggett blows out air, cheeks puffed out, like he's had too many beers. He's still weaving on his feet. "I, uh." He fights to remember what to say. He seems to fight to remember *how* to say anything at all. "I, uh, got lost."

Scully's brow contracts painfully. Confusion, drunken behavior, and an ominous lack of shivering...hypothermia. Serious.

He continues talking as Scully moves to his side. "Wait! I 'member. I saw'm out there. Comin' t'get you. Shot'm." He mimes a gun with his finger, and makes a *poosh!* sound. "Backa the neck. Like I saw sumbuddy do once." He grins then, very disarmingly. Scully feels warmed and chilled at the exact same time. Christ, she hopes he's going to be okay. She has so little in the cabin to work with.

She doesn't really need to check his temperature to be sure of her diagnosis. Can't check it properly, actually. But like any good med student, she fights her way under his many layers of soggy wet shirts and lays a hand flat against the skin of his chest. Jesus - he's ice. Her eyes fall shut in fear. He feels like a frozen wax dummy. She leads him into the bathroom, slowly, like guiding a toddler. Once there, she flips on the space heater in the wall.

"Aghen Scully, wuddya doin'?" He chuckles faintly. "If y'don' like my shirt jus' say so."

"We need to get you dry." Scully strips off two layers of icy, sopping shirts, down to his equally drenched thermal. Her fingers are going numb just from handling the stuff. How did all of it get so soaked? A quick glance up shows some abrasions on his forehead, just above his absently open mouth and his glassy blue eyes. It suddenly alarms her that the fire that normally blazes in those eyes isn't there - the intense look she associates with them has been extinguished somehow. Temporarily, she hopes. She gets back to work as she puts the pieces together. Obviously there was some sort of struggle. He may have fallen, perhaps down an incline - maybe spent some time unconscious, lying down.

She gets him shirtless and hands him a towel from the rack: "Dry yourself off." He dutifully attempts to follow her orders, rubbing the soft cotton imprecisely over one arm. He blows out air again. Scully looks up from where she's untying his boots to find his eyes drifting closed. She suddenly realizes how exhausted he is, on top of everything else. She stands and takes the towel from him, applying it as gently as she can to his cold and easily-damaged skin. "Agent Doggett? Do you remember anything about what happened?"

"Uh...yeah."

"What?"

"I gottim."

Scully smiles despite herself. "Yes, I heard that. Thank you."

He got him. The threat is over. But then, that's what Scully had thought the first time she'd killed him. It. Whatever.

A week and a half ago, the alien bounty hunter had reappeared and gone after Scully, evidently gunning for the chip in her neck, for reasons known only to alien bounty hunters. Mulder's first response was to run off to talk to some unnamed informant, who promised to explain the bounty hunter's quest and give him the big picture about a larger pattern of attacks. As usual, he neglected certain formalities, like telling tell anyone where he was going.

In Mulder's absence, the bounty hunter did not relent, and close calls and nearly-deadly ambushes had ensued. The attempts on her safety came too fast and too strong for her, Doggett and Skinner to completely deflect. After a few days, Mulder had left Scully a message on her voicemail, talking excitedly about how close he was to a really big answer. Scully had wearily scratched at a bandage over her eye, and hit the button to delete it.

Doggett, meanwhile, could no longer abide leaving Scully vulnerable and out in the open. He said he knew of a very remote cabin where she could hide out, under his protection. To leave fewer trails to trace, he determined that he wouldn't tell anyone its location, not even Skinner or the Gunmen.

Now normally, when Mulder decided to take Scully out of an equation "for her own good," he had quite an argument on his hands. Scully could never take his "protection" lying down; no matter how high his degree of concern, there was still something chauvinistic about his approach to shielding her, about the way he just assumed he could make the choice for her.

Doggett was entirely different. Whenever Scully found herself in harm's way, his unabashed worry for her just radiated off of him in waves. A haunted puppy-dog look would take up residence in his eyes, and he would suddenly make it his life's mission to keep himself constantly, silently near her. On the evening after the third and worst close-call with the Bounty Hunter, he'd arrived at her apartment, handed her his biggest suitcase and told her to fill it - they were going on a trip. She had taken one look at his face, nodded and gone to her bedroom to do so, strangely grateful for the gesture.

Scully sometimes thinks that she responds to Doggett's protective ways because they are no-nonsense and military - not too far from the way Ahab might have shown concern.

In the back of her mind, she also finds herself riveted by one fact: she's never seen him suffer that way over anybody's safety but hers.

"You look li' Katie. I never notiss that before."

"Really?" Katie - or Katherine - Scully knows, is Doggett's ex-wife. Though she's read the name in his FBI files, she's never seen a picture, so she has to take Doggett's word about the resemblance.

She continues drying his top half, carefully touching each part of Doggett's lean torso - his muscular arms, his broad shoulders, his flat belly. The coldness of his skin is still alarming to her, but the sight of him is creating much different feelings, resulting in a little storm of confusion in her mind and body. She's surprised to find it difficult to keep her doctor's facade in place. She's also surprised at how little guilt these feelings cause her.

Time to lose the pants. She tries to compartmentalize her feelings as she reaches for their top button. Doggett isn't helping.

He starts to laugh. "You sure you aren' Katie? Tha'ss sumthin' Katie use' to do..." His laughter dwindles as a wave of exhaustion hits him.

"Relax, Agent Doggett, I'll have you dry in just a minute." She unfastens his jeans, thinking about how she and Doggett have never crossed a line like this in their partnership before. She wishes he were a little more present, able to take part in it - it sort of feels like she's crossing it without his permission. Then again, she thinks as she peels down the wet denim, maybe it's better that he's out for this.

She helps him fight free of the jeans, taking in the sight of his strong thighs as dispassionately as she can manage, though she wavers when faced with the prominent bulge under the fly of his wet, clinging boxers. She shivers slightly, and not from cold. She decides to move around back of him, where at least if she stares he can't see. She hooks her thumbs under the elastic of his shorts and pulls them off. She grabs a towel and quickly dries his lower half.

"Katie..." he slurs, turning around. Oh well. So much for discretion. She lets her eyes drift to what's right in front of her, thinking briefly that for a man who's just endured vicious cold, he's not making a bad impression.

Doggett leans down to put his hands on her shoulders and speaks apologetically. "Katie...I did'n get what I wen' out for."

Her heart tugs. "I know, Agent Doggett. It's okay."

"No iss not. Wer screwed."

"It's o-*kay*." She says gently. "You got hurt. You need help."

"Yeah, do." He stands and sways, wincing. "Hurt all over."

She rises, glances around, considering what to do. She helps him sit on the closed toilet seat, half leaned against the bathroom counter. "Stay here. I'm going to run into the next room for some blankets. I won't even be gone a second." He nods gravely. She races to the hall closet and back as fast as she can, but still returns to find Doggett slumping forward, ready to topple. She grabs him and rights him carefully, her heart clenching in fear.

She wraps him firmly in the woolen blanket and leads him into the living room. She moves the couch nearer the fire and guides him onto it, laying him on his back, his head and feet propped along the arms.

"Katie." he slurs cheerfully, "Katie, you gonna join me?"

(End Part 1/3)

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