Title: Open Doors  
Author:  RFK 
E-Mail: rkresse@ior.com 
Feedback: Pleasepleaseplease 
Rating: R for adult situations and language 
Type:  Scully angst, Mulder angst, MSR 
Summary: Mulder has decided there will be no romance between them.  It's up
to Scully and the forces of fate to convince him otherwise.  
Disclaimer:  Don't own 'em.  


Open Doors 
Part One  


Mulder: 
For once I've outdone myself in the "choosing a motel" competition.  The
Shady Rest Motel is clean, with large, well furnished rooms and the air of
a quaint bed and breakfast rather than a rent-by-the-hour freeway motel,
which is what most of my choices tend to be.  I can tell Scully is pleased.
 She has come in to chat several times through the open doors between our
rooms.  I can hear her humming as she goes over her notes from the case.
It is a beautiful spring evening and there is nothing across from the motel
but field and, beyond them, the mountains.  We had dinner in the sparkling
clean café that adjoins the motel and now it after nine.  I shower, then
review my own notes, making penciled questions in the margin that I will
bring up with Scully over breakfast tomorrow, as we plan the day.  I am
tired, though that does not always mean I'm going to sleep.  I step in to
Scully's room to say goodnight.  She is sitting up in bed, glasses perched
on her nose, reading a murder mystery.  "Night, Scully," I say.  She
murmurs a goodnight to me.  I close my door, noting that she leaves hers
open.  It's a Scullypattern; I always notice those.  There was one night
two weeks ago that, through some oversight, I left my door open and hers
was open too.  When I woke in the middle of the night, that open door
created (at least in my mind) a curious intimacy between us.  I could hear
her in restless sleep, I could imagine her kicking off the covers, perhaps
a button or two undone on the silly flannel pajamas she always wears.  I
got up, padding to the door and, without looking through it, close it.
There are places I can't go in my relationship with  Scully.  There are
places I WON'T go.  

Scully: 
My relationship with Mulder has a lot of levels.  On one level we are the
quintessential partners.  A good balance for each other, we often can
anticipate the other's moves, thoughts, opinions, arguments.  But there is
a deeper level of our relationship where I am often confused.  
It is clear we love each other.  We have saved each other, physically and
emotionally, many times.  I expected, hoped, wished, desired, that there
would be an evolution to our partnership.  Once when I threatened to leave
him we almost kissed but the moment passed in disastrous form and when we
again were together the barriers were up again and they've never been
lowered.  
Sometimes I think it's me.  I'm intensely private, "all buttoned up" as my
sister used to say.  I used to think that I was the one who needed to
relax, unwind, open up, disclose.  
But then we met this mutant guy.  Okay, we're ALWAYS meeting mutant guys.
But this man was a shapeshifter who decided to take my partner's shape.
And guess what?  I was as relaxed and unwound as it's possible to be.  So
then I thought:  it's Mulder.  
Now, lying in bed reading a thriller, with Mulder in the next room, I'm
more and more sure.  He comes to the doorway, gives me a half-hearted
goodnight and then shuts the door.  I pause in my reading, look up,
frowning, at the damn door.  A month ago I started an experiment, leaving
my door open.  As if in invitation.  I thought, maybe he'll leave his door
open too, answering my invitation.  And then maybe, finally, after a
ridiculously long time, something will start between us.  
But, in answer, his door stays shut.  He sometimes shuts it early in the
evening, while the game shows are still on television, when I'm still all
wound up and anxious to talk.  His door will shut and if I encroach on his
privacy he makes it clear, in the nicest way, of course, that I really have
encroached.  And then I'll back my way out of the room, feeling like a
13-year-old, my cheeks probably bright red.  
So now I need to know:  why.  I know there's no other woman.  He seems to
be as celibate, lonely and driven as I am myself.  He is gorgeous; I am at
least not ugly.  Maybe he is simply not attracted to me.  Maybe I have
taken over the sister's role in his life.  Maybe he's gay, I don't know.
But more and more, I need to know.  If Fox Mulder is off limits for me, I
need to know why.  Because then, maybe, I can go elsewhere.  Shit, if I
could make myself go elsewhere.  

Mulder: 
We have been on this case four days now, with no end in sight, and there's
an uncomfortable shifting between us I can't quite put my finger on.  Alert
as I am to her every move, it seems clear she is touching me more.
Incidentally, maybe, but it's happening all the time.  And then, only an
hour ago, I was sitting at the small table in my room, attempting to
diagram the myriad and complex family relationships of the murderous Oakney
clan that we are chasing, and she stepped behind me, massaging my neck.  
For an instant, an instant only, I let myself succomb to the touch, the
bliss that I experience whenever she touches me.  
I cannot have Scully.  If there is one truth I have uncovered in our time
together, it is that.  It is dangerous enough how much I love her; it is
dangerous enough that our enemies know that and use it against me.  How
much more dangerous would it be if we were lovers?  Reckless and
half-cocked as I can be sometimes, it would be much worse if we had shared
that kind of intimacy.  
On the way to Antarctica, I thought it all through.  The kiss was on my
mind, as well as her probable death.  As I drove that infernal machine
through the glacial whiteness I knew that, crazy with fear and grief as I
was, it would only be compounded if she were my lover, if she were my wife.
 I am a man obsessed, as she has often told me herself.  If I had her, if
she were mine, they could probably render me incapable simply by her
absence.  Already I am half crippled.  Were she to mean any more to me, the
crippling would be complete.  
So she massages me.  My eyes close briefly, my head tilts back a trifle.  I
indulge in a brief, forbidden fantasy. 
Then, abruptly, my self-set warning bells go off.  I stand up, pretend to
lean across the table for more notes, pretend I hadn't noticed the softness
of her touch, the tendrils of desire already growing in me.  
I know I hurt her.  I throw off some insolent phrase, designed to make me
sound like a total jerk, designed to widen the distance between us.  
I know it's a hazardous dance I perform.  If I'm enough of a jerk, she'll
leave me.  If I'm not enough of a jerk, she'll break through my defenses
and we WILL be lovers and all my worst nightmares will be before us.  

Scully: 
I try to psychoanalyze him.  Have women traumatized him?  The two women I
know that were in his life seem like man-eaters to me, but at least in
Diana Fowley's case, he seemed to respond to her in a way quite different
than the way he responds to me.  
I test the envelope every now and again.  Today I gave him a neckrub.  And
for an instant I thought - I KNEW - he was responding.  But then he
literally jumped away from me, made some asinine remark about harassing him
sexually.  
While I'm pondering this my phone rings.  It's the cute guy from the
sheriff's office that complimented me on my autopsy technique with the
fourth victim.   He asks me out to dinner and I accept.  It one of the few
times I've ever done that out in the field; aside from any feelings I might
have had for my partner, it seems like a silly distraction that cuts away
from our primary purpose here.  
But now I know I NEED the distractor.  Sexual harassment, indeed.  

Mulder: 
Well, she's gone with that rosy-cheeked moron from the deputy sheriff's
office.  I heard them chattering cheerfully, talking about restaurants and
maybe taking a drive by some fucking lake. 
It takes me by surprise, how angry I am.  I am a rational man, after all, I
know the game I'm playing.  Scully is an attractive, wonderful woman.  And
I treat her, at times, like dog meat.  And I can't tell her or, as I say,
she'll start hammering away at me and, if she shares my feelings, we'll be
locked together for life in a heartbeat.  
Even the thought, even the fucking thought and I have to pause and pull
myself together because it ain't happening.  I might as well just shoot her
through the head and end it quick because it would be slow and awful the
other way.  They'd stalk us, hunt us, and have us because of the depth of
our feelings.  But they're not sure now, not completely sure.  They might
guess at our feelings, they might wonder about our relationship.  But they
wired my apartment; they know the only sexual things that happen there are
extremely one-sided.  
I try to watch some television:  ER drags by like a documentary on the
salivary gland.  Finally I hear them in her room; her laugh is like
tinkling glass.  He's come in the room with her, it sounds like they're
talking.  
I fantasize about opening the door between the rooms, inserting myself into
the situation, acting possessive with Scully as if we are lovers.  Sitting
close to her, putting an arm around her.  Get the hell out, you
rosy-cheeked moron.  
There might have been a time I would have done that.  Before Antarctica, I
was getting pretty cocky.  Having a few fantasies.  Hell, having a LOT of
fantasies.  Maybe you should call them hopes.  
Finally I hear them talking outside, then a car door slamming and then I
hear her back in the room, then finally the shower going on.  
I turned my attention to the local news, having some faint interest in what
they were saying about the Oakney clan and the murderous trail they had
left across the state.  
But underneath that, I was thinking about her.  Having an awful daydream
about her married to some rosy-cheeked law enforcement officer and what
THAT would do to our partnership.  I was aware of the many times I had
crossed the boundary:  how many late night calls there had been, how often
I had come banging on her apartment door, how many late minute flights out
of town there had been.  Married people just didn't do that.  And then,
inevitably, she would want a nine to five job, something cushy at Quantico,
maybe.  And they'd give me some godawful young agent.  Shit, I just don't
think I can go through that.  Scully is my partner.  There'll never be
another for me.  

Scully: 
Skinner calls us to say they're sending out another couple of agents to be
basically working under us as we have really uncovered a serious pattern of
murders here.  It's good news, without any help we'll be in this town for a
month.  
Mulder is quiet today.  I see his fine mind is chewing away at something
but he doesn't speak of it.  Deputy Sheriff Burns called for another date
and I was tempted, but Mulder didn't take the bait so it wasn't as much fun
as I thought.  
We spend hours and hours interviewing suspects, witnesses, and ever more
relatives in the burgeoning Oakney clan.  I autopsy two more corpses, one
of them a child.  Abruptly, my teasing mood of the last couple of days
leaves me completely.  When we get back to the motel, I am near tears.  I
reach out to Mulder not in the sexually teasing way I've done lately, but
only because I need to feel something alive.  He seems to understand.  He
reaches out and rubs my neck, then draws me into an embrace.  My arms reach
around him, under his suit coat.  
We are like that when the two agents introduce themselves to us.  
I try to gracefully withdraw from the way I have molded myself onto his
body.  They seem somewhat amused by us, Agents Miller and Peck.  They are
both men, they have taken the room on the other side of Mulder.  We discuss
going out to dinner and bringing them up to speed on the case.  I insist on
a shower.  Mulder comes with me into my room, discussing a few of the
details he wants to get down in notes before we leave.  
I go in the shower.  When I come out, I realize he has gone to his room but
left the door open between.  I look at it, wondering, still able to feel
his arms around me.  

Mulder:  
Joe Miller and Henry Peck are gay.  I realize it about twenty minutes into
dinner.  About five minutes after that, I realize they're involved with
each other.  I don't know why the hell it embarrasses me so much.  I
//have// known gay men in my life.  As I pick through my chow mein, I
realize my embarrassment doesn't have anything to do with their
orientation.  It has to do with what they think of us.  Having come upon us
in what must have appeared to be a fervent embrace, they must think we are
eagerly breaking the FBI rules as fast as they are.  Co-conspirators.
Halfway through dinner I note that Scully's color is so high either she's
caught on to this or she's having a decade-early hot flash.  
We're in a secluded corner of the Chinese restaurant so over the fortune
cookies we brief them on the case.  Scully pulls out the diagram we have
been working on of the convoluted and interbred Oakney clan as well as an
accompanying diagram of the murders.  There have been seven bodies so far
uncovered, as we tell them, because we came to town to investigate a
psychic who swore a killer was on the rampage in that little town.   
It is pretty late when we start back to the Shady Rest.  I've decided that
I like Miller and Peck pretty well.  They've been interested and
complimentary about our work and although it's clear they've heard about
Spooky Mulder and the X-Files, they've kept any smart cracks to themselves.
 I appreciate that.  

Scully:  
I watch the door between our rooms like it's some kind of fucking
barometer.  And tonight, his side is open perhaps an inch.  Mine, of
course, is flung wide.  Pretty embarrassing, if there is a true parallel
here.  
We get home about midnight and I spent another hour on the laptop, trying
to tie more ends together.  When I finally turn out the light, I notice
Mulder's light also goes out and a faint //goodnight// drifts in to me.
It's a little silly, I feel like one of the Waltons.  But on the other
hand, it's a start.  Anything that will melt the glacial ice that Mulder
has drawn around him has got to be a good sign. 

Mulder: 
It is before seven when I hear Scully's phone ring.  I hear her answering
sleepily and another moment before she opens our connecting door.  "'Nother
two murders," she mumbles.  "I'm going to take the car and meet the coroner
at his office," she said.  "Can you go with Miller and Peck?"  
I tell her I can and ring their room to make arrangements.  I don't like
not being with Scully but it's clear our paths are going to go different
directions today.  
Just after eight we go to the murder sites.  At the first one, Scully is
just leaving.  She confers with me briefly, all efficiency and tight logic,
then she is gone.  
I promise myself that today, of all days, I am not going to moon about
Scully's ass or her breasts or any of that crap.  I //do//have a fine
investigative mind when I'm not acting like an adolescent.  The next few
hours are spent on the crime scenes and we rendezvous for a late lunch with
Scully in between her two autopsies.  She has a hearty appetite for a
forensic surgeon (or maybe they //all// do, for all I know) and then she
gives us a quick smile and leaves.  
Miller thinks of a question he wants to ask the coroner so he goes after
Scully and Peck and I get receipts for the meal and loiter outside, waiting
for Miller so we can go question another witness.  
"Your partner seems very bright," Peck says.  "Quite an advantage to work
with a medical doctor."  
"It's come in handy," I concede.  
"Out in the field a lot?" he asks.  
I shrug.  "Quite a bit."  I wonder if he's wondering if I heard them
through the walls the night before.  I did, but it's far from the only time
I've heard something.  To be quite candid, I envied them.  They could get
away with it as long as they were careful.  
"Bet it could get lonely," Miller said.  "Without your partner."  
I thought I might as well put an end to it.  "Scully and I are just
friends," I said.  
He looked at me, then looked away to see if Miller was coming, if anyone
was listening.  Then he flashed me a grin.  "You're kidding."  
"Just friends," I said firmly, 
"Why?" he asks me.  "I mean, the whole Bureau knows you're both workaholics
with a fantastic solve rating.  Everyone //thinks//you're sleeping
together, Agent Mulder."  
I blush to the roots of my hair.  I want to tell him off, I want to tell
him what an insulting asshole he is.  I realize how tremendously angry I am
at him, probably out of proportion to the insult.  "We're just friends," I
finish lamely, glad to see Miller coming down the street.  

Scully: 
The media has started to pick up on this story in a big way.  The local
sheriff department handles the reporters but it's clear they'll waylay us
if we go out to dinner.  We order in and the four of us eat in my room.
Miller and Peck are good company, we tell funny stories and laugh.  In the
midst of the horror surrounding us, it is the only thing to do.  Miller has
run to the store and brought back a six pack of beer, a six pack of wine
coolers.  We all get very giggly.  It is late when Miller and Peck leave.
Mulder helps me clean up.  I can't think of a time I was quite this drunk
in front of him.  I lose my balance briefly, he steadies me with a hand
that starts at the small of my back and unmistakably slides down to my butt.  
"Whoops," he says.  
"Mulder, you're drunk," I tell him.  
"You are too," he says, grinning at me.  
I can't help but grin back.  Mulder's like that.  His grins, which he gives
me very sparingly, are infectious.  
"We've got a big day tomorrow," I remind him.  "We better get some rest."  
He nods, turning toward the connecting door.  "You know what's funny,
Scully?" he says at the last minute, turning back toward me.  
"What's that, Mulder?"  
"Peck thinks we're silly for not being lovers."  
The suddenness of his words send an icy splash through me.  Lovers?  What?
I blink, trying to make my addled brain work.  
He grins again.  "All this time I thought I was being gallant, saving you
from being the target I know you'd be if you were //really// Mrs. Spooky."
He laughs, there's a bitter tinge.  "And he thinks I'm just being silly."
He shakes his head and heads into his room.  
I am standing there with the pizza boxes in my hands
I throw them into the trash and go to the door.  He is standing there,
unbuttoning his shirt.  He turns, seeming to know that I am there.  
I still don't know what to say.  "Lovers?" I say finally.  
He shakes his head.  "I don't know, it seemed so clear to me three beers
ago.  I can't hurt you.  And I've already hurt you so much.  Being with me
would be...nuts.  Well, like I told you, it seemed to make more sense when
I was sober."  
I know tears are forming in my eyes.  
"Are you crying because I've finally lost my mind, Scully?" he asks me.  
I shake my head, unable to speak for a moment.  When I do, my voice is
quavery.  "I just thought...you didn't want me."  
He is across the room in a second, cupping my face in his hands.  I can
smell the beer, smell the pizza.  "I have always wanted you, Scully."  
And then, like some kind of alcohol-induced hallucination, he steps back.
Though he was only touching me for a matter of seconds, I feel bereft.  
"It's wrong, Scully."  
"Because we're drunk?" I ask hopefully.  
"Scully, we have powerful, vindictive enemies.  Let them see we can handle
ourselves without each other.  Then they won't be that eager to break us
up."  
I don't like it but I can't think straight enough to argue with him at the
moment.  "Will you kiss me?" I ask, sounding like I'm about 12.  
He starts to refuse, then his face softens and he comes back, at once 
taking me in his arms, as if it is a practiced move we've made every day of
our lives.  His lips press against mine, our lips open to each other. One
of his hands is at the back of my neck, holding my head, the other is
wrapped around my waist, pulling me close.  I can feel he's aroused and
that arouses me.  My arms snake around his waist, dipping inside his
waistband.  
"Jesus, Scully," he says, breaking off the kiss, standing back a pace.  I
raise an eyebrow.  He shakes his head, smiles at me.  "Go to bed, Agent
Scully," he says.  
I watch him retreat across the room, still feeling the taste of him in my
mouth.  "I agree with Agent Peck," I tell him.  "We are being silly."  
I leave him with that thought and go into the shower.  When I come out, I
am vaguely comforted to see that, though the lights are off in his room,
the door between our rooms is wide open.  
I settle into bed, replaying the kiss a few times.  
I fall asleep, still thinking about him.  

  
Mulder: 
7:30 and I stand with Scully in the slightly muddy front yard of Elmer
Oakney, one of the family patriarchs, who has apparently gone missing.  We
have a search warrant.  The Sheriff says he will speak to the media;
Scully, Miller, Peck and I will search the house.  
It goes without saying that no one has done dishes in this house or run a
vaccum for over a decade.  I know I don't live in a Martha Stewart kind of
environment, but I do know the concept of soap and water.  Wordlessly,
Scully takes one look at the place and brings out her latex gloves, a pair
for each of us.  I start to tell her how silly she is; I then catch a
glimpse of the kitchen and I still my objections.  
Of course, this is all supposed to be accomplished without breakfast and
with a pounding head that nearly obliterates all thought.  It is not so
much that I had a lot to drink, but that I babbled on the way I did to
Scully.  And then, compounding error after error, I kissed her.  
As I'm wading through the garbage that serves as a floor covering in the
kitchen, I can't help but remember it.  I stop, momentarily transfixed, and
I'm not in the Oakney kitchen anymore, but back at the Shady Rest, kissing
Scully with an intensity that I think surprised both of us.  
"Mulder?" her voice drifts in to me.  "Be careful in there.  We're finding
some booby traps out here."  
Great.  Only 8 a.m. and the day has gone to shit.  I don't know how I can
possibly search the place without cleaning it.  I look through several
drawers and, weirdly, find an unopened box of garbage bags.  I start
hoisting all the crap on the floor and spilling over the counters into a
bag, deciding in short order it might be better to breathe through my nose.
 By some professional instinct, I didn't wear a suit but settled for
Dockers and a heavy teeshirt.  
Three beers and I'm babbling about us being lovers.  Sometimes I surprise
even myself.  


Scully:  
Elmer Oakney had the housekeeping instincts of a rat.  A dirty rat.  I take
the living room and dining room and Peck and Miller venture upstairs.  I
hear Mulder cursing in the kitchen and I don't know if he's accomplishing
anything but he's making a lot of noise.  
In the first few minutes we find several loaded pistols hidden among the
crap, and I bag them up.  Three of the victims we have found so far have
been shot.  I also find what seems to be a journal of some sort, some
rambling treatise on God and the Devil.  I put it aside as well.  
Aside from all his other attributes, Elmer Oakney is a compulsive saver of
things.  Just in the living room we have impressive collections of twine,
gum wrappers and empty tv dinner boxes.  
After about an hour we re-convene, the four of us, in the living room with
the various prizes we have found.  Mulder has what appears to be a bloody
knife (victim #2 was stabbed to death); Peck and Miller have a bloody sheet
they found hidden in the depths of a closet.  We all eye the basement door
with some unease then, sighing, we broke out the flashlights.  
There was a long, narrow stairway down to a cavernous basement.  Once
there, we separated, examining a half dozen tiny little rooms filled, as
the rooms were above, with an assortment of rotting crap.  Peck shouted out
for us after a few minutes.  
He'd found Body #8

Mulder: 

We reconvene at the Shady Rest about ten hours later.  Scully had been
through an autopsy, the rest of us had presided over an exhumation of a
very dead body.  All of us stank.  Scully was all fired up about a theory
she had and wanted to diagram it on big sheets of paper.  I was relatively
tolerant of this since she had had several big breakthroughs on big sheets
of paper.  
"Shower first, then we'll meet in Scully's room for Chinese," Peck said.  
"Give us a couple of hours," Miller said.  He didn't exactly smirk at us.
He smiled at us.  Like we would understand because we were practically
their friends.  
And because we had something so obviously in common.  
Again I went in the motel through Scully's room.  "At least they'll be
relaxed," I growled before I realized what I was saying.  
She kicked off her shoes.  "Mulder, you're the one who has some great,
long-thought-out no sex policy."  
"What?" I said.  "Are you saying you don't agree with me?"  
She ran a tired hand through her hair.  "I don't know, Mulder.  It just
seems kind of calculated to me.  I mean, whatever happened to passion?
Getting carried away?"  She went into the bathroom and shut the door,
leaving me standing there staring at her.  

Scully:  
Sometimes my mouth runs away with me, it really does.  I stand under the
steaming shower, trying not to think about what I just said, the look on
his face, our drunken exchange the night before or, most especially, the
kiss.  
The Oakney murder case was beginning to chip away at my professional
façade.  Between the sad little murdered girl, the body in the basement,
the hints of more bodies to come, I was more than aware that my mind craved
distraction.  
And Mulder was quite the distraction.  
I lathered, thinking about Peck and Miller.  They seemed like above average
agents:  funny, competent, able to deal with stress, intelligent.  And
there for each other in other ways as well as professional.  I shampooed my
hair, giving in to the fantasy of having Mulder there for me.  How much
different the Oakney nightmare would be if I could count on folding myself
into Mulder's arms at night, if I could have the release of a sexual
relationship at the end of these nightmare days.  If, at the very least, I
could get a hug maybe the pain wouldn't seem so overwhelming.  
I realize I'm crying, my tears mingle with the shower spray.  I rinse
briskly, trying to take myself in hand.  It doesn't get this bad very
often, but between Miller and Peck and the dark gloom of the Oakneys, I am
lonely, sad and just a little desperate.  

Mulder:  

I take a shower.  I seem to be the only one done early so I go to the
Chinese restaurant and get something called the Grand Feast for Six and
three bottles of plum wine, the house specialty.  When I get back, Scully
has got the Big Paper up on the wall and is drawing boxes and circles and
connecting dots.  I stand in the doorway for a minute, just looking.  Her
hair is damp and a little curly from the shower, she's wearing gray sweats
and a tiny little pink teeshirt that rides up a little on her stomach as
she stands on her tiptoes to doodle something at the top of the chart.  
I love her.  I've known it for a long time, I even told her once.  But it
hits me again, standing there.  It's like looking at the Promised Land.  I
feel a little like Moses, seeing it and knowing I'm never going to get
there.  
I put the boxes on the long bureau in her room and, getting her ice bucket,
go for ice.  When I get back, Miller and Peck have joined us and Scully is
explaining her diagram.  We open boxes , draw chairs around the table, and
Dr. Scully lectures us on the family dynamics of the Oakneys
Scully makes excellent sense and I can see she is drawing to some stunning
conclusion, but my mind is hopelessly sidetracked.  
//If we avoid having sex in obvious places like my bugged and probably
videotaped apartment, how is anyone going to know?//
The thought is so simple and yet so overwhelming I stop with a big forkful
of sesame chicken halfway to my mouth.  Scully thinks I've found some flaw
in her theory, which I haven't even heard.  
"Mulder?  Have I missed something?"  
I shake my head, smiling weakly.  She looks puzzled but goes on, thank God,
and I gather that she has found a pattern of death in the various
subfamilies that looks a lot like a ritualistic, sacrificial murder.  I
wrench my mind onto the subject, staring at her patterns of boxes and
circles and dotted lines.  Peck and Miller are all fired up about it,
pointing other things out that she hasn't seen.  By the time they talk
themselves out, they realize the evidence points to two other possible
murder victims.  All of the victims have been the oldest children of the
oldest child in a given branch. Elmer and Viola Oakney had twelve children, 
two of which died as infants, which left ten children who grew up, married,
and had children of their own.  
And eight of those children (there were 29 in all)  had lost their older
children to some kind of murderous spree.  
We had known that three of the children were cousins.  What had slowed us
down was the dismemberment of two of the Oakney families in the early 70s:
the children had gone into foster care and several had been adopted later,
changed their names, vanished into more mainstream American culture.  But
the killer had found them anyway and only now, almost a week into our
investigation, were we catching on.  
Okay, Scully was catching on.  
We scramble through all of our notes and papers and research to get some
names and addresses.  They marry young around here.  Elmer Oakney, if we
could find him, is pushing 90.  It is his great grandchildren who are dying
like flies.  

Scully: 
It is a little too late, and there's a little too much plum wine in all of
us to race out into the night to the remaining  Oakney families. And we
don't have enough information to identify all the 21 families we'll have to
eventually track down.  We do know about two, however, and call the
sheriff's office and let them know that Susan (nee Oakney) and Bruce Lime
of Waterville, some 50 miles from our location, have an older son named
David who, at 22 years of age, seems a likely target for the Oakney serial
killer.  We plan to leave at first light the next morning for Waterville.
The other Oakney great-grandchild is a little harder to track down, as the
parents were apparently deemed neglectful in the early 1990s and their four
children entered the state welfare system.  As the boys clear away the
Chinese food, I spend some serious time with the laptop, trying to track
down Cynthia Lee Webber, who would now be 12.  Mulder curls up on my bed
and is soon lost in the treatise we found in the Oakney house.  I glance up
at him now and again as I surf through the endless files of the Department
of Social and Health Services.  He's wearing his glasses, which I love.
He's chewing on sunflower seeds and making little notes as he reads.  
It takes an hour but I finally get an address for Cynthia as of two months
before.  It is in Reardon, a small town in the exact opposite direction of
Waterville.  I open my mouth to reveal this troubling bit of news to my
partner, but he speaks first.  "Oakney believed if he killed all the first
born great grandchildren it would usher in the second coming of Christ."  
"How did he get that?"  
"By a fairly bizarre interpretation, as I understand it, of the Bible, the
Catcher in the Rye, and several key episodes of Star Trek:  The Next
Generation."  
"So he's crazy."  
"Certifiable."  
"But who's killing all these people, Mulder?  Elmer Oakney is almost 90
years old."  
"He must have a confederate.  Someone in the family, maybe, who shares this
vision with him."  
"And how did they know where those first two kids were?  Those adoption
records should have been sealed."  
"More grist for the mill, Dr. Scully."  
I sat down, momentarily too tired to pursue more Oakney trails.  Mulder, as
always, picks up my cues and starts to collect the mess he has made on my
bed.  I'm glad I've already taken a shower.  I feel like I could be asleep
in about a minute. 
"I want you to think about something, Scully," Mulder says.  I think he's
still on the case.  
"What's that?"  
He stands up, throwing his sunflower hulls away and replacing Elmer
Oakney's religious manifesto with the other documents we've been
collecting.  "I know what you mean about passion."  
I blink.  I can't remember a time in our partnership when we have been on
such different tracks.  He sees my surprise and laughs gently.  "I missed
most of your first runthrough of the theory because I was thinking about
passion," he said.  
"Well, Mulder, what were your thoughts about that?"  
He stuck his hands in his pants pockets.  "I've never....allowed myself to
feel passion for you, Scully."  
"Why not?" I ask, soft, as though I'm afraid he might bolt from the
conversation, which I am.  
"They've taken you twice, Scully.  What we have is not what I want, what
would be my...choice.  But it's a hell of a lot better than nothing."  
"Sure," I say, nodding.  
"But then I thought, what if we never did...anything...in Washington?  What
if it was only on the road?"  
I stare at him, completely without a rejoinder.  Finally I smile slightly.
"Mulder, it's taken you six years to think of that plan?"  
"Actually, I think it's hearing Miller and Peck through the walls every
night.  I mean, we know my apartment was bugged, probably is again, and
yours is probably the same.  I'm certain our office is bugged.  But no
Consortium in the world has every motel room bugged, right?"  
"That would seem to be a long shot, yes."  
"So...?"  
I laugh.  "What are you saying, Mulder, that you've found some loophole to
your goofy theory and now you want to be lovers?"  
His face falls.  "Am I missing something?"  
I lean my head back, then rotate.  "Mulder, I'll ask the same thing I asked
you before that started this bizarre train of thought.  What about passion?
 I'm uncomfortable with just //deciding// that we're going to do something.
 I have to feel it."  
He laughs a little, shaking his head.  "I guess I'm different than you,
Scully.  I have to fight every moment to stop myself from feeling
overwhelming passion for you every moment of the day, every day of the
week."  
It takes my breath away, a little.  
We stare at each other for two or three beats, then he turns for the door.
"Think about it," he said.  We lock gazes again.  "Maybe we can talk
tomorrow."  
//As if I'm going to do anything else.// 


Mulder: 
First light and we're halfway to Waterville, companionably sharing a bottle
of Advil between us and several shy and embarrassed grins.  Drunk two
nights in a row has got to be a record for the somewhat staid partnership
of Mulder and Scully.  
Miller and Peck have gone the other direction, to Rockford and the girl in
foster care.  
In the car Scully tries to pull together what we know about the remaining
potential victims and is on the phone to the Sheriff about them.  Once we
get to this kid, we'll have time to sit down in some sheriff's office, plug
onto the 'net and get the rest of the information.  For now, however, it
seems like we need to get to the victim we know.  
A call to his parent's when we're twenty minutes out of town reveals the
information that he doesn't live at home, but he's one of the managers of
the local Taco Bell, a fact that seems to make them inordinately proud.
Scully gets directions and I take the right offramp which leads us directly
to the Taco Bell in question.  It's still about a quarter of eight, but of
course Taco Bell is open 24 hours and I'm thinking about a Breakfast
Burrito after we warn David Lime that his life may be in danger.  
Going in the Taco Bell, we show our I.D. to the surprised counter girl, who
goes in search of David.  He comes right up, flustered, so embarrassed and
weird I wonder if he's been reading porno in the back.  Scully introduces
us and speaks to him crisply.  "Mr. Lime, we'd like to take you into
protective custody.  We have reason to believe your life might be in
danger."  
"That's silly," he sputtered.  
"Do you know your great grandfather, Elmer Oakney?" I ask.  
The boy goes an interesting shade of green.  "I---I don't know that side of
my family very well."  
"We can take you to a safe house," Scully says, not mentioning that it's
the sheriff's mother's house who has promised to bake the dear boy an apple
pie.  
"Well, God, I need to call in someone to replace me.  That's going to take
a few minutes."  
I beam at him.  "We'll wait.  And maybe have a little breakfast."  
Scully rolls her eyes at me and orders a small coffee.  I have the
breakfast burrito - hey, make it two.  And a large coffee.  I settle down
beside Scully and we keep David Lime in our line of sight as he makes
several phone calls.  
"You seem in a very good mood today," Scully said.  "Despite the hangover."  
I attack the burrito enthusiastically.  "I feel like we've turned a corner,
Scully, don't you?"  
"We got drunk twice in a row, is that what you mean?"  
 I beam at her.  "And if it takes three times in a row, dammit, then I
think that's what we should do."  
She stares at me, but there's a smile lurking around those gorgeous lips
somewhere.  "Let's corral the rest of these Oakney children, Mulder."  
"And then we're going for a drink, Scully.  Not Peck, not Miller.  You and
me."  
She doesn't say anything but she smiles and for Scully that's practically a
signed commitment.  

Scully:  
We drop David Lime off at Gertrude Blake's house and go to the local
sheriff's station where I get on the internet to collect data and Mulder
spends hours on the phone talking about the data I've collected.  He brings
me lunch from a deli down the street and we work until about 8 p.m. that
night, but at the end of it all we've found all the Oakneys and have them
under watch for the night.  I stand up, stiff and sore from sitting so long.  
"Dinner?" Mulder asks.  
"Shower first," I say firmly.  
We don't really want to go back to the Shady Rest.  It's an hour away and
we're dead tired.  A block from the sheriff's office is a motel and Mulder
checks us in there.  It's almost nine when we head out for dinner.  Mulder
has evidently asked for directions because he drives us straight to a
nice-looking restaurant that occupies the main floor of an
impressive-looking mansion.  "Skinner's going to yell about the expense
account," I warn.  
"Our other two meals were Taco Bell and Subway, Scully.  We have this
coming."  
I relent.  The place is beautiful, an elegant old mansion where dinner is
apparently served in several rooms.  I get the impression Mulder has called
ahead:  we are shown upstairs to a secluded little parlor, where we are
utterly alone except for the occasional hovering presence of a very good
waiter.  We order something, I don't think either of us know or care just
what, and just sit and stare at each other.  The heavy subtext we've been
dragging along so long has finally become so heavy it's silenced both of
us.  I wait for him to speak.  

Mulder:  
God, she's beautiful.  And I've got to tell her the truth.  Not the
drunken, mixed-up truth, but the Real Truth, as I think I know it.  So, in
a way that must be clear by now to any reader, I do no preamble whatever
but just leap right in.  "I don't know if I ever told you, Scully, how
completely crazed I was when they took you last summer," I say hoarsely.  
"You never said much at all about it," she said.  
I smile to myself.  That is so like me.  I move heaven and earth to reach
her, imagine her dead in a thousand different ways, imagine my own
subsequent suicide in painstaking detail, and then I don't say much about
it????  What would it take for me to let this woman in a little?  
"When I thought I'd lost you, I was considering suicide," I said.  The
waiter then reappears with our drinks (Shirley Temples for both of us, we
have to have this conversation sober) and I smile up at him like I haven't
just dropped that pathetic sentence on Scully.  
But she isn't surprised.  She's been on this roller coaster right along
with me.  "But I didn't die, Mulder."  
"But then I thought, Jesus, I'm this bad and we're just friends.  If she
were my lover...if she were my wife I would just have died right there on
that street in D.C.  The pain might have been too much."  
We eye each other anxiously.  She takes a delicate sip of her drink.  "So
what are you saying, Mulder, that you love me too much for us to be lovers?"  
I smile weakly.  "It doesn't sound that logical when you put it that way."  
"It's going to be hard to explain to my mother."  
"Maybe I'm too screwed up to make this kind of a decision, Scully."  
Her eyes lit up.  "Then should I do it?"  
"What would you decide?"  
She reached across the table for my hand.  "I think it's hard for either of
us to open up, Mulder," she says quietly.  "We show our feelings through
the things we do for each other.  We never say the words, Mulder, but
everybody knows."  
I nod, appreciating the truth of that.  "Even Miller and Peck."  
"Even them," she agrees.  
Our food comes, it's delicious but we're a little more interested in each
other than the food.  
"But...to be lovers," I say, "I guess we'd have to open up, wouldn't we?"  
She nods seriously, as if we're discussing an X-File.  I guess in a way
this is completely unknown territory for both of us.  She smiles as she
jabs a mushroom.  "I guess we could  have sex and never talk.  Or confide.
Tell old stories.  You know."  
We stare at each other for a few more endless seconds.  "I bet the sex is
better if you talk about, you know, feelings," I say finally.  
This amuses her no end.  She doesn't just laugh, she whoops.  And I have to
admit, I am pretty funny sometimes.  "So how do you feel, Mulder?" she
asks, once she's gotten control of herself.  
I take a bite of salad to buy myself some time.  "Nervous," I manage finally. 
"Why's that?"  
"Because I think we're finally getting somewhere, Scully."  
We start in on whatever we've ordered.  I noticed a very admirable blush
creeping up her neck, onto her perfect cheeks.  "What are you thinking
about?" I ask, thinking that now maybe she'll tell me things like this.  
"What if we don't like it?" she burst out.  "What if we have awful sex?"  
I laugh, I feel the tension flowing out of me like honey.  I lean toward
her, bringing my hand up to caress her arm.  "I don't know about you,
Scully, but I quiver whenever you brush up against me, whenever you put
your hand on my arm.  How could sex between us be anything besides totally
incredible?"  
Her eyes seem to darken a shade or two.  


Scully: 
Okay, sometimes I worry about the dumbest things.  We finish the meal,
laugh, exchange long, lingering glances and go back to our motel.  We
return a call to Peck and Miller, banter together.  You know.  There is an
easiness between us, as if something has been decided.  It takes about ten
years off me.  
I shower.  He's waiting for me.  He could have been lewd, lying naked in
bed, leering at me.  He could have been silly, sitting in a chair all
dressed up in a tie and sportscoat.  But he's lying on what may turn out to
be "his" side of the bed, dressed in gray sweats and a long sweep of naked
chest and shoulders.  He was reading The Fortean Times.  "Hey Scully," he
says.  "There's a story in here about a human and flukeman marrying."  
I stand on the threshold of the bathroom, dressed in my sweats and
teeshirt, and my eyes fill with tears.  I love the man so much it nearly
drives me insane.  
He looks up at me and something changes in his face, something softens.  I
think the emotion I see in his face is mirrored in mine.  
I get into bed on the other side, just as if we've been sharing a bed for
years.  I slid in, plump the pillow up behind me.  "Comfy?" Mulder asks.  
I nod, completely unable to speak.  
"I got another Fortean Times," he says.  
I shake my head, showing him my New England Journal of Medicine.  I open to
a random page and read the first sentence about 20 times.  I then feel the
questing, questioning hand of my partner doing some not-so-subtle
exploration of my anatomy.  I lower my magazine.  Mulder is on his side,
caressing my leg, a finger or two straying to my inner thigh.  
I put down the magazine.  So much for props.  

Mulder:  
I fantasized about Scully in every conceivable way, setting, situation.  We
were always wild, passionate, tearing off clothes.  In the motel room that
night we certainly had our moments of passion, wildness, a little tearing
of clothes went on.  But what struck me, midway through our games, was how
damn much fun it was.  We always had trouble playing.  Turns out that sex
is how Fox and Dana come out to play.  We tickled, we laughed, we rolled
around like young puppies just because it was fun. 
The first time we came, watching each other like we had never laid eyes on
each other before, I whispered: "We stay like this, Scully.  Open to each
other.  Vulnerable.  I can make you come.  And God knows you can make me
come."  
"Deal," she whispered back
The other thing that surprised me was how damn horny she was.  Just about
as horny as I was.  And you have to know, that made me even hornier.  An
endless loop that got us hotter and hotter.  But it began with her and her
drive that surprised me, delighted me.  In this, as in so many things, she
matched me.  

Scully: 
I think I turned off some of my boyfriends by being too aggressive, taking
charge, wanting more.  They expected me to be a little more passive, a
little more ladylike.  
Mulder was different.  The more I played, the more I took a chance, the
more I began something, the more he liked it.  It was one of the secrets
that had always slowed me down when I thought of us together:  would I see
the look on his face that I'd seen on some of my boyfriend's?  Some kind
of...distaste...for the very wanton and sexual creature I could be?  
I see nothing like that at all on Mulder's face.  He just calls my name,
over and over, with a depth and a longing that has been my fantasy from the
start.  

Mulder:  
We oversleep.  It's after eleven and the maid is knocking at the door when
we finally come to consciousness.  I think it's the longest I have slept in
a stretch since I was twelve.  We head for the showers, grinning at each
other like kids.  I know there is talking to be done, a lot of talking, but
I keep thinking about her face when she is ready to come and I know I can
tell this woman anything, that I can hear anything from her.  The next act
of our partnership has begun and my only regret is that it took us this
long.  
Peck and Miller call and let us know they have caught Elmer Oakney and two
nephews they believe were the actual killers.  I have to admit I'm
listening with about two brain cells:  all I can think about is Scully.  

Scully:  
We spend two more nights at the Shady Rest, tying up loose ends, before
heading back to Washington.  We eat dinner both nights with Peck and
Miller, we talk about getting together back in Washington.  It seems as
though Mulder and I may actually have made a couple of friends.  The second
night we drive about an hour to a medium-sized city and they take us to a
place Miller knew when he worked in the city.  It's a gay friendly place
where they could feel comfortable being a little more physical with each
other than they could in the small town the Oakneys inhabit.  It seems to
free us up a little, too.  We spend dinner with our hands interlocked or
his arms draped around my shoulder.  "So it's going okay with you two,
huh?" Miller asks.  
"It's very okay," Mulder says, a tone of deep contentment in his voice that
hadn't been a notable trademark of Spooky Mulder.  "I want to thank you
guys," he continues.  "You pointed out something perfectly obvious that I
couldn't see."  
"Happy to be of assistance," Miller said, pouring us all another splash of
wine.  
"Personally, I think all FBI partners should sleep together.  I think the
solve rate would go way up."  
"Here, here," Mulder says solemnly, raising his glass for a toast.  "I'm
certain it's going to help ours."  He looks at me, smiling.  "And if it
doesn't go up, well, we'll just have to have extra sex."  
It's silly but it's been a long case, a gruesome case, and six years of
frustration.  To the amusement of Peck and Miller, we start laughing
uncontrollably, adding one thing and another to our growing theory of great
sex equals great detective brain power.  

Mulder:  
In the middle of the night I get up to go to the bathroom.  When I come
back, I pass the door to the room I haven't even entered since we returned
from dinner.  The door is closed.  I lean against it momentarily, staring
down at Scully asleep in bed.  
For six years, the doors between us always stood in the way.  
Thank God tonight the door is closed, and we're together on one side.
Though I don't know what will happen to us, how we'll resolve these
feelings, where we'll go from here, I'm deeply grateful that we made it
this far.  I ease into the bed and Scully turns toward me automatically,
still deep asleep.  I take her into my arms, smelling her hair.  
Maybe there is no such thing as loving someone too much.


END