From: Kate Rickman Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 15:47:27 -0500 Subject: Summer (1/1) Kate Rickman Source: xff Reply To: kate.rickman@mindspring.com TITLE: Love for all Seasons VI: Reluctantly, Summer AUTHOR: Kate Rickman E-MAIL: kate.rickman@mindspring.com DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, archive OK CLASSIFICATION: MSR RATING: R SPOILERS: None DISCLAIMER: Just the wall, not the bricks. SUMMARY: Mulder copes with separation from Scully. AUTHOR'S NOTE: It seems most logical to me that the *Biogenesis*-*Amor Fati* story arc continued unbroken with all segments occurring within a few weeks of each other at most. Since there's got to be a gap in time somewhere and since *Amor Fati* occurred after the World Series, I've decided to move those episodes into late summer/early fall, and use early summer for a story of my own. ORIENTATION: Stand-alone story, like all segments of this series. All you need to know is that Mulder and Scully became lovers in Part I; subsequent parts--like this one--explore facets of their new relationship. Love for All Seasons is and will be: I. Summer into Fall--archived at my site. II. Coloring Fall--archived at my site. III. Winter Solstice--COMING later--I'm stuck in edit, ack! IV. Winter into Spring--COMING later IV. Leaves of Spring--archived at my site. ***V. Reluctantly, Summer***this story VI. more, more, more--eventually Other parts of this story and my other fiction can be accessed at http://kate.rickman.home.mindspring.com/ Once again, thank you for reading! *** June 28, 1999 The Lone Gunmen's Den "...and the best thing? We caught the guy red-handed. Secret government documents stuffed in his mattress, under the rug in the living room, and in zip-lock bags floating in the toilet reservoir" Byers concludes with a flourish. "We're still sifting through the papers," Langly's voice slides up the scale, perilously close to an adolescent break. "We'll be putting it out for the next six months!" "At least!" Frohike jumps in. "The Area 51 stuff alone will fill three issues." The guys' voices buzz in the background of my thoughts. Scully's been sent off on Bureau business and, for once, I can't work at her side. I'm left sitting in DC like a good wife, waiting for her to come home again. Lonely. Frustrated. I see her face reflected in every window, hear the sound of her voice in my ears, feel her heat next to me in our empty bed every night. I need... "Earth to Mulder." Frohike summons me back to the conversation. "I'm sorry. What?" Contrite. "Area 51?" Byers dangles the holy grail in the air between us. "Documents proving that our government mined alien technology for development of new aircraft over the past fifty years?" He waits expectantly for my excited response. "Cool," I manage. "Cool? Is that all?" Byers lifts an eyebrow. Frohike probes me with a squinty stare. Langley stares at me blankly. I scrub my face with both hands. "I guess I'm not all here today." "AWOL, man," Langley agrees. "You got it bad," Frohike pats my arm sympathetically, looking more than a little envious. Byers shakes his head mournfully. "Another one bits the dust." I smile weakly, remembering that I bit the dust over six years ago when a rookie agent with red hair and a headful of brains walked into my office and swept me off my feet with the first words she spoke. My cell phone interrupts those thoughts. I find it in my pocket and thumb the switch. "Mulder." "Mulder, it's me." Scully's voice echoes in my ear. Scully! "Where are you?" "Kosovo..." Static breaks over her words, washing them away. "What?" I shout into the distortion. "...wanted to let you know...on the news." News? "Know what?" "...fine," she says, the line clearing suddenly. "I just caught some shrapnel." "Shrapnel!" I shout into the phone. The guys exchange worried looks. "From what?" "From the..." her voice fades into the distance, then surges back "... mine." "From your what?" Damn this connection. "It's OK, Mulder. I'm OK. I just wanted to let you know." Know what? "Scully!" I shout into the phone as the line goes dead. "Shit!" I bounce the plastic case off my forehead in frustration. "Mulder," Byers hunches over his computer, tapping at the keyboard. "Here it is." Byers, bless him, has hacked the DOD again. I read the bulletin over his shoulder. "Flash Alert. 28 June 1999 Pristina, Kosovo. 14:22 PM local time. While excavating a mass burial site near Suva Reka, a land mine..." "*Land* mine." Christ! That's what she tried to tell me. "...exploded, seriously injuring two members of the 481st US Army construction battalion and killing one member of an FBI forensic investigation team." That's why she called. She didn't want me to hear that an FBI forensic specialist had been killed and not know whether it was her. My heart resumes its steady thud in my chest and I continue reading. "Several other workers from the joint team suffered minor injuries from flying shrapnel." The bulletin continues, but I sag against the table in relief. Shrapnel, I think. "Jesus," I say, thinking of Scully. "Chill, Mulder. She's OK." Frohike claps a hand on my shoulder. "Yeah but what about tomorrow and the next day and the day after that?" There's so much work--important work--that needs to be done over there, but I can't help but think of the live ordnance laying around, waiting to explode under Scully's tiny foot. "She's probably in more danger driving on the Beltway at rush hour," Byers tries to reason with me. "Not to mention her continuing risk of alien abduction,' Langley adds. I chuckle despite myself. "Here." Frohike presses something into my hand. An envelope. Fat. "I think you need this more than I do." "What..." is it, I start to ask. Frohike waves away my question. "Just go home, open a beer, lay on the couch and look at what's inside." He gives me a push toward the door. "Go." So I go. I go to Scully's apartment instead of mine. Big surprise. One step inside and she is all around me. Her smell. Her things. The four walls of Scully's apartment embrace me loosely as I lay the mysterious packet on the coffee table. I toe off my shoes and pad into the kitchen to brew a pot of the special herbal tea that also smells and tastes like Scully to me. With a steaming mug in one hand, I open the windows and let the early summer heat flow inside, bringing the fresh smell of growing things with it. From the comfort of the couch, I open the envelope and slide the contents onto my hand. Photographs. A whole stack of them. I riffle through the pictures randomly. Scully in a dark suit. Scully looking through a microscope. Scully laughing, a notebook in one hand, Byers looking over her shoulder. My word. I sit back and watch sunlight flicker through the blinds. Frohike has given me his secret stash. I sip my tea and fluff the pillow then lay back and kick my feet over the arm, relaxing into the cushions. I leaf through the pile of snapshots until I come to a picture of Scully and me. I remember this one. Blue Ridge Mountains near Crabtree Falls. Easter weekend 1999. We needed all four eyes and frequent reference to the GPS coordinates to find the dirt road and the Gunmen's base of operations in the woods at the end of it. The guys had called with reports of mysterious blue lights floating across the night sky. Scully favored swamp gas, I favored aliens, and the Gunmen were certain they'd seen secret government trials of experimental aircraft the night before. The photo shows Scully on her knees, hands full of slime, a smear across her cheekbone. I'm blotting the filth with my handkerchief as Frohike snaps the shot. "Hey! Aren't you supposed to record supernatural phenomena with that thing?" Frohike chuckled in the charming dirty-old-man way of his. "I've got a few extra frames to burn." He opened his coat to reveal six canisters of film, each neatly trapped in a loop of velcro. "I'm prepared." So was Langley. He handed around mugs of coffee--Irish Coffee--to the whole gang. "Antifreeze," he described it. It worked--after two doses, I radiated heat into the cool night air. I snicker to myself as I examine the next picture, a close up of Scully's rear end as she reaches for something in the dirt. Next there's a crooked shot of Scully talking to someone with a wedge of my chest in the background. Then I find a photo of us sitting in the dirt, leaning against a log, a low campfire glowing through the artificial light of the flash. Scully and I face the camera, laughing. "...and the chimpanzee said..." Langley was beside himself, laughing through the punch line. We could barely understand the garbled words but laughed anyway, mostly at Langley who had to wipe his face with both hands to dry the tears. Suddenly I heard a loud pop and went blind. I struggled to focus through a purple smear as the whine of a recharging flash rang in my ears. "Frohike!" "Oh, look!" Scully points at the air, still laughing. "Little purple spots of light. They're heeeeeerrrrrre!" Filled with antifreeze, we all laughed hard at that one. Byers tilted his watch toward the firelight. "Eleven fifteen. We should take up our positions now." He tossed a walkie-talkie in my direction and I neatly plucked it from the air. "Call us if you see or hear anything." The guys left the ring of firelight, thrashed through the underbrush, and disappeared toward their campsite on the far side of the ridge. After a moment, I tossed my sleeping bag at Scully's back. The bag bounced harmlessly onto the ground, ricocheted from a tree, then rolled to a stop at her feet. She prodded it carefully with one toe before looking up at me. I waggled my eyebrows in the fading firelight. "Hmmm. Look what fell from the sky." She sat on her own bag and undid the ties on mine. "Think you'll get lucky tonight, Mulder?" I knelt on the ground next to her, helping her with the knots. "I certainly hope so." I unrolled the bag, sliding the zipper with one hand as I watched her from the corner of my eye. A smile flirted around her lips as she followed my lead, unzipping her bag all the way to the bottom. It was a simple matter to mate the prongs of my bag with the slider on hers, zipping the bags into one roomy envelope. I folded back the top, exposing red plaid lining. Then I peeled back the collar of her flannel shirt, exposing her pure white shoulder, kissing it, nipping it with my teeth. God, she tasted good--sweet, a little salty--I feasted my way to the delicate hollow at the base of her neck. Scully giggled as her head rolled loose on her shoulders. "I feel positively adolescent, Mulder." "I should be able to make you feel a bit more than that," I promised her as I slipped the shirt from her shoulders. "The guys might come back." She shivered a bit from the cold air. I rolled to my knees and lifted the edge of our joined bags. "They're too busy scanning the sky." Scully hesitated. "Mulder, we're supposed to be looking for strange lights, too." "In there," I pointed to the dark interior of the bag. She squinted, smiling, pretending to look for mysterious lights in the bag. "I don't know, Mulder. I don't see anything suspicious in there." Before she could close her lips behind the words, I shucked my clothes and dove into the bag, grinning wickedly at her in the fading firelight. She threw back her head and laughed from the belly, then clapped a guilty hand over her mouth as the sound echoed around the hillside. I enjoyed her laughter and laughed at her discomfort. When she relaxed and laughed again--more quietly this time--I lifted the edge of the bag, sliding to the far side. "So?" An invitation. Scully shed her remaining things and slipped into the bag with me, her silken softness sliding warmly down the length of my body. Scully. A sleeping bag. A naked girl in a sleeping bag. Wow. My head nearly exploded when I realized I had a boyhood fantasy in my arms. My hands roamed all over her; her hands touched me everywhere. I drank from her lips and she answered my thirst with kisses of her own. "This is good, Mulder," she murmured against my mouth. Yeah. With a thrust, I found myself inside her. She was wet and hot and held me tightly. She parried each thrust with one of her own, somehow rolling me onto my back so that she could ride above me. The Gunmen no longer existed in this slice of space/time continuum as far as I knew. "Ah." Her breath snagged in her throat as she gave in, shuddering around me, whimpering into my shoulder. I followed a moment later, calling ScullyScullyScully into the veil of her hair. Odd blue lights bobbled through my vision as I gave myself to her. Odd blue lights. Well, there you are, I thought as I snuggled into Scully's warmth and drifted into sleep. I drain the last of the tea and sit up, selecting another photograph from the pile. This one shows my face and Scully's, sleepy-eyed in the dawn light, peering from the top of our joined sleeping bags. Something woke me. A noise. A change in air pressure. I reluctantly stirred in my warm cocoon, flexing my muscles against the soft warmth of Scully, who lay sleeping in my arms. Then I got a jolt in the ass. A size nine jolt, if the magnitude of the sore spot on my left cheek was any indication. "Mulder, you old dog." Frohike boomed in the early-morning quiet. Amused with a touch of envy. Shit. Busted. I felt Scully tense against me, sliding down in the bag until only stray ends of red hair curled above the quilted flannel. "You were supposed to be watching the sky." "I was...we were. We did." "So, did you see anything?" I recalled the blinding blue lights and Scully in my arms then shook my head. "No. Did you?" He didn't. The whole expedition would have been a complete bust except for Scully in the sleeping bag, making beautiful love with me; except for Scully in the sleeping bag, giggling against my nakedness as she pretended to hide from Frohike even though her discarded clothing and mine lay scattered around us on the sunlit ground. A gust of warm air rolls through the window, carrying the sound of children laughing, playing. "Hurry home, Scully," I whisper, pressing images of her between my palms. "Summer is passing without you. We've still got to spend that week on the Vineyard and a weekend or two at your mom's beach house, *alone* this time. We haven't rented bicycles and gone for a long ride along the Potomac. Don't forget that we're going to take up tennis again and I'm going to whip your ass." I speak the words to her empty apartment and they echo back at me. I find a half-filled photo album in Scully's bedroom and turn to an empty page. I select twenty-two photographs from Frohike's stash, mostly pictures of Scully and me, some photographs of Scully alone that are too delicious to overlook. One by one, I slip them beneath the clear plastic, fixing them in place, sliding the plastic back over the top of each completed page and pressing it down. A herd of kids on skateboards thunder past the open window and disappear up the street. "We're going to have a life, Scully. Somehow, in this mess, we'll find a way." I place my palm over a blank page, smoothing it, considering the possibilities. *** END (1/1) A cry in the dark: I'm stuck in the edit of LFAS III. If anyone would like to read it and give me their impressions--good/not good, throw out these parts/keep in those parts--I'll happily end it off to you by return e-mail and be eternally grateful. I'm stumped. kate.rickman@mindspring.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://kate.rickman.home.mindspring.com