From: Admarem Date: 18 Apr 1998 05:45:04 GMT Subject: NEW: "Drapery Language" 1/2 by Admarem DRAPERY LANGUAGE 1/2 By Admarem Summary: My solution to the ring dilemma, but don't expect a typical ringfic. Spoilers: Just about everything up to and including "Travelers." Rating: PG (This is completely arbitrary, but G in my mind involves happy animated creatures with names like "Smiley" and R tends to involve the big bad s-word, and my story involves neither, so...) Keywords: I don't understand this category. Sorry! Feedback: Yes, please. Send in the comments. Fill up my mailbox. Accolades, criticisms, recipes for banana bread, what have you, to Admarem@aol.com. Any and all words of advice/enthrallment (is that a word?)/hatred are appreciated and will be acknowledged. Author's Note: This is so much fun! It makes it worth the hours of procrastination. But it's back to work now, so I thought before I return to the real world I would drop a line. This is a quasi-ringfic, quasi-funny piece. Well, I was amused... I had a good time writing it. Sure, I wasted time that should have been spent studying, but we all have our priorities. Seriously though, folks - without the world of fanfic, I would have a 4.0 and my roommate and I would still be "acquaintances" barely on "speaking terms," exchaning "chilly greetings" and "indifferent perfunctories" rather than being what we are now, which is "the kind of roommates everyone hates because we finish each other's sentences, which are usually about the X-Files anyway." Disclaimer: All right, everybody, gear up! Take a deep breath, place your right hand over your heart and your left hand on a recent photograph of the cast (but not that horrible EW movie cover - please!) and recite the following without stopping: TheX- Filesandallthecharactersinvolvedandtheplotandthepremisea Ndallthatgoodstuffbelongtonootherthantheheadhonchohims elfchristhemancarterandweareallinhisdebtsopleasedon'tsues inceallihavearelotsoftextbooksandbecauseofyoumr.carterlot softhemareasyetunreadohyeahandi'mnotmakinganymoneyy eahrightsoi'mnotreallygettinganythingoutofitinthatwaybuti' mgettinglotsofsatisfactionsohahatofoxwhoalsoownsallthisa ndnowi'mdone. Whew! Everyone breathe. And a great big disclaiming Wow! to the two lovely real-life humans behind Mulder and Scully, without whom those delicious characters would have neither voice nor face, nor all those wonderful mannerisms (not to mention grey mock-turtlenecks!). Thank You: To all of you, for reading (note: this is a hint) and for responding (this is also a hint). An extremely humble thank you to Dawson, who answered so many questions for me way back when. A big hi to Rachel (Hi, Rachel! ). Oh, and a latte for each and every Cafe member. Last but not least, heaps o' thanks to D, without whose trusty little computer there would be no story, since my computer felt the need to eat microsoft word a few weeks ago. Artificial intelligence! What can you do? Dedication: To Dreamer, of course, because she knows whatever the hell destiny does. One Final Note: You didn't think I would actually get to the story, did you? Foolish mortals. Nah, scroll on down. "Wide open falsehood/ the clandestine truths/ Rival till the end/ in a series of duels/ Pardon the drapery language I choose." -10,000 Maniacs, "The Wishing Chair" Saturday Afternoon Scully stared in horror at the limp bodies floating in the water...bloated and lifeless, they gazed unfocused with round, death-ringed eyes. Guilt twisted her stomach and she turned away. Under her breath she muttered an expletive that would have made her sailor-father proud. She was a medical doctor. She had handled plenty of water-logged dead bodies in her day. Guilt could come later. For now there was a job to do. Sighing, she rolled up her sleeves and scooped the small, stiff forms from their final resting place. She cradled them in the netting and then, with characteristic efficiency, dropped them one by one into Mulder's toilet. Four flushes later, she washed her hands, ran her fingers through her hair, and cursed her error. Dr. Scully, who in her time had pounded life into the lungs of near-drowning victims and shocked stilled cardiac muscles into steady acquiescence, had overfed a tank of -- pardon the language -- *&^#ing goldfish. The sudden jangle of the telephone startled her back to reality. Instinct made her reach for the receiver. "Uh, hello?" "...Scully?" "Mulder?" "I do have an answering machine, you know." "I know, but...why were you calling, then?" "I wanted to talk to you." She smiled into the phone, but didn't let it reach her voice. "How did you know I'd be here?" Carefully she brushed some of the newspapers aside on Mulder's battered couch and sat down. "Science." "Hm?" "It's just after four o'clock. The fish's internal temperatures are at their highest, producing food cravings. Simple biology. So you came to feed them." "Mulder, goldfish are cold-blooded." "Yeah, the ordinary ones..." She smiled into her hand this time. "Seriously, how did you know?" "Seriously?" "Yeah." "I've been calling every half hour." "What's wrong?" "Wrong? Does something have to be wrong for me to call?" "To call nonstop? Yeah, Mulder, something has to be wrong. Is your mother all right?" "She's fine. In good spirits. Cheerful. Active. She's been at a damned Board of Directors meeting at the public library all afternoon." Scully had given up on trying not to smile. "Are you bored, Mulder?" "Define bored." "A 36-year-old man, home alone, who can't find anything to amuse himself while his mother is out." "It's not as if she has any toys," he said in mock-defense. Scully sighed. "Do me a favor, Scully. Don't move to the suburbs." She arched an eyebrow, forgetting that he couldn't see her. "Any reason?" "Yeah. It's an X-File. Everyone up here has mutated. They're clones." "Clones?" "A bunch of athletic-looking clones in sailboats and sport- utility vehicles." "What, no station wagons?" "The 80s are over, Scully. It's time to let go. Even the yuppies have moved on...well, sort of." "Mulder, can I do anything for you?" "Anything?" She drew an irritated breath. "Okay," he amended. "Keep an eye out for Arthur; he wasn't looking so good when I left." "Arthur?" "He's the second-to-smallest, kind of a pointy left fin, with a white spot just above the ear. He's been looking...peaked." Fish don't have ears, Mulder. And as for poor Arthur, he's communing with the Flukeman right now in the crowded DC sewers. Sorry. "Uh, I'm sure he's fine," she lied blithely. "Can you check?" She sighed, then grunted in affirmation. "Scully?" She didn't answer; she was busy trying to think of a way to find a goldfish with a pointy left fin and a white spot just above the ear -- er, gills -- without actually having to set foot in a pet store. Did those places deliver? "It's all fine, Mulder." "You sure?" "I'm sure. Mulder, I'd love to stay and chat but I parked at a thirty-minute meter. I'll see you on Monday, okay?" "Wait a sec, Scully." "What?" "Be careful with the food flakes. It's really easy to overfeed them." You're telling me. "Okay, sure. Good-bye, Mulder," she said, emphasizing the "bye" just enough to make her point. "See ya, Scully," he responded cheerfully as she placed the phone back in the cradle, a frown of pure guilt creasing her forehead. She was a liar of the worst kind. Mentally she assigned herself penance. Two cover-to-cover issues of Cosmo. An hour of Melrose Place. Okay, that punishment was a bit severe. She sighed and picked up the yellow pages, opening them to "F." .......................................................... A few hundred miles up the East Coast, Mulder smiled and pressed the "off" button on the neat portable phone. He shook his head in amusement. Those fish were history. Good thing he hadn't gotten too attached. A key turned in the lock. "Fox?" called the familiar voice. ......................................................... Scully gritted her teeth and slid off her navy heels as she settled on Mulder's worn couch. Two hours trolling pet stores -- and one pet supermarket, which had been a rather interesting experience -- had left her exhausted and cranky. She padded barefoot to the tank and unceremoniously dumped the new fish into the murky water. There. The water wasn't even clean enough for Mulder to notice that his pets were imposters. Now, for fish food. She hadn't thought to buy more; surely Mulder kept some extra somewhere in the apartment. Too determined to feel guilty, she began attacking the drawers closest to the tank. She nearly jumped when the phone rang. "Hello?" "Scully, have you moved in or what?" "Mulder..." "I asked you to feed my fish, Scully, not become their live- in." "Why are you calling?" "Actually, I wanted to check my messages, but you picked up, so..." "No one called," she answered, then wanted to kick herself. Go ahead, Dana, let him know you've been there all day. "No one? I'm hurt." "Don't be. Mulder, wasn't your intent this weekend to spend some time with your mother?" "That may have been my intent; her intent was to make me carry all the heavy boxes down the stairs." "And is she doing that while you run up her long-distance phone bill?" "Maybe." To his credit, he sounded a little sheepish. "Mulder, go help her." "I'm going; I'm going." She could practically hear him resisting. A few seconds passed in silence. "I'll see you Monday, Mulder," she repeated. "Monday." She hung up. And returned to the task at hand. ..................................... Sifting through some papers in one of the messy drawers, she came upon an envelope with a strange lump. The paper was fine-grained and expensive; fine, curving script announced Mulder's name and address. Curious, she shook it gently. There was a small metallic object in there, she mused. Saving some implants for posterity, Mulder? Or did the consortium get sick of abductions send the chip in a nice envelope this time? She touched the envelope again. The seal had long been broken. The edges of the tear were jagged. Someone had torn it open in a hurry. Or maybe you're just looking for some excitement here, Dana. Reluctantly she put the envelope back in the drawer. She'd been here long enough. She slipped into her shoes and headed for door. And made it halfway before she was back at the drawer, sliding her finger neatly into the envelope and retrieving the small, hard object. Not an implant. Not a chip. A ring. Gold, bright, and burning into her palm. Instinctively she held it up to the light to read the inscription on what was clearly a wedding band. "FWM - CJT 3/15" March 15. Trust Mulder to get married on the Ides of March. Wait. What am I saying? Mulder isn't married. Scully closed her eyes for a brief moment. This wasn't happening. She hadn't spent the day murdering goldfish and trolling pet stores and pawing through Mulder's drawers. She sat back on her heels. And opened her eyes again. The ring was still there. The initials were still there. Mulder was still married. She swallowed, then turned the envelope over. Part of the return address had been torn, but she could make out "C. Mulder" and the last few letters of "Connecticut." Mulder has a wife in Connecticut? Breathe, Dana. Live and learn. Secrets are fine: you can't keep fish alive, you can't comprehend the concept of privacy, and Mulder is hiding a wife somewhere in Connecticut. Wait - you can't hide a wife. Can you? His FBI profile called him single. But then, it also called his eyes hazel, and that didn't come close to describing them. Maybe he hadn't actually married her. Maybe they'd divorced. Maybe they'd never told anyone. Maybe... Connecticut. Where he is right now. Visiting his mother. Unless he wasn't visiting his mother. The realization was an almost physical blow. Reaction took a moment, then it flowed: He lied to me. I lied to him. That was about his stupid fish! But it was a lie. I didn't mean it, though. Maybe he didn't either. Didn't mean to forget to mention that he's married? He's married. God. Or divorced, her subconscious reminded her. Or separated, or just engaged, or who knows what... Still holding the ring, she stood up and paced the room a few times. It was silly to be so shocked. Really. She'd had a life before she walked into the Hoover basement for the first time - was it so unrealistic that Mulder had had one too? There's a difference between a life and a wife, and you know it. Damn. Why was this so upsetting? It wasn't a lie. Not necessarily. It was...a sin of omission. Less ominous, no less painful. Of course, that depended on who was on the receiving end. She had vivid memories of "forgetting" to tell her father about the scratch she'd incurred squeezing the Scully family boat - er, station wagon - into a snug little parking space outside the Late- Night Diner when she was seventeen. She'd broken down after only minor interrogation, but she wasn't allowed to see Marcus for a month. "Not telling the truth is the same as telling a lie. You know that," her father had lectured her. And lectured her and lectured her and lectured her. No doubt about it, sins of omission definitely had consequences. Marcus. Where had he ended up, anyway? She considered the thought briefly. Probably out in some small town with a couple of kids, married... Like Mulder. Damn it. She stopped pacing and flopped down on the couch for what felt like the hundredth time that day. Her actions had taken on a sort of slow-motion fluidity, she noted. Her thoughts, on the other hand, tumbled through her mind like fleas in a jar, bumping wildly against the sides of her head. Similes aren't your thing, Dana. Regardless, it hurt to be lied to for so long. She didn't harbor any illusions about her relationship with Mulder. It was the kind of intimacy that shriveled at the thought of distrust. She had opened her blouse for Marcus so long ago, and more for Jack not so long ago. But Mulder was different. She'd opened her mind and her soul for him, cliched as it sounded; they were linked on an almost symbiotic wavelength the intensity of which sometimes frightened her. Mulder had looked into her eyes and sworn he would never give up until he could finally erase his sister's terrified screams from his foggy memories. She had looked into his and challenged the beliefs she'd been taught to revere. The evidence of both hung heavy in their conversation, tinging even their light-hearted bantering with a certain desperation. She didn't kid herself. She knew when "Got a hot date, Scully?" meant "Don't ever stop being my lifeline" and she knew he knew when "I'm fine, Mulder" meant "I'm counting on my own faith that you've helped strengthen." "I trust you" had become almost a code for "I love you" - no, it had surpassed it. Every 302 they filled out, every nameless town that boasted alien sightings, every cheap motel room along the way - everyday routine had become expressions of subdued need, an affirmation of their undeniable tie. Feeding his fish, packing his socks, stopping before they traded places on long car trips so she could scoot the driver's seat back to accomodate his long legs. The careless flirting of their early relationship had long ago given way to a more sublimated, deeper tension - it had ceased being sexual, ceased being friendly, ceased being professional. It was all of those and none; it was the odd, inextricable bond the two had forged and fought for the last five years. When had the dynamic changed? Was it when Mulder met her eyes that night on the bridge, when he traded her life for the sister he watched fall to her death? Earlier than that, perhaps - in the Icy Cape, when he blinked in the bright light of his confinement and asked her to trust him? Was it when she sat by his bedside in the Alaska, silently begging him to live and observing for herself the extents to which he would pursue his truth? His truth. It had become her truth, too. Their lives had been entwined for so long that this, the physical evidence of a bond with someone else, of a vow to a completely different sort of faith, was a shock. It felt like...it felt like a betrayal, Scully realized. So it wasn't jealousy, she reminded herself. Mulder might have had a wife, but he and Scully had been in a monogomous emotional relationship for almost as long as she'd known him. All right, so they exchanged platitudes about truth and faith a great deal more often than they discussed books, the theatre...or their pasts. Scully had met Phoebe...and she said a silent thank-you that she wasn't the woman Mulder had taken to the altar. Mulder knew about Jack. But there were years of both of their lives that remained private, perhaps as an attempt to deny their almost total union. Mulder didn't know about Ty, the History major she'd dated in college, the man who had proposed to her halfway through her junior year. The man she'd turned down. Was it so odd that Mulder had never told her about the girl who'd said yes? Hurt began to give way to curiousity. She drew a deep breath. She was past the oh-my-God-I- can't-believe-he-didn't-tell-me stage, she told herself. And she had officially entered the damn-it-I'm-an-investigator- and-I'm-going-to-solve-this-puzzle stage. Easier said than done. She looked at the ring again. Yup, there it was. A simple, elegant wedding band. A wife named "C." A Connecticut address. And nothing left to go on. Who was she? A neat line of attractive women paraded through Scully's imagination. Silently she ticked off their attributes - had he married the tall brunette? The wide-eyed blond? The voluptuous one with the curls? She saw C. Mulder - faceless, nameless, a blank oval in sleek casuals - sitting on her deck in Connecticut, addressing the envelope in her painstaking script. Or perhaps she was bent over an old walnut desk, writing to tell her husband that it was over, enclosing the ring, still warm from her fingers, to prove her point. What had happened? Why wasn't C. right here in Washington, sharing a sunny two-bedroom with Mulder and a couple of hazel-eyed babies? Pushing visions of dysfunctional marriages from her mind, she resolved to find out the story. She had the whole night, after all, while Mulder was with his mother - well, while he was in Connecticut. Which Mrs. Mulder he was visiting was a different story altogether, she thought ruefully. God! Had he really kept up correspondence with this woman behind her back? Listen to me; I sound like a jealous wife. I'm not jealous, though. For God's sake, I'm not his wife, either. I'm not. Someone is. Someone else. But who? There must be an answer. And that, my dear, as they say, is why they put the "I" in you-know-what. With a resolve that startled her (I already pack a weapon; add the mania and the jealous-wife syndrome; I'm a *&^*ing movie of the week), she tore into his cupboards. .......................................................................... ................... She couldn't do it. She'd rifled through a few notebooks, found a couple of old photographs. She couldn't keep ransacking the place. What did she expect to find, anyway - a white satin wedding album with an addendum at the back? Divorce papers? His pressed corsage? She was through. She was also ashamed. In the space of 36 hours, she had killed her partner's fish and violated his privacy. A lovely track record. But he lied. It was time to go. END 1/2 DRAPERY LANGUAGE 2/2 By Admarem .......................................................................... She sat at her kitchen table in the semi-darkness with a cup of steaming herbal tea at her right hand and a vodka-and-tonic at her left, battling exhaustion and more. "I didn't peg you for a two-fisted drinker, Scully. I'm impressed," said Mulder from somewhere inside her head, which was pounding from something like stress. That or the drink. Or both. C'mon, Dana. Two sips can't make anyone drunk. Can you blame a girl for trying? The phone rang then, straight through her skull. She grabbed it before it could do any permanent damage. "Hello?" "Scully, it's me." "Mulder. What time is it?" "A quarter past two." "Is something wrong?" "No, I just wanted to - " "Mulder, it's the middle of the night. Did it occur to you that I might be sleeping?" "Were you?" "No," she responded slowly. Were you married once, Mulder? What was her name? Did she wear white? Why did she leave you? Why didn't you tell me? "I'm sorry. I assumed you'd be up." Because you are. Because you think we're connected; you think I feel the tug of your actions halfway down the coast. Maybe I do. "Why are you up, Mulder?" What else haven't you told me? "I couldn't sleep. It's too quiet up here...a bunch of damned crickets without a single siren. And no Mr. D'Angelo, the amateur carpenter - he turns on that buzzsaw every night at the stroke of one." "That's terrible." "Yeah, well, you try reasoning with a guy carrying an electric implement of death." "You mean like a gun?" "Something like that." She paused for a moment, then spoke. "Mulder, forgive me for jumping to conclusions, but are you not enjoying your vacation?" "What vacation? Oh, you mean this? It's heaven." "Mulder. I'm serious." "I know." There was a long pause. Scully blew across the top of her tea to cool it, then inhaled the strong, sweet scent. "What's that noise?" "Calm down, Mulder. I'm blowing on my tea," she said with a hint of a smile. "Oh." "You could probably use a cup yourself." "I'd rather have a drink." "You don't drink, Mulder." "Not because I don't want to." "What do you mean?" "Nothing." "It's not nothing. You know, I've never seen you pick up a drink, Mulder. Not once. Not in five years." "It's no big deal, Scully." Yeah, nothing we would ever talk about. Drinks fall under that heading of, oh, I don't know. Lives. I guess your wedding ring would land in there, too. "Okay, then tell me about it." A few seconds passed in silence. She listened to him breathe. His voice had dropped to a whisper by the time he responded. "My father drank - is that what you wanted to hear?" "I figured as much," she said softly. "I thought the fewer of his choice traits I displayed, the better. Wouldn't you agree?" There was a trace of bitterness in his voice. Scully made a soft sound of encouragement, urging him to continue. This, catharthis, they could handle. Angst. Comfort. Nice and neat. She had a momentary pang for the little things: I like apricot tea, Mulder, and I hate Virginia Woolf. I've never ridden a roller coaster and I love the taste of the ocean. But this, this was what they did best. "It ruined my parents' marriage. It destroyed their lives." "What about yours?" "My life was pretty much wrecked just when he started drinking heavily. Right about the time my mother stopped calling me 'son.' I think she wanted to pretened I wasn't." "Mulder..." "I'm not angry about it anymore, Scully. If I resent my father, it's for a lot more than the bottle. And if my mother doesn't love me, it's ..." His voice trailed off. "It's what, Mulder? Well-deserved? Can you stop beating yourself up, please? For just a minute? Your mother does love you; she - " "No, Scully. Your mother loves you. And you've been spoiled by that. But we're not all Scullys. My mother, my father, me...it's different. Not that we were unfeeling. Not by a long shot. We felt, and we felt strongly. It wasn't love, but it was something...I had feeling for my parents; but we were these three...planets. Each in its own orbit. We didn't relate to each other, not really, but we circled the same sun." Samantha. "Sun?" "Samantha. My sister was the tie we had; she was the only way those criss-crossed lines of our relationships didn't snag or tear. When she was gone, they..." Scully stood up from the table. She was feeling claustrophobic, feeling the weight of his need settle around her. The responsibility of it was heavy and moist and maternal; she could all but make out his forlorn figure clinging to her. "...they just snapped. That was it. They waited a couple years and then they called it quits. My mother dragged me up to Connecticut with her and it was just the same: the two of us completely alone, only now we really had nothing to talk about. She couldn't even complain about my father anymore. "He didn't hate us, Scully. I can't think that. I need sometimes to...to pretend that I don't know what I know about him, that he's not the Bill Mulder in those pictures, not the Mulder who was involved...who might have..." "Mulder, it's okay," she said softly. His tone frightened her, and the cold self-recriminations rolling neatly off his tongue. Even for them, this was eerie...she had retreated the the living room and curled up in an overstuffed armchair, her feet tucked under the afghan. Mulder's voice poured out of the phone in a throaty whisper, draping itself over her consciousness. "He said good-bye to me before we left for Connecticut. I was...sixteen? seventeen? Somewhere in there. He took off his ring and gave it to me. 'Take care of your mother,' he said. "I hadn't started to resent him then. Not yet. He drank some, and he wasn't exactly a model husband. He was never warm, not to either of us. Not since...but I didn't hate him. I didn't know enough. "I wore it. I was the only high-school junior with a wedding ring. The only finger it fit was the fourth finger of my left hand." There was a pause. "I have my father's hands." Scully listened to the hitch of his breath, imagining him sitting in the semi-dark, not wanting to make noise, looking at the shadowed outline of his fingers. She looked at her own hands, whose slim white fingers were clenching and unclenching the afghan hem. They were her mother's hands: small and deft and capable. When Scully watched her own fingers tap her laptop or clench a scalpel she saw her mother's hands kneading bread or patching dungarees or braiding soft wisps of red hair. Genes were a wonderful thing if you had wonderful memories to match. "I have his hands, and I have his initials, and I have his obsessive tendencies, and love of sunflower seeds. And then I had his ring." "Your father's name was Bill." Why was this so important? She ordered every sleep-deprived cell in her brain to focus. "Frederick William. He hated his first name and never used it. I think he was trying to get past it by giving me an even worse one." Scully swallowed hard. Frederick William Mulder. "But I wore the ring for years. I told myself it was a tacit reminder to hold together the last few pieces of family I had left." And a handy way to show people you were emotionally unavailable, wasn't it? Or was it your punishment? A metal collar of disgrace for your finger, penance for destroying your family? And nothing I say can keep you from believing that you did... For whatever reason... She willed herself not to doze. It would be so easy...she was so tired...Mulder's voice was so soft...so slow...but she needed to talk to him...Weren't you married, Mulder? I was so sure you were married... "I don't wear it anymore." I'd noticed, Mulder, I'd noticed. "My father and I, we...lost contact after a few years. Just trailed off. He disapproved of my studies; he didn't want to finance my education. My mother had savings; I got scholarships; but by then he was drinking pretty heavily. We stopped speaking. "I didn't stop wearing the ring, though." "No?" "For one thing, it was practically welded on. I guess my fingers had grown a bit over those years. Nothing could make it budge. And maybe I...at that point I still wanted to believe in his humanity, and I think I saw the ring as a token of it. "But I took it off when...I had a case about eight years ago, Scully. It was...the first time I heard my father's name in connection to a conspiracy, the first time I questioned his work. It was, to say the least, unpleasant." Never raising his voice above a whisper, he brought her back to 1990, and then a few decades further, unfolding the story. "I didn't know what to make of it. But I came home from submitting my report and spent an hour with a tub of margarine tugging the ring off my finger." "Why?" She wasn't sure if she'd said the word or breathed it. "I don't know, Scully. I just couldn't wear it anymore. I gave it back to my mother. I didn't want to be their link. "My mother sent it back to me after he died. Just the ring in an envelope, no letter." C. Mulder. Tina Mulder. Christina Mulder. Christina T. Mulder. "I opened it and then stuffed it in a drawer somewhere. I didn't want to see it. I don't know if she thought I would want it back or if she wanted to remind me that I'd killed him." "Mulder..." She could actually feel the blows he was dealing himself, word by word. "I'm sorry, Scully. I should let you sleep." "I'm not tired," she responded automatically. She wasn't, not exactly. His voice had lulled her into a relaxed state, but the details of his story were pricking at her, nudging her brain. It was all so hazy, though. Just then she yawned, betraying her exhaustion with impeccably bad timing. "It's after four," he said, tactfully ignoring her blunder. "Are you..." "I'm fine, Scully. I just...being here made me think, I guess." What was it she wanted to ask him? She could feel her eyelids starting to close. She wished he would speak up, jar her out of this... "Mulder, your fish are dead." "I know." "You do?" "Easy come, easy go. Remind me not to let you baby-sit my children, though." She heard his intake of breath as he realized what he had said. And there was a pause of hideous awkwardness. Scully imagined Mulder contemplating how best to commit suicide without waking his mother. "God, Scully, I'm so sorry, I - " "It's okay, Mulder." It was. They couldn't forever guard their speech from this sort of pain; there were too many bruises and tender scars, too little unblemished flesh. Their surface words didn't matter anyway; they were just so many superficial utterances, a coating of etiquette over the intensity of their feelings. She didn't care if he slipped up, if he decided to speak to her in nothing but Urdu. The words were secondary, meaningless. Unnecessary for they who heard the words behind the words. "Hey Scully, you think my mother will notice the bill?" Thank you for listening. I needed it. "She'll probably ground you." Any time, Mulder. "I'm sorry I kept you up so late, Scully." I need you, Scully. Now and always. "You should get some sleep, Mulder." I love you, Mulder. "You too," he said softly. THE END All done! What did you think? As for me, it's a ring explanation I can live with. Agree? Disagree? Agree to disagree? Disagree to - to shut me up, just send feedback! Admarem@aol.com