From: "Parenthetic " Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 17:53:24 -0700 Subject: xfc: The First Glorious Mystery, PG-13, (1/1) Source: xfc From: "Parenthetic " Title - The First Glorious Mystery (1/1) Author - Parenthetic E-Mail address - parenthetic@my-Deja.com Distribution & Archiving - Gossamer, Ephemeral, Xemplary, okay; others just ask. Spoilers - Refs. to Fallen Angel, Anasazi, and Quagmire and FTF. More spoilishly, Never Again, and generally from season six through Biogenesis. Rating - PG-13 for suggestive situations and possible sacrilegious imagery, if you were raised Catholic. Classification - S; MSR; UST. Summary- Post ep for Biogenesis. Pushing the envelope of season 6-style UST. Mulder hallucinations. Feedback - I'd be eternally in your debt. Author notes: Though this is post-ep for Biogenesis, it's primarily inspired by the joint- hallucination section(s) of Field Trip. Disclaimer: Fox Mulder and Sam, Dana and Melissa Scully and all incidentals belong to 1013 and Fox. Moby-Dick belongs to Herman Melville and the American literary heritage. In this story, Queequeg belongs to Sigmund Freud. No profit will be made, no harm intended. _________________________________ In the beginning, the voices came in fits and starts. Then, the overwhelming, lacerating pain, of hearing all unvoiced thought at once, like standing in the middle of the track and being sideswiped by every single car in the Indy 500. The noise, and then the doppler drone of the noise, induced vertigo, nausea. But there had been no hallucinations from the voices, just the shearing pain. So Mulder was pretty sure that the hallucinations, which hadn't started until they'd locked him up in this psych ward, were from the drugs they'd been shooting into him and not the telepathic phenomenon itself. Or perhaps they resulted from some reaction between his brain activity and the drugs. It wasn't like he was a stranger to hallucinations. He'd tripped a few times at Oxford, nothing major compared to the stuff he'd been through since, usually involuntarily (thanks to his friends at the Consortium) though of course having holes drilled in his skull had been his own idea. It was still semi-shocking to him that Scully hadn't killed him herself after that one. All in a day's work for his Scully. More's the pity. And then he'd had quite a few weird experiences recently: the Queen Anne, if it wasn't real (and Scully had more or less badgered him into accepting that it wasn't) and the results of inhaling the spores of a gigantic puffball. Then there was the matter of his day of intense deja vu...on top of the Mystery of the Waterbed...maybe he losing his mind. These new hallucinations were vivid, as always, and utterly startling. The first took him unaware, as he glimpsed out of the corner of his eye Queequeg, sitting in the corner of the cell as if waiting to be let out, the little red patch of fur quivering with excitement. That was all of that one--when Mulder looked back, the tiny bundle of nerves was gone. Mulder walked over to inspect the corner for a telltale puddle of pee, but there was nothing. He retained the feeling that there was something very odd about that. The least disturbing hallucination so far (only, however, in comparison with the others) was one in which Sam walked into the cell, perfect and whole, eight years old, all sass. She arrived with a plastic sand pail and shovel, a beach, and the tide rolling in behind her. He recognized the scene as South Beach, outside Edgartown. Her one-piece suit was pink gingham appliqued with large, groovy summer-of-love type flowers in purple and orange. She plopped down on the sand indian-style and began to dig. "Will you help me build a sand castle?" "Of course." There was white sand scattered throughout her dark braid, more sand plastered on her tanned legs like frosting. "Don't try to take over the whole thing like you did last time. Let me do it. I just need help with the walls. I want really tall walls." "You do the moat, I'll do the walls," he whispered. "Can we have a drawbridge?" "It won't go up and down," he pointed out. "I know, silly. We'll have to keep it down. It'll still be a drawbridge, though." The sound of the surf was deafening as the bright sun faded her out, the colors at first yellowing like improperly developed film. Then he couldn't see her at all; then the beach disappeared altogether. He thought the cell retained the faint odor of sea air and fish. Then there was the one in which Scully walked into the room, wearing a sheer black body stocking like a Vargas pinup girl and a long string of pearls. "Scully...they let you see me," he gasped hoarsely. She merely smiled coyly and lifted the strand of pearls to her mouth, chewing on them provocatively, rubbing the surface of the pearls across her teeth. "Scully?" "Mulder," she said slowly. "Remember your article?" "My article?" he asked, confused. "M.F. Luder?" "Oh, that. What about it?" She shyly produced a glossy magazine from somewhere behind her back. "I wrote an article too. I thought you might like a magazine to read in here so I wrote an article and got it published and then bought you a copy in the gift shop." That seemed like an awful lot of work to accomplish in such a brief period of time, he thought, but if anybody could do it, Scully could. "Scully, you shouldn't have," he managed. "But I wanted you to read what I had to say." He knew she was just an hallucination because he couldn't read her thoughts and besides she would never say any of this. It looked like an issue of with the cover depicting a superbly-maned amazonian model wearing a sequined, plunging-necklined gown. Scully's article was blurbed prominently on the cover: INSIDE! "Lips," by Dana Scully. She'd left already, the Vargas version of his partner; she was gone from his cell, and he thumbed frantically through the magazine's slick pages looking for her article. It turned out to be a photo-essay, a delicious hallucinatory photo shoot. There was a full-page photograph of her taken in a confessional, her hair (but not her face) covered lightly with a white lace veil. She was wearing that cranberry suit with the velvet collar that she never wore any more and clutching a rosary; behind the mesh screen of the confessional there was a shadow implying the presence of the priest. She was kneeling in shadow, her hair a flame, and her berry-stained lips parted in a soft o of surprise or regret. Her commentary was written on the facing page: It was actually not unusual for him to dream that he was reading a text (a natural side effect of his memory), and it wasn't unusual for him to dream about Scully, but never like this. He turned the page. In the next photo she was girlish, leaning against a chainlink backstop dressed in his Bob Gibson* baseball jersey and probably not much else, though the jersey was long enough on her so that it was difficult to tell for certain. Her lips were again rounded into a perfect o, but closed more than they'd been in grief or penance and slightly puckered. He was shaking so hard he dropped the magazine. Which was not there when he bent to retrieve it. Well Scully, Mulder thought, your article was exceedingly strange. But I liked it. Too bad I didn't get to finish it. But now this. This was really freaking him out. There was a large, maybe even human-sized snake poised against the opposite wall when he looked up (alerted, perhaps, by a slight rustle or a telltale slither--godknows a snake that large could probably make a considerable noise). The snake was curled like a rope, its tail disappearing into its mouth, and it was propped against the wall like a...like a fat slimy hula hoop. He knew that in real life, snakes were in fact quite dry. As he stared at the hoop of snake, it finally let go of its tail and rearranged itself in a lounging fashion along the wall, a la the caterpillar in . Mulder half expected to see it produce a hookah from somewhere. "Hello, Fox," the snake said. Low, sultry, female voice. Persuasive, dismissive voice. "Do you know who I am?" There was something hyper-real, cartoonish, about the snake. Its scales were the emerald green of an amusement-park Loch Ness monster; its eyes glowed satanically in a piercing, throbbing red. It wasn't a snake. It was a tattoo artist's idea of a snake. Tattoo artist. "You're Scully's tattoo," he said in wonder, the fact arriving fully formed in his mind. Her tattoo that he had never seen. Though it made sense in a way. If Jerse's could talk to Jerse, he guessed Scully's could talk to him. "You're good, Fox. Very clever." "I--" "Don't give me the song and dance about not calling you Fox. She may have bought it, but I'm not so naive." It was then he recognized the voice as Melissa's. "I'm right? That's what she--you're really Scully's tattoo? Please tell me you're not actual size." "You've seen me," the snake said haughtily. "No. I-- She never-- How could I ask?" Mulder said miserably. "Antarctica?" "Goo factor aside, I had a *few* other things on my mind." It was easier to retain attitude dressed in a suit, he realized, than it was in this skimpy little bib. "Decon shower?" Mulder shook his head. "Where the hell are you? On her, I mean." The snake wriggled its lower extremity and smirked. "You touch me all the time, Fox, and you don't even know it." Mulder shivered and closed his eyes. When he opened them, this horrible thing would be gone. "I'm not so bad, you know." Or, maybe not. He kept his eyes shut. With them shut, it was easier to pretend that it was just Melissa. "Oh?" he said with all the cynicism of the chronically wounded. "How's that?" "I'm an ancient symbol of eternity, death and rebirth, of the circular nature of life--the eternal return. All those things are deeply natural. You should appreciate me for my beauty and not try to turn me into an instance when you couldn't control what Dana wanted to do." Again with the harmony of all natural things crap. He couldn't articulate what it was about Melissa that had always irked him; if she came into the room espousing the presence of intelligent and benevolent aliens on earth he would have curled his lip in contempt. Somehow Melissa believed, but for all the wrong reasons. Then she would invariably compound the problem by implying that he was a controlling bastard for deigning to say what the "right" reasons were and that it was the belief and not the reason behind it that mattered and that he was shallow for falling into such an elitist trap. It was easier to deal with Scully's not believing at all. Scully at least had her own good and pertinent reasons for skepticism. "And it's extremely sensual symbol. On any number of levels. Surely you know your Freud, even if you say you're not a Freudian." He did know. Freud was, at times, as clear as a mountain stream but a whole lot less refreshing. "Come over here and look at me, really look at me." "No." "Touch me." "No." "You have to get me out of the darkness and into the light." "But she doesn't want me--" "Mulder!" said a sharp voice from behind him. "Don't touch that!" His eyes flew open as he looked over his shoulder, and it was her. Scully. He knew what he must look like. He was crouched on his haunches near the wall where the snake had lain, his ass to the wind--far outside the ability of the short hospital shift to cover him. He'd been staring at the floor, he knew, reaching his arm out to touch a giant snake that now wasn't there. As crazy went, he knew, he was right up there in the final voting for poster boy. Posters? Hell, sell tickets. Monster Boy Goes to the Loony Bin. She looked quite different. She'd been wearing nothing but black recently, and he'd never in his life seen her wearing anything gauzy or floaty. This dress wasn't very revealing--it was still Scully disguising her body--but somehow this didn't camouflage her womanliness the way the black pants- and-trenchcoat did (though he had to admit she looked very FBI-Grrrl in those semi-flared lycra pants she'd started to wear). She looked pillowy in this. FBI-Grrrl had Don't Touch signs posted on all her pressure points. This Scully--he felt like maybe he could lean back and rest his head on her, and she might let him, and she would be very soft. "Hey," he said. "Hey," she said, tiredly, sinking to the floor beside him. He sat down too. His nuthouse crouch was making his knees ache. He wasn't as young as he used to be, after all. "Mulder, you remember I told you I was going to Africa?" she said, in the tones of one speaking to a child or someone with a learning disability. Or, he thought wryly, nuthouse Mulder. "Well I'm here, Mulder. Near the artifact. I'm thinking. I'm trying to get a message to you." "I can hear you, I can even see you, Scully." She twisted and looked at him. "No way," she said, while in fact looking him straight in the eye. "Way." He laughed at the surprise in her clear blue eyes. "Proof, Scully. You're wearing a beautiful dress. I've never seen it before. It's long and white and lineny." He reached out and rubbed a piece of the skirt between his two fingers. "It's really soft," he whispered. "I'm not sure it's really--" "I love it." He scooted up to sit behind her, his legs in a V around her, his arms around her torso: he clasped his hands in front over her stomach. "I love it. I can feel you." "I'm not really there, you know." "I know." He smiled into her neck. "Do you think I'd have the courage to hold you like this if you were really here?" She sighed. "Oh Mulder. You're hopeless." He looked up and around the cell. "Apparently." "I didn't mean--" "You're my only hope, Scully." "I know." They fell into silence; he rocked her gently. "So. I've been hallucinating," he said conversationally. "What have you been up to?" "It's too complicated for me to--to try to get across this way, I think." "What is it?" "It's proof, Mulder." He saw the ship as she had seen it, in his mind's eye, and he gasped in spite of himself. She was right. It was too complicated to discuss this way. And he had to get better, to out of here, to help her. He felt a shaft of searing light move through his mind again, and shut his eyes, clutching her back to still the vertigo. Okay, don't think about the ship. Think nice, think familiar, think normal. Except familiar and normal never seemed to meet up in his world. "Mulder, are you okay?" "I'll be okay. I think I just need to think of something...normal. Help me imagine something normal." "It's a beautiful Saturday and because this is normal we *don't* have to work. We're going to do something nice instead of digging around in files in the basement, okay Mulder?" Her voice was soothing, not condescending the way it had been when she'd first come into the cell, but infinitely patient. "We'll have coffee at that cafe you like near my apartment and read the paper and then we can do whatever you want. What do you want to do?" "We, uhh, we could decide to go to a movie." "What's playing?" He took a deep breath. The room wasn't spinning any more and he felt like he could relax a little bit. "In general-run cinemas? I really don't know, Scully." He dared open his eyes to catch her put-on-disdainful smirk. "You can pick the movie. Anything you want." "I don't think I really feel like a movie," she teased. "What else can we do?" "Hmmm. We could go running together. I see lots of" --couples, he thought--"people, two people together, running on Saturday mornings when I do my long run." "Uh-huh," she said, as if still not sold. "We could get in some target practice at Quantico. Kick some perp butt, whattaya say?" "That is tempting, I admit...but it's a little too close to being work. Keep going, Mulder." "Maybe there's something at the Folger. We do both like Shakespeare, don't we?" "I don't know much Shakespeare. Physics major, you know, and when I wasn't studying physics I took a lot of biology." When had life become so small, when had he forgotten how much there was to do with it? He hadn't seen a play since he'd left Oxford. "I saw a lot of Shakespeare when I was in England. You'll love it. I promise." "Okay, remember that we're going to see a lot of Shakespeare someday. But not right now." "Well, what do you want to do on this beautiful Saturday, Scully?" His head was lying on her shoulder, his lips near her ear, his arms around her middle squeezing her tight. She twisted her head back so that her lips were next to his. "Such a dearth of imagination from the man with the overdue triple X videos." "Oh my god," he said, and she laughed. "Is that what you want, Scully?" "Maybe not the triple part." She paused. "But I've been with you long enough to be pretty used to the X." He resisted the urge to roll right over on top of her and pin her to the cell floor. "You wouldn't know X if it came up and bit you on the ass," he asserted, tickling her belly lightly. "I beg your pardon, Special Agent Dana Scully did not fall off the turnip truck yesterday." She grabbed his hand and entwined her fingers with his. "If you want to make love to me, Special Agent Dana Scully, tell me where you want to start." "How do you always manage to twist everything around so that I'm doing all the work?" "That's what I do best, right?" "I sincerely hope not." "Tell me, Scully." She shifted uncomfortably in his grasp. "Okay." She took a deep breath. "Okay." It was more than obvious that she was nervous. He could feel the hum of all her censored thoughts. He couldn't grasp anything clearly but he got the sense that she was trying to think of something that he would find erotic and she kept second- guessing herself. Pulling his zipper down with his teeth. No, no, that wasn't it; that wasn't what he wanted. "Scully. Scully. Calm down." He felt her relax in his arms again and he gave her a squeeze. "You know," he said thoughtfully, "you don't have to start right off with the main event. Sometimes it's easier to start with a story. A little bit of story is always fun to...play with." "I don't think I tell stories any better than I sing." "I'm sure you have that inimitable, all-Scully style at both." "Show me what you mean by tell a story." She was running her fingers lightly across his knuckles. "Triple X, double X or just X?" "Let's start modest and work our way up." Mulder thought for a moment and then cleared his throat, in the way of storytellers. "Once upon a time there was a man, and he had a very beautiful and kind mistress." "Isn't it usually a beautiful but cruel mistress?" "Sometimes it is, but this man was very lucky. His mistress was exceedingly kind, which didn't, in the end, make her any less his mistress, do you understand? Because he didn't know how he could-- because he couldn't possibly imagine -- well, you know why because. Anyway, one day the mistress decided...to test the man." "She didn't trust him?" "She did trust him. This was a different kind of test. She wanted to see...if he would let her do...whatever she wanted. Whatever she wanted with him, with his mind or with his body. You see they both, they both liked to be right, pretty much all of the time." "Hmmmm." "Not a pretty picture, is it, Scully?" She leaned back in his arms and looked up at him smiling. "No, it never is. So what was the test?" "She, she wanted to mark him. They couldn't have wedding rings, for a variety of reasons that this story can't handle without footnotes, but she wanted him to be marked with a sign that he belonged to her, as he was always insisting. Body and soul." He heard Scully swallow and felt her grasp his hand more tightly. "He had to agree that whatever she wanted tattooed on his body was okay with him without knowing in advance what it would be or where it would be placed. She would decide. He would only submit to her wishes. Happily." "Why should he be happy about this?" she asked, her voice solemn. Now it was Mulder's turn to swallow. "Because once, when she wanted something and asked for it, he wasn't listening to her. After that he vowed to be better at knowing what she needed and giving it. So if she wants it, he's happy to give it to her. If she's happy, he's happy." "That's how it works?" "That's how it works." He held Scully in silence for a moment, wondering how to go on. "What if she asked him what he would choose? As a tattoo. Theoretically, you know, as if he had a choice." Ah, Scully. Even in fantasy, she was always voting for equal partnership. He occasionally felt that the balance swayed wildly, with Scully stock shooting up to 95% and his own dwindling at 5%, and that was okay with him, though the constant shifting made him feel queasy, something akin to seasickness. He began softly. "Sometimes, late at night, in the flickering blue glow of his TV--when he considered such things--he thought he wouldn't mind having her initials tattooed in script under his bullet scar. Because, you know, Scully, an artist should always sign her work." She actually laughed out loud, an honest-to-god Scully laugh. "Wouldn't that be dangerous? Her initials? If it's too dangerous for them to wear rings...." "Right, you're right as always, Scully. What would she choose instead?" He watched her stare off dreamily. "A little white whale," she said softly, "no bigger than my thumbprint." She examined her own thumb as if to see if she was pleased with its size, then placed it on Mulder's bare thigh, rolling it as if she were being fingerprinted. He felt the print on his skin as if it were itself the tattoo and he thought for a moment that wouldn't be such a bad idea, to have her fingerprints, her own unique calling card, inked on his skin, to show how thoroughly she owned him. "There?" he asked quietly. She shook her head. "No. In the small of his back. Right over the Speedo line." He could imagine it, the white whale skimming along as if over the tops of the waves. Red waves. Red sea. "Would you?" she asked him. "In a second." "If this conversation is in any sense real, Mulder..." "Just ask me when you get back from Africa, Scully, and you'll see how real this is." He felt her waiting, thinking, hesitating. Censoring. "Scully?" "*Ask* you?" she finally said in a tiny voice. He felt like waving her like a flag. "Tell me," he corrected. What he knew about Scully's sexual past was sketchy--she was never other than a guarded personality--but what he did know was enough. Catholic, Navy brat, Melissa already having appropriated the role of black sheep: Scully hadn't had anywhere to go but good and smart. Things Mulder hadn't failed to notice: Padgett: weird, wild-eyed, obviously dangerous. Jerse: he hadn't met the man, but he sensed that same hard edge, the proximity to something dark and dangerous. Nor had Mulder failed to notice her physical reaction every time he showed up for unofficial sleuthing as Immaculately Garbed Special Agent Dressed For Covert Op. And their stint with the manure pile of domestic terrorism had amply demonstrated to him one, beautiful concept. She hated it. Logical, scientific, everything-in-its-place Dana Scully was an adrenaline junkie. "Scully? There's something else. Please let me see." By some miracle she knew what he was asking, she just knew. She rolled her long dress up over her hips. The snake lay nestled just where Melissa had suggested it would be. There was, after all, only one spot on Scully that he touched all the time. After seeing the life-size version, the depiction at actual size seemed harmless, or at least toothless. De-fanged, he guessed that would be. And he knew that Melissa had been right. That it wasn't a commemoration of how he had failed to recognize Scully as a separate being apart from himself -- it was just an expression of that fact. That there was a Dana and maybe this was what, in one moment, she'd wanted to do. He shouldn't have a whole lot to say about it. He could probably never go so far as to think it was beautiful, but at least it didn't scare him. "Okay?" she said, her voice trembling. Too late he heard the noise of the orderly at the door, the man's thoughts before the actual noise of the door. Before he could answer, she was gone. And he knew again what he looked like, the crazy man, lying curled up on the floor clutching nothing, begging the air: Come home, Scully, come on, come to me, come home. -end- --- "We are all dying to give our lives away to something, maybe." --David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest