TITLE: oyster
AUTHOR: jordan
E-MAIL: jordan66@swbell.net
CATEGORY: That’s a good question. Skinner, Scully, and Mulder. All rolled into one juicy delicious shell.
RATING: No one under 18, I hope
SPOILERS: THIS FIC IS REQUIEM FREE.
SUMMARY: Scully gets laid, but it’s actually integral to the plot.
THANKS: for Barbara D, Ambress, Jean Robinson for their beta.
Also to jadedcat for her consistent “encouragement” (bzzzt!)and mlb for loaning me a name. And especially to Tracy E, for being so kind.
FEEDBACK: Cash prizes drawn each Friday for best feedback. Offer not valid where prostitution is a criminal offense.
ARCHIVE: Okay for Gossamer, Spookies, Xemplary, Ephemeral. Anywhere else, please let me know first.
DISCLAIMER: These characters all belong to Chris Carter, Ten Thirteen, and Fox. Period.
STORY CAN sometimes BE FOUND AT:
http://www.geocities.com/sandyjordan.geo

Prologue of oyster
But four young oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat --
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
----Lewis Carroll

On a slender curve of beach with silvery pink sand, under a far- flung sky as blue as the lips of a corpse, Mulder and Scully are discussing Great Literature while they eat raw oysters with little squirts from lemon wedges, the juice glistening in the half shells.
“Now, take Proust,” Mulder is saying, and Scully barely lifts her drooping eyelids to indicate she’s listening; “I really got into Swan Lake.”
“You mean, Swann’s Way?"
“Whatever. The one where he can’t sleep for the first thousand pages or so. I could relate to that.”
Beneath the shade of a brightly colored umbrella, they murmur profound things back and forth, voices interwoven with the whispering sound of the surf. The tang of lemon scents the warm salty air; the oysters slide down their throats like wet caresses.
A shadow flickers overhead. It is a bird with black tipped wings, but when Mulder looks up, he glimpses a man in a black coat so long that it trails the sand, a big wide-brimmed black hat fluttering a little in the wind. Startled, he looks back for Scully, only to see that everything has greyed out and is gone except for the umbrella, which has begun to turn slowly on its side, and is now accelerating like a mechanized pinwheel, spiraling inwards.
The dark man reaches towards Mulder. He lifts his arm from fifteen feet away, and Mulder knows that somehow that arm will reach him, and trail those long cold white fingers over his bare skin…
“Mulder.” Scully is shaking his arm gently.
He blinks up at her from some distant place and she frowns a little at the look in his eyes.
“Are you okay?”
He sits up, shakes off the dream. “Mm. What time is it?”
“Where were you?”
“I don’t know. It was just a dream.”
“No, I mean where did you go just a few minutes ago?”
He rubs his face, looks up at her for an explanation, and sees that she’s looking at him for one. “I fell asleep,” he says. “Sorry.”
She starts to speak, but decides to let it go. “Come on. We have to meet Sgt. Davila.”
When Mulder gets up, he notices a newspaper on the seat of the green vinyl chair where he was dozing. He must not have seen it when he sat down. But there’s no time for that now. Scully is brushing him down with brisk little pats and he takes the cue and straightens his tie and walks after her down the long ugly corridor of the hospital. The empty hallway has a strange hollow roar like the inside of a seashell. Mulder sticks his finger in his ear and wiggles it vigorously until the noise goes away.
They walk past rooms and rooms of numbered doors, and on the blotchy linoleum at their feet, behind them, behind Mulder, faint damp shoe prints evaporate unnoticed in the antiseptic air.
end one
Two