From: playwrtrx@aol.com
Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 22:13:20 EDT
Subject: xfc: Gutless by Magdeleine (0/16)
Source: xfc

Title:  Gutless  (0/16)
Author:  Magdeleine
Keywords:  Casefile, UST, Angst
Rating: Strong R.  No kids allowed in this clubhouse. 
Summary:  Deaths in a small town, Uber-UST, and a parrot.
Spoilers:  Nary a one.
Disclaimer:  Not mine, but it beats the hell out of Fight Club.
Archive:  Xemplary, Gossamer, Spookys OK; everyone else please ask.
Feedback:  Please do.  playwrtrx@aol.com
URL: http://shannono.simplenet.com/gutless
Notes:  Author's notes at the end.


"The scientific approach to life is not really appropriate to states of 
visceral anguish."  
    --Anthony Burgess
 
GUTLESS

Prologue

Cooper Street
Tehtonka, Kansas
Wednesday, 9:36 PM

"... refused to comment on the mysterious death of Lola Gruber.  
Sources close to Sheriff Volney, however, have indicated that although 
the local woman was found Tuesday morning, it is very likely that she 
had been dead since sometime Monday night ..."

*THUNK!!*

Aimee opened her eyes.

At first her head ached too much to focus, and all she was aware of was 
the scratchy couch cushion under her cheek that smelled like an allergy 
sufferer's worst nightmare.  One hand was cold; she let it scrabble 
around until wiry carpet fibers under her fingertips told her that she'd 
fallen asleep with one arm hanging off the couch.  The other arm was 
faint and numb, folded hard under her torso like paper in an envelope.

She'd had the flu for three days, and at the moment it felt like she'd been 
asleep for all of it.  She shifted onto her side and the skin over her 
breasts and stomach went hot, fizzing and boiling as the blood came 
back to the surface.  Fever spiked down her arms as she moved, forking 
at her hands like lightning.

"-- sources also revealed that there was no sign of forced entry at 
Gruber's home, although they admit that there is some question of 
whether or not the front door was locked --"

The jangling silver light in front of her resolved itself into the television 
screen.  Sideways, from her perspective, but otherwise recognizable as 
the KSNW news.  Channel three.  Normally she wouldn't be caught 
dead watching KSNW, but at the moment it didn't seem so bad.

God, she really must be sick.

"-- whether this bizarre death could have been the result of natural 
causes," the news anchor announced with a solemn face.  Stephanie 
something.  Big-haired bimbo.  "We caught up with Sheriff Volney at 
the county courthouse today." 

The shot of Stephanie cut away to grainy footage of a big man with a 
gray mustache, angry and on the move.  His mouth moved silently for a 
moment before the sound kicked in.  "-- telling you that this was not -- I 
wouldn't call it an evisceration, no.  Who told you that?"

*THUNK!*

Aimee finally remembered what woke her up in the first place, and 
twisted around to face the ceiling.  "GREG!" she croaked.  Her throat 
was dry, her mouth stiff with ropy saliva; she had to work hard just to 
form her brother's name.  "HEY!  GREG!  CUT IT OUT!"

Silence from upstairs.  She listened suspiciously, the skin of her temples 
feeling thin and papery over her pounding veins.  Nothing.  She let her 
head fall back against the couch cushion, thinking of her lease and the 
hefty deposit she had on this place.  He'd better not be moving 
furniture.  Last time he'd knocked a four-inch hole in his wall and had 
seen nothing wrong with just hanging a poster over it and calling the 
problem solved.  If he pulled something like that again, she'd kick his 
ass out -- if she didn't kill him first.

The television flickered and the sound cut out for a moment.  After a 
moment, just as it always did, it snapped back to normal.  "-- victim was 
found in her home near Tehtonka late Tuesday morning by her sister-
in-law.  KSNW's John Eskridge spoke with Joanne Gruber earlier 
today."

The close-up of the reporter cut away to a shot of a tear-streaked 
woman with lanky hair, standing in too-bright sunlight in front of some 
dingy siding.  "It was awful," the woman said in a strained voice.  She 
sniffled once and dabbed her eyes on her sleeve in a businesslike 
manner, as if ignoring the implications of tears would keep them from 
overwhelming her again.  "I knocked for such a long time, you know, 
and I thought Lola was just downstairs doing laundry so I walked on in, 
but when I finally found her she was upstairs on her bed and she was ... 
she was ..."  The woman teared up again, half-turning from the camera 
as she bit her lip and fought for control.  The camera stayed on her, 
merciless in its blank curiosity, until she shook her head and waved it 
away.

Back to the news anchor, who gave the camera a look of solemn 
concern that came a moment too late for authenticity; someone in the 
control room must be giving the cues late.  "If you have any 
information on the death of Lola Gruber, please call the Cooper County 
Sheriff's Office."  A number appeared at the bottom of the screen.

That was quite enough about the murder for one day.  Aimee fumbled 
at the coffee table for the remote control, knocking over a bottle of 
medicine.  The lid was off.  Crap.  Red liquid oozed over the surface of 
the table, filling the room with the cloying stink of cherry-flavored 
alcohol.  Clots of the stuff hung off the lip of the bottle.

She made a face and pried the remote out of the mess.  The flu had left 
her so weak that she had to use both hands.  Gooey strands dangled 
from the damn thing as she took aim at the television and fired off a 
channel change.

"-- creating a line of thunderstorms moving in our direction," said the 
Channel Ten weatherman.  "The good news for us is that the front is 
moving very slowly, so it won't be here until Sunday or so.  The bad 
news is, this batch of thunderstorms is a doozy.  Get out and enjoy that 
warm weather while you can, folks --"

The remote was starting to shake dramatically in Aimee's hands.  She 
braced her elbow against the edge of the couch and changed the 
channel again.

"-- half off the retail price.  This is a limited time offer --"

She started to drift off again, the sticky remote coming to rest against 
the collar of her flannel pajamas.  It would stain, of course.  She didn't 
care.

"Ohhhhhhh ..." a male voice groaned.

Her eyes snapped open and she stared at the television.  What the hell 
was she watching?

A tanned, muscular man on her television flashed a toothy smile.  
"Order the Oxyciser NOW and get a FREE instructional video!" 

An infomercial.  What the --

"Mmmmmm ..."

It wasn't coming from the television.  Her gaze drifted back to the 
ceiling.  

A gravely, throat-rending moan came from her brother's room.

Great.  She was down here dying of the flu, so of course Greg went 
upstairs to whack off.  Of course.  Aimee rolled her eyes and turned the 
volume up.  

"This amazing machine would ordinarily cost you more than one 
hundred and fifty dollars, but if you order TODAY, you can have the 
award-winning Oxyciser in your home for only eighty-nine ninety-five!"  

A longer groan from upstairs, this one with a sort of a yipping noise at 
the end.  The infomercial did nothing to cover it up.  God, why hadn't 
she rented a house with carpet?  Or better yet, one that was 
soundproofed?

She extended her entire arm to point the remote this time, as though 
somehow that would make it work better and faster.  

On the television screen, the camera swung dizzily down to focus on a 
row of spandex-clad women lying on their backs, their thighs and 
buttocks propped up on rapidly oscillating plastic stirrups, their feet 
skittering around on the floor.  The jiggling was minimal on two of the 
women, but the other three were bobbling like statuesque gelatin molds.

"Ugh," Aimee blurted, starting to feel seasick.

"OHHHHHHHHHH," Greg enthused from upstairs, louder than ever.

This time Aimee pointed the remote at the television with such violence 
that it struck the edge of the coffee table.  The battery panel popped 
open on impact and the batteries tumbled out, rolling out of reach.

Upstairs, Greg's moans continued to spiral toward ecstasy.  On the 
television, the women continued to jiggle, hips grinding away at thin 
air.  To add insult to injury, the screen flickered and the sound cut out 
again.

"Fuck."  Aimee flung the disemboweled remote at the television.  

That was when Greg screamed.

Aimee lurched to her feet and started scrambling toward the stairs 
before she really thought about it.  This wasn't normal.  She'd heard a 
lot of Greg's self-induced love life back when he'd hit puberty, and a 
couple of times since then, and this wasn't normal.  This sounded bad.  
This sounded like he'd hurt himself.  

She tried not to focus on what Greg could have done to himself that 
would have made him scream like that.  Instead, she concentrated on 
climbing the stairs without killing herself.

The first of the broad wooden stairs made a sound like a shot as she 
stepped on it, and even though it *always* did that and she should 
have expected it, she shrieked.  Her vision wavered -- when she looked 
wildly down at the step, her feet seemed to be small and very far away, 
as though she were looking through the wrong end of a pair of 
binoculars.  

Her legs were shaking too hard to support her; she collapsed to her 
knees and hauled herself up one stair after another on all fours, the 
world tilting back and forth like something out of a funhouse.  The 
yellow light bulbs dangling from the ceiling seemed to strobe past her.  
An awful silence seeped down from her brother's room in cold waves, 
her own noises insignificant compared to that icy quiet.  She could 
distantly hear the wheezy gasps of her own breathing and the gritty 
noise of the dirty wood under her hands, and God, wouldn't it be 
hysterically funny when she got upstairs and it turned out that she'd 
panicked just because her brother had been masturbating to a 
particularly good picture of Brad Pitt?

They'd have a good laugh over this later.  They would.  And then she 
was going to get a really, really thick layer of carpet for his room to 
make sure this never happened again.

Concentrate on that.  Concentrate on later.

The last stair came as a shock.  She collapsed on the sudden horizon of 
the hallway, her hands fluttering against the floor like pinned 
butterflies.  "Greg?" she called weakly, her voice cracking on her 
brother's name.  No answer.  "Greg?  Are you okay?"

The cold silence soaked into her joints and filled her ears with a 
seashell roar.  She struggled down the hallway on bruised and aching 
knees, her hand trailing along the cold wall for balance, the flannel of 
her pajama bottoms whispering secrets along the hardwood floor.  She 
froze at the door for an eternity, staring up at the monolithic stretch of 
wood.

She stretched a shaking hand into the unknown.

She knocked.  

"... Greg?"

There was no answer.  

Downstairs, the television screamed to life.  "ORDER NOW!  LOSE 
WEIGHT THE NATURAL WAY WITH OXYCIZER!  RECOMMENDED 
BY DOCTORS!"

Aimee tried to pretend that she was respecting Greg's privacy, that the 
reason she couldn't bring herself to open that door was simple fear of 
interrupting some kind of ... private moment.

The frozen knot in the pit of her stomach testified to her lie.

"YOUR FRIENDS WILL BE AMAZED!"

She pushed the door open with numb hands.

Dim yellow light from the hallway flooded into her brother's darkened 
room.  Aimee's world tilted again and she leaned hard against the wall, 
panting, her knuckles white where they clutched the door frame.

Her mouth was dry.  She breathed in a mouthful of silence and her 
brother's name whispered out of her like ice flakes.

She licked her lips uselessly.  "Greg?"  She couldn't see him.  Her fist 
clopped woodenly against the door even as she realized there was no 
reason to knock.  "Greg, are you --"

"JUST FIFTEEN MINUTES A DAY, THREE TIMES A WEEK!"

There was an odd smell in the air.  She noticed it on a level just above 
subliminal.  The smell of that hideous silence, perhaps.

"Greg?"

She shuffled into her brother's room on her knees like a child, recoiling 
from the silence, from the images of what could be.  Her eyes were wide 
open, the staring, straining eyes of a woman searching the dark for a 
recent nightmare.

She found it.

Her legs gave out and she folded up like a broken doll, her butt hitting 
her heels and grinding the tops of her ankles against the hard floor, her 
hand still clamped on the doorknob.

Greg was draped across his bed like a rag doll.  His shirt was off, and 
she could see a searing red mark, like a sunburn ... red all over his chest 
and stomach, red where his thin frame seemed caved in, hideously 
slumped, hideously *wrong*.

Aimee hitched in a breath and tried not to scream. 

"... Greg ...?"

He didn't move.

"... Greg??"

"YOUR LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!"

The smell was much stronger in here.  A sloppy odor, like unwashed 
socks going to seed in a men's locker room... and, subtly, playing along 
underneath it, something familiar.  Like bacon.  A homey odor at odds 
with the cold fear that was tearing at her stomach with razor claws.

Greg wasn't breathing.  She could see it from here; he wasn't breathing.  
Her world dimmed and stumbled but her brother's body remained at the 
epicenter of the quake.

He was dead.  He was dead he was dead he was dead he was d --

"CALL TODAY!"

That smell wasn't bacon.  Aimee suddenly realized what it was.

Sour acid rushed up her throat -- she turned to one side barely in time 
and threw up violently.  The thin vomit pattered irregularly onto the 
bare floor, puddling and trickling down into the cracks between the 
boards.  It hung off her lips in long glistening strands.  Some stunned, 
distant part of her mind noticed the bright pink color and she thought 
of blood and bubblegum ice cream before remembering the cherry-
flavored medicine.  The smell hit her, and she heaved again, fruitlessly, 
because even the stench of her own vomit wasn't enough to cover up 
the sweet smoky smell caressing the back of her throat.

The smell of her brother's roasted flesh.

<X><X><X><X>

End of Prologue  (0/16)


Title:  Gutless (1/16)
Author:  Magdeleine

GUTLESS

Chapter 1

U.S. Highway 165
Sunday, 5:18 PM

"Three victims, all residents of Tehtonka, Kansas:  Lola Marlene 
Gruber, female, Caucasian, forty-eight years old; Gregory Allen Marks, 
male, Caucasian, twenty-three years old; Marjorie Elise Bailey, female, 
Caucasian, thirty-seven years old.  Go." 

"Both female victims lived alone; Greg Marks had been living with his 
sister, Aimee Lydia Marie Marks, twenty-eight, manager of the local 
IGA grocery store.  Go."

"No common traits in employment; Lola Gruber was a substitute 
teacher; Greg Marks was unemployed, with aspirations of becoming an 
artist; Marjorie Bailey was a secretary for a local temp agency.  Go."

"The victims appear to have been killed on a two-day cycle; Lola 
Gruber died last Monday, Greg Marks died forty-eight hours later, on 
Wednesday night, and Marjorie Bailey died forty-eight hours afterward, 
on Friday.  The pattern has no apparent connection to the lunar, solar, 
or astrological cycle, nor to any known occult traditions.  Go."

"Very nice, Scully."

"Keep it moving, Mulder, or you forfeit your turn."

"Right.  There was no sign of forced entry, no prints on the bodies or 
the crime scene, no signs of sexual assault or torture, no ritualistic 
arrangement of the bodies.  All three victims were found lying in bed in 
their own rooms, dressed for sleep, with the lights off.  Considering that 
there were no signs of a struggle in any of the three cases, it's a safe 
assumption that the victims were asleep at the time they were attacked, 
and quickly overcome.  Top *that*."

"Watch me.  The first two victims -- and, from what I have been told, 
the third as well -- were marked by an irregularly shaped erythemic area 
covering much of the chest and abdomen, characteristic of a first-
degree burn.  The internal organs had been removed from the thoracic 
and abdominal cavities, but the means of removal are unclear.  Cause of 
death was most likely blood loss and shock, possibly manual anoxia.  
Go."

"... I don't think I can top that one, Scully."

"Well, Mulder, you know the rules.  Pull over and give me the keys."

"No no no no, waitaminit, hold on."  Mulder stared at the endless 
Kansas highway, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he 
ransacked his memory.

Scully watched him, smiling enigmatically.  "Give up?"

"Ten seconds, Scully."

She tilted her head and smirked up at the ceiling of the Crown Victoria, 
humming the theme from 'Jeopardy.'  "Doo doo doo doo, doo doo 
doooo..."

He shot a poisoned look at her.  "Cut it out."

Scully cocked an eyebrow at him, barely suppressing an evil grin.  
"Time's up.  You know how this works.  It's my turn to drive."

"No, wait --" Mulder interrupted, holding up a finger.  "Greg Marks was 
gay."  He beamed at her.  "Go."

She turned a skeptical look on him.  "It doesn't count if you make the 
information up, Mulder."

"I'm not making it up."

She waited for that glint in his eyes that meant he was joking.  "It's not 
in the file."

"I know," he admitted, grinning insufferably in the general direction of a 
freight train chugging along parallel to the highway.  "I talked to a few 
people.  Come on, your turn.  Go."

Scully considered this for a long moment, weighing the consequences 
of pressing this any further.  "Mulder," she said, "is there anything else 
not written in the file that you would like to share with me?"

"Do I win?"

She shook her head, smiling a little.  "Down, boy.  I'm declaring a 
temporary time out."

"I don't think that's covered in the rules."

"*Mulder*."

He rummaged around in the door pocket and came up with a new bag of 
sunflower seeds.  He offered the bag to Scully, not taking his eyes off 
the road.

"No thanks."

"No, no, I need you to open it.  I don't wanna crash the car."

She took the bag away from him without a word.  Opened it.  Gave it 
back.

"Thanks.  Sheriff Volney called me shortly after we were assigned to 
this case -- I believe you were in that meeting about the Erikson 
mutilation at the time -- and we spoke briefly, man-to-man."

"Man-to-man," she repeated, arching her eyebrows at him.

He shrugged and popped a sunflower seed in his mouth.  

The rental car was remarkably soundproof; the vague mumble of the 
motor and the wheels against the road did nothing to mask the faint 
noise of the hull clicking against Mulder's teeth ... and the soft sucking 
sound as he shifted the seed from one side of his mouth to the other ... 
and the barely audible popping as he cracked the seed gently, expertly.  
And then, that indescribable liquid whisper that meant that he was 
flipping open the cracked hull with his tongue, extracting the seed --

"The sheriff is a gentleman, Scully.  There were some things about this 
particular case that he didn't feel comfortable writing up in a report."

Scully found that she was still staring at him.  Surprised at herself, she 
shook her head to clear it,  and turned to watch the dark green highway 
signs whiz past.  

TEHTONKA - 5 MILES.  

She marshaled her thoughts with a firm hand and took a deep breath.  
Another.  The strange wave of arousal faded away as abruptly as it had 
started.

"I hope," she said, still not looking at him, "that the sheriff's 
gentlemanly reluctance to breach any sensitive subjects wasn't due to 
any religious or moral objections he might have."

"Actually, I believe that his reluctance is more due to the fact that 
Tehtonka is a very small town and practically the entire case file of the 
first murder was somehow leaked to the public.  Everything the sheriff's 
department knew, the local media knew.  And frankly, Sheriff Volney 
does not strike me as a man who likes pursuing an investigation with 
his pants around his ankles."

"Nice metaphor, Mulder."  Scully glanced over at him.  

Mulder took his attention off the road long enough to waggle his 
eyebrows at her.  "Who said it was a metaphor?"

She rolled her eyes and turned back to the window.  "I was under the 
impression that they had the leaks under control."

"Right," Mulder agreed.  "The sheriff got the leaks under control by 
keeping every new piece of information under lock and key.  Half his 
deputies don't know what the other half are doing, and none of them 
heard the interview with Greg Marks' sister.  Volney did that himself."

Incredulously, she cranked back around and stared at him.  "How the 
hell are they supposed to conduct any kind of effective investigation if 
only one man knows what's going *on*?"

Mulder shrugged.  "Like I said, Scully, it's a small town, and the sheriff 
is a stubborn man.  You read the file; Volney's been screaming for 
federal help since the day after the Gruber murder."

"Yes," Scully agreed dryly.  "Since the man refuses to use his own 
deputies, I expect the next logical step would be to go looking for some 
federal agents to do the work."

Mulder was shaking his head before she'd finished.  "Volney is an 
arrogant bastard, but you have to admit he had a point.  Nobody at the 
Kansas City field office was taking him seriously.  SAC Bauer was 
ready to come down here and kick his ass personally.  Face it, if 
Volney'd had help when he asked for it, Greg Marks and Marjorie Bailey 
might still be alive."

She leveled an eyebrow at Mulder.  "If he'd used his own officers 
instead of waiting for someone else to take care of it, they might have 
found the murderer themselves and we wouldn't be having this 
conversation."

"Maybe, maybe not.  They didn't have that much to work with, Scully."

"I don't have that much to work with, either," Scully informed him, 
letting a touch of ice creep into her tone.  "What else aren't you telling 
me?"

"The woman who found the first body --"

"Joanne Gruber?" she asked archly.

"Oooh, Scully," Mulder purred, "is the time-out over?"  He deftly 
picked the sunflower hulls from between his lips.  That soft, wet sound 
again.  A tiny flash of tongue.  Moisture glistening on his lower lip.  

Scully shivered, and gritted her teeth.  "No," she said, half to herself.

"Okay," he said.  "Joanne was interviewed on the Wichita news less 
than an hour after she was interviewed by Sheriff Volney.  Nobody 
seems to know how they got her name; the reporter, when asked, 
refused to name her source."

"Great."

"The reporter also got Joanne to admit that she didn't remember 
whether or not she had personally unlocked the front door of Lola 
Gruber's farmhouse, although she'd assured Volney that the door had 
been unlocked when she arrived."  He scratched under his chin again.  
"To make matters worse, a friend of Lola Gruber's told one of the 
sheriff's deputies that Lola was notoriously random about locking her 
doors, so there was no way of telling what actually happened."

"Which, if I remember correctly," Scully said, "was when he called for 
federal help the first time."

Mulder snorted.  "Yeah.  A lot of good that did him."  He popped 
another seed into his mouth.

Scully looked away, forcibly suppressing the twinge of arousal.  A 
feeling of cold dread flooded her stomach.  It was going to be one of 
those days.

One of *those* days.

Back during the first year that Scully was with Mulder -- with the 
X-Files, that is -- she'd started calling them Mulder-Awareness Days.  
They appeared out of nowhere and left just as quickly, a sort of bad 
hormonal joke that she had to endure as a consequence of being 
sexually inactive.

She'd had so many of those days by now that she'd jokingly catalogued 
the various levels of intensity.  Level One was a day when she'd catch 
herself staring at Mulder's ass, give herself a mental shake, and go on 
with life.  On Level Two days, Mulder's oral fixation became the focal 
point of her existence; she'd find herself hypnotized by the pencil-
chewing, the lip-chewing, and, of course, the damn sunflower seeds.  
Level Three days were tough to live through; she'd spend most of the 
day avoiding his touch; the slightest brush of his hand would be like 
touching a live wire.  Level Three days, to be honest, tended to send 
her home to cold showers and pints of Ben & Jerry's. 

"Scully?"  She turned to find Mulder frowning at her, concern creasing 
his forehead.  "You were spacing out on me for a minute there.  
Something wrong?"

"No, nothing."  She broke eye contact, a warm flush spreading over her 
neck and chest.

He gave the road momentary attention and looked back at her.  "Are 
you sure?"

"I'm sure."  

"You look kind of weird.  Are you feeling all right?"

"A little carsick, maybe."

"Need some air?"

"Yeah."  

Mulder obligingly switched on the vent, and cool air washed over her.  
She turned away and found herself watching his reflection in the 
passenger window, tracing the ghost of his face with her eyes.

She pulled her gaze away with an effort and sighed, shaking her head.

"Better?"

"Much.  Thanks."  

This was going to be one hell of a long day.

<X><X><X><X>

End of Chapter 1 (1/16)

Title:  Gutless (2/16)
Author:  Magdeleine

GUTLESS

Chapter 2

936 Lakeshore Drive
5:32 PM

The house was yellow and low to the ground.  The man guarding the 
front porch was gray and built like a tank, sporting a thick steel-colored
 
mustache and a nose like a car wreck.  He stepped forward before 
Mulder and Scully reached the stairs, glowering down at them with 
copper-colored eyes.  "You the FBI agents?"

Scully pulled her ID out of her pocket.  "Agents Scully and Mulder," 
she said, holding it up for inspection; Mulder followed suit an instant 
later.  "And you are ...?"

"Sheriff Michael Volney."  He motioned with his hand as he turned 
toward the door.  "Come on in.  Watch out, the boards are a bit 
warped."

Scully climbed the three steps with appropriate caution, Mulder 
following behind.  As they reached the top of the stairs his hand settled 
at the small of her back, just like it always did.

She shivered.

"Cold, Scully?" Mulder murmured, practically at her ear.

She shook her head and sped up, pulling away from his touch.

Volney was just inside, holding the door open for them.  "About damn 
time you two showed up," he growled, puffing humid, salami-scented 
breath directly into Scully's face.  "We've been waiting all day."

Scully tried not to flinch away.  "Sheriff, I apologize for any 
inconvenience, but we took the earliest available flight from --"

"Sorry is one thing, Agent Scully, but I've got lab people all the way in 
from Wichita."  Volney leaned in to emphasize his point, his salami 
breath fluffing his mustache.  "They've been here all damn day, on a 
Sunday, and every single one of them has a family to get back to, and 
they can't do that until the coroner takes the body back to Leotie.  
Which, by the way, she would love to do sometime this week, if you 
two would just --"

Mulder stepped up behind Scully, the hem of his trench coat brushing 
against her calf.  He was so close behind her, she could feel the heat 
from his body all along her back.  Her skin began to tingle as though 
she'd stuck her finger in a light socket.  "Excuse me, Sheriff," he said, 
"but my partner and I were called in on extremely short notice.   We 
appreciate the courtesy of keeping the crime scene largely intact for 
us --"

"I sure hope you do," Volney snapped, taking a step forward, "because 
I was promised federal assistance in this matter almost four days ago.  It
 
took a third murder in this community to inspire the Bureau to keep that 
promise, and that fact does not make me a happy man.  We have better 
things to--"

Claustrophobia reared up and clutched at Scully's throat.  "All right," 
she announced, pushing out from between the two men.  "Sheriff, the 
file we received didn't include a copy of the witness deposition.  If you 
could brief us on the details of how the body was discovered ..."

"Hmph."  Volney chewed on his mustache and squinted at her as 
though gauging her authority.  Apparently she passed muster, because 
the sheriff shrugged and complied.  "We got the call about six P.M., 
Saturday.  A friend of Marjorie's, name of Karen Schaeffer, came over 
and couldn't get an answer at the door, so she looked in through the 
bedroom window and saw Marjorie just lying there.  Called us from her 
car phone."

"Was the door locked?" Mulder asked.

Volney glared, and Scully remembered the controversy on the news 
over whether or not the door in the Gruber case had been locked.  
"Yes," he gritted out.  "We checked."

Mulder shrugged and went back to nosing around the dead woman's 
living room, his hands clasped behind him like a rookie cop who has to 
remind himself not to touch anything.  Volney glowered at him for a 
moment and turned to face Scully.  "No sign of forced entry or burglary.
 
'Course," he added, indicating the cluttered room with a nod of his 
head, "God only knows what all's supposed to be in here.  Hard to tell." 

"Have they determined the time of death?" Scully asked

"Oh, sometime Friday night is what they're thinking.  Nine, ten o'clock.
 
Gives me the creeps, truth to tell.  Ten o'clock I'm home watching the 
news and waiting for my daughter to come home from the movies, and 
across town a woman's gettin' murdered.  Coulda been my kid."  He 
blew out a long breath, fluttering his mustache, and cocked an eye at 
Scully.  "You're the medical one, right?  You wanna take a look?"

"Of course.  You said the body was in the bedroom?"

"Sure is."  Volney crossed the living room, waving at a tiny hallway.  
"Right this way," he said, wrinkling that unfortunate nose.  "Might 
want to hold your breath."

Scully glanced up at Mulder.  He looked back down at her, reading the 
implicit question.  "You go ahead, Scully.  I'll be there in a minute."

<X><X><X><X>

Mulder waited until he was sure that Scully wasn't coming back, and 
took a quick survey of the room.  A shelf full of Reader's Digest 
Condensed Books, a small herd of little china cows, Princess Diana 
dolls, a set of Elvis plates, throw pillows embroidered with the images of
 
Disney characters, ugly glassware everywhere ... it looked like the 
Home Shopping Channel had exploded.

He walked over to a little curio cabinet and gazed through the glass 
doors at a collection of thimbles.  Each thimble apparently represented a 
certain state; the little area for each one was neatly labeled with the 
state's name.  Rhode Island was missing.

Continuing past the thimbles, he found himself face-to-face with a 
blonde, surprised-looking Cabbage Patch Kid of indeterminate gender, 
hanging from the wall by a small cord around its neck.  Mulder's lips 
twitched upward.  

"Hey," he informed the doll, "who says culture in the Midwest is 
dead?"

"DEAD!" 

Mulder jumped back a step and stared at the Cabbage Patch Kid.  The 
Kid stared back.

"DEAD!" the voice repeated, and whistled.  This time Mulder tracked 
the voice by slowly turning toward the kitchen.  The kitchen lights were 
off, the saloon-style doors segmenting the shadows inside.  "Hello?" 
he asked, pitching his voice to carry as he edged to the side of the 
doorway.

"HELLO!"

Whoever it was -- whatever it was -- it smelled.  

He eased his semiautomatic out of its holster, holding it next to his 
shoulder with the muzzle pointed up, and gingerly pushed one of the 
doors open, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light.

The same voice emitted a loud scream.  "AAAAWK!"

Mulder's eyes finally dilated properly, and that was when he saw the 
birdcage next to the refrigerator.

A big damn birdcage.

With a big damn bird.

It was a parrot.  A gray one, with a blood-red tail.  Mulder crossed the 
room as he holstered his weapon, and stared at the bird.  The bird 
stared right back at him, tilting its head to one side, then the other.
 
Apparently, neither one of them could believe what they were seeing.

Mulder reached out to tap on the cage, took another look at that 
vicious beak and turned it into a little wave instead.  "Hey there, birdie.=
"

"HELLO!"  The parrot fluffed its wings and blinked.  "WHO ARE 
YOU?"

Mulder glanced over his shoulder, feeling self-conscious.  He 
considered briefly, shrugged, flipped his ID open and held it up in his 
best G-man style.  "Mulder.  FBI."

"MULDER FBI!  MULDER FBI!"  The parrot let out an ear-piercing 
shriek and flapped its wings with gusto.  "HELLO!"  And without 
further ado, the parrot burst into song.  "WHEN THE MOON HITS 
YOUR EYE LIKE A BIG-A PIZZA PIE THAT'S AMORE ..."

Mulder's jaw dropped.  

"WHEN THE WORLD SEEMS TO SHINE LIKE-A YOU'VE HAD TOO 
MUCH WINE THAT'S AMORE ..."

"Holy cow," Mulder muttered, grinning from ear to ear.  "Scully is just 
going to *love* this."

<X><X><X><X>

The corpse was female, Caucasian, in her late twenties; about five-foot-
four, one hundred sixty pounds.  Just forty-eight hours dead.  She was 
dressed neatly in a nightgown made of oatmeal-colored flannel, fuzzy 
socks, and, as Scully noted when she pushed aside the unbuttoned 
sides of the nightgown, simple cotton underwear with little rosebuds 
printed on them.  The corpse was lying face-up on the twin bed, mouth 
slack and tongue protruding slightly, arms at her sides, hands already 
enclosed in paper bags.

There were no lacerations, no puncture wounds or gunshot wounds, no 
blood splashed about.  There was only one mark on the body: a huge 
scarlet blemish on the chest and abdomen, running from collarbone to 
pelvis, fading out along the sides like bloody fingers trailing along the 
woman's ribcage.  The skin colored by this blemish was slightly 
roughened, the epidermis flaking off at Scully's latex-gloved touch.

What was really intriguing, though, was the appearance of the torso.  
Scully's first, irrational thought was that someone had already 
performed the autopsy; the entire trunk seemed to be collapsed, 
flattened, as though it were a football that had been punctured and 
stepped on during a particularly rough game.  When Scully prodded at 
the cool skin of the abdomen, it sank beneath her fingers.

The prodding caused a tiny hint of air to ooze out of the corpse.  Scully 
caught a whiff of it and was violently reminded of an autopsy she'd 
done a few weeks earlier, a near-evisceration.  All the organs and their 
contents had been mangled together into a soupy mix, but the wound 
had bizarrely suctioned itself back together again and held the goop 
inside like the world's most disgusting jelly doughnut.  This smelled like
 
that -- like bile and gastric acid and vomitus and feces, all mixed 
together -- but this scent was lower, subtler, an olfactory clue rather 
than the thing itself.

Scully found herself looking at the dead woman's underwear, at the pink 
rosebuds.  Rosebuds that, if Scully's guess was right, nobody besides 
Marjorie Bailey had seen since the day they were purchased.  
Something she thought was pretty, maybe.  They looked like something 
a little girl would wear.

Death and dead bodies, Scully was used to, could deal with; the 
rosebuds, however, had a kind of mute pathos that struck at her.  She 
blocked it off, drew a wide black magic-marker line to separate the 
curious pathologist from the horrified human being.

"... just this week," the coroner was saying.  "They're all like that."
 

"Hmm?"  Scully looked up, trying to figure out what she'd missed.  The 
local coroner, Jean Denison, was a tall, bony-looking woman, about 
fifty years old, with a thick Okie accent and big hair.  Dressed in jeans 
and a T-shirt under her lab coat, she struck Scully as a woman in denial 
about her age; to add to that impression, Dr. Denison had been 
chattering at Scully nonstop, apparently assuming she had found a new 
best friend.

Dr. Denison was much mistaken.  Unfortunately, Scully was in no 
position to set her straight; she would be dealing with this woman for 
several days and could not afford to antagonize her at the outset.

"Not a scratch on any of 'em," the coroner continued, leaning in closer.
 
This was not news to Scully, but she let it go.  "I can't be positive until
 
we open this one up, but I'm pretty sure the viscera are missing, just like
 
in the others."

"Doctor Denison --"

"Oh, call me Jean, honey."  Jean leaned over, lowering her voice 
confidentially.  "I tell you, Agent Scully, I hope to hell you and your 
partner can help us out, because I have *never* seen anything like this 
before.  Well, except for the two other ones we got stuck in the cooler 
over in Leotie, you know what I mean, we got a bunch of 'em but that 
don't make this one any more normal."

Scully looked up at her and forced a smile.  Sheriff Volney had left, 
moments ago, to check on the fingerprint experts who were smoking 
cigarettes outside the perimeter tape, waiting to begin their work; Scully
 
was stuck with the present company.  It was a relief to be without 
Mulder for a few minutes, but this woman was really beginning to grate 
on her nerves.  "Dr. Denison --"

"Jean, honey; call me Jean."  The older woman grinned engagingly at 
Scully, revealing a set of remarkably large teeth, stained yellow with 
nicotine.  

"Jean."  Scully's own smile was making her jaw ache.  "Was the 
nightgown buttoned or unbuttoned when the body was discovered?"

"Buttoned.  The pictures are still being developed, but we've got the 
Polaroids around here somewhere if you want to see ..."

"Yes, please."  That fake smile was slipping; to cover it up, Scully 
glanced down at the bedside table while Jean ruffled through an 
envelope.  The table, unlike everything else in the house, was relatively 
free of clutter; the only things on it were a watch, a pack of cigarettes,
a 
lighter, and a photograph in a heavy silver picture frame.  Curious, 
Scully leaned in for a closer look at the picture:  a candid shot of a 
handsome man in his late thirties, holding a drink by a Christmas tree.  It
 
looked like something from an office Christmas party; certainly nothing 
that rated such an expensive looking frame.

"These are the ones you want, I think."  A pair of Polaroids were 
abruptly shoved into Scully's line of vision.  Startled, Scully looked up;=
 
Jean was standing over her, her hand extended in offering.  "Well, go 
on, honey, they won't bite you."

"Thank you."  Scully accepted the Polaroids.  She gestured at the 
picture in the silver frame.  "Who's this?"

"Oh *that*.  That's Jim Taymor, Marjorie's boss."

"Was he Marjorie's ..."  Scully couldn't think of an appropriately 
delicate term.  "... boyfriend?"

"Her WHAT?"  Jean let out a startled shriek of laughter.  "No, no, 
honey, Jim's married."

"Could they have been having an affair?"

"Oh no.  No, I don't think so.  Not to speak ill of the dead ..." Jean's 
eyes flickered briefly towards the corpse.  "... but Marjorie really wasn't
 
Jim's type."

Scully followed Jean's eyes.  True enough; even allowing for the 
discoloration and distortion that had come with death, it was obvious 
that Marjorie Bailey had never won any beauty contests.  The thought 
made Scully feel bizarrely disloyal, as though she had been listening to 
unflattering gossip about a close friend.  She looked involuntarily at the
 
rosebuds again and shut her eyes.

<*Not to speak ill ...*>

There was a light knock on the door frame; Scully looked up to find 
Mulder standing just outside the door, his eyes crinkled in amusement.  
"Scully," he said, "you are not going to believe what I found in the 
kitchen."

"Are you going to tell me, or are we going to play a round of Twenty 
Questions?"

Jean's eyes lit up as she spotted Mulder.  "Oh, you must have found 
the parrot."  She strode to Mulder, stripping the latex glove off her right
 
hand and extending it toward him for a handshake.  "Jean Denison.  I'm 
the Medical Examiner."

"Special Agent Mulder."  He shook her hand, although the look on his 
face told Scully that he was irritated at this woman for spoiling his fun.
 
"I take it you've met my partner.  And the parrot."

"Are you kidding?  That's all we listened to for *hours* until Sheriff 
Mike had the idea to put it in the kitchen.  Nearly bit him twice, he told
 
me, and it *did* bite that young lady deputy of his.  Sharon, or 
Shannon, whatever her name is."  Jean waved one hand in a distracted 
manner.  Fiddle-dee-dee.  "Sheriff Mike has been threatening to shoot 
the damn bird all day and I don't half blame him."

"Sheriff Mike?" Mulder asked politely.

"You met him, Volney.  He lets me call him Sheriff Mike as a kind of a 
pet name, I guess.  He acts all gruff, but he's a big teddy bear at heart."=
  
Jean rolled her eyes heavenward.  "You men.  You think if you act all 
macho nobody'll notice you're human, but what you don't know is that 
women can tell what's underneath."  She hadn't released her hold on 
Mulder's hand yet, and as her eyes flicked over him she smiled coyly.  
"I'll bet you're plenty human, aren't you?"

"The jury's still out on that."  Mulder's smile was strained.  His eyes 
flickered from the middle-aged coroner towards Scully, his gaze holding 
hers for a moment, and she fought down laughter.  The message 
couldn't be any clearer if he'd held up a big cartoony sign reading 
HELP.  "Uh ... what were you saying about the parrot?"

"Well, we don't know what we're gonna do with the damn thing," Jean 
continued, still smiling that big-toothed smile at Mulder.  "The next of 
kin lives out of state and won't be here for three days.  Can't just leave
 
the bird at the crime scene once we go, but nobody wants to take him 
home with them.  Hell, I can't blame 'em, can you?"

Oh, this was delicious.  Scully gave in to that smile and let it spread 
across her face; if she'd tried to keep it in any longer, her jaw muscles 
would surely have snapped.  Poor Mulder.  So uncomfortable.  So 
trapped.  She let the situation continue, just to see how he'd manage to 
get out of it.  

"Ahem."  Sheriff Volney was standing in the doorway, scratching his 
ear.  

Jean released Mulder and turned her bright-eyed attention on the 
sheriff.  "Well, hello there, Sheriff Mike!  We were just talking about 
you."

The sheriff ignored her, focusing on Scully.  "You about done in here?  
The fingerprint people want to start dusting the place."  A pair of lab 
technicians flanked the big man, peering around him like children 
examining a stranger from behind their mother.  "That is, if we can haul 
off the body."

All eyes went to Scully.  

Scully stood up, peeling off her gloves.  "Yes, I'm finished here."

"Good."  Volney moved aside and ushered the lab technicians through 
the door.

Mulder glanced over at Scully and tipped his head towards the door, 
raising his eyebrows slightly in a question.  She nodded slightly and 
followed him into the living room.

"What do you think?" he asked in a low voice, coming to a halt and 
glancing back at the doorway.  "Any ideas?"

"I don't know, Mulder.  I'm going to drive to Leotie with Dr. Denison 
and get the autopsy done before dinner, so while you have all this free 
time it might be a good idea to get an interview with the woman who 
found the body."

He nodded.  "Anything in particular you're looking for?"

"You might want to ask her about the victim's social life," she said.  
"Try and find out about a man named Jim Taymor."

Mulder rummaged in his pocket and came up with a pen; another 
pocket yielded a crumpled receipt.  He smoothed the receipt on one big 
hand, turned it back-side-up, and poised the pen over it.  "Is that just 
with an A or with an A-Y?"

"A-Y, I think."  For some reason she found herself looking at the way 
the base of his thumb curved into his wrist.  The strong line of the 
metacarpal bones along the back of his hand.  The way the muscle 
along the side flexed as he scribbled the name on the receipt.  The 
texture of his skin.

She blinked, and concentrated very hard on her left shoe.

"... over dinner, okay?"

It dawned on her that he was asking some kind of question.  She looked 
back up.  "What?"

"I said, we can compare notes over dinner, if that's all right with you."
 

"Oh."  Scully blinked again.  "Yeah.  That's fine."

Mulder's brow creased.  "Are you sure you're all right?"

Just then, Jean Denison emerged from the bedroom, patting delicately 
at her hair.  "All right, the boys from the removal service'll be here in a
 
few minutes to take care of the body."  She focused on Scully.  "Are 
you gonna need a ride?  Or ..."  Her gaze shifted to Mulder, roaming 
over his body before focusing on his face.  "Or is ... Agent Mulder 
coming along?"

Mulder shifted his weight uncomfortably.  "I ..."  He looked down at 
Scully, desperation in his eyes.

Scully came to the rescue.  "Unfortunately, Agent Mulder has to 
interview Karen Shaeffer tonight, so he won't be coming along."

"Too bad."  Jean raked Mulder with her eyes again, far from subtly.  

"Yeah," Mulder said, edging behind Scully.  "It's a real shame."

Scully smothered a grin.  Served him right. 

Jean shrugged.  "All right, then, honey, I'm gonna go get the car 
started.  It's the blue Chevy."

"I'll be right there."  Scully turned to face Mulder, intending to say a 
quick goodbye and follow Jean out the door.  Her plan, however, did 
not cover her reaction to finding Mulder inches away, his eyes 
searching her face.  

She would have said something, but for some reason she couldn't 
remember how to breathe.

Oh God.  What was he doing?

"Scully."  His voice was a low rumble, resonating in her bones.  His 
eyes never left hers as he leaned towards her, impossibly close already 
and getting closer every moment...

OhGodohGodohGod --

Unconsciously, irresistably, she swayed forward a few millimeters.  

Mulder veered slightly to one side, his cheek brushing against a wisp 
of her hair, his breath caressing her ear for a tantalizing moment before 
he spoke.  "I think we should take the parrot."

It took a moment for the words to work their way through the hormonal 
haze obscuring her thoughts -- a moment for the realization to kick in 
that he wasn't going to kiss her, after all; a moment to maneuver her 
thoughts back on track and for her to assimilate what he'd just said.

She pulled back, staring up at him in openmouthed shock.  "Excuse 
me?"

"I think we should take the parrot with us."  Mulder had that innocent 
look on his face, but she wasn't buying it for a moment.

"Mulder, I don't -- you just can't --"  She stopped herself, and took a 
deep breath.  "We're not taking the parrot with us."

"Scully --"

"Forget it."  She could feel her face getting hot from embarrassment and 
anger, and it made her even more pissed off.  

"Just listen to me for a minute."  He put a hand on her shoulder, 
distracting her enough to let him continue.  "Scully, that parrot may be 
a witness to the murder."

She waited for him to crack, to smile and admit he was joking.  He didn't.
 

"Mulder.  It's a *bird*."

"Not just any bird, Scully, a *parrot*."  He grinned, looking 
insufferably knowing and smug.  Scully couldn't decide whether she 
wanted to laugh in his face or punch him in the stomach.

"I know it's a parrot, Mulder.  You already told me that."

"Think, Scully."  He squeezed her shoulder to emphasize his point.  
"This is the only house pet on the planet that can mimic the spoken 
word.  If it heard something on the night of the murder --"

She jerked away.  "Do you have any idea how long it takes to teach a 
parrot to say even a simple phrase?  There are tapes to play for them 
that repeat a phrase over and over and over again, just so their owners 
don't have to spend all their free time saying 'Polly want a cracker.'"

He grinned again.  "Believe me, Scully, this is one smart parrot."

"No matter how smart, the chances of a parrot hearing something a 
single time and being able to repeat it later are ... are infinitesimal."
 
Despite her intentions to keep this conversation quiet, Scully could 
hear her voice getting louder.  She didn't care.  "It's just not going to 
happen."

"Scully --"

"Dammit, Mulder --!"

"MULDER FBI!  MULDER FBI!  AAAWK!"

Scully's head swung toward the voice in the kitchen, her eyes widening 
in disbelief.  She took a deep breath before she slowly turned her head 
to look up at Mulder, and found him grinning down at her.  His smart-
ass grin.  The really, really insufferable one.  The one he always got 
when he was right.

Alone in the kitchen, the parrot began to sing again.  "DANKE SH-EN 
... DARLING ..."

Scully chewed on the inside of her cheek for a long moment.  "All 
right," she finally said, her jaw clenched.  "I admit ... you just ... 
might ... have a point."

"Gee, don't go out on a limb for my sake, Scully."

She gave him the eyebrow.  "Don't press your luck, Mulder."

<X><X><X><X>

End of Chapter 2 (2/16)

Title:  Gutless (3/16)
Author:  Magdeleine

GUTLESS

Chapter 3

Bob's Diner
9:47 PM

"Is that all you're going to eat?"  Scully watched her partner wolf down 
a slice of apple pie a la mode.  Correction:  his third slice of apple pie a 
la 
mode.  The first piece had arrived at nine-twenty-seven P.M.; it had 
been gone in approximately thirty seconds.  The second piece had 
vanished in under a minute.  By comparison, Mulder was positively 
dawdling over this one.

He grinned across the table at her.  "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, 
Scully.  This is great pie."

"I thought your usual for pie binges was sweet potato, not apple."

He paused, his fork suspended in midair.  "Where'd you hear that?"

She shrugged.  "It's a rumor."

He looked at her suspiciously for a moment and went back to shoveling 
pie into his mouth.

She shook her head in wonder.  "I suppose that a lecture about the 
questionable nutritional value of your meal would be in order, but I get 
the feeling that you know exactly what you're doing and simply don't 
care.  Throwing caution to the wind, as it were."

"Relax, Scully.  We're in a little diner in the middle of Kansas.  I'm just 
sticking with something I'm sure they'll get right -- as compared to, say, 
a chef salad."  Mulder gestured toward Scully's plate.  The chef salad -- 
oil and vinegar delivered on the side -- was woeful-looking.  Scully had 
been picking through it, hoping to find something edible, and was 
almost ready to give up.  "Although I'm sure the parrot will appreciate 
any leftovers.  They do eat that sort of thing, don't they?"

"It's possible.  Although I've heard that this one likes a bitten-off finger 
now and then as a snack."

"Ha, ha.  Oh, that reminds me --"  Mulder leaned sideways and 
rummaged in his pocket for a moment.  He came up with a key on a 
clunky metal key ring.  "Here."  He slid it across the table at her.  "Room 
one-twenty-one in the Mo-Z Inn, right next door.  Knock yourself out."

"Thanks."

"The parrot's back in my room.  I don't think he's gonna say anything 
useful without some prompting, so he'll be all right alone."  He took 
another bite of pie.  "Incidentally," he said with his mouth full, "Karen 
Schaeffer told me the parrot's name."

"Do tell."  

Mulder held up a finger in a wordless 'wait' as he swallowed.  "Guido."

"Nice name."

"Incidentally, Guido has quite the repertoire of Dean Martin songs.  
Sounds just like Dino, only with a head cold.  You get used to it after a 
while."

Scully gave him the eyebrow.  "Mulder, you do realize that Guido will 
be *your* roommate, don't you?"

"I've been meaning to discuss that with you."  Mulder leaned back, the 
red vinyl of the booth seat squeaking at his movement.  "Marjorie 
Bailey's sister will be here on Wednesday.  That means that Guido is 
staying with us for tonight, tomorrow night, and Tuesday night."

Scully gave up on her salad, sighed, and pushed it aside.  "That means 
that you'll have a smelly roommate named Guido for three days," she 
said wryly.  "Must be a dream come true.  Congratulations."

"Yeah.  Thanks."  He waved the joke aside.  "I was wondering if you'd 
consider trading off nights."

"Forget it, Mulder.  The parrot was your idea.  You wanted him, you got 
him, you keep him."  Scully folded her arms across her chest and glared 
at her partner.  

Mulder shrugged mildly and took another bite of his pie.  The vanilla 
ice cream had melted somewhat, and a milky drop trickled lazily across 
his lower lip; he caught it with a single swipe of his tongue.

And, apparently to remove any residual stickiness, he ran his tongue 
over that spot again.  

Scully stared.  

Certainly he couldn't know what he was doing to her.  It wasn't 
intentional.  It couldn't be intentional.  Mulder was preoccupied with his 
next bite of pie, without an iota of attention being paid to the abruptly 
aroused woman sitting across the table from him.

This was definitely a Level Two day.  God.  Nothing to do but grit her 
teeth and hang on.

"So."  Mulder's voice snapped Scully back to attention.  "Tell me about 
the autopsy."  She guiltily jerked her gaze away from his lower lip, 
looking out across the booths of the nearly empty diner.  Mulder 
misinterpreted the gesture, and shook his head.  "Don't worry, there's 
nobody close enough to hear.  I want details.  Tell me."

Scully sighed.  "Mulder, there's really nothing new to tell."

"Then go back over the old stuff.  Red patch on the torso?"

She nodded.  "Just like the others."

"Wounds, signs of restraints or a struggle?"

"None."

"And the internal organs --?"

"All gone."  Scully shrugged.  "I took a close look at the other bodies.  
They're all the same.  Completely hollowed out."

Mulder considered this.  "And there's nothing different about this 
corpse at all?"

"They found some kind of dried residue on the outside of the mouth; 
we're sending a sample to the lab in Kansas City for analysis."  Scully's 
eyes slipped briefly to Mulder's mouth, where a smear of ice cream 
traced a comma around the curve of his lower lip.  She looked away.  
"That's the only sign of anything outside the body."

"Well, whoever the killer is, he's certainly tidy."  He ate the last bite of 
his pie and waved the empty fork at Scully.  "Any damage done to the 
surrounding muscle tissue?"

"A little here, a little there.  The esophageal membranes in particular 
seem to have been scalded away."

Mulder played with the little pool of melted ice cream on his plate, 
stirring the crust-crumbs into it with the tines of his fork.  "Some kind of 
acid, maybe?"

She rubbed the bridge of her nose.  "Maybe."  It had been a short 
autopsy, but a maddening one, and hearing the same questions out 
loud that she'd been asking silently was giving her a headache.  "I 
doubt it, though; there would have been some third-degree burns on 
the mouth and esophagus, and unless the victim was anesthetized, she 
would have put up some kind of a fight before enough acid could be 
poured down her throat to do this kind of damage."  She sighed.  "And 
the tox screen didn't come up with any sign of anesthetics."

"Maybe ..."  The tone of his voice had changed, and Scully glanced up 
to see Mulder gazing off into space. 

"Mulder," she said, her voice sharp.  "What is it?"

He twirled his fork thoughtfully for a moment, then tapped it against the 
plate with a scratchy clinking sound.  "There have been documented 
cases of partial spontaneous combustion ..."

"Oh, no."

"Wait, Scully, just hear me out."  Mulder leaned forward, resting his 
elbows on the table, and lowered his voice almost conspiratorially.  
"Spontaneous combustion, almost by definition, is a phenomenon in 
which a body burns itself from the inside out.  In many cases not only 
are the surroundings left untouched, but the victim's clothing is neither 
burnt nor singed, and in many cases parts of the victim's own body 
remain perfectly preserved."

"I see where you're going with this," Scully said, mirroring his pose and 
lowering her own voice.  This was, after all, a small town.  "You're 
saying that this could be some kind of weird local variant on 
spontaneous combustion, a variant that only affects the soft tissue of 
the viscera and not the muscle tissue surrounding it."

"Exactly."  Mulder grinned, and waved his hand as though imagining a 
marquee.  "Spontaneous visceral combustion."

Scully took a deep breath.  "I have several objections to that theory."

"Fire away."  His mouth twisted in a smile.  "No pun intended."

She gave him her stop-screwing-around face.  "First of all, there have 
been no proven cases of spontaneous combustion."

He shook his head sagely.  "Ah, but there have been a great many 
cases in which there was no other answer.  And when all logical 
answers have been disproved ..."

Scully ignored him.  "Secondly, even if I accept that such a thing is 
possible, there is no physical evidence of any burning.  If I remember 
my X-Files correctly, cases characterized as spontaneous combustion 
usually leave a ... a slag covering of some kind on the ceiling directly 
above the body.  There was no such evidence in any of these cases, 
Mulder."

"Is there a third objection?"  Mulder glanced down at his plate, trailing 
a finger through the tiny puddle of melted ice cream.

"Yes."  She stopped, completely forgetting the third objection as 
Mulder casually sucked the ice cream off the tip of his finger with a 
soft, wet sound; she watched, mesmerized, as he repeated the process.  
Swirling the finger in the melted ice cream.  Lifting his hand.  Parting his 
lips ...

"Scully?"

"Hmm?"

"What's the third objection?"

For a panicky moment, she couldn't even remember what he was talking 
about.  Hoping to cover, she shook her head and waved a dismissive 
hand.  "It's not important.  What'd you find out from Karen Schaeffer, 
besides the name of the parrot?"

"Some personal information.  Karen was supposed to meet Marjorie so 
they could drive to Leotie for dinner; that obviously didn't go as 
planned."  He shrugged.  "Marjorie doesn't seem to have had that many 
friends.  Sort of a recluse."

"Speaking of Marjorie's social life, did you ask Karen about Jim 
Taymor?"

Mulder pulled a notebook out of his pocket, glancing down at the 
indecipherable scrawls that lurched across the page.  "I asked, but all 
she came up with was that he was Marjorie's boss."  He examined her 
expression.  "Expecting another answer?"

"No, not exactly.  Jean Denison already told me about their work 
relationship.  I'm wondering, though, if there was some kind of ... 
personal relationship between them."

Now Mulder looked curious.  The notebook went back in his pocket.  
"Based on what?  Something else Jean Denison said?"

"No, actually, I think there might have been something going on that 
Jean didn't know about."  Scully paused to consider her statement.  
"There is a picture of Jim Taymor in a heavy silver frame on Marjorie's 
night stand.  He's a married man.  I believe that there may be a 
possibility that the two of them might have been having an affair."

"And this relates ... how?"

"I'm not sure yet."  Scully shrugged.  "Just a lead I think we should 
follow up."

"Hmm."  Mulder studied her thoughtfully.  "You have a theory, don't 
you?"

Scully took a sip of iced tea and tried to ignore him.

"You have a theory, I can tell."  He tilted his head nearly sideways, 
trying to catch her eyes.  "Scuh-lleeee."  He grinned boyishly.  "Come 
on.  I showed you mine, now you show me yours."

She half-smiled at him.  "Gee, with a repertoire of sweet-talk like that, I 
can see why all the girls talk about you in homeroom."

"I got a million of 'em.  Come on, Scully."

"This is just a preliminary theory," she temporized.

"Don't tease me.  Spill it."

"All right."  She closed her eyes briefly, bracing herself.  "There was a 
case in London's Old Bailey in 1954; a pharmacist named Arthur Ford 
poisoned two women who worked for him.  Apparently he put the 
poison into pieces of candy and gave them to the women; the women 
died within a few hours and the autopsies showed that the internal 
organs had been literally burned away by the drug."

Mulder considered it, and nodded.  "Sounds like a possible explanation.  
What was the drug?"

Scully's mouth twisted sourly.  "Cantharidin."  She looked at him, and 
waited.

It took a moment for the reference to filter through Mulder's brain, but 
when it did, his jaw dropped.  "Cantharidin?  SPANISH FLY?"

Scully just looked at him, expressionless.

Mulder threw his head back and burst out laughing.

"Mulder, it's not that funny."

He attempted to control himself, settled down into a broad smirk, and 
brought his eyes back level with Scully's.  She raised an eyebrow.  That 
was all it took; his lips twitched and all of a sudden he was laughing 
again.  "Oh, Scully," he managed, "you should see the look on your 
face."

Scully was not amused.  "In the London case," she continued stoically, 
as though Mulder were not still chortling and wiping tears from his 
eyes, "the pharmacist was apparently trying to seduce the two women, 
counting on the rumored aphrodisiac effects of cantharidin to assist 
him in the matter.  He took some of the drug himself, although for some 
reason he survived to be tried for manslaughter."

Mulder finally stopped laughing, although a smile kept threatening to 
break out around the edges of the fist he had pressed loosely against 
his mouth.  "All right," he said, "let me get this straight.  You're saying 
that this organ displacement or disintegration or whatever it turns out 
to be could be caused by ... cantharidin?"  The corners of his lips 
twitched involuntarily upwards at the word.  

Scully sighed deeply.  "Mulder, if you're not going to take this 
seriously, there's really no point in continuing this discussion."

"No, no, I'm listening, I swear."  Mulder put on his best attentive 
expression, lacing his fingers together in a prayer-like posture.  "Go 
on."

She lifted both eyebrows.  "If you so much as smile, I'm out of here."

"I promise to be on my best behavior."  Straight-faced, he traced an X 
on his lapel.  "Cross my heart."

"Fine."  Scully reluctantly returned to the topic.  "The corpse I 
examined today is similar to the ones in the 1954 case in a number of 
ways; primarily due to the intense congestion of blood in the genital 
area --" she shot a suspicious look at Mulder, but he remained 
pokerfaced and wide-eyed, "-- and of course the apparent 
disintegration of all the soft tissue of the organs."

Mulder continued to watch Scully, and his unwavering attention was 
starting to make her a little uncomfortable.  He had his elbows propped 
on the table, his hands hovering near his chin -- one hand curled in a 
loose fist and the other curled around it.  His clear storm-colored eyes 
were focused earnestly on her face, and he was chewing lightly on one 
thumb.  It was making her very uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable was not quite the word to describe it.  The right word 
was flitting behind that brick wall in Scully's mind, she could sense it 
back there, but she refused to peek through the chinks in the wall to get 
a look at it.

"There are some differences ..."  She wished he'd look away.  "In the 
case of cantharidin, there would be necrosis of the esophageal mucous 
membranes, but in this case the membranes have been completely eaten 
away."  He was still looking at her, his teeth clicking slightly against the 
side of his thumbnail.  Scully was starting to think that this unrelenting 
stare might suffocate her.  "If it was a traditional form of cantharidin 
poisoning, it would have taken over an hour for the victims to die, and 
we probably would have found some bloody vomitus nearby, possibly 
bloody fecal matter, something.  In this case, however all four victims 
seem to have had an instantaneous death with no sign of a struggle or 
a drop of fluid misplaced."

Mulder continued to look at her.

"I'm finished, Mulder."

"Can I ask one thing?"

"Please do."

He leaned his chin on his hands.  "Where would someone find Spanish 
fly in Tehtonka, Kansas?"

Scully shrugged.  "Maybe they didn't find it in town.  Maybe they 
drove to Wichita.  Maybe somebody has an uncle who knows 
somebody in the business.  That's not the point, Mulder."

"I just thought it might come in handy to know where to shop."  His 
eyes were full of mischief.  "Unless you by some chance have a little 
baggie of cantharidin tucked away in your suitcase..."

"Mulder."

"I'd lend you some of mine, but I forgot it in my medicine cabinet back 
in DC.  Darn the luck --"

"All right, Mulder; that's it."  Scully slid out of the booth, her heels 
slamming firmly on the floor; she pulled her trench coat off the seat and 
shrugged into it with quick, brisk movements.  "Obviously you're not 
able to take this seriously right now.  I have things to do.  I'm going to 
go do them.  I will see you later."

"Scully --"

She caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass door as she walked 
out, but she didn't look back.

<X><X><X><X>

The Mo-Z Inn
Room 121

It was a room much like any of the thousands of others she'd slept in; 
beige paint, rust-brown carpeting, a thin machine-quilted synthetic 
coverlet on the bed almost exactly matching the color of the carpet.  An 
empty bookshelf hung sadly on the wall between the window and the 
bed, gathering nothing more literary than dust; a battered dresser with a 
television set bolted to it was jammed up against the opposite wall with 
a flat-cushioned excuse for an armchair next to it, ensuring that nobody 
inclined to sit in the armchair would actually be able to see the 
television.  

The room had the stuffy smell of rented air, of faint cigarette smoke and 
other people's bodies and the leathery smell of luggage.  Scully hated 
that smell.  She'd smelled it too often.

The night sky rumbled again, lacing the heavy clouds with flickering 
lightning.  There was no rain, and almost no wind, although a sudden 
cold gust rattled the windows as Scully opened them, hoping enough 
of a breeze would circulate to freshen the air in her room.  With any 
luck, it wouldn't rain for at least another hour, and she could have fresh 
air before she went to bed.

She toured the room as if it were a crime scene, turning back the tightly 
tucked covers on the bed to examine the sheets, rubbing the edge of 
her shoe against the grain of the carpet to check for insufficient 
vacuuming.  Not bad.  The bathroom seemed clean; it smelled of bleach, 
but bleach was much preferable to mildew.  She ran the water in the 
shower experimentally, and found that the water pressure was strong 
and the shower head was adjustable.  Not bad at all.  

There were, unfortunately, no towels.

As Scully sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, explaining the towel 
situation to the guy at the front desk, she noticed that something else 
was missing.  Her luggage.  

Great.  Mulder had dumped her luggage in his room right along with his, 
again.

She hung up and walked over to the connecting door.  She hadn't heard 
him come in, but she knocked, just in case.

"COME IN!"

It didn't sound like Mulder.  Scully frowned at the door and opened it 
anyway.

The parking lot lights beamed through Mulder's open blinds, turning 
the room into a black-and-white cartoon sketch, shaded with gray.  
Scully spotted her luggage sitting next to Mulder's bed and grabbed it 
in a hurry, feeling strange about being in his room in the dark.

There was the rustling, pumping sound of wings flapping.  "HELLO!"

She turned and saw the parrot for the first time.  Gray, like the rest of 
the room.  He leered at her, his beady little eyes glinting.  

"Hello, Guido."

Guido bounced up and down on his perch like a feathered survivor of 
the club scene.  "VOLAAAAARE!  OHHHH-OH!  CANTAAAAAARE!  
OH-OH-OH-OHHHH!"

"That's just great," Scully sighed, and left the room.

<X><X><X><X>

"Housekeeping!"

Scully opened the door.  The bosomy woman standing outside was 
dressed in jeans and a uniform tunic, with long hair hanging in a thick 
braid over one shoulder.  The scratched metallic name tag over her 
heart informed Scully that "Housekeeping" was named "Mae."

Mae held up a stack of white towels.  "Here ya go.  Sorry about the 
wait."

"No problem."  Scully held out her hands to accept the towels, but Mae 
didn't hand them over.  Instead, she nodded towards Mulder's room.

"Do you want to complain to management about the noise?"

"Do I --?"  Scully realized that Guido was still serenading the public next 
door.  Astounding.  She was already used to the damn bird.  "Oh.  No, 
that's okay."

"Look, it's none of my business, but everyone else has been 
complaining."  Mae leaned against the door frame with the air of a 
woman in the mood to gossip.  "Jeff -- that's the manager -- says he's 
going to call the police if we get one more complaint about that parrot."

Scully, who was *not* a woman in a mood to gossip, pulled her ID out 
of her pocket and flipped it open at eye level.  "Believe me," she said, in 
a tone that brooked no argument, "the police don't want the parrot, 
either."

Mae's eyes widened.  "Ohhhh," she said, nodding sagely.  "So the 
gorgeous guy with the parrot ..."

"He's my partner."  Scully snapped shut her ID, tucked it back in her 
pocket, and held out her hands for the towels.  Again, Mae did not 
appear to notice.

"Ohhh.  Look, it's none of my business, but ..."  Mae leaned in, her 
sharp eyes snapping with mischief.  "How on earth do you sleep at 
night with a man like that in the next room?"

"A couple drops of chloral hydrate will do the job every time," Scully 
said, straight-faced, and took the towels from Mae.  "Thank you ..."

"You need anything else, just call the front desk."

"Yes, thank you, I'll do that."  Scully waited politely for Mae to leave.

Mae did not appear to be leaving.  She leaned forward a little, pitching 
her voice to a low, confidential tone, dripping with innuendo.  "And if 
your *partner* needs anything --"

Scully shut the door.

<X><X><X><X>

She stood under the water, head down, one hand on the wall.  She 
hadn't shampooed, hadn't soaped up the washcloth -- very frankly 
hadn't dared to touch herself, convinced that the sensation would 
conjure up a fantasy of her partner's hands on her.  Just standing there, 
letting the cold water flow over her, waiting to stop feeling as though 
her scalp was boiling.

Mulder.

Mulder sucking ice cream off his finger, Mulder licking his lips, Mulder 
watching her intently from across the table as that gorgeous mouth 
worked on his thumbnail.  Mulder ...  Her eyes drifted shut as she 
involuntarily imagined that mouth on her face, her lips, her breast ... her 
body's reaction to the fantasy was visceral and immediate, and she 
wrenched herself out of it with a stifled moan.

Scully leaned her forehead against the cool tile and closed her eyes.  

God, that man made her *ache*.

The cell phone rang twice before it truly registered on Scully where the 
noise was coming from.  "Oh, hell."  She turned off the water and 
struggled out of the shower, dripping everywhere.  Mulder.  What was 
he calling for?  Did he expect her to come back and pay her half of the 
bill?  She wrapped a towel around herself and dried her hands on it as 
she padded out of the bathroom to search through her discarded 
clothing for the phone.

She snapped it open and held it slightly away from her head, afraid that 
her dripping hair would short out the phone.  "Scully."

"Agent Scully, this is Sheriff Volney."

"Yes?"  She frowned, puzzled; this was not the voice she had been 
expecting and it took a moment to change gears.  "What is it?"

"You might want to find your partner and get out to one-seventeen 
Franklin Street."

"What?"  Scully was having a little trouble hearing the sheriff with the 
phone four inches from her ear.  In Mulder's room, Guido burst into a 
spirited rendition of 'I've Got You Under My Skin.'  "Sheriff, could you 
repeat that?"

"I said you might want to get out here.  One-seventeen Franklin.  
There's been another murder."

<X><X><X><X>

End of Chapter 3  (3/16)

Title:  Gutless (4/16, part 1 of 2)
Author:  Magdeleine

GUTLESS

Chapter 4

117 Franklin Street
10:25 PM

Joshua Schmidt was about eighteen years old, tall, dark-haired, and pimply.  
And dead.  Really, most sincerely dead.  Like Marjorie Bailey and the two 
victims before her, Joshua was face-up on his own bed, staring at the 
ceiling, his jaw slack and mouth agape.  Like the other victims, he was 
dressed conservatively for bed -- in this case, a faded t-shirt and a pair 
of flannel pajama bottoms.  Joshua's mother, father, and two younger sisters 
were huddled outside the bedroom door, too stunned and confused for tears.  
They stubbornly resisted the awkward efforts of the two deputies to move 
them to a more convenient location, like the living room, so that the body 
could be examined without further trauma to the family.

Mulder hated situations like this.  On the one hand, he felt an instinctual 
need to protect the grieving family from seeing Joshua handled by impersonal 
hands.  On the other hand, it was after midnight, he had been up since five 
A.M. -- four, if he accounted for the different time zone -- and his body 
was clamoring for sleep, exhaustion weighing him down and rooting his feet 
to the floor.  Under any other circumstances, he would have tried to help 
the deputies soothe the family and guide them away, but the weary ache in 
his head was making him impatient with their grief and he couldn't think of 
any other words than Will You Just Get The Hell Out Of Here, Please?

Not the kind of thing the FBI advised in these situations.  But hedging 
around like this, standing in a corner with your thumb up your ass because 
the goddamn family had some kind of religious reason for not letting the 
corpse out of their sight -- that couldn't be proper etiquette, either.

If he didn't know better, Mulder would have sworn this was the guest 
bedroom, rather than the lair of a high school senior.  It was spotless.  No 
posters.  No sports memorabilia.  The dirty laundry was neatly stowed in a 
wicker basket in the corner by the dresser.  One small bookshelf, with a few 
lonely books on it.  The desk was uncluttered, except for a worn grammar 
textbook and a pad of paper.  There was a crucifix hanging on the wall above 
the bed, and a well-thumbed Bible with a red faux-leather cover on a tiny 
bedside table.

The place gave Mulder the creeps.  When *he* was eighteen, the only time his 
room had looked half this clean had been when company was coming over and 
his mother had roused herself enough to decree that This Mess Must Go.  
Joshua Schmidt's room didn't have the polished feel of order imposed by a 
mother's hands; this room felt almost sterile.

Scully was standing near the bed, speaking with Jean Denison in a low voice.  
Mulder couldn't hear the conversation -- he was keeping well away from Dr. 
Denison, thank you very much -- but Scully's body language and gestures told 
him that she was talking about the similarity of this corpse to the others 
they had seen.  He could also see that Scully didn't like Jean very much, 
although she was keeping it well hidden under her usual air of cool 
professionalism; to Mulder, though, it was obvious from the angle of her 
spine, the faint line between her eyebrows, the occasional unconscious 
clenching of one fist, and the impatient way she pushed her hair back from 
her eyes.

Her hair.  The rumpled state of Scully's hair made Mulder grin, despite his 
efforts to keep a straight face.  She hadn't said anything about it, but she 
must have been just out of the shower when Volney called her; her hair had 
still been only towel-dry when she'd dragged Mulder out of the diner.  It 
had been brushed down flat against her skull, but when Scully's hair air-
dried, it had a mind of its own -- defying any attempts at control, curling 
every which way and refusing to stay neatly tucked behind her ear.  Hair 
that was just as stubborn as the woman beneath it.  Perfect.

Sheriff Volney had finished taking the crime scene photographs almost ten 
minutes ago; he'd been more leisurely with the back-up Polaroids, snapping 
shots of every square inch of the room.  He stood near the desk, fanning 
himself with the latest couple of developing prints, glancing at them every 
once in a while to check their readiness.  He looked every bit as itchy and 
ill-at-ease as Mulder felt.

Mulder didn't like Volney.  The man was grumpy and stubborn and too damn 
self-important.  For some reason, his direct copper-colored stare and 
southern-Kansas drawl made Mulder feel like he was ten years old again, 
sitting on the bench outside the principal's office:  defensive, keyed-up, 
and irritated at himself for feeling that way.

Then again, the family showed no signs of budging, and Mulder couldn't go 
talk to Scully while Jean Denison was over there.  God, no.  The only thing 
left to do was to strike up a conversation with Volney.

Mulder glanced over at the sheriff, making eye contact.  Volney raised one 
bristly eyebrow -- an expression Mulder wasn't used to getting from anyone 
but Scully, anymore -- and tilted his head to one side in invitation.  
Mulder crossed to the desk, standing next to Volney; both men kept a casual 
eye on the proceedings in the hallway.

"Poor kid," Mulder offered.

Volney made a snorting sound beneath his moustache.  "Yeah, poor kid," he 
muttered, pitching his voice low.  "Home schooled."

He seemed to expect some kind of response to this; Mulder nodded sagely and 
made a noncommittal "hmmm."  

"Wouldn't'a been so bad," Volney continued, "except that this bunch doesn't 
know what the hell they're doing when it comes to education.  Ninety percent 
Jesus and ten percent everything else.  Damn near nobody raised like that 
has a snowball's chance in hell of coming out normal."  He shook his head, a 
frown drawing long vertical creases on either side of his mouth.  "Poor 
kid."

Mulder couldn't think of a thing to say.  He settled for nodding again, 
feeling slightly foolish.  Across the room, Jean Denison raised her hands in 
some kind of surrender and left the room, rubbing the back of her bony neck.  
Scully turned back to the corpse, scribbling in that little notebook of 
hers.

"You religious, Agent Mulder?"

"No, not really."

"Hmm."  Volney blew air through his moustache and considered this.  "I'm 
Methodist, m'self.  Mostly a Sunday morning Christian, if you catch my 
meaning.  I got nothing against people practicing whatever kind of religion 
they want, but these kind of cloistered Bible nuts get me a touch concerned.  
Don't talk to anybody else, won't send their kids to school, all that 
jazz -- and that damn crazy uncle Fred of theirs comes to every damn city 
council meeting and rants about how Jesus is gonna come down from heaven and 
smite every last one of us if we build that new dike to keep the river from 
flooding the damn baseball field."  He cast a surreptitious look in Mulder's 
direction.  "That sort of shit makes me want to start checking out the place 
for a secret cache of Uzis, know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah."  Mulder took another look around the Spartan room, imagining the 
life that Joshua Schmidt must have led.  "I've seen that kind of thing a few 
times."  For a moment, a memory of twisted lines of bodies at a Tennessee 
farm flashed behind his eyes; he dispelled it with a shake of his head.  
"It ... never ends well."

Volney nodded slowly, gazing vaguely toward the door, his lips pursed 
slightly in a soundless whistle.  It almost seemed as though he hadn't heard 
Mulder at all, but when he turned his head a moment later there was a gleam 
of something approaching respect in his eyes.  "Nope," he said, and turned 
back to the door.

"GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!!!"

The voice was unbelievably loud in the tiny room, echoing like the roar of 
an avalanche.  Mulder's gaze shot toward the doorway.  The two deputies were 
struggling with a skinny short man in his late fifties, bald except for a 
few colorless puffs around his ears.  He was wearing polyester pants and a 
yellowed dress shirt with perspiration stains that showed as he brandished a 
Bible over his head with both hands.  "DO NOT HINDER THOSE WHO WORK FOR THE 
LORD THY GOD!"

Volney sucked in his breath on a mild obscenity and made for the door with 
surprising speed, his head lowering like a bull charging a red cape.  "Fred, 
will you cut it *out*?  This is not the time for your horsecrap!"

The little computer in the back of Mulder's brain sprang to life, spitting 
out the answer to this mystery man's identity.  Fred.  Crazy uncle Fred, the 
one who came to meetings and yelled about smiting.  This certainly promised 
to make the proceedings more interesting.

Fred's yelling took on a sing-song quality, the kind that Mulder identified 
with televangelists and auctioneers.  "For behold, the day COMeth, BURNing 
like an oven, when ALL the ARROGANT and all the evilDOERS will be stubble, 
the DAY that comes shall burn them UP, says the LORD of Hosts --"  The rest 
of the family shrank away, inching towards the living room; it seemed that 
the appearance of Crazy Uncle Fred moved them more than all the efforts of 
the two deputies.  

Volney held up a warning hand.  "Fred, if you don't settle down, I'm gonna 
have to get you locked up again!"

Fred was starting to foam a little at the mouth.  "The Lord will SMITE thee 
with the boils of EGYPT, and with the ULCERS and the SCURVY and the ITCH, of 
which thou canst NOT BE HEALED!  We must PURIFY the boy, CLEANSE him of the 
unclean spirit --"  

To his credit, Volney did attempt to handle the man gently, but after Fred 
twisted away and brandished the oversized Bible at the sheriff, Fred ended 
up pinned against the wall, one of Volney's big hands holding him in place.  
"Now Fred," Volney chided, "I warned you.  It looks like another spell at 
the hospital for you, now doesn't it?"  He slapped a pair of handcuffs on 
Fred, gesturing down the hall in disgust.  "You know the drill, boys.  Take 
him away."

Fred continued to hold forth as he was led off.  "The unclean SPIRIT is the 
ENEMY OF THE LORD.  We must CLEANSE the boy lest he lose his IMMORTAL SOUL 
to the agent of SATAN, to the succubus LILITH --"

Mercifully, Fred's voice faded as the distance increased.  Mulder exchanged 
a glance across the room with Scully, who raised her eyebrows in an amused 
facial shrug.  He rolled his eyes in the direction of the hallway with a wry 
grin, and was rewarded for his efforts with a rare half-smile from his 
partner.

"Goddamn Fred."  Volney absent-mindedly wiped his hands on the sides of his 
pants, as though just touching the man had put him at risk for a 
communicable disease.  "Damn crazy lunatic sonovabitch.  Of all the times 
for him to sound off, I swear."

Scully cleared her throat delicately, drawing Volney's attention.  "Does 
this happen often, Sheriff?"

"Often enough.  About once every month or so we have to haul him off to the 
psych ward at Bryan Memorial; the family goes up and gets him out once he 
calms down."  Volney shrugged philosophically.  "Nothing much we can do 
about keeping him there, and we can't incarcerate him forever just on 
account of being a public pain in the ass, so ..."

"What --"  The word came out of Mulder's mouth involuntarily.  He was 
vaguely aware of everyone turning to look at him, but the question forming 
in his mind took up most of his attention.  "What did he mean when he said 
that he needed to *cleanse* the boy?"

"Oh."  Volney looked uncomfortable.  "That was before you got here.  Fred 
started raving about being attacked by a demon and staving it off with a 
prayer and some cross-waving; I guess he thinks that's what happened to 
Joshua, too."  Volney shook his head.  "Everyone in this family is a little 
cracked, but Fred takes the cake.  I'm not too surprised that he's messed up 
about the kid dying; those two were good buddies.  Josh was even starting to 
act a bit like Fred, last I heard."

Scully had her professional face on again, frowning faintly.  Her hair 
spoiled the hard-boiled image, though; it was difficult for Mulder to take 
Scully seriously when she had to keep swiping a particularly stubborn curl 
out of her eyes.  "Act like him?  In what way?"

Volney seemed to give this question a great deal of thought.  "Just certain 
things he'd do.  Mannerisms.  Nothing you can really lay a finger on, it's 
just that Fred tends to make people feel a bit disturbed, and lately Josh's 
been much the same way, not to speak ill of the dead ...  Sort of a spooky 
kid, real geeky." 

Scully looked over at Mulder, tipping up an ironic eyebrow.  Mulder ignored 
her.

Volney hesitated, chewing on his moustache, then added, "The kid was 
following my daughter around, past couple weeks."

"Do you mean he was stalking her?"  Mulder was still a little stung from the 
'spooky geek' comment and having a hard time picturing this kid as the 
stalking kind.  "Are you sure that he wasn't just trying to ask her out on a 
date?"

The sheriff fixed Mulder with an icy glare.  "He was ghosting around after 
her for more'n a month, mister.  She was scared.  I finally had to step in a 
few days ago and tell him to leave her the hell alone."

"Sheriff?"  One of the deputies was standing hesitantly in the doorway.  "We 
have a problem."

Volney made a noise halfway between a chuckle and a groan.  "Great.  What 
now?"

Jean Denison appeared beside the deputy.  "Sheriff Mike --"

The sheriff gave Mulder a long-suffering look.  "What *is* it, Jean?"

Jean balled her hands into fists.  "They don't want to let us do the 
autopsy."  Mulder half-expected her to start hopping up and down and 
shooting steam from her ears like Yosemite Sam.

Scully blinked.  "I was under the impression that the medical examiner is 
required by law to investigate any death under unusual circumstances.  Is 
that not the case in Kansas?"

Jean shook her head vigorously.  "No, no, law's the same, we're on safe 
ground there, it's just these people don't take kindly to having their dead 
ones cut open.  Religious objections."

Volney stroked his moustache. "They don't have a legal leg to stand on, but 
they can make a big stink about it."  He tossed his hands in the air, 
surrendering.  "Aw, hell.  I'll go talk to them."

"Need any help?" Mulder offered, automatically.

"Nah," Volney said, "you two stay here.  I'll be right back."  He gave the 
ceiling a pained look and exited; Jean and the deputy followed closely 
behind him like baby ducks toddling after their mother.  

Mulder waited until they'd rounded the corner before he smiled at his 
partner.  "So, Scully, whaddaya think of Uncle Fred?"

"Obviously delusional."  Scully crossed to the bed, snapping on a pair of 
latex gloves.  "Reminds me a little of someone I know."

"Frohike?"

"Close, but not quite."

"Maybe it's Skinner."  Mulder followed her across the room, enjoying the 
banter.  Scully's bad mood seemed to be over, thank God.  He mentally 
crossed his fingers and hoped it would last.

"Hmm, no, but he *is* in the FBI ..."  Scully smiled faintly as she checked 
through the black bag that Jean had brought in from the coroner's van.  
"Aha."  She brought out a wicked-looking pair of steel scissors and deftly 
cut the t-shirt off the body of Joshua Schmidt.  As she peeled back the thin 
pieces of cloth, Mulder got a good view of the vivid red mark covering most 
of the sunken torso.  Scully pressed gently below the sternum; the skin sank 
beneath her fingers like the stretchy rubber of a deflating balloon.  "He's 
still warm.  I'd say he's only been dead an hour or two.  I'll have a better 
idea once I get the rectal temperature."

"That's okay," Mulder said hastily, warding off the idea with one hand, "I 
don't really need to know."

Scully moved up to the face, pulling back one eyelid.  "Cornea's clear ..."  

Mulder had always prided himself on having a strong stomach.  After all, 
he'd faced down Eugene Tooms in a mess of bile; he'd seen people who had 
been devoured by mutant fungi; he'd seen so much blood in his career that it 
almost failed to surprise him anymore.  For some reason, though, watching 
Scully finger a dead boy's eyeball was making him feel a little queasy.

Ugh.

"Mulder, take a look at this."  Scully pulled the corpse's mouth open, 
peeling back the top lip with one hand and pointing with the other.  There 
was a kind of cloudy slime clinging to the teeth, pooling a little around 
the tongue.  "That looks like the same residue we found around Marjorie 
Bailey's mouth."  She made a little face.  "Except this is much fresher."

"Fresh, not frozen.  Just like you get at the farmer's market."  Mulder 
turned his attention to the ceiling, hoping to see some kind of stain or at 
least a discoloration directly above the bed; no such luck.  So much for 
spontaneous combustion.  

This close to the corpse, though, Mulder was starting to smell something.  
It wasn't a familiar crime-scene smell -- blood, or rotting flesh, or even 
excrement -- this was something else.  Two something elses, in fact; a ripe, 
sticky smell and a scent that he had dismissed vaguely as the lingering 
scent of dinner.  Baked ham, or something like that, except that this smell 
was stronger near the corpse.

He looked again at the angry red mark on the body.  Not baked ham; baked 
Joshua.  The thought made Mulder feel even queasier.  He was too tired for 
this shit; he just wanted to go back to the motel, get some sleep, and think 
of a new theory in the morning.

Scully continued her cursory examination of the corpse, which, based upon 
the words 'rectal temperature,' was nothing that Mulder particularly wanted 
to observe.  To distract himself, he started snooping around the room as 
discreetly as possible, not touching anything out of respect for the 
integrity of the crime scene.  There wasn't much to see.  Hell, it looked 
like the kid had even *dusted* regularly.

This was no fun at all.

"Air temperature, seventy-one degrees Fahrenheit; body temperature ... 
ninety-four point five.  Time of death was no earlier than eight-thirty or 
so ...  You know," Scully said conversationally, "this looks pretty routine.  
I think if I get a good sample of this substance in his mouth, I could 
probably let Jean do the main part of the autopsy by herself."

"Oh, really?"  Mulder had half an eye on the grammar textbook.  Diagramming 
sentences.  Christ, what a way to spend your last evening on earth.

Scully pushed her hair out of her eyes delicately with one wrist.  "She's 
capable of handling it.  I could check in on it later.  It'd give me a 
chance to sleep in a little instead of being up to my elbows in a corpse at 
six in the morning."  She did something to the body that produced a strange 
squishy sound; Mulder kept his eyes on the textbook.  There were some things 
that man was just not meant to know.  Scully didn't seem to pay any 
attention to the noise; she kept on talking as though it hadn't happened.  
"I thought we could do an interview with Jim Taymor.  Maybe track down 
Sheriff Volney's daughter, too, while we're at it, and get the story on what 
sort of 'stalking' Joshua did."

Whatever the noise had been, it did not repeat itself.  Heartened by this, 
Mulder ventured back near the bed.  It was a plain bed with a solid wooden 
headboard, running clear to the floor; Mulder idly glanced behind it.  
"Well, hello there ..." he said, half to himself, and knelt down to take a 
better look.

"What is it?"  Scully, still engrossed in her work, cocked an eyebrow in his 
direction.

"Looks like good old Joshua had a hidey-hole behind the bed."  Mulder pulled 
a pair of latex gloves from his suit pocket and snapped them on.  He reached 
between the headboard and the wall, easing out the object of his 
attention -- a Tehtonka High yearbook with a dark green cover.  He held it 
up triumphantly.  "Jackpot."

"A yearbook," Scully said flatly, unimpressed.  "He's a high school student, 
Mulder.  High school students have been known to have yearbooks."

"Ah, ah, ah ..."  Mulder wagged a finger at her.  "*Normal* high school 
students have yearbooks.  Joshua Schmidt was home schooled.  Explain to me 
why a home schooled student would have a yearbook for a school he doesn't 
attend?  Better yet, why does he have it hidden behind his bed?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I," Mulder murmured, checking the yearbook over.  The spine was 
broken towards the back of the book, rather than the middle, where one would 
expect it; he experimentally opened the book, letting the pages flip open 
along the break.  Black and white pictures of last year's junior class 
smiled up at him in all their teenage gawkiness.  He scanned the names, 
hoping something would pop out.  "Wait a minute, maybe I do know."

"What?" Scully asked, walking over to him.  She pulled off her gloves and 
pushed back that curly strand of hair with one talcum-dusted hand.  "What'd 
you find, Mulder?"

He extended the yearbook toward her in explanation.   She sighed, pulled a 
fresh glove out of her pocket, and snapped it on, accepting half the book in 
her gloved hand so that she and Mulder supported the weight of it together, 
as though they were sharing a hymnal at a church service.

"Check it out," Mulder said, tapping at a black-and-white picture of a 
pretty, dark-haired girl.  The caption off to the side gave her name:  Amber 
Volney.

"It could be a coincidence."

Mulder ruffled through the pages of the yearbook.  He stopped at a worn, 
dog-eared page, pressing the book open, and scanned the pictures.  "Here."  
He pointed at a full-body picture of a dark-haired cheerleader in mid-jump, 
pompoms flying -- Amber Volney.  A few pages later, another dog-eared page; 
this one had a shot of Amber Volney in the school play.  The next dog-eared 
page had a shot of several girls posing for the camera together; despite the 
fact that the caption did not give the names, the face of one girl was 
completely familiar -- Amber Volney.  There were three or four other pages 
in the book that were dog-eared from repeated viewing; a quick check 
confirmed that Amber Volney was the only girl who was on every page.

"Well, there you go," Mulder said, grinning at Scully.  "Looks like Joshua 
was in luuuuve."

Scully raised an eyebrow.  "I somehow doubt the sheriff will see it that 
way."

"Scully, are you mocking a young man's tender feelings for the girl of his 
dreams?"

"No," she said, "but I believe the word 'obsession' fits those tender 
feelings to a 'T.'"

The little computer in the back of Mulder's brain was still chittering away, 
but he was so tired that it took real effort to focus on what it was 
bringing up.  Pictures.  Obsession.  Pictures at the bedside.  It all 
coalesced so suddenly, he could almost hear the *click*.  "Hang on, didn't 
you say that Marjorie Bailey had a picture beside her bed?"

Scully looked up at him.  "Yes, of her boss ... Jim Taymor.  What about it?"

"What was it you said -- you thought they were having an affair?"

"Well ..."  Scully twisted her mouth, her typical reaction when Mulder had 
caught her in the middle of a half-formulated theory.  "I said that it was 
possible.  Jean doesn't seem to think so, but secretaries have been known to 
become ... infatuated with their superiors, and that might be the case with 
Marjorie and Jim Taymor."

"So ..."  Mulder looked down at his partner's rumpled hair and lowered his 
voice to a more flirtatious tone.  "We could be talking about another case 
of unrequited love."  

"Could be ..."  

The hell with it, this was a golden opportunity.  Mulder let his voice slide 
even lower, into a dark chocolate rumble.  "Or possibly just ... unrequited 
lust." 

Scully went abruptly still, her eyes narrowing.  She dropped her side of the 
yearbook, causing Mulder to fumble and make a less-than-graceful grab at the 
book to save it from plummeting to the floor.  She crossed back to her 
original place near the bed, carefully packing instruments into the black 
leather case.  "Maybe we ought to interview Amber Volney, too, just to make 
sure."  Her back was to him, her tone cool.

"You think they were dating behind the Sheriff's back?" Mulder asked, 
frowning faintly, less concerned with the dating rituals of teenagers than 
with the sudden return of Scully's bad mood.

"It's not impossible.  Perhaps Amber broke off the relationship and Joshua 
wasn't ready to let go," Scully said, sounding slightly agitated.  She 
continued to tidy, dropping the used latex gloves into a baggie to dispose 
of later.  Mulder still couldn't see her face.

"So he stalked her, and she told her daddy a big lie so he'd threaten 
Joshua, is that what you're saying?"  Mulder stared at the back of Scully's 
head and watched her swipe at that red curl as it fell into her eyes again.  
What had set her off this time?  He'd flirted a little.  So what?  It hadn't 
even been a particularly good flirt.  He hadn't had the spare brainpower to 
come up with a good double entendre for at least a half hour now.  Was she 
pissed off because he'd flirted?  

Mulder wished he wasn't so tired.  Attempting to profile Scully on a good 
day was a workout, but after twenty hours on his feet and, if the truth be 
known, with a touch of indigestion from all that apple pie, profiling Scully 
was gaining him very little except a dull ache at the base of his skull.

"That's a little extreme, don't you think?" he added, just to see if she'd 
turn around.

She faced him, completely expressionless.  Whatever anger she was feeling 
was tucked neatly behind that calm exterior; Mulder couldn't get a read on 
it at all.  "I'm saying it's possible, Mulder, that's all."

Hell.  He was too tired for this.

"Agent Scully?  Agent Mulder?"  Jean Denison was in the doorway.  "Could you 
come out here for a minute?"

<X><X><X><X>

Continue to Chapter 4, part 2

Title:  Gutless (4/16) (part. 2 of 2)
Author:  Magdeleine

<X><X><X><X>

Andrew Schmidt and his wife Marty were both tall and dark-haired, traits 
they had obviously passed on to their children -- Joshua's younger sisters, 
Esther and Deborah, were both dark and gawky girls in their early teens.  
The girls were bustled out onto the front porch to "pray with your father," 
leaving Marty Schmidt in charge.  It quickly became obvious to Scully that 
Marty was the head of the household, an iron-fisted ruler who might have 
been quite successful in a military career.

Jean Denison, it seemed, had met her match in Marty Schmidt, and was not at 
all happy about it.  The moment that Jean reentered with Mulder and Scully 
in tow, Marty had turned and glared at Jean with piercing green eyes until 
Jean dropped her gaze, turning away from Marty and seeming to shrink in on 
herself; Jean looked daggers at Marty the moment Marty's attention was 
diverted, but didn't do anything else to challenge her authority.  It was 
like something straight off The Learning Channel.  No question about who was 
the alpha bitch *here*.

Sheriff Volney motioned for Scully to come forward; she did so, not without 
the vague feeling that she was Alice in Wonderland being introduced to the 
Queen of Hearts.  Mulder started to follow; Volney frowned at him and shook 
his head, and Mulder stopped in his tracks.  

Scully had to admit she was happy that Mulder wouldn't be in such close 
proximity for a few minutes, at least.  She'd been thinking that maybe this 
Mulder-Awareness Day was over, after her shower this evening ... she'd even 
relaxed enough to joke with Mulder a little.  And then, at the first little 
flirtatious move on his part, she'd felt her body chemistry shift once 
again.

This was turning out to be a very long day.

"Marty," Volney said politely, "this is Agent Scully.  She's the one we were 
telling you about."

Marty looked Scully over carefully, tilting her head to one side so that her 
dark hair waterfalled over her shoulder.  Scully stood still and kept her 
expression neutral, quelling the illogical expectation that the tall woman 
was about to come over and sniff at her like a dog.  At last Marty focused 
in on some spot directly below Scully's chin; Scully realized with a start 
that the point of interest was the gold cross around her neck.

"Yes," Marty announced suddenly, meeting Scully's eyes at last, "you are a 
believer.  I can tell.  You have the hand of the Lord upon you, Agent 
Scully."

Scully was at a loss.  She had been mentally running through condolences, 
trying to pick one that was at once professional and compassionate; this, 
however, was a scenario for which she was completely unprepared.  
Nonetheless, she extended a hand to Marty.  "Mrs. Schmidt."

Marty took Scully's hand, but instead of shaking it, she clasped it in both 
of her own and held it firmly, keeping Scully too close for comfort and with 
no avenue of escape.  "Agent Scully, I can't tell you what a comfort this is 
to us.  Jean has told me that you are close to the Lord, and I can see it on 
you."

Scully shot a look at Jean, who turned red.  This was getting irritating.  
She hadn't spoken to Jean about issues of faith during any of their time 
together; she could only assume that Jean had plucked this story out of thin 
air, making a guess based on Scully's demeanor and her cross necklace.

"I'm glad to be of help, Mrs. Schmidt," Scully said, wishing the woman would 
let go of her; Marty had large sweaty hands and the whole handshake was 
starting to feel very humid.

"It means a *great deal* to us that Joshua will be in the hands of a woman 
of faith.  We know you will handle him with respect and dignity."

Scully blinked.  "I beg your pardon?"

Marty pressed Scully's hands even harder, boring into her with those vivid 
green eyes.  "We would *never* let anyone touch our Joshua unless we knew 
they were acting as the hands of the Lord."

This was starting to make sense, but Scully didn't like it.  "Mrs. Schmidt, 
I think there's been some kind of mistake --"

Volney made a sharp gesture behind Marty's back.  Scully focused on him; he 
lowered his eyebrows and shook his head gravely.  Oh God.  It was all making 
sense now.  This was the way out; this was the way to get the family to 
peacefully agree to let Joshua be autopsied.  This was the straw that 
everyone was grasping at, looking to Scully to play along and not say 
anything.

She felt like screaming in frustration.  The very idea of using her identity 
as a Christian to get a family to agree to an autopsy was fundamentally 
abhorrent to her, almost as repugnant as the idea of sleeping with someone 
to get a job, or a promotion.  Under any other circumstances she would 
gladly do the autopsy, but she was irked by being accepted as a doctor 
because of her faith instead of because of her abilities.  It was like being 
back at the naval base, being catered to because her father was respected 
rather than on her own merit.  It had infuriated her then; it infuriated her 
now.

But the look on Volney's face, and on Jean's, and on the faces of the two 
deputies at the door, was a uniform expression of exhaustion and desperate 
hope.  And Mulder, still hanging back in the hallway, looked like he was 
about to fall asleep on his feet.  It was late.  If she broke this last 
straw, it would only get later.

Marty Schmidt's hands trembled, and Scully's perception of the woman flipped 
sideways, from ice-cold woman to a deeply grieving mother whose control of 
the situation was the last link to her dead son.  It was so easy to forget, 
sometimes, that these were people with lives of their own, lives that did 
not begin and end with their involvement in an FBI case, lives that had been 
irrevocably changed.  

Scully could deal with death because she could act upon it, investigate it, 
explain it.  These people could not.

Scully pressed her left hand on top of Marty's and gave her a gentle smile.  
"Mrs. Schmidt," she said, putting as much sincerity into her voice as she 
could, "rest assured, I'll do the best I can to give your son the care he 
deserves."

<X><X><X><X>

End of Chapter 4  (4/16) part 2 of 2

Title:  Gutless (5/16)
Author:  Magdeleine

GUTLESS

Chapter 5

The Mo-Z Inn
2:17 AM

The night was cool and windy, and the storm clouds were still rumbling 
occasionally, withholding their rain.  The only sound besides the wind and 
the dull thunder was the crunch of the parking-lot gravel underfoot as 
Mulder and Scully walked to their motel rooms in silence.

Scully was exhausted.  Her thoughts had taken on that peculiar merry-go-
round quality, each one cycling back to the front in turn.  Autopsy in four 
hours.  Sleep.  Better have the field office in Kansas City run an analysis 
on the blood.  Sleep.  Make sure the blood samples from the previous victims 
went out, too.  Sleep.  Might be a good idea to take apart the plumbing and 
look for traces of visceral material in the sink traps, especially the 
garbage disposal.  Sleep.  God, autopsy in less than four hours ...

As they reached the sidewalk, a particularly strong gust of wind nearly 
caused her to lose her balance.  She flailed for a brief moment; Mulder's 
hand shot out and grabbed her elbow, steadying her.  "You okay?" he asked.

She shook his hand off.  "I'm fine, Mulder."

Mulder held up his hands in mock surrender.  "Okay, okay."

"Good night, Mulder," Scully said, too worn out to rise to the bait.  She 
pulled the room key out of her pocket and headed for her door.

"Scully, hold on a sec."

Inches from freedom, inches from bed.  She put the key in the lock.  
"Mulder, please, it's late.  It's beyond late, it's early.  Can't we talk 
about it in the morning?"

"It'll only take a minute," Mulder promised, leaning against the wall next 
to Scully.  "Humor me."

She looked longingly at the door.  So close ...  "Fine," she said, and 
pushed her hair out of her eyes with a weary hand.  "One minute."

"I want to interview Uncle Fred," Mulder said, and shoved his hands into his 
pockets like a man bracing himself for a deluge.

She stared at him.  "You're joking."

He shrugged.  She could hear the fabric of his trench coat rustle as his 
shoulders shifted.

"God," she sighed, resting her forehead against the door frame.  "Look, 
Mulder, Fred Schmidt is delusional at best and possibly psychotic.  I very 
much doubt that you could glean any information from him that isn't either 
deeply flawed or completely fictional."

"Maybe, maybe not," Mulder said.  "Volney told us that Uncle Fred claimed 
that he was attacked by something shortly before Joshua's death.  Whoever or 
whatever it was that killed that kid probably made a try for his uncle first 
and for some reason Fred was able to fend him off."

"Him?"

"Him, her, it, whatever.  Fred may be an unreliable witness, but he's all 
we've got."

"Fine," Scully grumbled, and straightened up.  "I have to be at the hospital 
at seven to start the autopsy.  We can stop off at the psychiatric wing 
after I finish, and talk to Fred."  She reached for her key, still jutting 
brightly out of the lock.  "Goodnight."

"One more thing ..."

Her open palm slapped against the door and she leaned into it, straight-
armed, her head a little bowed.  "*Yes*, Mulder?"  She turned to see Mulder 
giving her his puppy-dog face, peaking his eyebrows and looking pitiful and 
hopeful at the same time.  "What is it now?"

"Scully, do you remember when we were talking about switching off nights 
with the parrot?"

"No, Mulder," Scully gritted out.  "I remember *you* talking about it."

"Just for tomorrow."

"No."

"Only the daytime hours, Scully.  I'll take him back at night, I swear."

"Mulder, the parrot is your responsibility," Scully told him in her most 
authoritative voice.  "I don't want it anywhere near me.  Is that clear?"

"Yes," Mulder said, without changing his expression.

"Do you, dare I ask, have anything else to talk to me about?"

"Not really."

"All right."  Scully was trying to look stern, but that stubborn curl that 
had been plaguing her all night slithered out from behind her ear and fell 
into her eyes.  She couldn't summon the energy to brush it away and instead 
blew at it, once, ineffectively.

Mulder smiled, a rare gentle smile that made Scully's stomach turn over.  
"Problems?" he asked, his eyes straying to that curl.

"Nothing I can't handle," Scully said, but it came out much quieter than she 
meant it to.  He was still looking at her with that smile on his face, and 
she couldn't think of anything else to say.

Mulder's every movement seemed to be twice as slow as usual, as if she was 
watching him move underwater.  He reached over and smoothed that errant lock 
of hair out of her eyes, tucking it gently behind her ear.  His fingers 
seemed to linger on her skin, burning a path across her forehead as he 
brushed back a few flyaway hairs.  That sweet little smile widened slightly 
as he took his hand away.  "Good night, Scully."

Scully realized she hadn't breathed since the last time she spoke.  She 
sucked in a lungful of air, trying to look as though her normal respiratory 
process hadn't been interrupted by the slightest touch of her partner's 
hand.  "Good night, Mulder."  She fumbled at the key and the doorknob and 
almost fell across the threshold.

Holy Mary, Mother of God.  She pushed the door shut behind her and managed 
to turn the dead bolt.  Her hands were shaking.  Actually shaking.  
Unbelievable.  She must be in worse shape than she'd thought.  A further 
personal inventory revealed that her knees were on the verge of buckling; 
she sagged against the door and closed her eyes.

Mulder's door closed, the impact of it making her own door rattle in 
sympathy.  Her own trembling, however, was starting to fade away.  She began 
to classify the phenomenon, her mind flinging pieces into different 
categories like a woman sorting laundry.  She hadn't really eaten since 
lunch.  She'd been up for almost twenty-four hours straight.  Whatever 
effect Mulder was having on her, it was obviously augmented by low blood 
sugar and exhaustion.  As a matter of fact, it was unlikely that much of 
this at all was due to Mulder's touch.

A breeze brushed her cheek with icy fingers.  She looked up, frowning, and 
saw the curtains billowing away from the open windows like a pair of lungs 
made of synthetic fibers.  Fresh air, very fresh, but far too cold.  She 
ducked under the curtains and closed the windows.  The scratchy curtains 
settled around her like a drift of feathers; she fought her way out and 
headed for the bathroom, hanging her trench coat neatly on one of the 
headless hangers in the open closet nearby.  She did a cursory tooth-brush 
and face-wash, changed into her pajamas, dug her travel alarm clock out of 
her suitcase and set it, hit the light switch, and crawled gratefully 
between the cool sheets.  

There was no further noise from Mulder's room, not even a squawk from the 
parrot.

<X><X><X><X>

She couldn't sleep.

At first she thought that it was the cool temperature of the sheets that was 
keeping her awake, but they soon warmed to her body temperature and she was 
forced to reconsider her theory.  

Perhaps it was just the way she was lying on her back.  She curled up on her 
right side, only to find that no matter where she put her elbow she just 
could not get comfortable, and her hair kept falling into her eyes.  When 
she tried the left side, her leg fell asleep.  She clenched and unclenched 
her toes; her leg began to fizz like a can of soda someone had shaken up as 
a joke, and she gritted her teeth until it subsided.

She twisted over onto her stomach, kicking at the covers -- the blankets 
were too heavy, that was the problem.  Too tightly tucked in.  Too 
oppressive.  She took a moment to peel off the synthetic quilted coverlet 
and the fleecy blanket beneath it, leaving her with just the sheets.  Now 
she was too cold.  There was a tiny draft coming in from somewhere, tickling 
her knee.  And the sheets were still too tight around her feet.

Scully kicked violently at the covers, thrashing around until she was 
wallowing in a pile of over-bleached cotton and slithery polyester.  Better.  
But the pillow was way too flat.  Maybe if she added the second pillow for 
more neck support ...

The pulse in her neck was fluttering too quickly.  She took a series of 
long, deep breaths, hoping to slow her heartbeat, but it didn't help.  There 
was a dry, fuzzy band of tension inching across the back of her skull, the 
kind of headache she hadn't experienced since the night she'd drunk eight 
cups of coffee at a 24-hour diner, trying to pry a story out of a skittish 
witness.  She was itching to check the clock, but hoped that if she just 
kept her eyes shut ... 

Just a little bit longer, that's all ...

Scully wasn't sure how long it'd been since she'd turned over onto her back 
again.  She was almost positive it had been more than five minutes, but then 
again, the early hours of the morning were always a case in point of 
Einstein's Theory of Relativity -- an hour could go by in an eyeblink or an 
eternity.  The light filtering through the curtains gave her very little 
clue as to the time.  She thought it was moonlight, since the shadows were 
cool and tinted with blue, but that may just have been wishful thinking.

The hell with it.  Scully turned over and grabbed the alarm clock, clicking 
the little button that lit up the time so that she could see that it was 
almost four in the morning.  Four.  Two hours until morning.  She glowered 
at the little clock and barely resisted the impulse to hurl it across the 
room.  

Insomnia.  God help her.

Scully rolled out of bed, pulled on her robe, and paced the room.  It was 
insane how awake she felt; by all rights she should have been sleepy.  By 
all rights she should have been *sleeping*.  She was so tired that her bones 
ached, but she seemed to have completely lost the ability to fall asleep.

Work, perhaps, would dull her chattering brain and let her get a few 
precious hours of sleep.  She turned on a small lamp, not quite ready to 
illuminate the whole room, and sat down at the small table in the corner.  
The case file was tucked neatly into her laptop case; her notebook, however, 
was missing.  She found herself stalking around the room like a frantic 
mother with a carpool of children outside and the car keys nowhere to be 
found.  It wasn't in the laptop case, it wasn't on the bedside table, it 
wasn't in her suitcase, it wasn't on the bed.  Could it be in the car?  Had 
she left it at the hospital in Leotie this evening?

She stood next to the table and dug at the base of her skull with one hand, 
trying to ease some of that dry ache while her mind spun in circles.  At 
that moment, there was a parroty squawk from the next room, and Guido's Hit 
Parade came back on the air.  "EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY, SOMETIMES ..."

"Oh for God's sake," she groaned, and slammed the laptop shut.  She switched 
off the light and stared into the dark while her eyes adjusted.  Her hair 
fell into her eyes again and she automatically shoved at it, not really 
noticing the movement of her hand until her fingers brushed her forehead and 
she was jolted into memory.  

Mulder's touch, Mulder's gentle smile.

A tiny sound slipped from her lips, like the whimper of a sleeping infant.  
She blinked, and shook her head violently to clear it.  This was ridiculous.  
She was a responsible adult who ought to be beyond adolescent fantasies, and 
certainly shouldn't be letting this sort of thing keep her awake all night.

At any rate, a responsible adult ought to have some kind of medication in 
her suitcase that would make this subject moot.

Scully was not a great believer in sleeping pills.  She was well aware that 
they served as a poor substitute for relaxation and the natural sleeping 
process; she had read all the documentation on the side effects and come to 
the logical conclusion that it was better to tough it out.  Nonetheless, she 
found herself digging through every nook and cranny of her suitcase, hoping 
that she'd ignored her own conclusions and brought something along, anyway.

<*A few drops of chloral hydrate will do the job every time.*>  She'd been 
joking when she said that, but now the joke was on her.  There were no 
sleeping pills in her suitcase.  The closest thing she could find was the 
box of motion sickness medication she'd used on the plane -- one of the side 
effects was drowsiness.  She weighed her options, rolled her eyes, and put 
the box back in her suitcase.

She almost wished she *had* a few drops of chloral hydrate.

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY SOMETIMES ..."  

Correction:  She wished she had a few drops of chloral hydrate for *Guido*.  
Damn that bird.  Damn Marjorie Bailey for only teaching him the first line 
of that song.  Damn Mulder for insisting they bring him back with them ... 
and while she was at it, damn Mulder for being so sweet to her tonight.  
Damn her hormones for making so much of it.  Damn this insomnia.  

Damn, damn, damn.

She found herself hovering near the connecting door.  Any moment now, Mulder 
would wake up, she was sure of it.  He'd get up, and go over to the 
birdcage, and shut that bird up.

Her brain was spinning, conjuring up unsolicited fantasies of what her 
partner might be wearing.  A T-shirt and sweatpants, probably; that was what 
he usually wore to bed.  Maybe he'd left off the T-shirt.  Maybe he was only 
wearing boxers.  Or maybe ...

She tried to push away the last thought, tried desperately to keep it from 
creeping through the crack in her mental brick wall, but it slipped out 
anyway.

Maybe, just maybe, Mulder was about to walk across that room with no clothes 
on whatsoever.

Dana Scully was no voyeur.  She did not glance through windows when she 
walked past people's homes; she did not put her ear to the wall to listen to 
her neighbors' arguments; and she certainly didn't peek through the 
connecting door to her partner's room in the hopes of catching him wandering 
around in the buff.  So why in the hell was she standing by this door, 
straining her ears, listening for any hint of movement?  

She felt ridiculous.  She felt like a cheap cliche.  

She felt like yanking the door open and looking in because she wasn't 
hearing a damn thing that meant Mulder was awake and how on earth could 
Mulder *not* be awake with that parrot making so much noise?

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY ..."

Her hand gripped the doorknob.  She stopped, her adrenaline-driven heart 
pounding in her ears so loudly that it almost drowned out Guido's crooning.  
What was she *doing*?

Curiosity warred with common sense.  A rationalization crept up in her mind, 
the cozy thought that she just really wanted to check on him, wanted to make 
sure he was all right.  She could say that the parrot was keeping her awake 
and she wanted to make it shut up.  It was close enough to the truth that 
she wouldn't choke on it as a lie.

"... SOMEBODY SOMETIMES ..."  The damn parrot sounded like a broken record.  
How could anyone sleep through that?

She knocked softly and listened, expecting to hear Mulder's footsteps 
approaching the door.  Nothing.  Guido's serenade continued unabated.

She waited, and knocked again, a little louder.  Still no response.  Scully 
took a deep breath and eased open the door to Mulder's room.

He was on the bed.  Lying on his back.  Sound asleep.  Snoring very softly.

Fully clothed.

She honestly didn't know whether to be disappointed or relieved.

The light was still on in his bathroom, seeping over Mulder's sleeping form, 
illuminating him with a dim yellow glow.  He had removed his jacket and 
loosed his tie before falling asleep, and undone the top two buttons on his 
shirt, but that appeared to be all.  The bedcovers were pulled back and he 
was sprawled out on the sheets.  One arm was draped over his chest, the 
other dangling off the edge of the bed; he was still wearing his shoes, 
although one seemed to be untied.

She could not stop looking at him.

The opening of the door had brought an abrupt halt to Guido's staccato Dean 
Martin impression, and the silence in the room was almost eerie.  Scully 
could hear Mulder's breathing, and her own heartbeat, and that was all.

She stood there for a long time, watching the slow rise and fall of his 
chest.  Paralyzed.  Her arms were wrapped around herself as if she was 
straitjacketed, holding herself back from causing damage.  She breathed 
shallowly, her brow furrowed in something like pain as she stared at her 
sleeping partner.

He looked like a little boy.  Sleep erased the tension from his face and 
touched his lips with the ghost of a smile, a faint echo of the way he'd 
smiled at her outside a few hours ago.  

She meant to leave.  She couldn't.

Mulder moved.  Just a little.  The hand dangling over the edge of the bed 
twitched, and her partner shifted on the bed, frowning, murmuring something 
unintelligible.  Scully's heart rate shot up into the panic zone, despite 
her brain's efforts to shut down the flow of adrenaline.  Her paralysis 
broke.

What was she doing here?  What could she possibly be thinking?

Her eyes flicked over the room in confusion, her gaze caught by the 
fluttering curtains at the window.  His window was open.  She suddenly 
realized that it was cold in Mulder's room, cold enough to see your breath.

She took a step into his room, and then another.  The rough carpeting rasped 
against her bare feet like steel wool.  She developed a plan of surgical 
precision: go in, shut the window, go back to her room, shut the door.  
Swift, precise, no wasted movement.  She programmed it into her bones, 
banished every thought of any other action.

The window was stuck.

She gaped at it in shock for what seemed like forever, unable to process the 
concept.  When the realization finally registered, she yanked at the wooden 
frame as hard as she could, but there was no budging it.  It might have 
responded well to a good *whack* with the heel of her hand, but this was not 
the time to find out, not with her partner sleeping peacefully ten feet away

Shit.  She glared at the window and chewed on her lip, trying to develop a 
new plan.

She could ...

She could tuck him in.

She'd done it before, of course.  Several times.  She'd put him to bed after 
his father had been murdered and had sat beside him for most of the night, 
cooling his face with a wet cloth and soothing his nightmares with her 
voice.  Such a long time ago.

She'd stripped him down to his boxers, that time; in comparison, tucking a 
few blankets around him tonight was nothing important.  Certainly nothing to 
hesitate over.  Nonetheless, she stood for long moments like a girl at her 
first dance, shifting her weight from foot to foot, hands twisting together 
hard enough to mark her skin with her nails.

One deep breath.  Another.

Scully crossed resolutely to the foot of the bed.  Her breathing sounded 
much too loud in the hushed room; she tried to be quieter, but her chest was 
already so tight with tension that the added action made her feel like she 
was suffocating.  She moved slowly, lifting Mulder's feet one at a time, 
easing each shoe off with a care she usually reserved for adjusting the 
focus on a microscope.  She set the shoes on the floor, side by side, and 
gently tucked Mulder's feet under the rumpled covers. 

He was still asleep.

Scully crept around the edge of the bed, still walking on the balls of her 
feet like a cat, and reached over her sleeping partner to grab the sheet and 
blanket.  It was a stretch, especially considering her determined effort not 
to lean on the mattress for fear of waking Mulder up; she found herself 
hovering over his chest for an endless moment, breathing him in.

He smelled of leather and warm cotton and sea-salt.  

She finally managed a two-finger hold on the elusive bedding and inched her 
way back, trying not to let the covers brush against Mulder until they were 
finally in place; she let them settle over him, drifting into place with an 
almost imperceptible whoosh of air.  There.  Done.  Mulder's hand was still 
dangling over the edge of the mattress; as an afterthought, she gently slid 
her fingers around his wrist and lifted his arm, moving it so that it rested 
on the bed, his hand palm-up, fingers curving in the soft relaxation of 
slumber.

Scully stood next to Mulder's bed for a long moment, watching him sleep.  

She knew that she ought to leave.

She didn't.

She reached out without really thinking and touched his hair, the barest 
hint of a caress, much in the same way that he had touched her a few hours 
earlier.  Her other arm was wrapped around her stomach again as though she 
were holding her insides together from a gunshot wound.

His skin was a shock against her fingertips, his warm solidity a shock to 
her mind.  He was here, and she was touching him.  This was not a dream.

The breath rushed out of her as reality hit home.  She hitched in more air 
and swallowed hard. She was shaking all over; her nails bit into her ribs as 
her left hand tightened convulsively.  She watched in awe as her fingertips 
ran lightly over his cheek, traced the line of his stubble-roughened jaw.

Touching him was like holding a lighted match.  It threatened to burn her 
but she could not let it go, not yet.  Not yet.

She brushed his lips with her thumb.  Soft, slightly chapped, curving in a 
gentle smile.  Her throat seemed to lock up as she traced the shape of his 
mouth, the memories of each time those lips had touched her cheek coming 
hard and fast and threatening to topple her over.

Slowly, her spine creaking at every centimeter, she bent over him.  Closer.  
Closer.

She could not breathe at all.

Her lips were inches from his.

"EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY, SOMETIMES ..."

Scully had never moved so fast in her entire life.  One moment a breath away 
from kissing Mulder in his sleep; the next thing she knew, she was almost 
six feet away from the bed -- six feet in the wrong direction, six feet 
further away from the connecting door.  

Shit!  

She came to a sliding stop, the carpet burning her feet with the friction, 
her veins pumping almost pure adrenaline, trying to get enough control over 
her shaking limbs to make a similarly rocket-propelled journey back across 
the room to the door --

"... Scully?"

OH, SHIT.

Mulder sat up, groggy, blinking and running a slow hand over his face.  
Scully froze, her heart was going like a trip hammer, trying to take a 
breath that would fill more than a quarter of her lungs.  A shrieky little 
voice in the back of her head kept screaming *Caught! Caught! Caught!*  It 
made it impossible to think.

"Sorry, Mulder," she said in something near her normal voice, "I didn't mean 
to wake you."  That was for damn sure.  "Go back to sleep."

"What are you doing in here?"  Sleepy, but not stupid.  Mulder was still 
rubbing one eye, but she could almost hear the neurons in his brain firing 
up and working through this new puzzle.

"I ..."  She couldn't remember.  All she could remember was the way his 
eyelashes had curved across his cheeks, a tidbit of information which was 
absolutely no help under the circumstances.  "I ..."

Guido chose that moment for a repeat performance.  "WHEN THE MOON HITS YOUR 
EYE LIKE A BIG-A PIZZA PIE THAT'S AMORE ..."

The memory of her cover story hit like a thunderbolt.  The parrot, right.  
She indicated the cage with a tilt of her head, raising her eyebrow and 
starting to feel a little more like herself.  "I couldn't sleep."  She 
crossed to the cage and made a great show of pulling the cover over the 
cage, effectively silencing Guido's serenade.

"Oh, sorry about that," Mulder mumbled, pulling back the covers and swinging 
his legs off the mattress.  "I fell asleep the minute I got in here.  I 
didn't even take off --"  He broke off, looking down at his stocking-clad 
feet and at his shoes parked neatly beside the bed.  "Huh."

Scully stiffened.

Mulder stared at his shoes, a strange look on his face.  "I could have 
sworn --"

"I -- I --" she stuttered.  The vague, unfocused fear of discovery had 
suddenly sprouted teeth and bitten her heart in half.   "Mulder --" she 
croaked.

"Hmm?"  He was still pondering his feet.

"-- I'll take the parrot tomorrow."

He looked up.  "What?"

The words had fallen out of Scully's mouth so quickly that she had to 
backtrack to remember just what those words *were*.  "I said ... I'll take 
the parrot tomorrow."  It didn't make any more sense the second time.  "Just 
for the day.  Like you said."

Mulder stared at her, a sleepy smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.  He 
stood up and ambled towards her, yawning, and extended one hand as though 
for a handshake.  "I'm sorry, I don't believe we've met.  Fox Mulder.  And 
you are ...?"

She swallowed the remnants of fear and waved his hand away, acting her 
normal part.  "Mulder, it's obvious you're having trouble with Guido.  If he 
keeps this up we're going to get thrown out of the motel.  It's in both of 
our best interests if I help you out."

"Scully ..."  He was smiling.  That puzzled, delighted smile that meant that 
she'd surprised him, that warm smile that spread across his face and lit up 
his eyes and made her feel irrationally pleased with herself.  He was 
smiling, and she felt herself starting to smile back, and she hated herself 
for it.

She had a brief eyeblink vision of reaching for him, tugging his face down 
to her own.  His arms tight around her.  Their legs tangling together as 
they tumbled onto the bed ...

She turned away.  If she had looked at him any longer, she might have melted 
down like a candle and not have been recognizable when she cooled.  "I'd 
better get to back to bed.  I've got an autopsy in three hours."

He shrugged, and started towards the bathroom.  "All right.  Good night, 
Scully."

"Good night, Mulder."  Scully walked through the door and closed it behind 
her.  She could hear water running next door -- probably Mulder brushing his 
teeth, or washing his face.  She sighed, and stared through the dark in the 
direction of his bathroom.

She focused, and found herself staring at her trench coat.  A thought 
squirmed through her pounding brain, and she walked over and put her hand 
into the pocket.

Her fingers recognized the cool lines of the little notebook but she pulled 
it out to stare uselessly at it, in the dark.  Next door, Mulder's 
bedsprings creaked.

She crossed the room in ten blind steps and looked at her alarm clock.  It 
was four-fifteen.  She didn't feel the least bit tired.

It was going to be a very long night.

<X><X><X><X>

End of Chapter 5  (5/16)

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