From: playwrtrx@aol.com Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 22:38:00 EDT Subject: xfc: Gutless by Magdeleine (14a/16) Source: xfc Title: Gutless (14/16) Author: Magdeleine GUTLESS Chapter 14 Drees Street and Main 7:18 AM The tiny red Honda barreled along the road with little heed to the pounding rain or the twenty mile per hour speed limit. Three blocks behind the Honda, a rented Crown Victoria struggled to keep up, the tar lines in the blacktop throbbing beneath its tires like a staccato cello solo. Mulder was not happy about driving this fast. He was normally ambivalent about bending the law when shadowing a suspect, but the rain-slick blacktop was hard to maneuver on. He found himself wanting to drive like a blue- haired old lady, which made him jumpy and irritated with himself, but the fact remained that while the sheriff's daughter might speed with impunity, a pair of FBI agents tailing the sheriff's daughter ought to be just a little bit more cautious. He didn't want to think about Volney's reaction if he found out about this little excursion. The windshield wipers were thwipping back and forth at a frantic pace, clearing the rain for a microsecond before the constant flow of water obscured Mulder's vision again. He hunched over the steering wheel, practically driving with his knees and elbows, squinting out at the smeary red tail lights of the tiny assortment of cars engaged in the sport of controlled hydroplaning. Water hissed steadily beneath the Crown Vic and swished out from under the wheels of approaching cars, changing pitch as the cars whizzed past. Scully leaned forward and turned up the heat a notch. The inside of the windshield began to fog up; Mulder squeegeed it angrily with the flat of his hand. "Cut it out, Scully, I can't see." "I'm cold," she bit out. Mulder squeaked a hand across the windshield again, leaving a six-inch-wide swath clear in the middle of the fog, and grabbed recklessly at the heat control. "It's not that cold," he informed her, and snapped the heat off. She glowered and turned away from him, ostensibly to look out the rain- marbled window. "Fine." The Honda's tail lights flared like a trumpet call and Mulder had to do some talented braking action to avoid drawing attention, avoid hydroplaning, and avoid cramming the Crown Victoria up the Honda's tailpipe. He hadn't recognized Taymor's Staffing Service under the gray drape of rain; somehow he'd thought it was somewhere a few blocks further on. The Honda shot into a parking spot directly in front of Taymor's. As the Crown Vic passed it, Scully whipped her head around counterclockwise to peer out the back window when she could no longer keep in visual contact through the passenger side. "Turn here!" she barked. "Here! *Now!*" "I *am,*" he snapped back, craning his neck around to check for oncoming traffic. The car plowed through a deep puddle with a low-pitched *sploosh* that slapped against the underside of the car. There was a parking lot in this block, right across the road from Taymor's, but he couldn't see a way in from this street. There were too many damned bushes in the way. Scully twisted in her seat, still keeping an eye on the red Honda. "In here," she ordered, and pointed authoritatively at the parking lot without looking at it. "Hang on a minute." "Mulder, will you PARK THE CAR already?" "I AM," he howled, and hit the gas. He wrenched the car to the left and through a one-car-wide inlet to the parking lot that he'd spotted barely in time, jouncing them severely as the wheels struck a faded orange concrete traffic bump far too fast. It was nowhere near appropriate behavior for a stakeout, but Mulder didn't give a damn. The parking lot was nearly empty. Mulder ignored the chipped lines of paint on the concrete and plowed across the parking lot, braking hard and throwing the Crown Vic into park in a spot parallel to Main Street, the driver's side facing east, toward Taymor's. He cut the engine and looked across the street just in time to see Amber Volney slam her car door and run across the wide sidewalk without a coat, umbrella or even a newspaper held over her head against the pouring rain, the perfect picture of the indifference of youth to cold and wet and mother's orders. She splashed through a puddle, darted under the wide green awning that covered the entire front of the store, yanked open the wide glass door and slipped inside. Moments later, Amber appeared in the display window, tossing her dark hair to free it of water, throwing her blue backpack into the chair behind the receptionist's desk. She stopped, fluffed her hair a little with one hand, and then walked off toward the back, disappearing from sight. Rain slammed down on the car in sheets, blowing in from the West, obscuring every window except the one facing Taymor's. "Do you think she saw us?" he asked, more to have something to say than because he actually thought they'd been burned half an hour into the stakeout. He kept his eyes on the lighted windows of Taymor's Staffing Service. "No." Scully's voice was very quiet, barely audible over the drumming of the rain. Across the street, Amber Volney reappeared in the display window. She sat down at the receptionist's desk, propped her feet up and began flipping through a stack of files in a haphazard manner. Occasionally she tossed one onto the desk. "Looks like she's in for the day," Mulder said. Scully didn't answer. "I said, it looks like she's in for the day." "I heard you the first time," she snapped. He turned away from the lighted windows of Taymor's and looked at his partner in the pinched gray stormlight. She had her arms wrapped tightly around herself, and her face might as well have been carved from stone, her eyes fixed straight ahead. It wasn't exactly her angry expression, but he didn't know what else to call it. "If you're tired," he offered, "you can go ahead and take a nap." She angled her face in his direction but still didn't exactly look at him. "I don't want a nap." "I'm just saying that I know I woke you up and we couldn't get any coffee and it would be understandable if you needed to take a quick --" "Mulder, I don't need a nap." She turned all the way away from him, her shoulders tight under her trench coat. "Okay. Okay." He sighed and turned back to Taymor's. Amber was fiddling with the antenna on a little radio, frowning at it; she played with the dials, apparently did not get what she wanted, and gave the radio a hard *thwack* with her palm. This seemed to satisfy her. She settled back into her chair and began to belt out a lip-synch solo, pointing sexily at someone invisible during relevant musical phrases. A pickup truck bumbled past, splashing through various puddles, playing loud country music that made the panels of the Crown Vic vibrate. The mobile concert faded out in the distance and all that was left was the cold rattle of the rain and Amber Volney's mute concert across the street. Mulder sighed again, took off his seat belt, and shifted around until he was in a somewhat comfortable position. "Hey, Scully," he tried, "I could sneak out to the gas station across the street and grab us some coffee." "I don't want any coffee." "It would help wake you up. Wake us up," he amended quickly. "Mulder," she said in a patient voice edged with scorn, turning slightly toward him, "it may be a while since you've done this kind of surveillance, but we're not going to have many bathroom breaks in our future and caffeine is a diuretic." "I could get decaf." "I'm not even going to go into the logic of that statement," she snapped, and turned away again. 10:52 A.M. Scully saw the man coming before Mulder did. More accurately, she saw a dark rain-streaked blur crossing the lighter rain-streaked blur that she had identified as Lind Street, and made an educated guess. "Down!" she hissed, and slid lower in her seat. Mulder didn't even turn to double-check what she was talking about; he hunched down in his seat awkwardly, his knee smacking the dashboard as he doubled up. The noise tore through Scully's mind like a bullet -- She swallowed a whimper and rested her head against the seat back with a cushiony thump. The man-shaped blur scurried past the driver's side of the Crown Vic and slowly came into focus from the shoulders up: short, bald, brown suit, goggle-eyed like a frog. He held a blue plastic tub above his head in both hands like an offering to a whimsical ancient god. There was a furiously twisting level of dark blue evident along the side of the tub, evidence that the man had been out in the rain long enough to collect a lot of water. The man sped past the parking lot without glancing at the car, much less the federal agents crammed into it like the bottom half of a circus clown act. "I don't think he saw us," Mulder announced as he wormed his way upright again. He started peering out the only clear window as though an entire platoon of bald men with plastic tubs was about to come charging their way. Her eyes were drawn to his face the moment his attention was elsewhere, like some kind of science experiment from second grade involving magnets and iron filings. He hadn't shaved this morning, perhaps because he was in such a determined hurry to get on the road and start keeping an eye on Amber Volney. She couldn't remember the last time he'd done that. She couldn't remember how she'd lived through the last time. "You know, Scully," Mulder observed, absently drawing little curlicues on the fogged edges of his window, "the real difference about the Midwest isn't so much the people as it is the *cars*. In the city it's such a hassle to find parking that once you park one place, you might as well keep the space for the day and just hoof it around the immediate area, rain or shine. Out here, you can leave the umbrella behind and just drive the two blocks to your next destination. The Midwest is rich in parking spaces." She stared helplessly at the dark texture of his face and wished he'd shut the hell up. The ache of wanting him was starting to grind at her bones like a high fever; it made her restless. More than anything else she wanted to run her palm along his jaw and feel that stubble with her hand and her lips. "Then again," he continued thoughtfully, "it might just be the cheaper gasoline." She didn't answer. Her mind was caught up in flesh fantasies of sandpaper stubble scraping against the inside of her thighs, of threading her fingers through his soft dark hair to direct him and urge him on -- "You okay, Scully?" She broke herself out of the vision to find Mulder facing her, studying her face with a faint frown etched between his eyebrows. A sudden cramp in her neck brought reality front and center, and she realized that she was still slouched down below eye level, still in hiding. "Fine." The word didn't seem to mean anything anymore but she said it nonetheless, struggling upward to sit stiffly in her seat. His eyes were still on her -- she could feel him examining her as though his huge rough hands were running along her limbs to check for broken bones. She turned and looked him full in the face and suddenly felt as if she'd been blindsided by a wall of cold water. And she was drowning -- His eyes caught and held her for an endless moment, his face set in that eternal Mulder expression of puzzlement and mulish determination but his eyes, his eyes were lit with a spark of surprised awareness that burned to the bone. Dizziness washed over her, a swirling giddy half-drunken sensation that she recognized from childhood, when she'd spun herself around and around like a top and thrown her head back to watch the pebbled ceiling magically turn into a universe of concentric circles. At age six, that sensation had been her favorite, better than swimming on a hot day, better than jumping into a crackling pile of leaves. As an adult, it terrified her. It was like standing in the doorway of an airplane at cruising altitude, with a parachute strapped to your back and the cold air sucking at you, standing and contemplating the incoherently huge distance to the ground while dumb animal fear warred with impetuous human desire and you know that at any moment desire would win and you'd hurl yourself out the door. She could feel her attraction to Mulder pulling at her like some insanely strong gravitational force. The door of the airplane was open, all right, and she was standing there with the wind whipping at her, staring down at the curve of the earth's surface, but the difference here was that she had no damned parachute, none at all. The desire to jump remained, and that scared her worse than the concept of falling -- the panicky surety that she might do something without her mind's permission, that if she let down her guard for the slightest moment, something -- -- might happen, something irrevocable. She ripped her eyes away from him and turned away, feeling profound relief that she retained *that* much control over herself. And then she yawned. It was an absurd, huge, undignified yawn, and it scared her half to death. How could she keep watch over this starved animal hunger if she was too tired to concentrate? "If you want to take a nap --" Mulder began. "I don't want to take a nap." His gaze sunburned her neck for another moment and then she felt it shift away. When she felt sure of herself again, she chanced a swift look at him out of the corner of her eyes. He was staring out into the rain, mulling something over in the deep cavern of his mind. Something about his face made a tiny worm of unease twist deep in her gut -- something in the set of his jaw, maybe, or the way the rain rolling over the windshield threw moving shadows across his face. She looked down at her hands, clenched together in her lap, and tried not to wonder what the hell he was thinking about. Please continue to Chapter 14b. Go, go, go! Subject: xfc: Gutless by Magdeleine (14b/16) 12:26 PM Mulder had entertained vague hopes that staking out Amber Volney would be more interesting than the usual kind of stakeout, but after more than five hours of watching the little brat do office chores, he was starting to wonder just what the hell he'd been thinking. Had he really expected some kind of smoking gun? All he'd gained from the experience, thus far, was a low opinion of Amber's clerical skills and a fairly numb ass. Not to mention an earful of chilly silence from Scully. The weird tension shivering between them, the one that Mulder didn't care to put a name to, had been cranking up and up all morning, like a violin string tightened beyond the point of vibration or resonance, tightened to the point where there wasn't much else it could do besides snap with a whip-sharp *THWAP!* He knew, on a visceral level, what was going on, but he didn't want to think about it. His waking mind had chosen to studiously keep away from examining anyone's motives this morning, particularly Scully's. Or his own. In the field, Mulder operated on instinct a good ninety percent of the time, and he was in the field right now. There was a knot of dread in his stomach, about two fingerwidths down from the southern end of his sternum, making him restless; he felt like an elementary-school kid who couldn't sit still, the kind of kid who went charging around and around at recess instead of playing kickball. Looking at Scully intensified the feeling; he watched her select a juice box from the little cooler at her feet and strip the thin plastic off the bendy straw with a surgeon's dexterity. Ignoring him. Shutting him out. There was a strange urge building up in him, a nervous, twitchy need to draw her into conversation, stir her up, irritate her. Very similar to the need he'd had at age eight to push girls down on the playground. "I have a problem with your theory," he told her. Her eyes went wide and she stared at the windshield, and it occurred to him that she'd been doing that on and off for hours now, usually at the points in conversation when, normally, she'd turn to look at him. A sick feeling of recognition began glowing around the edges of his thoughts, but he ignored it. She was silent and still as a rabbit hiding from a predator. "According to your theory," he pushed on, "the murderer administered half of the binary poison and the other half was purely in the victims' hands. If you'll excuse the expression." She made a face, flinching away from him. "So tell me, Scully ... if, as you've theorized, the murderer was not present for the murders, why weren't the liquefied guts still sloshing around in the victims when their bodies were discovered?" There was a long moment of rain-pattered silence. "Stomach pump," Scully said at last in a strained, throaty voice that he barely recognized. "The murderer removed the viscera with ... with a stomach pump." "I don't think so," he informed her, feeling a smug I-know-something-you- don't-know glee that made him a little sick to his stomach. "If the time of death was completely random, the murderer couldn't have known when to show up unless she'd been following the victims around, and *that* would have been noticed." He leaned over in a fit of deliberate casualness and took a juice-box out of the cooler by Scully's feet, brushing her leg almost accidentally. She flinched again and moved her leg away, the movement jerky. He sat back up and unwrapped the straw with shaking fingers. Some dark and nameless boy-monster was dancing savagely in the back of his mind, and Mulder couldn't seem to resist the suggestions the little devil was calling out. It was like interrogating a suspect -- the crazy feeling of flying by the seat of his pants, not knowing some of the questions he would ask until he heard them pop out of his mouth -- running on instinct all the way. Exhilarating. But this wasn't some suspect; this was *Scully*. He looked blindly down at the juice box and speared it with the pointy end of the straw. Thunder exploded around them at the moment the straw struck home. <*A tad over-dramatic for a box of cran-grape,*> he thought he said, but his lips never moved. So much for witty repartee. Scully's voice rasped into the ringing silence after the thunder, moments before he could hear the rain again. "I don't know." "What?" He honestly couldn't remember the question, but the word sounded smug. The great scientific Scully mind, finally stumped. "I ... don't ... *know*," she snapped in her sandpaper voice. Her face was flushed and hot-looking, as though she was running a marathon. "If you're not going to fill in the blanks, dammit, you might as well go ahead and enlighten me as to your opinion." It was the longest sentence she'd strung together in hours. He drank down her voice greedily, like a man wandering in the desert who comes across a full canteen, and in a moment of perfect clarity he saw that this was what he wanted, this was what he'd been prodding her for -- he wanted her to talk, that was it. Get her talking, pry her open bit by bit -- The nameless something in the back of his mind stirred at the thought. Mulder stubbornly ignored it, and moved on. "I think there's somebody in this town -- let's call him or her 'Pat' -- who's having an occasional spell of amnesia, experiencing heightened sexual tension, having a few weird sexual dreams where they seem to be somebody else, say, Jim Taymor." He looked at Scully. Nothing. "In the dream, Jim is making love to someone -- say, Marjorie. And at that moment, across town, Marjorie dies." Still no response. "Pat gets up, goes to work, doesn't even remember the dream ... and all the while, he or she is playing host to a monster that they know nothing about." He looked at her. She was very pale, and silent; she stared at the dashboard like a woman contemplating her worst nightmare. "I think it's all about dreams," he continued, hating her silence. "The host, and the victims. I think that the Tochok finds its victims while they're sleeping, and I think that it can not only *keep* them asleep, but it can affect their dreams. Maybe you were right about the sleep paralysis thing --" She jumped, as if goosed, and almost turned to face him; he saw her catch herself, and close her eyes briefly. "-- I think maybe the Tochok can evoke the effects of sleep paralysis, so the victims can't fight back physically, only mentally -- and I bet that's why it only picks victims who are fixated on somebody. I bet the Tochok takes the form of the person that the victim most desires, that unrequited love ... the one person that the victim could never resist ... the one person the victim would never want to fight off." His voice slid down the octave, resonated like the sounding board of a string bass. Scully's face screwed up in an uncharacteristic expression of pain, her eyes shut tight, her body seeming to vibrate with tension. Silent. Still silent. Shutting him out. Why wouldn't she just *talk?* "It's a creature that feeds on our deepest dreams," he told her softly. "The ones we don't tell anyone else, the ones we'd rather die than see dragged out into the light, those secret desires that we only think about when we're alone ... a lot of killers use that sort of vulnerability, but this is the first time I've seen it used so directly ..." He trailed off, caught up in his own web of words, barely sidestepping the huge unnamed *something* stirring and whispering in his mind. Thunder muttered thickly, high overhead, and thin light flickered over Scully's paper-white face, illuminating that expression that he instinctively recognized but refused to acknowledge. He looked out the window then, across the street at the windows of Taymor's where Amber Volney was jabbering into a telephone, an elaborate dumbshow for the FBI agents out here in the tense cold. "I think," he said at last, "I think that the only way to kill something like that is to kill the host." 5:18 PM The rain just would not let up. There had been a few times that it got a little lighter, once so much that the streetlights turned off for almost five minutes, but the storm always came back full-force, sheets of rain pelting the rented car with an odd sound like an almost-empty washing machine agitating a few lonely clothes in a sea of bubbles. It was dusk now. Mulder was silhouetted against the dim light of the fading day, squinting to see across the street. He seemed restless, on edge; his fingers drummed on his knee almost soundlessly. Dusk. Twilight. His breath fogged up the window and he absently wiped it clean with a sweep of his hand, the moisture running down the glass like quicksilver. Scully dug her nails into her palms and hunched down a little further into her trench coat. She was not superstitious, she refused to even consider it, but she had to admit to herself that, if she *had* been, the omens were not looking very good. Here she was, on stakeout with Mulder at twilight in a car with foggy windows. Granted, it was cold instead of hot, and the moisture in the air was composed of battering rain rather than thick humidity, but the similarities were perfectly clear to a woman of science. The only way they could be any clearer would be if Mulder decided to strip to the waist for some insane reason. The image tore fire through her brain, flared along every nerve ending in a white-hot flash. She gritted her teeth and waited for it to pass, counting the seconds as if she were guessing the proximity of an approaching storm. One-thousand-one one-thousand-two one-thousand-three and the wave of flame passed over, leaving her feeling weak and shaky, her skin supersensitive. She shuddered all over for a moment and then, helplessly, yawned. Her eyes drifted halfway closed, and her shuttered gaze fixed on Mulder's face. His good, strong, desperately handsome face, tired and stubbled and everything she could ever think of wanting. And to think, she'd flippantly called it a Mulder-Awareness Day. Dear God. Not since Custer took on his last batch of Indians had something been so phenomenally underestimated. She was vaguely aware that one hand had unclenched and left her lap, slowly smoothing over the upholstered no-man's-land in the direction of Mulder's thigh. For long, lazy seconds this state of events was perfectly all right -- nothing wrong here, folks -- and then some panic-button in her mind was tripped and her eyes snapped open, adrenaline slamming through her veins. She looked at her traitorous hand in horror and snatched it back, wrapping the fingers of her other hand around her wrist like a handcuff. She had almost -- oh Christ, she'd almost -- Mulder swung around in her direction and she nearly jumped out of the car. "Wha --?" she gasped guiltily. "She's been gone for almost ten minutes," he said, pointing his finger accusingly at the driver's side window. "She went down the hall and didn't come back." Scully stared at him for a naked hideous moment before her numb mind could process the sentence. Oh. The stakeout. Amber Volney. "Oh." He gnawed on his lower lip, deep in thought, and the tiger began to pace back and forth in Scully's stomach again. A desolate thought occurred to her: she was going to break. Any moment now, the tiger would fling itself against the bars of the cage and the sucker would bust wide open-- any moment now, she'd climb right the hell across the seat and into his lap and start ripping his clothes off with her teeth. It wasn't a question of *if,* anymore. Just *when.* She shut her eyes and, hopelessly, sent up a wordless prayer for the strength to last just a little bit longer. Suddenly she heard the driver's side door opening -- cold wind blew in on her and spattered her with fine mist, smelling like fresh wet laundry hung up to dry. The rain seemed to roar. She wrenched her eyes open just in time to watch her partner climb out of the car, moving stiffly. "Where the hell are you going?" she yelped, too stunned to follow him. Mulder leaned down to peek back into the car. "There's a window in Taymor's office that looks out on the alley. I'm going to sneak back there and take a look." "Are you NUTS?" she shrilled at him, but the door shut and she was left alone in the car, exhaustion pressing on her, listening to Mulder's faint footsteps as he ran across the street in the rain. The sign on the wide glass door had been flipped so that it said CLOSED, but the lights were still on at Taymor's. Mulder skimmed the front of the building, slumped a bit but not really daring to walk hunched over because that, if anything, would gain the attention of a passing motorist or someone in a nearby business. He would bet even money that Amber had gone, skipped out the back for some weird teenaged reason, maybe headed out on a date that her father wouldn't approve of, leaving her car out in front of Taymor's as mute "proof" of her whereabouts. Taymor would probably be working late, and as long as those lights were on she'd have an alibi. By the time Mulder made it around the back of the building, he was soaked to the skin, shivering, his teeth chattering. At least he was moving, though; at least he got to *do* something for a change. Water poured in a steady waterfall off the gutterless edges of the roof, hissing onto the pavement and sluicing into a stream down the middle of the alley. He consulted his mental map of the interior of Taymor's and came to the conclusion that the window he had noticed yesterday should be right ... abouuuuuuuuut ... Ah. There. Slowly, cautiously, he edged up to the window and peeked inside. It was recognizably Taymor's office, all right; there was the bookcase Mulder had seen yesterday, there was the ridiculous merit award hanging on the back wall, there was the desk -- His jaw dropped, and he stared. There were two mostly-naked people grappling passionately on the desk. One of them was Amber Volney, and the other was most certainly Jim Taymor. "Shit," Mulder breathed, his two top picks for the office of Sexually Frustrated Tochok Host going up in smoke. The barely legal office assistant and the married owner of the company, who the hell would have thought it? Scully'd said that Amber had a crush on Taymor, but ... As he gaped through the window, Amber fumbled a hand backwards over the surface of the desk down to a drawer, yanked it open and came up with a condom. That squelched Mulder's half-formed hopes that maybe this was their first time and he *had* been right, just not *anymore* -- whatever these two were to each other, they'd practiced already. This was no awkward first encounter. Shit. Mulder found himself plodding back across the street, splashing through a big damn puddle that he vaguely remembered skirting on the way out. He had been *so* sure he was right. They'd sat here all day in the damn rain because he was so *sure* ... The rain came at him in waves, and he was forced to shield his eyes with one hand just to keep from being blinded. Half-drowned, freezing his ass off, and his mind in a state of pissed-off shock, he stumbled to the Crown Vic and collapsed inside. "Scully," he said, wiping water off his face, "you're not gonna believe what I --" He broke off as he got a good look at her and realized that she was asleep. She was slumped, just barely, her head tipped back against the seat back and tilted slightly off center like the earth's axis. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her middle, her little fists tucked under her elbows. Even in sleep, the faint line between her eyebrows was present and accounted for, and her mouth looked thin and tense. He recognized it as her crossroads expression, when she was fighting with some decision that she didn't want to make, but had to. He looked at her for a long time, the water dripping off him in fat beads. She was ... She was so ... The nameless feeling in him expanded and roared, demanding attention. "Scully," he said softly, and when that failed to wake her he leaned over and touched her shoulder. "Hey, Scully --" Her eyes snapped open and she stared full into his eyes. And *snarled* at him. Her lips drew back from her teeth and her eyes slitted at him dangerously as she snarled a single word: "*Don't* --!" He yanked his hand away so fast that it ended up splayed in the air next to his ear, drawn back in the surprised defensive posture of a man almost bitten by a trusted pet. Scully shrank back against the passenger door, breathing in harsh pants, one fist clenching and unclenching at irregular intervals as she stared at him with the burning eyes of a cornered wolf. She looked absolutely savage. "Scully --" She shook her head in three short jerks. "Scully, are you awake?" he asked suspiciously, suddenly positive that she was sleepwalking, having some kind of vivid dream -- he'd heard about this sort of thing, the polar opposite of sleep paralysis, where the connection between brain and body never switched off and people went raging around in the night acting out their dreams -- "I'm --" Her eyes met his again, and the desperate way she stared at him convinced him that she definitely wasn't asleep. She was awake, all right, and horribly lucid, and she was either terrified of him or she was trying to keep herself from murdering him. He wasn't sure which. "What the hell is *wrong* with you?" he blurted harshly, without thinking at all. "Nothing! I'm FINE," she snarled, despite the lie that her eyes made out of the words. "I just dozed off for a --! I -- what the hell is wrong with *you*?" His temper started to rise, and he stomped it back down again with an effort. "I just found out that this stakeout is pointless," he snapped. "We might as well go back to the motel." "*What*?!" "Amber Volney and her boss are over there fucking each other's brains out on his desk," he said, striking out with the blunt words as though they were fists. "That's it. That's all. End of story. We'll have to start over." "I don't understand." "Neither one of them can be the host if they're not sexually frustrated, and whatever sort of relationship that is, I can guarantee you they're getting their itches scratched. It pushes plausibility for one of them to be pining for somebody *else*, so there goes that angle. Neither one of them can be the host or become a victim, so there's no point in hanging around unless you really want to watch them break out the post-coital cigarettes." He reached for the keys still in the ignition. Her voice rasped, "Don't you *dare*." He snapped back around to face her and stared, shocked and astounded at the challenge. "What?" She seethed at him like a volcano. "Just because *your* theory's been broken doesn't mean *mine* has --" "Oh, please," he sneered. Dull fury was starting to seep through his brain, radiating from that nameless place like blood flowing from a stab wound. "You don't say six words to me all day and *now* you want to start discussing the case?" Her eyes flashed at him in warning. "Mulder --" "Okay," he said, his vision starting to go red. "Okay, let's discuss it. Let's discuss this theory of yours. You thought Amber was going around killing everyone who looked at Jim Taymor because she wanted him but couldn't have him. Right?" "That doesn't mean that she still couldn't be --" "*Right*?" he pressed, not knowing why he was goading her on this, not knowing why he needed to rub it in her face. An image flashed through his mind, something out of the cheesy adventure movies he'd watched when he was a kid -- Scully hanging off a cliff by her fingertips and he was stomping on them -- Tension boiled through the car like red fog. He held Scully's gaze ruthlessly, and saw some kind of decision snap into place behind her eyes. She turned her back on him and flung the passenger door open. He tried to stop her as she scrambled out. "Scully --" "Go to hell," she snapped, and slammed the door. Thunder cracked the sky open above Scully just as she made it to the end of the block, and the rain seemed to intensify, stinging down on her in huge hurtling drops that she briefly mistook for hailstones. It felt as though her hair had come to life like Medusa's snakes, but that was just the freezing water streaming along her scalp, waving her hair like reeds in tiny swift-running currents. The rain surrounded her, pounded down on her, ran cold down her face. It blurred her vision and obscured her hearing -- the sound of the car door slamming a block behind her seemed unimaginably distant in the constant hiss of the rain, and the splashing footsteps hurrying in her direction were almost inaudible. "SCULLY!" She whipped around to find Mulder bearing down on her and for a moment it seemed like some kind of weird Breakfast at Tiffany's reunion scene, that he would throw his arms around her and protect her from the beating rain with his body and his wet mouth and his hands under her trench coat. The illusion was broken when he stopped in front of her and began to yell. "GODDAMMIT, SCULLY," he roared, "GET BACK IN THE CAR!" She balled her hands into fists. "NO!" she screamed up at him. "I've wasted ALL DAY on your STUPID STAKEOUT! Somebody's gonna DIE tonight and we wasted ALL ... DAMN ... DAY!" Thunder boomed through the clouds above them, shaking the world; Scully barely noticed. "You and your STUPID THEORY! We've been sitting on our ASSES all day instead of looking for a killer and because YOU guessed wrong! Somebody's gonna DIE and WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!!!" "If you had a better idea," Mulder yelled, "you sure as hell never told ME!" "You wouldn't have listened ANYWAY!" "*YOU* never tried!" he howled at her, his face dark with rage. "YOU just shut me out and IGNORED ME!!" "DAMN you, Mulder," she screamed. "What do YOU care? It's all about your THEORY with you, I'M just here to listen like somebody in a damn SOCRATIC DIALOGUE! Well, you know what? YOUR THEORY *SUCKS*!!!" He shook his head violently, water flying from his hair. "Your problem isn't my THEORY, Scully! It's something else, *isn't it*?" He stepped even closer to her, towering over her like an angry grizzly bear. "ISN'T IT?" Terror and longing and fury all collided and exploded in her head. "*FUCK* ... *YOU*!!!!" Lightning cracked above them. She turned away and started to stalk off, the rain slamming against her face. Out of nowhere Mulder's hand latched onto her arm, right below the elbow. "*Scully* --" She whipped around and punched him in the jaw, a hard roundhouse right. His head snapped back with the force of the blow and he overbalanced, stumbled, and fell to the ground. Scully stared at her stunned partner for an awful moment, the rain roaring down around them. Lightning burst overhead like a flashbulb. She turned and ran. End of Chapter 14 (14/16) Title: Gutless (15/16) Author: Magdeleine GUTLESS Chapter 15 The Mo-Z Inn, Room 121 6:15 PM The electricity was off at the motel. Some faint illumination came through the curtains, but the sun had almost completely set, the rain was still coming down, and the streetlights were all dark. It was still warm inside, to Scully's surprise; the heat must have been on all day and apparently the blackout was of recent vintage. She fumbled through her suitcase with wet hands -- in the dark, it was difficult to ignore the nightmare thought that the sticky damp was warm blood -- and at last she came up with her flashlight. She turned the flashlight on and swept the beam around the room. A huge ghoulish shadow rose up and batted at her with a twelve-foot wingspan, uttering a blood-curdling shriek -- Guido. The parrot flapped his wings twice and squawked at the bright light. "JACK AND JILL WENT UP THE HILL, THEY EACH HAD A BUCK AND A --" Scully turned the flashlight away and he settled down, chukking disapprovingly. Scully shed her dripping trench coat and hung it on one of the headless hangers in the tiny closet area. The clothes she was wearing were mostly dry, except for the bottom quarter of her dress slacks; her shoes were completely soaked and had water squishing around inside from the puddles she'd splashed through on her blind run back to the motel. She considered it, shrugged, and squished her way to the bathroom. The flashlight, thank God, balanced nicely on end. She propped it up on the lid of the toilet tank, where it illuminated the ceiling in a bright half-circle, the other half of the circle stretching down the wall like a half-moon made of silly putty. As thunder boomed outside, the flashlight rattled slightly against the porcelain, but stayed upright. She toed off her shoes and emptied them into the sink, squinting at them critically. Not too bad. With any luck, they'd be fine after they dried. She stripped off her slacks and pantyhose; the slacks she wrung out and draped over the shower rod, the pantyhose she wadded up and tossed in the trash. There were clean towels in the bathroom. Twice as many as there had been the night before, and Scully sensed the stealthy hand of Mae the Maid at work. Special treatment for Mulder's sake. Bitch. Her stomach twisted at that and she yanked a towel out of the stack with such violence that the remaining towels went everywhere like a white terry cloth avalanche. She almost stooped down to gather them up again, went so far as to stretch out one hand toward a little washcloth perched companionably next to the flashlight, but the gesture brought her bruised knuckles into view and stopped her cold. She'd hit him. This hadn't been some playful punch on the shoulder; she'd really clocked him. And if the way her hand was aching was any indication, she'd hurt him. The thought made her head buzz and the world seem to tip sideways as though she were drunk. Her numb mind continued to churn out short-term plans like a ticker-tape machine spewing out paper. Dry off. Put fresh clothes on. Call the hospital, check on how many stomach pumps they had and whether one was missing, and ask about any medical supply stores in the area. Call Dr. Marek and see if there was any new development in the analysis of the mystery substance they'd found. Go through the employment rosters from Taymor's again and see if anything popped out at her. Apologize to Mulder. The thought came out of the deep, shattering the tidy arrangement of surface plans, and suddenly the ugly glut of mixed emotions came welling up too. The rain had frozen her mind as well as her feet, but now everything was thawing out and she couldn't stop thinking. Too many thoughts, crowding her head, overwhelming her. She ground the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, blinding herself for a moment; for some reason it made the thoughts quiet down to a dull constant mutter instead of a hurricane of huge, shrieking, horrified voices. A little space to think in. Fine, all right, she was going to have to deal with this, but first things first. She dried her wet hair to a general dampness by rubbing it with a towel, and used a fresh one to roughly dry off her feet and calves. Some sort of pants, then. She left the bathroom, walking with short, jerky steps, the steel-wool carpet exfoliating the hell out of her water-softened feet. The flashlight stayed behind, illuminating the ceiling of an empty room; she'd only be a minute, really, why bother with hauling the dumb thing along? She was pulling on a pair of flannel pajama bottoms in the dark bedroom when car headlights swept across her window. Her head jerked up and she froze, like a cat going stock-still on a fence with its back arched and one paw in the air. The car motor idled for a moment out in the dark -- a familiar motor, she'd been listening to it for days now -- and then switched off. Car door opened, car door shut. Footsteps, crunching through the wet gravel. Keys jingling outside. Mulder's door peeled open with a rubbery sound, then slammed again. It was eerily quiet without electricity -- no televisions, no little refrigerator motors running; mostly, though, there was the spooky lack of that almost inaudible hiss that every electric light and appliance gives off. Scully could hear every one of Mulder's hesitant footsteps as he crossed the room, the *chink!* as he tossed his keys onto the bed, the mellow *bong* as he accidentally ran into a trash can and the muttered curse that followed. It was sort of thrilling to stand in the dark and listen; it was almost as if the wall wasn't there and they were in the same dark warm room, neither one able to see the other. Almost ... intimate. It gave her a chance to realize just how well she knew his little noises, realize that she'd know his footstep among a thousand others. The thought floated to the top of her mind again, unstoppable, implacable: *apologize*. She took one step toward the door without really meaning to, and suddenly she knew just what would happen if she tried to apologize, and it made her feel both furious and nauseous. Not that he wouldn't forgive her -- when it came down to it, taking her temper out on him and decking him in the rain was a small thing compared to the other betrayals Mulder had survived in life -- but she just *knew* that the bastard would ask her to explain herself. He wouldn't let it go with a simple "sorry." Oh no, Mulder would want a *talk*. She'd have to humiliate herself by admitting that her anger had been the flip side of the unassuaged lust that had been tearing her up for days. Goddammit. Worse, to have to face him and tell him these private, secret things when she was still worn out with wanting him. She'd broken once today already, when she lost her temper -- it was not unimaginable that she might shatter down the weakened lines of the first fracture. She didn't know which direction it would go; she might kiss him or she might kill him. It was a toss-up. Her stomach twisted violently as she realized just how much she wanted that to happen. How much she wanted to break. There was a limit, dammit, a definite limit to how long any kind of tension could be maintained without going insane. She stared warily into the warm dark in the direction of the connecting door and listened to Mulder rummage around in his suitcase and then start walking around the room with more confidence. Probably found his flashlight, just like she had. She heard him cross into the bathroom and stay there for a long time, probably drying off, maybe taking a look at his jaw. Most likely the bruise was forming already, the outraged blood vessels flaring color that would look black in the dim light of his flashlight. Scully took another step toward the door, not really conscious of doing so. Just then, she heard Mulder exit from the bathroom, his feet bare -- she could tell when he had his shoes off, God help her -- and pad across the carpet, across the room. The footsteps stopped right in front of the connecting door. Scully's heart bucked. She had no proof of it, but she was absolutely positive that Mulder was standing there looking at the connecting door, just as she was, some sixth sense arranging it so that their gazes were locked through the dark and the door. She couldn't breathe. The moment seemed to last forever; in the timeless dark, it could have been an instant or an hour. *KABOOOOOOOOOOOM!* A bright flash of lightning and its clap of thunder occurred almost simultaneously, giving Scully the startled impression that she was at the center of an explosion. The moment was broken; she heard Mulder finish crossing the room, heard the bedsprings creak in a getting-comfy pattern and then stop. On the bed. He was on the bed. The *bed*. Stiffly, she took two steps back and sat down on her own bed, feeling for it with one hand first to make sure it was where she thought it was so she wouldn't end up falling on her ass. He was on the bed. Did he know? Was it an invitation? Was he lying on his bed in the dark hoping for her to walk through that door and join him? The thought knifed through her: *Had he wanted her, too, all this time?* She sat there for an eternity, staring into the dark as though she were hypnotized, exhaustion weighing her down like a quadruple dose of gravity. It would be so easy. Just open the door and walk in. So easy. So simple. No explaining, no words, just the dark and his arms around her and an end to this insanity. She stood up. She walked. Her joints seemed stiff, her movements uncoordinated, her legs jerking as though electric shocks were being applied to her thighs. Too soon the door was in front of her, warm and smooth under her hesitant touch. She stood there, her heart pounding painfully in her chest, her breath shallow and sharp, feeling as though she was about to burst into tears or scream at the top of her lungs or erupt into gasping hysterical laughter. When she touched the doorknob her hand went numb and prickly. She swallowed down a huge lump in her throat and steeled herself to turn the knob. And then she heard it. Snoring. She gaped at the door in shock. He was taking a nap. Oh Christ, he was taking a nap and she'd almost walked right in and -- Shame flooded over her, and furious embarrassment. Part of her mind was still reaching forward into a future that no longer existed, still crawling into his bed, crawling up his body and finding wordless relief in a kiss that cracked the world open ... Not only would there be no kiss, no bedwarm body pressed against hers, there would be no relief. Not tonight. Anger flared through her in a red haze. Vague thoughts of her gun were pushed aside by stronger, bloodier thoughts of strangling Mulder with her bare hands. Inch by inch she fought the hot rage back, pushed it into a dungeon and locked it up. It took the last dregs of her energy and left her feeling cold and hollow. She stood in the dark, head bowed, and took up the burden of control like Atlas shifting the world back onto his shoulders. Quietly she moved to the light switch and moved it to its useless ON position in lieu of an alarm clock, then stumbled back to the bed. She pulled the covers back neatly and slid between the sheets, lying on her back, staring at the ceiling like a doll tucked into a toy crib. Eventually, she slept. Proceed as quickly as possible to Chapter 15b! RUN! Subject: xfc: Gutless by Magdeleine (15b/16) It was the Coliseum in DC, the last piece of the Greco-Roman architectural puzzle. On a lavish balcony the President was eating grapes with Siskel and Ebert, all of them wearing laurel wreaths and togas except for the President, who had for some reason declined the laurel in favor of a Chicago Cubs baseball cap. Scully and Mulder were alone in the arena. The sun glinted off Scully's knife as she faced Mulder, her shoulders hot under the flapping trench coat and the packed dirt hot beneath her feet. The sky was painfully bright, flawlessly turquoise. The crowd roared like an angry ocean, cheering for her, cheering for him, but most of all cheering for blood to be spilt. They circled each other warily, their arms outspread, knives at the ready. Waiting to attack. Mulder's eyes were dark and smoldering, burning into hers. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead; as she watched, one slid down his face at an achingly slow pace, binding up in the stubble near his mouth. Without breaking eye contact, he slowly wiped the back of his knife hand across his brow, mockingly. An obvious opening. A trick. She clenched her hand tighter around the hilt of her knife and slitted her eyes at him, still biding her time. A predatory smile played over his lips, as if he was amused that she'd seen through him. His eyes never left hers. This would be settled here and now. The crowd roared again, louder than ever, as the two agents suddenly flung their trench coats off their shoulders like the wings of huge black crows. The coats tumbled to the ground, raising a cloud of red dust that swirled around them. Mulder attacked first, making a bold slash at Scully's right arm. She evaded the slash easily and parried with a strike at his exposed throat, pale under its stubble. He jerked out of the way and eyed her, still smiling that smoldering mockery of a smile. Anger flashed through her like lightning and she lashed out at him again, aiming for his ribs. A hand seized her knife arm by the wrist and twisted cruelly, halting her forward motion and sending shooting pain up to her shoulder. She lifted her arm and ducked under Mulder's arm like a dancer, planning on snapping out to a position where she could wrench away, but before she could complete the turn he pulled his arms down around her, trapping her against his body. His breath puffed hot and humid through her hair and over her scalp as he tightened his grip. His knife hand traveled slowly down her torso, his knuckles tracing a torturous path between her breasts and down to her belly. In apparent slow-motion he turned the knife, pressing the hard point against her stomach gently but firmly, pressing something just as hard into her lower back. She felt his head move down, sliding against her hair, his mouth next to her ear. "Surrender?" he rumbled in his darkest chocolate voice, his lips brushing her earlobe. His hips moved against her rhythmically, rubbing a tingling path along on her spine. Up and down, up and down. "On what conditions?" she asked, her voice unsteady. She curved her lower back toward him, curling away from the knife as she rocked against him, distracting him from the stealthy movement of her left hand toward his knife. He groaned faintly into her hair and she shivered, goosebumps shimmering up all over her body. "No conditions," he breathed, and nuzzled lightly at the fine flock of hair in front of her ear. "Unconditional." She turned her head to smile sideways into his eyes. "No sale," she informed him, and grabbed his knife hand, yanking it away from her body as she wrenched out of his grasp. It took a moment for mission control to throw the correct switches in Mulder's head, but not as long as she'd expected; she barely skidded past his outstretched hands, striking out at him like a blind thing -- Blood. First blood. She'd just winged him -- the red-tinged slash on his white shirt sleeve was small and shallow -- but the brief surprise in his eyes made savage joy skyrocket through her. Too soon his surprise faded into a magnanimous sneer. *Lucky shot,* he mouthed at her, and drove in toward her again. His knife caught her blouse right under the arm, barely missing her -- she felt the cold blade slide by less than an inch from her breast as she flinched away. Her rage flared white-hot and she stabbed at his thigh, overbalancing as he jerked out of reach and she instinctively lunged after him. Something hard slammed into her wrist and her knife-hand went numb; she yelped and tried to hang onto the weapon, but her stunned nerves wouldn't communicate the messages to her hand and the gleaming knife plunged to the red ground. He was coming at her again and she saw the knife at eye-level. Without thinking, she grabbed his forearm and *bit*, tearing at his flesh with a growl. He cried out and grabbed her hair with his left hand, trying to rip her away, but she ignored the pain. She held on with grim determination, eyes shut tight, worrying at him like a terrier. The crowd roared its approval. Mulder's knife fell just as he succeeded in pulling her away from his arm. He yanked her head up with his fist full of her hair and stared at her in outrage, his chest heaving, his hot breath coating her. She laughed triumphantly up into his face and licked his blood off her lips, savoring the thick tang of it. He looked so stunned at that that she laughed again, howling like a wolf, and lunged at him. They overbalanced and hit the ground hard with Scully splayed on top of him, his fist still clenched painfully in her hair. She clawed her way toward his throat, all humanity forgotten, weaponry meaningless in the rush of pure savage bloodlust, grabbing handfuls of his shirt to pull herself up his body. He locked his hands around her hips like a man stomping on the breaks of a speeding car, and rolled them over, crushing her beneath him. "Gotcha," he rasped, gulping for air. "That's ... what ... you ... think ..." she panted, one hand scrabbling in the dirt beside her. She swung a leg over and around his hip, throwing her weight so that they twisted over and she was on top again, straddling him, her skirt hiked up around her thighs. This time the knife was in *her* hand. Mulder froze, his gaze caught on the blue flash of the blade as Scully whipped it up, sweeping it through the air toward his throat -- His hand shot up and grabbed her forearm. The knife jerked forward, back, forward again as they struggled. Back. Forward. Back. It trembled in the middle for a long moment and then Scully ripped away from him, the knife high in the air. Their eyes locked. Scully made a move toward him; Mulder's hand mirrored the movement to block it. She feinted to the left; he followed it and she jerked back to swoop in from the right. He blocked her at the last minute, hitting her forearm hard. The knife went flying and suddenly he had a firm grip on both her wrists, pulling her hands out to both sides like a face-to-face double crucifixion. Her chin socked into his collarbone. His breath was hot on her throat as he panted for air, his back curved slightly as though he were about to sit up, head tucked in. "You fight ... dirty ..." she gulped. "You ain't seen ... nothin' ... yet ..." The hot humid breath on her neck suddenly solidified into his hot wet tongue tracing her jugular, tasting the pulse at the base of her throat before he latched on and suckled hard. She gasped and arched against him, shifting her hips to center herself on the hard bulge that had been beating time against her upper thigh. "Mulder ..." His mouth skidded up her neck and across her cheek. Their teeth clashed, clicking wetly together like broken crockery, mouths striking wildly at each other in a frenzy of biting and sucking and snatching each others' breath. Mulder groaned deep in his chest and pulled her hands back in, working them between their bodies. He tucked one of her hands over his heart, as though they were slow-dancing; the other one he slid down until she found herself cupping him, her fingers curling around him as he moaned into her mouth. "Touch me, Scully --" She ran her hand up and down his length and he whimpered and bucked against her, his hands carving a path down her back and crushing her to him. She nipped him high on his throat and sucked the tiny wound dry, her teeth scraping him as she found his mouth again and drank him down. He reared up, pushing her into a sitting position, and ripped her blouse open, burying his face between her breasts. His stubble scraped and burned as he turned his head blindly and pushed the fabric of her bra aside enough to pull her nipple into his mouth, sucking hard; she gasped and stroked him faster, her wrist bumping against her clit and sending a shower of sparks across her vision. Her free hand slid up and scrabbled against his shirt; she yanked on it but only succeeded in breaking one button off. "Your sh-shirt," she managed, and he grinned his wolfish grin against her breast and reached up to rip his own shirt open. She pushed her hand inside the shirt greedily, eating up his skin with her fingers, marking him with her nails. His hands were under her skirt now, cupping her ass and sliding back between her legs, and she began rocking against him, against her hand and his cock and his hands. He groaned deep in his throat and tore his mouth away from her breast to bite her shoulder as she found the zipper on his slacks and pulled it down, reaching inside to bring his cock out. "Scully --" "Get -- my underwear --" That was enough for clear communication; he yanked twice at the lacy barrier and it ripped away. She lifted up, positioning him with her hand, and then slowly slid down onto him, the sensation burning her from the inside out as he wrapped his arms around her back and gasped. And the crowd went wild. Up. Down. Again. So good, so good -- She threw her head back, exultant. Mulder made a desperate noise deep in his chest and pushed her back, pushed her over, pushed her down into the packed gritty dirt with his delicious weight covering her. Her legs wrapped around him and he thrust into her, the force of it driving her backwards in the hot dirt. Thrust. Thrust. *Thrust*. Harder each time, each thrust shoving her further backwards, the ground scraping her skin beneath the thin shirt, the heat burning her back. His hand slicked down between her legs and began to work her clit in a tight circle, and as he gasped and grunted against her neck and pounded into her she began to feel flames licking at her, the heat building and building and build -- And -- The bedroom lights turned on. The hard edge of consciousness slammed into Scully like jagged concrete and she jolted awake, the light burning red through her knotted eyelids as she gathered herself to scream in frustrated agony and -- -- *couldn't breathe* -- There was something crouched on top of her, its enormous weight crushing her, squeezing the breath out of her and scorching her belly and ribcage. Scully's defensive reflexes reared up and she tried to turn on her side to buck the attacker off *but she couldn't move* -- *Paralyzed*, her mind screamed, but she couldn't make any sound come out of her mouth. Her entire body had turned to stone and no matter what she tried to do she couldn't move, couldn't breathe -- The red light shrieking through her eyelids went suddenly black; for a frantic moment she thought that she had passed out, but her awareness remained sharp. The lights, then, had gone out again. Dimly, beyond the pulse pounding in her ears and the thick haze of her growing fear, she could hear thunder rumbling as the storm continued unabated. A terrifying heat was twisting through her lower torso, illuminating each of her internal organs with a low, sensual fire -- she had sudden firsthand knowledge of exactly where her spleen was, could sense each of the twists and curves of her intestines. Burning -- she was *burning up* and that more than her paralysis threw Scully into a state of pure panic: she had to move, had to move *now*, had to move move move move MOVE MOVE MOVE -- Her eyes flew open in the dark and she stared up, like a corpse on a stainless steel table, at the shadowed face of her attacker. Even in the dark, she knew that face. She was still staring up at him in betrayed horror when the electricity flickered on again and the full glare of the lights came streaming through the empty eye sockets and open, leering mouth of the Mulder-shaped thing on top of her. Scully's paralysis broke. The thing cackled into her face with brimstone breath as her arms pistoned up to push it away. She felt its skin give like some kind of horrible taffy and she had enough time to think that she was almost up to her elbows in what looked like Mulder's ribcage and then -- then the springy surface snapped open and it was if she'd thrust her arms into a pottery kiln. She yanked her arms back with a choked cry and rolled out of bed, thudding painfully onto her hands and knees. One hand -- stinging as though from a sunburn -- slapped up onto the bedside table as she scrabbled away, searching for and finding her semiautomatic in a matter of milliseconds. She threw herself into the nearest corner, gulping air, and trained her weapon on the thing hovering over her bed. There was enough time -- barely -- for Scully to notice with adrenaline-fueled clarity that there was only one surface to the thing, the frontal, ventral side; the back of its head and body were missing and she could see through it to a smooth pink interior like the inside of a rubber mask -- -- and then the creature reared up, shimmering like hot blacktop, its two-dimensional Mulder-face beginning to run like melting butter, and it screamed a hot thin scream like lava pouring into the ocean. It leered at her with that funhouse face and suddenly it was shooting away from her like high-powered steam -- -- shooting across the room through the connecting door and then it was gone. Scully's gun dropped to her side as her arm relaxed all at once, weak and trembly. Gone. Fled back to its host, whoever and wherever that could be -- A soft sound came from Mulder's room that made Scully's hair stand on end. And again, easily audible in the rain-pattered silence: He moaned. A sudden slideshow memory slammed through Scully's mind of Fred Schmidt and his nephew and Mulder's idea that the murderer, when balked by Fred, had simply gone on to the next best thing -- "MULDER!" she screamed, and launched herself across the room. The door was stuck. "Damn!" She dropped her gun onto the bureau next to the television set and yanked at the doorknob with both hands but the door remained as steadfastly sealed shut as it had been twelve hours ago. "Mulder!" she yelled, banging on the door with both palms. Another soft moan from the other room. "Mulder, wake up!" There was no answer other than an indecipherable murmur of sleeping speech. Scully screamed in frustration and beat her fists on the door -- She snatched up her weapon again and ran to the front door, unlatching it -- if she couldn't get through the connecting door, Mulder's *front* door would work -- and stopped just before she threw the door open. God. She didn't have the key to his door. Any efforts to get the key from the front desk or break in through the front would take too long; shooting the lock in would be tricky and ran the risk of having the bullet pass through the door and hit Mulder. The only option left was to try to break down the connecting door and hope that the noise would somehow wake him. "MULDER!" she yelled again and threw her weapon back on the bureau, her eyes darting over each piece of furniture in her room, judging each instantly for solidity and weight. "Come on, dammit, *wake up*!" She spotted the shelf next to the parrot cage, remembered the shelf was heavy, and practically flew across the room to grab it. "Come ON, Mulder, WAKE UP!" The shelf was slightly too high for her to pull down easily; she jumped up to slam one end up with her outstretched hand and knocked it off the wall. It came crashing down, striking the parrot cage en route to the floor, and narrowly missed Scully's bare toes as she skipped back out of the way. Guido, sleeping inside the cage, stirred but didn't wake. Scully grabbed the heavy plank of wood and charged back across the room. "DAMMIT, MULDER," she shouted as she adjusted her grip on the shelf, "will you WAKE UP already?" "*Scully* --" She whirled around. The intonation was Mulder's but the voice -- "*Scully* --" Guido muttered again, apparently talking in his sleep. "*Scully, touch me* --" She stared, caught momentarily in a dream of knives and blood and a crowded coliseum, hearing those words in Mulder's voice. The HOST. Oh, Christ, the PARROT was the host. And the thing that it was playing host to was about to kill Mulder. "MULDER!" She slammed the shelf against the door, near the knob. *WHAM.* "You were right!" *WHAM.* "You were right about the whole thing!" *WHAM.* "Will you just WAKE UP, DAMMIT?" *WHAM.* *WHAM.* *WHAM.* The door wouldn't budge. When Scully paused for a split second to catch her breath, she could hear Mulder moaning almost continuously in the next room. "*MULDER!!!*" she screamed in despair, beyond hoping that it would wake him up, and lifted the board for another attack on the door. A low chuckling started behind her. Guido. She whipped around and stared at the parrot, chortling away in his little cage, and an idea came to her -- a last-ditch crazy idea, a Mulderish idea. <*Kill the host, kill the creature.*> She grabbed her gun and leveled it at the birdcage, hearing Mulder's groans become more and more frantic in the background. Her finger tightened on the trigger. What if it wasn't the bird? What if she did this and it *still didn't save him*? "Dammit!" she howled, her face contorting in an agony of indecision. "Mulder, WAKE UP, this isn't FAIR!" "YOU AIN'T SEEN ... NOTHIN' ... YET ..." Guido rasped in perfect Mulderspeak. In the other room, Mulder uttered a wordless preorgasmic shout. Scully aimed at the parrot's head and fired. Mulder rocketed through Scully's front door seconds after the sound of the gunshot had died away, his semiautomatic at the ready, the unlatched door flying into the wall hard enough to put a dent in the drywall. Scully looked up at him with wide eyes, her weapon at her side, her face pure white. "What happened?" he demanded. One side of her mouth jerked up in a humorless smile, then down again. "I found the host." "What?" He trained his gun in a sweep around the room, expecting an intruder to leap out from behind some furniture somewhere. That was before he saw the birdcage. Feathers and blood were everywhere. The little corpse was lying on the floor of the cage, one wing cocked up as though Guido was waving goodbye. Mulder lowered his weapon to his side and stared. After a moment, he felt Scully join him. They stood side by side in silence, looking for a long time at the mess. Finally, Mulder roused himself to speak. "You know," he said, looking down at the crown of Scully's fantastically rumpled hair, "there's a Monty Python joke in here somewhere ..." "Just leave it alone, Mulder." End of Chapter 15 (15/16) Title: Gutless (16/16) Author: Magdeleine GUTLESS Chapter 16 The Mo-Z Inn, Room 121 Fifteen minutes later "Gatorade, Sheriff." "Gatorade?" "Gatorade. Playing host to the Tochok probably drained the host's body of certain chemicals that were replenished by the melted viscera of the victims. Sort of like Gatorade." Volney pinned Mulder with a look of patient irritation, the expression of choice for law enforcement officers across the country when dealing with Mulder in one of his more talkative moods. "Agent Mulder," he said sharply, "have I mentioned that I was already sound asleep when Jeff Murray called my house to tell me that you two were shooting up his motel?" "Yes, you have, and incidentally, as *we* have already mentioned, there was only one shot fired," Mulder said, straight-faced. Scully expected him to add 'and Agent Scully was the only one involved in the gunfire' but instead, Mulder neatly sidestepped the issue of the origin of that one shot and moved on. "A shot which, I might add, has effectively disabled the murderer by separating the murderer from its physical host with no means of reentry." Volney studied Mulder with a long, suspicious stare. "Tell me, Agent Mulder," he said at last, "are you on any kind of medications I should know about?" Scully sighed. It always came to this. "I know how this sounds, Sheriff," Mulder reassured him, but the reassurance was a joke. She'd seen it before. He was already on Planet Mulder, thinking that he was sounding sane and professional when in actuality he was too excited about the case coming together to just *shut up*. The fact that he was still barefoot and wearing his sweats and FBI Academy T-shirt did not help matters. "I hadn't even considered that the host might not be human, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense. There have been studies done on parrots that suggest that their speech is not just mimicry, but that they can actually put together words and symbols in a manner similar to language; if we take that as a given, it's only a small step to assuming that the Tochok would find a parrot just as hospitable as a human being." Volney turned and pondered the mess in the parrot cage, chewing on his moustache. He glanced at Scully, his impersonal visual inspection sweeping over her and taking in the robe and slippers as well as the bed-dry hair and the spatters of parrot blood which she could still feel drying against her skin. She met his gaze, lifting her chin a little. "*You're* awful quiet, Agent Scully," the sheriff said accusingly, as though he was checking on her sanity as well but didn't have much hope for a satisfactory answer. "Do you have any thoughts on this?" Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mulder lean against the wall and fold his arms across his chest, apparently very interested in her answer. She cleared her throat. "I have a slightly different theory than the one that Agent Mulder subscribes to. There was a foreign organic substance discovered in the blood work from the latest victims; I suspect that under further study this will prove to be a kind of mutant allergen borne by the parrot which only ... select people were susceptible to. The allergen seems to have created a complex reaction, the primary result being the visceral pyrexia which was the cause of death for the four victims. There seem to be some lesser effects including hallucinogenic episodes, such as vivid, violent dreams and some residual hallucinations immediately after waking." Volney looked so surprised and pleased to hear a sane theory that Scully almost expected him to start purring like a big tomcat in a patch of sun. "Well. Does this constitute a public health hazard, in your opinion?" "It might," Scully admitted, "but it would be an easily contained one. The body of the parrot should be handled as a biohazard and properly packaged for further study. Those people who have already been affected by the allergen, including Agent Mulder and myself, should be tested for the foreign organic substance before being allowed to handle weapons or operate a moving vehicle. We may otherwise present a danger to the public." Mulder shot Scully a surprised look. She ignored it. "While I was -- hallucinating -- earlier tonight, I imagined that the parrot posed an immediate threat to myself and to Agent Mulder, and I shot it," she said. "This may or may not have been due to some subconscious realization about the nature of the recent deaths and the parrot's possible involvement in them. Either way, I acted without thinking, and if any repercussions result from my actions I will take full responsibility." She gave this speech matter-of-factly, keeping a stone wall of calm between herself and the creeping feeling of childish dread, the feeling that she was going home from class today with a note for her parents in her backpack. Mulder was still watching her closely, an odd color of concern tingeing the edges of his expression. Volney appeared to be chewing on the insides of both cheeks. After a moment of deliberation he shook his head and snorted. "I don't know a damn thing about medicine so I'm gonna take your word on this one, Agent Scully. If you two just set tight I'll get some people out from Bryan Memorial to take a look at you and take the parrot away." He rummaged through his jacket pockets like a man contentedly scratching an itch and came up with a sleek cell phone that looked to be the size of the big man's thumb. He punched a single button and brought it up. "Rob? It's Mike Volney. Yeah, I'll hold." Scully cleared her throat delicately. "Er, Sheriff ..." "Hmm?" "About the parrot's owner --" Volney brought the tiny phone down to the level of his collarbone. "If I may be frank, Agent Scully, I don't give a damn about the parrot's owner. That bird bit one of my deputies, it tried to bite me, it's been a serious pain in my ass and now you're saying it's the reason that four people in my jurisdiction have died. As far as I'm concerned, you did us all a favor. When Marjorie's sister shows up tomorrow I'll tell her that the parrot died of natural causes and we burned the body." The sheriff crinkled his copper eyes at Scully. "Does that answer your question?" The water was cold, but Scully splashed it on her face anyway, scrubbing at the tiny shriveled patches of dried bird blood. The relief of getting it off her skin made her a little lightheaded ... or maybe that was just a delayed reaction to having to give a sample of her own blood. The bathroom door creaked behind her and she jerked her head up, startled. Mulder was standing in the doorway, rubbing at the bandage on the inside of his right elbow. He met her gaze and smiled sheepishly. "Hey." "Hey. Can you hand me a towel?" "Sure." He ran one long arm out and hooked a towel off the rack, tossing it to her with the casual grace of an outfielder flipping a ball out into the bleachers. "Thanks." She dried her face and folded the towel in half, then in half again. "Are they done with you already, or did Jean Denison show up with the death squad and scare you off?" "Funny you should ask," he said, leaning back against the door frame. "They're *not* done with you?" Mulder shook his head vigorously. "No, no, they're done with me. Took my blood, took my weapon, the works. Funny you should mention Jean Denison, I mean." Scully leaned one hip against the cold porcelain of the sink and cocked an eyebrow at him. "Is she here?" "Nope. And she's not going to be. They caught her in Volney's office reading those secret files he was keeping on this case; turns out she's been the one leaking information to the media all this time. According to the hospital staff, Jean has a sort of a thing for Volney and this was some kind of desperate bid for attention. Volney's so mad, he wants to bring her up on charges for obstruction of justice." "He'll have a hard time proving it on a case like this one," Scully said. "Yeah, well." Mulder shrugged. He studied her strangely for a moment, then turned a few degrees to fake a relaxed punch at the door frame. "They're coming back around ten tomorrow morning to check on us." "I know. I'm the one who suggested it." "You don't ..." Mulder stopped, squinched his eyes a little, and tried again. "Do you really believe this allergen theory?" Scully looked down at the towel in her hands and frowned critically. She shook it open and refolded it with slow, careful movements. "Scully?" "I wouldn't have suggested it to the sheriff if I didn't think it had merit, Mulder." The towel was still not quite straight; she flipped it open again with a sigh and started lining up the corners. Mulder reached out and captured her busy hands in his, gently taking the towel away from her. He was suddenly very close; she could feel him looking down at the top of her head as she looked down at her hands, stiff and awkward in Mulder's grasp. "That wasn't what I asked," he said, his voice very low. "I asked if you *believe* it." She tried to say yes, but it stuck in her throat. Instead, she shook her head slowly and said, "You don't want me to answer that, Mulder." He made an indecipherable noise and let her hands slide away. "You're probably right." She tipped her head up to frown at him and promptly forgot all about doing so when she spotted the purpling bruise on his jaw. "Oh," she said faintly, and reached up, leaning to one side to get a better look. Her fingers skimmed through the air over his jaw, not quite touching him; somehow, she couldn't. Green heat came off the bruise, bleeding into her hand through the millimeters between them. "Oh, Mulder," she murmured in soft horror, staring at the damage she'd done. "I didn't think I -- how does it feel?" A wry smile creased his skin under her fingertips and she looked up in surprise. His gaze met and held hers, searching for something. His face was strained, somehow, and a little sad; the out-of-place smile was heartbreaking, at once closed off and vulnerable. "Don't worry about it, slugger," he said with a little shrug. "No permanent damage done." "I -- Mulder, I'm so --" "I said," he told her, pulling her hands gently away from his face, "don't worry about it." She frowned at him in confusion, her hands still thoughtlessly hanging in the air between them. The grinding need to touch him that had made her hands ache for days had subsided, but something, some need, remained -- the need to reach out and smooth the worry from his face, to step into his arms and hold him as he held her, to speak gentle words of comfort. These were good things, partnerly things, but some new color had bled into them like ink into tissue paper. She wanted to touch him, but she couldn't be certain of her reasons. Somewhere in the storm, her bold black borderlines had faded and half-washed away; all the landmarks were strange, as if she was looking up at the night sky in Australia, searching for Orion. Her hands drifted down to her sides by themselves, lost. "All right," she said. After a moment she folded her arms across her chest. "Besides," he said indistinctly, "I deserved it." She shook her head, not because it wasn't true but because her guilt outweighed the reason. "You didn't deserve *that*." "Yeah, I did." He looped a mirthless smile at her, exhaustion printed around his eyes. "I did." They were both silent for a moment, the shifting of Mulder's bare feet on the slick tiles very loud in the tiny room. Mulder looked at the floor. "I had a dream," he said in a quiet voice she hardly recognized. "When I was asleep before, I mean." "Everybody dreams, Mulder," she snapped, more harshly than she meant to, knowing where he was going and not wanting to hear it. Intent on some interior goal, he didn't seem to process her tone. "This was different," he insisted, frowning. "I think --" "Don't." He heard her then, looked up with some new expression mixing with the hurt in his eyes. "Scully --" "Don't," she repeated, softer this time, unable to think of anything else to say. Mulder's mouth opened and then shut again. He seemed to deflate slightly, sagging back against the door frame. He gazed at the toilet and shrugged, the careless gesture of a man berating himself for something. "One thing," he said, "and you don't have to answer if you don't want to. What woke you up?" "Oh." It took a moment for her to stop bracing herself against some unasked personal question and answer the one that *had* been asked. "I'd left the light switch on, and when the electricity came back on, so did the lights." She looked at him warily, but didn't ask what was coming next. "Ahhh," Mulder sighed, and his lips curved upward. "I left my lights off. No wonder you couldn't wake me up." "What?" "The eye muscles are the only ones not frozen up by sleep paralysis. You told me that yourself, remember?" "I don't see where you're going with this." Mulder leaned back against the bathroom wall and gave her a hollow smile. "Every victim died in the dark. That's where I'm going with this." He seemed to think of something and made a face. "Except for Fred Schmidt. I'm not really sure how he broke free; maybe the Tochok was so dependent on the mental aspects of its victims that Fred was just too crazy to get killed." He looked at the toilet again, but she doubted he actually saw it. Scully studied his face for a long time. She wanted to reach out and take his hand; instead, she turned back to the sink. "Do you really believe that thing exists?" He caught her gaze in the mirror, his eyes weary and too knowing for comfort. "Don't you?" She looked away. The parrot was long gone, removed from its cage with dead rustling sounds that Mulder would have paid half a year's salary to avoid hearing. The cage was also gone. The parrot food was still there, sitting alone and forlorn in a sea of white plastic sheeting where the remnants of the mess had been covered, just in case. Scully had packed and hauled her suitcase to Mulder's room a few minutes ago, reiterating to all who would listen that this was only a temporary stop on the way to whatever new room the Mo-Z management would come up with. A few eyebrows had been raised among the people from Bryan Memorial, and a pair of deputies had exchanged a significant look of knowing amusement, but Scully hadn't seen it and Mulder didn't give a damn. Let them think what they wanted. Mulder had been fighting idly with the connecting door for lack of anything better to do. It seemed to be loosening, although that might have had more to do with the slackening rain than any of his efforts. He took a surreptitious look around the room as Volney shooed the Death Squad out into the thin rain, letting in another whirlwind of cold air. The blood-spattered bedclothes had been stuffed in a large Hefty bag, and the exposed mattress lay staring at the ceiling, its belly patterned by brown discolorations like sprawling birthmarks. Cold. Empty. Mulder sighed, feeling disappointed for no definable reason, and returned to wrestling pointlessly with the door. Behind him, Volney whuffed out a great sigh of relief. "All right, Agent Mulder," he announced in the tones of a bartender declaring last call, "time to lock up. I'll be by in the morning to check in and get your weapons back to you." He shifted around, looking slightly guilty. "I don't really think you're a threat to the public, you understand ..." "No, no, I got it," Mulder assured him, twisting the doorknob as he wrenched at the stubborn wood under his hands. "I've been through it before -- Scully has a thing about covering our asses." The sheriff gave him a look of bemused irritation. "Can't imagine why," he growled, and made a gesture toward the drizzle outside the open door. "You comin'?" "Not yet, hang on. I just want to --" The door made a sharp ripping noise, cutting him off. Mulder gaped at it in surprise as it swung serenely open. He remembered Volney and turned to give him a sheepish smile. "It was stuck," he explained in a vague way. "Hmph," Volney snorted. "Gonna go through that way, then?" "Yeah." "Right," Volney said, and something suspiciously like a smile creased his face. "See you in the morning, Agent Mulder." "Night." Mulder walked through the connecting door as the other door shut and locked. The room was dim, barely illuminated by the yellow light peeking out of the bathroom. At first he didn't see Scully anywhere, just her luggage set neatly next to the outside door, with her trench coat draped over it. He shrugged, and turned to shut the door. Scully was curled up in the droopy armchair, fast asleep. Her cheek was pillowed on the left arm of the chair, just a few inches away from a worn spot leaking a tiny cloud of stuffing. She was still wearing her robe, flannel pajama bottoms and thick white socks poking out from underneath it. One hand was loosely fisted and burrowed halfway under her cheek like the last remnant of a babyhood thumb-sucking habit. Her hair curled in every direction, twisting up to cling to the fabric of the armchair back, falling over her cheek and obscuring her eyes. As he watched, her lips parted slightly and she sighed in her sleep. Mulder's breath caught in his throat as if he'd been punched in the gut. A stripe of queasiness that wasn't quite pain sliced down the inside of his sternum, like a pathologist's scalpel cutting him open from the inside out. It pooled like blood in a place slightly above his stomach, right where his center would have been if he flung his arms and legs out like a starfish. He could not stop looking at her. A dismayed revelation unfolded in his mind like a magician's flower. He stuffed it back down as fast as it came up, but he'd never really got the knack of folding the damned things up in real life and he didn't do much better with the one in his head. Party-colored shreds of thought were left over, too bright to ignore: thoughts of kneeling by his sleeping partner and burying his face in her stomach, her hands touching his hair like a benediction, the rest of the world flowing past them unnoticed, unimportant. Some kind of sound escaped him as he watched the dim light gleam off her hair, making it glow like banked coals. He knew better than to go to her; he'd already done the rejection thing once or twice today, thank you, and all he had to show for it was a sore jaw with a bruise the approximate size, shape, and texture of a kiwi fruit. He knew better than to go anywhere near her. He went anyway. It seemed to be a long trek across the rough motel carpet, and by the time he knelt in front of the armchair he had a purpose in mind, a goal of waking her up and getting her out of his room before his mouth ran away like the gingerbread man and he ended up with a matching bruise somewhere even less comfortable. His hand reached out for her without asking the brain for permission and before he quite realized it he was brushing air-fine hair out of her eyes. "Hey," he whispered, unable to take his eyes from her sleeping face. "Hey, Scully." "Mmm." It was the barest hint of sound, accompanied by an eyebrow twitch. "Scully, wake up." She slept on, her breathing slow and regular. "Scuh-lee," he murmured, tasting her name on his lips. His fingers brushed over her warm cheek and she made another faint sound, her mouth curving slightly in a sleep-smile. "Hey," he told her softly, "come on, this chair is going to give you a sore neck if you sleep on it all night." "Mmm." His fingertip traced her jawline with the most delicate of touches, flesh painting flesh with a thread of blood-warmth. As he reluctantly took his hand away, that soft smile spread a little further across her face. Mulder watched her for a long moment, caught in glass. She was ... She was so ... Twin curves of lashes stirred, lifted, and her eyes focused on him. She made a faint sound and blinked slowly, once. "Mulder," she said, her voice rough with sleep. "Hi." She blinked again, yawning a little on the long downswing. "I fell asleep." "Yeah," he agreed, adjusting his legs so that he was sitting in front of the left arm of the armchair, his face level with hers. "Comfortable?" "Mmm," she rumbled, her eyes drooping. "Not too bad." She stayed that way for almost a minute, her breathing slow. He cradled her face with his gaze, expecting her to fall asleep, but a sliver of blue appeared between the lashes of one eye and waxed lazily to a half-moon. He smiled at her, that odd queasy pain slipping leisurely up his ribs again. "Hungry?" "Yeah," she yawned. "Too tired to eat, though." The blue waned to a sliver again, kept from total eclipse by sheer determination. Mulder rested his temple against the arm of the chair and watched her as though she might disappear. Scully arched an eyebrow at him, the one matching her single open eye. "What?" "Nothing," he said, and closed his eyes, her warm sleep-smell surrounding him and twisting in his lungs until it made his head spin. "Are you tired?" she asked in a voice too low for Mulder to tell if the words were in her doctor tone or her partner tone. "Yeah." He opened his eyes and found her looking straight at him with her most enigmatic expression -- sleepier than normal, but unreadable due to the droopy eyelids. She studied him for a minute or two and then a crooked little smile appeared like a crack in an egg. "Hmmmm," she mumbled drowsily. The pale hand stuffed under her cheek worked its way back out to freedom, hesitated clumsily in midair for a long moment, and then slipped over his face, cupping his cheek. She still smelled faintly of gunpowder. He could feel each of her fingers burning a separate and distinct furrow into his skin. "You should sleep," she whispered huskily, her thumb brushing a hot, shallow arc near his jaw, inches from the angry bruise that same little hand had given him only a few hours earlier. "So should you," he whispered back. Her eyes drooped and she made an amused sound that was thick with exhaustion. "Understatement," she mumbled, and her eyes glided shut. Her hand relaxed and succumbed to gravity, sliding down to rest on the side of his neck. "Mulder ..." She sighed his name as if she were already sleeping, and for all he knew she was. "Hmm?" Her voice was almost inaudible, lips moving around a soft slip of air. "You said you had a dream ..." Mulder's stomach flipped over and he exhaled hard. "Yeah," he managed, too aware of the bed behind him that still stank of guilty pleasures and guiltier dreams, soaked into the sheets with his sweat. She breathed out a slow stream of warmth that curled around his face like fog. "Me too." In the moment it took for him to go from puzzlement to comprehension, she fell asleep. Mulder watched her sleep, thoughts buzzing around his head like lazy bumblebees, the curve of her hand heavy and warm on his neck. He reached up and wrapped his fingers around her forearm, anchoring her to him. "I know," he whispered. - END - AUTHOR'S NOTE: Attention: Lena has not been allowed to compose this note herself, as it would have delayed this story by at least another month. Instead, her beta team has elected me, Shannon, to tell you that this story has been in the works for more than a year and has had more editors than a dog has fleas. She has been threatened within an inch of her life if she ever, ever attempts another story of this magnitude. This is her Magnum Opus, so enjoy it. She'll never write anything over 50K again or we'll break all her fingers. ... Pssst, this is me, Lena. Shhh. Don't tell Shannon, but I'm gonna write my own notes anyway. I feel like I've been writing this thing my entire life. Certainly I've been writing it for most of my fanfiction career; there are people that met me a year ago who don't remember a time when I *wasn't* working on what we called parrotfic. Many people have stepped in to help out over that year, and hopefully I can thank them all. First and forever, I have to thank Erlybird, giver of the world's best feedback, constant cheerleader, and den mother to the most unruly pack of fic puppies ever seen. When I took the dead parrot out of my first fic and substituted a regular corpse, Erly demanded that the parrot get a story of his own, and so was parrotfic born. Who knew? Ropobop, my first beta reader and She Who Knows Where Quotation Marks Ought To Go, for constant beta duties, for ordering me to stop outlining and start writing, and for not laughing when I presented her with a truly horrible first paragraph an hour after it was ordered. Not to mention for her Herculean effort this week as she ran a quick final beta on four chapters every day (five, today). I owe her much cheese. Shannono, the Grammar Nazi, for beta services, a stellar introduction to baseball at Wrigley Field and the strangest "revise this thing NOW" stalk I have ever encountered. KatyBlue, who not only responded to my gushy feeback but also asked about my next story and sent me tons of amazing information on parrots, including the idea to make the sucker sing. Jean Robinson, for stalking me on a story that hadn't even been posted as a WIP. wen, for stalking me gorgeously with a cover for the newly named Gutless, for mentioning that my ending really ought to act like an ending and then for graciously forgiving me for acting like a jackass about having to rewrite it. Marasmus, for asking to read it and then agreeing to do machete beta... not to mention the shipment of British candy and British music and the funniest picture-stalk I've ever seen. Cofax, who asked all the right questions about the later chapters, who wouldn't let me forget to give Mulder a little continuity and resolution, too, and who nicely ignored my whining and bitching when it then took me twice as long to write the chapters. And last but never least, my beta groups, Babyfishmouth and Yes, Virginia, for patient support above and beyond the call of duty, for the prudent application of pointy sticks, for coming up with upwards of a hundred bizarre title suggestions, and for putting me on trial for refusing to write smut. I am still honored and amazed to be surrounded by such a brilliant bunch of writers. This Bud's for you. Magdeleine March 4, 1999 - July 6, 2000