From: "livengoo@tiac.net" <livengoo@tiac.net>
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2000 03:37:02 -0400
Subject: NEW: Having the Time of My Afterlife 00/14

Having the Time of My Afterlife 00/14

By Livengoo

No harm, no foul, no intent to damage, detract, distract or otherwise
cause mischief.  Lemme go, I'm mostly harmless!

Warnings . . . well.  I never did put them on my stories much before and
I figure I'm an old dog (actually, I'm more of an old cat . . ) and
that's a new trick so be patient with me.  UST. RST. Character death.
Character undeath. No MSR. No BHA. No BST. Safe for most audiences of
legal age. Has some naughty language, a few risque concepts and some bad
cafeteria food.

I'll be posting a piece a day.  Eventually I'll get around to putting it
up on my web site.  Meanwhile, if you miss a bit, let me know. If I'm
too slow on the keyboard, it's probably out there on deja.com.

You can reach me at livengoo@tiac.net if you want to write.  Hope you
have fun with it!

Having the Time of My Afterlife 01/14
By livengoo
Livengoo@tiac.net

Any and all disclaimers in part 0.
_____________________________________________________________________
. . . You dream too much
If you think I've got a thing for you
You dream too much, and it's going
To end bad.

Richard Thompson - I Feel So Good I'm Going to Break Somebody's Heart
Tonight
_______________________________

Brian Pendrell's dreams slowly filtered up from a warm, quiet dark to
the nightmare cold.  He remembered being that cold.  It was like
when-he-was-ten-and-his-bratty-little-sister-stole-his-clothes-and-no-one-came-to-get-him-more-clothes-but-his-Aunt-Grue-was-visiting-so-no-way-in-HELL-was-he-gonna-run-down-the-hall-in-his-birthday-suit,-unh-unh-no-WAY-and-Betsy-could-just-forget-
about-that-so-he-snuck-out-the-window-through-the-snow-to-his-bedroom,
you know, THAT kind of cold.  So cold his teeth wanted to chatter but
just locked up tight instead.  And it had to be a dream, just HAD to,
because if it was real he'd be able to open his  eyes.  If it was real
he couldn't possibly be that cold again in his life.

Could he?

Avalanche, he thought dreamily.  Maybe it was an avalanche like those
climbers on Mt. Ranier always got themselves stuck in.  Except that he
didn't climb rocks.  Heck, he didn't even ski since that time when he
was thirteen and they'd been living in Boulder and he and Johnny Wilcox
played hooky and he broke his leg skiing on the Sudden-Death-Overtime
slope.  He really envied the people who could suppress traumatic
memories sometimes, because he'd sure like to suppress explaining that
one to his mom.  So it couldn't be an avalanche.  It really couldn't.

And besides, in an avalanche he'd have rocks poking into his back but
whatever he was lying on was smooth and hard, not at all like rocks.
Pendrell tried to shift so his poor, numb bottom could recover a little
feeling, but that just creased something under his back and made it
worse. As if it really could get any worse. But his mom had always said
that patience was a virtue and if you wait long enough you'll get what
you need. Maybe. He'd always doubted that particular piece of advice,
though it had gotten him quite a bit of what he wanted now that he
thought about it and his mind wandered idly off down that trail of
memory to getting his first car and his degree and then another degree
and then his job and didn't it just feel like he was lying on a lab
table now that he thought about it?

Maybe.

He sighed.  Not one of those pansy little sighs like guys usually make
either, like they're trying not to get caught at it.  No.  This was a
real, solid, long, drawn-out, mournful,
had-to-wait-until-he-was-nineteen-for-his-car kind of sigh.  The kind of
sigh that blew something up off his face that he hadn't even known was
lying on his face until he sighed like that and it all startled him so
much that this time he COULD open his eyes and all of a sudden he was
lying there in this really weird, dim, pink glowing place that reminded
him of nothing so much as the way your face looked when you put a
flashlight in your mouth in the dark and looked into a mirror.  That
kind of pink. Except there wasn't any mirror and he knew darn well he
wasn't holding any flashlight.  That did it.  That finally, for real did
it, sending this first-cup-of-hot-coffee jolt of adrenaline through him
so fast that he tried to sit up and it felt like he nearly pulled every
muscle in his body. For sure it pushed his face up against that rough
whatever-it-was that draped him.  Pendrell shuddered, and now his teeth
WERE chattering and he was shivering too.  So cold.  But not still and
leaden anymore, thank God. His hands fluttered at his sides and they
ached with the cold, stung as they caught against the shroud (shroud?)
that pressed in and around him and kept him from seeing or moving or . .
.

Calm.  Darn it!  His pulse stuttered in his ears and it was like it
hadn't been there before but all of a sudden he felt it, thundering
loud.  Pawed at the stuff around him and snaked his hands up his body to
get them by his face where he could push at what felt like canvas.
Canvas with plastic? Jeez, where WAS he?  If this was that stupid geek
from fingerprints playing another practical joke he'd . . . he'd . . .
He didn't know WHAT he'd do but it'd be bad and he'd do it as soon as he
got out of wherever he was. There was metal in the cloth thing that was
right over his face.  In fact, all of a sudden he could feel it and it
practically scratched his nose when he tried to push up against it
again.  Little metal bits like . . . a zipper.  That was it!  Tracing it
up and it WAS a zipper, it really was, and he poked and prodded and
found the top where it was pulled down just a little. He pushed his
finger through and pulled and pulled and it started to unzip with those
little scratchy noises that zippers make but it sounded so loud right
now.  Scraping across his nerves it was so loud.  Ooooh, he really WAS
going to murder that geek.  Lock him up in the spookiest office in the
FBI or hose him down with buteric acid or something rotten.  One bad
trick deserved another and just let him get out of whatever he was in .
. .

He didn't want to think about what he was in because he thought he knew.
There.  There.  The zipper was down past his nose and he could gulp a
big breath of fresh air.  So big it lifted his chest and that hurt.
Holy SHIT did it hurt, pardon his French but it did!  Pendrell paused,
took a smaller breath and dragged again at the zipper and his hand was
free, face was free and he could finally  see around him to where . . .

Where he was.  He knew where he was.  Brian Pendrell took another deep
breath even though it hurt.  Even though it reeked of alcohol and decay
and God almighty but he was glad they didn't use formaldehyde anymore.
That would have been the last straw.  A scream wanted to rip loose even
without the stink of formaldehyde and he choked it back, forced it into
a quivery little giggle that wasn't at all like he was feeling but it'd
do.  Too loud for the morgue, but not as bad as a scream.

And dammit but it was cold.  Too cold for a practical joke.  This was
cruel cold, icy cold.  Cold as death.

Don't think about it don't think about it just pull and push and pull at
the zipper and make it let go by one tooth and another, by whole
mouthfuls of teeth.  Silly images of dentures and clattery, toy teeth
that chattered when you wound them up would have been funny if his teeth
weren't chattering so hard.  If these teeth didn't take so long to let
go and free him from the bag that wrapped him up.

One tooth at a time.  Then whole rows of them.  Oh please yes, and then
he was free of them all, free and sitting there on an icy, sleek metal
table. When he turned and dangled his legs off the side he could feel
the gutters that ran the table's length.  The feeling made him slightly
queasy.  Or would have if he hadn't already felt so horrible and cold
and . . . and something hurt like the dickens on his toe!  Oh, God, oh
no, oh no oh please don't let it be but it was and he sat there, holding
his feet out like a child and staring down the length of bare, pale,
hairy, freckly legs (he'd never liked to sunbathe.  Just wished he
didn't have so much hair every time he had to go out without clothes) at
his feet sticking out like the toes of frogs when you ate frog legs
except that frogs didn't have little froggy toe tags telling you that
this poor amphibian had been Ranipus somebody or other.  He couldn't
remember but then biology had never been as much fun as chemistry and he
hated dissecting anything but the idea that someone might dissect HIM
was something he hated most of all!

He shuddered and gasped and waved his feet, if for no other reason than
to prove to himself, once and for all, that he, Brian Piccolo (his
parents always wanted him to play football) Bedlow Pendrell was not a
dead, inert, yucky body slowly trying to decompose on a slab in the
morgue.  He gulped and looked around.  He might not be dead, and not
everyone thought he was yucky, but he certainly was on a slab in the
morgue.  He hopped down fast just so that would be one more thing about
all these terrible, horrible things that wouldn't be true.  Couldn't be
true.  His toe stung and something ached badly deep in his chest and the
floor tiles were, if anything, colder than the table but at least he
wasn't on that slab anymore.  No indeed.

It took him what felt like hours was all he could figure later.
Hobbling around to the desks of people who cut up other people for a
living.  Turning on those purplish desk lights that made everyone look
like extras from Dawn of the Dead (don't thing that don't go there don't
even LOOK at yourself in these lights Brian!) and nervously jumping at
every sound, every cockroach, everything that might be a guard wandering
around.  Thankfully morgues didn't seem to be high on the security risk
list.   Hours, or at least twenty minutes, looking for pliers and
finally settling on a set of medical shears to cut that nasty, painful
toe tag off his foot so that he wasn't worried his toe'd be amputated
and left behind like some prop from Blue Velvet.  Darn them but none of
them left any clothes lying around the morgue.  He was sure that the
blue cast of his skin was from a lot more than just the lights, but he
held on to the reassuring thought that ANYONE would be blue in that kind
of cold.  The family jewels were trying to hide and his fingertips still
felt a little numb and maybe it was the cold that made his chest feel so
funny.  Achy and numb and burning all at once.

For some reason he really didn't want to look.  Something in his head
just kept telling him, "Brian," it said.  "You don't want to look."

But when something trickle-tickled down through the fuzzy hair on his
belly he just couldn't ignore it anymore.  It even felt a bit warm.  And
somehow, that just made it worse.

But warm or not, nothing was worse than looking down in that purple-y
ugly light from the cheap desk lamp and seeing a little spot about the
size of his fingertip right under his left nipple.  Well, the spot
wasn't so bad when you really thought about it but that long, shiny
trickle of reddish black stuff that just leaked and oozed and matted . .
. that was bad.  That was really bad.

It wouldn't go away.  Neither the dull ache under his nipple, or the
trickling, sticky stuff with its coppery smell.  None of it was going
away. He shut his eyes.  Hell.  No.  He didn't really shut his eyes
'cause he'd never be able to tell if he'd touched IT if he did shut them
because he was shivering so hard and his fingers were numb and he did
NOT want to think about it but he was going to.  So he didn't shut
them.  He squinched them up really tight and held his breath and turned
his finger back like he was pointing at himself.  Ooooh, but he really
did NOT want to do this. Pendrell clenched his teeth so they couldn't'
chatter anymore and the TOUCHED it.  It felt like the hot fudge on a hot
fudge sundae.  Sort of viscous and slippery and sticky all at once.  He
was NOT going to think about what the color looked like.  No he wasn't.

The bl- hot fudge was slowly dribbling down from that h- no.  That dot
under his nipple.

"C'mon, Bri.  You're a SCIENTIST."  Even whispering his voice seemed
loud and hoarse.  But the silence was worse.  No alarms, no running
feet. Nothing but him, all alone with the other - no.  With the dead
people. "C'mon he urged, even more quietly.  "You can do this."

He could, too.  No, he would.  Would drag his still-tingly cold finger
up through that dark red fudgy paint (yeah.  That's it.  It's paint) to
the dot.

Touch the dot.  Just like a game.  Touch it and everything would be
fine, score the winning point, touch it and everything would fall back
into place.  Get it over with, and call somebody up.  Get them to bring
him some clothes and start plotting revenge and go on with his life and
. . .

. . . and the tip of his finger went into the dot.

He nearly blacked out.  Standing there like the little Dutch boy with
his finger in the hole and it didn't really hurt but it darn well didn't
feel good.  Pendrell sucked in a long, hard shaky breath and nearly
blacked out again when it lifted his chest up but didn't lift his finger
and all of a sudden his finger was right up to the first little knuckle,
that knuckle right under where his fingernail ended.  That had always
seemed like such a short distance before, just an inch or so, but an
inch or so inside his chest was just . . . just . . .wrong.
Wrongwrongwrongwrong but just how deep did that hole go anyway?  Holy
shit oh shit oh no oh please but his finger went in to the second
knuckle and his knees felt wobbly and his stomach did a slow, lazy roll
when it still didn't stop.  Just kept going.  And going. And . . . and
his thoughts were running around in circles but all of a sudden he
realized that there was this kind of wet leaky feeling down his back too
and he really, really, really didn't want to know how far his finger
would go if he kept on pushing.  Nonononono!

His stomach did that roll all over again when he pulled his finger back
out and it made a little sucking sound and something felt funny inside
him.  He shuddered at the sort of sticky, shiny red color on his finger
and couldn't wipe it off fast enough, no he couldn't!  He needed -

- needed help.  He needed clothes and help and he needed to wake UP
right away before this nightmare got any worse.  But if he was stuck in
a dream then he'd better go find clothes before his third grade teacher
(the one who had always looked at him funny) came in and found him naked
the way she did in so many bad dreams.  Pendrell shuddered again and
wiped his finger off on the desk blotter very fast, pointedly not
thinking about the smears left behind.  When he stood up his bare bottom
made a sort of squelchy, sticky noise and something wet smeared there,
too.  Nononono he would NOT think about it but whoever came up with this
practical joke ought to go into the Guinness Book for inventive horrors
except that when he had a chance he'd top them at this because they sure
as HELL deserved it!

Helphelphelphelphelp he needed someone right away.  Pulling open drawers
of desks and wondering what he expected to find there.  Wadded up note
pads and old lunch bags.  Somebody's high heeled shoes.  He wasn't that
desperate for shoes.  Opening doors of cabinets and closets and somebody
was whimpering and he wished he could pretend it wasn't him.  Or maybe
he didn't wish that after all since if anyone else had been whimpering
they'd have been in one of the drawers and no indeed, he was NOT going
to think about that and he was never going to walk into the morgue again
in his entire LIFE even if he lived to be a million years old!  "I want
my microscope.  I want my . . ."

Stop.  Stop it.  Right there.  Brian Pendrell stopped cold where he was
and bit his tongue to keep the next little whiny words locked up tight.
He could almost hear the echo of them in the air. Blinked very fast and
counted slowly, deliberately to ten.  Then he counted to a hundred
because no way was ten enough for a night like this.  Looking around him
and concentrating on the numbers.  No words.  No speculation.  Just
numbers.

Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen.  There was a nice, ordinary door over there
on the far side of the twenty-eight lab.  Not a thirty-four morgue.  A
thirty-lab-nine.  Nice and familiar.  His forty-five feet didn't make a
sound on the fifty linoleum.  Fifty-six boy was it cold.  But not
fifty-nine cold enough to try on those high heeled shoes.  He almost
giggled at the notion as he turned the sixty-seven knob and oh, yes.  Oh
thank you God and he would definitely have to get up early and go to
church on Sunday because there really, really were nice, clean, ordinary
blue scrubs all folded up in there.  Seventy-four and he pulled down the
first set.  Small.  But the second pile was largest and while Goldilocks
would have sent them back because they didn't fit just right, Brian
Pendrell wasn't nearly so picky.  By the time he reached a hundred he
was no longer a naked ape and suddenly things felt like they might just
possibly yield to reason and he might just possibly manage to get home
and find out that nothing was so very different at all, and life was
just like always.

Wasn't it?

It was so much easier to think when he didn't feel so naked.  Well, to
be honest, when he actually wasn't so naked.  He'd never liked being
naked even as a baby.  His mother said he'd try to cover up when she
wanted to play koochy koo and tickle him but that was enough of that and
he would NOT let his thoughts wander off again.  There was simply too
much to do. Pendrell padded back over to the desks, tugging the
drawstring tight on his newly borrowed scrub pants and considering who'd
be best to call. Closed his eyes and the memory of a soft, oval face,
warm, red hair and worried blue eyes hovered in the dark of memory.  Ah,
in his mind's eye Pendrell sketched pursed, coral lips and his heart
warmed, spirits lifted at the recall of her leaning over him.  He
reached for the phone, knowing her number from memory, from a hundred
times he'd dialed and hung up before it could ring, heart sinking at his
own cowardly fears.  She'd been worried. When and where niggled at the
back of his mind even as his fingers danced over the buttons.  She'd
been worried for him. She'd help him.  She cared, his heart almost sang,
cared about him!

Her phone rang once, rang twice and he held his breath and waited for
her voice.  The way she'd said his name was . . .

"Mulder?"

Not like that.  Pendrell opened his mouth, words hovering at the edge of
his voice and the memory of her calling to him firmed.  "Mulder, is that
you?"  Sharp and cross.  Her voice hadn't been cross but it had been
sharp and . . .

"Napkins."  Oh my God.  He blurted the word out before he knew it and
his stomach shriveled inside him.

"Napkins?  Nap- who is this?  I'm warning you, I'm an FBI agent and
crank calls are against the law!"

Napkins.  She'd shoved cocktail napkins into the hole in his chest.
She'd had his blood on her . . . on her . . . ohmygodohmygod he slammed
his finger down on the button to disconnect her and gulped back bile at
the memory of Special Agent Doctor Dana Katherine Scully hovering over
him as he'd desperately tried to breathe, desperately tried to ask her,
plead with her, to help him and she'd stuffed COCKTAIL NAPKINS into the
hole in his chest!

Tears started in his eyes, burned and ached like the hole - yes, it WAS
a hole oh God help him - in his chest.  Cocktail napkins.  He hadn't
even been good enough for her scarf or her blouse.  Were they even
clean?  Or just something she'd pulled off the table?  He sniffled hard,
tasting the salt of his tears and his snot in the back of his throat
like he'd tasted it when he was a little kid and . . . but he wasn't a
little kid anymore. Brian Pendrell was a grown man with a big, nasty
hole in his chest and Dana Katherine Scully had shoved those horrible
little cocktail napkins, the kind with the bar's name on them, into the
wound that . . . that . . . was still weeping blood in a slow trail down
his belly and his back.  He still needed help but not the kind that Dr.
Scully would give.  He needed help. Not napkins.

Sitting here in the morgue with a hole in his chest.  He didn't want to
think about what he was remembering but he did know that this was not
the run of the mill shooting in Washington, DC.  Maybe this wasn't a run
of the mill shooting anywhere!  He wasn't absolutely sure but he didn't
think many people woke up in the morgue in a body bag.  Almost choked at
the thought but there it was.  A body bag.

She'd trace the call.  All she had to do was call in and get it traced.
If that.  She probably had caller ID.  He could sit here and wait until
the police or a guard showed up to see who'd called.  What would happen
then? Pendrell swallowed hard.  He didn't know what would happen then
but he knew he didn't want to find out.  One thought led to another and
before he knew it he'd picked up the white pages and flicked through,
found the number he wanted.  One thing leads to another.  He didn't need
Dana Scully's kind of help.  Not professionally or personally.  Not
Scully, but maybe, just maybe . . .

_____________________________________________

 He was standing there hopping from foot to foot, wishing that the
little scrub booties were warmer when the headlights finally slowed and
turned into the parking lot.  Paused at the guard station.  That was a
thought. He might have just walked up to the guard and asked for a cab
but what would he pay the driver and besides, the guard probably
wouldn't be too polite to a not-so-dead man bleeding there in the middle
of the night. Pendrell laughed nervously and watched the car slowly
cruise up.  He could see the driver craning, trying to see who might be
standing in the shadows between the floodlights that shone from the
corners of the building. Pendrell stepped forward and waved.

Fox Mulder slammed on the brakes.  The squeal they made as the car
stopped and backed up five feet was enough to have Pendrell wondering if
he was risking his life all over again just getting into the car with
the other X-Files team member.  At least Mulder probably wouldn't use
endorsed paper products on his wounds, he thought sourly.

Mulder didn't say a word to him as they peeled out of the parking lot.
Driving along the dark, unlit road that skirted Quantico he seemed more
nervous than Pendrell could ever recall.  Mulder, in his experience,
could be arrogant, edgy, effusive, sometimes even snarky, but nervous?
He sighed and stared out the passenger side window, trying to ignore the
reflection of Mulder glancing over to study him by the dashboard
lights.  Not his idea of paradise.  He was almost relieved when the
streetlights gave Mulder more light and let him get a better look.

Almost.  Not quite.  Not at all by the time they reached a block of
not-so-charmingly grimy, WWII era brick apartment buildings.  When the
engine went off it was startlingly quiet.  Quieter than the morgue with
its refrigeration hum. So quiet he could hear the engine ticking and
Mulder swallowing.  The agent's eyes were dark, unreadable reflected in
the window in front of his face. Pendrell glanced back and said the only
thing that came to mind. "You really mean to tell me you couldn't afford
a better apartment?"

"Hey!"  Mulder visibly startled, glared back.  "Chasing aliens and dead
men doesn't come cheap you know."

"Okay.  Okay.  I'm sorry.  I never really thought about it."  He sighed,
rubbed at his eyes but stopped fast at the sort of crackly, flaky feel
of his fingers with the - with his dried blood on them.  "Can I use your
shower?"  Mulder was still pale, as white as he'd been since he'd first
laid eyes on Pendrell, but he was starting to get that hectic flush that
was so familiar from handing over lab reports chock full of improbable
results. "Sure. Sure.  I think I've got some sweats that'll fit you
too."

Pendrell longed wistfully for a tender touch, for concern unsullied by
avid curiosity, but at that point he'd take what he could get.

____________________________________________________


"These blue jeans shrank in the drier," called Mulder.  "I think they'll
probably fit you if you roll them up."

Pendrell peeked uncomfortably around the shower curtain and wondered if
the man was this solicitous of all his guests.  The rapacious curiosity
in Mulder's answering stare didn't leave that illusion intact for long.
"I'm all right, Agent Mulder.  Thank you.  Really."

"Are you sure?  You know how to joggle the handle to get the water just
right?  And is there enough soap?"  A chill draft made Pendrell squeak
as Mulder stepped into the bathroom.

"Agent Mulder, I'm fine!  I . . . I . . ."  He wanted to finish the
sentence but he couldn't.  The memory of his own blood washing down the
drain from that ugly little dot - hole - gave it the lie.  Pendrell
finally sighed and steeled himself.  "Look, you can do one thing for
me."

"Sure.  Fine.  No problem."  Mulder's rapid-fire words seemed to be on
autopilot.  His real focus was Pendrell's face, hazel eyes scanning and
catching at every tiny flicker of motion as if Mulder were cataloguing
them for future reference.

Pendrell twitched under that microscope stare, but wouldn't let himself
back down.  "You can check one thing for me, Agent Mulder."

"Hmm?"  That piqued his interest.

Pendrell had never before considered how thoroughly Mulder lived up to
his first name at times.  He felt like a mouse being eyed for some
vulpine hors d'eouvre. "Umm, could you just check my back?  I mean, I
need to know if -"

He never got the chance to finish the sentence.  Fox Mulder pounced on
him, pushing the shower curtain back and studying Pendrell's poor, pale
chest like he'd found the secrets to the universe and picked a winning
Redskins season.  Pendrell let him be until the agent reached out
inquisitively to poke at the hole in his chest, but that was more than
he could really stand.  "Agent MUL-derrrr!"

"Huh?"  Startled eyes met his, as startled as he'd been in the car.

"Aren't you forgetting I'm alive?"

"Actually Pendrell, I'm not."  Mulder tried to get that Mr. Spock
eyebrow lift but he just didn't have it down. Scully did it a lot
better, but he didn't want to think about that.  Bad as Mulder was, at
least he wasn't wadding stuff into the wretched little hole.  He was
just standing there studying it with that same, intent look on his
face.  "Do you think you could turn around, Pendrell?"

Flashbacks to the FBI physical when he'd been accepted set a blush of
sheer embarrassment to chase off the cold.  Pendrell sighed again and
turned his back.  Fingers touched his back, stretching skin that stung
so much it made him jump.

"Sorry."  Mulder's distracted murmur was less than convincing but the
fingers on his back gentled.  "This may sting a little bit, Pendrell."

"You sound like my doctor."

"Mmm.  Don't worry. I won't ask you to turn your head and cough."
Mulder's tone was distracted, humor on autopilot too, but it did make
Pendrell relax.

"What is it?  Is there a - a -"

"An exit wound?  Yep."  Clinical interest almost made it easier to
discuss the hole in his own body.  That was surprising.

"Well.  It must have missed all the major organs."  Pendrell
straightened up and warmed to his topic.  "That's what MUST have
happened!  Like those fluke accidents where somebody gets a steel I-beam
through the chest but somehow it only takes out their appendix or
something?  That would explain why they thought I was dead but were
wrong and they just made a mistake when they put me in the morgue!  That
has to be -"

"I don't think so, Pendrell."  Mulder's voice was even more distracted,
distant.  The soft touch on his back traced up his spine, tickling.

"It has to be, Agent Mulder.  What other explanation is there?"

The touch stopped at the back of his neck, rubbing uncomfortably over
one spot that sort of ground against his spine like something was back
there. When Mulder spoke he was so close Pendrell could feel breath
brushing warm over his skin.  "Pendrell, did you sleepwalk a lot as a
kid?"

"Huh?"

"Sleepwalk."  The hands pushed his head forward and stretched the skin
tight over his cervical vertebrae.  "Daydream.  Lose track of time.
Wander off.  Go missing.  Phase out.  Get a rep for being late.
Nightmares.  Out of body experiences. Speaking in tongues or -"

"Okay!  Okay!  I get the idea! I don't remember really getting lost or
anything and my parents would never have let me hear the end of it if I
had. The only thing I remember is that my mom did used to say that I'd
be late for my own funeral."

Mulder's hands dropped to his shoulders and turned him around.  Very
solemn eyes met his.  "Pendrell.  I hate to tell you this, but I think
your mom was right."

______________________________________


Having the Time of My Afterlife 02
By Livengoo
Livengoo@tiac.net
________________________________________


Maybe it was Mulder's television set that kept him up all night ('I
didn't sleep at ALL last night' ran some ridiculous song that was
probably from an ad).  Maybe it was the unfamiliar bed.  Or the creepy
sense that Mulder kept tiptoeing in to see if he really WAS alive,
although he never caught the guy at it. Whatever it was, Pendrell felt
like death warmed over the next morning.

He had to hand it to Mulder though.  It smelled like good coffee was
brewing and, if his discerning palate was as accurate as ever, some
vintage, gourmet Eggos were toasting in a toaster out there.  Better
than the Giant Foods brand he usually bought for himself and enough to
make him feel less like an extra out of Night of the Living Dead.

He dressed quietly in the too-long blue jeans that Mulder had given him,
pulling the Oxford sweatshirt on with a gingerly, careful motion.  With
bandaids plastered on his chest and back, he could almost pretend the
hole was just a bad cut, an accident, a front and back pinch, anything
but what it was.  Not that Mulder had done anything as crass as suggest
sticking a straightened-out coathanger through the hole to check, but
even with all the will in the world Pendrell wasn't really believing his
own stories anymore.  At least when Mulder had him hold the flashlight
to his chest last night he hadn't been able to see all the way through
like some cartoon character.  Feeling a finger slide into that hole in
his back had been back enough.  If he could have reached it he'd have
preferred to do it himself but double joints had never been one of his
talents.

Mulder was lurking.  Watching the door.  Just waiting for him emerge.
He could feel him out there in the living room, skulking.  Had to give
him points for tact and patience.  He remembered being one of those
little kids who'd get impatient and break open the fertilized chicken
egg too soon.  At least Mulder was letting him have the privacy to dress
alone instead of wanting to see the hole again.

And he did want to see it.  That was written all over his face in five
different spoken languages and Braille when Pendrell walked through the
door.  Absolute, total rapt focus on him.  He tried to remember why he'd
ever wished people would pay attention to him.  Looks like the one he
was getting now just made him want to run back into the bedroom and
crawl under the bed.  Except that it was Mulder's bed and who knew what
you'd find under there.  The office rumor mill made hiding under THAT
bed a less than appealing prospect.

Instead, Pendrell sort of . . . edged into the kitchen as normally as
you could when you were moving sideways and backwards so as to avoid
turning your back to someone.  The alluring smells of coffee and
breakfast warred with his desire to cut and run.  But he'd run before,
from bullies and embarrassments, from a boring home and a boring job in
his dad's store. Run and run and what had it gotten him?  A hole full of
cocktail napkins. No, running was NOT on the agenda anymore.

Not that changing overnight would be easy.  Especially not when Mulder
followed him into the kitchen with that catnip-high look in his eyes.
"Sleep well, Pendrell?"

Years of bullies had trained him well.  He didn't bat an eye as he
poured coffee and retrieved the toaster waffle.  "Just fine, Agent
Mulder."

"Good!  Good!"  It struck Pendrell suddenly that few things were sadder
than a night person trying desperately to pretend he was a morning
person. Mulder yawned and went on, "it'll be a big day for you, huh?"

"First day of the rest of my life," Pendrell responded blandly.  Mmmm.
He had to admit, he'd rather drink Mulder's coffee than his Maxwell
House any day of the week.  A tentative sip sent that first little
delicate zing of heat and well-being down his gullet.  Distantly, he
hoped that the bullet wound hadn't pierced any part of him that might
reasonably be expected to contain coffee, and felt rather proud that he
was able to take it with the gallows humor he'd always admired in other,
more rough and tumble agents.

"Good attitude."  Mulder was nodding like he was having trouble
focusing, squinting slightly in the cheery morning light.  Pendrell
caught himself actually feeling sorry for the poor vampire.

At least, he felt sorry until Mulder continued.  "That bullet wound of
yours really needs some professional attention, Pendrell.  I've got
these friends who could -"

"No."  Pendrell cut him off politely but firmly, and happily without
spitting any crumbs from his waffle.

"But . . ."  The wistful longing on Mulder's face almost swayed him.
Pendrell couldn't remember when someone had wanted his company that
much.

But he needed Mulder's friends like he needed a hole in his . . . head.
"I'm fine, Agent Mulder.  Really.  The bandaids feel like they're
holding up well and you know what they say about bandaids and injuries."

It stopped Mulder cold in his tracks.  Baffled eyes met his and Pendrell
wondered how the man could possibly have the television on all night
without absorbing any of the wisdom of advertising.  "They make wounds
heal faster," he explained patiently.

Mulder blinked.  Blinked very fast.  One. Two. Three. Many times.
Almost like he had something caught in his eye.  "Pendrell, this is not
a scraped knee or a paper cut.  You've got a through and through bullet
wound in your chest.  I don't think the Teflon coating and antibiotic
ointment was really meant to deal with that sort of thing."

"I'm not bleeding anymore," observed Pendrell around another mouthful of
waffle.  Mmm. Real maple syrup.  "And it feels better.  It's not in my
way or anything.  I don't see why it should it should be such a big
deal."

"Pendrell . . . Brian . . . I think there's more going on."

Pendrell had to bite down on his tongue.  Mulder was visibly struggling
to cope and it was much too early in the morning for him.  Especially
when he looked like he'd been up all night.  Pendrell worked to keep a
straight face and let Mulder rattle on as he finished his waffle and
sipped his coffee.  "Pendrell, there's something fishy going on.  I
mean, people don't just rise up from the dead most of the time."

"Who says I was ever really dead?"  He politely turned and rinsed his
plate and mug like he'd been taught.

"Scully did!"  This time impatience edged Mulder's voice.

"Dr. Scully tried to stuff cocktail napkins into my chest," Pendrell
informed him with wounded dignity.  "Her professional judgment may be
all right with dead people but obviously I'm not dead.  She must have
made a mistake."

He'd never seen Fox Mulder struck speechless before.  He'd have felt
sorry for him if he hadn't been so relieved.  As it was he just brushed
past him and looked around, trying to get his choices clear in his
head.  Mulder had followed him in and now his voice started to sound
really strained. "Pendrell, believe me.  I've been in the weird-stuff
business a lot longer than you have and you were dead and people do NOT
just get up and walk out of the morgue on a regular basis.  It's just
not done."

"But here I am," noted Pendrell calmly.

"I . . I . . . that's my point exactly."  Mulder was flushed and waving
his hands in the air.  "There's something going on here.  You are
walking around and eating my food and I think it has something to do
with that lump in the back of your neck."

"The one you couldn't keep your hands off last night?"  Pendrell eyed
him suspiciously.  "Do you always fondle peoples' necks, Agent Mulder?
Have you spoken to anyone about this?"

"About what?"  Mulder stopped in mid-gesture.  "Huh?  I've been telling
people about this for years, Pendrell!  We've finally got a chance to
prove to them what I've been saying!"

"Calm down, Agent Mulder."  Patting the air between them didn't really
seem to reassure Mulder, but it did catch his eye like a bell ball
rolled past a jumpy cat.  "It'll be okay."

A frown started to gather between Mulder's eyebrows.  "Pendrell, what
the hell are you talking about?  Because I'm talking about unsanctioned
experimentation on civilians, maybe by alien forces, and I don't have
the first fucking clue what you're talking about."

"No need for profanity, Agent Mulder."  Pendrell picked up Mulder's
wallet and car keys out of the flotsam on the coffee table and dropped
them into his now-motionless hand.  "We can talk this out like two
civilized men while you drive me to my apartment."

"What?"

"We're wasting the best part of the day, Agent Mulder.  Let's get
going!"

______________________________________________________

 He'd never realized that Fox Mulder whined before.  It just hadn't ever
occurred to Pendrell to characterize Special Agent Mulder as whining.
Oh, he'd had his own ideas about Mulder - something about the way the
female technical staff kept trying to find things to do in his lab when
Mulder was there; or the way he always felt a little bit short and hairy
when Mulder was around, or maybe the way that no one seemed to hear him
anymore when Agent Mulder dropped by - yes, he'd had a definite
impression of Mulder but it had never included whining.  Until now.
"Agent Mulder, once and for all, I am NOT going to let your friends
examine me for alien implants, military hardware, Borg cybernetics,
mutated viruses, podperson matter or any other goofy sci-fi fantasy
notion!"

"Listen Pendrell," he was starting to sound desperate, "you've seen some
of the stuff I work with.  You've tested it.  It doesn't follow the
rules and you aren't following them either.  Think about it, Pendrell!
You need help.  You've obviously been affected by something strange.
Pendrell, you're an X-File."

Brian Pendrell was gaining a whole new appreciation of the joys of being
a tease.  "You're right.  I'm not following the rules.  Not theirs.  Not
Dr. Scully's.  And not yours either."

It was really a beautiful day.  Sun shining, birds chirping, joggers
joggling and now even his timing was perfect!  As the car braked to a
stop and Pendrell stepped out he realized his timing had never been
perfect - never in his life before!  God, he was starting to wish he'd
been shot years ago!

It was liberating.  Incredible.  He could feel the bounce in his step,
the confidence.  The joy.  He'd been murdered and it wasn't so bad!
Mulder scampered along behind him like some exotic pet, begging for his
attention. He smiled widely at a jogger and she smiled back.  Mulder
stopped in his tracks, watched her go by, stared at Pendrell and caught
up barely in time to slip through the hall door after him.  "This is NOT
a good idea, Pendrell!  You need help."

"Mulder - may I call you Mulder?" He couldn't believe he didn't bother
to wait for the nod, "Mulder, I have spent my entire life being afraid."

The profiler leaned against wall by his apartment door, watching him
unlock it.  His voice was pitched low, soothing.  "It's okay, Pend -
Brian. I understand.  You're going through a very traumatic time.  It's
perfectly normal to feel buoyed when you survive a violent incident but
-"

"No, you don't understand."  Pendrell pushed the door open and walked in
without waiting to see if Mulder had followed.  "You don't . . . don't .
. ."

Hamsters.  The mess looked like what happened when hamsters got into a
pile of papers and scattered and shredded them.  Well, maybe not
shredded but Pendrell couldn't help but imagine giant hamsters
scampering around his apartment, pulling open drawers, spreading paper
over every surface they could find.

"Jesus Christ," muttered Mulder.  "And I thought my place was the only
one they worked over like this."

"What?"  Pendrell turned, his mood suddenly not quite so firm. An errant
notion of how he'd file for insurance for a through-and-through to the
chest made his tummy drop.  "Who did this?  Why would they do this?"

"Toss your place?"  Mulder's voice had the ease of a man long accustomed
to this sort of havoc.  He wandered, poking at cancelled checks and tax
returns.  "Depends on who did it.  If it was our brethren at the DC cop
shop or the Bureau, they were just trying to cover their asses for when
they shitcan another unsolvable, zero-motive murder.  But if it was
them, they sure as hell got in and out fast and took their ugly, yellow
crime scene tape with them."

It seemed unreal.  "But I can just tell them who shot me.  They didn't
need to do this!  This is . . . this is an invasion of privacy!"

Sympathetic hazel eyes came up to meet his.  "No.  It's a murder
investigation.  As far as anyone knows, Pendrell, you joined the DC
statistics last night.  I'm betting the 'theft' of your body is a juicy
tidbit on the Metro page today."

"But I'm not dead!"  He waved his hands at the disarray, as if somehow
its existence proved his point.

Mulder walked over to him, picking his way around scattered sheets of
grad school notes unearthed from some long-forgotten notebook.  Reached
out and deliberately laid a finger on Pendrell's chest.  Right over
where the h- bandaid was.  His voice was lower, even calmer, the kind of
voice that Frazier Crane used at his most poncy.  "That's a hole,
Pendrell.  You and I both know it goes front to back and that bandaids
won't really help.  This is what I've been trying to tell you.  You may
be walking around, but no one's going to be able to pretend this was
just a little booboo."

He struggled for a shadow of the euphoria from that morning, found a
faint echo of it. "What if I said it was just a flesh wound?"

Mulder stared at him.  The corners of his mouth twitched, turned down
with some internal effort and the skin pulled tight across his
cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. When he turned his back and
started to shake Pendrell wasn't sure what to think until he heard
muffled choking noises. "Are you laughing?"

"Oh, shit," no escaping it.  Mulder's voice was hoarse with barely
contained laughter.  "Oh fuck, Pendrell.  Just a fl . . . "

That did it.  Whatever small control Mulder had imploded and the man
just sagged into a lazyboy, buried his face in his hands and howled like
a banshee at a comedy club.  Which might have been insulting and
probably was except that somehow it was contagious, and Pendrell found
himself grinning back like a fool even if he didn't have his mood all
the way back. "I could tell them my wings are like a shield of steel?"

"B-b-b-b-b-b-BATFINK?"  Mulder lost it all over again, going red faced
and gasping with it.  Pendrell sat gingerly on the edge of an end table
and waited for him catch his breath.  "I think it must have been your
other cape, Pendrell."

"Yeah. Well.  You know . . . so what did you mean about who might be
messing my place up and the crime scene tape and all?"

Mulder sobered although his eyes were still suspiciously bright.  "Did
you have your next of kin written down in your wallet?"

"Nooo . . ."

"Living will?"

"Jeez, Mulder!  I'm only -"

"I don't care how old you are, Pendrell."  Mulder sighed, looking around
him.  Pendrell nervously scooped up several sheets and started to line
up their edges.  "No crime scene tape.  And a quick toss job.  Your
wallet wouldn't do them any good either."

His mumbling to himself was starting to get on Pendrell's nerves.  "I am
still here, you know.  Why don't you explain it to me?"

If he kept startling Mulder the older man's heart was going to give out.
It was like he kept forgetting Pendrell was there.  "Sorry.  Sorry.
Usually I do this on my own."

That much was obvious.  "Is this why they call you Spooky?"

A rueful grin met his question.  "Not really.  Look.  It's going to
sound sort of crazy but obviously someone tampered with you."

"Tampered?"  Pendrell could hear his own voice climb up the scale and
hated the way it squeaked at the top of his register.

"Yeah.  If you'll just let my friends-"

"No."  Pendrell slapped the sheaf of papers down on his knee.  "No and I
don't want to hear it again, Mulder.  I'm not a guinea pig."

"But-"

The patented, Mulder-wistful look might work on Bonnie at the front
desk, but it was not going to sway Pendrell.  He glared back at Mulder.
"No. I woke up in the morgue and it was bad enough letting you check the
holes. If I'm going near a laboratory it's as a scientist, not a
subject."

"Pendrell, you're a walking dead man!"  Mulder was starting to sound
desperate.

"I'm breathing. I'm moving," waggling his fingers in front of Mulder's
nose.  "I can feel and think and eat and everything.  I'm not dead by
any definition I ever learned, Mulder.  Now who searched my apartment?"

Mulder's shoulders drooped as his latest sales pitch struck out.  "I
don't really know, Pendrell.  But for what it's worth, I don't think
they're on our side."

He forbore to mention to Mulder that his side and Mulder's might not be
the same.  "Do you think they'll come back?"

The X-Files' supervisor glanced thoughtfully around.  "Noooo -- not
unless someone tells them you're here.  But that doesn't mean someone
else won't come by.  You are the subject of a murder investigation, you
know."

"Not to mention body-snatching, as you seem to like pointing out,"
Pendrell added acerbically.  "Maybe we should get out of here.  And no,
just to forestall the obvious, I won't go to your friends'!"

"Okay.  Okay.  I give up."  Mulder slumped back in his chair and studied
Pendrell.  "You'd better get what you need, but don't take too much or
they'll be wondering if your death has some connection to your stolen
sweat socks."

__________________________________

 Mulder's car was beginning to feel disturbingly familiar.  Pendrell
slumped down slightly, as much as habitual good posture and a shoulder
harness would let him.  "So.  The truth, Mulder.  Do you know who
ransacked my place?"

That sideways, slightly sneaky glance was starting to seem familiar too.
He wondered how Dana Scully put up with it, then reconsidered based on
his newly acquired knowledge of her sense of procedure.  Mulder was
doing something weird with his mouth.  Not exactly unpleasant, but this
little catch of the lip that made Pendrell slightly nervous.  "C'mon.
Quit stalling.  Do you think I was attacked by scientifically created
vampires and I'm going to start craving blood or fluoridated solutions
or something?"

He'd only been half-joking but it did get a real grin instead of that
smirk.  "No.  I think either aliens abducted you in childhood and
implanted a device of unknown origin in your neck, or else that our
military industrial complex, in a conspiratorial cabal, inducted you as
part of a widespread campaign of illicit experimentation on civilians."

"Oh."

The silence hung between them as Pendrell untangled the two equally
abstruse and absurd statements.  "Has anyone ever told you that you talk
like a bad TV show, Mulder?"

The stare of solemn disapproval was neatly offset by the effort it
looked like it took Mulder to keep that expression in place.  "You have
no respect for your elders."

"Oh, right!  Like you're what?  Maybe six or seven years older than I
am?"

"I am wise beyond my years," denounced Mulder loftily as he pulled into
the Woodside Deli.  "And because of my wisdom I'm getting a Reuben for
lunch. You want anything?"

He hesitated, considering cholesterol then realized again that he had a
hole in his chest.  His chest, not his head.  "Philly cheesesteak with
extra peppers and an order of fries."

Mulder's moue of distaste didn't faze Pendrell in the least.

_______________________________________



Pendrell licked ketchup off his lips before it could dribble down his
chin and stuffed another french fry into his mouth. "Mmm. I feel like I
haven't eaten in years."

It was a little hard to really tuck in and enjoy his lunch with Mulder
watching him like that.  He kept wanting to laugh at the look on the
older man's face -- somewhere between stunned awe and horror.  He shoved
another french fry in and waited for the inevitable glance as Mulder
checked to make sure the food went down instead of out.  "You can stop
that, you know."

"Stop what?"  The guilty look completely undercut Mulder's attempt at an
innocent tone.

"Stop trying to see if I'm going to dribble food out of my chest,
Mulder. If I didn't drool coffee and waffles then the sandwich is
definitely safe."

"Umm. . . I wasn't.  I mean, I didn't think that.  I didn't expect. . ."
The poor man was pulling sauerkraut out of his sandwich in little
nervous tics, trying to think up some good reason he'd been studying
Pendrell's chest.

It was too good to pass up.  Pendrell gave the hook one more yank before
he let the poor thing go.  "I could understand it if I were a woman,
Mulder, but it's just starting to get a little odd, you know?"

Mulder became terribly interested in the dynamics of eating a reuben
without losing any more kraut.  Pendrell happily dragged another french
fry through ketchup and wolfed it down in peace, unstudied.  He'd never
realized how much fun it could be to hang Mulder -- or anyone for that
matter -- out to dry.  People had to be interested in you before you
could make them wait.  It was a novel pleasure and he savored it right
down to the last bite of salty, fatty, bad-for-him lunch, sneaking
little glances over to watch Mulder stew as he concentrated his
attention on his sandwich.

Pendrell couldn't remember a meal he'd enjoyed more.  Mulder was reduced
to sucking the melt water out of his soda before Pendrell was ready to
relent. "So.  Aliens.  Vampires.  Mad scientists.  What are we looking
for?"

Mulder probably didn't know how easy it was to read the crafty look he
was giving Pendrell.  The ultra-controlled mask he usually assumed had
slipped the night before after the intial shock of seeing Pendrell up
and on his feet, and never quite snapped back into place.  "I thought
you'd chalked that up to too much bad television."

The theory was worth a moment's consideration, but Pendrell finally
shook his head.  "No.  They didn't send me to grad school because I was
stupid. Much as I hate to admit it, a bullet through the chest usually
has more effect than this one's having, so something's going on."

A relieved smile greeted his admission.  "Then you're finally ready to
get that looked at?"

"Did I say that?  Just reboot and get out of that loop, Mulder!"
Familiar frustration, echo of years of being ignored, put an edge on his
voice.  "I do not want to be a guinea pig for some kind of
conspiracy-buff's lab project.  Give me your best guess."

"What do you expect me to do, Pendrell? Call 1-900-psychic hotline?"
The whining note had given way to flat sarcasm.  "Best guesses work
better when you let me get some evidence.  Despite my reputation, I
really don't pull this shit out of thin air."

"You're right."  He couldn't make the words more than a whisper no
matter how he tried.  "But I've seen some of your X-Files, Mulder.  I
don't want to be one.  I never asked for this.  I'm not just some
photograph or scary story you get to solve, point to the body, collect
your applause and go home.  I'm . . . I'm a real person, Mulder.  I . .
."

His words trailed off into silence that hung heavy and ripe between
them. Mulder was working his lower lip, staring back at him without a
hint of the cold, feline curiosity.  Pendrell wasn't used to the warm
sympathy he was seeing.  It set a quivery, sad feeling loose in his gut
that made his eyes prickle, made his nose start to itch and stuff up.
He rubbed at it angrily, scrubbed at his eyes.  "Look, what do you want
me to do?"

"Trust me."  Mulder turned away, reached for the ignition.  "I know that
won't be easy.  Really, I do.  But you'll need to trust somebody some
time, Pendrell.  Let me help you."

"For now, Mulder.  For now."

_______________________________________


Downtown Washington DC had been deserted by most of the middle class.
Pendrell knew that and didn't expect much from it. Even the poor people
left if they could, commuting to Silver Spring or Tyson's Corner to
escape the oppressive, funereal core of the nation's capitol. Downtown
Washington sometimes had the ambiance Americans associated with news
broadcasts from war zones and even by those standards the building
Mulder parked behind was low.  Pendrell studied the seeping,
iron-stained water that dribbled from a pipe behind the brick relic and
wondered where the hell Mulder found people who'd live in a place like
this.

"I don't know, Mulder.  This looks like the sort of place my mother told
me to stay away from."  A manic grin met his apprehension.

"Don't let it get to you.  If you don't want to be found then this kind
of place is prime real estate."

It might well be, but Pendrell locked his car door with a care he never
took in less seedy neighborhoods.  Sidestepping the refuse, orphaned car
tires and occasional dog droppings (at least he hoped they were dog
droppings) he followed the special agent to a door with a surprisingly
good lock that was barely disguised by artfully misapplied paint.
Mulder fished through the keys on his key ring and found one
thick-bodied, many-toothed stalwart that got them through the dented
steel fire door with barely a pause.  Inside, shabby but clean stairs
led up and down.  Somehow, it didn't surprise him when Mulder headed
down.

"You really have a thing for basements, don't you?"

"Nah.  I got stuck in the basement when they converted my first office
to a conference room."  The smile that Mulder flashed back at him was
warm, more so than Pendrell had ever expected.  "The Gunmen like 'em
because parabolic mikes don't work well on them.  No big windows and
lots of insulation."

The gunmen?  Parabolic mikes?  "Oh. Of course.  I knew that."  Bible
school never covered this when they talked about life after death.


________________________________________________

Having the Time of My Afterlife 03
By Livengoo
Livengoo@tiac.net
__________________________________

Somehow, when Pendrell had pictured the afterlife he'd had vague images
of attentive Playboy bunnies wearing angel wings and puffy little cotton
tails as they scampered along tropical beaches playing harps and vying
to give him big, exotic drinks with little umbrellas in them.  The
afterlife had never included the weird brothers with their electronic
cauldron and arcane trappings.  His images of heaven had certainly not
featured the tickle of long, blond hair unaccompanied by the certainty
that a biddable beauty was at the other end of those pesky tresses.

"Wow," burbled Langley.  "The little guy's a walking Cray.  Intense!"

"Supercomputer?  I don't think you can make that assumption based purely
on what we're seeing here."  Byers' dry, professorial tones were
reassuringly clinical after the orgasmic reactions of his two cohorts.

Frohike ran a finger over the faint, oblong outlines that broke the
organic ridges of Pendrell's spine.  "If this is anything like what
Agent Scully had," Pendrell winced at the obvious adulation in the
troll's voice, "then these five chips are staggeringly powerful."

"Don't drool on him, Frohike."  Mulder's irritated reprimand made it a
little easier to stay still under the Gunmen's lights.  At least one
person wasn't seeing him as just Bill Gates' wet dream.  "Byers, can you
think of anything else these might be?"

"Superficial indications are that the objects were implanted
subcutaneously but there is no external evidence for the nature or
purpose of what we're seeing."  Byers sounded intrigued.

"Mind control," suggested Frohike.

"Espionage," breathed Langley.

"Have you had any dizziness, headaches, neurological symptoms?"  Byers,
bent sideways, studied Pendrell's face.

Mulder had cautioned him not to mention miraculous revivification and
that didn't leave much.  "I used to get eczema when I was a kid.  And I
had scoliosis.  Is that the kind of thing you mean?"

Myopic brown eyes searched his, but the baffled frown settling over
Byers' features didn't offer too much, and then Pendrell was left with a
close up of tweed again as the conspiracy buff stood up.  "I don't know,
Mulder. General symptoms of childhood ailments that would have required
frequent medical visits.  Sleepwalking and evidence that might indicate
a typical, short, repetitive pattern of abductions.  But there's nothing
absolutely definitive here."

Pendrell felt obscurely relieved when Mulder pushed away from the wall
and stepped up next to him.  Told himself it was Mulder's fingers that
stretched the skin over his spine, because somehow being pawed by Mulder
wasn't nearly as bad as being pawed by the high tech equivalent of
MacBeth's witches.  Of course, that made Mulder MacBeth and Scully Lady
MacBeth which wasn't a comforting thought and left him with the question
of whether he was Banquo or somebody else; but even so it was just too
weird to have the Gunmen playing xylophone up his spinal column looking
for things that went bump in his back.  He shivered and wished they'd
let him put his shirt back on.

The thought might have been a cue.  A finger flicked the edge of his
bandaid and Mulder's voice growled a vague warning

"If Agent Pendrell is injured -"  Byers' voice held almost enough
concern and solicitude to cover the greedy curiosity.

"It's just a flesh wound," Pendrell protested meekly.

"I think we should wait on deeper investigation, don't you?  Implants
are pesky, finicky things that we need to understand better before we
mess with them," observed Mulder in a deceptively mild voice. "Who
knows.  They might affect personality or hormonal balance or cause
cancer or something."

All three of the weird brothers twitched at that last and Pendrell
wondered what conversation was being invoked in the subtext of the
comment.  Flailed and tried for a more neutral comment.  "So, you guys
don't know what they do?"

"Umm. . ." The three looked back and forth between themselves themselves
in every possible combination, trading little shakes of the head like
they were some tic tac code then turned to him with a precision he
usually associated with Busby Berkeley musicals.  Frohike, the spokesman
du jour, heaved a sigh and shook his head.  "Sorry my man.  Without
further investigation all we know is that you do have implants."

"Any guess at the origin," asked Mulder with an impatient edge in his
voice.

Langley shoved his glasses up his nose and took his turn as the Voice of
Fate.  "If they're anything like what you've brought to us in the past
then they're way past the stuff that's commercially available.  Or even
what we know the military has . . ."

". . . but nowhere near the sophistication of the nasal implants and the
like."  Byers picked up seamlessly, almost as though he were just one
aspect of a single entity, crone to Frohike's matron and Langley's
(shudder) maiden.  Pendrell paused as be buttoned his shirt, and really,
really wished he hadn't read so many spooky comic books over the years.

"The outlines are rectangular and a little bigger than what the New Hope
abductees had.  And more of them."  Mulder's voice was distant,
distracted as he worried the idea like a dog with a bone.

"From what you said those were implanted more recently," Frohike
observed. God, those three were really starting to give him the creeps!
"You know, Mulder, with all the alien species that keep cropping up
maybe this is just a question of, like, American versus Japanese
technology?"

"Grays make the best implants but morphs do better invasion tactics?"
Mulder responded drily.  "So this is probably morph because it's
clumsier?"

"Home made bread boardlets," added Langley, fiddling with the electrical
tape holding the earpiece of his glasses together.  "I suppose it could
be ours, though it's way past anything we're supposed to have."

Mulder rolled his eyes. "Right. And we didn't have stealth technology
before '84."

"Hey, we're on your side!"  Frohike's indignation struck Pendrell as
ludicrous.  "The military-industrial complex has been trying to gain
control of our lives -"

Mulder shook his head, cut him off with a smirk.  "You need to broaden
your sights.  The military are just trial balloons.  Try television and
advertising.  We've got V chips and S chips under development.  Just
think of this as the F chip."

"F?" the three chorused.

"Use your imaginations."  Mulder grinned evilly and handed Pendrell his
coat.

______________________________


The laughter dropped away without a trace by the time they were back in
the car.  Pendrell blew on his chilly fingertips and tried to figure out
all the little things that niggled at his attention.  Mulder's
concentration was well and truly absorbed by the process of starting the
car.  He didn't look up, or meet Pendrell's eyes.  Just torqued his body
around to to study the street behind them and backed up smoothly, if
just a little too fast.

The tires didn't squeal, but the car did jump just a little when Mulder
shifted gears.  Pendrell found himself nervously trying to see the cars
behind them in the side mirror, but it was tilted wrong for his view.
No one seemed to be particularly paying attention to them when he did
glance back, but that didn't soothe his nerves much.  "This is
ridiculous."

Mulder did glance over then, quirked a little grin, and Pendrell wished
he had sounded firmer.  "What's ridiculous, Pendrell?  The Gunmen?  They
look a little -- odd but . . ."

"Not them.  They're not any weirder than you, Mulder.  They just don't
dress as well."

"Ouch."  The theatrical wince was just a little too much. The voice a
little too bland.

"Why didn't you tell them?"  Pendrell matched his tone, but only by
digging his nails into his palms.

"Tell them what?"  Mulder was suddenly deeply absorbed in the right turn
onto Georgia Avenue.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."  Pendrell hadn't known
he had such a sarcastic streak in him.  The words were sour on his
tongue. "Why didn't you tell them about me being shot?  Why'd you keep
distracting them?"

"I thought you didn't want them poking and prying."  Mulder gave him a
perfectly disingenuous look, a too-polished innocent widening of the
eyes. "They were making you nervous, weren't they?"

"Yes.  YES! They were making me nervous."  No pretense of calm now.
Pendrell shoved balled fists into his coat pockets and glared at the car
in front of them.  "But they shouldn't have been making you nervous.  I
mean -- I -- " he stammered to a stop, counted out five deep breaths
through his nose and went on.  "You took me there so they could help us
figure out what happened.  Well, everything I know tells me that things
in your neck and waking up from the de . . . from being shot like I did
is really unusual and they just might be connected!  So why not tell
them and let them help us?"

"Help you," stalled Mulder.  He was doing that thing with his lip again,
worrying it with his teeth.  Pendrell studied him closely, picking up
little tics he'd never noticed before, never seen past the carefully
heedless image Mulder maintained. "I didn't tell them because they
didn't already know."

"Will you quit the Oz act?  Will you just tell me in normal words like a
normal person instead of the bad riddles?"

Mulder shot him a startled look, whipped his eyes back to the road in
front of him.  "I played a hunch, okay?  They're usually into the most
paranoid, micro-grain details around but they didn't know about you.  If
they don't know then it's being kept under a lid thats tighter than . .
. than . . . Christ, Pendrell.  Secrets leak out all over Washington.
It's like a fucking sieve.  So how does a cold, public murder of a
federal employee in a Georgetown bar and a disappearing body from the
morgue get so hushed up that it's not even on the rumor mill?"

"I don't know!  But you know it happened so why are you keeping it
hush-hush?"  He shut up, shocked to find he was almost shouting at Fox
Mulder.

The reply was quiet, so quiet, but it sliced into the tense air of the
car. "I don't know how they're keeping it quiet, and I can only take
guesses at why.  But someone wants this totally under the radar,
Pendrell."

"So why not screw up their plans?"  He sagged, letting his seatbelt pull
him back.  "Why not go as public as we can?"

"Another hunch."  That lower lip was going to split if he kept after it
that way.  Pendrell licked his own lips in sympathy.

"I'm not one of your X-Files, Mulder."  Pendrell sighed, shook his head.
"I'm not some secret project for you to play with."

Mulder carefully pulled across traffic and onto New Hampshire.  "That's
why I'm playing the hunch, Pendrell.  Right now they want to keep you
under wraps, control what happened to you."

"So you let them toss my place and hunt me?  That doesn't make any
sense. Let's just get it out in the open."  If he hadn't felt so tired
all of a sudden he might have been able to work up some real, decent
indignation and Mulder's string pulling.

The genuinely worried look he got back quenched what little ire he could
stoke.  Mulder's face was pinched, wary.  "Right now they want to
control you.  But push them too far and I think they'll try to eliminate
the evidence."

Pendrell's tummy wanted to knot itself up around his fatty lunch.  He
tried to joke.  "Like Ollie North and Fawn Hall?"

Mulder didn't smile.  "I don't want to think about shredders, okay,
Pendrell?"


_____________________________________


It was really obvious when a wordy guy shut up, thought Pendrell.  At
least, it was obvious to him but maybe that was becausehe was a sort of
wordy guy himself.  Or maybe not.  But Mulder's grim silence didn't make
the late winter scrum of traffic any less unpleasant than it usually
was. He scrunched down in his seat and tried not to catch the eye of
passing drivers, wishing his hair were a drab brown instead of the
ridiculous ginger that always got him teased in school.

Although, come to think of it, he'd have been just as glad if Mulder
were teasing him about it just then.  A grim Mulder seemed . . . dire.
Worse than just trouble.  Pendrell fished for something to get him to
talk again. "We're going to the Hoover Building?"

"Yeah.  I want you to stay in the car," absently changing lanes and
ignoring the honking horn of the diplomat he'd cut off.

"What are we going to get there?"

That did finally bring a small smile, not much more than an ironic quirk
of the lips.  "Files. Clues. Portents in pigeon entrails."

"You are really sick, you know that?"  Pendrell sat a little higher,
suddenly somehow feeling less bleak.  Feeling able to brace even the
nastiest topics.  "Who was going to do my autopsy?"

"I think it was going to be a combo effort, DC ME and our folks."
Mulder glanced around in a perfunctorily paranoid way.  "Whatever else
you can say about the FBI, when it comes to autopsies we look after our
own."

"Sick and morbid!"

"You brought it up."  The ironic quirk had turned into a sort of
subversive grin.  "I'm going to park down by the Corcoran.  Think you
can pretend to be a hungover passenger for a little while?"

"Yeah.  You can't park there -- fire hydrant."  Years of law abiding
driving fueled the stern stare he turned on his chauffeur.

Mulder sneered, but behaved, cruising around the block until he could
find a spot.  His parallel parking was extravagantly perfect.  "There.
Is that a parking job a fit for a boy scout badge?"

The snotty tone won a real grin from Pendrell, familiarity warming him.
"You could be a little closer to the curb but it's not bad."

Mulder snorted down that long nose and turned to get out.  The sudden
jolt of fear-nerves-apprehension-dread that hit Pendrell took him
completely by surprise and he'd grabbed Mulder's wrist before he knew
it, held it locked in his own chilly fingers.

Surprised hazel eyes came around to meet his.  Surprised and wary.
"What is it?"

Pendrell swallowed, trying to put his rattled thoughts in order then
took a shaky little breath.  "You won't be long?"

Whatever Mulder saw must have been familiar to him.  The tension bled
away in an instant and that professionally soothing, bland look that had
put Pendrell's back up earlier suddenly clicked into place, oddly
comforting now.  "No. I know what I'm looking for.  I won't be more than
twenty minutes."

The thought of Mulder in his office was -- terrifying.  Pendrell's
fingers tightened before he even knew it and he felt his eyes prickle
uncomfortably.  "I want you to promise me something, Mulder."

The hesitation that hung between them would have been an insult at any
other time.  Now, it leant weight to Mulder's words.  "If I can."

"If Scully's there, don't tell her."

He was so close he could see Mulder's pupils widen then go tight, see
the little shadow of an almost invisible frown between dark brown
eyebrows.  "I know she upset you, but Pen--Brian, Scully's my partner."

He couldn't stop it.  The prickle in his nose and his eyes blurred into
wet, into tears.  Pendrell blinked hard and fast, hating the feeling and
one ran down his cheek.  He sniffed and let go of Mulder's wrist, rubbed
at his treacherous nose.  "Please.  Don't tell her about me."

Mulder turned back slowly, sank into his seat, studying Pendrell.  He
supposed that the same look studied people whose children or parents or
-- anyone they loved were gone.  "I know she hurt you, Pendrell.  But
she would never hurt you on purpose.  Your . . . when you got shot, it
really shook her up.  Really upset her."

"Wh-when did she tell you?"  Trying so hard not to stammer.

"The night it happened."

He curled his lips between his teeth, bit down on them, then let them
go. "Mulder, how long ago was that?"

Blink. Blink. Blink.  He could see the wheels turning, see Mulder
considering the ramifications of the news.  "Four days ago."

Bad.  It made his heart hurt in his chest.  Made him feel small and
fragile.  But Mulder would go and he needed to make him understand.
"When she told you I was -- I was dead, what did she call me, Mulder?"

The frown deepened, worried and baffled.  "'Pendrell.'  No different
from me."

"But it is different from you, Mulder."  He could hear the tight sound
of his own tears in his voice and forced them to stay back, behind his
eyelids; but he couldn't keep the shaky little sound out of his words.
"You called me Brian.  You know my name.  Did she ever know my name?"

The realization and the truth were there, right behind Mulder's eyes, so
easy to read.  Caught on his lips with words he couldn't say.  Words
that would be either a painful truth or a lie too transparent to be
believed. Pendrell saved him from the choice, shaking his head to answer
his own question.  "She didn't know.  She never knew.  You did.  Why do
you know but she doesn't?"

"It's on your desk.  On a little plaque."  Mulder sounded almost
apologetic.

"And on the wall on my diplomas."  He sniffed in a loud, messy sounding
sniff but he didn't want to look around to find the leftover napkins
from lunch.  "And on the holiday cards I sent around every year."

"That's not fair, Pendrell," Mulder's tone was gentle.  "I've got an
eidetic memory."

"Don't lie for her."  He pursed his lips.  "I know you want to make me
feel better but I took a little psychology in college." Found a wan
grin. "And I read up when you kept spouting off those obscure facts like
a smartass and somebody said you had a photographic memory.  You don't
remember everything, Mulder. Only what you pay attention to.  And you
remembered my name."

Mulder stared at him, wearing a guilty expression that he hadn't earned.
Pendrell swallowed back the thick, sad feeling that was hurting his
throat. "Just, if you run into her, please don't tell her.  And please
hurry."

Mulder blinked, and nodded.  And then he was gone.


______________________________________


Coffee highs during college.  Nicotine from a brief, nasty flirtation
with cigarettes.  No-Doz.  None of them matched anxiety and fear for
keeping you wide awake and heart pounding.  It made finals and boards
and first day of school, all rolled into one, look like kindergarten. It
made getting shot a walk in the park.  It made the sight of Mulder's
lanky frame one of the sweetest things that Brian Pendrell had seen in
days.

The field agent opened the door and tossed in his briefcase with a
crisp, casual motion that utterly belied the leaden weight of the
thing.  "Ooof! What've you got in here?"

"Weighty and ponderous matters," quipped Mulder.  "See anyone
suspicious?"

"No, though a meter maid has been eyeing us off and on."

"We'll just have to live with breaking her heart."  Mulder peered over
his shoulder, then ripped his way into traffic, cutting off a gypsy cab
with an evil chuckle.

"Why do you do things like that?"  Pendrell couldn't decide if he was
just trying to distract himself or if he really wanted to know why
Mulder would taunt taxis for fun.

"They're pests.  They're maniacs.  I've been hit by at least one taxi
and I never miss a chance to cut them off now. One of these days I'll
get the guy who slammed me and broke my phone."

"That's terrible, Mulder.  Did he run a red light?"  Pendrell was
fiddling with Mulder's briefcase, trying to figure out the arcane locks.

"Nope."  Without even looking, quick fingers flicked them open.  "Don't
take those out in the car.  I was chasing a suspect and he sent me
flying and never even slowed down."

Pendrell knew his face had that dumb, blank look for a one-two-three
beat, but it took that long to figure out how to answer that.  "You ran
into traffic, Mulder.  What do you expect?"

"If no one hit the suspect then why should they hit me?"  Mulder raised
an eyebrow in that not-very-good-Spock-look he kept trying.  "Why do the
laws of probability favor the crooks?"

"Maybe because they go first?"

"It ought to work like dice where no one result changes the probability
of any other result coming out a certain way.  Stochastic probability
favors --"

"No-no-no!  You don't get to pull that one on me, Mulder.  You're a
psychologist and they don't make you people take REAL statistics,"
Pendrell felt the note of gleeful braggadocio creep into his voice
before he could stop it.  "Soft science."

"Squishy?"  This time Mulder actually brought it off, a perfect, ironic
lift of the brow that pulled his face into something like a rakish
devil's leer.

"So your bad guy got away?" Pendrell considered his deflection skills
expert, honed by years of surprise questions in class.

"Nope."  Mulder adjusted the rear view mirror for effect.  "Scully
chased him and lost him but he probably just turned into a pile of green
slime."

"Gr . . .sli . . . how did we get to green slime from a nice, normal
discussion of your bad traffic habits?" Pendrell shut the case again,
willing to let the files wait.

"You asked what happened to the bad guy and I told you," observed Mulder
in that innocuous voice. "A batch of other lowlifes involved in that
case, and some cases like it, turned into green slime, and Scully had a
hole in her shoe."

"A hole. Who were these people?"

Mulder considered the question, then shook his head. "Some people I
knew, Pendrell." His voice went distant. "Some I thought I might know
very well. I hate it when cliches turn out true all the time."

Pendrell picked up the dangling thought carefully. "Which cliches?"

"Book by its cover.  All that shit."  Mulder shifted in his seat.  Shook
his head.  "But I guess that fits just about everyone, doesn't it?"

"Maybe.  I . . ."  No.  He couldn't say he was just what he looked like.
Not anymore.  He sighed.  "Cheer up, Mulder.  At least I don't turn into
green slime."

_____________________________________


The second time around the block, Pendrell absently wondered why it had
to be today, on a cold, windy, April afternoon that Mulder's neighbors
decided to move.  Whatever the reason their timing stank.  As they kept
looking for a parking place, Mulder was only too happy to say so in
incredibly colorful and inventive terms.  Each time he turned west and
drove into the setting sun, he got a little more creative in his
interpretation of their parentage.  Pendrell listened with a sort of
detached awe.  "You were an eagle scout, weren't you Mulder?"

"What?"  The exasperated reply devolved into a snarl as he dove for a
parking spot only to find it was another fire hydrant.

"My cousin told me you have to pass profanity one, two and three to be
an eagle scout," replied Pendrell in a mild, gentle tone.  "I never
mastered the art."

The quizzical stare that dissected his defective past lasted through a
red light and a little into a green, until another DC resident
demonstrated his proficiency with his car horn.  Mulder startled and
whipped his car into another predatory circle, seeking a spot close
enough to be comfortable for a man who liked to sleep late.  "I was
never an eagle scout. Though, thank God, I did manage to claw my way out
of the ranks of the Weebelows.  You still have your uniform, Pendrell?"

The question could have been acid-dipped but it wasn't.  Pendrell
considered trash cans and grafitti as Mulder prowled the alley behind
his building for a spot.  "I don't have my uniform, but my ring's on my
dresser."  He suddenly looked back at Mulder and could not find a face
to hide behind, a way to blunt what he was feeling.  "I'm never getting
my life back, am I?"

Mulder pulled his car into a spot that was almost too narrow for it.
Pendrell watched him, wondering if he chose the spot to avoid the
question. He sat still behind the wheel just a moment too long,
expression a little too impassive.  "I hate these bastards, Brian. I
hate them more than I can tell you."

"I don't hate them."  Pendrell looked out, opened his door to the breath
of a cold, damp DC April.  "I just want to know why."


_____________________________


Having the Time of My Afterlife 04
Livengoo
Livengoo@tiac.net


________________________________________

Gloomy, yellowish light, and the elevator creaked and groaned for an
instant before it lurched into motion.  His own apartment building had
been new, clean, efficient and totally devoid of character.  Mulder's
had character, though it would be going too far to say it had charm.

Character and locks, though the locks did little good when the movers
had the front door propped open and were carrying large crates into the
front hall. Maybe it wasn't new neighbors, just new refrigerators
decided Pendrell.  Whatever it was, their thumping and crashing was
confined to the floor below Mulder's and that was a relief.  Neither of
them seemed to be in the mood for clatter.  Pendrell, at least, just
wanted to quietly retreat into a corner and try to understand how much
his life was really going to change.  The euphoria of the morning had
long since faded as he tried to grapple with both what he'd regained and
what he'd never have again.  He was alive, but he'd have been hard
pressed to say he'd come back to life.  At least not his life, the one
he'd spent his twenty-nine years building.

Mulder seemed to know the mood without even needing to ask.  He quietly
started a pot of coffee and went to hang up his suit coat.  Pendrell
hadn't really noticed his home much the night before.  There had been
other things on his mind, he wryly observed to himself.  When he really
looked, it wasn't messy, just cluttered.  Books and magazines stacked or
spread across the coffee table -- journals on psychology and police
science, academic journals on folklore and myth, all side by side with
cheap tabloids and conspiracy nut fantasy rags. Pendrell tipped some of
the books on their sides and read: Sexual Homicide: Patterns and
Motivations.  A coffee-stained and dog-eared copy of the Crime
Classification Manual.  He shuddered and missed the narrow focus of a
microscope, the tunnel vision of evidence analysis. The big picture
reminded him of one of the framed posters in Mulder's bedroom -- one by
Hieronymus Bosch, he thought.

"Find anything interesting?"  The dry, soft voice right behind him made
Pendrell jump.

"Not really.  You know, I never thought my liberal arts intro courses
would be useful until I started having to talk with you."

The thin smile he got in return perfectly matched how he felt.  Pendrell
took the cup of coffee Mulder offered him and looked around again.
"What's on the agenda tonight?"

"We take a look at what I might have on file, see if we can find anyone
else with your kind of resurrection on record.  Are you a field agent,
Pendrell?"  The question seemed almost an afterthought.  Mulder wandered
over to his phone.  It's message light blinked frantically.  "I'm half
tempted to just put masking tape over that . . ."

"You can't do that!"  Pendrell almost kicked himself at the scandalized
tone he heard in his own voice.  Puffed up a little and then deflated
under the amused look Mulder gave him.  "I mean, it might be somebody
about one of your cases.  Somebody important."

"Big foot . . . or maybe Gort."  But Mulder was grinning now.  Sticking
a finger in his free ear to block the racket of the movers - it sounded
like they were coming up floor by floor -- he hit the message button.
There was another crash out in the hall.  They'd be disappointed by
Mulder's fridge.  Pendrell wandered over to the window, studying the van
and wondering idly when the notice had gone around.  Glanced back to see
Mulder scowling at his phone, then felt a chill as the frown cleared,
smoothed to the blank look he'd started to associate with Mulder
calculating probabilities.  Somehow, when the agent dropped the phone he
just couldn't find it in himself to be surprised.

"We need to get out of here."  The tense, controlled note of Mulder's
voice was scarier than panic.  "You take the briefcase."

"What is it?"  Whispering, not really sure why but whispering.

Mulder shook his head and scooped his holster off his desk, slipping it
on with quick, efficient motions.  "Maybe a hunch.  Tell you later.  Get
your coat!"  That was a snap, angry, but not really directed at him.

Pendrell shrugged into his coat, hugging the briefcase close as Mulder
flipped the fingerlatch free and loosened his gun. Weapon, Pendrell
reminded himself.  They always called it a weapon.  He tried to stay
close without getting in the way but even so almost bumped into the
field agent when Mulder stopped with his hand on the doorknob.  The
thumping in the hall didn't cover his soft curse.

He spun in place and headed back, towards the bedroom.  Pendrell gasped
as long fingers grabbed his arm, dug in and dragged him as fast as
Mulder's long legs could carry them. His voice was grim.  "Keep hold of
the briefcase.  We're going down the back."

"The elevator would be faster . . ." Pendrell knew his offered route was
only tentative.  He watched nervously as Mulder cocked his head,
listening to the comforting crash of moving men in the hallway, and the
very uncomforting, much softer rattle of the door knob out there.

"Fuckfuckfuck . . ." a soft mantra as Mulder yanked at the painted,
jammed window in the bedroom.

"Mulder, are you sure something's wrong?"  Pendrell glanced back towards
the living room, wondering if they'd really heard the knob rattling.

"There weren't any crates in the truck, Pendrell. They weren't unloading
anything, but they've been carting stuff up from the third floor."

Perfunctory explanations broke off in a grunt and a crash as Mulder lost
patience with the window frame, drew his gun -- weapon, Pendrell
reminded himself, weapon -- and smashed the glass.  It shattered out,
pinging off the iron security grate.  He could hear Mulder panting as if
he'd run a mile, felt his own adrenaline singing in his blood at the
scratchy, rattling sound of metal on metal from the front hall.

"Shitshitshit. . ."  Mulder had changed his litany but the tone was the
same as he pawed through his keys, found the small, iron key for the
grille and shoved it into the little hole, twisting it and shoving the
grate out on its hinges.  Chain links snapping against chain links
should have been soft, almost lost in the sounds from the hallway but
Pendrell heard it when the chain lock broke and, to judge by the way
Mulder froze then lunged out onto the fire escape, so did he.

"C'mon-c'mon Pendrell!"  The taller man grabbed his shoulders and yanked
him out of the window frame, knocking broken glass around and slicing a
stinging cut through Pendrell's jeans.

"I am I am!  Just leggo!"

Mulder shoved him past and onto the rickety, steel stairs.  "Go!  Go!
Get to the car."

Their feet pounded, thundered really, down metal.  He heard it when
Mulder stopped, heard the shot squeezed off, so loud it drowned out his
footsteps, drowned out his pulse, swept everything else aside.  He
twisted, looking over his shoulder then Mulder was there pushing him,
urging him back down to where the fire stairs ended twelve feet above
the alley. "Jumpjumpjump!"

He'd have loved to say something, wanted to remember what Butch Cassidy
had said, but couldn't, could only shudder at the tickle of anticipation
between his shoulder blades and flinch as another gun cracked and
something snapped past, stingingly close.  Jumping was easy with that
sound in his ears. Hitting the ground and rolling on the cardboard and
trash, arms wrapped tight around the briefcase and looking up to see
Mulder drop from the fire stairs, with his coat sailing out like
Batman's cape for an instant before he hit, too, grunting with impact
and then scrambling onto his feet. Another booming crack and something
kicked up in front of them.

Pendrell wanted to stop.  Wanted to put his hands in the air.  Actually
balked for an instant until the flat of Mulder's hand practically lifted
him and sent him flying over the hood of the Ford.  Another shot
whistled past, slamming into the ground in front of the car.  Open
doors, open doors, thank you God and any saints that are there and real
Pendrell couldn't even think in real words but he could throw himself
into the passenger seat and did.  Mulder was backing out and clear
before Pendrell even had his door shut, grim in the security lights
shining into the alley.

Somewhere, a terrifyingly long way away, sirens wailed but here, all
they could hear was the car and their own breathing.  The gunshots had
stopped.

______________________________


 Brian Pendrell was still shaking.  He tried to cover it by clutching
the briefcase more tightly, but he knew.  Fingertips gripped tight
against leather and numb with shocky cold would never be able to stay
still and calm in his lap.  His teeth ached from how hard he clenched
them.

Mulder looked like he always looked.  Maybe a little more irritated, if
Pendrell really tried to see it.  A little tattered, with his coat
sleeve ripped on glass.  If he really listened he thought he could hear
teeth grinding, which made sense.  Muscles flickered along the agent's
jawline, then suddenly smoothed as he sighed.  "Pendrell, we're going to
need money."

"Uh huh."  Well. Of course they'd need money.  You always needed money
when people shot at you.  Pendrell shook his head fast, replayed the
thought and it still didn't make any sense to him.  "Mulder.  People
were just shooting at us.  How can you think about money?"

"I can think about it because I don't like going out in the open where
they can shoot at us again."  The reply was maddeningly calm.  "We're
going back to the Gunmen's office. I want you to stay in the car and be
ready to get out if anything looks bad."

"What?  WHAT?"  He did let go of the briefcase at last, fingers warmed
by the sudden burst of anger.  He hadn't been so angry since . . . he
had NEVER been so angry.  "We're going WHERE?  Look, I don't know the
first thing about your kind of case, Mulder, but I do know that when
somebody shoots at you the first thing you do is go to the police.
That's why we have police!  It's not why we have conspiracy buffs or
tabloids or any of your other silly -- silly --" he spluttered.

"I think 'asshole friends' is the expression you're looking for.  Or
maybe weird friends if you're taking the polite route."  Mulder's
autopilot humor didn't make Pendrell feel any better.  Not when most of
his attention was on his rearview mirrors and he kept taking unnecessary
turns onto side streets.

"If we need money stop at a bank machine and then we go to the police,
Mulder, and we call in and Mr. Skinner gets agents out to help us and
--" His voice seemed abruptly loud when Mulder pulled to the curb and
put the car in park. The shadowy face that turned towards his was
serious, intent.

"We can't do that, Pendrell.  Remember what I told you this afternoon?
We show our faces and you, at least, disappear like Jimmy Hoffa."

"But the police were coming to help us."  Pendrell almost spluttered
that, too.  But even as he said it he knew he just wasn't sure anymore,
not sure that he trusted the police.  Not sure who he trusted.

"Why wasn't your shooting in the papers, Pendrell?"  The gentle question
must have been rhetorical because Mulder went on.  "And why did they try
not to hit us?  They were shooting over our heads. Why the whole charade
about movers?  Unless there was something they were there to move."

Boxes. "they were just about six feet long," he blurted.  "The boxes."

Mulder nodded.  "I don't know why they want you, Pendrell.  Oh, I know
some of it, but not enough.  And I don't know why they didn't try to
kill us both.  But Skinner left a half dozen messages on my machine
asking why I was at Quantico the other night, and whether I knew
anything about a theft at the morgue."

"Skinner?"  Pendrell's aghast whisper barely got past the chalky, choked
feeling in his throat.  "A.D. Skinner's in on it?"

A dry chuckle eased his worry a little.  Just a little.  "I don't think
so.  Or not the way you think.  But I wasn't thinking -- I'd have
remembered the parking lot records.  The guard at the gate.  What
Skinner figured out a lot of other people could figure out too."

Such a wistful, bitter note to his voice.  Pendrell leaned forward.
"Why are we here, Mulder?"

"Because I've made too many stupid mistakes already."  The seat belt
buckle clicked when he opened it.  "I just didn't think about how big
this had to be.  We can't show up at an ATM, Pendrell.  The first time I
use my card or yours they'll be on us.  No credit cards.  No hotel
phones. Nothing."

"Oh God."  Breathed. More of a prayer than an oath.

Mulder turned, looked at him carefully and smiled.  "Don't look so
worried. I've done this a few times before.  You get better with
practice.  When I get out, you get in the driver's seat and keep an eye
out.  Leave the engine running."

"I won't leave you."  He was proud that he kept the chill that shriveled
his stomach out of his voice.

It didn't matter much.  Mulder leaned down to look back into the car at
him.  "Yes.  You will.  You have to.  Here."  He tugged the briefcase
out of Pendrell's hands.  Pulled out a bundle of black nylon and glossy
steel. "You need to carry this."

Brian Pendrell stared at it.  "I can't use that."

The frown that met his words wasn't puzzled or inquisitive.  It was
ice-cold irritation.  "You're a field agent.  Take it."

"No. I'm not."  Pendrell leaned forward and hissed the words.  "Not
everyone who works for the FBI is a field agent, Agent Mulder.  I'm a
lab specialist.  I'm not --"

The gun was shoved into his hands anyway.  Gun, damn it, not weapon.
"If you need it, this is the safety." The tap of a finger on repellant
metal. "Point it. Hold your breath. Let it out and squeeze, don't pull,
the trigger."

"I won't need it."  Sullen and frustrated.  "And I won't leave you."

"I hope you won't need to do either."  Mulder gave him a sharp nod.
"Now get behind the wheel."

Pendrell's ears popped when Mulder slammed the door, but he did it.
Scooted over the center doo-hickey where Mulder kept change and
notebooks and who-knew-what.  By the time he pulled the seat up to where
he could reach the pedals comfortably, he couldn't see a thin man in a
black coat anymore. Couldn't see anything but shadowy shapes that loomed
under streetlights, ghastly in the jaundiced, yellow light of sodium
vapor.

______________________________________________


There are times that time stops meaning anything.  Brian Pendrell stared
up at the orangey clouds scudding over Washington's sky and wished he
could see stars.  Wished that minutes were only minutes and not ageless,
jittery periods of watching over his shoulder, trying to be invisible in
a nondescript but not-cheap car in a very nondescript, very cheap part
of town.  Wished he didn't have a heavy, ugly lump of killing steel in
his lap, but Mulder had told him to keep it and he'd do that for now.

Wished, most of all, that life was normal and he was sitting at home,
warm and bored.  Except that, deep down, where he never lied, he knew
that for the falsehood it was.

The car was chilly and he was sick with nerves but he was there, more
alive than he could ever remember.  There and waiting and hearing sounds
he'd never heard before, seeing the delicate colors of night that he'd
never noticed before.  He'd never seen beyond the strict dichotomy of
day and night. Your path is in the headlights and everything else is
"other."  Except that now he was other, with a vengeance.  Not alive.
Not dead.  Not a criminal but not obeying the law either and he could
just forget about the rules.  Pendrell straightened a bit in his seat
and peered more closely into the dark.  When the lean shadow drifted out
of the deeper nighttime tangle that was just abandoned cars by day,
Pendrell felt relief but also, surprisingly, did not feel fear go away.
He didn't have to feel fear go away - it hadn't been there to begin
with.

_________________________________________


Having the Time of My Afterlife 05
By Livengoo
Livengoo@tiac.net

___________________

"Welcome to Motel Hell."  Mulder muttered,pulling into the driveway of
what advertised itself as a motel.  He could have been talking to
himself for all the inflection in his voice.

"Why do I get the feeling that you've polished this routine so often it
bores even you?" Pendrell smiled a little, taking the sting off it.

The look he got conveyed a wealth of weary resignation packaged for
maximum effect.  "You're probably spoiled.  Techies always get spoiled
because they get to stay in places like Holiday Inn on convention
rates."

"Hyatt.  Or Sheraton.  The Association of American Lab Geeks wouldn't be
caught dead in a Holiday Inn."  Pendrell tried to recall the last time
he'd let anyone call him a geek without bristling, let alone having
called himself one. New perspectives and, if nothing else, at least he
got to smile more often.

"I'll remember that when I hit my mid-life crisis and reconsider my
career choices."  Mulder yawned and got out of the car.

"Hey!"  From the look on Mulder's face, Pendrell had sounded more
alarmed than he'd intended.  "I just -- you're not going to sneak off or
anything are you?"

This time the weary resignation only barely covered a grin, as if
Pendrell had walked into a long-running joke.  "I won't ditch you like a
bad date.  But even flea traps discourage squatting, Pendrell.  I'll be
back with the key."

Key.  Singular.  He sighed and couldn't decide if he was relieved or
nervous.  On the whole, maybe a hair more relieved than nervous.  And
not really quite sure why.  Or maybe just not comfortable looking at
why.  He'd think about it later.  For now, he just leaned back, let his
neck go loose and watched Mulder slump against the counter in the
garish, too-bright lobby of the motel.  Pendrell couldn't recall
noticing such a thing, noticing that a man might be tired from the way
he stood, without even seeing his face.  He wondered for a moment if
he'd always split humans into "people to be noticed" and "men."

Well.  He noticed men now.  Noticed the drab clerk who seemed irritated
to have to work at this time of night, and who made Mulder wait while he
counted the cash for the room one bill at a time.  Noticed the field
agent's restive shifting from one foot to the other, the way his
shoulders bowed just a little more.  Pendrell shook his head, looking
out at a barren parking lot where broken glass sparkled under
corpse-blue streetlights, gleaming with a strange, sad beauty that would
fade under day's light.  In the dark, he could barely see scaling paint
and crumbling concrete.  The chiaroscuro of shadow and form gave him a
landscape of Mondrian shapes in cool tones.

The door opening snapped him around so fast his neck cricked and he
winced at it, and the blare of the dome light.  "Woolgathering?"
Mulder's voice was raspy with exhaustion.

"Just thinking about the night and how lonely this place is.  And how
beautiful nighttime can be."

A warm, weary chuckle brought a smile to his lips, put a gentle, human
touch on the mechanical rumble of the ignition.  "If you're lucky you
stop actually seeing these places for what they are and just get it over
with."

"No. No, really, Mulder.  I was always so busy getting home and getting
on with my life, with being who I thought I was, that I never really
looked around me.  It's beautiful out here at night.  You hear things,
see things . . . "  The car pulled into a parking space at the end of
the motel row.

Mulder's dark eyes lingered on his face, and he nodded as he shut the
engine off.  "Yeah.  Sometimes I still see it.  Sometimes it scares me
when I see it."

"Why?"  Pendrell picked up the briefcase, looking around before he
remembered there wasn't anything else.  Mulder was quiet, leading them
to a shabby door and opening it.  Pendrell almost asked again, then
trusted Mulder to come back to it.

The taller man pulled his coat back, off his shoulders and didn't take
it off so much as just let it fall from his arms to pool on the floor at
his back.  He kept the arch of his spine, kneading his lower back, eyes
shut. The lashes were black against dark, purpled circles of exhaustion
and Pendrell winced guiltily, then wondered why.  He hadn't slept at the
morgue exactly, and restful was one thing he'd never claim death had
been.

Mulder slumped forward and turned his head, gave Pendrell a gentle,
threadbare smile.  "It scares me when I feel so at home in the night, in
places like this, that I think I've forgotten how to be anywhere real,
or how to have something of my own."

Pendrell blinked hard, thinking of two ruined homes, places that were no
longer safe or sound.  Mulder turned away and slouched towards the
bathroom.  "Turn on the TV, okay Pendrell?"

___________________________________

The news didn't cover things like refrigerator delivery men going to the
wrong apartment, or even things like broken security chains and gun
battles in Washington, DC alleys.  Mulder lay sprawled across a double
bed, knees bent and laptop resting against his thighs.  His glasses
reflected the television's image when Pendrell looked at him.  "I wish
you had two of those."

"Sorry."  Mulder's mouth quirked in a small grin.  "Believe me, I would
share the workload if I could."

"Why don't you?"  Pendrell hitched himself up on his elbows.  "I'm not
sleepy.  I didn't do the driving."

Mulder didn't so much turn his head as let it fall sideways.  "Bullshit,
Pendrell.  You're wiped.  You just don't know it yet.  Besides, I know
what I'm looking for."

"What do you have there?"  Pendrell sat on the edge of his bed, resting
his elbows on his knees and studying Mulder's face.  "What are you
looking for?"

"Ah . . .  The X-Files weren't very portable so we commandeered the
scanner one weekend."  He didn't need to explain who 'we' was.  Pendrell
didn't miss the lonely, vulnerable expression in his eyes.  "We scanned
them and put them on these."

"Jazz disks.  Nice.  I know how to use them too."  Pendrell stifled the
desire to match Mulder's yawn.

"I know."  The quick snort of laughter was familiar.  It sent a twinge
of memory through Pendrell, recalling that not-quite-laugh in his lab,
in the halls of the Hoover building.  "I'm looking for the cases indexed
as resurrections and for how they dovetail with the abduction and
conspiracy cases.  Pendrell, I remember most of the names involved in
these cases.  There are some things you just won't know how to look
for."

The gentle denial didn't sting.  Much.  "Okay.  So maybe I can't
remember all the names and I don't have a photographic memory --"

"Eidetic."

"But Mulder, sooner or later I need to know what's in those files.  I
need to learn that stuff.  Don't I?"

"Do you, Pendrell?  Once we get you past this mess it won't matter to
you. You can go back to your life."

Pendrell let him finish, forced himself not to rise to the practiced
resignation he heard.  When he answered he kept his voice low and calm.
"That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in my entire life,
Mulder.  Something strange reached out and touched me, and it's still
looking for me, but even when it stops that doesn't change what's
happened.  Something I can't explain happened to me, and the odds are
that it's happened to someone else."

"A lot of someone elses."  Mulder nodded.

"I can't explain it.  But only a fool would deny that it's happened."
He saw Mulder's wince, gentled his tone even more.  "Or a coward.
Someone terrified by it.  I need to understand it, Mulder.  Just because
I can't understand it with what I know now, doesn't mean I won't be able
to if I learn more."

"'Just because science can't explain it right now, doesn't mean science
won't be able to explain it.'" Pendrell could almost hear the quotation
marks, and didn't really wonder who had said that to him.  Only wondered
what had happened to that faith and sense of wonder.

"That's right."  He told Mulder.  "And science can't grow without
observations.  Observed phenomenon.  Believed, supported, phenomenon."

"So you want to join the X-Files?"  The ironic lift of Mulder's eyebrows
tried to communicate more than Pendrell knew how to understand.  He
wished -- then quelled the frustration of knowing he was seeing a
language to which he did not yet have the Rosetta Stone.

"I want to know what happened, Mulder.  And why.  Is that so much to
ask?"

The slow, assessing look that judged him gave way to grudging
admiration. Pendrell let his intent study of Mulder's face relax into a
smile as the laptop was yielded, turned to face him.  "You win.  I can
barely read the print anyway."

Pendrell wasn't sure why he felt relieved, and he didn't worry about it
as he reached for the laptop.  "I'll take good care of it, Mulder.  You
get some sleep."

He settled back happily enough, wishing Mulder good dreams even as he
dove into reports of nightmares.  Brian Pendrell had never worked in the
field, or had much contact with the victims of the crimes the FBI
investigated -- his specialty was the tiny bits of evidence left behind,
the little parts that added up to a whole in someone else's analysis,
someone else's job.

Mulder's job.

The little bits here added up to something that reason and "fact" could
not support.  Added up to things that made no sense in a sensible,
logical world.  Kidnappers did not abduct victims and return them with
bits of metal in their bodies and fractured memories in their heads.
Extortionists did not rob the locked safes of killers, leaving behind
only pictures of hazy, incorporeal villains.  Serial killers did not
leave dead bodies sucked dry of fluids and trapped in insectile
sarcophagi.  But something did.  Something had.  And Mulder had
weathered disdain and disgust, danger and ostracization to bring back
the best information he could.  The best guesses he could make.

Pendrell found himself sagging into sleep, snapping awake to find the
computer screen inhabited by cartoon aliens, the television set silently
tolling the call of tragedies across the globe.  He looked over, smiled
a little at Mulder, who was huddled to the far side of a bed more than
large enough for him, splayed across the side as if he were sleeping on
his couch. Yawning, Pendrell shut down the thin, sleek laptop and
unplugged its electrical umbilical cord from the wall.  It fit snugly
back into Mulder's briefcase, safe and sound with room for a bit more
left over.  He admired the economy of Mulder's piracy, the efficiency in
taking what he needed.

In the dark, the television's light flickered erratically.  He might
have turned it off, but it was somehow comforting.  A touch of home in a
place that smelled like anything but.  It didn't help, not much.
Pendrell turned and tossed, trying to find a comfortable way to lie in a
bed that didn't have his body's shape worn into the mattress.  There
wasn't one.  It took him hours to decide that, and the clock radio's
numbers told him of a time past two-thirty in the morning before he gave
up and lay there, remembering every detail of his own home, where he'd
left things, and where men he'd never met or let in had left them.
Shivered at how naked he felt at the memory, how violated.  He wondered
how Mulder did it, leaving his apartment so quickly and sleeping so
soundly in this strange, unfriendly place.

And Mulder was sleeping soundly, more or less.   He found himself
watching, studying the man in the other bed.  He lay still, shuddering
sometimes, muttering under his breath, but never rolled away from the
edge over which he'd sprawled.  Pendrell envied that, turned away.  And
found himself turning back because, in all these strange and unfamiliar
things, Fox Mulder was neither.  Mulder wasn't truly known but he was .
. . a piece of Pendrell's life.  Something he knew.

Three in the morning.  Three and his body was chilled and lonely, heart
sick inside him with the hollow sense of loss.  His own and the loss
he'd cost his companion.  And the only comfort was the sound of soft,
steady breathing from the bed next to his.  He finally couldn't make
himself stop, couldn't stay there anymore.

Brian Pendrell crawled carefully, gently into Fox Mulder's bed and moved
over under the covers, just close enough to feel the other man's heat,
smell his scent, close enough to be within the comfort of his presence.
Mulder started.  Pendrell felt him tense.  "It's okay.  I'm sorry, I'll
-"

"What is it, Pendrell?"  The sleepy voice was ripe with relief, the body
relaxing fast.

"I'm sorry Mulder.  I'll go away."  Scooting back, horrified at himself.
The light of the television blurred in treacherous tears and he didn't
see the hand that grabbed his wrist.

"No."  Mulder rolled over, looking at him through half-open eyes.  "What
is it?"

He couldn't make himself pull his hand away.  "It's -- it's stupid,
Mulder.  I just -- I just can't sleep.  I can't sleep and I keep
remembering all the stuff and remembering that life where I tried so
hard to be what I thought I was and I never really realized what a
little person I am inside it all."

Sleepy eyes blinked at him.  Sleepy words, honest ones, answered him.
"You're not a little person Pendrell.  You're a brave guy.  You don't
just let things happen to you."

"Brave?  You think so?"

Dazed blinks.  "Yeah.  I do.  What'd you want?"

He was torn between backing away, and moving close into the warmth of
someone familiar, someone who thought he was brave.  Whispered words
loud in the dead of night.  Words more honest than he'd thought he could
say.  "I just wanted something familiar Mulder.  I wanted something that
I knew from the person I've always been.  I just wanted to sleep close
to you."

The slow, sleepy smile that met his words eased him and made him blush
all at once.  "Tha's funny, Pendrell.  Kinda sweet.  I don' mind, but
don't blame me if I kick you."

"I won't.  I won't."  Blinking away the nervous, embarrassed tears from
his eyes.  Mulder's body was warm, smelling of man more strongly than he
had in the car.  The heat of sleep washed the space under the blankets
as Pendrell gave in to temptation and huddled in close again.  This
time, Mulder didn't tense, just breathed away in the not-quite peace of
his dreams.  And in the warmth of his body, Pendrell joined him there
soon enough.

__________________________________


 "Oh SHIT!"  Pendrell woke with a start at the muffled curse and the
sudden rush of cold air on his poor, sleep-sensitive body.  A dazed
curse rose from the floor.  "Shit."

"Mulder?"  He peeked over the side and winced.  Mulder, sprawled in a
tangle of sheets and blankets, looked blearily up at him.  Pendrell
gulped.  "Are you okay?"

Blink. Blink.  The man on the floor puffed a rueful breath and gave him
a thin smile.  "Sorry I startled you.  I'm not used to people cuddling
up to me.  Especially not people with a hard on."

"Oh. OH!"  Pendrell scooted back into the middle of the bed, face hot.
"I'm so sorry.  I really am.  I didn't mean -"

"No."  A languid hand waved over the edge of the bed.  Mulder's voice
was tinged with amusement.  "That first-thing-in-the-ay-em woody's hard
to avoid, Pendrell.  Don't let it bug you.  I just forgot that you were,
um . . ."

"Using you as a teddy bear,"  Pendrell completed, mentally kicking
himself again.

"Hey, don't do that."  Mulder sat up, resting his chin on arms folded on
the edge of the mattress.  "Pendrell, you've been through a lot and
there's a lot more to go.  I'd be really nervous about you if you DIDN'T
act rattled and lonely.  Did you ever go out in the field?"

The non-sequitur felt weird, dj vu jarring oddly in the changed
surroundings since the last time he'd asked that question. Pendrell
glanced around almost superstitiously.  "I'm not a field agent. I mean,
I wasn't.  I was on the technical staff, not an agent."

"Ah."  Mulder nodded as if that answered more than he'd asked. It
grated.

"You know, Mulder, this is all hard enough without you playing hocus
pocus magic parlor tricks."  The smile that answered him nettled even
more.  "Maybe your X-Files haunted house owners like feeling like you
know more than they do, Mulder and maybe the act makes you feel better
but it doesn't make ME feel better and I wish I wasn't here and I just
want to go home and have my life back and --" and his nose was running
and his words were starting to come so fast they tumbled all over each
other and stopped making sense but he was still making little, choked
noises in the back of his throat.  Itchy, painful tears blurred his
vision and he scrubbed at them, hating himself for what he knew looked
like a little kid's moves.  What one girlfriend once told him looked
like a little kid.  She'd thought it was sweet.  Two months later she
left him for somebody she said acted like a man.

The hand that squeezed his shoulder made it harder.  No.  Made it
impossible to hold onto the feeling that was exploding in his chest.
For a raw second Pendrell hated Mulder, wanted to scream at Mulder to
just get away, go chase ghosts or killers or little green men.  Then
another sob shook him hard, harder than he could control, and the hand
on his shoulder was the only thing holding him together, the voice in
his ear the only one that still spoke to him, that still knew his name.

"It's okay, Pendre-- It's okay Brian.  It's okay.  I know.  I know."

"No you don't."  Or that's what he wanted to say, wanted words without
hiccups tripping them up.  "No you don't know how I feel."

The hand went away and that was even worse.  Pendrell pulled his knees
up double, grinding his face hard against them as if the pressure could
hold back tears and the helpless, horrible feeling that he would never
be able to find his way back to a life he knew how to live.  Then the
hands were back, pulling his own away from where they were wrapped
around his calves and pushing a flimsy plastic cup against his palms.
He sucked in a noisy, wet sniffle and lifted his face to meet Mulder's
worried, sympathetic stare.  The cup almost collapsed between shaky,
uncertain fingers but the water tasted good and it gave him something
small and solid to focus on.  "Thank you."

Mulder hesitated, watching him a moment longer, then nodded and turned
away.  He was noisier than he needed to be as he rooted through his
briefcase and found a disposable razor.  "You know, I used to keep a
spare suit and stuff in the trunk, then I got tired of having them smell
like whatever had been in there."

"Oh?"  Pendrell was grateful for the conversational tone, the sudden
tangent into harmless bitching and moaning.  "So what does this mean?"

"It means I'm condemned to wear the same suit twice in a row, and we're
condemned to shop in some godforsaken Walmart or whatever other strip
mall passes for civilization in Ohio."  The agent's voice echoed
slightly from tile as he took over the bathroom.

Pendrell drank a little more, dipped his fingertips into it and stroked
cool, clean water across his face. It was good, even if it didn't taste
like the water at home.  He sighed.

The shower's white noise reminded him of a pressing need.  Pendrell
heaved himself back off the bed and padded into the bathroom, blushing
from habit as he took care of the piss-hard-on Mulder had so graciously
excused.  Pendrell wished he himself could excuse it as blithely but
found the target practice soothingly familiar.  Adjusting his Y-fronts,
he addressed the blank faade of cheap shower curtain. "What are we
doing, Mulder?"

"What?"  Mulder leaned out to look at him.  His soap-lather-beard made
Pendrell laugh even as he winced at the thought of shaving with the
stuff.

"You can tell me later."  Another day in the same clothes.  He was
grateful they'd stopped at his place before they'd been sent running the
day before.  At least if they had to be on the run, he was re-wearing
his own clothes instead of Mulder's cast-offs.  "Can I use your razor
when you're done with it?"

"I dunno, Pendrell," his voice called, blurred by water and tile
refractions.  "The last time I loaned my razor to anyone I got it back
as a weapon for blunt trauma."

"Let me guess.  Scully did her legs with it."  CNN still reeled endless
disasters locally and abroad, but no sign of Mulder's apartment.  No
sadly optimistic pictures of missing men or dramatic stories of FBI
searches.  Pendrell swallowed hard and held onto his feelings tight,
relieved to have the banter as cover.  "Didn't your father teach you
that, Mulder?  In my family, the men always taught that to their sons.
My mom got stuck with the birds and the bees talk, and my dad told me
never to loan my razor to my sister."

Mulder stood in the bathroom door, toweling his hair dry.  A shadow hung
in his eyes but his mouth quirked as he answered.  "Nope.  I guess my
dad never bought the paternal guide book, Pendrell.  I had to learn it
the hard way and I paid the price in blood and little, tiny bits of
toilet paper."

"You have my condolences."  Pendrell nodded solemnly.  "I broke up with
my second girlfriend when she kept using my razor."

"Any blood shed?"  Mulder's tone was absent, attention fixed by the
television.

"Not really.  Though my college roommate did think that was where I got
my dimple.  There's nothing there about us, Mulder, you don't need to
keep watching."

"I know.  That's what I'm worried about."  He kept half an eye on the
set as he dropped the towel from around his waist and starting climbing
back into stale clothing.

Pendrell tried not to watch, invoking the rituals of high school locker
room etiquette and focusing narrowly on the television set.  It was . .
. mortifying to be sitting there with another man naked in the small
motel room.  And, if he was really honest with himself, it wasn't
embarrassing because he didn't want to see Mulder, but because he did.
Pendrell shifted uncomfortably and tore himself away from the TV set,
gathering his clothes and scuttling past Mulder into the bathroom.  He
spent a long time in the shower.  The hot water felt good and even cheap
soap was slick enough for what he needed it for.

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