Date: 24 Jul 1999 13:15:04 PDT From: cofax Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative Title: The Climbing Series III: Mixed Signals Author: cofax Category: V Rating: R for a bad word. Spoilers: Minor ones for Killswitch & Drive. Set mid-season 6, before 2 Fathers. Summary: Mulder jumps to not one, but two, erroneous conclusions. Just another day in the Basement. Disclaimer: I make nothing off this. Litigating to enforce the copyright would be a waste of judicial resources, as the copyright-holder is in no way damaged by my temporary abduction of the characters of Mulder & Scully. Sportrock exists, and belongs to Sportrock. Notes: Ohmygod - I've created a . . . series. This is another climbing story (doh!); it should be noted by anyone who bothers to read these, that they are not written in chronological order. Hey, this is the X-Files - who cares about linear reasoning? Much thanks to my betas Erin & Mary, and to the legions (well, not really) of folks who liked the first two stories and told me to keep writing. We'll get Scully up El Cap yet. Feedback: Feedback makes me do the wacky. Cheerfully received by kofax@concentric.net, rewarded with virtual baked goods. **** The Climbing Series III: Mixed Signals by cofax July 1999 Scully's holding out on me. She's been mysteriously absent or busy on evenings and weekends for the past few months. Preoccupied (not a problem considering the work we've been doing would stupefy a tax attorney). Far less likely to allow unexpected demands to interfere with her lunchtime workouts. The workouts have gotten longer, too. Not that *that* matters; we've put in enough overtime over the past six years that we could take three hour lunches for the rest of our careers and not put a dent in what they owe us. I didn't have any reason to call her on it, until today. We had to dig through some old files in the basement of the building, some distance from our -- from the X-files office. It's pretty stuffy down there, even in the winter, and we both took off our jackets as we shifted file cabinets from the 1940s and 50s and squeezed around boxes of evidence long since moot. Scully was wearing a sleeveless knit top, in a shade of blue that caught my eye from across the room. It took me longer to notice the other blue -- the blue of a bruise on her arm. I moved up behind her, under the guise of dropping a box of files nearby as she dug through the drawers of a filing cabinet that was listing to port. When I looked more closely, I saw that there were several bruises on her upper right arm, most of them rather faded, but one was new and an interesting shade of purple. Her hands looked kind of battered, too: there were scabs and scratches on them, and her nails were shorter than I recalled. The world slowed down. How had I not noticed this? *This is Scully.* Something, perhaps the common sense I rarely exhibit, stopped me from upending my dusty box of evidence all over the floor. So? *So Scully is the *last* woman on the planet to allow someone to hurt her.* Oh. Right. So what's the bruising from, then? *Well, look at her. She's wearing a sleeveless shirt, so she's not trying to hide it. It's not a one-time thing because the bruising is repeated. So she didn't get mugged, which she would have told me about anyway.* Scully took three files out of the drawer and turned around. She caught me standing there like a moron, staring at her arms. I got the Brow. "Mulder?" "Yeah, Scully?" "Can I get by, please?" *Oh. So we're going to ignore this, are we? I don't think so.* I didn't move. She sighed. "Mulder, move your ass. I want to get these files upstairs by lunch so I can go to the gym." *The gym!* I had a thought, an inkling. Background checks, fertilizer, and paper-pushing hadn't destroyed all my cognitive abilities. I can still tell a hawk from a handsaw when the wind is in the west. "Scully, did you join a new gym?" The light isn't very good in the archives, but I *think* I saw a blush. Her eyes definitely flicked away. This wasn't Scully being angry . . . this was embarrassment. Why be embarrassed? If it was what I thought, it was -- well, cool. And smart. And sexy. "As a matter of fact, I have," she said, as she slipped sideways past me into the aisle. She dropped the files on top of the others we had been gathering and picked up her jacket. Trying to look nonchalant, I opened the filing cabinet Scully had already checked, and pulled out a folder at random. "Oh? Is that what the bruises are from? Are you taking some kind of martial-arts classes?" I *loved* this. Maybe that fantasy in the AI wasn't so off-base after all. "No, Mulder." She headed for the door. I was stuck behind the filing cabinet with my arms full of files. And I knew that if she beat me to the elevator I wouldn't see her again until well into the afternoon. "Then what? C'mon, Scully -- give." When in doubt, plead. If pleading doesn't work, whine. She stopped at the door, her hand on the knob. She didn't look at me, but the curve of her cheek tightened -- she was smiling. Sigh. "Fine. I'm a member of SportRock, Mulder." *What?* This was so far from what I expected to hear that my brain took a long moment to process it. I fumbled for something to say. "SportRock. That's that --" "--climbing gym in Alexandria. Right. The bruises are from climbing, Mulder. Nothing more." Climbing. Scully and climbing. I felt a snarky remark sliding from my brainstem to my tongue, bypassing all my higher functions. "Scully, does that mean --" Slam. Climbing. Ropes. Tattoos. Piercings. Bungee-jumping. Muscled young men in lycra, listening to Van Halen. "Shit." ***** End -- "I am all for traditional unaided balance climbing; the artistry of single finger holds and steady, delicate movements with flexed arms. Pegs...piton hammers...karabiners...Who wants, for God's sake, to climb like an ironmonger?" -- Dorothy Dunnett, Proving Climb