The Cry of the Truth, 01/22
Prince and Prisoner
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.com
Rating: NC-17 (sexual activity, profanity, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary:  As their love affair unfolds, Scully reveals to Mulder a painful
secret relating to her abduction. Mulder's reaction tests their bond and
eventually leads Scully to discover a few truths about herself.

Spoilers: The Pilot, Squeeze, Fire, Colony/Endgame, The Host, Pusher, Terma,
and Tunguska, but nothing after Never Again

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

Disclaimer: Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Alex Krychek, Ed Jerse, and many
of the details and situations mentioned in this story are the original
creations and property of others -- Chris Carter, 1013, and Fox.
The rest of this story is my creation.

Author's Note: This story is a sequel of sorts to "The Actor," although you
won't be lost if you haven't yet read that tale (the actor himself didn't make
it into this one -- he was too busy making movies). It contains descriptions
of rape, told in flashbacks, that may be disturbing to some readers.
However, I *really* don't want this to be classified as a "Scully rape
story." There's more to it than that. Be forewarned that Mulder and Scully
may not live up to your expectations in this story. They are portrayed as
having many all-too-human flaws. They are capable of hurting each other.
Both have made and will make serious mistakes. Finally, I apologize to
Krychek's loyal followers for making him the bad guy.

Thanks to Joe N. and Misti for their encouragement, to my husband for the
computers, to my best friend M.C. for pushing me, and my dog Bailey for
keeping me company at the keyboard.

XXXXXXX

   Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.
                   --Elizabeth Bowen

Mulder went to Russia to find a piece of the puzzle that had plagued him for
so long, and soon found himself huddled in a Siberian cell, barely eight feet
square, stinking of his own effluvium, thirsty and starving, anticipating his
own death with a numbness that surprised him. He considered offering up
a prayer, but did not. He felt it would be hypocritical to turn to the deity
only in a crisis. Ultimately he had to answer to his own conscience, after
all.

Mulder bowed his head over his knees and tried to summon up comforting
images. He had hoped that he would spend his last days thinking of his
family, his friends, his few happy memories. He never expected that his
last thoughts would be of the amazingly offensive smell of his own shit. At
least, he assumed it was his. Which was worse -- to die with a snootful of
his own nastiness, or someone else's?

He imagined himself rescued, sleeping peacefully in a clean, soft bed. He
saw the pale, impassive face of his beloved Dana Scully looking down at
him, as if he were a corpse on the autopsy table. In his fantasy, he opened
his eyes and smiled at her to let her know that he was still alive. Then she
smiled back, first with her lush rosebud mouth, then her sparkling blue-
green eyes, then her entire, symmetrical face, and in a warm rush Mulder
was reminded of how lovely she was. When she leaned over the bed to
kiss him, he sighed happily, and strained to hear what she was whispering
in his ear. He nodded as her words began to make sense. "Come back to
me, and I'll never let you go again. Never again..."

Mulder had made his feelings clear to Scully months ago, when he saw
that he was about to lose her to another man.  He very nearly did lose
her -- she left him, their work, her family and everything else she had in
Washington to pursue her relationship with Mulder's rival. And then
she came back because she loved Mulder more. It was as simple as
that.

In the months since then, they had shared only one passionate moment
in the shadows of their basement office. It had happened late one
evening when nearly everyone else had gone home and those who
remained were afraid to descend into their spooky domain. Mulder had
pressed her up against a file cabinet, burying his hands in her hair and
raining chaste kisses on her face for long minutes before first tasting the
recesses of her mouth. They had both been startled by the tottering of
the cabinet, and had jumped away from it, terrified that it would go
crashing over. Once it stopped moving, they had continued to stare at it
for an instant, and then burst out in nervous laughter. Soon they
wandered back to their desks, and the next day they were assigned a
case that took them across the country. Their jobs continued to
intervene, the weeks dragged into months, and although their feelings
for each other only intensified, the opportunity to act on them had not
presented itself again. Now Mulder faced the very real possibility that
he would never hold her in his arms again.

He heard a soft giggle coming from the other side of the cell, and lifted his
head only long enough to shoot an evil glance to his cellmate, Alex
Krychek. In return, Krychek gave him a suggestive arch of one eyebrow.

Mulder wanted to beat the flirtatious look off of Krychek's face, but he was
too weary to move from his huddled position. His throat was so dry that he
was hardly interested in speaking. He knew that Krychek had eaten and
drunk on his excursions from the cell. Their captors had found some use for
the young traitor, and over the past two days had fetched him at all hours of
the day and night, and then returned him just as unpredictably.

This is not how I wanted to die, Mulder told himself, resting his head
against the cool stones of the wall. I wanted to die at an old age, with my
sweetheart and our children and my sister there to send me off with kisses
and tears and remembrances of my love for them. I wanted to die in my
own bed, the bed where my wife and I had made love for years, surrounded
by familiar books and photographs. They would prop me up on my pillows
so I could look out at the sea and smell the surf on the breeze that
stirred the sheer white curtain.

Mulder's eyes squeezed shut as tears began to form from what little fluid
remained in his body. What wife? What children? What bed, even?

He remembered her promise. If he made it back, then maybe --

"You know, Mulder, I can make you feel better," Krychek said in a low,
seductive drawl.

Mulder scoffed and put a hand up to rub his eyes.

"Fuck off, you little shit," he said hoarsely.

Krychek tugged at the beard that was forming on his chin. He smiled
coldly and cleared his throat. He was going to enjoy this. He had saved it
up for years, unwilling to spend the secret until the time was right.

"You know, they let me comfort her when she was suffering. She was
contemplating death, like you are now. She was cold and afraid and all
alone." Those last words he pronounced in a sing-song voice, like a child
describing the emptiness of Goldilocks' bowl. "Did she tell you how good
I was to her? How I took her mind off the tests they were putting her
through? No? Maybe she hasn't remembered it all yet. Maybe she never
will. But I remember every minute of it, like it was yesterday. I can
remember how her skin felt under my hands, dry and soft like velvet. And
her smell. Like vanilla and something else -- cinnamon?"

Krychek chuckled at the memory. He reached up and rubbed the back of
his neck, bowing his head to stretch his spine. When he looked up again,
Mulder was glaring at him.

"Vanilla and cinnamon at her neck. Rosemary in her hair. There were rusty
smears of betadine, looked like blood, on her chest and belly...there she
smelled like the bandages they used on her. But the best place, the last best
place, between those pale, pale legs...it was like the smell of the surf. She
tasted like oysters -- those big oysters from the Gulf. What're they called?
Apa -- apala --"

"Shut up, you sick fuck," Mulder hissed, his pulse pounding in his
temples.

"Or what, Mulder? Or you'll stink me to death? Think about it. You
haven't had any food or water for two days. You really think you can beat
me into silence?"

Mulder allowed his head to roll down to rest on his knees again. Krychek
was right: he barely had the energy to curse at him.

"So tell me about it, Mulder." Krychek pressed on, his smile fading into a
set scowl as he spoke. "Does she call out my name when she comes? Does
she try to hide it from you? Or does she tell you that she remembers
nothing after Duane Barry took her?"

Mulder stiffened, but did not look up.

With a dismissive snort, Krychek nodded.

"I get it. You've never fucked her, have you? What's the matter? She get a
look at your dick?" He chuckled dryly. "Just kidding. I got a look at it
myself. Very impressive. Maybe it scared her."

"Nothing scares Scully," Mulder said, his voice muffled by his legs.

"Oh, you think so? She was scared enough back then. The smoking man -
- hey, I don't know his name either, and I don't want to -- he scared the shit
out of her. She would curl up into a little ball whenever he came to her
room. He'd hold her hand, or pat her on the head -- like she was a little
scared little girl -- and ask her questions about you, about your work and
your family. I never could figure out what he wanted with your parents,
but -- you think I'm a sick fuck? Oh, he's the king. I'm just a prince.
Prince of fucks."

Mulder wondered if he was approaching delirium when he actually laughed.

Krychek threw him a smile that might've been endearing under other
circumstances.

"Finally, he gave up. He'd already promised me a shot at her, but I figured
it'd come right at the end...but I got lucky. He gave me the job. I guess he
was impressed with the way I handled Duane Barry."

Mulder lifted his head and rested his cheek against his palm. He watched
and listened, on the off chance that anything the traitor said was true, and
the even slimmer chance that he would live to do anything about it.

Krychek felt a frisson of victory. He had Mulder's full attention now,
which was far more than he had given him when they were partners. And
this time, Krychek was following no one's agenda but his own.

"They kept the women in 12 rooms, not much bigger than this cell. Twelve
rooms for 12 women. They were pretty much like hospital rooms -- a bed,
a chair, a shelf or two. Food was brought to them. They were watched
continuously by a video surveillance system. The staff would get them for
the tests, take them to the clinical facility. That was at one end of the
place. At the other end, there were offices and conference rooms. I used to
take
Scully to this one conference room, because there was an old couch in
there, and a good lock on the door."

"Who were they?" Mulder whispered.

"Who were who?" Krychek asked, genuinely confused.

"The ones who took her, asshole," Mulder said.

"Who were they?" Krychek repeated the question as if it to be sure that he
had heard Mulder correctly. "Oh, but Mulder, you know who they were.
I'm surprised you'd ask me such a dumb question. What's the matter, you
got a fever? Come over here and let me feel your head."

Mulder's anger produced a dull, gripping pain in his chest. He struggled
for a breath, and wondered if he was having a heart attack. Then the pain
passed as quickly as it had come, leaving him winded and exhausted.

"You needn't fear that I was taking advantage of an unconscious woman."
Krychek affected a courtly tone. "Not even I would do that to Scully --
well, I probably would, but believe me, she was wide awake. Never took
those damn icy blue eyes off me."

The image of her glimmering, imploring eyes loomed before Mulder. For a
moment he was back in that hospital room with Modell, unable to escape
either the insistent push of Modell's insanity or the pleading, tearful
gaze of his partner.

He moaned softly at the memory. Krychek made a rude whimper of false
sympathy, which promptly broke into a self-satisfied grin. He mentally
checked off one of the goals on his list of ways to torment his cellmate, and
went on to tackle the rest of them.

"I figured out pretty quickly that she'd rather die than talk, so I bagged the
idea of fucking the information out of her and starting going to her
whenever I had the urge -- usually after I'd had a few drinks. She's kinda
intimidating in her own right, as I'm sure you know. I'd take her down the
hall to the room with the couch. Sometimes I had to drag her. I would've
done it in her room, on the bed, but those cameras -- I wasn't putting on a
show for the security guys."

Krychek paused to clear his throat. He thought he had seen Mulder
watching his mouth as he spoke, and the intensity of the gaze was exactly
the kind of attention he had longed to attract from Mulder in the old days.
Pursing his lips momentarily, Krychek resumed his tale.

"I tried telling her to pretend I was you, and she nearly bit my head off. The
first few times, I had to gag her with my tie. I didn't really mind, because I
knew by then that my tie-wearing days were nearly over. Luckily I didn't
have to cuff her. She was so weak from the tests, and from refusing to eat,
that she couldn't even knee me in the balls. Thank God for that, right?"

He laughed, grinning like a man who expected his fellow male to join in a
sympathetic session of woman-bashing.

Mulder merely glowered at him. He had willed himself into numbness.

"Sometimes I'd put her on the conference table, or sometimes I'd do it on
the sofa. Scully was always wearing those damn blue hospital gowns.
Easy access, but they don't do much for her. On you, Mulder, it'd
probably be great -- that slit over the ass -- perfect." He leaned forward
slightly, resting his elbow on his knee and gesturing conversationally.
"You know, I told her how much I'd wanted to fuck you. How you
couldn't be convinced, no matter what thrills I promised you. Guess they
didn't teach you buggery at Oxford, huh?"

"I skipped class that day," Mulder said.

"Yeah. Right," Krychek said. He muttered an epithet in Russian and
leaned back against the damp stone wall. "Where was I? Oh yeah. I
learned after the first couple of times to bring some lubricant with me. She
was dry, and incredibly tight, and held her legs so stiff that sometimes I
could hardly get in her. There were days when it was just easier to do what
I do best and turn her over and go into her ass. Talk about tight -- my God!
I'd have to become a pedophile to find a guy that tight in the ass.
Amazing."

Mulder shook his head and grunted at the turn the story had taken.

Krychek grinned at him, lightly tossing his head with a grace that was a
strange contrast to the brutality of the acts he was describing.

"Of course you want to know what she was like. What it was like to fuck
her." He peered up at the ceiling for a moment, searching for just the right
words to describe his experience of Scully's body. "Fucking her wasn't
really the good part. Spooking her was fun. Controlling her was the best,
though. It was like she was my personal territory, like a kid's tree house.
Her body is like that statue in the Louvre -- the one with the arms and head
cut off? Yeah. You know the one I mean. Nice full tits, a gorgeous round
ass, little tiny waist. What else? I already told you what her pussy tastes
like. Apalachicolas. Those are the oysters I was thinking of. A -- pa -- la -
- chi -- co -- la. Sounds like it tastes, sorta."

He giggled and repeated the word softly to himself, as if savoring the
flavor.

Mulder told himself that he was hearing the rant of a delusional psychotic
with a serious dissociative disorder. He had to focus on Krychek --
thinking of Scully would surely kill him at this point.

Krychek was well aware of Mulder's capacity for denying the truth of his
story should he think him mad. If he was to achieve his ultimate goal, he
would have to give Mulder a marker by which to check the veracity of his
tale, should he ever return to the land of the living.

"So, Mulder, any questions? I can tell you this -- the red hair? It's
definitely natural. And she has a few distinguishing marks -- how's that for
a Bureau term? Distinguishing marks. Yeah. Put this in your photographic
memory, Mulder. She has a mole on the left cheek of her ass. And there's
a birthmark on her thigh, just about there." He stretched out a leg and
languidly traced his fingers up his thigh, nearly to his crotch. "On her right
leg. Just south of her cunt. Oh -- sorry, Mulder. You don't think of
Scully as a cunt? Maybe you should."

Mulder grimaced at him, his eyes flinty with rage that was suppressed only
by his physical weakness.

"And -- I almost forgot -- I bit her a few times. Hard enough to draw
blood. I don't know if there're any scars, but if there are, you won't see
them until you get really up close and personal." He grinned and nodded.
"If you know what I mean."

"What happened to you in your childhood, Krychek, that you grew up to be
such a freak?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Krychek replied, a taunting lilt in his husky
voice.

Mulder chuckled, again shaking his head and looking down at his boots.

Krychek shifted onto his knees and crawled across the uneven stone floor
until he was close enough to put a finger under Mulder's chin.

Mulder looked up at him.

Krychek smiled grimly, his dark eyes already responding to the rejection
that he knew was inevitable.

"What d'you say, Mulder?" he whispered, searching Mulder's eyes for any
hint of warmth. "Sure you don't want to experience the love of a good man
before they finish you off?"

Mulder snorted. He did not, however, scramble away from Krychek.

"You don't know shit about love, Krychek."

"Oh, and you do?"

Mulder stared him down, certain, for the first time, of the answer. He
knew his weaknesses, better than he would've liked. He knew his
strengths. And he knew that the best thing about him was that Scully loved
him, and that he loved her. That truth gave him the determination to fight
back.

"Yeah," he said to Krychek. "I do. Now shut up so I can think."

End The Cry of the Truth 01/22



I did not write this.  Please forward all feedback to the author at
<vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu>  Thanks, Monica
____________________________________________________
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

The Cry of the Truth, 02/22
Something Erotic
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (sexual activity, profanity, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary:  Scully helps Mulder recover from his experience in Russia.

PLEASE ARCHIVE AND POST TO ATXC. Ask me before putting it
anywhere else. Thanks.

See part 01 for the Disclaimer and Author's Notes.

A few weeks after his return from Tunguska, Scully came into the office
one morning to find Mulder asleep on the floor beside his desk.  He
was stretched out like a drunk in a western, fully clothed, arms and legs
splayed, mouth slightly ajar, snoring softly. She stood at his feet and
contemplated his face. Even as he slept, there were charcoal smudges
under his eyes and deep worry lines etched across his broad forehead.
Through the sprinkling of whiskers on his cheeks, a faint red rash
remained visible -- a touch of dermatitis he had picked up in the Russian
jail and continued to irritate by shaving. The laceration delivered to his
lush lower lip by one of the guards was healing well; a small vermilion
scab covered the original wound.

A sunbeam swirling dust motes shone on them through the tiny skylight
above Mulder's desk. The golden light made Scully's eyes prickle, or
so she told herself, unwilling to admit that she was moved to tears by
the sight of her battered partner. She knelt on the carpet at his elbow,
intending to wake him. She hesitated; he rarely slept. Still, she knew
that if she didn't convince him to move, his right hip -- the one he had
injured by jumping onto that train a few years ago -- would be
screaming with stiffness when he finally tried to rise.

Scully was about to place her hand on his shoulder when he moved.
His head lolled to one side, and he muttered something under his breath.
Just as she was straining to hear what he was saying, his eyes flickered
open and came to rest on her face. He smiled dreamily and put a hand
up to cup her cheek.

She could not help but smile back at him. Her only desire at that
moment was to wrap herself around him and join him in slumber.

"Were you dreaming?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah," he replied in a voice thick with weariness. "I dreamed about
the stars."

"The stars?"

"I couldn't see the sky from the cell in Russia. Even though it was only
for a few days, I got so hungry for the stars...Until then I didn't realize
how much I took the night sky for granted."

"The wishing place," she murmured.

Mulder twitched an eyebrow, somewhat surprised that she understood.
Then he remembered that she was Scully; of course she understood.
With wavering fingers, he touched her lips, testing their pliancy and
warmth, and wondered how he had survived for so long without
kissing them. She patiently allowed his exploration. She liked being
the focus of his intensity.

Scully touched his shoulder very lightly. Edgy with exhaustion, he
startled and sat upright so quickly that he cracked his temple on the arm
of his chair. The magic of the moment was abruptly gone.

"Oh, Mulder, that must hurt," she said, grasping his chin to make him
turn the site of the blow toward her.

"Damn right it hurts," he grumbled.

"Why were sleeping on the floor?" she asked, gently palpating his skull.

"I came in early, to finish up the notes from Terma." He cleared his
throat and began to shuffle his feet against the floor. "And I started to
feel really rotten, like the flu or something. Let me --"

Scully tilted her head so that she could press her lips to the soft skin of
his temple. She felt Mulder still and sigh beside her. Then his hands
tentatively patted her waist.

"Scully?"

"Sorry," she whispered, quickly standing and backing away from him.
Her face was flushed. Although she was a little surprised by what she
had done, she was not embarrassed.

Mulder stood with some difficulty; his hip was so stiff that it felt like a
gear grinding into his pelvis. He cursed under his breath.

"Jesus. I feel like shit."

"You look worse. Let me feel your head," she said, reaching up to
touch his forehead.

He flinched away from her touch; her words echoed the dubious offer
made to him by Krychek.

"We're calling it a day," she said, gathering the files from his desk and
shoving them into her briefcase.

Mulder blinked dumbly; the glare from the skylight was in his eyes. All
he could see of Scully was the aureolar glow of her copper hair.

"What're you talking about?" he asked, still somewhat groggy.

"I'm taking you home," she said, keys jangling in her hand.

He took a step toward her, out of the glare, and saw that her pale
forehead was furrowed with concern.

"Home? As in --?"

"As in my home, yes. Don't argue with me. You won't win."

She extended a hand toward him, and after a moment's hesitation,
Mulder took it.

XXXXXXXXXX

He was glad he didn't argue.

As he stood under the stream of Scully's shower, Mulder sighed out the
profound weariness that seemed to penetrate every atom of his being.
He had not felt well since his return from Russia. From time to time his
chest hurt like he was being hugged by a giant bear, and his sleep was
plagued with dreams of the experiment, the horsemen, and Krychek's
nasty giggle. The wild tale Krychek had told him seemed to play itself
out anew every time Mulder closed his eyes, like the goriest scenes from
a Peter Greenaway film. Certain that Krychek had planted the fictional,
albeit horrific, images of Scully's rape in his mind to torment him,
Mulder steadfastly refused to believe the story. The pain Mulder had
felt upon hearing the story was dimming with time.

When he emerged from the shower, he found two towels, still warm
from the dryer, stacked on the toilet. He wrapped one around his waist
and used the other to dry his hair.

"Don't shave."

He pulled the towel away from his head and saw Scully standing in the
bathroom doorway, holding a pair of cotton boxers and a big white tee
shirt. He smiled weakly.

"What?"

"Don't shave. Your face will never heal if you keep shaving." She
touched a finger to his chin and squinted at the constellation of red
bumps along his jaw. "By the time I'm finished with you, you should
have a pretty decent beard going."

"You like men with beards," he said with a smirk, referring to the actor
she had fallen in love with not so long ago.

"I also like men who follow my instructions," she said, handing him the
underwear.

Mulder looked at the striped boxers.

"Hey -- these are mine. How'd you --?"

"Put them on, then come out and let me listen to your chest. I have a
feeling you've got a nasty case of bronchitis."

She left him holding the boxers and gaping.

When he joined her in the bedroom, she was smoothing the sheets and
fluffing the pillows. The pure white bed -- Scully's pure white bed --
was the most beautiful sight he could imagine at that moment.

"Sit here, Mulder."

He obediently sat on the edge of the mattress.

She took her stethoscope from the bedside table and used it to listen to
his heart and lungs. As she touched his back, Mulder's eyes fluttered
shut. He felt her warmth spread throughout his body, and for the first
time since his return from Russia, he was not cold. He put his hands on
her waist to tell her not to stop.

"Just as I expected," she said, draping the stethoscope around her neck.
"You have a few crackles on the right side. Have you had any pain in
that area? Spasmodic coughing? Thought so. I'll go to the pharmacy
later and pick up some azithromycin for you. Now. Get in bed."

"Only if you come too," he said. He was so tired that he was slurring
his words.

Scully had no difficulty in pushing him into the pillows and tucking his
big feet under the comforter.

"Maybe later," she said softly, tugging the covers up close to his chin.

"Promise?" he mumbled.

"I promise," she replied, kissing his forehead.

She closed the blinds and pulled the sheer white cotton draperies. As
she passed the bed on her way to the door, she heard him murmuring
again. Again she leaned over him, and this time his words did not
puzzle her at all.

"I love you too," she murmured.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Mulder took the powerful antibiotics that Scully prescribed and
graciously allowed her to take care of him. For once, he did not feel
compelled to eschew her attempts to protect him. He wanted nothing
more than to rest in her bed, surrounded by the sights and smells of her
home, and follow her instructions. He ate the fruits and vegetables she
prepared for him, drank enough water to fill a lake, and even choked
down the foul-tasting herbal tea she swore would quiet his cough.
Mulder had not known this kind of unconditional love since his sister's
disappearance broke the childhood bond he had shared with his mother.

He felt that sheltering, custodial love from her, but also something
considerably less maternal. When she looked at him, he saw a softness
in her expression that he had only rarely observed when they were
working. Her voice was softer, more girlish, and she actually smiled --
quite often. The best part was the feel of her warm, small hands on his
skin. She often held his hands and caressed his face as they talked, he
propped up against a mound of pillows, she perched next to him on the
edge of the bed.

Dr. Scully only allowed him short periods of conversation, and then
enforced his silence by threatening to dose him with codeine cough
syrup. Mulder associated codeine with Elvis in his later years...so he
followed orders.

On the third day, she awakened him from a fitful late-afternoon nap by
grasping his shoulders in her cool hands and shaking him lightly as she
called his name. Eventually he opened his eyes and smiled up at her.

"You're my angel," he murmured, wrapping his arms around her.

"Oh, Mulder," she sighed, easing herself down against his chest so that
he could hold her close. "You were having a nightmare. The same one,
about the oysters."

"Oysters?" he rasped.

"Apalachicolas," she said. "You've been saying that in your sleep for
days. I don't get it."

"Apa -- oh yeah."

He glanced down at the crown of her head, grateful that she was not
watching his face at that moment. In his waking hours, he could
distract himself from thoughts of Krychek's story by devoting his
attention to the case at hand or, even better, by focusing on Scully's
face. But while he slept, the memory surged up unbidden, and the
rhythmic syllables of the word Krychek had used to describe the taste of
Scully's body reinforced the persistence of the memory.

"Uh...probably something I ate," he joked, rubbing his belly.

She lifted her head to gaze at him.

"You sure? You were pretty agitated, Mulder."

"You know what oysters can do to a person," he said with a shrug.

"Some people believe they have aphrodiasical qualities," she stated.

"Then that explains the other dreams," he said.

She arched an eyebrow by way of inquiry.

"The dreams about you, sweetheart," he said gently, rubbing her back
lightly.

"About me?"

He nodded slowly.

"I dreamed about you when I was in Russia," he said quietly. "I
dreamed that we were making love in a meadow, on a beautiful white
cloth spread on the grass -- a big tablecloth, with lace around the edges.
The sun was shining and there was a slow, winding river nearby. It
was beautiful, like the summertime in England. And just when it was
getting really -- you know -- um, good...these little rose petals started
falling from the sky, like confetti, swirling all around us, soft... At first
I couldn't tell what they were...but you put caught some on your
tongue, like a kid in a snowstorm, and ate them. We were laughing."

"I ate them?" she asked.

"Oh, just a few. You grinned at me, like it meant something...erotic."

"Probably does," she mused, her brow knit in puzzlement. "What do
you make of it?"

Mulder shrugged against the pillows.

"I needed to be comforted, and the dream comforted me. I felt --
loved." His sentence was formed in a whisper. He swallowed a lump
that had formed in his throat and continued. "So when I said I was
really glad to finally put my arms around you, I wasn't kidding."

"Did you see the look on Skinner's face?" she said, a smile tugging at
the corners of her mouth.

"I didn't see anything but you," he replied. She rolled her eyes, and he
laughed out loud. "Okay, for the first minute I didn't see anything but
you. Then I saw Skinner's face. I think he probably chalked it up to
post-traumatic stress."

"Probably," Dana said doubtfully. She shifted herself a little farther up
his chest and placed a hand on his forehead. "You still feel a little
warm. I'll get the thermometer."

He grabbed her arms to stop her from leaving.

"I'm warm, Scully, but it's not the bronchitis." He lowered his eyes
and smiled shyly through his lashes. "Trust me."

Her hand slid from his forehead into his hair; her fingers brushed it back
from his face, the silky spikes tickling her palm. She studiously
avoided meeting his eyes, preferring to concentrate on his hair. It was
safer, somehow.

"Scully..."

"Mmm."

"We -- hey, look at me, Scully."

"You've got nice hair, you know, Mulder," she said, her throat dry.

"Sculleee," he said insistently. He gently guided her face around until
he could see her eyes, green-gray without the mask of her blue contacts.
"What is it, sweetheart?"

She smiled in spite of her trepidation. He had called her sweetheart only
a few times since he first revealed his love for her.

"I love it when you call me that," she said in a husky tone.

Mulder made a noise in the back of his throat, something between a soft
growl and a contemplative moan. An eyebrow lurched into her forehead
when she heard it, and a flush spread all over her body. Mulder felt the
warmth of it through her clothes.

"We only had the one kiss, in the office that night, Scully," he said
softly.

She gave a half-nod, and caressed his cheek with the knuckles of her
right hand. Her left hand clutched at his shoulder. Slowly, as if afraid
of detection, she was pulling herself up closer to his mouth. Mulder
grasped her by the waist and helped her into place.

She smiled faintly as she took an inventory of his familiar face: facile
brows, wide nose, deep smile lines that ran from the corners of his
mouth to his chin, fleshy coral-pink lower lip twitching now as he tried
to be patient. What Mulder didn't realize was that she was carefully
selecting her target. She had spent many hours contemplating his face
during the past six years, and had her favorite parts.

She chose the nose.

Her pointed little tongue flicked out to touch the tip of his nose, and then
she pressed her lips to the bony bridge, the flared sides, the frenum
between his nostrils. Mulder was grinning with delight by the time she
reached his upper lip, which she nibbled softly and sucked between her
lips before sliding her tongue between his upper incisors and the slick
underside of his lip. Then she traced the full diameter of his lips with
her tongue and settled a damp, smacking kiss on his lower lip. At that
point, Mulder took over.

His hands clutched at the soft shirt that covered her back as he returned
her kisses. Her mouth seemed so small, so humid and sweet. She
tasted as he remembered, like cinnamon and oranges. His tongue slid
over hers, taking in the cobbles of her taste buds, then traced the rafter-
like ridges of her palate and columnar symmetry of her teeth. Within
this gateway to her body he did not find solace from the memories that
plagued him; rather, he found something to counteract them, a renewed
resolve to feel, to live, to hope for the best. He found his way to the
essence of everything Scully had always been to him, and took the next
turn in the road that would lead him toward becoming everything he had
always wanted to be for her.

He rolled her over easily; she was so small that he wondered at the
difference between her body mass and her powerful spirit. She was
soft beneath him, breasts and belly and thighs, jersey and denim and
velvet skin and plump lips and satin-smooth hair. He felt her humming,
almost purring, her contentment as he nuzzled her neck. She laughed
softly as nipped at the points of her collar bones and lapped at the pool
of her suprasternal notch.

He felt her hands tugging at the hem of his tee shirt, then sliding warm
and dry over the planes of his back. Her nails traced the curve of his
ribs around to his flanks, tickling him inadvertently as she scratched at
the soft spot between the protrusion of his pelvis and the strong pylon
of muscle up the center of his torso. He gasped with surprise, and the
sharp intake of breath brought on a wracking cough that knocked him
off his elbows.

She continued to hold him and pat his back for a moment, then urged
him into a sitting position. His body thrashed with the involuntary
effort of expelling the irritants from his lungs. The sound that came out
of him was like a crackling fire. His face reddened and tears flowed
from his eyes. Mulder shook his head helplessly and tried to cover his
mouth, as if there was any need at this point to shield her from
contagion.

"Poor Mulder," she murmured. "That sounds rotten. Time for the
codeine."

He was laughing through his pain as she climbed off the bed and paced
off to the kitchen to retrieve the dreaded brown bottle and a spoon. As
she returned, hips swaying, shirttails floating, Mulder laughed again at
the absurdity of his predicament. Here was every boy's nurse -- or in
this case, doctor -- fantasy, and he was entirely too sick to live it out.
Cruel, cruel reality.

He swallowed a large spoonful to the grainy yellow syrup and almost
immediately felt his throat calm and his lungs grow quiet. Dropping
down heavily to the pillows, he wiped the mirthful tears from under his
eyes and watched, exhausted and grateful, as Scully smoothed out the
sheets under and around him.

As he slipped away into sleep again, he wondered if their kisses had
been a dream. He managed to open his eyes once more and smile at her
to let her know that he loved her. But when she smiled back, he could
see that she already knew.

"You'll be better soon, Mulder. I promise," she whispered, stroking
his forehead. When she leaned over the bed to kiss him, Mulder sighed
happily. He strained to hear what she was whispering in his ear; then
he nodded as her words began to make sense. "You've come back to
me this time, and I won't let you go again. Never again."

End The Cry of the Truth 02/22




I did not write this.  Please forward all feedback to the author at
<vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu>  Thanks, Monica
_____________________________________________________
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

The Cry of the Truth, 03/22
Mulder's Fancy
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (sexual activity, profanity, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary: Spring has an interesting effect on Mulder.

   In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to
    thoughts of love.
                      --Alfred, Lord Tennyson

   You said you'd stand by me in the middle of chapter three...
                       --Elvis Costello


A few weeks later, Mulder was received a call from the State Park Police
regarding reports of a ghost in Arlington National Cemetery. He drove out
to Quantico to pick up Scully, who was spending a couple of days
presenting case studies to a conference of state Medical Examiners from
around the country.

He wandered through the complex to the office Scully used when working
at the Academy.  Here she had a window, two computers, and a secretary.
She had turned down three different offers to work here permanently so that
she could remain with Mulder in the damp basement of the Hoover
building.

He stood behind the broad new desk and fingered her notepad. It was
covered with statistical computations in her precise handwriting.

"May I help you?" said a peevish voice.

Mulder looked up to see Scully's secretary, Kevin, slouching in the
doorway.

"I'm looking for Dr. Scully," Mulder said in his best professional tone.

"Do you have an appointment?" Kevin asked, looking him over like the
maitre d' at a restaurant where Mulder could only afford the chicken.

Mulder had the distinct impression that Kevin did not approve of his tie. He
smoothed it against his chest and swallowed self-consciously.

"No, I don't. And I don't need one. I'm her partner. Now where is she?"

Kevin tossed his head and sniffed.

"In the pathology conference room, reviewing the slides for her lecture.
Her time is valuable, Agent Mulder. I suggest that you schedule an
appointment next time you need to consult with Dr. Scully."

In his best imitation of Scully, Mulder cocked an eyebrow so effectively that
Kevin had stepped out of his way long before he reached the door.

He found her in the conference room at the end of the hall. She was
conducting her own personal slide show in the dark. He moved in quietly
behind her, and slipped a stealthy hand around her hip before she could stop
him.

"I thought I warned you about that, Walter," she said, clicking the
projector's controller.

Mulder pressed himself against her back and nuzzled her neck. "I thought
I'd pull rank on you and demand a few sexual favors in return for letting
Mulder keep his job."

"Whatever it takes," she said, and with a flick of her thumb turned the
screen black. In the darkness, she turned into his embrace. "I'd do
anything for my Mulder. Anything."

Her Mulder snorted.

"That sounds ridiculous, Scully -- 'my Mulder'. Try 'my Fox.' Maybe I'll
buy that."

"It'll never work," she murmured, her lips finding the mole on his cheek in
the dark. "There isn't a pet name that will ever suit you. I've thought of
them all, and 'Spooky' is the only one that sticks."

"Come to Spooky," he growled.

She twined her arms around his neck as he pressed his lips against her
cheek. He kissed his way to the corner of her mouth, and felt a smile
forming there.

"Have any good dreams last night?" he whispered. His hands were lifting
the hem of her jacket and playing along the seam in the back of her skirt.

For a moment she seemed to stiffen in his arms. He wondered if he was
going to far by reaching under her clothes. Then she relaxed a bit, and
Mulder continued his exploration.

"Mmm. A few," she replied. She nibbled at the cleft in his small chin, her
lips tingling against the whiskers there.

Mulder hooked his thumbs under the waistband of her skirt and spread his
fingers across her hips, pressing her toward him. He could tell by the
texture of the skirt's fabric that she was wearing the cranberry suit --
one of
his favorites.

"My dreams are becoming a fire hazard," he said. "And my bronchitis is all
better. Don't you think we've waited long enough?"

"The path conference room isn't the best spot, Mulder," she said.

"Is that the voice of experience, Scully?" he said, grinding his hips
against her.

"Wild horses couldn't drag that from me," she said, trying not to laugh.

"Wanna bet?" he countered, covering her mouth with his own and dipping
his tongue between her lips to taste her. Today he detected hints of
cinnamon tea and peaches.

"Mmm--rrrr--" She tried to say his name, but her mouth was not her own.

"You're killing me, Scully," he mumbled, his hands skittering up her back,
fingers clutching at the cross-strap of her bra.

She chortled at that. Pressing her hands against his chest, she disengaged
herself and turned back toward the projector.

"You've survived far worse," she said.

She turned the projector back on, and flashed up a slide of a severed hand,
adorned with multiple heavy gold rings, in a pool of blood. Mulder made a
chuffing sound.

"Great. You really know how to put the rot in erotic, don't you?"

She grimaced into the light, and forwarded to the next slide, a table
depicting the findings of her analysis of the blood.

"These are my slides for the lecture tomorrow," she said, glancing down at
a dog-eared document on the table next to the projector. "Role of co-A
polymerase antagonists in classifying forensic evidence. Think they'll like
it?"

"A roomful of pathologists? Sure. They'll love it. They'll especially love
it if you wear that red suit with the lacy white thing that just peeks out
of the
jacket. It lends a certain air of disrespectability to your otherwise pristine
CV."

"Shut up, Spooky," she said tersely, stepping around him to turn on the
overhead lights.

"Aw, show's over? Just when it was getting good," he whined.

Scully busied herself with verifying the order of the slides within the
carousel. When she was satisfied, she put the carousel in its box and began
to loop up the projector's cord.

Mulder watched her, trying to read her mood. She had returned his kisses
eagerly. Now she was wearing the impassive expression that he knew so
well. It was nearly inscrutable.

He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall as she packed
her briefcase with the carousel and her notes.

"Are you worried?"

"About my talk? A bit," she replied, snapping shut the clasps of the case.

He took a step closer to her and leaned in to whisper in her ear, his
shoulders a safe six inches from hers.

"I wasn't talking about the conference," he said.

She fished in the exterior pocket of her case for a pen, then made a couple
of notes in the margins of her transcript. Mulder watched carefully; she was
clearly stalling.

"Yeah. I'm a little...nervous," she said without looking up from her
papers. "What brings you out here, anyway? Something break on the
Evans case?"

"Nope. Got a call from the Park police at Arlington Cemetery. Seems
they've got a ghost at the Lee house. Wanna come check it out with me?"

"Normally I'd love to," she said. "But showtime's in twenty minutes."

"I thought it was tomorrow!"

"It was originally, but the schedule's been rearranged to accommodate the
Director."

Mulder nodded his understanding.

"Oh. Okay." He watched thoughtfully the progress of his index finger as it
traced the flap of her well-used cognac leather brief case. "This's been a
long time coming, Scully. It's only natural that we would both be pretty
eager -- and a little nervous." He shrugged, feigning nonchalance.
"Performance anxiety. Call it what you want."

"I know what you mean," she said, clicking her pen.

They exchanged a glance that told of only the slightest surprise at this
indirect confession.

"So, Mulder." She slid the transcript into her case and snapped it shut.
"Got a hot date tonight?"

"The hottest, Scully," he said, his voice cracking slightly over her name.
His eyes were drowsy with untold fantasies. "She's so hot even her
hair is red."

She pursed her lips and blew a silent whistle of wonder.

"Hachi-machi," she uttered.

He cocked an eyebrow at that. Hachi-machi?

Scully hoisted her briefcase off the table and headed toward the door. Just
as Mulder was about to panic, she turned and called out two words over her
shoulder.

"Eight o'clock."

Eight o'clock, he mouthed back at her, his eyes wide with amazement.
Long after she was gone, he was still seeing red.

XXXXXXXXXX

"I'm here to see -- ah --" Mulder consulted the notes he had made in his
pocket-size leather portfolio. "Adelia Forrest. Miss Adelia Forrest."

Mulder smiled a little awkwardly at the young man who had met him at
the entrance to the dig site. He wore a pair of ragged, clay-encrusted
khaki shorts, mud-caked workboots, and a sweaty bandanna tied
around his head, but no shirt. His navel was pierced with a gold ring
that shone cleanly in contrast to all the dirt and dust on his body.

"Delia? Why?" he asked, scowling at Mulder from behind his streaked
oval spectacles.

Mulder pulled out his badge.

"Special Agent Fox Mulder, FBI. I'm here to talk to her about the
apparition at the dig site. You got a problem with that?"

He showed Mulder his palms in a gesture of submission.

"No problem. I just make it a habit not to trust anyone from the
government. Stay here. I'll get Delia for you."

Mulder watched the man -- presumably an archaeology graduate student
-- lope away through the maze of staked-off areas of excavation. A
dozen similarly filthy researchers knelt in the mud, sifting through the
earth, brushing off what small stones and sticks they found, and tossing
the useless bits over their shoulders into a heap of refuse.

He turned to take in the view across the Potomac. Directly opposite the
river he saw the glinting gold dome of the old Riggs bank building at the
intersection of Wisconsin and M, and further north, the verdigris
rooftops and mellow brick chimneys of the Dunbarton Oaks museum set
deep in the expensive gardens of residential Georgetown. Farther east
was the enormous edifice of the Capitol, its dome topped by a well-
weathered statue of Columbia.

A breeze that carried the promise of spring lifted his tie and ruffled his
hair. He caught the sweet scent of roses that grew in the memorial
gardens all around the house behind him, and then the acrid tang of jet
fuel as a plane loomed overhead, banking for its landing at Washington
National airport, not five miles southeast of where he stood.

Mulder considered yanking off his tie and running barefoot through the
long grass. This year spring was having a powerful hormonal influence
on him. The urge to mate with Scully was nearly overwhelming these
days. Between forays into the field, Mulder found himself sitting
behind his desk in their basement office, vainly trying to succumb
neither to the blood-boiling fantasies he had of making love to Scully or
the sweet dreams he was hatching about marrying her and fathering her
children.

Kissing her in the darkness of the conference room just an hour ago had
done nothing to quiet these urges. He could still taste her on his lips.
On the hilltop above the river, with the soft spring air caressing his face,
Mulder closed his eyes and pictured her sweet rosebud mouth, intense
blue eyes, and shiny copper hair.

He shook his head as if trying to throw off the distracting thoughts, and
took a half-turn to the right and scanned the landscape. The rolling
meadow before him was replete with neatly trimmed emerald grass, but
it was hardly the place for vernal frolicking. Row after row of uniform
white headstones marked hundreds of graves. In the distance, a low
flame flickered in memory of a young president who had been gunned
down when Mulder was just learning to tie his own shoes.

Arlington National Cemetery was probably Mulder's least favorite of all
the historical sites in his home city. To many tourists, it seemed to be
just another museum of names and dates, a place to buy mementos of
their trip to the nation's capital and take pictures of their kids in front of
the eternal flame. For Mulder, who felt the presence of the dead around
him like a palpable fog, it was a living reminder of the horrors of war.

Arlington House was particularly hard for him to stomach. He had
avoided looking at it in the ten minutes he had stood waiting for Miss
Forrest, and even as his patience waned, he was reluctant to turn in the
direction of the house and set off in search of her. She was leading an
archaeological inspection of the gravesites closest to the Lee house, and
Mulder had no desire to peer into the opened graves that were within
spitting distance of the house itself. Perhaps it was due to his own
metaphysical link with a fallen Confederate soldier, or perhaps to his
generally sensitive nature, but Mulder found the house and its garden of
graves almost unbearably poignant.

He heard footsteps crunching in the gravel behind him, and turned to
see a woman approaching. She was wearing a pair of work shorts
nearly identical those of the man who had greeted him, but her legs were
quite clean, pale, and pleasantly muscular. Mulder eyed them
appreciatively; they were like Scully's legs, but longer. As Miss Forrest
came closer, he also appreciated the impressive breasts that bounced
ever so slightly beneath the UVA tee-shirt. She smiled at him from
behind a pair of tortoise-rimmed sunglasses and waved congenially.
Her bangs fluttered in the wind; a loose dark auburn braid snaked
around her shoulder and rested on the swell of her left breast.

"Adelia Forrest," he muttered to himself as she paused in front of him.

"Call me Delia. Adelia was my grandmother. It's best not to mix up
your generations around here, believe me."

He shook the hand she offered him, noting the long, graceful fingers
and absence of any rings. She was wearing a steel watch, but no other
jewelry, not even earrings, although he could see that her lobes were
pierced. Her smile was infectious; it seemed to stretch across her face,
revealing even white teeth and deep, girlish dimples in her cheeks.

"You wanted to ask me about the apparition?" she prompted when he
lulled a little too long.

"Yes," Mulder said, trying to mute his grin. He glanced down at his
notepad again and pulled a pen out of the breast pocket of his jacket. In
Scully's absence he felt the need to take notes, in spite of his good
memory.  "You are the supervising archaeologist for this project?"

"Yep. I'm the one." Her accent was decidedly Southern, but mellowed
by a lush layer of higher education and careful breeding that Mulder
associated with Shelby Foote, the novelist who had narrated a good
portion of the popular documentary about the Civil War. "What does
the FBI care about a ghost?"

"A ghost? You think it was a ghost?"

"Well, what else? We're digging up these poor fellows' graves,
disturbing Mrs. Lee's garden -- there are any number of souls who
would want us to get the hell out of here. I can hardly blame 'em. Can
you?"

"You believe in ghosts?" Mulder asked with a cock of his eyebrow that
would've done his partner proud.

"Of course," Miss Forrest replied, crossing her arms under her well-
supported breasts. "I'm a gravedigger of sorts -- as opposed to a gold
digger, that is. I've seen a number of ghosts, specters, bogey men, et
cetera. They don't scare me. I believe they know I'm sorry for
bothering them, and that they respect my pursuit of the truth."

"The truth?" he echoed.

"The truth about their lives. Sometimes digging up their homes and
graves is the only way for us to really understand what happened to
them. It wouldn't be my first choice, as a historian. I'd prefer to read
what they wrote, study the homes that they built and the shit they threw
down the well." Miss Forrest looked over her shoulder at the columned
mansion, and shook her head sadly. "But that's not always enough,
especially when you're talking about someone like General Lee.
There's an unquenchable thirst for information about him and his cause,
although why I do not know."

"But you're from the South, aren't you?" Mulder said, running a finger
under his collar. He wasn't sure if it was the afternoon sun or Miss
Forrest's rich, throaty voice that was making him sweat.

"Oh, can you tell?" she asked coyly. Then she laughed delightedly, and
Mulder could not help but join in. "Well of course I am, Mr. Mulder,
but time marches on, now doesn't it? There's a lot more to the history
of our country than just the Civil War. But this is where the interest is
lately, and the funding is just pouring in. That's why we're here,
beating a dead horse, so to speak."

"Traveler?" Mulder queried, naming General Lee's horse.

She laughed again, lurching toward him slightly and then taking a step
back, as if to show him that his charm had an unsettling effect on her
balance. Mulder was charmed himself. He rarely smiled when
interviewing a witness; he had been smiling since her first word.

"So, Delia -- the ghost?"

"Oh, the ghost. It happened over there, by the kitchen." She pointed
toward the corner of the house, where a tent had been erected to protect
a particularly delicate area of the project. "Come on, I'll show you."

Mulder followed a few paces behind her, shamelessly hoping to get a
view of her backside as she walked.  Her strong strides resulted in a
ladylike sway of her hips, and Mulder felt a potent urge to put his palm
out and cup the rounded crest of her ass. She tossed him a glance over
her shoulder, and he felt a frisson of arousal pass through his body.

Get a grip, he said to himself as they rounded the corner of the old
house.

She stopped under the tent to examine a vented tray of clay-encrusted
finds -- bits of pottery, glass, miniballs, and buttons. In the cool, dim
shelter of the tent, the sweat on Mulder's body evaporated quickly, in
spite of the tropical-weight wool suit he wore. He shivered slightly.

Delia Forrest pulled off her sunglasses and fixed her hazel eyes on him.
"Spooked?"

Mulder smiled nervously, wishing she had never taken off the glasses.
Her dark green eyes, flecked with gold and orange, were wide and
luminous like a spaniel's. He felt himself inexorably drawn into them.

"Mr. Mulder? You all right?"

He gulped before he spoke. "Oh, yeah. Fine. The -- er -- kitchen?"

She pocketed a shard of what appeared to be blue willow china and led
him through the other side of the tent and into the shady rear yard of the
house. Here, as with the other aspects of the house, graves had been
placed within a few feet of the foundation by Union soldiers intending
to leave a permanent reminder of the Lees' treachery. Mulder had long
since given up trying to avoid stepping on the graves. In this place it
was simply impossible.

Miss Forrest stopped at the crumbling ruins of a brick structure, four
low walls and two chimneys around a patch of damp clover and violets.
A lilac bush bowed in the breeze near what had once been the door to
the old kitchen. The waning afternoon was filled with the sweetness of
the lilac blooms. The smell reminded him of Scully.

Mulder sighed raggedly and followed the archaeologist over the low
remains of one wall. They stood amidst the violets. His black wingtips
slowly sank into the damp earth as he stared down at the shapely curve
of her calves where they emerged from cotton ragg socks peeking out of
her Timberland boots.

"There was a bright light -- y'know, just incredibly intense -- right
here," she said, indicating the clover between their feet. "I was here late
last night to pick up my laptop -- stupid of me, really. I left it under the
tent. I was rushing off to catch a concert at Wolftrap, and left it here
like a fool. So around eleven, I came back and got it. I was just about
to leave by the front way -- the way you arrived -- when I heard what
sounded like two people arguing. It was coming from back here. So I
tiptoed around the side of the house to see what was up, and that's
when I saw the light."

"Tiptoed?" Mulder teased her, enjoying the image of her skimming
along on her toes in the mud.

"I don't always wear these damn boots," she said, blushing slightly
under the sprinkling of freckles that adorned her well-sculpted cheeks.

"What was the concert?" he asked, apropos of nothing.

"Gypsy Kings. You know them?"

"Mmm," he replied, wondering what she would wear to such a concert.
"So how high and how wide was this light?"

"Oh, about six feet tall, two feet wide. It undulated, kind of."

Undulated, he mused. I'd like to see Miss Delia Forrest undulating.

She reached up and tugged at the neckline of her tee shirt, scratching a
mosquito bite at the nape of her pale neck. Before taking her hand
away, she slipped a finger under the shirt and pulled out a fine gold
chain from which hung an intricately engraved Maltese cross.

Mulder's brows shot up in surprise. Miss Forrest caught his reaction,
and wrinkled her forehead in consternation.

"Got some kind of aversion to archaic talismanic symbols?" she
demanded.

He chuckled and shook his head.

"Not at all. It just reminds me of someone I know, who wears a
cross..."

"Someone you know, huh?" She smiled and peeked at him through her
long, dark lashes. "Isn't that male code for your girlfriend?"

Mulder felt himself flushing in spite of the cool shade of the lilac bush.

"She has a dangerous job and she wears the cross as a talisman, as you
put it."

"Does it work?" Miss Forrest asked.

Mulder frowned at the memory of the three months in which he had
worn Scully's cross.

"Not always," he replied grimly. "What about yours?"

"So far, so good. The spooks haven't gotten me yet." She shifted her
weight from one foot to the other and rested her hands on her waist.
"Mr. Mulder, are you interested, or are you just passing time?"

Mulder licked his lips and searched for a reply. Perhaps the attraction
was mutual. If it was, then what could he do about it? And what about
Scully? They had no formal commitment other than the six intense
years they had shared. And the fact that he had told her that he loved
her. And that she had broken her engagement to a man who adored her
so that she could continue as Mulder's partner and, hopefully, as his
lover.

On second thought, there was no need for a formal commitment. What
they had ran deeper than words, anyway. It always had.

He took a deep breath and tried to focus on the case.

"I'm interested in your story, yes," he said evenly, gathering his
professionalism around him like a shield. "How long did the light
linger here?"

"From when I first saw it? About two minutes. The voices faded pretty
soon after I got here, though. Almost as if they shut up once they knew
they had my attention."

"They? Who do you think the voices belonged to?"

Miss Forrest shrugged impatiently, her breasts rippling slightly with the
motion.

"How the hell should I know? I never understood anything they said.
They just sounded like people arguing. You know. Like a couple you
hear fussing through the heating vents in a crowded old apartment
building."

Mulder looked back toward the tent. Scruffy graduate students and
techs came and went, squinting into the watery March sun each time
they emerged from the darkness.

"Have you made any significant discoveries at this site?"

"No, not really. There's nothing left to find. As I said, this place has
been picked clean in the past hundred and thirty years. What you saw
under the tent was just your basic historical garbage."

"What about the shard you took from that tray?" he asked.

She fetched the bit of china from her pocket and turned it over in her
fingers.

"That's kinda hard to explain...I have these feelings, sometimes, about
stuff. As I said, I'm interested in the domestic side of history." She
rubbed the dull edge of the shard along her jawline as she spoke.
"Every now and then something we dig up will just strike my fancy. I
might get a feeling about the person who used it. This piece -- I dunno.
It's not so much that I got a vibe from it -- I really like blue and white
china.

Mulder grunted equivocally and put away his notepad. He fished one of
his business cards out of his badge case.

"Sounds like a garden-variety spectral apparition. Give me a call if it
happens again."

She took the card and read it. "Fox? Your name is Fox?"

He was already walking out of the confines of the ruins, his big feet
squelching in the soggy earth.

"Mr. Mulder."

He turned reluctantly and saw her pulling the elastic band from the end
of her braid. As she walked toward him, her fingers worked the lush
dark auburn hair out of its twist and fluffed it over her shoulders.
Mulder felt an unmistakable desire to bury his face in her hair and nibble
on her ear.

She smiled brilliantly at him. "Maybe we could -- what's the expression
-- stage a stake out one night? Just you and me and the ghost."

Mulder's upper lip twitched up into a pained smile.

"Uh -- maybe so. In the meantime, Miss Forrest, good luck on your
dig."

He walked away as fast as he could without running.

End The Cry of the Truth 03/22



I did not write this.  Please forward all feedback to the author at
<vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu>  Thanks, Monica
_____________________________________________________
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

The Cry of the Truth, 04/22
Sex and Violence
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (sexual activity, profanity, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary: Mulder and Scully's work interferes with their investigation
of each other.

A Little Reminder:  Rape is an act of _violence_. The sex that Mulder and
Scully are approaching in this chapter will be an act of love (hokey, yes,
but there you have it). I feel somewhat uncomfortable with the
juxtoposition of these two topics in the story, and I expect that some
readers will too. From what I've seen, however, real life is a messy jumble
of the sublime and the profane and a lot of mediocre stuff in between.


Just after ten o'clock that evening, Mulder found himself slouched
deeply among the velvet cushions of Scully's sofa, watching _NYPD
Blue_ with bleary eyes and wishing that he and Scully could curl up in
bed together -- just to sleep. His belly was happily full of homemade
chicken pot pie from Scully's freezer and the spinach and radicchio
salad that she had willed him to eat. In their time together away from
the office, Scully always made him feel well-cared-for. It was no
wonder he had fantasies about settling down with her. Forty was
looming large on his horizon, and she was a terrific cook in addition to
being the object of his respect, affection, and lust. What more could a
man want, he asked himself.

Wild, ceaseless sex with Dana Scully. That's what.

And it was as that thought flitted across his mind that Scully slid into his
arms and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.

"You asleep?" she whispered.

"No. Just dreaming." He opened his eyes and saw that she had
changed from her cranberry suit into a pair of midnight navy silk
pajamas. "I think I'm still dreaming. Are you --"

She shifted upward and turned slightly so that she was half atop him,
half on the sofa. Mulder eagerly accepted her kiss. Like a teenager he
pretended to casually rub her back, when what he was really doing was
titillating himself with the fact that she had shed her bra with her street
clothes. He let his hand stray to her hip, and discovered no panty lines
beneath the smooth flow of the silk.

Oh, this is too good, he told himself.

His hand slid back up her hip to her waist, found the hem of her top,
and was easing under it when his cell phone rang.

"Shit!" he muttered without removing his tongue from her mouth.

Somehow he managed to sit up and grab his phone from the coffee table
without breaking the kiss. The phone continued to chirp as Scully
rearranged her limbs so that she was straddling him. As he brought the
phone up to his left ear, the tip of her tongue danced inside his right ear.

"Mulder," he croaked into the phone.

He continued to stroke her back as he listened to the caller. His palm
cupped her bottom, encouraging her to rock her pelvis against his
crotch. Part of Mulder's brain struggled to comprehend the words he
was hearing as another part screamed "she'll feel it, it's the size of the
Florida panhandle and she's gonna know it -- she definitely knows it
now -- ooooh, Scully, good girl --"

The talking on the other end stopped, and he let the phone slip from his
hand so that he could wrap both arms around her slender waist. He
held her as he thrust up against her. His eyes bored into hers when their
bodies met; even through the layers of their clothing, the heat was
considerable.

"Mmm. I'm impressed," she cooed, a smug smile on her pretty face.

"I'm so glad," he replied, his breath coming in short, humid gasps as he
brought his hands around to lightly trace the curves of her breasts.

Scully smiled down at the sight of his long, dexterous fingers glossing
over the dark silk of her top.

"Who was on the phone?" she asked, thrusting against him once again.

"Ahhh...Do that again," he moaned.

With a wicked grin, she did.

His head lolled against the back of the sofa. She cupped his cheeks in
her hands and redirected his face toward hers.

"Mulder, who called?" she asked again.

"St. Vincent's," he mumbled.

"The hospital? What about?"

She had stopped her provocative lap dance. Mulder sighed heavily.
His disappointment was epic.

"We should go over there," he said grudgingly.

"What happened?"

"The archaeologist I met today, at Arlington...she was brought in by the
EMTs. She was raped tonight."

XXXXXXXXX

Scully drove them to the hospital. Nestled comfortably in the buttery
leather seat of her Volvo, she once again blessed the heating coils
hidden beneath the upholstery. It was a cold night, nearly freezing, and
she was as warm as she could hope to be outside the shelter of Mulder's
arms.

She hummed very quietly to himself as she pictured him sitting next to
her. Without taking her eyes from the road, she could clearly see in her
mind's eye the oddly handsome profile that she had grown to love. Had
she turned to look at him at that moment, she would have seen that his
hair was falling over his forehead. She would have felt compelled to
reach over and gently brush his hair back into place, and then allow her
hand to wander down over his bristly cheek, to the back of his neck
where the starched white collar of his shirt creased into the warm, salty,
lightly tanned skin. So Scully did not look. She simply drove.

Scully loved driving at night; it was like sailing on a calm black sea. The
heavy, broad carriage of the Volvo equalized every variation in the road.
No outside sounds permeated the cockpit of the car. The lights of the
dashboard glowed a cool green; reflections of the city lights washed
over the spotless windshield as she cruised down K Street, heading for
the Fourteenth Street bridge.

She shifted into neutral and coasted up to a red light. Now it was safe
to take a look at Mulder.

He was slumped drowsily in his seat, arms crossed over his chest.
Scully wanted nothing more than to turn around, drive home, and curl
up in bed with him. She suspected he would no longer be sleepy once
they were naked, spooned together in her bed. Tonight she had begun
to feel that the time for their union had come. Up until now something
had been missing, some nameless little gesture between them that would
reassure her that she was right to pursue this affair with Mulder. The
restraint he had shown, in spite of his more than obvious arousal, had
pleased her. She had heretofore doubted whether, when the time came,
Mulder could see through the pink haze of lust and think of anything
other than his own need. Tonight she had seen that he was more than
capable of prioritizing his responsibilities.

"Scully?" He was grinning at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners, his
dark brows peaking into his forehead with amusement. The light had
turned green during her contemplation of him. "Are you with me?"

"All the way," she said, her voice catching slightly on the words.

Mulder sat up and turned toward her, still grinning happily.

"This archaeologist, Miss Forrest -- she hasn't quite finished her
doctorate -- reported seeing a specter at the sight of her dig adjacent to
the Lee house," he said. "I listened to her story, took a look around,
and told her to call me if anything else happened."

"Not spooky enough?" Scully said.

He shot her an evil glance.

"You'd better watch that," he murmured.

"Or what?" she challenged.

Mulder fished a sunflower seed out of his pocket and popped it in his
mouth. He tried not to smile. He failed.

They grinned at each other like idiots.

"Or I'll take a big bite out of you," he said, licking the salt from his lips.

They merged onto the Fourteenth Street bridge. To the west, Thomas
Jefferson gazed serenely from beneath his perfect dome. A March wind
was buffeting the river, turning up whitecaps visible from the bridge.
Scully did not see them, however. She had developed a moderate
phobia of bridges after the night that Mulder had exchanged her life for
that of a woman who claimed to be his long-lost sister. Now she was
able to tolerate heights above water only if she did not look beyond the
railing.

"So she called you," Scully prompted.


"What?" Mulder's brain scampered back from its temporary romp.
"Actually, she didn't. A nurse at St. Vincent's found my card in her
pocket and made the call."

"Let me guess," Scully said. "Spectral rape? Come on, Mulder.
We've been down this road before..."

"I know, Scully. Impossible to substantiate. But I'd like to hear her
story, nonetheless, if only to add it to the files."

"And you want me to come along to ease the way, because I'm a
woman," she added, working to ignore the tremors that were passing
through her belly.

He shrugged.

"I hadn't really thought of it that way." He ran a hand through his hair,
confounding the part. "I want you with me because you're my partner,
and because -- well, because the only way I was going to be able to
leave that couch was if you came too."

Scully caught a glimpse of the strong, even line of his jaw, his fleshy
earlobe, and the strip of skin between his ear and sideburn that seemed
perpetually to require licking. Her anxiety about the case at hand faded
as recalled very vividly all the hopes she had for him. All of him.

"Mmm. I *do* like being your partner, Agent Mulder."

XXXXXXXXX

They found Delia Forrest's room on the trauma ward of St. Vincent's
Hospital in Alexandria. Scully paused to open Miss Forrest's chart
before they went into her room. Mulder tried to read the admission note
over her shoulder, but could not decipher the doctor's squinty
handwriting.

Scully scanned the note and then flipped to the back of the folder. She
pulled a thatch of photographs out of a manila envelope labeled
"Forensic Documentation." After sifting through the grim color
photographs of Miss Forrest's body, she summarized what she had read
in a low voice.

"She has physical evidence of sexual assault -- contusions and
lacerations to the soft tissues of the vagina and perineum, contusions to
the thighs and buttocks...and semen was collected from the vaginal
vault." She shook her head. "I don't think a ghost leaves behind his
semen, Mulder. Or his handprints."

She handed him the photographs. Mulder had no difficulty picking out
the hand-shaped bruises on Miss Forrest's thighs and buttocks.

Returning the photos to the chart, Mulder frowned at his partner. He
was ashamed of the giddy delight he had been feeling before they left
her apartment, and his guilt over the lust he had felt for Miss Forrest that
afternoon was mutating into nausea.

Scully was obviously wearing her mask of professional detachment, but
she was aware if his regret, if not the specific causes of it.

"I know how you feel, Mulder. But you have to remember --
impartiality is part of our job, at least in an ideal world."

He nodded once, and then pushed open the door.

And was shocked by the woman he saw. The beautiful Adelia Forrest,
she of the voluptuous curves and dark auburn curls, was curled into a
little ball in the middle of her hospital bed. She stared at the blinking
lights of her IV pump with glassy eyes. When Mulder walked into her
line of vision, she blinked, but did not look at him.

"Miss Forrest?" he whispered, sitting on the edge of a hard plastic chair
beside the bed. "I'm Agent Mulder, from the FBI. We met this
afternoon..."

She nodded.

"I told you I thought the souls wished me no harm," she said hoarsely.
"I guess I was wrong."

Miss Forrest uncoiled her body, grimacing as she moved. Mulder could
only guess at the varieties of pain she was enduring.

"Miss Forrest, this is my partner, Special Agent Dana Scully."

Delia came close to smiling at Scully, who shook her hand gently from
the other side of the bed.

"You're the one with the cross," Delia said, her eyes indicating Dana's
necklace.

Scully glanced at Mulder, who gave her the most infinitesimal of smiles.

Miss Forrest reached for a small plastic medicine cup on the bedside
table. She upended it over her palm, and with a soft rattle, her own
gold talisman snaked out into her hand.

"He -- it -- whatever it was -- ripped it off me. Just like that. See the
mark?" She lifted her long hair to give them a view of the red stripe
along one side of her pale neck. "The cops found it in the grass. I
begged them to let me have it. They said it was evidence, but I got them
to settle for a photograph."

Scully resisted the urge to touch her own cross.

"Miss Forrest, you told the police that you believe your attacker was --"
she began.

"A ghost?" Delia said. She nodded wearily. "Yeah. I do. And I'm
usually not considered crazy. Did you think I was crazy when you met
me this afternoon, Mr. Mulder?"

"...No," he replied softly.

"Me neither," she said. "Now -- I'm not so sure. The thing is, I've
really tried to think clearly about this. I've tried to remove myself a
little, to look at it objectively...Oh, I can tell what you're thinking,
Agent Scully. Can't be done. Well, I'm a scientist first, a historian
second. Archaeology is as much about chemistry and molecular biology
as medicine is. Did you realize that?"

Scully shook her head slowly, fascinated by this woman's easy, sincere
way of speaking in spite of her pain.

"But Miss Forrest," she said, "There are some things that simply cannot
be subdued by the intellect."

Mulder could not control the expression of shock that crossed his face.
He had never heard Scully utter such words.

"Yeah, but you can try, can't you? Anyway," Miss Forrest continued,
"I remember seeing plenty of real things around me while it was
happening, but not a real face or body. Oh, what I felt was real, all
right. I've got the injuries to prove it. But...I saw the brick ruins of the
kitchen. I saw the tent poles and stakes. I saw the back of the Lee
house, even. I saw the lilac bush above me and the lights of a jet
heading over to National. I even saw the stars -- it was a clear night.
But no face. No man. No nothing."

She did not cry. Scully knew that the hurt was too deep for tears. Miss
Forrest seemed disappointed in the figment -- the whatever -- that had
raped her, as if she had trusted it and it had betrayed her.

"Maybe the memory is just too repellent," Scully said.

Delia shrugged, then winced at the strain on her already injured neck.
Scully stepped closer to the bed, and rearranged Delia's pillows so that
they supported her head more thoroughly.

"Maybe," Delia conceded. "But I've been through other painful
experiences, and never felt the need to attribute them to a goddamn
ghost."

Scully nodded thoughtfully.

"Rape -- rape is different," Scully said.

Delia's luminous hazel eyes flashed with comprehension. She abruptly
grabbed Scully's hand and held on tightly.

Mulder's gaze shifted from Delia to Scully and then back again.

"You were at the dig site alone tonight?" Mulder prompted, feeling
suddenly out of place in the presence of the two women.

Delia took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, as if trying to pace her
response. Her hand was nonetheless clammy with anxiety. Scully tried
to loosen her grasp a little.

"Yeah. I was just packing up my bag, taking home some stuff to work
on, you know...I walked across the back yard, like I showed you
earlier, Agent Mulder. I heard those voices again. And when I got to
the kitchen...I sorta hoped I'd see it again, so I'd have another 'garden-
variety' apparition for you." She managed a small smile in his
direction. "I was just thinking about you when this -- this thing
whopped me upside the head. Knocked me right over. But I didn't
black out. The doctors say there's no sign of that."

Scully nodded; she had glimpsed the electroencephalogram in Delia's
chart.

"Did it say anything, Delia?" Mulder asked.

She shook her head.

"No. No words. There was just this...grunting. Like..." She looked
up at Scully's wide eyes, and found in them the empathy she was
seeking. "Like your grossest idea of what sex with a cruel, perverse
man would be like.  I don't know how else to describe it."

Scully turned her head away with a deep, silent sigh of pain.

Mulder sensed that, for whatever reason, this was cutting too close to
home for Scully, and took over.

"Did you call the police?" he asked.

Delia nodded.

"Yeah. I had a cell phone in my bag." Delia pulled the blankets over
her shoulders and began to draw her legs back up to her chest. "I don't
expect you to do anything about this, Agent Mulder. I probably
wouldn't have called you myself..."

"Is there anything else you remember?" Scully asked, her face
shadowed with a sympathetic intensity that Mulder rarely saw.

Delia shook her head and absently stroked the ends of her hair. Her
face tightened under the strain of containing her tears.

"It's just that -- I kept thinking...I feel like this thing knows my body
now, knows my freckles, the way I smell, the color of my underwear,
the scar on my shoulder." A sob caught in her throat. "Those are the
private things you keep to yourself, to share only with -- with -- and
now no one's ever going to want to share them with me again..."

Scully squeezed Delia's hand. Delia looked up at her, and for a
moment, a flicker of recognition passed between the two women.
Mulder saw it, and his gut shuddered.

He rose from his chair and went to Scully's side.

"If you think of anything else..." he said, awkwardly patting Delia's
arm, "Give us a call."

Delia nodded and rolled herself back into a ball, her long eyelashes
brushing her cheeks as she closed her eyes.

Mulder guided Scully out of the room and shut the door quietly.  When
he turned to her, he was surprised to see that the color had returned to
her face and she seemed ready to resume their usual banter.

"Well?"

"She's making it up," Scully whispered to him. "To take the edge off
the pain. I can't say that I blame her."

"How can you be so sure?" he asked as they began walking toward the
bank of elevators.

"The semen, for one. The bruising pattern, for another..."

As Scully continued to explain her theory, Mulder's mind hurtled back
to the tale Krychek had spun in the Tunguskan jail. In learning to live
with the memory of his imprisonment, Mulder had focused on
convincing himself that Krychek was incapable of telling the truth, and
that nothing he had said during their time together could be taken at face
value. Mulder had not, however, considered the possibility that the
traitor was perfectly capable of telling the truth when it was the most
efficient weapon at his disposal. Now Mulder's instincts were telling
him that the interaction between Scully and Delia indicated that Scully
knew something of what Delia had experienced. But -- he tried to find
comfort in the qualifier -- *but* if Scully remembered anything of what
had transpired during her abduction, she would've told him years ago.
Wouldn't she?

"... I'll be interested to see what the DNA analysis of the semen
shows," Scully was saying. "If she decides to pursue the case, the
Arlington police at least have some solid comparative material, assuming
they come up with a suspect. I'll bet you five bucks it was someone
close to her."

Mulder made a hurried decision to suppress his suspicions until he had
more time to think through them.

"Five bucks?" he shot back with a smirk. "Is that all?"

She glared at him, trying to disguise her smile, as they boarded the
elevator. They descended to the parking garage in silence.

As they walked to the car, their footsteps echoing, Scully glanced at her
watch. Just past midnight.

"It's late, Mulder. Okay if I drop you on my way home?"

Mulder took her keys and unlocked the passenger door, but did not
open it.

"That depends on what kind of goodnight kiss I get," he said, taking a
step closer to her.

"Mulder, we're working..." she said, glancing over her shoulder at the
nearly empty parking garage. The yellow stripes on the concrete
scintillated under the fluorescent lights, and the tang of diesel fuel hung
in the air.

Mulder shook his head and stepped slightly to her side. She turned to
face him, her eyebrow twitching curiously.

"Scully, it's the middle of the night. We've completed our inquiry.
This isn't even a Bureau car. Don't you think we could call this
personal time?"

Summoning up his best hang-dog look, he slid his fingers under the
collar flaps of her trenchcoat, then reached with his right hand to smooth
her hair back from her face. At his touch, her eyes fluttered shut for a
moment and she tucked her head against his palm.

"Another persuasive argument," she said with a weary smile. "I
concede your point -- this time."

"That's what I like to hear," he whispered, slowly sliding his hands down
her arms until they found her hands. Their fingers intertwined instinctively
as he inclined his mouth over hers.

Mulder pressed her body up against the car, and used his hands to support
her head as he kissed her. Although they had had few opportunities to
practice, neither was tongue-tied when Scully's lips parted to give him a
taste of the essence of tea and cilantro she carried in the smooth recesses of
her mouth. He moaned into her, the vibration striking a chord in her belly
that provoked her to thrust her pelvis against his thighs as she mimicked the
motion of his tongue. Mulder smiled against her lips, and sucked greedily
on the warm bit of flesh she offered him. He found his way to the slick
underside of her tongue, and gently pressed against the frenulum until he
was rewarded with another, harder thrust and a moan that matched his own.

Dana was breathless and flushed when they finally separated. She grasped
blindly at the rear-view mirror in an attempt to steady herself, and then put
up a shaky hand to clear the wayward hair from her face. After a moment
she was able to look at Mulder. He was nodding his satisfaction even as his
knees trembled.

"Do it again," she said.

She reached for him and he met her, repeating the kiss with intensity and
tenderness in equal parts. His hands clutched her bottom through the layers
of trenchcoat, skirt, and pantyhose. He felt one thigh lift slightly, and her
knee brush against his leg. He was wishing she hadn't tied the belt of her
coat so tightly when he felt her warm, small hand reach between them and
grasp him through the fine wool of his trousers.

It was a touch he had been anticipating for weeks. He broke the kiss to
gulp in a surprised breath, and then another, as she continued to stroke him
in a way made him want to scream in victory. Soon she was pressing her
belly against his erection, thrusting against him and panting humidly into his
chest.

"Scully," he breathed, catching the scent of her shampoo as his nose came
to rest in the forest of her hair. "I can't -- stop it. Stop it or we'll
both be
embarrassed."

She reluctantly withdrew her hands, and Mulder backed away slightly.
They stood in silence, trying to steady themselves. Scully untied her belt
and unbuttoned her coat in attempt to release some of the heat that had built
up inside. She massaged her neck and combed back her hair with her
fingers, all in an attempt to regain her composure. It worked, if only
slightly.

Mulder watched her carefully, gauging her state of mind as he tried to
regulate his breathing.  She was beautifully flushed, and a smile played at
the corners of her glistening mouth. He felt certain then that he had been
mistaken in his fear that Krychek's story could be true. Surely the
emotional scars from such an experience would prohibit a thoroughly
healthy sexual response like the one he had just received.

Scully was still shaking, shocked by the sudden intensity of her hunger for
Mulder. She was beginning to wonder if she had reached the sexual peak
of her early thirties, an excess of androgen that brought on a release of
neural -- oh, who am I kidding, she said to herself. It's love -- and lust.
Just look at him. That mouth, those eyes, the little cleft in his chin...

"Mulder," she said, in the admonitory tone that he had heard a hundred
times before.

"What do you want to do, Scully?" he asked in a husky voice.

She took a deep breath as she searched for the words to describe what she
was feeling.

"What I *want* to do is throw you against this car and take a big bite out of
you."

He grinned wildly.

"What I'm *going* to do, however," she continued, opening the car door,
"Is go home, take a shower, and go to bed."

"Oh, promise me," he cooed, sliding into the passenger seat.

"That's after I take you home, Mulder," she said. "No sleepovers on a
school night."

"But Mom --"

End The Cry of the Truth 04/22


I did not write this.  Please forward all feedback to the author at
<vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu>  Thanks, Monica
_____________________________________________________
&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

The Cry of the Truth, 05/22
Paradise Delayed
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: R (profanity, descriptions of sexual activity)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary: As Scully prepares to leave town for a few weeks, Mulder
tries to make plans for consummating their partnership.

PLEASE POST TO ATXC AND GOSSAMER. Anywhere else, please ask me first.
Thanks.

See Part 01 for the Disclaimer.

FEEDBACK PLEASE! I'm still trying to finish this thing!


As scientific lectures go, Scully's presentation to the Bureau's
conference of state medical examiners was enormously popular. Several
of the pathologists made comments to the Director about her acumen.
When she arrived in the basement office on the morning after the
lecture, she found a memo from Skinner congratulating her on her
success and informing her of a three-week assignment to teach methods
and theory at an international seminar on forensics in Boston.

While Mulder was pleased that she was receiving the recognition she
deserved, it pained him to think of delaying their rendezvous for another
three weeks. They had nearly six years of frustrated lust to assuage,
and he was ready and willing to apply himself to the task.

"But why do you have to go now?" Mulder whined. He trotted after her
as she whizzed through her apartment gathering items she would need
for her trip to Boston. "And can I come too?"

Scully shook her head as she removed a stack of carefully folded bras
from the top drawer of her dresser.

"I have to go now because the conference takes place now," she replied
in the indulgent tone of a mother. "And you can't come because you're
not a forensic scientist."

"I could be," he insisted, dropping heavily on the bed next to her open
suitcase.

Scully squinted a warning glance at him and arranged her underwear
among the neat stacks of outerwear that already filled her bag.

"Scully, you cured me. You kissed me. You made me eat my
vegetables. You gave me erections -- on several occasions, I might add
-- that could rival the Washington Monument. And now you're going to
just leave me *hanging*?"

She snorted and returned to the dresser for hosiery.

"You're a big boy, Mulder," she said, filling her arms with little balls of
sheer nylon and opaque lycra. "You can find some amusement for
yourself while I'm away. Surely."

"Hmm. I can," he said, unfurling a lacy black bra from the nest of her
clothes and dangling it in front of his face. "And don't call me Shirley."

"Look, if it'll make you feel any better," she said, snatching the bra out
of his hand, "You can come over here and water my plants while I'm
gone. That is, if you think you can take better care of them than your
poor fish."

"What fish?" he quipped.

"There's beer in the fridge, wine in the pantry, and tons of my own
nutritionally correct cooking in the freezer." She tucked the bundles of
hosiery into her suitcase and closed the flap over her clothes. "You can
even watch my collection of surgery videos."

"Oooh, Scully. I always suspected that you of a certain perversity,
but...surgery?"

She zipped the bag shut and carried it out to the foyer. When she
returned to the bedroom, Mulder had pulled back the bedcovers and
loosened his tie.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

"Just preparing to tuck you in, sweetheart," he said innocently. "You
need a good night's sleep before your trip. Go ahead. Do your getting-
ready-for-bed thing, and I'll watch."

"Since when do you care if I sleep or not?" she muttered, unbuttoning
her jacket.

"I've always cared." He stretched out on the bed and crossed his arms
behind his head as if preparing to watch a long-anticipated game on TV.
"I just couldn't show it until -- oh, when was it? Two-twenty PM on
November ninth --"

"Don't be pathetic," she said from the cavern of her closet.

"I seem to remember your saying something just like that to me that day.
I said, 'Scully, I had hoped that when you got around to falling in love
with someone, you'd fall in love with me.' And you said, 'Don't be
pathetic, Mulder. What would I want with you when I could have
Stuart Novak?' Rings a bell, doesn't it?"

"Half a bell," she replied, emerging from the closet.

She paced into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. When she
emerged a few minutes later, devoid of makeup, her hairline damp and
her teeth brushed and flossed, Mulder had shifted to the other side of the
bed and propped himself on his side in a seductive pose he assuredly
had not learned from reading _The New Yorker_. He patted the empty
spot next to him.

"Mulder, get out of my bed," she said, checking to be sure that the tiny
pearl buttons on her pajama top were securely fastened.

"Aw, come on, Scully. I'm just passing through -- at least for tonight.
Come on in."

She studied the sweet smile on his face and the light in his eyes. He
seemed much more at peace than he had since the first year she had
known him, and this made her happier than she had thought she could
be for another person's well-being. When she relaxed her workaday
guard against his charm and allowed herself to feel all the stored-up
affection she had for him, she felt younger, lighter, more like her true
self and less like a cog in the shadowy machine. With a brilliant smile,
Scully launched herself onto the bed, landing with a bounce in his arms.

"That's the kind of enthusiasm I like," he said, chuckling. He wrapped
his arms and legs around her and pulled her small body into the
protective curve of his torso. "That's my girl. You feel so good,
Scully. I could hold you like this forever."

And I could let you, she thought, tucking her head into his crisp cotton
shirtfront. It felt good to be small and light in his arms. She did not
think of it as a matter of being weaker than Mulder. She saw herself as
a complement to him, in this embrace as in all things. They fit well
together, filling in each other's gaps.

She sighed and wished the light would turn itself off so that neither of
them would have to move.

But Mulder wanted to talk.

"So, Scully, when you get back from Boston..."

"Mmm," she mumbled sleepily.

Mulder took a deep breath and released it slowly, hoping to stop the
tremor that was threatening to seize his gut. He had never actually
asked a woman such a thing, and certainly not so far in advance.

Scully untucked her head to look up at him; his uncharacteristic
hesitation had piqued her curiosity.

"Mulder?"

He cleared his throat. Now that she was looking at him, he was even
more nervous. But then, as if she knew he needed a little help, she
reached up and caressed his bristly cheek with the palm of her hand.
She was smiling, watching the path of her hand, as if the contact
between her hand and his face was the most beautiful sight in the world.

Mulder took heart.

"When you get back, you think we could consummate this relationship
of ours?"

There. It was out. He felt like he had just expelled an enormous bubble
of emotional gas.

Scully's right brow twitched; at first he feared that it was with
disapproval. Then a corner of her mouth tugged toward her cheekbone,
and he knew she was amused.

"Consummate." She mulled over the word. "That's sounds
so...ecclesiastical."

"I was trying to be polite. I've got a few other euphemisms -- wanna
hear 'em?"

"Maybe later," she replied, propping herself up on one elbow in order to
get a better view of him.

"Oooh, Scully, you want me to talk dirty to you?" he offered, unable to
resist the opening.

"You already do, Mulder," she shot back, affectionately brushing the tip
of his nose with a finger. "I've had six years of the ultimate Mulder-
seduction. All those sultry looks you've given me over the putrid
remains of sewer monsters --"

"The sight of you in scrubs and a mask, with that little saw in your
hand, really turns me on," he said, placing a hand on her waist. His
touch was tentative, in spite of his bold words.

"See what I mean?" She rolled her eyes in disgust. "Other women are
told how beautiful they are, but not --"

"Is that what Stuart told you?" Mulder asked, no longer joking. He had
long wanted to know how she perceived the inevitable differences
between the two men. The investigator in him knew that this was a
mystery best solved by direct interrogation.

For a moment she looked away, considering whether to be angry that he
had invoked the name of the actor or to answer him truthfully. Her
mouth moved a fraction, then closed. She shrugged.

"Yes," she replied simply.

He touched the strong line of her jaw and traced the curve of the bone to
the tip of her chin, then dragged the backside of his furled fingers across
her cheek before unfolding his hand and raking his fingertips through
her hair.

"Of course I think you're beautiful, Scully. I just figured you'd never
go for that kind of talk. Not from me, not after all these years. I could
write a book about your face, your hair, your eyes...don't even get me
started on your knees or your hands or your tiny little waist." His hand
tightened its grip on her midsection, illustrating its size in relation to the
span of his fingers. He smiled a little sheepishly at the sight of his hand
on her body and then returned his gaze to her eyes. "But I want you to
take me seriously. I *am* serious about this. Making this -- this thing -
- work between us is more important to me now than anything else."

Scully twisted out of his grasp and sat up. She felt him rise beside her,
but did not turn to him. Now she was grateful for the light in the room;
it allowed her to focus on the shapes and colors of her furnishings,
which in turn allowed her to distract herself from the urge to cry.

"Scully?" he whispered, his chin hovering just above her shoulder.

"I don't want to believe that it's more important than your -- our --
work," she said in a clear, low voice that did not reflect her state of
mind.

"Why not?"

"Because I doubt you could sustain that level of commitment," she said.
"Just let it be equally important, Mulder. More than that would be too
much...okay?"

Hooking a finger around the curtain of hair that obscured her face,
Mulder tucked the hair behind her ear and laid clear a spot on her cheek
for kissing. He wrapped one long leg around her hips and both arms
around her torso, and was relieved when she took this as an invitation to
relax against his chest.

"You..." he began.

He was temporarily distracted by the view of her pale cleavage afforded
by the deep vee of her simple pajama. The adolescent in him tightened
his embrace, thereby increasing the loft of her breasts and the depth of
the cleavage. He resisted the urge to growl his delight, and returned to
his original purpose.

"You can have great expectations, you know, Dana," he said.

"I don't want to be disappointed," she said, gripping his forearm where
it crossed her chest.

He grunted.

"Honest as always," he said. He sighed, his breath warm against her
chest. "I guess I haven't exactly given you a lot of reasons to expect
more of me."

"I expect a great deal from you, Mulder," she said. "Why do you think
I work so hard to challenge your theories?"

"For fun?" he ventured.

"Because I know you can come up with tangible evidence to support
them, if you try hard enough. If someone gives you a reason to try.
But I'm not sure I can be that someone around the clock..." She shifted
in his arms so that she could see him. He was listening raptly, and the
intensity of his dark eyes made her lungs skip a breath. "I can't come
home from a hard day of second guessing your investigative methods
and start all over again, regulating your methods of social interaction..."

"Oh, Scully," he whimpered. "I know how to be one half of a whole.
Is that -- you think I'm a rude, egocentric bastard, don't you? Don't
you..."

"Most of the time, yes," she replied, blinking at him.

He laughed.

"Scully, did you really think I was just interested in you for the sex?
Are you nuts?" He laughed more, a dark, raucous sound that tumbled
over his vocal chords like a waterfall. "Scully, how can I convince
you? I'm in *love* with you. I haven't been in love since -- well, to be
honest, I'm not sure I ever have been before now. If it was just sex I
wanted, I could find it in a simpler package. But you...you're
everything. You're -- oh, I have such things planned for you. For
years I've been dreaming of the things I can do to make you happy..."

Her curiosity overtook her. "Like what?"

Mulder wiped away a tear that his laughter had brought to the corner of
his eye.

"Like taking out your trash. Washing your car. Doing the dishes." His
eyes strayed to her copper hair; he reached out to smooth it over her
crown. "I'd brush your hair. I'd shave your legs. I'd --"

"Cut to the dirty bits, Mulder," she said with a smirk.

He chuckled and went on.

"Okay. First I would kiss you, for a long, long time, like the other day
when I was still sick...I want to get lost in your mouth. Learn my way
around like a spelunker."

"A spelunker?" she queried.

 "Yep. And then I'd take off your clothes, bit by bit, because I'm dying
to see your underwear." His brows peaked in accordance with his grin,
giving him an impish look. "Lingerie turns me on, Scully. In case you
didn't already know it."

She knew, very well. But hearing him say it was doing wonders to
distract her from her worries.

"And then I would wrap my arms around you so I could feel your skin
against me -- what I wanted to do on our first case, all those years ago.
I'd hold you for a long time, soaking up what it feels like to be naked
with you." He squeezed her tightly and kissed her forehead. "I'd hold
you tight, to let you know how much I love you, and how badly I need
you..."

His whisper was fading under the strain of containing his emotions.
She touched his lips with her fingertips, silently telling him that his need
for her would be met.

"I want to taste you," he continued. "Every inch of you. I want to go
down on you and make you squirm like a devil. I want to learn how to
make you come, saying my name, thinking of me, loving me. Am I an
egocentric bastard for wanting that?"

"...N-No..."

"I want to swallow every drop that you give me, and pray that I can
taste you on my lips for days afterwards. And then I'd --"

"Mulder. Stop." She pushed him away and slid off the bed, a bit
unsteady on her feet as she paced about the room. "You have to go. I
don't want this to happen tonight. I have to leave early in the morning
and I need some sleep and...and...you just have to...go."

Mulder slid to the edge of the mattress and slung his legs over the side.
He tugged his socks taut and slipped on his wingtips, shaking his head
and chuckling as he tied them on.

"Okay, Scully. I'm going, just to prove to you that I do care whether
you sleep."

He stood and tugged at the waist of his trousers, willing the pleats to
drape elegantly over his reluctantly dwindling erection. When he looked
up, he saw that she had been watching him, a faintly lewd, secret smile
on her face.

"Sheesh," he muttered. "What'd you expect?"

She shrugged and followed him to the door.

"Ah, Scully," he sighed as he turned to face her. "Tonight you've given me
material for six months of happy dreams."

"More like one long night of dyspepsia," she said, holding his coat as he
slid his arms into the sleeves.

"Isn't it rheumatic?" he countered, wearing a goofy grin to go with the pun.

"Go home, Mulder," she said good-naturedly.

He stood patiently while she straightened his tie and smoothed the lapels of
his coat, obviously trying to buy herself a little more time with him. As she
fussed over him, he studied her pale scalp and the countless hairs emerging
from it to form cascades down to her shoulders. He tucked his head and
kissed the spot where her the part in her hair ended.

"I'm going," he whispered.

"Okay." She looked up at his sleepy face. His eyes were drooping -- more
than usual -- and a pronounced shadow had grown over his jaw. She found
herself focusing on the oddly appealing asymmetry of his mouth.
Stretching up on her toes, she kissed him. "It never occurred to me that
your mouth could be so much more than just a source of irritation to me."

"You say the sweetest things." He returned the kiss and added a crushing
hug. "Call me from Boston, will you?"

"I will, I promise." She watched him lope down the hall. "Sweet dreams."

He smiled over his shoulder, his eyes assuring her of his commitment to
pursue her sweetness even in sleep.

End The Cry of the Truth 05/22


The Cry of the Truth, 06/22
Paradise Played
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
Rating: NC-17 (language, graphic descriptions of sexual activity)
Category: S,A,R (Mulder/Scully romance)
Summary: Mulder misses Scully as she contemplates the secret
she must share with him.

See Part 01 for the Disclaimer.  Feedback would be most welcome!

Please post to ATXC and Gossamer.  Thanks.

Watering Scully's plants quickly became a little lie Mulder told himself
to justify his need to be in her apartment. The plants did not need his
attention; Scully purposely bought varieties that could survive weeks of
neglect. Mulder, however, could barely survive a few days without
delving into his rich library of Scully fantasies. One of his favorites
involved visiting her apartment when she was away...looking in her
underwear drawer...and now he had his chance to enact it. During her
three-week absence, he slept at her place every second night, theorizing
that daily indulgence would undermine the forbidden nature of the
experience. It was with undiluted anticipation, then, that Mulder packed
a small overnight bag and drove across the river and uptown to Scully's
apartment on the night before she was to return from Boston.

He locked the door carefully and then strode back to the bedroom to
hang up the suit he had brought to wear to work tomorrow. He flipped
on the bedside lamp and looked over the room. It was cool there, as if
the windows had been open to catch the breeze all day. He went to the
French doors at the end of the room to check the locks; there were tight.

All was exactly as she had left it, except for the indentation of his long
body on the down comforter. He had been careful to sleep atop the bed,
rather than in it. Mulder felt the emptiness of the room pressing against
him so palpably that he expected it could be measured on a barometer.
The hours he had spent there while recovering from his illness had been
some of the happiest of his life, but without Scully's vivid presence, it
was for the most part just a room. In the old days, he would call her in
the middle of the night when he was plagued by a nightmare or a theory
that demanded to be sounded out. Back then he would picture her on
the other end of the phone, curled up in bed, phone cradled between her
shoulder and jaw, as they talked. He always hoped she was naked
beneath the sheets.

But there was evidence to the contrary. When he opened the closet to
hang up his suit, he was not surprised to see her suits and dresses
arranged with almost military precision. The blouses had their section
of the rack, and her few party dresses their zone. Sweaters and
sweatshirts were carefully folded and stacked on a tall narrow shelf that
ran from floor to ceiling. Her shoes were arranged by color and style
across two parallel racks on the floor. And there, in the corner, hung
her robes and sleepwear. He smiled with satisfaction as he pushed the
other clothes back to take a look. There were the plain pajamas he had
seen her in on the rare occasions that he had disturbed her in the middle
of the night. And then there were the other, more revealing
nightdresses. Peach gauze with a wide lace collar. White jersey with
skinny lace straps. Dark green satin, severe and abbreviated. Cream
silk jacquard, cut like a man's shirt with French-cuffed sleeves.
Absolutely sheer pale pink silk, like a big tee shirt...Jesus Christ.

In the bathroom, he peeled off his still-sweaty running clothes and
dropped them unceremoniously on the white tile floor.  Scratching his
belly where the lycra shorts had rubbed a red spot, he leaned across the
white porcelain sink -- it reminded him of a baptismal font -- and
squinted at himself in the mirror. Scully had been right about the
shaving; the dermatitis from Russia was all clear now, and his skin was
back to its usual sallow tone.

Taking a step back, Mulder took a good look at himself. Thanks to his
daily runs, the steady diet of PopTarts, pizza, and beer had made no
difference to his waistline -- it remained the same 34 inches it had been
in college. He had developed his pecs nicely since joining the Bureau.
Scully liked that, he suspected. Her hands seemed to gravitate to his
chest whenever they had any prolonged physical contact. She also
seemed particularly interested in his hands. Mulder spread them across
his belly and tried to imagine what she saw when she looked at them.
Long, tapered fingers, a few small calluses from handling his weapon,
deep nail beds, smooth cuticles. His mother had taught him that a
man's hands can make or break his appearance; apparently Scully
agreed.

Mulder stroked his fingers up and down his torso, ruffling the hair over
his sternum as he followed it down to the thick patch of wiry black curls
that formed a dark backdrop to his penis. Rather than looking down, he
studied it in the mirror, wondering if she would like it.

Like it? It's what you do with it, you idiot, he told himself. You have
to win the talent competition, my man -- beauty is not a concept that
applies to this particular organ. Nonetheless, he was glad, for starters,
that he had been circumcised. Nice and clean, pink and taupe but...hey,
Mulder, you're tall, you've got long feet and a big damn nose, but you
still have an average dick, he reminded himself. All that's just a myth,
and Scully knows it's a myth -- she's seen enough naked dead guys to
know, and probably quite a few naked live ones, too (don't go there,
Mulder). But now, as he watched through the mirror, his average dick
was metamorphosing into a erection that any man -- or woman, he
hoped -- would be proud to claim.

He stepped into the shower and proceeded to wash himself, hoping to
quell the raw lust he had conjured up in the mirror. The scent of her
soap as he smoothed it over his body transported him, and there was no
coming back until he played the little videotape in his brain. Lather
accumulated in his fist; he put the soap on the little tray in the corner of
the shower and, supporting his body with one arm against the wall,
sheathed himself in his soapy fist and went on his inward journey.

He sat by her side in Skinner's office, listening patiently to the Assistant
Director's customary diatribe about procedure and funds and lost
property...when for no apparent reason Scully stood and began to take
off her clothes. She shed her jacket first, then her skirt...one by one the
buttons of her white silk blouse gave way to reveal a lacy black bra and
matching garters...and no panties. Her mound was auburn and curly,
glistening with moisture as she grinned at him and mouthed "watch
this"...she climbed on Skinner's desk and knelt there, facing the A.D.,
her back toward Mulder, her full, firm ass framed by the garter straps,
her thighs milky and soft above the black stockings...

Skinner was stammering at this point, his own cock straining against the
pleats in his trousers as he reached out for Scully's cleavage...His hand
was promptly slapped away. He unzipped his fly and yanked out his
cock, as if to plead medical necessity. Scully simply looked over her
shoulder at Mulder and tossed her head, issuing an invitation to him.
Mulder's clothes magically disappeared and he found himself kneeling
behind Scully on the boss's desk, poised to plunder her body as the
A.D. pumped away at his own little problem....

Mulder turned his face into the warm spray of Scully's shower and
shook his head. Not that one. That was an old one, and it wasn't nice.
Things were different now; she loved him, he loved her, and he wanted
his fantasies to reflect the happy news...and then the screen in his brain
began to show him a beautiful picture of Scully walking the beach at
Gay Head, where he and Samantha had played as children. The wind
tousled her auburn hair and plastered her tee shirt against her front...it
was Mulder's tee shirt, heather gray and entirely too big for her...the
wind molded it to her breasts, chilled her nipples into sharp relief, and
made the hem of the shirt dance over her bare bottom. Mulder knelt in
the sand at her feet and wrapped his arms around her legs. Then,
suddenly, she was beneath him, the ocean lapping at their feet as he
stroked into her all-redeeming depth. She smiled up at him and her lips,
so familiar and so sweet, formed the words he longed to hear.

He fucked her for an interminable time there on the beach, but it only
took a few minutes in the shower for him to come with a small yelp.
Resting against the cool tile wall, Mulder struggled to catch his breath,
still murmuring her name. When he felt steady again, he washed his
hair and rinsed himself with cold water.

When he emerged from the shower, he encountered Scully's white terry
robe hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and the arousal he had
just coaxed down the drain nipped at his heels. He pressed his nose
into the collar, and was transported by a mental picture of the robe
hanging loosely over her bare body, covering her nipples but revealing
the generous curves of her breasts, her smooth belly, and the ruddy
patch of hair between her pale legs.  He had never seen her nude, but
he knew he was going to like it when he did.

He dried himself, carefully avoiding his flushed cock, and then went to
sit on the edge of her bed. He dialed her hotel and waited, trying not to
pant into the phone.

"Scully," she said in her tight, professional voice.

"It's me," he choked, swiping his wet bangs back from his forehead.

"Hmm," she sighed. He could hear sheets rustling as she made herself
more comfortable in her bed.

"Mulder, I'm coming home tomorrow," she chided gently.

"Can't wait," he said, stretching out on the comforter.

"Where are you?"

"I'm laying naked on your bed, Scully."

She made a strangled sound that bloomed into a throaty laugh.

"Lost you taste for video, Mulder?"

"Completely." He swallowed noisily. "So...what are you wearing?"

Another laugh. Another rustle of the sheets, as if she were lifting up the
blankets to give him a look.

"Navy silk pajamas," she replied clearly, as if he had just asked her the
time.

"Why pajamas, Scully?"

"As opposed to...?"

"You wear pajamas a lot. They're nice, I guess, but a
little...constricting. Not exactly easy access."

"You think? Gee, I haven't heard that complaint before," she said.

Mulder's cock twitched against his thigh. Jealousy was a powerful
aphrodisiac for him, and he suspected that she knew it.

"When you were sleeping with Stuart, I bet you never wore anything to
bed," he said, well aware of the risk he was taking in mentioning Stuart
Novak.

"I didn't get a lot of sleep when I was with Stuart," she said, her voice
void of irony.

"I don't sleep much, you know," he said, lightly stroking his fingertips
over his ribs.

"I know, Mulder," she said. "I've been sleeping in the room next to
yours for years now, remember?"

Oh, did he. Night after night of wondering what would happen if he
went to her and offered himself to her, or asked her to comfort him.
Years of being too afraid to take the risk. And now, for better or worse,
he knew what the answer would've been.

"I thought about it," she said, reading his mind as she often could. "I
remember, especially, on the nights when my body was aching...I
wanted you to touch me, to soothe the pain. Emotional pain didn't seem
legitimate enough to ask for that."

"You were always tending to my bruises," he said, frowning up at the
ceiling. "But who took care of yours?"

"Physician heal thyself," she said, her voice a little dimmer now. She
was remembering.

"I'll heal you, baby," he said, rolling over and clutching a pillow to his
abdomen.

"Mulder..."

"Hmm." He closed his eyes and allowed the sound of her voice to fill
him. His sexual preoccupation had been displaced by something far
more tender.  "Oh, Sculleee..."

"Me too," she murmured.

"Tomorrow?"

"Meet you at my place."

XXXXXXXXX

That night, Mulder crawled under the sheets, pulled the comforter over
his nakedness, and switched out the light. Curled like a child around a
pillow that bore her vanilla-and-grass scent, he slept for hours. His
dreams tormented him, as always, but they did not wake him. It was as
if his subconscious knew that there was no need to rouse him when he
was in Scully's bed. There he was safe.

XXXXXXXXX

Scully rose from her bed and crossed her darkened hotel room to the
window that afforded a view of the Charles River and the lights of
Cambridge. She tugged the draperies open and stood staring out at the
night, the chill of the New England spring touching her through the glass.
Wrapping her arms around her torso, she hugged herself and thought of
Mulder. It was a warm, comforting thought, just the encouragement she
needed to finish the task she had set for herself.

She sat at the square table by the window and opened her laptop. Her
glasses rested on a neat stack of journal articles that she had been reviewing
earlier in the evening; she put them on and peered into the document that she
had left open on the computer's desktop. She had been working on it
steadily, both mentally and electronically, ever since her arrival in Boston
three weeks ago. The conference could not have come at a more propitious
time. She needed the distance from Mulder to formulate a plan for revealing
to him the single, albeit potent, secret she held.

When she had climbed into bed that night, Dana thought she was finished
with the letter. Then, when she heard once again the love and longing in
Mulder's gravelly voice, she knew she had to try a little harder to make it
right.

She began to reread what she had typed, but her attention quickly wandered
from the words to the memories they summarized. For the past four years
she had worked hard to avoid remembering, and had very nearly succeeded
in suppressing the memory once and for all -- until she met Stuart Novak.
Stuart's tenderness had unfolded many mysteries within her, most of a
sexual nature. But there had been one night, as she slept next to him, that
her nightmares had awakened them both. Stuart had wrapped his arms
around her and stroked her hair as she told him of the real events that
haunted her sleep. She had never imagined that any man would continue to
want her after hearing what she had to say, but Stuart had only loved her
more. He had held her while she cried and then made love to her, slowly,
gently, as if to heal her soul while driving out the demons.

For a moment she wished she could reach out to some cosmic switch and
turn out the city lights so that she could see the stars. She settled for
admiring the blinking red bulbs atop the city's tallest towers. For the first
time in years she did not feel the icy underlayer of loneliness in her heart.
Tomorrow she would go home to claim that last missing piece of her own
internal puzzle.

She typed one last paragraph, read it, and saved the document. After
shutting down the computer, she returned her glasses to their place atop her
journals and crawled back into bed. As she closed her eyes, Dana prayed
that Mulder could forgive her.

End The Cry of the Truth 06/22



The Cry of the Truth, 07/22
Dear Mulder
A.I. Irving
vsmith@ischemia.card.unc.edu
*Rating: NC-17 (sexual situations, language, descriptions of rape)
Category: S,R (Mulder/Scully), A
Summary: Scully has to give Mulder some painful news.

See part 01 for the Disclaimer.  Feedback would be great.

Please post to ATXC and Gossamer. Thanks.

*Author's Note: As I said in the beginning, I really and truly don't want
this to be classified as a Scully rape story. However, Scully's rape during
her abduction is integral to the story. So be forewarned: this is the chapter
where she describes to Mulder what happened to her. And again, I
apologize to Krychek fans; I'm sure he's really a lovely boy once you get
to know him.


   This is how truth is groved,
   With wayside nights where sleeping
   We wake to tell what once seemed cruel
   As dream-dim -- in the dream
   As plain and sure as then,
   In telling no less dark than doubtful.
        Laura Riding, "The Forgiven Past"

Scully emerged from the jetway at her usual brisk pace. Today,
however, she was in a particular rush to get home. She was in such a
hurry that she nearly passed Mulder in the waiting area at her gate. He
was leaning against a column, his asymmetrical lips sucking sweet tea
through a straw shoved into a big paper cup. As he took a final sip, he
twitched an eyebrow at her, as if to tell her that he rather be taking sips
of her sweetness. Then he tossed the cup in a trash can and walked
toward her, opening his arms beatifically like a cheap plaster statue of
Jesus.

She gave him a simmering smile and handed him her bag.

"Couldn't wait for me to get home?" she asked.

"You got it," he said, resting a hand between her shoulder blades as
they walked.

"But you realize that my car in parked here?"

"Yeah. I thought I'd carry your bag for you, then send you on your
way," he said blithely.

Scully stole a glance at him as they made their way through the terminal.
In the past three weeks, they had exchanged many humid phone calls late
at night, and now she was struggling not to be embarrassed about some of
the things she had revealed to him. Halfway through her stay in Boston,
she had been invited to dinner by a group of her colleagues -- the fact that
they were all men was not unusual, given her field. But the wine she had
drunk and the preponderance of testosterone that seemed to pour off her
companions combined with her longing for Mulder to form a heady brew
of lust. As soon as the dinner was over, she had called him, only to
realize that he had gone to Iowa City to investigate a report of little gray
men shopping in a Gap Kids store. In a frenzy of unrequited lust, she had
stripped off her most of her clothes and thrown herself onto the bed,
writhing hotly against her fingers until she summoned up her own orgasm
in a messy tumble of Mulder fantasies and memories of Stuart. And just
as it was ending...the phone rang. Knowing that it could be no one other
than Mulder, she picked up the phone without speaking and held it so that
he could listen as she tried to catch her breath. He talked her down from
her transcendent state with soft words of longing and love. And now,
walking through National Airport, Dana blushed at the memory even as
she felt the product of her imagination oozing sticky and warm between
her legs.

"You okay, Scully?" Mulder innocently asked as they came out of the
terminal.

She paused at the curb and looked at him. In the soft light of late
afternoon, he seemed younger and more vulnerable, somehow. A breeze
lifted his dark bangs and dropped them back in his eyes. He pushed them
away, and smiled at her, and it was then that she realized that it was not
the light that had this effect on Mulder. It was love.

"Yeah. I'm just really glad to be home."

He offered her his hand, and she took it. As they walked to her car, she
told him about the seminar and her various expeditions around Boston to
visit medical libraries and shops. Mulder shook his head in amazement.
Only Scully would derive as much satisfaction from research as from
shopping.

When they reached her car in the long-term lot, Mulder tossed her luggage
in the back seat and opened the door for her. She sat behind the wheel and
started the engine. For a moment she stared at the speedometer, lost in
thought.

Mulder leaned through the open window, hoping for a kiss. What he got
instead was a caress of his cheek and a tense smile.

"Scully?" he gulped.

"I need a favor, Mulder," she said, rummaging in her pocket.

She produced an ivory vellum envelope on which she had written his
name in her precise, flowing hand. She handed it to him, her eyes
imploring him to take it without making a joke of it.

Mulder's heart sank. He knew what it was: the proverbial Dear Mulder
letter. Should've known it was too good to be true. It's better if we can
just be friends. Jesus. Just like all the other women -- all two of them.

But this is Scully, for God's sake. Scully is like no one else.

"I need you to take this home and read it," she was saying. "Please."

"O-Okay. Whatever you say." He swallowed the lump in his throat.
"But are you --"

"I'll wait to hear from you, Mulder," she said, covering his hand with
hers for a second.

Then she put the car into gear and drove.

XXXXXXXXXX

It was only with an uncharacteristic surge of self-discipline that Mulder
made it home without ripping open the letter and reading it in the car.
He even managed to leave it on his desk long enough to pour himself a
glass of tea and strip down to his tee shirt and trousers. Finally, with
a deep, shuddering breath, he sat at his desk and opened the envelope.
He was prepared to be dumped in an eloquent, heartfelt, Scullyesque
way. What he got instead was painful all right, but in an entirely
unexpected way.

"Dear Mulder,

"This letter contains information that you should have before our
relationship progresses further. Since I arrived in Boston, I have been
writing it in fits and starts in the hope that the requisite introspection
would help me find a way to tell this secret that I have kept for so
long. My cowardice has won out, however. In spite of my faith in
you, I am fearful even of giving you this written record. It is my
conviction, nonetheless, that you have the right to this information
regardless of my discomfort. Here, then, are my ramblings.

"As you know, UFO lore is filled with stories of female abductees
who undergo a sort of empathic 'Mindscan' by the 'Tall Gray', the
apparent leader of the 'Small Grays.' The Mindscan is usually
followed by an intense sexual experience with the Tall Gray that some
female abductees recount as rape and others as particularly satisfying
intercourse. Clinical psychologists attribute these abduction stories to
a need on the part of the 'abductee' to metaphorically express her
underlying feelings of loneliness, neglect, and sexual disappointment.
Expressing these feelings for what they truly are has been met with
indifference in the past, so the abductee resorts to a more lurid
explanation for her suffering. I believe this to be a highly probable
explanation for the phenomenon."

Mulder snorted and took a sip of his tea. Typical Scully. Thank God
for her constancy.

Then, as he read on, his entire body seemed to clench in a spasm of
horror.

"During the three months that I spent in that unknown place, I was
raped. My rapist was not a Tall Gray. He was Alex Krychek. I
remember his face, hovering above mine, his thin upper lip curling,
nostrils flaring, saliva stringing between his upper and lower incisors
as he raped me. The  plane of his cheek was spotted with my
blood, splattered from a wound to my head incurred when he threw me
against the table on which this particular assault took place. A hank of
pomaded dark hair flapped repetitively over his forehead with each
violent blow to my body. His dark eyes bore into me as he struggled
to achieve his immediate goal, which I can only guess was to reach
orgasm while humiliating me. Occasionally he looked away to see if
anyone was watching; at times the smoking man was there, or a man
in a military uniform. But there were no Small Grays."

Mulder emitted a cry from the depth of his being, a whimper of despair
and disbelief and wonder at the evil coincidence of it all. Krychek had
been telling the truth in the jail. Now, through her words, Mulder saw
it as she had seen it, and began to weep.

"I have always maintained that I remember nothing about my
abduction. Now you know that I lied, at least in part. Although
nothing else about those three months is even remotely clear to me, I
certainly remember his raping me, repeatedly, both vaginally and
anally. I remember the room in which it happened: a conference
room, cheaply furnished, but with central heating. The only other
persistent memory I have of that time is of being incredibly cold
whenever I was not in that room. You may recall that since that time I
have been particularly averse to cold. Or perhaps you never noticed.

"I have struggled to find a safe place in my personal history for this
memory, and have failed. I cannot live with the memory and function
at the level to which I aspire. Because of this, I have refused to
acknowledge it, and its effect on me, for four years. Whenever I
begin to feel the first warning nausea that always precedes this
recollection, I distract myself with some sort of extreme challenge: I
run for three hours straight, I work all night, I clean my apartment
until it is all but sterile. This technique has served me well. I have
been able to accomplish more in my career than I thought possible,
while also managing to numb myself to the point that the chill I feel is
in my heart rather than in my extremities.

"Until I met Stuart Novak, I rejected any man who sought any sort of
ongoing romantic relationship with me. I feared that emotional
intimacy would lead to the suppuration of this psychological wound,
and that would have been intolerable. Why was I able to allow Stuart
into my heart? Probably because he sought so little in return. He only
wanted to love me, and for me to accept his love. Occasionally
flashbacks interfered with our lovemaking, but Stuart never asked me
to explain. He had the strength to wait them out, to reassure me, and
then to love me even more. Perhaps I trusted him initially because of
his age, and because he bore a slight physical resemblance to other
men whom I have trusted: Walter Skinner, and my own father. I
loved him in response to his love for me, rather than out of a discrete
appreciation for the traits that comprised his essential self. Eventually
I came to realize that this was not the sort of love that could make
either of us happy in the long run. It would not be enough to sustain a
marriage.

"The love I feel for you, Mulder, is something completely different. It
has grown steadily over the years and was born out of an abiding
respect for your spirit. It has become as much as part of me as my
faith in science, my belief in God, my red hair, my right-handedness.
It has endured many tests, and I now believe that it will flourish even
in the difficult conditions presented by our life together.

"Revealing to you this secret that I have harbored for so long is a
particularly strenuous test. I expect you will be angry that I did not tell
you earlier, and that I could not tell you in person. This is where I
exhibit behavior typical of a rape victim: I feel great shame over what
was done to me. Of course I know that I am not responsible for
Krychek's viciousness. Nonetheless, a part of me still demands to
know, even after four years, why I did not use all the skills I learned at
the Academy to stop him. In retrospect, I can imagine a dozen
different scenarios in which I could have deployed those skills and
effectively deterred him. This is a demand that I will never be able to
assuage. Shame, as well as a reluctance to feed the guilt that I know
you feel over my abduction, has prevented me from telling you until
now. But if we are to be lovers, Mulder, I want you to know this
about me."

He sighed and sniffed away his tears. Lovers. I love you, Scully,
and we will be.

"I almost wish that I could conclude this letter by writing something
impossibly romantic -- I love you beyond all reason, I cannot live
without you, my life was meaningless until you loved me. But such
phrases would not only be inaccurate, they would be hopelessly
uncharacteristic. I have endeavored to be utterly honest with you in all
the years of our partnership, and this letter is my attempt to correct a
lapse. It is only fitting that I close with the one truth of which I am
most certain: I love you above all others, now and forever.

"Scully"

Mulder's hand dropped heavily to the surface of the desk, and he
allowed the letter to slip from his fingers. Through bleary eyes he
took in the graceful curves of her handwriting. He could feel all the
thought and self-examination that had gone into the letter. The thrill of
knowing that she loved him enough to lay her soul bare before him
almost took away the horror of what she had revealed.

He did not care, at the moment, that she had hidden it from him. All
that mattered to Mulder at that moment was that it had happened, and
that Alex Krychek had done it. He had raped Scully. His Scully.

"My Scully," he whispered, covering his eyes and sobbing again.

XXXXXXXXXX

Mulder ran to the river. He slowed down only when the water was in
sight, and then continued at a more moderate pace alongside the
Potomac. Across the river the lights of the city were flickering on.
Sailboats bobbed at anchor in the midchannels. The smell of the
Chesapeake Bay blew in from the east, salty and fishy and reminiscent
of Mulder's island childhood.

He told himself that nothing had hurt him like this since his sister had
been taken. Not until tonight had he been able to admit to himself that
losing Scully for those three months had been worse; heretofore he
had thought it some sort of a betrayal of his carefully maintained guilt
to consider anything more important to him that the loss of Samantha.
Before Scully had gone to Boston he had tried to tell her that she was
more important to him than his guilt, and she had refused the pledge
inherent in that statement. He had assumed that she, being the wise
one of the pair, had been right. Now he could feel with each step he
took that all the pain that had accumulated in the years before he found
Scully was subsumed by his need to find some meaning in all the
suffering he had brought to her. Now he knew that his worst fears
about her abduction had been realized. She had finally trusted him
with the information; now he had to prove himself worthy of her trust.
There was no hope of finding Krychek, much less hauling him in for
prosecution. No. Justice had to be found in how he and Scully chose
to incorporate the fact of her rape into their daily lives. It could
destroy their relationship, or make it stronger. Scully had made her
choice. Now it was up to him.

As the moon unfurled a white scarf across the river, Mulder turned
around and headed home.

XXXXXXXXXX

"Hey, Scully, it's me...you don't have to pick up. Look -- I read it. I
read it and then I went for a run. I'm about to get in the shower and
then I'm gonna pack up a few things and come over there. Okay? I
really need -- I really want to be with you now...because I love you,
Dana. Hope that's okay. 'Bye."

End The Cry of the Truth 07/22