From: kate rickman <kate.rickman@mindspring.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 20:33:10 -0400
Subject: Love for all seasons 11
Source: direct

TITLE:  Love for all Seasons 11 - April Showers...
AUTHOR:  Kate Rickman
E-MAIL:  kate.rickman@mindspring.com
DISTRIBUTION:  Anywhere, thanks
CLASSIFICATION:  MSR
RATING:  R
SPOILERS:  Everything through season 7, including Requiem.
DISCLAIMER:  Just the wall, not the bricks.
SUMMARY:  Scully ties up loose ends, then waits...
AUTHOR'S NOTES:  Well, it's been a wild ride but now that CC
finally has caught on and caught up with my premise :-) I think
I'll take a load off and let him carry the ball for awhile.  Of
course, he might fumble and I might need pick it up again, but for
now, let's say we're even.  Since I don't know whether CC will slip
the time line or let it stand, I'm presuming that the events of
Requiem actually took place in mid-May.  And, for the record,
Mulder and Scully have been intimate since shortly after the
movie...in my universe at least.

Other installments in this series and my other fiction can be
accessed at http://kate.rickman.home.mindspring.com/

Once again, thank you so much for sticking with me through this
series.  All kind words and feedback have been greatly appreciated!

***
Alexandria, Virginia
August 17, 2000
3:10 PM

Dust motes shimmer in the afternoon sunlight that slants through
empty windows, rolls across bare floorboards, and breaks against
the blank walls at the far side of the room.  I move into the
light, wading through its rich pool to the window, leaning forward;
improbably in the summer heat, the glass pane cools my forehead.
Outside, through the sticky reside of a taped X, I see a van
trundling down the street with a rumble and a clatter.  A herd of
teenagers on mountain bikes pedal furiously in the opposite
direction.  A businessman in a summer weight suit strides quickly
along the sidewalk.  A car door slams.  I glance in that direction
and see a young man bend to help an elderly woman onto the curb.

S + M, I trace with one finger across the dusty windowsill, then
rub it away with the cloth clenched in my left fist, then trace it
again, hard, with the tip of my finger against the dark paint.
Scully plus Mulder equals...?  My dusty hand lifts, travels lightly
across the dirty front of my tee-shirt, across the thickened curve
of my belly, across the miracle that grows there.

"...the Lord gave..." I whisper, the words echoing loudly in my
ears as I imagine the new life growing protected beneath my hand.

"...and the Lord hath taken away..." I turn to the empty apartment,
eyeing the small box of cleaning things dropped by the door.

"...blessed be the name of the Lord."  I strangle on the last
words, tears welling in my eyes.  Taken away.  Is this the price I
must pay?  Mulder, for the baby?  What kind of blessing is that?  I
dry my cheeks with the back of one hand and find the bottle of
cleaner I carried to the window.

With a sniffle - suck it up, Dana, I imagine my father saying to me
- I spray my cloth with lemon-scented wood cleaner, slide it along
the top of the wainscoting, across the molding, and into the corner
where Mulder kept his fish for as long as I've known him.  I close
my eyes and see the fish in their new home, sitting on the same
shelving that now stands next to the armoire in my living room.  I
imagine the little UFO, bobbling up and down, and the fish,
swimming aimlessly, waiting for...what?  Mulder?  No, waiting for
food.  To them, Mulder is nothing more than the big shadow that
drops fish flakes into the tank.

He is so much more to me.

I spray again and work my way along the molding until I stand where
the leather sofa once stood.  There are so many memories here.  I
remember the night in April when I fell asleep on his shoulder and
woke beneath the Indian blanket.  I remember the evening soon
after, when we drank beer and watched stupid movies, then made
glorious love right there on the leather.  In May I learned I was
six weeks pregnant.  When did it happen?  Was it one of those April
nights?  Did the miracle occur right here in this apartment, right
here in this spot?  I look down at my feet on the bare floor,
remembering.

"Fifteen hundred dollars, Scully," Mulder's smug words had tickled
my scalp as he murmured through the hair on my head.  Across the
room, a black-and-white man, hair slicked back, whispered into the
ear of a woman with her hair curled into an impossible pile.

I twisted my head to look at Mulder, who sat on the couch at my
back, his knees bracketing my shoulders.  "No way."

"You owe me fifteen hundred dollars, Scully," he kneaded my
shoulders lightly, encouraging me.

"I don't have it."

"Then we have a problem," the words puffed against my ear as Mulder
leaned forward.  "You could sell a few things."

"I don't have much to sell."  I'd been having a run of bad luck and
had to return most of my assets to the bank.

"What about that...and that...and that?" Mulder fingered three
documents that lay on the coffee table in front of me.

My best properties.  My only money-makers.  Without them, I might
as well give up.  "Together they're worth less than $1500."

"A special deal...for you."

"You're so generous."  Meaning anything but, I slapped the cards
into his hand.

"True," he ignored the sarcasm in my words, taking his turn,
parking the car safely on his own property.  He dropped the dice in
my hand.  "I can afford to be."

I threw the ivory cubes and watched them skitter across the board,
teetering on their edges before falling to rest, eyes up.

Snake eyes.

I looked ahead two spaces, knowing what I'd find there, knowing I
was finished.  A door slammed on the television.  The slick man
stood looking at gray wooden panels with defeat in his eyes.  Back
on my cardboard world, my battleship steamed forward two spaces.

Boardwalk.  With a hotel.

Mulder chuckled in the air above me.  "Two thousand dollars,
Scully."

"You'll take it in trade?" I ask for a confirmation.

"Sure.  Whaddya got?"

What did I have left?  I summed my remaining properties quickly,
selling houses back to the back.  Less than a thousand dollars.  I
gave Mulder the verdict.

He shook his head.  "Not good enough."

I folded my deeds and my money neatly together then placed the dice
squarely on top of them.  "I've got a better idea."  I turned in
his arms, kneeling, sliding my hands beneath his sweater.

"Sex for payment?  That's illegal."  Mulder raised his hand to my
face.  Gently.  I turned my lips into his hand.  Slowly.
Connection made, the electricity below the surface began to flow,
short-circuiting our negotiation, resetting our focus to the naked
bodies clumsily hidden beneath our clothes.

"So arrest me, G-man," I pulled the turtleneck over his head and
tossed it away.  I undressed a willing Mulder and myself, tasting
each part of him as I liberated it from the confines of his sweater
and jeans.  Mulder's hands competed with my own, undressing me and
himself, flinging odd bits of our clothing around the room until we
finally lay skin-to-skin in each other's arms.

"This should be illegal."

"Thank God it isn't."

Then we were inside each other, him literally, me enveloped by his
embrace, moving, surrendering to pure feeling, floating, falling,
frantic like the first time we came together.  Afterward, I lay on
his chest, feeling blood pound through every inch of my boneless
body, listening to our thundering heartbeats and the concussive
rhythm of heavy rain against the window.

April showers bring May flowers, I remember the rhyme as I stand in
the August sunlight.  Did they in my case?  I scuff the dust rag
one more time across the molding.  "Just one more day, Mulder.
Just one more day and I...we...would have known about our
pregnancy.  Just one more day and you would have had good reason
not to return to Oregon."  "One day, twenty-four hours, stood
between me and losing you.  And I lost you."  I remember Mulder's
words in Oregon, asking if he should call a doctor.  Why couldn't
I, for once, have given in?

I find a broom and push it through to the bedroom, nosing into
corners, herding dust bunnies to the center of the room.  As I bend
to whisk them into the pan, I notice a long blue thread in the
collection.  Holding it between my fingers, I can see clearly that
it's the blue of Mulder's comforter, a piece that got away - like
Mulder, a piece of me that got away.  I sit back on my heels,
thinking of the last time we spent together here.

It was a Sunday morning, mid May, just a week before he
disappeared.

That morning, pale yellow sunlight flooded the room, spilling
across the quilted blue comforter. Coffee steamed on the
nightstand, Mulder's mug next to mine, both sitting atop a case
file serving as a coaster.  We spooned together, the heat of
Mulder's naked body pressed against my bare back.  With the Sunday
paper spread out on the sheets, I nosed my way through the trivia
of the back pages.

Mulder, propped on one elbow, read the news through the gap between
my shoulder and my head, his breath tickling my ear while his left
hand tickled the skin where he chafed my arm idly.  "Hey, what's
that?" his hand crept up the page to a minor item in an inside
column.

I followed his finger to the item of interest.  "Langton, Indiana.
For several nights, local farmers observed unusual lights in an
isolated corn field.  Authorities called to investigate report a
series of large, overlapping bald areas, where the corn stalks have
been crushed in rough circular shapes.  The damaged plants, burned
around the edge..."

"Crop circles," he interrupted me.

"Vandalism," I know how to play this game.

"Obviously crop circles."

"Mulder!"

"What?"

"It turns you on.  The idea of crop circles turns you on."

"Well..."

"Don't deny it.  I have the proof right here," I reached between us
and found him with my hand; in the circle of my fingers, he swelled
and hardened even more than he had at the thought of an alien
landing pad.

"It's *you* that turns me on," he whispered against my mouth as I
rolled in his arms, pushing him onto his back.

That morning, I forced the pace, kept him off-balance, receptive,
submissive.  Our lovemaking was hot, sweet.  I enjoyed the act of
making life without knowing or even suspecting that life had
already begun to grow deep within me.  The passion in Mulder's eyes
- delirious out-of-control passion, love, and desire - was the fire
that lit my fuse.  I exploded around him and he in me.

"Next time, we'll have to try that *in* a crop circle," he pulled
me down into his arms and I drifted with him into a short nap.

Next time.  When would that be?  Would there be one?  I shake the
negative thoughts from my head, refusing to go there.  I sit up,
stand up, then finish the floor, propping the cleaning things
against the wall.   I check his closet - only two empty hangers
dangle from the rod that once held Mulder's expensive wardrobe.
They clatter in my hand as I take them down and turn away.

So many of my things are too tight at the waist, so many blouses
already gap from the swelling of my breasts.  I have carefully
folded them away and hung Mulder's beautiful suits, his shirts, in
their place.  His shoes stand carefully arranged on the floor.  One
side of my closet is now his closet, waiting for him to return.

Thanks to Mulder's paranoid foresight, his affairs are in perfect
order.  I knew he had inherited money from both parents; I hadn't
realized it was Money with a capital M until his disappearance
forced me to invoke legal guardianship of his bank accounts and
investments.  There is more than enough to pay rent on this
apartment through the 21st Century, but I choose not to.  If I
can't have Mulder, at least I can live surrounded by his things.

And when he returns, he will live with me...and our child.

In the bathroom, I sluice water around the tub.  Scrubbing the
porcelain, I remember a Tuesday morning in early Spring when
steaming water sprayed into this tub, streaming over Mulder and me.
That morning, my pleasure center waged a battle with the rest of my
brain.

Pleasure Center:  You love it, don't you Dana?

Mulder stood naked before me, soaping my hair, massaging my scalp.
Clots of fine bubbles surfed across my wet shoulders and tickled
their way down my arms.

Me:  I have to be at Quantico in an hour.

PC:  When was the last time a naked man massaged your scalp?
Doesn't it feel good?

Me:  Yes.  Oh hell, yes.

Mulder turned me into the hot spray.  I closed my eyes and let him
rinse my hair clean, loving the gentle sweep of his hands as he
slicked the hair away from my face.

Me:  I wonder what time it is?

I stood, eyes closed, face turned into the steam.  A soapy bath
sponge chafed light circles across my shoulders leaving my skin
clean and tingly in its wake.

PC (as if reasoning with a dull child):  Do you really want him to
stop?

Me, groaning:  No.  Never.

Mulder scuffed gently at my back, his hands following the sponge,
moving lower.

Me again:  Ummm, that feels heavenly.  Let's see...I'll present the
Kilgore case first, then the case of the...

PC, sharply:  Can't you live in the moment just this once, Dana?

Mulder lifted one foot, then the other, working the sponge against
my heels and sliding slick fingers between each toe, massaging the
sensitive skin that lay hidden there.

"Ahhhh.  You're too good to me," the words tumbled from my lips on
a gasp of pleasure.  I turned around, reaching down for him.

"No such thing, Scully," his soapy chest glided up my legs, slipped
over my belly; his hairs tickled my breasts, sending a jolt of
desire straight to my core.

PC:  See?

"Ummm. This isn't fair.  What are you getting out if it?"  I
finally opened my eyes.  Looked down.  Oh.

My head fell against his shoulder, suddenly too heavy for my rubber
neck.  As he soaped my arms and washed them down in turn, I traced
the swell of his pectorals with an available finger, splayed a
cleaned hand across the damp tightness of his abdominals, then
strayed below his waist.

"No no," he swatted me away.  "This is for you."

"Mulder," I protested weakly.

"Almost," he ran a fine velour cloth over my face, "done."  He
guided me in one last circle through the water.  "All done."

"Your turn," I reached for the sponge.

"No time," the sponge disappeared into the cloud of steam above his
head. "You'll be late," he kissed me quickly.  "Next time," he
promised, swatting my backside with his free hand.  "Now off to
work with you, young lady."

Next time.  A sound - somewhere between laugher and tears - turns
to dust in my throat.  I watch the last of the rinse water circle
the drain - once, twice, then it's gone and the empty steel eye
stares back at me.  Bracing myself against the porcelain sink, I
stand awkwardly.  I don't need to clean the apartment.  The guys
would do it for me.  Mulder...I...can well afford to leave it dirty
and sacrifice the deposit.  Or pay professional cleaners.  But I
need to do it.  I need to bring order into a life that consists of
nothing but loose ends these days.  I need to take control with my
own hands.  I need to touch everything that brings me closer to
him.

My cell phone warbles, jolting me back to the present.  I find it
in the living room and thumb the send key, raise it to my ear,
allowing myself to imagine for a moment that it's Mulder's voice
I'll hear.  I hold my breath, saying nothing, listening, hoping.

"Scully?"  Byers.  The Gunmen have triple teamed me since Mulder's
disappearance three months ago.

"Yes."

"We've put the furniture and the last boxes in storage.  The things
you wanted are over at your place."

"Good."  I close my eyes and lean back against the wall.  The last
rays of sunlight warm my face.

"Frohike fed the fish," Byers chokes a little on the words.  The
guys have put up a strong collective face but I see the strain in
their eyes and hear the loss in their words when they speak with
me.

"Thanks."  Thanks for everything.  Thanks for being there, for
loving me and loving Mulder.  Thanks for not giving up, for
spending part of each day following endless leads, searching for
the love of my life, who surely is the father of my child.  As I
listen to Byers' comforting voice, I think of the manila folder
tucked away on my desk.  Tonight I'm going to open it.  I'm going
to confirm what I already know in my heart.  I'll erase all doubt
that this miracle is anything other than the product of love
between Mulder and me.  Then I will go on, following every UFO
sighting, interviewing witnesses and possible abductees, until I
find him or he finds me.

He will return.

We will play silly games and laugh again.

We will lay in bed and cuddle again.

We will shower together and it will be my turn for exploration with
soapy hands.

We will be together again.

I have no doubts.

***

END (1/1)

--
kate.rickman@mindspring.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://kate.rickman.home.mindspring.com