El Quinto Sol

Author: OneMillionAndNine
Feedback: If you want kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com
http://www.oocities.org/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 OFHOWLING (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 Quinot Sol

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 ours 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 themale 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."

:~:~:~:~:~:~:~

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?

:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:~:

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

kokotheuberchimp@hotmail.com

http://www.oocities.org/onemillionandnine/