New Submission: Bruised and Bloody
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Summary: Two agents, one pizza delivery vampire and a wooden
chair leg. Post episode thoughts from Bad Blood.
Spoiler: Bad Blood and some small mentions of season five
Keywords: vampire
Rating: PG
Category: S H UST/MSR (you decide--it's not that blatant)
Disclaimer: Like I could leave this one alone? HAH! So I took the
characters, beat me with a wet noodle. So I took the plot (a great
one, too)--shove bamboo up my nails! So I had a great time, but I
made no money. Now, leave me alone :)
Comments: please
Archive: anywhere
Dedicated: Susan for editing and all the nice people who make me do these
pieces

Bruised and Bloody (1/2)
by Vickie Moseley
vmoseley@fgi.net

He still wouldn't look at me as we got off the plane. Three hours in
in the air, one hour lay-over in Atlanta because God forbid we get a
non-stop flight, and he still found ways to ignore my gaze. Every
single time.

I didn't realize how much I depend on looking into his eyes until he
refused to let me do it.

OK, maybe it was my fault he was so mad at me. I mean, looking
back, I probably could have been more supportive. I'm sure that
when Mulder was reaching for that rock to pound the leg of the
motel chair into Rickie's chest, he was doing so because he thought
_we_ were in extreme danger. I had just shot four rounds at the
kid, point blank, for the same reason.

But a stake through the heart? Give me a break! A simple flying
tackle and cuffs couldn't have done the trick?

So I told Mulder the only thing that came to my mind when I broke
through the underbrush and found him, a little bloody, finishing his,
uh, technique. I said I thought he 'over-reacted'.

You would have thought I'd accused him of performing sodomy on
the high altar with the Bishop. No, Mulder could have found
humor in that. It was much worse than that.

You would have thought I'd said I didn't trust him.

But that was just the beginning. I only wish I'd known.

So, anyway, the ride back home, all the way from scenic Chaney,
Texas, was a complete and total bore. Mulder somehow managed
to get us seated in separate rows, and I found myself sharing my
row with two teenagers, on break from college. Two very horny
teenagers, who seemed to think that a row of airline seats was the
90's equivalent of the balcony of the Bijou Theater. At one point, I
almost offered the couple a condom. And some advice on the evils
of pre-graduate sex.

But once we were on the ground, things went to hell in a
handbasket rather quickly.

He had to talk to me in the car. I mean, I was driving and I had him
captive. And I really was trying to understand what had just
occurred. Here was the man who had taught me EVERYTHING I
know about being a field agent, about making a 'good' arrest so
that it's not a waste of time, about making sure to keep your head
when everyone around you is losing theirs (visions of Chaco
Chicken flooding my memory)--when this man drives a stake, a
wooden stake through a teen ager's chest, that tends to upset me. I
really did ask what had happened politely.

The first time.

By the eighth time, I have to admit, I probably had lost my temper.
But he was being so damned uncooperative. And totally
unresponsive.

He didn't even try and defend his actions. He kept repeating "It's
over, I don't want to dwell on it." By the tenth time he said that,
getting more and more agitated each time, I think I'd gotten the
hint.

I dropped him at his place to change. He looked like he'd spent the
night in a hog lot. I told him I'd meet him in the office in an hour.
I turned the car around and made my way back to the office.

I never realized what a bitch she could be. No, scratch that. I think
I've always known it, but luckily, I've been able to deflect her
bitchiness most of the time. Oh, there are plenty of times when she
directs that 'Superwoman Laser Look' at me and I actually feel the
blood leave the lower reaches of my anatomy. It probably travels
to my heart, where it quivers for a while before risking a look out.
But by and large, Scully is a reasonable person.

Except when she smells blood.

Over-reacted. Over. Re. Acted. OK, I can see where to some,
my actions in the resolution of this case might seem a little extreme.
A bit far to the end of the spectrum. A tad off the beaten path. But
hell, she all but accused me of murder out there in those woods.
She should have been kissing my feet! After Ricky finished
'feasting' on my AB negative red blood cells, I'm certain he would
have gone after Scully for dessert. So I wasn't just protecting
me--I was protecting my partner as well.

Hell, she was acting like she was on the rag the entire trip. The
moment she walked into the office, I could tell. But I made a quick
check of the calendar and either she's early or it was something else
bothering her. Broken nail. Ran out of eye liner. Pantyhose riding
up the wrong side of the OK corral. Take your pick. Yeah, even
'90's guys' can be gross when pressed.

She came into the office pissing and moaning that we had to leave
town again. Well excuse me, Miss High and Mighty. If I could
find 'X Files' walking around the streets of DC everyday, maybe
we would have nice 9 to 5 jobs where we never left our comfy little
homes. But, even given the higher than usual number of
'weirdness' types we have here in the Capitol City, some of our
work is best done in the field. Of Kansas. And Washington state.
And even, god forbid, Chaney, Texas.

I certainly would never _pick_ Chaney as a hot spot for vampires
and vampire activity. But then, I led a sheltered childhood. I can't
remember running into a single bloodsucker in my entire time on
the Vineyard. Of course, I was never invited to the Kennedy
compound.

But it's not that far-fetched to find vampires in Chaney. It really
isn't that far from New Orleans, and if we are to believe Ms. Rice,
that _is_ a hot bed of vampires and has been for about a couple
hundred years.

But Chaney?

Oh, well, it doesn't matter. He was there. He was there, and he
tried to kill me, first by drugging my pizza. Scully's pizza. Scully's
pizza that I ate and I still think it was only the drugs which I
ingested that stopped her from beating me senseless for eating her
pizza. So, I was drugged. Not an unusual occurrence for me.
Waking up with a pimply faced kid with green glowing eyes and
fangs taking a bead on my jugular, now _that_ is something I don't
come across every day. When he went for my throat, my life
started flashing before my eyes.

Or was that the tracer off Scully's bullets?

Yeah, right, she accuses me of murder, well, almost and there she
was, Ms. Annie Oakley, pumping lead into the kid's chest like it
was free time on the shooting range. Direct hits. Two of them that
I could see. Damn, I'm glad she's on my side. Especially since the
one and only time she's fired at me, she aimed high. Could have
been _much_ worse.

But as it was, after I recovered enough to run after the guy that just
tried to drain me of a vital resource, I did what any sane person
would have done.

I drove a stake through that sucker's heart. After that, I just didn't
want to talk about it. But Scully did. All the way back to the
motel, all the way through the interview with the Sheriff, Deputy
Dawg, and all the way home.

By the time she dropped me off at my apartment, I was ready to
take an ice pick to my ears just so I wouldn't have to listen to her
voice again.

I knew Mulder was scared. Hell, I was scared. We were facing all
sorts of charges and some of them were manslaughter and murder
related. The family was suing the FBI, with our names prominently
listed as codefendants, for 446 million dollars. Ahab could have
had a really nice ship for 446 million dollars. I know I didn't have
that kind of loose change laying around, and I'm pretty sure Mulder
didn't either.

But he didn't have to be so defensive.

I was going to back him up. Or at least give him an out. I mean,
he'd ingested a goodly amount of a potent drug--it was a wonder
that he could stand, much less run through the woods after that kid
and then drive a stake through him. I didn't get a look at him
during the plane ride home, but I could tell by the way his hair was
sticking out in all directions in the lounge in Atlanta that he'd been
asleep during the flight. Mulder doesn't sleep on planes. He just
pretends to. Unless he's not feeling well.

I knew he wasn't feeling well. I should have taken him to the
doctor. Drugs in your system can mess you up for a couple of
days, and with Mulder, even more so. It took three days to get the
psychotropic out of his system after his water was drugged. But I
didn't push.

I was not mad at him. I know that's what he thought. That I was
mad and that I didn't think he used 'appropriate procedure' in
restraining our assailant and he probably thought I was ready to
gleefully hand him over to Skinner and wash my hands of the whole
case.

That couldn't have been farther from the truth. I have lied more
times in my life _for_ Fox Mulder than for any other living human
being. I've lied to save his career, I've lied to save his life, I've lied
to help him save _my_ life. So now, when it looked like he could
have landed in a nasty prison cell, he has the audacity to think that I
wouldn't back his story, regardless of how outlandish it might
sound.

That kid really was attacking him when I got to the room. Assault
on a federal officer. Grounds for use of extreme force. Mulder's
methods were a bit--gross, but I still think he was in the right to, ah,
restrain Ricky. Maybe not by pinning him to the ground with a
wooden chair leg through his chest, but hey, I'm not about to
quibble. What's done is done. Any port in a storm. Shit happens.
Case closed. Of course I would support my partner.

I had a few things to do when I got to the office, so by the time I
made it down to the basement, Mulder was already there. I could
tell he was trying to write up his report--there was a tidy pile of
crumpled up pages already decorating the floor around the trash
can.

He was mad at me. No doubt about, no matter what I would have
said at that point, it all would have been 'bitchy nagging' to Fox
Mulder's ears. So I didn't say anything. Just sat there quietly and
watched him kick the shit out of our one and only trash can which
took me 3 months to requisition when the last one developed a
huge hole in the bottom thanks to Mulder dropping some excess
'evidence' into it from a case. By that time I was getting a little
pissed, too and I was almost ready to tell him that he was
requisitioning the next trash can. The look on his face stopped me.

Mulder doesn't scare easily. Threats against his life run off him like
water off a duck's back. Threats to my life don't scare him, they
make him mad. Prison--that scares him. Maybe it's because of Bill
Patterson. Maybe it's because in the back of his mind Mulder is
terrified that one day the demons he keeps locked up so securely
inside him will break to the surface and he really will end up like
Patterson--alone and insane.

Mulder has always depended on me to keep that from happening. I
think that's what he was asking yesterday morning. Did I really
think he'd lost it this time?

But he didn't have to be such an asshole about it. He wanted to
know what I saw. OK. Sure, fine, whatever. I thought the tape
recorder was a bit much, but by this point, Mulder wasn't Mulder,
he was crazed and nervous and if I'd had some Thorozine handy,
his butt would have been sore, too.

I told him what I saw. Short story. Tiny town, a nice funeral
home, a dedicated Sheriff who _did_ call me Dana, two dead men
with pizza in their stomachs and knock out drugs in their blood
stream. A psychopathic pizza delivery kid standing over my prone
partner, who seems to remember all the words to _The Theme from
Shaft_ at the most inappropriate times. That's what I saw. That's
what I remember. That's what happened.

Then I took off after the pizza kid, after attempting to subdue him
with my weapon (note, I gotta check my gun, I think the sight is
off) and when he tried to escape, I shot out his car tire. He entered
the woods, I followed in pursuit.

Now, I'm not taking sides at all here, well, I am, but that's besides
the point, when I say that it's curious how Mulder, who was
groggy as hell when I left him, managed to break a chair (flimsy
though it be) run out into the woods (in his socks but no shoes),
race past me (OK, I'll give him that one--he's always been faster)
and drive a frigging stake through the kid's heart all before I could
even get within earshot of him.

Maybe there was something else in that pizza.

But when it all comes down to it, I still firmly believed that the
absolutely best defense for both of us was for Mulder to tell
Skinner

He was drugged.

God, she can be so sanctimonious. I've noticed it before, but
usually it's just a passing sort of thing. Yesterday morning, she
_reeked_ of it. Sanctimonious nagging little bitch! No, that's not
fair. She was scared. I could tell it. Hell, I was a little scared, too.

Scully would never last long in prison. Not a day. If the first time
someone female made a pass at her didn't get her in a fatal fist
fight, the sheer humiliation that she would be bringing down on
herself and her family certainly would kill her. And Maggie--I don't
even want to think what would happen to Maggie Scully if she had
to go through a murder trial. Two murder trials, actually. Dana's
and then Bill's. Of course, I'd be long dead. Bill Scully would
have put a bullet between my eyes weeks before Dana's trial even
started.

Not a pretty picture.

But then, when I asked my partner to update me, tell me what to
expect out of her statement to Skinner, she gets all high and mighty.
"You mean 'get our stories straight'?" Like we've never done that
before! Like we don't do that every frigging case! This time it was
just slightly more important, since not only our jobs, but our lives
and a considerable portion of the National Debt hung in the
balance.

So I got out the tape recorder--to make it official.

In the heat of the moment, it struck me as sort of funny that the two
of us could be in the same room and see things totally differently.
She always blows off my efforts to include her in cases early on.
She hates to travel and makes no bones about telling me. So I
wasn't surprised when her version of the events were a little jaded.
But when she got to the part at the funeral home--that's when I
really started to get nervous.

She had it all wrong. She forgot completely about very key points,
like the town having the largest showroom of coffins in the state.
She did manage to remember when I noticed that the first victims
shoes were untied, so she wasn't in a trance or anything.

I found it particularly interesting, from a strictly psychological
viewpoint, that she all but forget how she stood there and drooled
all over Deputy Dawg. I'm sorry, Sheriff Dawg. Or whatever.
The woman needs to start frequenting the same rooms of the video
stores that I do, no doubt about it.

Bill Scully would put another hole in me for that idea.

But when all was said and done, she came up with some cock and
bull story about how I woke up singing 'The Theme from Shaft'
which is damned interesting since I never even saw the movie, and
then she continued to forget how the kid flew across the room at
her, pushed her aside and took off into the night. She said she fired
at him but missed--yeah, like that _ever_ happens. She shoots at
me and hits the target, she shoots at a perp and misses by a mile.
I'm willing to believe that, sure.

What was really annoying is that some of what she conveniently
forgot was essential to my defense. In fact, pretty much all of it.
She didn't miss the little bastard, the bullets didn't stop him. He
had fangs and green glowing eyes--a real tip off that he wasn't your
average run of the mill murderer, but that escaped my ever watchful
partner, as well. Basically, she made it sound like I ran a wooden
stake through some pimply faced pizza kid who was just passing
by.

But she did come up with a fool proof alibi. I was drugged. Yeah,
that's right, the old stand by. Mulder socks his boss in the jaw. It's
OK--he was drugged. Mulder runs off to New Mexico and ends up
in a boxcar buried under ground. It's OK--he was drugged.
Mulder drives a wooden stake through a 19 year old kid's heart for
no good reason other than he thought he might be a vampire. It's
OK, he was drugged.

Yeah, that should do it. File it in the Constitution somewhere in the
Fifth Amendment. You can't be forced to incriminate yourself and
always let Mulder off any charge because face it, he was drugged.

I did not want to go up and see Skinner.

End of part one

*****

Bruised and Bloody (2/2)
By Vickie Moseley
vmoseley@fgi.net

Going up to see Skinner was the least of our problems, it turns out.
Before you could say 'did you say 'gnawed' on the neck?' we were
on a flight back to Chaney.

OK, I have to say it. Mulder was right and I was wrong. Not
completely wrong, but obviously a little off the mark. There has to
be something strange about a person who can survive a stake
through their heart.

Even I know you don't pull the stake back out once you kill a
vampire. Sheez!

Not that I'm admitting that Ricky was a vampire. I mean, that's
just too--too--too,

Ah, screw it.

Anyway, one dead forensic pathologist later, we are back in the
Chaney Cemetery, waiting for a pizza. I'm sorry, pizza delivery
man.

I kept wondering if we should have just phoned on over to Aunt
Bee's and ordered a medium sausage, pepperoni and mushroom.
After all, I didn't get supper last night, now did I?

It wasn't that unusual a feeling. There I was, cold, wet, hungry,
waiting for a vampire in the middle of an abandoned and untended
cemetery in a small town in Texas. And who says I don't lead a
glamorous life as an FBI Agent? Until the Sheriff showed up.

Now here is where the story gets a little weird. (Did I really just
say that?) Sheriff shows up, Mulder asks where General Delivery
mail would be delivered. Sheriff answers 'the RV park'. Suddenly,
Mulder is all but throwing me at the Sheriff with a lecherous grin
and a 'Don't say I never did nuttin fer ya' and off he ran.

Well, this time, I was not in a 'running after Mulder' mood. It had
_nothing_ to do with the Sheriff. He was good looking, yes, but he
was also a very interesting man. He was keenly interested in my
views on the case, something my esteemed partner seemed to lack
this time. Interest in my views, that is. And the Sheriff was very
accommodating. I mean, he offered me the warmth of his car--er, a
seat in his car and a boot/cup full of some of the best darned coffee
I've had in years.

It wasn't until he started telling me how sad he was that Ricky was
giving all of 'them' a bad name--how Ricky didn't understand the
meaning of 'low profile' that I started to put two and two together.
Charming. Vampire LaStat. Oh shit. And where in the hell was
my partner when I needed him?

By that time I was out like a light.

I knew there was nothing to worry about with Skinner. Piece of
cake. Of course, the fact that Ricky the Vampire attacked the
forensic pathologist--I knew the fangs were important!--might have
helped our Assistant Director in his understanding of the events of
the previous night. Or not. Anyway, we were ordered to return to
Chaney post haste.

As in now.

So, after a quick change of clothes (I've discovered that blue jeans
are much easier to part with than Armani suits), we found ourselves
on yet another plane to Chaney.

Scully was doing her stone statute imitation the entire trip. I was
doing my damnedest to refrain from a chorus of 'I told you so!' and
the airline magazine was the same one from the day before, so I
took the opportunity to eat two bags of sunflower seeds (skipped
breakfast) and consider out next move.

It kept coming back to the cemetery.

OK, I have to admit, here the journal articles and textbooks I read
in college failed me. How did I know to go to the cemetery?

You've never heard of Bela Lagosi?

Though I must confess, Wynona Ryder was rather hot in the
remake.

But I digress. We arrived at the cemetery, tired, cold, wet,
hungry--yep, must be an X File. Scully wonders why I get banged
up all the time and not complain about it. Do you know what you
never miss in a hospital? Three square meals a day! And it's often
the only place I get a full eight hours of sleep (though I'm told that
coma and sleep are two different states of unconsciousness).

There we were in the cemetery, waiting for Ricky. Just my luck,
another sucker showed up instead. Sheriff Casanova. Scully
started salivating and it was just too much for me.

Get something straight. Scully and I have an understanding. We
have no life together. She doesn't date, I don't date. We don't
date together. That's just the way it is. Now, whenever _I've_
broken this little arrangement, whether intentionally or not, Scully
has gone ballistic on me. I can still remember the attitude she had
with poor Dr. Berenbaum. And Det. White? We won't even go
there--the woman was under the influence of strange cosmic forces
and Scully was ready to shoot both of us. Or maybe, just me.

But I'm above that kind of behavior. I'm a realist. I know that any
guy who hooks up with Scully would be in it for the sex. Face it,
we don't have the kinds of jobs that are conducive to a long lasting
relationships. They might have some hot passion, but one Sunday
morning pretty soon after they meet, I'll call about 4:30 to tell her
we need to fly out by 8, Casanova'll throw a hissy fit because he'll
have planned on staying in bed all morning doing erotic gymnastics,
she'll tell him to hit the road and that'll be the end of it.

Why bother to be jealous over that? Waste of time. No matter
what happened between Scully and the Sheriff, I'm the guy with her
plane ticket home.

So I went off to find the Vampire.

I probably should have been worried. I mean, that little naggy
voice that sounds exactly like Scully at her shrillest was telling me
there was more to this case than one blood sucking pizza kid. But I
was trying to block out all things Scully at that moment, so I chose
to ignore it.

Ricky was in his aunt's Winnebago. Nice RV, actually. Interesting
how it was the only one I've seen fully equipped with a built in the
wall casket. You can get _anything_ for these things these days.

Ricky was 'encased' all right. Right where all good little vampires
should be, except it was night. He had headphones on--probably
listening to MegaDeath. Anyway, I slammed that lid down the
minute his beady green eyes opened and I did the only logical thing
I could think of. I read him his rights.

Hey, I wasn't going to spoil this collar on procedure!

Gotta say this for him--some of that flab must be muscle because he
almost knocked me off the coffin lid. I cuffed it shut. And as I was
triumphantly trying to get Ricky to settle down, I looked out the
window.

A whole small town of green glowing eyed people with fangs stared
back at me.

Shit.

There wasn't much to work with. And I learned somethings that
are vitally important.

One. Not all vampires live in fancy Southern Plantations or in the
French Quarter of New Orleans. A whole bunch of them live in
RV's and travel through Texas.

Two. Garlic breadsticks are a very poor substitute for either a
silver crucifix OR a string of real garlic cloves. Or a wooden stake
through the heart that is NOT removed by an over eager forensic
pathologist.

And there are times, when a sharp needle in the butt can actually be
a welcome respite from whatever hell you are going through.

Emma Amelia Willoughby. Born July 12, 1883, died February 4,
1965. Beloved Wife, Mother, Grandmother, Great-Grandmother.
More power to ya, Emma. Thanks for letting me sleep on your
grave.

I woke up alone, cold, wet and hungry. Big surprise. Face down
on a grave in the middle of the cemetery. Another big surprise.

With all my clothes intact.

Big relief.

My mouth tasted like a herd of long horns had partied till dawn
there. And there was a Sheriff's badge pinned to my overcoat. He
really was too charming. I should be getting good at this by now.
If a guy is charming, if I'm attracted to him in any way, shape or
form, I should _immediately_ put the bastard in cuffs and call for
back up.

Would make my life a hell of a lot simpler.

But there I was, as I said, cold, wet, hungry, and minus one pain in
the butt partner. Oh, and of course, without any means of
transportation. I vaguely remembered the turn off to the RV park
about two miles down the road. Good thing I was wearing my
hiking boots. The mud was awful.

When I got to the Park, it was deserted. Not just
deserted--_really_ deserted. Not a van or Winnebago any where in
sight. Just our rental, parked over by the bathrooms/laundry
facility. There were two boots sticking out of the driver's side
window. Three guesses who the boots belonged to.

My head was pounding and the taste in my mouth was getting
worse as I stood there and the last thing I needed was to find my
partner, drained of blood and dead in the red Ford Contour we'd
rented in Dallas.

Fortunately, I heard him groan before I broke out into tears.

He was fine. This time, he'd been pincushioned with the drug,
unlike consuming in in a cup of coffee shaped like a Western boot.
But that doesn't stop the horrible taste in your mouth. I could tell
by the way he grimaced and ran his tongue around his teeth that he
had the 'fuzzy feeling', too.

We were a pair.

His immediate response to waking up in the car was to check his
neck in the rearview mirror. OK, I have to admit, I felt my neck,
too. Then, after he was sure he was all right, he had to check out
_my_ neck. Just like my Mulder, always the paranoid. But at that
moment, I didn't really mind it that much.

Once I got over my initial relief that we were both intact, I was a
little perturbed when he couldn't supply me with a more accurate
description of the past night's events. Somehow, the story of him
sitting atop Ricky's coffin, giving him the Miranda treatment,
struck a humorous chord with me. I tried. I really, really tried.

I just couldn't help myself.

She laughed at me! She frigging started to laugh _at_ me!

That ticked me off. Until I got a good look at her.

Scully is a beautiful woman, but, and I say this with the deepest
affection, she looks like Medusa in the morning. And this morning,
her hair was nine ways from Sunday, her make up was smeared (but
not the kind of smear that would have made me reach for my gun
and go 'sheriff hunting') and her clothes looked like she slept
outside all night. On the ground.

My first thought on waking was to check our necks, which were
clear of bite marks. I was a little suspicious of the badge pinned to
her chest, but decided at that point, not to press it.

I told her my version of the events of the previous evening. Now,
usually, Scully takes these impromptu reports with a tongue stuck
firmly in her cheek and an impassive expression on her dainty face.

This time, she laughed at me.

It was a giggle, really. At first, at least. And she did try to hold it
in. But after that first little 'tee hee hee' escaped, there was no
stopping the avalanche. It was the coffin that got her.

OK, I'll fess up, I burst out laughing, too. I could see the
seriousness of the situation. I had been drugged, again! She had
obviously been sleeping outside, and knowing Scully as I do, that
was NOT of her own volition. And the entire RV park was now
devoid of any trailers. Or members of the undead. In other words,
the perp and any other suspects were long gone.

It took us about half an hour to quit giggling everytime we looked
at each other.

"I'm starved," she told me, in between titters.

"Tell me something I don't know," I rejoined.

"I refuse to eat anywhere in this town," she promptly shot back.

"You expect an argument out of me, Scully? Because you aren't
going to get one. Not on that, at least." We both climbed into the
rental.

"Shouldn't we--" she started, but I stopped her.

"Look for them, try and find the sheriff--" I interjected.

"He was one of them," she said flatly. I was good, I kept the shit
eating grin off my face.

"Don't worry, Scully. Falling for a vampire seems to be an
occupational hazard," I grinned at her. She looked like she was
going to ask for an explanation, but then she thought better of it.
I'm glad she did.

I remembered seeing a Baker's Square at the exit before the
Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. We stopped, since we had two hours
before our flight, and ate. We ate like locust eat during a dry spell.
Mulder was starting to consume sugar packets by the time his
'mega breakfast' arrived. And coffee. Between the two of us, we
drank at least a pot of coffee.

Didn't get to sit together on the plane, but that was all right. I was
seated next to a dear woman traveling to see her grandchildren and
got to endure stories of their entire grade school career, to date.
Mulder, of course, lucked out and was seated next to some business
class passenger, who immediately took out his lap top and started
working. Since I was just across the aisle I could see the 'what the
hell' look on the guy's face when Mulder sat down, looking like an
escaped convict. The coffee had kicked in by that point and gave
him that 'wide-eyed, delusional paranoid' look that I've come to
love. Mulder squirming in his seat, chugging down iced teas and
bags of peanuts as fast as the flight attendant could toss them at
him. Oh, yes, it was going to be a fun drive home.

We were five miles from my apartment when I noticed my partner
squirming in the seat. Three too many iced teas was my diagnosis,
so instead of my original plan of heading over to Arlington to drop
him off, I went straight home. He didn't seem to notice the detour.
He was too busy running to my bathroom.

As always, he forgot to put the seat up. Damn him.

When he emerged, several minutes later, looking far more
comfortable than when he went in, I offered him a seat. He was
starting to come down from the caffeine high he'd been on and the
after affects of the knock out drug were also kicking in. He didn't
sit--he fell onto the couch.

I wanted to talk. I deserved it, I felt. I wanted to apologize and be
apologized to. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry he thought I
wouldn't back him up and he should know that I'd cheerfully go to
jail for him--just like I've done before. But more than that, I
wanted him to tell me that he was sorry he thought I would rat him
out, that he never doubted me for a minute, really and he was only
kidding about the sheriff.

I got a roomful of snoring Mulder instead.

It's morning. That comes as a surprise, really. When I sat down it
was still evening--early evening at that. Now, it's morning, my
shoes are off, I'm lying on Scully's sofa (the too short one) with a
nice fluffy pillow under my head and one of her grandmothers
patchwork quilts covering me. It's nice and warm and smells like
fabric softener sheets and I think if I'm really quiet, I can stay like
this for a while.

I didn't mean to fall asleep on her. I'd really about decided that if
she wanted to talk, I would talk. We don't do that as much as we
should, as she's pointed out to me on a number of occasions. It
wasn't the middle of the Florida forests, it wasn't after some lunatic
monkey boy had put the moves on her wearing _my_ tee shirt and
jeans, it wasn't even in a hospital where we were holding hands
because we had to hold on to each other or risk falling off the earth.
No, it was in her apartment, and it would have proven to be a rather
lengthy apology on my part but instead, I fell asleep.

So now it's the next day. Scully just tiptoed into the kitchen, I can
hear her making coffee. I peek over the side of the couch and see
her in her robe and --oh God, Tigger slippers?! Where the hell did
she get Tigger slippers?! Must have been a gag gift from Maggie.
But I was wrong in my earlier assessment. My partner looks pretty
damned good in the morning. It's nice to wake up here.

And the apology. I don't think I have to worry about it. If I'm not
mistaken, she's got the skillet out and I distinctly hear the cracking
of egg shells.

I'm pretty sure I'm already forgiven.

the end
Vickie

My fortune cookie, Feb. 28, 1998