Title:  Respite

Author:  Anjou  (Anjou@rocketmail.com)

Posting Date: June 2002

Rating:  R for sexual situations  

Classification:  Established MSR, Angst, mytharc

Archive: Gossamer, Ephemeral; others please ask.

Spoilers: This is a late S6 story and is the fourth 
in the Speechless series. Speechless, Perfect and 
Angel can be found at 
http://home.midsouth.rr.com/xffanfic/anjou/index.ht
ml. A series summary is available in the prologue 
to this posting.

Disclaimer: All X-Files personnel belong to 1013 
and Fox. All other elements are mine. 

Author's notes at the end.

Summary: "Scully, I am not giving up or giving in 
to fatalism. I'm just admitting the possibility 
that we might never get the white picket fence or 
any of the trappings of a normal life." He smiled 
softly to lessen the weight of his harsh words and 
said quietly, "but I'll be damned if I skip the 
honeymoon. I won't let that be stolen from us, 
too." 


*~* *~* *~*
Respite
By Anjou
*~* *~* *~*


*~* *~*
Georgetown
June 21, 1999

  Sometimes, despite all of the years that he had 
lived in D.C., the heat was still a surprise. 
Mulder felt the weight of the warm, humid air as he 
closed the outer door of Scully's apartment 
building against it. The collar of his dress shirt 
was sticking to his neck. A trickle of cold 
rainwater had run down his spine before being 
absorbed by the sticky cotton undershirt that clung 
to his lower back. So far, the rain had done 
nothing to dispel the enervating mass of dense air 
that blanketed the city. Although the air might 
smell a bit cleaner, it seemed even more humid than 
it had been before the rain began a few minutes 
earlier. 

  It was only the first day of summer.

  Mulder sighed as he wrestled the grocery bags 
down the hall to Scully's apartment, the rattle of 
dried pasta keeping time with his shuffling 
movements. The bags weren't heavy so much as they 
were awkward. The inadequate plastic handles had 
ripped on two of them, so he held them against his 
body as he maneuvered his way to her front door.  

  He gave himself a score of 8.4 for juggling 
mastery as he managed to find his keys, get inside 
the door and place the grocery bags on the floor 
without dropping anything. His keys clinked against 
the floor, echoing as he bent over to remove his 
wet shoes. In the stillness of the apartment, there 
was something charged in the air. He lifted his 
head fractionally, his senses on alert. As he 
stepped out of his shoes he slipped his snub-nosed 
pistol from its ankle holster. He planned to meet 
Scully later at the makeshift lab the Gunmen had 
set up for her in their lair, so there shouldn't 
have been anyone at home. But there was no 
mistaking it -- he was not alone. He stood up, 
cradling the gun in both hands as he stepped 
forward on socked feet. The rain-streaked windows 
cast silvery patterns on the walls as he moved 
deeper into her apartment. 

  "Mulder, it's me," her voice said from the 
bedroom. 

  He winced at the two-pack-a-day grit that 
exhaustion had given her voice. "Scully?" He didn't 
bother to hide his surprise. She hadn't veered from 
the routine of working two full-time jobs since 
they'd returned from California four weeks ago. 
Scully had decided that the best course of action 
that she could take in their investigation was to 
apply her scientific training. Since they had both 
been exposed and then inoculated against variants 
of the alien virus, her efforts were focused on 
trying to find antibodies in their blood, in hopes 
of creating a vaccine. Although he was happy that 
she'd decided to take the night off from trying to 
tease out the mysteries in their bloodstreams, he 
couldn't help but wonder what had provoked such a 
decision. He had no reason to assume that it had 
been good news. People celebrating didn't sit in 
their darkening apartments with the lights off. 

  Mulder's shadow stretched across Scully's bedroom 
toward her as he crossed the threshold. She glanced 
up as he approached her. Her exhaustion was 
apparent in the shadows under her eyes and the 
streaks of mascara that she had tried, but failed, 
to erase. She had tucked herself into the corner of 
the oversized armchair on the other side of her bed 
and was curled around herself protectively.    

  "What's wrong?" he asked. He had learned these 
past weeks that it was best to be direct with her. 
If he gave her the chance to avoid answering a 
question, her first response was still to take the 
evasive approach and deny her own feelings. 

  "Nothing's really wrong," she said, favoring him 
with a failure of a smile. She spoke in a tone 
intended to sound measured and not defensive. He 
remained silent. After a moment, she shook her head 
in a gesture of angry denial. "I'm just being self-
indulgent."  She plucked at the arm of her chair.

  He sat down on the bed opposite her and analyzed 
that statement. "Scully," he replied, "you are the 
least self-indulgent person I know. Please tell me 
what's going on." She made a small gasping noise. 
He could see the red flush of hot tears as they 
surged under her pale skin; they made him feel 
beastly. She loathed crying and he had provoked the 
tears she was fighting.

  "I'm just being foolish," she said, her tone 
self-deprecating. She flinched when he reached out 
and captured a tear with his thumb, caressing her 
skin. She sighed and then yielded to the warmth of 
his touch, closing her eyes and pressing against 
his hand. She spoke softly against his palm, trying 
to change the subject. "Were you going to make me 
dinner?  That sounded like groceries hitting the 
floor." 

  "Mm-hmm," Mulder answered easily, "and you are 
avoiding my question. I doubt that my cooking is 
bad enough to make you cry."  He gently nudged her 
face to turn her eyes up to his. She was trying to 
blink away the tears that were still threatening to 
spill over. He wished that it was easier for her to 
be honest about her emotions, but the stiff upper 
lip example of her childhood was firmly ingrained 
in her. He watched her fight for control. 

  She breathed in slowly, then bit off a statement 
with her eyes closed. "I got my period."

  Mulder fought to keep the wrinkle from his brow, 
knowing that a neutral expression always got him 
more information than an emotional one. "Okay," he 
said cautiously. 

  Her head sagged against his palm and she sighed. 
He searched in vain for a clue. Could he have known 
this woman for years and never have known that she 
got the blues when she had her period? 

  She opened her eyes and closed her hand over his. 
"I was late, Mulder," she said in a whisper. He 
felt his heart catch in his chest. As comprehension 
dawned on him, she closed her eyes. "I allowed 
myself to hope." She pulled his hand down into her 
lap and circled the indentation on his left ring 
finger. "It was stupid of me."   

  Mulder's hand slipped from hers. Without warning, 
he picked her up and turned them both so that he 
was sitting in the armchair with her on his lap.

  "Scully," he whispered, "why didn't you tell me?" 
He held her as close to his chest as he could 
before he realized how strong his anguish had made 
him and loosened his grip.

  She hesitated for an instant, then turned at the 
waist and pressed her torso flat against his, as if 
she had suddenly decided to take the comfort he was 
offering.  

  He tightened his arms around her. She wrapped her 
arms around his neck and her chest heaved against 
his as she struggled not to cry. He had to fight 
the urge to make her speak to him. He distracted 
himself by touching her, needing to comfort her as 
much as himself. He slid a hand low on her back, 
spreading it wide across the bend of her waist. A 
small noise of encouragement escaped her as he 
pressed against the ridge of muscles in her lower 
back, kneading them carefully for long minutes. 

  "Scully?" His voice was barely a breath against 
her ear and she sighed. He knew that she wished he 
would just let the subject drop, but he couldn't. 
She lifted her mouth from the skin on his neck and 
pulled back a little to see him. 

  "I didn't notice at first," she said. "We've been 
so busy and I'm not..." she hesitated, "regular." 
He nodded. "So, it took me a few days to realize 
that even by my own standards, I was really late."  

  "How late?" His hands continued working gently 
against the tense muscles in her back.

  "At least a week," she said. "It's not a normal 
cycle that I can track accurately," she added in 
her factual-recitation voice. 

  He nodded and wiped the tracks of her tears off 
her face with gentle fingers before asking,  "When 
did you realize that you were late?"  

  "Sunday," she answered finally after the question 
had hung in the air for a moment. Mulder flipped 
his mental calendar backwards. He blinked in 
surprise and Scully buried her face in his neck at 
the change in his expression.  

  "Scully," he said, emphasizing the last syllable 
of her name. Sunday, he had persuaded her to spend 
the morning in bed with him. He'd pointed out that 
in all the weeks they had been together they had 
never just lain in bed and read the paper, drinking 
coffee, making love and napping while the papers 
crinkled around them. At the time, he had thought 
that her thoughtful expression amounted to her 
consideration of his offer, the argument that he 
was pressing with his hands and his mouth. Now he 
understood that her smiles were not just about the 
joy of spending a day playing hooky. She had made 
love to him that morning in a fierce and tender 
manner, her face seraphic, her focus on him utter 
and complete. It would always be a cherished memory 
for him, but one that would now be marked by the 
separate meanings it held for them. "I wish you had 
told me."    

  "I'm sorry, Mulder, I am" she whispered, "but ... 
I just wanted to hold that little secret inside of 
me for a while." Her voice was rough. "I knew that 
it was too good to be true. I," she swallowed and 
blurted out the next piece of her confession in a 
rush, "I thought that if I said it out loud that I 
would jinx it." She shook her head. "I know how 
foolish that sounds, so I tried not to think about 
it." She broke off again and he heard her throat 
swallowing more tears, "But I couldn't stop 
myself." When she spoke again, her voice had 
thickened. "I wanted it to be true so badly," she 
whispered. The words sounded painfully shoved out, 
as if saying them swiftly would make them hurt 
less. 

  "Me, too," he whispered back and she clenched him 
tighter in her grasp.

  For long minutes, the only sounds were the small, 
wet exhalations of their breath as she finally gave 
into tears and he joined her. 

  "Maybe this is for the best," she said 
eventually. He could not help stiffening. "It's not 
like we could do this now when we have to focus on 
stopping them. It's not like we could keep a baby 
safe."

  Before he could protest, she shuddered in his 
arms, then seemed to gather herself. "Besides," she 
said bleakly, "we still don't know what this thing 
in my neck does. We have no idea what it would do 
to a baby." His arms convulsed around her as if he 
could keep harm away from her with his touch and 
the room lapsed into silence again. "We just don't 
know," she whispered into the empty air.

*~* *~*

  She observed him from the end of the hallway as 
he wiped down counters and loaded the last few 
dishes into the dishwasher. The smell of tomato 
sauteed with garlic and pepper lingered in the air, 
but she had spooned most of their dinner into 
containers. Neither of them had had much of an 
appetite, and after a sad and mostly silent meal, 
Mulder had shooed her away from the kitchen and 
told her to get ready for bed, even though it was 
far earlier than usual.  

  Once again, she fought the impulse to pretend 
that everything was just fine. As she watched 
Mulder, she reasoned that the emotional response 
she had had tonight was just a result of being 
overtired and overworked, compounded by her 
frustration at their lack of progress. She could 
see by the furrow in his brow that he was focusing 
only a portion of his consciousness on the task at 
hand. He was barefoot, dressed in his work slacks 
and the T-shirt he had worn under his dress shirt. 
CNN was on in the living room, but she doubted he 
could tell her what the top story was tonight. He 
looked tired and worn down in the unforgiving light 
of her kitchen, his eyes red-rimmed with sorrow. 
She knew he was worried about her, worried about 
how hard she had been working, how driven she was 
to find a solution to the impending crisis, but the 
truth was it hadn't been anything less than 
frustrating for him either. Every lead that Mulder 
had had about the Consortium's business dealings 
seemed to lead to new dead ends. Companies had 
folded overnight, with critical staff disappearing 
suddenly. There had been more suspicious 'suicides' 
of the type that had claimed Agent Gerard's life in 
California. Whoever was clearing the slate was 
doing an effective job of it.

  She felt a resurgence of the protective anger 
that he so often evoked in her, a desire to slay 
the dragons that persistently bedeviled him. Her 
father's wedding ring, now Mulder's, swung from the 
chain around his neck as he bent over to place the 
containers in the refrigerator and she felt her 
resolve harden at the sight of it. If this was all 
that they were to have, it was more than enough. 
She would not be greedy. She went into the bedroom 
to change.

  In the dim light of the bedroom, her own damp, 
freshly scrubbed face reflected the same bone-deep 
weariness that she had seen on Mulder's. She had 
never been a woman with a rosy complexion, but now, 
between her exhaustion and the fact that she was 
having her period, her pallor was pronounced. She 
smoothed some moisturizer on her skin and looked at 
herself critically in the mirror before turning 
away in resignation. There was simply not enough 
time in the day to accomplish all of the things 
that they had to do and certainly no guarantee of 
success. And if they lost ... she could not stop 
herself from shuddering in dread as she remembered 
the weightlessness of the pod in the Antarctic ship 
and the utter feeling of helplessness as she had 
hung there, waiting.

  The phone rang and interrupted the whirling 
spiral of her thoughts. She could hear Mulder's 
smooth murmur from the kitchen, and gleaned that it 
was one of the Gunmen, probably wondering where 
they were. She stuffed a shirt into her dry-
cleaning bag where it sat next to Mulder's. The 
little signs of domesticity that served as proof of 
their intimacy were everywhere. Aside from their 
period of estrangement in the late winter, Mulder 
and she had spent most nights together since she 
had returned home from New York after having been 
shot. Their work and personal lives had been 
completely braided together even before they had 
become lovers, and they had decided to keep the 
change in their lives private. 

  It surprised her how much she liked finding the 
evidence of their shared life among her things. She 
would have thought that she would have trouble 
adjusting to Mulder encroaching on more of her 
life, but that part of things had been surprisingly 
smooth. The physical intimacy was a relief on a 
number of levels; not only was it a refuge from the 
horrible race against time that occupied her waking 
hours, but it was incredible to be free of the 
burden of pretense under which she had lived for 
years. Emotional intimacy was the most difficult 
for her. Some part of her did not like to be known 
so well; another part of her resented that he had 
adapted seemingly without effort to this new level 
of their relationship. Tonight, when he had asked 
her what was wrong in his soft but blunt manner, 
she'd had to tamp down the resentment that arose in 
her at the cleverness of his opening gambit. That 
wasn't entirely true, she had to admit -- it was 
only now that Mulder was secure in her love and in 
the marriage that they were making that his natural 
tendency had reasserted itself. Mulder had always 
adapted to change better than she. It was a galling 
trait.  

  She sighed, eyeing her rumpled suit critically to 
decide if she could get one more day out of it.

  "Bag it," Mulder advised from the doorway as he 
moved toward the bureau. He took his watch off and 
put his wedding ring on, depositing the now empty 
gold chain on her bureau, then whipped his tomato 
sauce-spotted T-shirt off and tossed it by her into 
the open hamper. He only slowed down when he took 
off his pants, lining up the pleats before hanging 
them up. He carefully arranged his suit jacket over 
them and hung them off the back of her bedroom 
door. She observed this small ritual with amusement 
as she rummaged around in the back of her drawer 
for her comfortable flannel nightshirt. Mulder 
might have an inscrutable filing system and be 
prone to clutter, but he was very careful with his 
clothes -- at least the ones that survived the 
rather prodigious wear and tear of their jobs.

  She undressed herself, feeling the silence 
between them. It wasn't uncomfortable, but notable, 
continuing as Mulder rooted around in his overnight 
bag for something. He barely seemed to notice her 
standing there in front of him half-naked, a 
happenstance that invariably elicited some sort of 
comment from him. She put her nightshirt on, 
counting in her head until he began talking.

  "You don't really believe that it's for the best, 
Scully," he said with no preamble. She had gotten 
to seven before he had spoken. "That's just a 
rationalization that you're offering yourself and 
me, to make us feel better about the situation." He 
turned the lamp on beside the bed and laid a book 
on the nightstand. "But I don't," he finished. She 
didn't answer him, used to the abrupt manner in 
which he continued conversations. Although tonight 
he was focused on what had happened earlier, it was 
not unheard of for him to pick up an interrupted 
conversation from a stakeout they'd been on five 
years before as if there had been no interval. She 
had always prided herself on her ability to follow 
these various and sundry threads of continuing 
conversations as they reappeared.  

  She moved over to the bureau to remove her 
earrings, glancing up at his reflection as he moved 
to stand behind her. He stopped her hands and 
carefully removed the first earring. She held her 
hand out and he dropped the sapphire into it. She 
watched the dim light catching the facets of blue 
and pink in the stone. She didn't answer.  

  "And neither do you," he continued, removing the 
second earring.  

  She sighed as he dropped it into her palm. Mulder 
had given them to her the day that he had picked up 
his re-sized ring from the jeweler. He'd had them 
made for her, milling the posts from the gold cut 
out of his ring. She knew that he liked it when she 
wore them. Luckily, they had become her favorite 
earrings.   

  "It isn't fair," he said from above her and she 
looked up at his reflection in the mirror. His sad 
face was focused on her image, pale and silent in 
her bare feet and baggy nightshirt, the top of her 
head level with his heart as she stood in front of 
him.

  She clutched the earrings in her palm and looked 
his quicksilver twin in the eye as she nodded, then 
leaned back until her head came to rest against 
him. He closed his arms around her. "No, Mulder," 
she concurred quietly.  "It isn't."

  Mulder picked her hand up from where it rested 
over her heart and kissed her loosely closed 
fingers. He held her close for a moment then turned 
them both toward the bed, giving her a gentle push 
toward her side, before he went into the bathroom. 
He fingered the material of her nightgown with an 
arch expression on his face.

  "What?" she asked.

  "Sex-ay," he said. 

  "Mm-hmm," she said, "what were you really 
thinking?"

  He laughed and stepped away, saying, "Oh, just 
that you've finally proved a theory that I 
developed from years of being on the road with 
you." 

  She huffed out a laugh. "It's a very comfortable 
nightshirt, Mulder."

  "And sex-ay," he drawled out as he walked into 
the bathroom. 

  She shook her head and turned back to put her 
earrings away. The dark of her quiet apartment bled 
into the room as she glanced out the door at it. 
All the lights were off. All the life in this place 
was provided by just the two of them, contained 
within the walls of this room. She shook her head 
to clear it of her continuing morbid thoughts and 
climbed wearily into bed, shutting off her lamp. 
She didn't have the energy to read anything 
tonight. She just wanted to sleep, to hold onto 
Mulder and to be held onto. She allowed her mind to 
drift as she waited for him to come out of the 
bathroom. 

  She felt the bed dip as Mulder slid carefully 
under the covers, trying not to disturb her from 
even this uneasy slumber, but she roused and moved 
over to him immediately, laying her head on his 
chest with a relieved sigh. 

  "What did the Gunmen want?" she asked as she 
curled into him. 

  "How're you feeling now?" he said by way of an 
answer, smoothing her hair against her scalp. He 
pressed kisses into the line of skin where her hair 
was parted, then on her brow when she raised her 
face to his.  

  She shrugged and made a face, her eyes barely 
open.  

  "What does that mean?" he asked softly but 
firmly.

  "I just don't know how I feel about anything 
right now Mulder," she answered. When he didn't 
answer her, she sighed and said, "Bruised. I feel 
bruised."

  He nodded above her. "That's a good word for it, 
I think. Scully," he said in a tone that made open 
her eyes in curiosity. "I want to do something 
different." He hastened to clarify what he meant 
when her eyebrow raised. "Even if it's only for a 
few days, I want to just be with you without 
growing cell lines and vaccine trials, trying to 
figure out what the chips are for. I need..." 
Mulder's voice faltered. Scully pushed herself up 
onto her elbow. 

  "What?" she asked. "What is it that you need?"

  He sighed and reached down to lay a finger along 
the line of her cheek. "I need to know that if this 
all ends, that if we fail after all the struggle," 
he said in an almost whisper that grew stronger as 
he raised his voice to override her protest. "That 
we had a few days of peace, a few days where we 
just celebrated this." His hand gestured back and 
forth between the two of them. "Scully, I am not 
giving up or giving in to fatalism. I'm just 
admitting the possibility that we might never get 
the white picket fence or any of the trappings of a 
normal life." He smiled softly to lessen the weight 
of his harsh words and said quietly, "but I'll be 
damned if I skip the honeymoon. I won't let that be 
stolen from us, too." 

  She felt her rising argument die at that 
statement. "Oh, Mulder," she said. Her hand rested 
on his chest, her fingers plucking at the hair that 
grew there. "We really shouldn't. We're so busy," 
she offered half-heartedly. She wanted to be 
convinced.  

  "When aren't we, Scully?" he challenged her. 
"When is there going to be time for just us, if we 
don't make some? I wasn't going to tell you 
tonight, but Byers called to say that the latest 
batch of lines don't seem to be multiplying. He fed 
them and put them under the lights, but if they 
don't take, you'll have to start again, right?"  

  Scully dropped her head to his chest, groaning. 
"Yes," she exhaled against him in an exasperated 
burst. "That is just the perfect ending to my 
perfect day." 

  He let her brood for a moment.  "Does it really 
matter if you start again this week or the next?" 
he asked. "I'm going nowhere with the continuing 
investigation of the people who were burned. Every 
time Frohike and I get to the end of the line the 
company is gone, or never existed in the first 
place and the DOD's got their system locked up 
tight. We might have a promising lead on one of the 
European companies, but that's going to take a 
couple of days for Frohike and Langly to track 
down. I've got to get the end of the fiscal year 
paperwork into Skinner, but I can wrap that up by 
Thursday. We can leave Thursday night."  She lifted 
her head, resting her chin atop the hands she had 
laid against his chest. He smoothed her hair with 
his hands. "Think of it like this: we need to 
regroup before we can figure out what to try next."   

  "Where do you want to go?" she asked, giving real 
consideration to what he was saying.

  He hesitated for a moment. "I'd love to take you 
to Paris or to some tiny tropical island where we 
could just be alone, preferably naked all the 
time..." She favored him with an indulgent eyebrow 
arch that let him know that she was considering the 
possibility, so he continued "but the fact is I 
have to take care of some business on the 
Vineyard."  

  "Oh?"  Her curiosity was piqued.

  "Yes," he answered back, kissing her nose. "I 
need to go see my lawyer and sign a bunch of 
papers. I was going to do it as a day trip, but..." 
he ran his hands up and down her flannel-covered 
back as she shifted into a more upright position, 
bracing her upper torso against his chest. "I 
really need you to be there with me."

  Scully's drew her eyebrows down in consternation. 
"I don't understand what would be left to do, 
Mulder. I already hold your healthcare proxy, your 
power of attorney and I've been listed as your next 
of kin for years."

  He nodded. "That's true," he said. He hesitated, 
then said, "I'd already set things up so that you 
were the beneficiary of all my assets if something 
were to happen to me. Now I'm changing it so you 
have equal access to those assets." 

  This line of conversation made her uncomfortable. 
"I thought you said you weren't giving up," she 
said. 

  "I'm not giving up," Mulder parried. "I'm being 
pragmatic, something you often urge me to be, 
remember?"  He raised his hand and wiggled his ring 
at her. "You say that you consider us to be 
married." She nodded. "This is what married people 
do, Scully, merge their assets."

  "I don't have any assets, Mulder," she said 
quietly.

  He leaned in to kiss her on the forehead. "That 
is not true and you know it."  

  He sighed when they broke apart. "We should go to 
the Vineyard," he said. "It's beautiful there this 
time of the year. It's not Paris, but ... who says 
we only get to take one honeymoon?"  

  For the first time in hours, she smiled. "Okay, 
Mulder," she said, "we'll have our first honeymoon 
on the Vineyard."  

*~* *~*

Aquinnah, MA
June 25, 1999

  Scully watched as Mulder slowly rose to 
consciousness from a restful night's sleep. His 
nostrils flared as the cool, salt-tinged breeze 
wafted from the open window and she marveled as a 
small smile graced his mouth. After all these years 
of strange beds and strange towns, some part of his 
brain still recognized that smell, and this place, 
as home. 

  It was an idea she hadn't ever considered. Fox 
Mulder had always seemed to be a man without a 
country to her, with his chilly and unforgiving 
parents and his wreck of a childhood. It had been 
her expectation that returning to the island that 
had been the site of the defining event of his life 
would not be a happy experience, yet Mulder seemed 
to be content here in yet another house that he had 
never mentioned owning. He was sleeping peacefully 
in his grandparents' bed, the white sheet draped 
over the long arch of his flank. In the weeks that 
they had been together, he had eschewed his 
previous sleepwear of pajama pants and T-shirt. He 
complained that he was too hot since she insisted 
on sleeping under a heap of covers. She hadn't 
thought to argue with him, since the view was too 
lovely. Besides, he was the hot one. He radiated 
heat like a mini-furnace in their bed at night 
while she luxuriated in his warmth.

  She craved his heat in the cool morning air with 
only the sheet to cover her, but for now she was 
keeping her distance so that she could watch him. 
He was lying on his left side, facing the middle of 
the bed with his arms curled around the pillow 
under his head. A movement from him drew her 
attention. He had a small frown on his face as if 
he had suddenly realized that his early morning 
dreams were nonsensical. He murmured something 
unintelligible. His left hand drifted down from his 
pillow and scratched the ruff of hair on his chest, 
then he snuffled once and opened his eyes to half-
mast. The morning sunlight picked up the golden 
hues in them before he let them close again. He 
smiled at her and pressed his calves against her 
toes. She was lying in a position that was a mirror 
of his. She smiled as he blinked at her foggily.

  "What are we doing?" he rasped at her in a voice 
still thick with sleep.

  She shrugged. "Nothing." She reached out a hand 
and smoothed his rumpled hair away from his brow.  
"Interesting 'do," Mulder, she said wryly. 

  He grinned at her. "The messy look is in right 
now, Scully. I can't help it if you're not as hip 
as you used to be."   

  "Hip?" she said in a threatening tone. She ran 
her left hand over the terrain of his body, heading 
down toward the item in question, carelessly taking 
the sheet with it.

  "Hey, hey," Mulder admonished, grabbing at it, 
"you already took almost all of the covers, woman? 
Can't you leave me a little bit of the sheet?" 

  She moved a little closer to him in the bed, eyes 
gleaming. "You're really going to have to work on 
getting your stories straight, Mulder. First I'm 
suffocating you with all the covers, now I'm 
stealing them and leaving you high and dry."  

  "Interesting choice of words there, Scully," he 
waggled his eyebrows at her. "If I were a 
Freudian," he began, but she cut off the end of his 
sentence by leaning over and kissing him. 

  He pretended that her sudden kiss had been a 
pounce, feigning that she had knocked him flat onto 
his back and scooped her up to lay on top of him. 
"Hello," he said amiably when they broke apart. He 
was now wide-awake. "Just browsing? Or do you see 
something you like?"

   She planted her knees on either side of his body 
and raised herself into a crouch, propping herself 
up with arms placed on either side of his head. 
"I'm not sure," she answered thoughtfully, "but I'm 
thinking that the breakfast buffet looks good." She 
bent forward and nipped sharply at his ear lobe. He 
made a noise that could have been described as a 
squeal and wrestled her onto her back on her side 
of the bed.  

  "There's an obvious joke there," he panted. "So 
obvious that even I can't bring myself to say it."

  She laughed at that thought. "You? Avoid an 
opening like that?" Her words were interrupted by a 
kiss and a chuckle from Mulder as he unbuttoned her 
pajama top.

  "And there's definitely a joke there," he chided, 
leaning forward to kiss her breast, "but I'm just 
too much of a gentleman to point it out."

  Scully snorted at that thought and wriggled as 
Mulder kissed the soft skin of her belly, pressing 
a kiss near her scar.  

  "Scully?" he asked earnestly as he struggled with 
her pajama bottoms, "do you think there's a chance 
that someday you might start wearing clothing 
that's a little more easy access to bed?" He blew a 
wet kiss below her belly button and she wrestled 
with him vigorously, determined to keep him from 
zerbetting her again.  

  "Didn't I mention the little breakaway number I 
packed in my suitcase?" she panted. They were now 
draped halfway across the bed and Mulder was face 
down with one arm behind his back in a classic 
arrest position. She was holding the other one 
against the bed. He craned his neck around to look 
at her with interest.

  "Really?" he asked in a voice several octaves 
higher than normal. "This could be an interesting 
honeymoon."

  "Absolutely," Scully said, letting him up. She 
bent forward to kiss him, running a hand down his 
torso as he rolled over. "You'll look really great 
in those satin shorts," she smirked.

  That answer prompted more of a struggle, which 
ended up with Mulder much in the same position as 
before, only facing the top of the bed. She felt a 
little smug at her battle prowess, but wasn't 
completely certain that he was trying as hard as he 
could have. Dismissing the notion, she kissed him 
between the shoulder blades. He shivered when her 
breasts touched his back.  

  "Mulder, I have only one complaint about this 
position," she said. He grunted in response. She 
had trapped his wrists under the pillows below his 
head and he was trying to free them, but years of 
autopsies had made her hands very strong. 

  "What's that?" he asked, after failing to loosen 
her locked grip on his wrist.

  She leaned forward and whispered in his ear, "I 
can't ride you like the pony I always wanted but 
never got if you're facing that way." She released 
his wrists as his breath whistled out of him in 
shocked surprise. She hovered above him as he 
rolled over, then resumed her position from before, 
straddling him.

  He goggled at her for a moment, stunned into 
silence by her innuendo, then recovered enough to 
say, "I'd like to point out Scully, that any side 
benefit you might get from said 'ride' would be 
greatly improved if you actually took off your 
pants."  

  "You think so?" she asked. 

  "I don't like to brag," Mulder said modestly 
while smiling. He reached his now free hand up to 
trace the outline of her right breast then covered 
it. "You know," he said conversationally, "you 
could've had a ride anytime you wanted this week." 
He glanced up at her from underneath his lashes. 

  She trapped his hand over her heart with both of 
hers, not wanting to lose the playful mood they had 
started the day with. Mulder was transparent in 
many ways. He'd often touch her near her heart when 
he was saying something he particularly wanted her 
to hear. "Technically, I think I could get a ride 
any old time I want, couldn't I, Mulder?" she fired 
back.

  "Yes," he said sincerely, then emphasized, "Any 
day, any time."

  "I know that, Mulder," she said, "and my not 
wanting to have sex with you this week had nothing 
to do with anything other than having my period."

  "Are you sure about that?" Mulder asked 
thoughtfully. She resisted the urge to smack him. 

  "Yes," she responded firmly. "It's too messy."

  "Sex is messy," he announced, tugging at her 
bottoms.

  "Not that messy," she muttered, shifting so that 
she could help him.  She was suddenly annoyed with 
her sleepwear and irritated that he was right about 
that, at least. 

  "Have you ever?" Mulder began, but she bent 
forward and kissed him, swallowing the inevitable 
question.

  "Mulder," she said when they came up for air. "I 
missed you. Can we just focus on where we are right 
now? Please?" She flung her pajama top off the bed, 
then looked down at him. He was flushed and smiling 
at her, his eyes full of lust and promise.
 
  "I can do that," he said easily. His hands began 
to roam over her skin, traveling from the sensitive 
skin of her thighs up over her belly. "Oh, and 
Scully?"

  "Hmm..." she murmured, intent upon other matters.

  "Yippee-ki-yo ki-ay!"

*~* *~*

  "What're we doing now?" he asked, after silence 
had prevailed for some time. Scully stirred from 
her light doze. The bright June sunlight poured 
into the room, filtered only by the clean white 
curtains. Now and then, a passing breeze stirred 
them and cast interesting shadows upon the floor. 

  They were still in bed. Scully was curled up in 
front of him, nestled into the bend of his body. 
His right hand drew lazy circles on the soft skin 
of her stomach as they drowsed. 

  "This is good," Scully remarked lazily. "We could 
keep doing this for awhile." He nodded and kissed 
the warm skin of her shoulder. 

  "I'd actually vote for staying in bed, if there's 
a motion on the floor," he said. He continued 
kissing her clavicle as she rolled a little out of 
his embrace and onto her back.

  "Permanently?" she queried. "Or just this 
morning?"

  He shrugged and kissed her neck. "Permanently 
does r sound good, but I'd settle for all day." He 
drew back and frowned at the red marks on her white 
skin. "Although I think I'll go shave first." He 
kissed her and gave her a sharp squeeze. "Meet you 
back here in three minutes?"

  She raised an eyebrow. "What about food?" 

  "We can eat in bed," he offered helpfully. 

  "Uh huh, but what about food?" she asked 
plaintively.

  Mulder grinned in feigned shock at his partner. 
"Who are you and what have you done with the real 
Dana Scully?" he asked.  

  She shrugged. "Oh, please. When you leave me that 
kind of opening..." She shrieked as he blew a wet 
kiss onto her belly and then rapidly shifted out of 
the line of fire. 

  When he returned to the bedroom a few minutes 
later, Scully was sitting up in the bed with a bowl 
of fruit salad in her hands and a basket of baked 
goods next to her. She had a suspicious expression 
on her face. "There's an awful lot of food in that 
refrigerator, Mulder," she said.

  "Yes," he answered. "I am capable of planning 
ahead, you know."

  He jumped onto the bed and she scrambled to pick 
up her bowl, squinting at him with mild annoyance. 
He lay down next to her, but propped himself up 
against the foot of the bed so that he was facing 
her. He rustled through the basket, looking for 
something good.  

  "I know that," she reproved in a mildly curious 
tone, "but I'm just wondering who purchased all 
this food for you."

  "You put clothes on," he said accusatorily, then 
uncovered one of her feet. Her pedicure was growing 
out, a testament to how busy she had been. He 
kissed her little toes, then took a bite of a 
muffin.

  "Mulder, my feet are dirty!" she scolded. 
"Besides, it's just a shirt. I agreed to 'stay in 
bed all day', not 'stay in bed, naked all day'."

  He raised a finger in contention. "Next time I'll 
be more specific with my motions, because frankly, 
staying in bed naked all day was the point. And 
point number two," he raised a second finger, "the 
caretaker, who cleaned the hell out of this house, 
bought all the food. I doubt the top of your foot 
is filthy from your little jaunt into the other 
room."

  "Point three," Scully interrupted and raised her 
middle finger, waving it at him. "A little mystery 
is good for a relationship." He swallowed some 
muffin and began choking. "I mean, you with your 
suddenly appearing real estate and caretakers, 
hardly have a leg to stand on. Plus, you're an 
exhibitionist and it's only a T-shirt."

  He sighed. "See, this is why I don't talk about 
the money. No matter what I say, I sound like a 
pretentious snob." He sat up and spoke in a firm 
voice. "I have a caretaker for this house," he said 
"and for the other ones I inherited. What else am I 
supposed to do? Let them look crummy and piss off 
the neighbors?"

  He watched her digesting the information for a 
moment, and then she nodded. "No, you're right. I 
guess I'm feeling a little weird about this. I 
mean, my family didn't have a lot of money growing 
up, but I think maybe I'm feeling a little put 
because you've always been kind of..." she shrugged 
"secretive is the word that comes to mind. I 
suspected you had money, Mulder -- your clothes 
when we first met, Oxford, growing up here. It was 
a safe bet. I guess I just don't think of you this 
way. I mean, why do you live in that crummy little 
apartment? Why were you worried about depositing 
your check a couple of months ago?" 

  He sighed again. "I support myself. I don't live 
off that money." She watched him with her 
implacable blue eyes, clearly unsatisfied with that 
explanation. He petted the smooth white skin of her 
calf, relishing the curve of her leg. "I admit that 
I have a strange relationship with the money. I 
didn't do anything to earn it other than to be 
born." He shrugged. "In my father's family, money 
validates things for people, informs the way they 
think, how they judge people. I made a decision a 
long time ago that I was not going to be like that. 
Maybe I swung a little bit too far the other way, I 
don't know." 

  Scully looked around the comfortable room that 
they were laying in. It was tastefully furnished 
with a few good pieces, but it all had a truly 
lived in air. This was not an observation that she 
could have made about her erstwhile mother-in-law's 
home. "Did your mother's parents feel that way?"

  "No," Mulder said definitively, "my grandparents 
didn't believe that money determined character." He 
let the room grow quiet; after a while he looked at 
Scully to find her looking out the window with a 
speculative expression on her face. "What?" he 
asked. 

  "It's a beautiful day, Mulder," she said 
wistfully. "It looks so warm and sunny out there."

  "Are you putting a new motion on the floor, 
Scully?" he asked, "'cause I've got an idea, if you 
are..." he trailed off meaningfully as her eyebrow 
raised.

*~* *~*

  "Mulder!" she hissed from the open door of the 
deck. She couldn't believe what she was seeing, 
much less what she'd allowed herself to be talked 
into. He ignored her, continuing to string up the 
hammock between two trees in the wide backyard, 
whistling lightly.

  He was stark naked, his only adornment the 
wedding ring she'd put on his finger a few weeks 
ago.

  "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" he sang 
in a horrible falsetto without turning around. He 
was pulling on the knots on the hammock, testing 
their sturdiness. She could see the long muscles in 
his back ripple all the way down across his 
backside and found herself enjoying the view, 
despite the absurdity of the situation. 

  "I can't do this, Mulder!" she stage-whispered to 
him.

  He dropped his shoulders and sighed, turning 
around as she stepped out tentatively onto the 
deck. She was wearing a toga made from one of the 
bedsheets and stopped to pick up the trailing end. 
"Hey!" he said firmly, "put on a pair of shoes 
before you walk across the deck!" She rolled her 
eyes at him. She wished she'd had a camera to 
record him walking across the aged deck in 
moccasins that appeared to be thirty years old and 
nothing else. It seemed more than a little silly. 
"I'm not kidding," he said, "the deck is full of 
splinters. I need to replace it and I haven't 
gotten around to it." She sighed and put on a faded 
and paint-spattered pair of canvas boat shoes from 
the pile next to the door.

  "Mulder," she said in a low voice, "this was not 
what I had in mind when I said I wanted to go out."

  "Scully!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. She 
jumped. He did it again, this time drawing her name 
out into a Stanley Kowalski-style bellow, complete 
with out-flung arms. He turned and looked around at 
the wide vista of the green yard, hands on hips. 
"You hear that?"

  "What?" she asked. "I can't hear anything."

  "Exactly," he said.

  "Of course, my ears are still ringing," she 
interrupted. "And what exactly, was the point of 
that?"

  "Scully," he said, as if talking to a fractious 
child. He walked to the deck stairs, then slipped 
back into his moccasins and strode toward her as if 
he always walked around outside nude. "I don't have 
any neighbors up here," he gestured around the 
yard, "which is part of the reason I like it so 
much. There's conservation land on two sides of 
this property and the nearest house is acres away. 
Caleb knows that we came here for a honeymoon. He's 
not expecting to see us until we go to sign 
papers."

  She had allowed herself to be drawn out onto the 
deck, but drew the sheet around herself reflexively 
at the mention of names. Mulder tugged on her hand, 
and she stepped out a little further into the open 
air, feeling curiously exposed despite the fact 
that she was actually more thoroughly covered up 
than when she usually left the house. "Although he 
and Elizabeth did invite us to dinner," he said 
teasingly and laughed as she took a step back. "On 
Sunday, Scully. I'm sure we'll be dressed by then. 
Besides, I keep telling you that it's not a big 
deal up here."

  "I don't believe you, Mulder," she said sternly.

  He laughed, but they had made it to the deck 
edge. "I actually have proof of this, Scully. We 
could wander over to just about any of the beaches 
up here if you'd like to view this proof for 
yourself."

  She raised an eyebrow. 

  "Indian Guide's honor," he said. "Up-island is 
clothing optional."

  "And of course, you opted out," she said.

  He shrugged, "Yes, I did." He clambered up onto 
the hammock and she eased up beside him, struggling 
to keep her toga wrapped while he tugged at it. She 
slapped at his hands and he laughed and lay down. 
"I've always hated wearing a suit to swim because 
of it. What?" he asked at her snort.

  She smiled as she poked a foot out of the sheet 
into the warm June breeze. "I was thinking that 
explained the Speedo."

  He chuckled. "No, that was the European 
influence. I had to buy new trunks when I got to 
school and, well ... it was the least of many 
evils."

  "You do realize that most of the other guys at 
the FBI pool thought you were just showing off, 
don't you?" 

  Mulder flashed her a grin, crossing his long legs 
at the ankle after he'd started them rocking. "The 
truth is out there, Scully. I've had a lifelong 
belief in not hiding it."

  She punched him in the shoulder and he chuckled, 
pulling her against him and trying to insinuate his 
hands against her skin. "How's about you shed your 
cocoon, my little pupa?"

  "I'm fine, thanks," Scully said. Mulder sighed. 
"Aside from being modest, I don't want to get 
sunburned." 

  He opened an eye and gazed down at her. "I think 
there's some sun block in the house," he said. 

 "Let's just rest a bit," she said, listening to 
the quiet around them. It was only disturbed by the 
sound of the wind in the grass and the trees and 
the occasional birdsong. It was Mulder's turn to 
doze in the sun-dappled shade of their hammock, but 
he roused when she spoke again.

  "I never pictured your childhood like this," she 
said, adjusting in the hammock so that she was 
lying on her side. She was pressed up right against 
him because his weight made him lower in the 
hammock than she. Mulder's purposeful tugging at 
her sheet had been partially successful. She lay 
only loosely enveloped in her toga. The trailing 
ends of the sheet made a soft noise as they ran 
back and forth on the grass.

  "Lying nude in a hammock?" Mulder asked lazily. 
"Funny, I'm pretty sure I pictured you lying nude 
in a hammock."

  She smiled against his shoulder, "Living in the 
country," she said. "I always think of you as being 
such a city slicker." 

  "Hmm ... " he said, "I like it all. I loved 
growing up here, but I was always so excited when 
we went to Boston or to New York. All the people," 
his voice had a dreamy quality, "rushing around. It 
was fascinating."

  "Did you go to the city a lot?" 

  "We went to Boston to visit my father's parents," 
he said, "but that wasn't the fun part of being 
there. When we'd go to buy school clothes and visit 
my Uncle Thomas, that was fun."

  "You had an uncle named Thomas?" Scully asked and 
added, "and your father's name was William?" She 
leaned against his chest, exposing her shoulder to 
the warm air. "Mulder, why on Earth did they name 
you Fox?"

  He sighed. "Mulder family tradition decrees that 
the eldest son gets named the maternal 
grandmother's last name and the father's first."

  "You're the eldest son," Scully pointed out. 

  "Yes, indeedy," Mulder concurred.

  "So, you're telling me that if we had a son, we'd 
have to call him O'Brien Fox Mulder?" 

  Mulder laughed out loud. "It's certainly an 
argument for only having girls," he said on a sigh, 
but he opened an eye before he kissed her. 

  "I'm OK, Mulder," she stated firmly. "I figured 
there had to be a good reason you had that name," 
she remarked wryly as Mulder groaned  "but what I 
don't understand is that if you liked your 
grandparents, why do you hate your name so much?"
  
  He hesitated for a long time before answering. 
"It's complicated.  My name was a battleground in 
my family. My grandfather thought that it was a 
WASP affectation and even though he had rejected 
the traditions he'd been raised with, the idea of 
naming a child after a living relative rankled him. 
And ... " he paused again, "he disliked my father 
intensely."

  "Because he wasn't Jewish?"  She asked. 

  Mulder shook his head.  "Neither was Leo, 
really." He rushed on when Scully made a demurring 
noise. "No, honestly, Scully. My grandfather 
escaped Holland before he was transported to the 
camps, but when so many of his family and his 
friends didn't, he stopped believing in God. He 
refused to accept that the God he had been raised 
to believe in would allow his Chosen People to be 
slaughtered. Therefore, he believed that there were 
no Chosen People, and no God."  

  Looking pensive, Scully slid her hand across 
Mulder's chest, caressing the sun-warmed flesh over 
his heart. 

  "What?" he asked when she remained silent.

   She hesitated, "So, if it wasn't about 
religion," she asked, "why did your grandfather 
dislike your father?"

  Mulder sighed. "Leo suspected my father harbored 
war criminals in his job for the State Department." 

  Scully made a low note of surprise in her throat. 
"Is that true?" she asked in a neutral tone.

  "I don't know," Mulder said. They swung back and 
forth for a while and Scully drew circles on his 
chest while she waited for him to continue 
speaking. "You saw the pictures of the men that 
used to come to our barbecues, Scully. When I was 
little, maybe 5 or so, Leo said that one of them 
was a Nazi scientist. He was insistent about it, 
even though my father denied it. My father 
convinced my mother that Leo was crazy." He shook 
his head. "Leo never came to my parents' house 
again. Never. Sam and I used to come here to visit 
Katje and Leo when they were here for the summers."

  "It must have been hard for you, knowing that 
your grandfather and father didn't get along."

  "I know it sounds strange to say, but it wasn't. 
It was just the way it was. My father's family 
didn't like my mother. My mother's father didn't 
like my father. My family was always sort of 
fragmented, but I didn't really understand it until 
I was older. Leo wasn't really a kid person, so we 
spent most of our time with my grandmother when we 
were up here."

  "You make it sound like it's so far away from 
Chilmark," she teased.

  "It's a good bike ride," Mulder answered, 
"especially with a slowpoke little sister who's 
stopping to look at every pretty bird and flower 
along the way, and hoping to see the deer in the 
State Forest."

  "You used to ride up here by yourselves?" Scully 
sounded surprised.

  "This is the country, Scully. Only the really 
rich summer people came up here when I was a kid. 
Everybody else was down island in the towns. It was 
safe." He smiled ruefully. "I think that's why my 
father wanted us to live here. He thought that we'd 
be safer here on an island than in Boston or D.C." 
He shook his head. "It really doesn't make any 
sense when you think about it. What?" he said.

  Scully shook her head and turned over in the 
hammock to stare up at the impossibly blue June 
sky. "I guess I just never thought of you this way, 
Mulder. When I think about your family, I never 
think about anybody other than Samantha, or maybe 
your mother. It just all seems so sad." For a while 
the only sound was the creaking of the hammock and 
the whispering of the breeze in the grass. "Is that 
why you don't talk about it?" 

  "Maybe," he answered. He was staring up at the 
high cirrus clouds. "I always hated the pitying 
looks that I got more than the suspicious ones, but 
... none of that happened here. This place," he 
gestured at the yard around them, "was always 
special and even now when my grandparents are gone, 
this place holds that for me." He gathered her up 
against him. "I've never brought anybody else to 
this place, Scully," he whispered, "just you." 
Scully felt herself blushing to the roots of her 
hairline. "This is my secret from the rest of the 
world, and I've never shared it with anybody," he 
kissed her brow, "but you. I love this place, and I 
don't want your thoughts of it to be tainted by a 
past you can only imagine. It wasn't all bad for me 
here. This is where it was wonderful. I want you to 
feel that." 

  She raised her face to his and he kissed her 
softly and then with more purpose when she opened 
her mouth. She reached up to kiss him, wrapping her 
arms around his neck and Mulder finally got what 
he'd wanted all morning as she popped out of the 
coverage of the sheet. He stroked the smooth skin 
of her back as the sun shone down on them and began 
tugging at the sheet that covered her hips as he 
tried to urge her to her back. The hammock swung 
erratically and Scully broke away. "You'll flip us 
over if you keep doing that, Mulder." 

  "Scully," he growled, "take that stupid sheet 
off."

  "I will," she said in a sly voice, "but you're 
going to have to let me drive, partner." At 
Mulder's puzzled expression, she added, "unless you 
want us to end up in traction."

  He sighed and threw his hands out in resignation 
as Scully carefully moved to straddle him. He'd 
managed to end up lying on part of the sheet in his 
effort to unwrap her, and when she pulled it out 
from underneath him she gave his backside a good 
squeeze. She settled herself carefully over him in 
the hammock, the now freed sheet thrown over her 
shoulders like a cape. "Scully," Mulder warned, 
plucking at the sheet. She smirked as she sunk down 
on him, waiting until they were totally joined to 
fling the sheet off her shoulders.

  "Mulder," she murmured throatily, "no one would 
ever believe how long you were celibate or that we 
just had sex maybe an hour ago from the way you're 
behaving."

  He grunted as she levered herself up and down, 
helping her lift her hips as the hammock swayed at 
their motions. She planted her hands on his chest, 
bracing herself as he swiveled underneath her. This 
time, she groaned at the contact. Mulder smiled at 
her saucily, his point made. 

  For her part, Scully felt the perfect sybarite, 
exposed as she was to the open air and the 
sunshine, Mulder's strong hands wrapped around her 
hips, his warm flesh beneath and inside her. She 
felt a surge of unaccustomed joy at the freedom of 
it all and threw her head back, watching a plane 
miles above them slide soundlessly across the 
perfect sky. She turned her attention to more 
earthbound matters as Mulder surged below her. She 
ran her hands along his torso. "Mulder," she said 
to him tenderly. He was watching her intently 
through heavy-lidded eyes. "Thank you."

  "For what?" he asked softly.

  "For bringing me here," she answered easily. "For 
making me take a break. I don't think I knew how 
much I needed this, until now."

  He smiled at her double entendre, but she cut off 
any rejoinder he might have made by grasping him 
with her body. "Scull ..." Mulder gritted out. A 
cooling breeze stole over her skin and she felt 
anew the voluptuous shock of what they were doing 
as the birds sang in the trees around them and the 
hammock swayed steadily. "Kiss me," he implored.

  She bent forward to try to accommodate him, but 
physics was not on their side. Mulder strained up 
on his elbows only to be unable to reach her as the 
hammock wobbled alarmingly. The knotted rope behind 
Mulder's head slid a few inches down the tree it 
encircled. Mulder seemed not to notice, groaning in 
exasperation at not being able to reach her. She 
ground down on him to distract him just as his 
pelvis rose up. The intensity of the contact forced 
her to close her eyes. She had never given credence 
to the notion that the Earth could move, but for a 
second there...

  "Scully," Mulder rasped out urgently before she 
cut him off.

  "I'll kiss you all you want in two more minutes, 
Mulder, I promise," she panted, rising and falling 
against him insistently, "I just can't, right now -
- Oh!" She clutched the sides of the hammock and 
rode out her orgasm, distantly feeling the response 
she provoked from Mulder. In the aftermath, she 
felt boneless with satiation and sank onto Mulder's 
chest to cuddle. Her head was spinning and the 
swaying of the hammock caused her sparking nerve 
endings to reignite now and then. She literally 
hummed with pleasure.

  "Scully," Mulder said. When she didn't respond, 
he repeated her name.

  "I'm resting, Mulder," she said. Her voice 
sounded blurry, even to her own ears. She felt 
dizzy.

  "I appreciate that, Scully, but I've got a little 
problem here."

  Reluctantly, she raised her head to question him, 
only to find herself forced to look down. "Mulder!" 
she said into his reddened face. "How'd you get 
down there?" 

  He was braced against the ground by one arm, the 
other clinging to the edge of the tilted hammock. 
The head end of the hammock now hung more than a 
foot below the foot end. "I've got no complaints 
with the ride, Scully, but can you help me? My big 
head's filling up with blood here and it's not 
nearly as much fun." 

~*~ ~*~

  Hours later, Scully was feeling the effects of 
having gone without sun block for their hammock 
interlude. She wasn't sunburned so much as rosy; her 
skin tingled all over with warmth and she was dusted 
with freckles. Mulder had delighted in thoroughly 
mapping each new one when they'd showered after 
disentangling themselves from the wreckage of the 
hammock. Not for the first time, they'd discovered 
that they had been hanging by a thread.  

  In the late afternoon, they wandered out to do 
errands. Mulder enthusiastically showed her favorite 
spots from his childhood while steadfastly refusing 
to tell her where they were going. Much to her 
amusement, his errands involved shopping at the 
island's General Store. Set at a crossroads with 
little else around it, the store had an eclectic mix 
of gourmet grocery items and typical beach town 
community needs. Exotic coffees, cheap styrofoam 
coolers, organic sun block, infused olive oils and 
plastic flip-flops coexisted peaceably in the same 
store. Mulder's purpose in patronizing this 
particular store became clear when he purchased a 
new hammock, but one with a stand this time. The 
clerk had promised to deliver it to the house at the 
end of the business day. 

  Their next stop was the fish market, the first 
place that somebody recognized Mulder since they had 
arrived on the island. She was rather surprised to 
observe him carrying on a lively discussion with the 
fishmonger about fishing restrictions, who had moved 
to the mainland and all manner of romantic scandal. 
Scully was introduced with no small amount of pride 
to the counterman, who had extended his large, 
chapped hand with a grin, honestly pleased to meet 
her. They'd left the store with some lobster salad 
for dinner and a promise of first crack at the catch 
of the day for the rest of the weekend.

  Although those stores had been relatively close 
together, necessitating only a short walk across a 
sporadically busy street, the supermarket was miles 
from where they were staying. The vista around them 
was mostly that of unbroken greenery, the setting 
far more pastoral than she had imagined an island 
would be. Roads off the main one they were traveling 
on were more common as they moved down-island, but 
there weren't a lot of houses visible. The greenery 
was interrupted by the occasional roadside parking 
lots designed to hold a few cars. The beaches lay at 
the other end of the sandy paths that extended from 
the parking lots, Mulder informed her, necessitating 
a hike through woods and over dunes in most cases. 
She remarked that hadn't seen the ocean since they'd 
disembarked from the ferry and Mulder had only 
smiled. 

  Now, they sat on a blanket on the tiny beach for 
Menemsha township, awaiting the sunset. Scully's 
sandals were off and her newly painted toenails were 
bared to the waning sun. The faded summer-weight 
blanket below them had been worn thin over the 
years, but was a soft barrier between her and the 
rough sand. She was bracketed by Mulder, his legs 
planted on either side of her, his torso behind her 
as he rested against the cooler that had held their 
dinner and the champagne he had poured into their 
chilled glasses. She held her glass up and examined 
the cascade of bubbles that shivered to the surface. 
She had been told once that the mark of an excellent 
glass of champagne was in the compactness and number 
of its bubbles. Her glass was filled with the 
tiniest bubbles she had ever seen. 

  Mulder clinked her glass from above and she took a 
sip when he moved his away. He hadn't offered a 
toast and didn't need to. They knew what they were 
drinking to. She sighed and relaxed more fully 
against him, rubbing his knobby knee with affection. 
He leaned forward and kissed her temple in answer.

  In silence, they watched the sun fall below the 
surface of the water and the sky progress through 
the spectrum of sunset colors before it darkened to 
deepest blue. Replete with excellent champagne and a 
cold supper that had featured the lobster salad, 
they reacquainted themselves with the everyday 
beauty of the world. The beach was virtually 
deserted except for them. Now and then fishing 
trawlers would navigate the nearby channel to get to 
the docks, but other than the occasional noise of a 
boat throttle, they rested in the quiet. It seemed 
to her that the concerns of their workaday world had 
become even more surreal in light of the peaceful 
beauty of their surroundings. Even the ever-moving 
surface of the ocean was becalmed in this small 
harbor, the water only gently lapping at the shore's 
edge. 

  Her perspective might have been skewed by the 
bottle of champagne they had emptied, but it was 
hard, in the face of this serenity, to perceive of a 
world in which monsters roamed and madmen stole 
children for insidious use. With both of Mulder's 
arms around her and the feeling of him breathing 
deeply and evenly in unison with her, she realized a 
kind of grace she had not felt in a long time. She 
crossed her arms over his and hugged them in 
affirmation of her feelings before she turned her 
head and drew his gaze down from the heavens. He 
regarded her with an expression that told her that 
he understood exactly what she felt in this serene 
setting and that he shared, for this one time, her 
point of view in its entirety. She kissed him, and 
poured all the tenderness she felt into it as she 
pressed her lips to his. When she drew back, they 
smiled at one another. He rested his forehead 
against hers for a moment and then, still silent, 
they turned back to watch the stars come out one by 
one.
  
~*~ ~*~

  Mulder was surprised at how much he was enjoying 
showing Scully his childhood home. After packing up 
their picnic dinner, they crossed the island in 
search of dessert in Edgartown. Here, the remnants 
of the island's post-colonial glory as a whaling 
capital were readily evident in the architecture of 
the captain's houses that lined the narrow streets. 
The colorful shops and restaurants that heralded the 
truth of their modern era didn't detract from the 
charm of the scenery, although it did seem 
particularly noisy to him after the calm of 
Menemsha. They stood in line with families and other 
couples, young and old, waiting for ice cream at a 
shop that had opened in the years since he'd left 
the island. It had been Caleb's recommendation that 
they give this store a chance and he was more than 
willing to indulge his sweet tooth.

  Scully was avidly people watching in her quietly 
intense fashion. Even he, the jaded ex-local, had to 
admit the watching was pretty good. They were in 
line with one major movie star, a rock star, a 
couple of corporate titans, a famous academic and a 
few other people who looked familiar, and not 
because he remembered them from his years here. The 
line was long and slow moving; he had forgotten that 
this was the last week of school in Massachusetts. 
The island was already crowded with summer people 
and would only get more so as the days drew closer 
to July 4th. As much as he was enjoying their 
sojourn into humanity, he couldn't wait to get his 
ice cream and take Scully back up island to relative 
peace and obscurity. 

  He poked her gently with his elbow as they drew 
abreast of the featured flavors list and asked, "See 
anything interesting?"

  "Yes," she answered, without looking at the list, 
"isn't that actor supposed to be married to a 
woman?" 

  He chuckled. "Uh-huh," he answered, then added, 
"who knows, Scully? Lots of people have secrets." He 
nudged her with his knee and her eyes twinkled.

  "I just think it's sort of sad," she said. 
"Although I will admit that there is a kind of magic 
in good secrets." She smiled up at him, tilting her 
head to the side. "Do they have any Chubby Hubby?" 
she asked innocently. 

  He laughed and looked at the list, "Well, they 
have all the makings, but not the actual item. 
You'll have to improvise."

  She smiled at him again, keeping her tone light, 
"Who's the older man in the blue shirt that's 
staring at you?" she asked.

  Mulder sighed. He supposed it was too much to ask 
that Scully wouldn't have noticed him with her 
powers of observation.

  "He's retired from the Chilmark police force," he 
answered succinctly, knowing that she would grasp 
what he wasn't saying.

  Her blue eyes turned serious, but a spark of 
something dangerous shot across their surface. "And 
he thought?" she asked elliptically and then waited 
for his nod. "Even though you were 12? Even though 
Samantha was gone and no trace of her has ever been 
found on this island?" Her voice was low, but he 
could hear the anger in it.

  He touched her shoulder, drawing his finger across 
the dusting of gold there. "We both know that 
children have killed, Scully."

  "Not you," she answered without equivocation. 

  He couldn't stop the smile that played at the 
corner of his lips at her words or the surge of love 
that he felt for her steadfast certainty. 

  He turned back to the list and focused on deciding 
what he was getting for dessert. When he felt Scully 
move, he turned around to find that she was now 
standing with her back to him, her arms crossed as 
she faced the end of the line. She stared at Joe 
Mitchell until he turned his attention from Mulder 
and looked at her. Mulder couldn't see Scully's 
expression, but Joe flinched, a just barely visible 
recoil followed by widening eyes. The silent 
confrontation continued for a full minute before 
Joe, red around the collar and the ears, turned and 
simply left the line. Mulder glanced around the 
crowd in which they stood. With the exception of one 
or two observant people, everybody seemed unaware of 
what had just taken place. 

  Scully turned all the way around and began to 
study the list of ice cream choices, her posture 
casual. She picked up his hand and held it over her 
heart as she read over the list with interest. "I'm 
going to have a sundae," she announced in a firm 
voice, "with marshmallow, caramel and fudge."

  "No holds barred, eh, Scully?" he said, around the 
lump in his throat. She looked up at him with eyes 
still darkened by the force of her passion, but 
there was no reproach for him in her gaze. 

  "No mercy, Mulder," she answered. They both knew 
that she was aware of the tears in his eyes, but she 
made no mention of it. He was helpless in the face 
of his feelings for her, and found himself bowing to 
them, despite the fact that they were in public. He 
bent and kissed her once, then twice in rapid 
succession. In answer, she opened her hand in his 
and knit their fingers together as they broke apart. 
Together, they waited.
 
~*~ ~*~

June 26, 1999
Aquinnah, MA

  By the time Scully got out of the house the next 
morning, Mulder had already set up the new hammock 
and discarded the remnants of the old one. They had 
slept surprisingly late, then found other reasons 
not to get out of bed right away. She felt relaxed 
and loose-limbed as she strolled across the deck, 
with a couple of virology journals that she'd been 
meaning to catch up on and a tube of sun block. 
She'd picked the journals up and put them back in 
her suitcase three times before deciding that she 
should read them, even though they were supposed to 
be taking a break. It was a beautiful early summer 
day, although the sky was a bit cloudy in the 
distance.

  She stopped short of the hammock when she saw that 
Mulder was reading what were clearly folders of 
research from the Gunmen. He looked up with a 
sheepish expression that rapidly changed as he saw 
what she was wearing.  From the wolf whistle she had 
received for her modest two-piece, one would think 
that she'd decided to join the nudists he insisted 
could be easily found on the island, sometimes even 
in one's own backyard. He hastily cleared her side 
of the hammock and folded up the research, revealing 
a pair of sun-bleached and ragged cutoff jeans that 
had to be as ancient as the moccasins he had been 
wearing the other day. She raised an eyebrow at him 
and he shrugged.

  "It's a little cooler than it was the other day," 
he said as she settled down next to him. "One 
shouldn't take this as a statement of intent," he 
murmured, kissing her brow, then whispering, 
"they're pretty easy access." 

  She smiled at him, then leaned up to kiss him. "I 
see I'm not the only one thinking of other things." 
She indicated his folders with her chin and then 
raised her own reading. Mulder sighed when he saw 
it. "What have you got there?"

  "I don't know yet," he answered. "Langly's been 
trying to follow the money from all the companies 
that are folding up. Where it came from, where it 
went to..." he shrugged again. "Besides, I was just 
waiting for you to come outside." He stretched down 
and picked up a book she hadn't noticed before off 
the lawn.

  "Busman's Honeymoon," she read aloud. 

  "The continued adventures of Lord Peter and 
Harriet Vane," he said triumphantly. She laughed out 
loud at his delight. "It seemed fitting."

   They spent what little was left of the morning, 
rocking in the hammock while Mulder read aloud. It 
had been weeks since they'd spent any time doing 
this, and Scully felt herself returning to the state 
of drowsy relaxation that had typified her long 
recuperation from her gunshot wound. Lulled by the 
rocking and the sound of Mulder's warm monotone, she 
dozed off before Lord Peter and Harriet were even 
married. When she awoke, it was due to the chilly 
breeze that had pebbled her skin. 

 "Mulder," she rasped. He murmured a response, 
intent on the research. She repeated his name.

  He'd gotten a pencil at some point and was making 
hieroglyphic marks in the margin. "Hmm?" he intoned, 
not taking his eyes from the page.

  "I'm cold," she said and snuggled closer to him. 
He grunted in response and wrapped an arm around 
her. "When did the sun go in?"

  After a moment, he dropped the research on the 
ground next to him with a look of disgust on his 
face. "About a half an hour ago," he answered, "but 
I don't think it's going to rain."

  "Bad?" she asked, pointing at the research with 
her chin. He had closed his other arm around her and 
was chafing her skin. 

  "No," Mulder said slowly, "but I just don't see 
that it's going to get me anywhere." He sounded 
frustrated. "I don't know where to look next, 
Scully." He sighed, then shivered. "It is cold. Why 
don't we go in?" 

  After a late lunch and a shower, Mulder talked her 
into going to one of the up-island beaches for a 
walk. She had wrapped herself in a thick sweatshirt 
to ward off the breeze; Mulder was wearing a thinner 
one and laughed at the sight of them. 

  "I've become a thin-blooded landlubber, Scully. In 
New England, this is not cool weather. I guarantee 
you there'll be people in the water on the beach."

  "Mulder, it's only 60 degrees out there!" Scully 
said.

  "You'll see," he answered. 

  As disinclined as she was to believe the 
impossible, Scully was glad to see that most people 
on the beach were as dressed up as she was. Yet, 
Mulder was right: there were people in the water, 
and not all of them were wearing surf gear, some 
trying to ride the erratic wind-driven waves in just 
bathing suits.

  "A lot different than San Diego, huh?" Mulder 
asked.

  "Mulder, this place is about as different from San 
Diego as Japan was when I lived there." She walked 
over to the water's edge and waited until the swell 
touched her feet, then shivered from the chill. "The 
water must be 50 degrees." 

  He nodded. "It won't get much above 60 on this 
part of the shoreline," he answered. "It's warmer at 
other beaches, but ... not by much. I never knew how 
cold the water was here until I swam elsewhere." He 
turned away from the water to look at her with a 
speculative expression on his face. "What was it 
like, growing up in San Diego?"

  "A lot more crowded than it is here," she said 
finally. 

  "That's it?" he asked. "That's the summation of 
your childhood?"
 
  "Mulder," she sighed, "you saw what it was like 
when you were out on the base."

   He nodded, "Lots of kids," he said, "lots of 
families. It seemed like a community."

  "It was," she said, "but you shouldn't think of it 
like we were really a part of San Diego. The base 
was like its own little world. Everybody's house 
looked the same," she said. "People were always 
moving in and moving out."

  He waited for her to add to her brief assessment. 

  "I don't know, Mulder," she said, "I don't know 
how to characterize it for you. It just was, that's 
all. I don't miss living on the base, that's for 
sure. I like living in a place where everybody's 
house is different, you know?" She kicked at the 
water. "I don't know. I loved the weather, but ... I 
was a fish out of water in San Diego. I was never 
good at laid back and outside the base it was still 
California. And, the Navy kids were generally looked 
down upon. It was the '70s. Vietnam was just ending. 
I think it made us even more insular." She looked up 
at him and shrugged.

  "Uh huh," he said.

  "That's really it," she said, "no deep, dark 
secrets. I was just kind of a serious girl in a 
frivolous world. Being smart and kind of geeky 
didn't help my social life on the base either." She 
turned and began walking down the shoreline again, 
turning back when he didn't follow her immediately.
 
  "Do you hate talking about your past?" he asked.

  "Mulder, are you analyzing me?" Scully asked.

  "Nope," he said easily, skipping a stone that was 
swallowed by a big wave. "I'm just curious to know 
more about you."

  "You know more about me than anybody else in this 
world," she said simply.

  He turned and looked at her wordlessly for a long 
moment. "I guess I just want to know more," he said, 
then added. "You can be very mysterious."

  "Like I said, Mulder -- there's no deep, dark 
secret," she said. "Just typical family stuff."

  He waited her out. 

  "Mulder, it's very annoying when you do that," she 
said with irritation and began walking again. 

  "Are we having a fight now, Scully?" he asked as 
he fell into step with her. 

  She sighed. "Yes. No. I don't know. You know what 
I think this is?" she asked.

  "No," he answered, "I don't."

  "Melissa used to describe this kind of thing as 
the Family Myths," she said. "You know, Dana's 
dependable and Missy's flighty, when in fact, Missy 
was a damned good student who never missed a day of 
school in high school, but the idea was ingrained in 
both of us that I was the more traditional one of 
the two of us." 

  "And the truth was something different?" Mulder 
asked. 

  "The truth wasn't that simple. I was a good 
student, but if I was so traditional, how come I 
ended up in the X-Files Office?" She countered. 
"Melissa and I were different people certainly, but 
we neither of us, when it comes right down to it, 
followed the path that our parents wanted or 
expected from us."

  "Unlike your brothers," Mulder observed. 

  Scully half-nodded, "That's more true of Bill than 
Charles, but that wasn't my point. I think that we," 
she gestured between the two of them, "have this 
myth that lies between us that I'm the more closed 
mouth of the two of us, when we're both guilty of 
the behavior."

  "I know I'm guilty of it, Scully," he said. 
"That's part of the reason I wanted to come here. I 
want you to know these things about me, want you to 
know where I came from. All I'm saying is that I 
want to know these things about you, too." 

  "I'm trying, Mulder," she said. "I really am. I 
promise you that if a good familial anecdote 
surfaces, I'll tell you, OK?" She stared up at him 
until he smiled at her.

  "OK," he said, then placed his hands on her 
shoulders to turn her around. Several yards away, 
there was a naked body lying on a blanket. 
 
  "Told ya," Mulder said.

  "Mulder, one naked guy is hardly proof of 
widespread up-island nudism," she chided coolly. 
She'd seen far too many corpses to be impressed or 
offended by the nudity of a random beachgoer. Mulder 
looked faintly disappointed at her response and she 
chuckled lightly, then took his hand and began 
walking the shoreline again. "So, your grandmother's 
last name was Fox?" she asked.

  "Not exactly," he answered. "It was Fuchs, but my 
father decided to have a little mercy on me and 
anglicize it. I can't imagine how many beatings I 
would have had to dispense in elementary school if 
my name had been spelled like that. Hey 'Fucks'!" he 
began yelling as she giggled and tried to shush him, 
since there were children nearby. "Fox was bad 
enough, thanks," he said in a rueful tone.
  
  "It must have been an excellent name to have in 
the '70s," Scully pointed out helpfully.

  "Oh yeah," Mulder said, then added, "wicked 
excellent", in a nasal New England accent that made 
her giggle again.  They picked their way around a 
rocky outcropping and came around a bend to where a 
volleyball game was taking place. Scully was 
startled to see that the server was a rather famous 
defense attorney. He was wearing a Harvard 
sweatshirt, but seemed to have forgotten to put any 
pants on. His teammates were all similarly attired.

  "Mulder," she said after a moment. "In this one 
particular instance, I really could have foregone 
the proof." 

  He was chuckling at her words. "Is that for the 
record?" he asked.

  "Definitely," she said with a shudder. 

~*~ ~*~

June 27, 1999
Aquinnah, MA

  Scully stood watching the gathering clouds and 
tried to will her feelings away. Although they'd had 
a beautiful weekend, she felt restless and 
apprehensive. She was sure that Mulder was 
misunderstanding her moodiness, ascribing it to 
having spent the day with his longtime friend and 
lawyer Caleb, Caleb's wife Elizabeth and their three 
children. He thought that she was mourning things 
that they would never have, but it wasn't that 
simple. Being back in society only reminded her of 
all that they had to lose; the weight of what they 
must accomplish was pressing on her. They had 
planned to spend this last evening on the hammock, 
but with the gloom settling over the sky, even that 
small hope seemed useless. Not that she found the 
idea of spending a night under the stars as romantic 
a notion as she once had. The stars were full of 
secrets, mysteries that she doubted she could 
decipher. For more than fifty years, scientists had 
secretly toiled, trying to create a vaccine, and yet 
had come no closer to a cure for the alien virus now 
than when they started. It had occurred to her more 
than once over the past month that it was hubris for 
her to assume that she could find the answers -- but 
she could not stand by and do nothing. She could 
not, by her inaction, become like the collaborators. 

  A cluster of stars became briefly visible amongst 
the thickening clouds. Their fleeting transit across 
the clear space of sky reminded her of a clock, 
inexorably ticking the minutes of her world away. 
She had hoped to be able to keep the stars at bay 
for just one more night, but alone on the deck, a 
dark foreboding held her in its grip. 

  She tried to push her thoughts away as Mulder came 
on the deck to join her. She just wanted one more 
night of peace. He was quiet, approaching her 
without even a quip, assessing her mood. Finally, 
she turned to face him, unable to push her mood 
away.

  "What's up, Scully?" he asked.

  "I'm worried," she answered without hesitation. He 
nodded slowly. In the half-light, she could see his 
eyes darken at her words, but he kept silent. "We've 
had a beautiful weekend here, Mulder," she 
continued, "a real respite from our lives, but..." 
she turned her gaze to where the secretive stars 
loomed above them, hidden behind the clouds and then 
looked back at him.

  "Tomorrow we go back," he said simply.

  "Yes," she answered and then sighed, "and what if 
I can't..." the sentence trailed off into the humid 
evening air.

  He took her into his arms, tucking her into the 
space under his chin. "I know that I'm not the 
scientist in this marriage, Scully, but I want you 
to know that you don't bear this burden alone. The 
only way that we'd really fail is if we stood aside 
and did nothing, knowing what we know."

  "I know that, Mulder, I do," she said, leaning 
back so that she could see his face "but the fact is 
that if we don't find a vaccine to forestall a viral 
invasion, who will? I accept that we have to try and 
I'll repeat what you said to me last week -- I am 
not giving up." She paused. "But I am so scared that 
we won't be able to stop it." She broke from his 
embrace and looked out over the peaceful greenery 
around them, "And that everything we know, 
everything we remember, could just be stripped 
away." He put his hands on her shoulders, and when 
she leaned back against him, wrapped his arms around 
her.

  "I wish there was something I could say that would 
make everything better," Mulder said finally. "I 
don't think I can truly comprehend the pressure that 
you are under about the vaccine, but I feel it. I 
feel the clock ticking." He shook his head. 
"Practically every lead I've had since California 
has been a dead end. Their companies have been 
disappearing, one by one, taking whatever answers 
they had with them. I don't understand it anymore 
than you do, Scully, but I do know this: but I have 
faith in us. I have faith in you. And I have faith 
that we are not alone in this."

  She turned in his arms. "What do you mean?"

  "I can't believe..." he began, then said firmly, 
"I refuse to believe that it's just us and the 
Gunmen trying to stop this. I can't believe that 
there are so few moral men and women among us that 
everybody who knows of this would sell out the world 
to save their own skin for an uncertain future. I 
won't believe that."

  She couldn't help the smile that broke over her 
face. "Mulder! How uncharacteristically optimistic 
of you!"

  Mulder smiled sheepishly. "I've got a few 
surprises in me yet," he said. "Or maybe it's just 
the way we work, you and I. If you can't be hopeful 
for humanity, I will." He shrugged. "I wouldn't be 
doing this, Scully, if I didn't think the world was 
worth saving."

  She felt the sting of tears in her eyes. "I love 
you," she said. 

  His laugh this time was heartfelt. "You'll never 
know how much that means to me," Mulder answered 
softly. "Although ... " he said after a moment, "I 
could try and show you."

  She laughed at him. "So, this was all a come-on?"

  He pouted, "You know me better than that." She 
raised an eyebrow. "Scully! I have some shame. But 
you know what I was thinking about when we were with 
Caleb and Elizabeth?" 

  She was bemused by the sudden turn of his mind, 
and had no idea where he was going, metaphorically 
speaking. He was, however, extending his hand to her 
as he stepped down the deck stairs and led them over 
to the gently swaying hammock. "It's going to rain," 
she warned darkly.

  "Not yet," Mulder answered, looking at the heavens 
above them. "Not for a while." He sat down and she 
stood between his legs after a moment. "I was 
thinking about how we skipped so many of the good 
parts, you know?"

  She was well and truly puzzled now. "Aren't we on 
our honeymoon, Mulder?"

  "Yeah, we are," he said, wrapping his hands around 
her hips. "But being with Caleb and Elizabeth made 
me remember what it was like when we were all 
teenagers together." Scully raised an eyebrow. "No, 
no, the good parts -- I admit that I have no desire 
whatsoever to return to that part of my life, but 
what I was thinking about was," he leaned up until 
he was just a breath away from her and stopped, 
"kissing. Remember kissing? I don't know about you, 
Scully, but I remember kissing for hours and hours."

  She laughed. "That's very sweet, but I was under 
the impression that you were pretty fond of doing 
other things for hours and hours."

  "I am, I am," Mulder said, leaning back, "but 
don't you remember what it was like back before sex 
was a real possibility?" he asked. "How'd you go out 
and just kiss and kiss until your lips were 
swollen?" He was smiling at the memory, his eyes 
traveling warmly from her eyes and back to her mouth 
as he ran his hands over the curve of her hips. She 
leaned into him, placing her hands on his shoulders 
as he continued. "It had its own rhythm, almost like 
the equivalent of making love to somebody."

  Her eyebrow would not stay down. "The equivalent, 
Mulder?"

  "You know what I mean," he said. "I know you do. 
There was a peak to it, and then you'd calm down. 
But..."
  
  "You wouldn't stop kissing," she finished.

  "No," he said and waited a beat before speaking 
again in a low voice. "Sometimes, I want to be that 
innocent again. But I'd only want to be that 
innocent with you." 

  She had only to tip forward the slightest bit to 
touch his soft lips. Their lips met again and again, 
kissing just for the sake of the act itself. And 
there they stayed, under the secretive stars, until 
the rain came.  

~*~ ~*~

  Mulder awoke just before the thunder rumbled 
overhead, unsure of what had awakened him. Scully 
had left their bed, and her absence, rather than the 
encroaching storm, had roused him from sleep. The 
sound of a driving rain became clear as the thunder 
rolled away. It was oppressively humid in the room, 
although the breeze was cool when it reached him 
from the opened window. He flinched as the lightning 
flared anew, lighting the room for one instant. The 
water glass he had raised to tender lips halted as 
the thunder roared again, nearer this time. 
Something was wrong.

  The scent of ozone was still thick when he pushed 
the sheet away and bolted from their room, the robe 
Scully had lain across the foot of the bed clutched 
in his hand. Where had she gone without any clothes 
on? The light switch in the bathroom flipped, but 
the room remained dark until the next bolt of 
lightning revealed what he already knew. She was not 
there. He could hear the sound of his heart pounding 
in his ears as he yelled her name, stubbing his toe 
in the suddenly unfamiliar dark of the house. The 
crack of thunder was his only answer, the thickening 
storm like a counterpoint to his own rising panic.

  "Scully," he said, clutching her robe in trembling 
hands. He remembered her feelings of foreboding 
earlier in the evening and how he had tried to 
soothe them away. "Scully!" he yelled to the empty 
house. He should have listened. The lightning 
flashed again and the skin on his scalp rippled when 
he saw the rain beating on the kitchen linoleum as 
it streamed through the open deck door. 

  Ingrained habits abandoned in his fear, he pounded 
barefoot across the splintered wood, slipping when 
he hit the sodden grass. The empty hammock was 
illuminated by the next flash of light as it 
teetered precariously in the wind. "Scully!" he 
yelled into the teeth of the wind, his voice blowing 
back at him powerlessly against the force of the 
storm. He whirled around in the darkness trying to 
will himself to see something, anything and turned 
back to the house in desperation, hoping that she 
would appear in the doorway, small, cold and 
befuddled as to why he was standing outside naked in 
the rain holding her bathrobe.
 
  As he stared at the empty doorway, from the corner 
of his eye he saw a flash of white purer than the 
magnesium-stoked show surrounding him. He plunged 
into the woods headlong after it, half-mad with 
worry. This was no sleepwalking incident. In the 
weeks that had followed the recent callings he had 
wondered time and again how she had escaped the 
dominion of the chip that had saved her life. He had 
half-convinced himself that they would never dare 
take her again, even as he clutched her to him in 
his sleep. Why had he let go tonight? Why had he let 
his guard down here of all places, the place where 
it had all begun?

  The tree roots and branches gave way to the field 
of sawgrass that led down to the beach. As he burst 
from the tree cover, her sodden robe still clutched 
in his right hand, its trailing sash muddied by the 
woods, he saw her, moving as if in a purposeful 
dream, walking steadily toward the beach. She was 
streaming water from her fingertips as she walked 
stiff-armed into the wind, her cap of red hair 
slicked seal-black against her skull. He screamed 
her name in agony as he ran across the field, the 
sharp edges of the grasses stinging his burning 
calves. The field was sodden and the mud sucked at 
his feet as he ran, trying to slow him down further. 
Mulder pushed on, fear of her losing her to the 
precipice or to the sky speeding his pace. They 
would not take just her this time. He refused to be 
left behind. 

  When he overcame her, she resisted him turning her 
around. The lightning cracked overhead and he 
flinched from its closeness, imagining alien ships 
looming in the eerie light. He stepped in front of 
her and she looked through him, continuing to take 
steps forward. "Scully," he pleaded, knowing that 
she was beyond hearing him. "Scully." Another bolt 
of lightning illuminated her pale face, devoid of 
expression while the thunder belched above them. He 
picked her up off the ground and wrapped his arms 
around her, while her legs moved restlessly, still 
mimicking movement. 

  "Where are you going, Scully?" She didn't answer 
him and he felt the weight of fear converting to 
tears in his chest. He began to walk back toward the 
house and she struggled against him, a thin animal 
wail escaping her lips that scared him more than the 
raging storm around him. "No, Scully," he said 
gently in her ear, "they can't have you." She 
snarled at him, actively seeking to free herself. He 
held her above the ground and continued moving her 
away from the path down to the beach. After all the 
years of cheap shots he'd taken fighting criminals 
he should have been prepared, but this was Scully -- 
when he felt the sharp edge of her knee against his 
groin, he was lucky that he'd already raised a leg 
to take a step and didn't take a full-strength blow 
from her. As it was the impact staggered him and he 
dropped to one knee and lost his grip on her.

  Calmly and utterly without affect, she walked 
around him and returned to the path she had been on 
before he diverted her. He felt the hair stand up on 
the back of his neck from more than the electricity 
and the air, but had enough fight left in him to 
drop her robe and reach back blindly with his right 
hand. He caught her ankle as she lifted it out of 
the sucking mud and clamped onto it with a vise-like 
grip, not caring for the moment when she lost her 
balance and fell into the mud herself. Her forward 
momentum was broken, that was all that mattered. 
Still, she fought against him, her clawing, crablike 
movements against the ground illuminated by the 
ever-present lightning. He was crying openly now as 
he struggled to gain control over her. He levered 
himself around painfully and tried to get a hand on 
her rain-slicked skin as she twisted and fought 
against his bruising grip above her ankle. He would 
leave a mark there, he knew. He got an arm around 
her waist and let go of her ankle, crawling over her 
as she thrashed to get away from him, their posture 
on the ground like some repulsive perversion of 
their lovemaking. The lightning strobed around them 
as the thunder roared. As he fought her increasingly 
frantic struggles to free herself from his bruising 
grip, he saw it, off in the distance. The ship 
loomed across the sound near the mainland, the 
massive circle of it a scar against the black and 
cloud-filled sky. It was miles away, hovering. 

  It hadn't come for her yet, but Scully was 
determined to get to it. If he hadn't found her she 
would have thrown herself down the cliff face, into 
the open ocean and drowned in the rough seas, 
compelled to get to it. "No!!" he screamed into the 
black sky. "No!" They didn't care who lived or died 
by their deeds or how. By water or by fire, they 
would have killed her. As if hearing his anguished 
cries, the great ship moved. To Mulder's fear-filled 
eyes, it seemed to be turning toward them. "No!" he 
screamed again, scrambling to move Scully away. He 
bent to pick her up and her foot caught him in the 
face, but he didn't let go. He wrapped her awkwardly 
around the front of his body, and ran for the trees 
while she tried to climb over his shoulder, driven 
relentlessly toward her goal. He reached back with 
his left hand and grasped her by the back of her 
neck, holding her knees immobile against his body so 
she couldn't get purchase against him. He felt the 
crackle in the air just before the world turned 
white and he knew no more.

*~*

  "Mulder?" Scully could feel herself tipping over 
more and more into the realm of hysteria as the 
minutes passed and he did not awaken. She was 
bruised everywhere and soaking wet; she was naked 
and they were outside with the house nowhere in 
sight. There was nothing of comfort in sight. She 
shivered convulsively and gripped Mulder's torso 
tighter to hers. This was entirely too reminiscent, 
but this time ... 

  The smell of something burning singed her nostrils 
and Mulder would not wake up and they were, they 
were -- her mind would not comprehend it, but there 
it was, hovering above them in the distant sky. "I 
see it, Mulder," she cried into the wind, clutching 
him to her chest. "I see it." She chanted it in time 
with her rocking. "Mulder, please, don't let them 
take me." 

  The words she wasn't truly conscious of uttering 
seemed to have penetrated and Mulder came up 
swinging, breaking out of her grip. In the darkness 
of the continuing storm, he seemed to have trouble 
locating the looming danger above them at first. He 
hissed in pain as she grabbed his hand. "What the 
hell happened?" he screamed to be heard above the 
wind. "Did we lose time?" He thrust her away from 
him, trying to examine her as she shivered in the 
unrelenting rain. 

  "I see it, Mulder," she answered. She was shaking 
convulsively. He pulled her roughly toward him with 
a sob. The ship hovered almost uncertainly in the 
distance, sweeping back and forth over the same bit 
of water offshore, before turning toward their 
exposed position on the bluff. 

  "Get down, Scully!" he yelled, knocking her into 
the thin shelter of the long grasses. The ship swept 
over the bluff at a high altitude, once and then 
again, before it headed back over the water and then 
... disappeared.
 
  "Mulder," Scully said in a trembling voice, 
"what's happening?" 
 
  He stood up cautiously, crouching over her as if 
his naked flesh could shield her from the certain 
doom of the ship. He scanned the skies and she 
looked up herself. The storm had begun to lighten, 
as if the weather itself had been created to hide 
their unwelcome visitors from view. She could see no 
evidence of them or their ship in the thick dark 
above them. "I don't know, Scully. I thought they 
were here for you, but ... why didn't they take 
you?" He turned and looked down where she shivered 
next to him. 

  Her feet were bleeding, her nails broken and where 
she wasn't covered with mud, she was bruised. "Let's 
get out of here, Scully," he said firmly. He stepped 
away from her and looking intently at the ground. 
She moved with him instinctively, not willing to 
break body contact as he picked what looked like her 
bathrobe off the muddy ground. "I'm sorry, Scully," 
he said, wrapping her in it, "but it's better than 
nothing at all." He stooped to pick her up and she 
tried to stop him. 

  "I can walk, Mulder," she said with an edge of 
pride in her tone. 

  "Look at your feet, Scully," he urged patiently. 
She couldn't help the shudder that moved through her 
at their bloody and raw state. "Let me help you." 

  "Why aren't your feet all cut up like mine, 
Mulder?" she whispered to him in a voice that 
betrayed her fear. 

  She could feel his fear radiating back to her as 
he answered her. "They were calling you, Scully," he 
said urgently. "You didn't care what you were 
walking on. I did a little bit better than you." 

   She relented but as they made their way into the 
woods at the end of the meadow, he stumbled over a 
tree root and almost fell on top of her. She made 
him put her down. In silence, they looked at the 
enormous tree that had been shattered by lightning. 
The seared pulp in its split trunk was still smoking 
in the cooling rain. She walked slowly, gingerly 
favoring her right ankle, which throbbed 
unmercifully. It seemed to take forever to get back 
to the relative shelter of the house. When they 
finally did, the electricity was out. 

  "Is there any hot water?" Scully was dripping on 
the rag rug in front of the fireplace as Mulder 
tried to light the kindling with his wet and 
trembling hands. 

  He nodded as the fire caught. "I can light the 
furnace," he said, then went outside to reach the 
furnace under the porch deck. 

  Scully followed him to the door, unwilling to let 
him be out of her sight. When he reappeared on the 
deck a few minutes later, her voice was tight with 
anxiety. "Why didn't they take me, Mulder?" she 
asked again.

  He shook his head helplessly and pulled her close, 
trying to put some color back into her skin, but she 
winced when the robe chafed her raw flesh. "C'mon," 
he said, leading her to the bathroom. He started the 
shower and went back to the living room to collect 
the candles scattered throughout the room. They were 
dusty with age, but sputtered to life. Scully stood 
still in the center of the bathroom, watching him 
and shivering. He closed the door and turned to her, 
easing the robe off of her as he helped her step 
into the tub and under the flow of the water.

  In the weak light, it was hard to assess where the 
dirt ended and the bruises began but the warm water 
began to wash the worst of the grit off. She 
flinched and grabbed at the back of her neck when 
the water ran over it.

  "What?" he asked.

  "Hurts," she answered, raising her eyes to his. 
She was clutching her implant scar. He turned her 
under the shower's spray and lifted her hair. "What 
is it, Mulder?" 

  "It looks like a burn," he whispered fearfully.

  She grabbed at his hand and he yelped as his ring 
made contact with his fingers. She turned and held 
his hand up in the dim light. The blistered red skin 
around his ring was clear. "So does this, Mulder," 
she said, slowly. She fingered the scar on her neck 
thoughtfully, then turned to look at him. "Mulder," 
she said "were we in the meadow when that tree was 
struck?"

  "What?" he asked.

  "I woke up in that meadow," she answered. "I woke 
up and you were unconscious. What happened just 
before you passed out?"

  He shivered, even in the warmth of the bathroom. 
"I was carrying you, trying to get you away," he 
swallowed convulsively and she wondered how hard she 
had fought him. "And then there was a bright 
light..." he trailed off. "I thought it was the 
ship."

  "Did your ring make contact with the back of my 
neck?" she asked him.

  His stricken face was her answer. "Oh my God," he 
said.

  She drew him into her arms, "Don't jump to 
conclusions, Mulder," she said. "You may have just 
broken their transmission."

  "Scully," he said in anguish.

  "Don't jump to conclusions," she said again, 
trying to will herself to do the same. "Don't. Byers 
has been working with the chips, and we have lots of 
them now, Mulder."

  He was clutching her to him. She could feel his 
heart pounding as he said her name. "I'll be all 
right, Mulder," she whispered, "I promise. I'll be 
all right."

  For once in her life, she truly wanted to believe.


*~* *~* *~* *~* *~* *~* *~* *~* *~* *~* *~* *~*



Part 5 of the Speechless series, Justice, will begin 
in July. The WIP will be available at 
http://home.midsouth.rr.com/xffanfic/anjou/index.htm
l. I promise I won't take 2 and 1/2 years to post 
the next part. 

Although the location of the story is the same as my 
story entitled Aquinnah (and one of the characters 
in that story is mentioned), Respite takes place in 
a different universe than Aquinnah. I hope that's 
not too confusing. I had actually written the first 
version of this story and created Caleb and his 
family before I wrote Aquinnah. Caleb, and other 
characters familiar from Aquinnah, may very well 
appear in Justice. 

My sincere thanks to my sister Suzanne for her 
patience and assistance. Suzanne has read more 
versions of this story than you can possibly 
imagine. Thanks also to Sarah Segretti, who came in 
for the last round of editing and pointed out all 
the stuff that still needed fixing. And, of course, 
thanks to Shari and Kris for making me such a 
beautiful home for my stories.

Last but certainly not least, I have to thank all of 
you who have written me over the past two years and 
urged me not to give up. I promised that I wasn't 
abandoning the story, but I do apologize for having 
taken quite so long. This story is dedicated to amy 
(roda93@aol.com), who has been persistent but kind 
in reminding me that she was still waiting.

Those of you on my former mailing list should know 
that Yahoo no longer allows users to create their 
own mailing lists, preferring that those functions 
are carried out by Yahoo!Groups. If you received 
only the prologue for Respite, it isn't because I 
didn't try to forward the rest of the story to you; 
Yahoo stopped me. 

As always, feedback is welcome at 
Anjou@rocketmail.com