From: "John L. Gilson" <drjohn@wizvax.net>
Subject: The Road Not Taken 2: Snapshots (1/7)

And we're back! Let's get the formalities out of the way:

TITLE:			"The Road Not Taken 2: Snapshots"
AUTHOR:					deejay
CATEGORY:
T, R/A (Adventure, Romance/Angst)
RATING:
NC-17, for adult language, some violence, and sexual situations of the
same-sex variety. If you have a problem with any or all of that, GO
SOMEWHERE ELSE! If you are under 18, you probably shouldn't be reading this
(or anything else with this rating, for that matter) so I repeat... GO
SOMEWHERE ELSE!
KEYWORDS:
Slash story, Scully/other
SPOILERS:
References to "Shadows", "Ghost In The Machine", "Ascension", "Beyond The
Sea", "Anasazi", "The Paperclip", "Die Hand Die Verletzt", "Pusher", "Clyde
Bruckman's Final Repose", "Apocrypha", "Terma", "Nisei" and "731". (Maybe I
should have just listed the episodes I _didn't_ mention...<g>)
TIMELINE:
Pre-diagnosis Season 4. Takes place in mid-October 1996.
SUMMARY:
Scully's confusion deepens as her relationship with Max develops, and a
life-threatening situation forces her to confront her feelings.
ARCHIVE:
Submitted to Gossamer USA and AEA. All others, please ask me first (unless
I submit it to you), and please use my penname if you get permission.
FEEDBACK:
Questions, comments, flames and fanmail to drjohn@wizvax.net

"The X Files", Fox Mulder, Dana Scully (and any Scully relations or
ex-boyfriends that happen to appear) and Walter Skinner belong to Chris
Carter, 1013 Productions, and FoxTV! I'm not trying to take them away -- at
least, not permanently -- or make any money off of them... unless CC reads
this, likes this, and wants to give me a job! (Email address at the end of
the story, Chris! Don't delay, write today!<g>) All other characters,
dialogue, and the story idea itself belong to Night Tripper Productions and
the author (viz. the person what's typin' at you now!), and will be
defended with guns, bombs, wolverines, and anything else I can get my hands
on! Any resemblance to real-life people, living or dead, is purely
co-incidental.

The song excerpts in this story are also used without permission (Don't
bother suing, guys; all you'll get is a '91 Volkswagen Fox, a Performa Plus
with a possessed hard drive, and a MasterCard that resembles a thin
charcoal briquette! Besides, I see this as my way of promoting music I
think is absolutely wonderful):

"Riverdance", by Bill Whelan (1995 Celtic Heartbeat Ltd.) is the title
track from the show of the same name. If your local PBSer shows it during
their quarterly Pledge Death March, check it out, throw as much money at
the station as you can, then go get the CD! "Maybe Angels", by Sheryl Crow
and Bill Bottrell (1996 Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp./Old Crow Music)
is the first track of Sheryl's second CD, cleverly entitled _Sheryl Crow_.
Play it loud, but tie down the furniture first, or you're liable to be
redecorated with extreme prejudice! (Also, if you check the lyrics
excerpted here you'll find Sheryl is almost certainly an X-Phile!) Finally,
I had to throw in one more from _Fumbling Towards Ecstacy_  -- "Hold On",
by Sara MacLachlan (1993 Tyde Music). Can't get enough of the Divine Sara!

For X-Philes: This is the sequel to "The Road Not Taken". However, it is
not the sequel I had originally planned to write. I started that sequel
out, fully intent on finishing the story I started. But then I sat and
thought a while, and decided I liked the dynamic I'd created between Dana
Scully and Becca Maxfield, and wanted to explore it a little further. Well,
one thing led to another, and... well, here we are!

If you're a Relationshipper, and you didn't like the first story, you
probably won't like this one, either, so go find a nice MSR to read. For
the record, I think Mulder and Scully deserve someone of their own, because
they're two of the loneliest characters on television; but I truly believe
getting them together will destroy their relationship, as well as the
wonderful UST that helps keep this series cracking! Remember what happened
to 'Moonlighting' after Maddie and David got together. You want that to
happen _here_?! Of _course_ you don't!:)

This story originally appeared -- in slightly different form -- as
"Snapshots" (not to be confused with "Snap_shot_") on Bobbi's Auto Erotic
Asphyxiation Page. If you want to turn up the heat on your fanfic, check
this out:

http://nycmetro.com/Bobbi/index.htm

WHEW! Having done all _that_... y'all ready for THIS?

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 2: SNAPSHOTS (1/7)
by deejay

<<<POST-GAME>>>

"Did you _have_ to live on the fourth floor?"

"Come on, girl. Play with pain!"

"I'm not _playing_ with pain," Scully groaned as she started up the final
set of stairs. "I'm _climbing_ with pain! Does the elevator always break
down at the worst possible moment?"

"Eight times in two years," Max said over her shoulder. She was holding
onto the brown wooden banistair, but she didn't seem winded... or at least
she was hiding it well. "It went on the fritz halfway through my move-in
day. Thank God I had the Bear and two guys from Vice, or my furniture would
still be down in the street." She thought a moment. "Actually, this is the
first time it's gone down since Summer."

"Just my luck," Scully muttered.

"Oh, come on, Scully," Max said playfully. "I thought you Feebies were
supposed to be rough-and-tough."

Scully shot her a dirty look. "If you want to call me a Feebie, you'd
better smile. You try climbing a mountain of stairs after playing three
sets of volleyball!"

"I have done it," Max shot back. "Matter of fact, I _am_ doing it." She
made her steps more exaggerated. "Seeeeeeeeeee?"

*I could shoot her, but she might think I was a poor sport.* "But you're
_used_ to it! I still can't remember the last time I actually played..."

"And you did damn well. And we won, didn't we?"

Scully groaned again. She didn't feel like a winner. She felt like someone
had been using her body for a handball court. When Scully got her workout
clothes from the hotel and met Max at the Cambridge Y, she thought all she
was going to do was get a Guest pass, swim some laps, and watch the game.
But then Max got together with Keisha and Roxy, the co-captains/coaches of
Max' team, and found out one of their teammates had just gone into Brigham
and Women's Hospital for an emergency appendectomy -- one of the few
allowable excuses for missing a game.

It had taken Max five minutes of pleading, joking, bullying and teasing
before Scully finally acquiesced and joined the rest of the team. She
wasn't great -- soccer was her sport in school, with track a close second
-- but at least she hadn't embarassed herself. Scully even made a few
diving digs, one that saved a match point and turned the first game
around... as well as making her left shoulder hurt like blazes. But
compared to the rest of the players, Scully was a rank amateur. These women
could _fly_, and some of them took great pleasure in trying to tear their
opponent's head off. Max was about the fifth-best player on the court,
making up for her lack of height with a killer serve, a pretty decent
vertical leap, and a kamikaze attitude. Max set up the final kill of the
third game, giving the match to their side.

Scully whooped in victory with the rest of the team, but she was happier
that it was over than she was about winning. Twenty minutes in the
whirlpool, ten in the shower, and two excellent Bloody Marys at Grendal's
had done nothing to take the edge off the various hurts that were making
life difficult for her, and a climb up four flights of stairs just added to
the problem. Scully sighed with relief when she cleared the final step and
saw Max had the door open. Scully tossed her gymbag and her raincoat on the
chair with Max' bomber jacket; Scully's Sig made the bag thump quite a bit
harder than usual. The raincoat came off with another groan.

"Damn, you're not kidding," Max observed. "You do hurt."

The Mulder Smirk took over Scully's face. "A trained detective," she said
dryly.

Max made a face at her. "Go lie down for a bit. I'll get you some Aleve.
Works like a charm for me."

"I won't argue at all." Scully followed Max into the alcove and turned
right into the bedroom, while Max went into the bathroom and started
rummaging through the medicine cabinet. Scully had been wearing the same
clothes she'd had on the plane for almost two days, but she'd gotten a
change-of-clothes when she picked up her workout togs. Scully kicked off
the white LA Gear sneakers and shucked out of the faded bluejeans, but then
a wave of fatigue rolled over her and she sat heavily down on the bed,
still wearing her green silk blouse, leaning back and rolling over until
she was lying face-down on the quilt, her head sunk deeply into the big
fluffy pillow. Faintly, Scully could hear music from the livingroom --
Celtic-sounding music, but with an electronic background. "Reel Around The
Sun", the overture to 'Riverdance'. Scully had fallen in love with the show
when she'd seen it during a WETA fund-drive, and had been meaning to pick
up the soundtrack.

Max had two Aleve in one hand and a plastic cup of water in the other when
she came into the bedroom. She smiled sympathetically at Scully's prone
form, lingering for a moment on her panty-clad butt. "How do I contact
next-of-kin?"

Scully's voice was muffled by the pillow. "Mulder's number is the second
memory button on my cell phone. He'll know who to call."

"If you're going to lie in state," Max told her, "you're supposed to be on
your back, with a lilly clasped in your hands."

"Kiss my ass."

"One thing at a time," Max deadpanned. "Sit up. I bring healing tablets."

Scully hiked herself up onto her elbows and gratefully accepted the two
blue tablets, washing them down with a few sips of water before she handed
the glass back and fell back into the pillow. Max laughed, putting the
glass on the side table. Scully shifted her head enough to give Max the
evil eye.

"Oh, honey, I'm sorry," Max said quickly. "I shouldn't laugh, I know,
but... Well, damn, if I'd known I was gonna _kill_ you, I wouldn't have
asked you to sub!"

Scully laughed softly. "I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.
Besides..." She sighed. "I thought I was in good shape."

Max put the glass on the bedside table. "If it makes you feel any better, I
felt like an elephant did the Macarena on my back after my first match with
this team. Could barely get out of bed the next day."

"It doesn't make me feel any better, but it's good to know..."

Max ran her eyes along Scully's body. "Well, believe me, you _are_ in good
shape. You were the best-looking woman on the court."

Scully sighed dramatically into the pillow. "But once we were in the
shower, I was just another piece of puffy pink-and-bruise flesh..."

Max slapped Scully's ass, hard enough to elicit a little cry of discomfort.
Scully looked up at Max curiously. Max was only barely smiling now. "On the
court. In the shower. On the streets of Greater Boston. Name a place, we'll
go to it, any time of the day or night. You'll outclass whoever's there. No
contest."

*How many times has she made me smile,* Scully wondered. She reached out to
take her hand. "You are so great."

They held each others' eyes for a moment before Max said, "Okay, now what
hurts? Really."

Scully got back up on her elbows and rolled her neck. "Oh, I am dramatizing
a little. Most of it is just the muscles protesting the workout they just
got. They're only used to a good steady run and some time on the
Stairmaster." She rolled her left shoulder, grimacing. "Agh," she allowed.

Max stood up and clapped her hands twice. "Come on. Lose the blouse. Let's
see that shoulder."

Scully raised an eyebrow. "Do I sense an ulterior motive?"

"Like I said, one thing at a time," Max said. "Let's do some triage first.
Besides, that's a great blouse and you're wrinkling it pretty badly."

The clothes-conscious part of Scully's brain kicked in. "You have a point
there." She rolled slowly up into a sitting position and began to unbutton
her blouse.

Scully could feel her pulse rate shift. Although they'd been together
almost every waking moment since Saturday morning, they hadn't made love
again. They'd walked. They'd talked. They'd kissed, more than a few times.
They'd done lunch Saturday and brunch today. They'd held hands under the
table both times, which sent a stream of sparks up Scully's arm. They'd
cooked dinner together, Scully building a huge salad while Max microwaved a
batch of home-made spaghetti sauce; it was better than any commercial
brand, and it improved the angel-hair pasta a thousandfold.

They'd spent Saturday night on the couch howling at one of Max' collection
of 'Wallace & Grommit'  cartoons, then Scully had fallen asleep on Max'
shoulder in the middle of 'Get Shorty'. When the movie ended, Max nudged
Scully awake, led her to the bedroom, and handed her an over-sized Red Sox
t-shirt. "Sorry it's not Victoria's Secret," Max cracked as she put on a
man-sized buttondown Oxford shirt. "But I didn't have time to shop." They'd
kissed again when they got into bed together, but it was obvious Max was
just as tired as Scully. They talked for awhile, sleepily debating whether
John Travolta had finally learned how to act, and then drifted off in each
others' arms.

So Max wasn't pushing, which Scully was glad about. But there was also
those nagging doubts: *Was the first night really alright? Did I do
something wrong? Has she changed her mind? Is she just doing this because
she wants to let me down easy?*

*Is she as scared as I am?*

Max took the blouse from Scully and hung it on a hangar in the closet.
"Now, Mizz Scully," Max said, trying to sound like a pompous doctor, "if
you'll roll over and get up on your elbows. This shouldn't hurt a bit."

"Easy for you to say," Scully muttered. But she smiled as she followed Max'
instructions. Max sat on the bed next to her. There was a pretty decent
bruise on the left shoulder, already yellow and on the way to purple. Max
sucked air through her teeth.

"Is it bad," Scully asked.

Max went "Hmm." Then she said, "It's definitely gonna sting for a couple of
days. You ought to learn to roll better. You didn't bust anything, but I
wouldn't go far from a bottle of Advil, and I wouldn't wear halter tops for
a while."

"Not pretty, huh?"

Max shrugged. "It gives you character. Anybody asks, tell 'em it's a
psychedelic tattoo."

"Ha ha."

Max leaned forward and kissed the bruise. "That'll make it better."

Scully smiled. "Brilliant technique, Doctor."

"All in a day's work." Their eyes locked again. *Like twin whirlpools,* Max
said to herself. She broke the contact, looking down at Scully's back. "How
'bout the rest of you?"

Scully looked over her shoulder. "Still spasming a little. It's the legs
more than the back. Those stairs really did them in."

Max patted the pillow. "Lay down your head, Tom Dooley. I will create magic."

"Hooray," Scully sang softly, lowering her head again.

Max moved to the foot of the bed, pulled up Scully's left leg by the ankle,
and began to massage her foot. "Let me know if I do this too hard," Max
told her.

"Don't worry."

Of all the things her past lovers had done, none of them had given Scully a
backrub without some kind of exhortation on her part, and only her massage
therapist in Annapolis had given her a footrub. Max wasn't as good as the
therapist, but she was doing a wonderful job just the same. As she worked
on the balls of Scully's foot with one hand, she massaged the arch with the
thumb of her other hand.

"Ohh boy," Scully sighed.

Max smiled, working both thumbs into her arch now. "You ain't seen nuthin'
yet."

She worked on both feet for five minutes each before shifting around to
face Scully's prone form. Kneeling between Scully's legs, Max began to
massage her ankles, using the thumbs to dig into the muscle with just the
right amount of pressure. She was nothing if not thorough, taking her time
as she worked up from the ankles to the thighs to the lower back, fingers
trailing lightly over Scully's ass, sending shivers up her spine. Scully
was surprised she hadn't melted into the mattress. *This feels sohhhhhhhhh
goooooood...*

Max lightly snapped Scully's bra-strap. "Where's the catch?"

Scully looked over her shoulder at her, green eye poking through a mass of
red hair. "Vaht makes you tink dere's a catch?" *That accent needs _work_!*

The corner of Max' mouth turned up. "Droll. Very droll."

"Who you calling a troll?" Scully lifted up on her elbows and undid the
clasp on the front of her bra, letting her breasts hang free. Her voice was
hoarse. "Be my guest."

Max took a deep breath before she pulled Scully's bra off, drinking in the
sight of her bare back. She began the massage again, working up the
shoulder blades to the shoulders, doing her best to avoid the bruise. Three
times she rubbed her hands together as quickly as she could, placing them
firmly on different areas of Scully's back each time. Scully sighed each
time, the warm pressure loosening muscle after muscle. Scully had the left
side of her face on the pillow, eyes closed, totally relaxed, completely on
edge, waiting, waiting, until Max stopped rubbing Scully's neck and laid on
top of Scully, her hands running down Scully's sides. Scully lifted her
head and kissed Max deeply.

When they both came up for air, Scully breathed, "What took you so long?"

Max ran a hand through Scully's hair, kissed her once, and then put her
forehead against Scully's and closed her eyes. "I don't want..."

Scully waited, then kissed her and said, "Tell me."

Max seemed to consider, then said, "I was afraid that if I pushed, I'd
scare you away."

Scully smiled slightly. "Do you see me running in terror?"

"No," Max said, giggling slightly. But she still wasn't looking at Scully.

Scully shifted so she could look right into Max' eyes. "Is this going too
fast for you?" Max seemed at a loss for words, starting to speak and then
stopping. "It's okay. Say what you think. I'll be alright." *I think...*

It took Max a few seconds, and when she finally spoke, her words were
measured. "I'm trying not to lose my perspective. I've only known you three
days. I am not in love with you." Before Scully could respond, Max added,
"However, I am _deathly_ afraid that if I close my eyes for too long, I'll
open them and you'll be gone, and I'll find out it's Friday morning and
this has just been a dream..."

"Max..."

"Or that you'll wake up and realize you're sleeping with a woman and not a
man, and you _will_ run screaming out of here, and you'll be too fast for
me to stop you..."

"Max..."

"I've got this... electric feeling every time I see you. Every time I touch
you. And I am flat-out terrified that I'm going to do something that..."

"Max," Scully said firmly. Max stopped, obviously afraid she'd said more
than she should. A lot more. Scully went nose-to-nose with her. "Please
don't talk so much."

Max just stared at her, then she closed her eyes and sighed with obvious
relief as their mouths met, Max on her side, hugging Scully hard. Scully
started to roll over. Max shook her head. "No," she whispered. "Stay like
you are."

Before Scully could say anything, Max was back on top and moving down her
body, kissing and licking her spine as she went. Scully moaned as Max'
fingers slid inside Scully's waistband and eased her now-wet panties down
her legs. There was a pause after Max slipped them off her feet, and Scully
could hear some hurried rustling. Then Max hands were sliding back up
Scully's legs, this time massaging her now-naked ass.

"Get up on your knees," Max said, her voice dry as dust.

Scully eyes were tightly closed, her top teeth biting her bottom lip as she
shifted her lower body until her head was buried in the pillow and her ass
was in the air. Max pushed at Scully's thighs, parting her legs a little
more. The thought of being totally exposed to Max thrilled her like nothing
else ever had. And when Max planted her mouth on Scully's engorged clit,
Scully nearly came right then and there.

Max' hands were all over Scully as she ate her pussy -- up her back, over
her shoulders, squeezing her breasts, stroking her nipples, hugging her
belly, kneading her asscheeks, and then repeating the process over again.
She attacked Scully's pussy with abandon, her tongue darting in and out of
her until Scully thought gravity had taken a walk. Then, without warning,
Max moved her mouth up and slid her tongue into Scully's ass.

"Ohhhh Gawwwwwwwd," Scully wailed, her first orgasm slamming into her. Her
hands clawed the sheets. She nearly passed out.

Max was a live wire, a sound like crashing surf roaring in her ears as she
moved her mouth from hole to hole. Her chin was as drenched as the fingers
that worked furiously on Scully's clit. The world could end right now and
Max wouldn't care, as long as she died with the taste of Scully in her
mouth. When Scully came again, two fingers were in her ass and Max was
tongue-fucking her as hard as she could. *If she hollers any louder,* Max'
mind laughed, *somebody's gonna call the cops!*

Max let Scully catch her breath before she started moving up Scully's body
again. The rustling Scully had heard was now explained; Max was naked
except for a pair of short white tennis socks. Scully rolled over onto her
back, pulling Max into her arms as they came face-to-face. Scully stuffed
her tongue deeply into Max' mouth, saliva mixing with something else.
*That's me,*  Scully thought hazily as they kissed and kissed.

Scully broke the kiss, breathing hard. "Move up."

Max pushed herself up a little farther, offering her aching nipples to
Scully's mouth. Scully sucked them hard, her nibbling making Max reel. But
Scully pulled away after only a few moments. Her eyes were hooded and
glassy.

"Move all the way up."

It took a second before Max realized what she was asking. "Are you sure-"

"Please," Scully hissed. "I want to taste you now."

*Oh thank you,*  Max said to Someone Else. She shifted around until her
knees were wedged in Scully's armpits and her glistening pussy was looking
Scully in the eye. Scully ran her fingers across Max' clit, making her
growl, then moved through Max' pubic hair. It was shorter, sparser, than
she remembered from two nights before. *She trimmed it for me,* Scully said
to herself. The thought made her mind swim. Without conscious thought, she
moved her mouth up and licked lightly, tasting another woman for the first
time.

Like her first time suckling Max' breasts, Scully was tentative, adjusting
to the taste and texture. She thought of how she liked her pussy to be
loved, and tried to do the same, her eyes aimed up at Max' face. Max' eyes
were closed and she was obviously somewhere else. *God she's beautiful,*
Scully thought, *and she tastes sohhh good.* Her hands moved up Max'
stomach and over her breasts. So small, but so firm. As her mouth got
bolder, so did her hands, running all over Max as her tongue slipped
between Max' nether lips. *I'm inside her. Inside my lover. Ohhhhhhh, my...*

Max' hands came down and pushed Scully's head away. Before Scully could
speak, Max panted, "I've got to... got to..." Her voice sounded like it
belonged to someone else as she twisted around. Scully was going to ask
what was wrong, but then she realized what Max was doing. As she settled
back down to licking Max' clit, Max hugged Scully to her and began to eat
her again.

Scully had tried 69 a few times with men, but she'd never really gotten off
on it, mainly because the man was too busy getting off to concentrate on
her needs. Plus... Well, for lack of a better description, the geometry
just didn't work. But Max on top of Scully with their mouths on each other
seemed like perfect symmetry. Like when they fucked each others' clit their
first night together, concentration was a real problem. Max didn't lie; her
mouth performed magic. Scully did the best she could as the fire started
overtaking her again. She focused as best she could on what Max was doing,
trying to mirror the motions. Whatever she was doing, it must have worked,
because Max screamed into Scully's slit a second before Scully's third
orgasm of the night hit her with shattering force and Max' juices soaked
her face. Scully lapped up all she could.

It took a long time before they could move. They just held onto each other
and tried to breath. After a couple of minutes, Max started to shake, and
Scully was afraid she was crying again, until it was obvious she was
laughing. "What?"

Max rolled slowly onto her back, laughing harder now. Scully was starting
to get annoyed. "What?!"

"Now that..." Max finally managed to say, "is what _I_ call... playing with
_pain_."

Scully blinked down at her, then she started laughing too, but she had to
do it in bursts, because her breath still came in gasps. Max was into a
serious giggle fit, but her breathlessness made it come out like Morse
code. Their laughter was almost as much of a release as anything else that
had happened. Max reached up and took Scully's hand. Scully squeezed it. It
took a few tries, but Scully finally was able to say, "Do you have...
enough energy... to come up here and hold me?"

"Ohhhhhhhh... I'll consider it." She broke into giggles again, and so did
Scully, but Max slowly re-arranged herself and crawled up until they were
side-by-side. They held each other like two swimmers who'd just finished
crossing the Channel, Max trailing kisses across Scully's neck, Scully
kissing Max' pert nose and closed eyes. They stayed closed after Scully
stopped kissing them, and then they opened slowly, like a child peeking at
the scary part of a movie.

"Thank God," Max sighed.

"What?" Scully wanted to know.

Max kissed Scully's ear. "You're still here."

Scully stroked Max' cheek. "I couldn't move even if I want to," she said.
"And I don't want to."

"Oh good," Max said. And they kissed again, snuggling close, listening to
the beauty in the other room:

"I am living to nourish you/Cherish you/I am pulsing the blood in your
veins..."

END OF PART ONE


TITLE:			"The Road Not Taken 2: Snapshots"
AUTHOR:					deejay
CATEGORY:
T, R/A (Adventure, Romance/Angst)
RATING:
NC-17, for adult language, some violence, and sexual situations of the
same-sex variety. If you have a problem with any or all of that, GO
SOMEWHERE ELSE! If you are under 18, you probably shouldn't be reading this
(or anything else with this rating, for that matter) so I repeat... GO
SOMEWHERE ELSE!
KEYWORDS:
Slash story, Scully/other
SPOILERS:
References to "Shadows", "Ghost In The Machine", "Ascension", "Beyond The
Sea", "The Paperclip", "Die Hand Die Verletzt", "Pusher", "Clyde Bruckman's
Final Repose", "Apocrypha", "Terma, "Nisei" and "731". (Maybe I should have
just mentioned the episodes I _didn't mention...<g>)
TIMELINE:
Pre-diagnosis Season 4. Takes place in mid-October 1996.
SUMMARY:
Scully's confusion deepens as her relationship with Max develops, and a
life-threatening situation forces her to confront her feelings.
ARCHIVE:
Submitted to Gossamer USA and AEA. All others, please ask me first (unless
I submit it to you), and please use my penname if you get permission.
'SHIPPERS: If you didn't like the first story, you'll like this one even less.
FEEDBACK:
Questions, comments, flames and fanmail to drjohn@wizvax.net

"The X Files", Fox Mulder, Dana Scully (and any Scully relations or
ex-boyfriends that happen to appear) and Walter Skinner belong to Chris
Carter, 1013 Productions, and FoxTV! I'm not trying to take them away -- at
least, not permanently -- or make any money off of them... unless CC reads
this, likes this, and wants to give me a job! (Email address at the end of
the story, Chris! Don't delay, write today!<g>) All other characters,
dialogue, and the story idea itself belong to Night Tripper Productions and
the author (viz. the person what's typin' at you now!), and will be
defended with guns, bombs, wolverines, and anything else I can get my hands
on! Any resemblance to real-life people, living or dead, is purely
co-incidental.

The song excerpts in this story are also used without permission (Don't
bother suing, guys; all you'll get is a '91 Volkswagen Fox, a Performa Plus
with a possessed hard drive, and a MasterCard that resembles a thin
charcoal briquette! Besides, I see this as my way of promoting music I
think is absolutely wonderful):

"Riverdance", by Bill Whelan (1995 Celtic Heartbeat Ltd.) is the title
track from the show of the same name. If your local PBSer shows it during
their quarterly Pledge Death March, check it out, throw as much money at
the station as you can, then go get the CD! "Maybe Angels", by Sheryl Crow
and Bill Bottrell (1996 Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp./Old Crow Music)
is the first track of Sheryl's second CD, cleverly entitled _Sheryl Crow_.
Play it loud, but tie down the furniture first, or you're liable to be
redecorated with extreme prejudice! (Also, if you check the lyrics
excerpted here you'll find Sheryl is almost certainly an X-Phile!) Finally,
I had to throw in one more from _Fumbling Towards Ecstacy_  -- "Hold On",
by Sara MacLachlan (1993 Tyde Music). Can't get enough of the Divine Sara!

This story originally appeared -- in slightly different form -- as
"Snapshots" (not to be confused with "Snap_shot_") on Bobbi's Auto Erotic
Asphyxiation Page. If you want to turn up the heat on your fanfic, check
this out:

http://nycmetro.com/Bobbi/index.htm

---------------------------------------------

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 2: SNAPSHOTS (2/7)
by deejay

<<<LECTURE>>>

If the crowd hadn't started applauding, Scully never would have known the
lecture was over. She looked around, becoming aware of her surroundings for
the first time since... *Well, when? Probably when I flipped the tape.* She
looked down at the small tape recorder lying on its side on the fold-out
arm of the chair. There was maybe three minutes left on that side of the
cassette. Each side took 55 minutes. *Are we awake, Dana?* Scully had taped
all her lectures at U of M and in medical school, as a backup for her
notes. Scully hadn't planned to take notes this morning, but even if she
had, she would have had nothing but a blank sheet of paper.

Scully gathered up her raincoat, put the recorder in her pocket, and made
her way out of Lecture Hall B with the mix of medical students and visiting
physicians. The guest lecturer -- Dr. Duncan MacLeod, a short round man
with a sense of humor as full as his bright red beard -- was a respected
pathologist at Johns Hopkins, and had drawn a significant enough crowd to
necessitate moving his talk to the 500-seat lecture hall inside the Science
Center. Even so, it was Standing Room Only, and Scully was lucky to get a
seat when she bustled in fifteen minutes before showtime.

Scully automatically scanned the crowd for anyone she might know, but drew
a blank. The crowd was too thick, all of them shucking into raincoats and
topcoats, and the chances of her running into a colleague from med school
were fairly slim. She glanced at her watch. 11:32. The schedule allowed
ninety minutes for lunch, followed by the afternoon lecture at 1pm, with a
post-lecture tea at 3:15. Scully had paid for the lecture but not the tea.
It would have almost doubled the price of admission, you rarely got to
spend more than a few moments with the star of the day anyway, and Scully
had more important places to be...

*More important.* Scully reflected on those words as she moved through the
corridor with the rest of the herd of doctors and would-be doctors. Her
mind had been in a fog for most of the morning, beginning when Scully
looked down at Max' sleeping form as Scully slipped quietly back into her
jeans. She had woken up a little before 6 and realized the lecture was at
9:30, and she had nothing suitable to wear. She'd left a note on the
dresser with her cell phone number, the hours of the lecture, and -- after
a lot of deliberation -- the emoticon symbol for a rose. On her way out of
the apartment, Scully asked herself the same question she asked herself
now: *What is going _on_ here?!*

The discipline that had been instilled in Scully by her parents (*Alright,
by my father...*) had translated into her sexual life without missing a
beat. She had watched too many people screw up their lives by putting their
minds on "Hold" and letting their libidos do the thinking. Scully was bound
and determined not to go down that road. She had places to go, things to
accomplish. So she had standards. She had stuck to them in the face of
mounting opposition, and they had stood her in good stead. But an entire
list of "Nevers" lay shredded in the wake of this vacation, and the damn
thing wasn't even over yet!

Scully had never gotten involved with anyone on any prior vacation. Yes,
there was a one-night stand or two in there, but that definitely did not
count as "getting involved"... though Scully fondly remembered one weekend
in Ocean City that got pretty involved from a technical standpoint...

Scully had never slept with anyone immediately after meeting them -- not
even Jack Willis, who had piqued her interests almost immediately upon
setting eyes on him her first morning at Quantico. She had let several
attractive opportunities pass her by because the object of her affection
didn't want to wait around. Scully had a well-defined comfort zone, and
no-one had ever gotten through it...

Until Max.

Scully hadn't lied that Saturday morning. She knew her body quite well, and
what she had felt in Max' bed was all too real. So was what she felt when
they'd held hands under the table at Harvest. And what she felt when Max
walked away from her. And when Max walked towards her. And when Scully
looked into Max' deep brown eyes. And when she listened to the rasp in her
voice. And it was getting more "real" all the time. Scully had never fallen
this far, this fast, and the speed was making her dizzy. She'd had lovers
who were funny, lovers who were intelligent, lovers who were passionate,
lovers who made her spine dance when they touched her. But none of them had
all these qualities, and Max did. Forget the fact that Max was a woman...

*No,* Scully chided herself as she came closer to the exit, *_Don't_ forget
the fact that Max is a woman! It's unfair to Max, and it's unfair to you!
You have to deal with this!*

Scully wasn't sure what unnerved her more: The fact that she'd made love
with a woman, or that she'd done it with so little objection. When she
wasn't trying to analyze the unexpected direction of her vacation, Scully
had spent the better part of the lecture re-living the previous evening,
the warmth in her mind (and between her legs) making her shift and fidget.
Scully would have gone back to bed with Max the second they finished their
coffee that first morning, and to hell with brunch. However, Max had made a
very good call, her own fears aside. The wait between their first time and
their second time was definitely needed. There was the chance that doing
too much too soon would have sent Scully out the door and back to
Washington. Half of her wanted to do that when she woke up in Max' arms on
Saturday, and there was still a voice in the back of her head that broke
through occasionally, urging her to flee with all possible speed, because
what she was doing was _wrong, wrong, wrong_!  If she listened closely, she
knew whose voice it was. Captain William Scully could not be mistaken for
anyone else.

Making love with Max had been like walking into a dark room, unknown in its
geography and its scope, and while the pleasures she found were deep and
frequent, they also terrified her in their possible meaning. Scully had
always felt bisexuality was merely a hedge, that there was no choice in
your sexuality, no matter how much the Religious Right howled from the
rooftops. You were either gay or you were straight. And Scully was
straight. Scully liked men. She had been with men and enjoyed their
company, in and out of bed. Her fantasies had been exclusively about men,
right up to the morning she left for Boston, when a stray thought in the
shower about the host of a party had made her feel the need. Yes, her past
choices for long-term relationships could (upon reflection, and depending
on your point-of-view) be seen as mildly dysfunctional. She knew she had
been involved with a steady diet of "father figures", and she didn't need
her psych classes from med school to realize they were not the most healthy
choices she could have made. But the fact was that she had enjoyed her time
with them. She had enjoyed her time in bed with them. Her body wasn't lying
_then_.

*Or was it?*

The rain was starting to slacken off when Scully had run into the Science
Center, and now it was nothing but a fine mist. Some people popped open
umbrellas, but Scully kept hers in her pocket. She liked this kind of rain.
It fell softly on your face and hair, and it smelled wonderful, even in the
middle of a city. Scully broke out of the crowd and started across the
pedestrian bridge. The bulk of the lecture audience was headed for the
cafeteria under Sanders Theatre, but Scully had seen a nice-looking cafe on
the other side of the Yard, a few blocks from Harvard Square. It was a bit
of a walk, but if she hurried, she might beat the lunch crowd...

"Agent Scully?"

Scully stopped and turned. Two men, same height (About 6'3") and build
(Paunchy, verging on fat), were coming up behind her. The black man had a
black raincoat like Mulder's and was bare-headed in the mist; his shoulders
were hunched and his hands were deep in his pockets. The white man with the
moustache wore a grey trenchcoat and a tweed cap. Water droplets stood on
the brim. Scully recognized him before he flashed his badge.

"Sergeant Paddock..." He nodded to the black man. "...Detective DuPree.
Boston P.D. Internal Affairs."

Scully nodded. "I remember you, Sergeant. What can I do for you?" Paddock
had led the questioning when I.A.D. had quizzed her about the museum.
DuPree had mostly taken notes, throwing in a question here and there.
Neither were friendly then, and they didn't seem to have improved.

Paddock was all business. "We have a few more questions concerning the
incident last Friday, Agent Scully. I realize this is a bad time, but we
tried contacting you at your hotel with no luck, and we'd like to get this
investigation wrapped up as soon as possible."

Scully looked pointedly at her watch. "I've got about an hour for lunch
before I'm supposed to be back at the lecture hall..."

"Great," DuPree put in, his smile as genuine as a three-dollar bill. "Just
about time for lunch for us. Let's go to The Tasty. We can eat while we
talk."

"And I'm sure you don't _have_ to be back at the lecture, Agent Scully,"
Paddock said coolly.

"Sergeant," Scully said, just as cool, "considering the price of admission,
as well as the distance I traveled to attend, I definitely _have_ to be
back at the lecture. We can eat while we talk, but we'll also talk while we
walk. Fair enough?"

Paddock and DuPree excahnged a look. Scully had seen it before from cops
who tried to walk over her. "Uppity bitch," that look said. Scully didn't
care. She'd done the surprise-visit routine on a suspect before. This
meeting smacked of that, and she didn't care for it one bit. Or for
Paddock's attitude. Finally, Paddock turned back, attempted a small smile,
and said, "Lead the way, Agent Scully."

<<<LUNCHTIME>>>

The cafe was attached to one of the myriad number of bookstores spread
around Harvard Square. Scully and her uninvited guests did just beat the
lunch rush. DuPree got a table by the window while Scully bought a spinach
salad and a cup of Earl Grey. Paddock got a roast beef sandwich and a
turkey sandwich -- both on kaiser rolls -- a Diet Pepsi and a raspberry
Snapple. He hadn't asked DuPree what he wanted.

"Never had lunch here before," Paddock said at the check-out counter. He'd
made sure he was ahead of Scully, shouldering his way past other customers.

"Really," Scully said, just making conversation.

"Pretty good idea to have this next to the bookstore. I know I like to read
the Herald when I have lunch."

"I understand," Scully said dryly. She had planned to buy one of the books
she'd been meaning to get and read it while she ate, but Paddock & DuPree's
appearance put an end to that. Paddock waited patiently while Scully paid
for her lunch, and then stayed close to her while they wound their way
through the tables. DuPree accepted the turkey sandwich and the Snapple
without comment, though his expression said he would have liked to make his
own choice.

"Now then, Agent Scully," Paddock said, cracking open the can of soda.
"Where were we?"

Scully poured a minimal amount of vinaigrette on the salad and forked a
piece of spinach. "I believe we were going over my initial meeting with
Detective Maxfield. Again."

"Right, right," Paddock said. He took a sip and nodded judiciously, as if
approving a fine wine. "Now, let me see if I've got this straight. You and
Detective Maxfield were together for two hours prior to the incident in the
lobby."

"That's correct." The spinach was quite fresh, a rarity in Scully's
experience.

A droplet of Diet Pepsi was in the corner of Paddock's mouth. He wiped it
off with the back of his hand. "And until she pulled her gun and flashed
her badge, you didn't know Detective Maxfield was a cop."

"Also correct." Whoever made the salad had cut the hard boiled egg into
thin slices. Many restaurants better than this one did not. Scully popped a
slice in her mouth. *Should have gotten some pepper...*

"And she didn't know you were a Feeb... 'scuse me. Federal agent." Paddock
over-pronounced the last two words. DuPree smirked around his sandwich.
"Have I got that right?"

Scully was getting very tired of these two. "You do," she said evenly.

Paddock and DuPree exchanged a look. Paddock took a large bite of his
sandwich, chewed, and swallowed most of it before he said, "So. What did
you two talk about all that time?"

"Art."

Paddock blinked twice, looked at DuPree again, then looked back at Scully.
"Art?"

Scully tried not to sound condescending. "It's not uncommon for two people
to talk about art when they're in a museum, Sergeant Paddock." She took a
sip of tea.

DuPree spoke up for the first time. "Pretty uncommon for two people to talk
for two hours and not mention what they do."

Scully shrugged and speared another spinach leaf. "In this case, that's the
way it happened."

"Unh hunh," Paddock said, sounding quite unconvinced. "And I suppose the
subject of Jason Roberge never came up, either."

Scully chewed, frowned, swallowed. "Why would it? I didn't even know
Roberge existed until he attacked his wife..."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, that's so. May I ask what you're implying?"

DuPree leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Mizz Scully..."

Scully's voice was as level as it got. "Agent Scully." Paddock snorted
softly and took another sip of soda. *Easy,* Scully told herself. *You
getting mad is just what these troglodytes want...*

DuPree made a small gesture that might have been an apology. "Agent Scully.
You gotta understand our position here. We've got an estranged husband who
goes to a well-populated place of business to blow away his wife. A place
where the security detail's been told this guy is persona non grata. The
guy takes down two rent-a-cops, and just as he's about to do his wife, two
lady cops come out of nowhere and pop him."

"Police officers in this city don't find themselves in the middle of
criminal acts? Bank robberies, convenience store hold-ups, purse
snatchings, muggings..."

"Of course they do," Paddock said, obviously getting frustrated. "That's
not the point, and you know it."

Scully looked at Paddock, then at DuPree. "Oh, I see. This isn't about two
law enforcement officers stopping a murder attempt. This is about two
_female_ law enforcement officers stopping a murder attempt."

DuPree cleared his throat. "My sergeant believes that one of those female
law enforcement officers being a divorcee herself could have been a
contributing factor to how it went down..."

"She divorced a brother officer, Mizz Scully," Paddock said, as if that
explained everything.

DuPree tried not to look pained. "And I gotta say... it's an interesting
theory."

"You have to admit, Agent Scully," Paddock said darkly. "It's a hell of a
co-incidence."

"Co-incidences happen, Sergeant..."

"Not in my experience."

Scully could feel a little more contempt for Paddock, but she would have to
really work at it. She put down her plastic fork and rested her arms on the
table. "I want to make sure I'm hearing this correctly. It's your theory
that Detective Maxfield and I rendezvoused at the MFA and... what? Laid in
wait for Jason Roberge until he compromised himself, and then used the
opportunity to assassinate him?"

Paddock shrugged, not apologetic in the least. "We have to work all the
angles, Agent Scully."

Scully sat back, folded her arms, and let one eyebrow raise very, very
slowly. "This is your idea of working all the angles?" When Paddock stayed
stone-faced, she asked, "Ever shoot pool for money?"

That got a snicker out of DuPree, but Paddock was not amused. "Is there any
reason why we shouldn't follow that line of reasoning, Mizz Scully?"

Scully let the "Mizz" pass. She had other things to be angry about. "How
about because it's ludicrous? How about because I'd never been in Boston
prior to last Friday, and had never set eyes on either Detective Maxfield,
Jason Roberge, Louise Roberge, or anyone else involved in that scene, until
that day..."

"We don't know that," Paddock said placidly.

Scully looked out the window. *I'm vacationing in the Twilight Zone.* She
looked back at Paddock and DuPree. DuPree was taking a few gulps of
Snapple, but Paddock was trying to do the Killer Stare Beauchamp had
attempted in the interrogation room. "Fine. Let's find out what you _do_
know. There were two security cameras in that lobby. Did you see anything
on those cameras that might lead you to think this was anything other than
a righteous shoot?"

DuPree caught that one. "Agent Scully, what was on those cameras is not
really the point. It's what got the two of you to that point that my
sergeant and I are interested in. What everybody saw could have been
staged. Plenty of cops have done that kinda thing."

"In other cities, of course," Paddock put in quickly.

Scully's voice was almost arid. "Of course. Well then. Have you checked
whether Detective Maxfield and I were in contact prior to Friday? Through
phone records, email, whatever?"

"We're not at liberty to comment on that," Paddock said, condescension
running quite freely.

Scully felt a Mulder Smirk coming on. "I'll take that as a 'No'." The color
started to rise in Paddock's neck. "Have you checked with the FBI in
Washington to see if I'd been in Boston prior to last Friday? My movements
have been on-file with the Bureau ever since I left the Academy."

Paddock lit up at that one. "According to the SAC for the local Bureau
office, you and your partner, an Agent..." He consulted his notes. "...Fox
Mulder, were on some kind of assignment a few years ago in Steveston.
That's only a couple of hours west on the Mass Pike..."

"I know where it is," Scully said evenly. *Thank you, Special Agent Beauchamp.*

Paddock looked up from his notes, eyes gleaming. "Really? Then do you know
where Baltimore is? Because we know Detective Maxfield made several trips
to Baltimore over a period of seven months." He flipped his notebook closed
with a flick of his wrist. "Baltimore's pretty close to Washington, isn't
it, _Mizz_ Scully?"

Scully shook her head slowly. "It's even closer to the District than
Steveston is to Boston, Sergeant. Now that we've all got our geography up
to snuff, can you establish Detective Maxfield and I linked up in either
place? Or anywhere in between?"

Paddock smiled without humor. "What makes you think we _need_ to establish
that, Mizz Scully?"

Scully put her elbows on the table, interlocked her fingers, and rested her
chin on her hands. "Oh, I don't know. Maybe because all you've got is a
bagful of assumptions and more than a little wishful thinking?" Before
Paddock could think of an answer, Scully said, "What do you _really_ have a
problem with, Sergeant Paddock? That Detective Maxfield is a woman? That
she divorced a 'brother officer'? Or that she shot a man who was trying to
kill a woman who had the temerity to divorce him?"

The red that had started up Paddock's neck had reached his receding
hairline. His voice was dead calm. "I don't have to justify my
investigation to you, Agent Scully."

"That's very true, Sergeant." Scully took another sip of tea. It was cold.
*Just as well. My appetite's long gone, anyway.* "But if you're going to
present the results of your investigation to anyone with the I.Q. of a
graham cracker, I'd say you'd better come up with something a little more
substantial than what you tried to walk past me just now. That is, unless
you're a glutton for ridicule." She looked pointedly at her watch. "Now, if
there's nothing else..."

Paddock was about to fire another fusillade when DuPree jumped in. "Agent
Scully, you gotta understand..."

"You're repeating yourself, Sergeant," Scully put in.

DuPree nodded. "What you're seein' here is an example of the effect gravity
has on sewage."

"You lost me."

DuPree leaned forward. "Shit flows downhill?" Before Scully could react,
DuPree went on, ticking points off on his fingers. "We get shit from our
lieutenant, who gets shit from his captain, who gets shit from the
commissioner, who gets shit from... another office we work closely with...
about how we have to look deeper into this thing. That there's something
wrong with how this went down, and why the players happened to be in the
right place at the right time. Then we got the Organized Crime Unit
hollerin' about how this shooting ruins a major investigation they had
going, 'cause they heard Roberge's construction company was all mobbed up,
and they were workin' a way to play Roberge so they could nail Tommy
Cellini, who's a major wiseguy round these parts. And if _that_ ain't
enough, the commissioner's tellin' our captain he wants this wrapped up
yesterday, 'cause the commish's also gettin' shit from the Mayor's office,
due to the fact that the women's groups in this town are hollerin' about
how you an' Maxfield oughta get a medal for what you did." Paddock snorted
loudly. Scully fought to remain deadpan. DuPree looked around, as if
searching for someone. "Now, my sergeant and I, we got _no-one_ to shit on.
That ain't what we do anyhow." It was Scully's turn to snort, though she
did it softly. Paddock kept himself in check, and DuPree either ignored it
or was too interested in his monologue to notice. "So that means we got to
pick up our orders and go see what we can find..."

*And shit on me.* Scully wiped her mouth with a napkin. "I know all about
pressure from above, Detective DuPree." *Do I ever!* She looked directly at
Paddock, who was breathing through his nose. "But I also know that's no
excuse for taking a shaky scenario and stretching it like taffy until it
fits whatever your agenda calls for." She picked up her tray and stood,
dumping its contents in a nearby wastebasket. "Now, if you'll excuse me,
I've got approximately ten minutes to get across Harvard Yard and back to
the lecture hall. That is, unless I want to stand against the back wall for
the better part of the afternoon. Which I do not." She dropped her business
card on the table, along with a small tip for the busboy. "If you actually
come up with something credible, my cell phone number's on the bottom of
the card. Gentlemen."

Scully walked around the table and headed for the door. Paddock was staring
heatedly into the middle distance while DuPree considered what was left of
his turkey sandwich. Scully knew she should just walk out, but she couldn't
resist, so she stopped and turned back. "Oh, Sergeant Paddock?"

Paddock wheeled around in his chair. "What?!"

Scully did her best to look solicitous. "You really ought to have that
blood pressure checked."

Scully kept a steady pace across the Yard. Her face was placid, but her
mind was volcanic. *"Another office we work closely with." Beauchamp
couldn't make my life miserable directly, so he goes in the backdoor!* She
pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and flipped it open, fully intent
on bringing down the wrath of Skinner on that nicotine-stained misogynist.
She had powered the phone up -- The moderator that introduced Dr. MacLeod
had asked that all beepers and cell phones be de-activated, which caused a
mild furor among the audience -- and had her hand on Skinner's memory
button when she told herself, *Take a breath. Think a minute.* Beauchamp
probably has deniability, at least as far as the captain and the
commissioner goes. Presented with pressure from the outside, the Regional
Old Boy Network would close ranks, just like its local and national
branches. Paddock and DuPree had demonstrated they had nothing but air on
the conspiracy angle, so Beauchamp's backdoor play had gone for naught.
*But if what goes around DOES come around...*

Scully's cell phone went off. She looked at her watch and added six hours.
Evening in Scotland. *Maybe they found Nessie,* Scully thought wryly. She
punched the "On" button. "Scully."

Max' voice purred in her ear. "If you're going to give unsuspecting damsels
your cell phone number, you ought to leave the damned thing on."

Scully sighed. "Boy, am I glad to hear your voice."

"You could have heard it half an hour ago," Max told her, only mildly put
out. "That's when I got out of the shrink's office."

"How'd that go?"

"She said 'Mmm hmm' a lot. Asked a lot of stupid questions. Whether I
gravitated towards violence. Whether I thought violence gravitated towards
me. Whether I was thinking about my divorce when I saw Jason point the gun
at Louise..."

"Popular theory," Scully murmured.

"You lost me."

"I'll explain." And Scully did, keeping a brisk pace, totally unaware that
a Nikon camera with a telephoto lens and a motor drive was taking pictures
of her every step of the way.

END OF PART TWO



TITLE:			"The Road Not Taken 2: Snapshots"
AUTHOR:					deejay
CATEGORY:
T, R/A (Adventure, Romance/Angst)
RATING:
NC-17, for adult language, some violence, and sexual situations of the
same-sex variety. If you have a problem with any or all of that, GO
SOMEWHERE ELSE! If you are under 18, you probably shouldn't be reading this
(or anything else with this rating, for that matter) so I repeat... GO
SOMEWHERE ELSE!
KEYWORDS:
Slash story, Scully/other
SPOILERS:
References to "Shadows", "Ghost In The Machine", "Ascension", "Beyond The
Sea", "The Paperclip", "Die Hand Die Verletzt", "Pusher", "Clyde Bruckman's
Final Repose", "Apocrypha", "Terma", "Nisei" and "731" (Maybe I should have
just listed the episodes I _didn't_ mention...<g>)
TIMELINE:
Pre-diagnosis Season 4. Takes place in mid-October 1996.
SUMMARY:
Scully's confusion deepens as her relationship with Max develops, and a
life-threatening situation forces her to confront her feelings.
ARCHIVE:
Submitted to Gossamer USA and AEA. All others, please ask me first (unless
I submit it to you), and please use my penname if you get permission.
'SHIPPERS: If you didn't like the first story, you'll like this one even less.
FEEDBACK:
Questions, comments, flames and fanmail to drjohn@wizvax.net

"The X Files", Fox Mulder, Dana Scully (and any Scully relations or
ex-boyfriends that happen to appear) and Walter Skinner belong to Chris
Carter, 1013 Productions, and FoxTV! I'm not trying to take them away -- at
least, not permanently -- or make any money off of them... unless CC reads
this, likes this, and wants to give me a job! (Email address at the end of
the story, Chris! Don't delay, write today!<g>) All other characters,
dialogue, and the story idea itself belong to Night Tripper Productions and
the author (viz. the person what's typin' at you now!), and will be
defended with guns, bombs, wolverines, and anything else I can get my hands
on! Any resemblance to real-life people, living or dead, is purely
co-incidental.

The song excerpts in this story are also used without permission (Don't
bother suing, guys; all you'll get is a '91 Volkswagen Fox, a Performa Plus
with a possessed hard drive, and a MasterCard that resembles a thin
charcoal briquette! Besides, I see this as my way of promoting music I
think is absolutely wonderful):

"Riverdance", by Bill Whelan (1995 Celtic Heartbeat Ltd.) is the title
track from the show of the same name. If your local PBSer shows it during
their quarterly Pledge Death March, check it out, throw as much money at
the station as you can, then go get the CD! "Maybe Angels", by Sheryl Crow
and Bill Bottrell (1996 Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp./Old Crow Music)
is the first track of Sheryl's second CD, cleverly entitled _Sheryl Crow_.
Play it loud, but tie down the furniture first, or you're liable to be
redecorated with extreme prejudice! (Also, if you check the lyrics
excerpted here you'll find Sheryl is almost certainly an X-Phile!) Finally,
I had to throw in one more from _Fumbling Towards Ecstacy_  -- "Hold On",
by Sara MacLachlan (1993 Tyde Music). Can't get enough of the Divine Sara!

This story originally appeared -- in slightly different form -- as
"Snapshots" (not to be confused with "Snap_shot_") on Bobbi's Auto Erotic
Asphyxiation Page. If you want to turn up the heat on your fanfic, check
this out:

http://nycmetro.com/Bobbi/index.htm

---------------------------------------------

"THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 2: SNAPSHOTS" (3/7)
by deejay

<<<KITCHEN>>>

If Scully was angry about Beauchamp, Max was absolutely livid about Paddock
& DuPree. Scully watched her pace around the kitchen from the safety of the
chipped wooden table by the window.

"Fucking IAD weasels," Max said for the third time. "They haven't got the
brains God gave _lettuce_! They don't have the smarts or the instincts to
be REAL detectives, so they kiss up to the brass and work out their
insecurities beating up on people who can actually do the job!" She slugged
back half her glass of wine, fire in her eyes. "Those two are perfect
examples! DuPree... Oh, shit! If his nose was any farther up the Captain's
ass, he'd need a proctologist's license! And _Paddock_! He was burned out
when they moved him out of Narcotics three _years_ ago..." She laughed
harshly. "The only reason he didn't get chucked over the side when he got
charged with Assault by a witness was because the captain pulled a few
strings! 'We can't afford to lose good cops because someone wants to lie
about us...'"

"So you said," Scully said easily.

Max stopped and looked at her. "I'm repeating myself, aren't I?" She ran a
hand over her face. "Oh shit, Scully, I'm sorry..." She took another sip,
seeming to calm down, only to slam the glass down on the table and go off
again. "But DAMNIT, this is getting old! I helped clear eighty-seven
homicides this year ALONE! Over two hundred since Bear and I were partnered
two years ago! But do _I_ get the benefit of the doubt? Oh, HELL no! I've
had to dance this dance twice in the last month! First with that dockworker
in Swampscott, now with this! I mean, I didn't _ask_ for this shit to
happen! It just _happened_! SHIT HAPPENS!"

"I know," Scully said quietly. Having been under scrutiny herself, from
areas as diverse as the Office of Professional Conduct and Congress its own
self, Scully knew exactly how she felt.

Max pulled the chair across from Scully out and plopped herself down,
picking up her glass and staring into the middle distance for a moment.
"Y'know what's amazing? If I'd done something wrong, I might even be able
to accept this! I wouldn't _like_ it, but I'd _accept_ it!" She spread her
arms in a I'm-totally-clueless gesture. There wasn't much wine left in her
glass, but she nearly spilled it anyway. "But I didn't! I stopped a crime
in progress! I saved someone's fucking LIFE..." She gestured at Scully with
the glass after a second. "...with a little help from my friends..." Scully
smiled and nodded. Max shook her head slowly, coming down somewhat. "Girl,
if this is the thanks you get for doing something right, I shudder to think
what'll happen if I ever _do_ fuck up!"

Scully put her glass down firmly on the table -- though not nearly as
firmly as Max did. "Max, it stinks," Scully said, as soothingly as she
could. "No question about it. But one of the things I've learned is you
can't let stuff you can't control get to you. This is so far out of our
hands, it can't even be measured. And it's not just two neanderthal
pseudo-cops we're dealing with. There's pressure all over this thing." She
started to tick points off with her fingers, then remembered DuPree did
that too, so she stopped herself. "IAD, who's following procedure. Right?"
Max waved a hand at Scully, an I-know gesture. "The commisioner. The
Mayor's office. Beauchamp, whose got his own agenda. Your Organized Crime
Unit..."

That set Max off again. "Oh yeah, don't you just _love_ that?! Another one
of the Gangbusters' best-laid plans to put Tommy C in a cage gets screwed
up, and it's just GOT to be a conspiracy! I swear, Oliver Stone shouldn't
be allowed to make movies any more." They both chuckled, though Scully did
it quietly. She'd seen Mulder's video collection, and Oliver Stone was a
major component. Max looked up at Scully. "What's Beauchamp's angle? Was he
on the level about you screwing up his job security, or is he just your
garden-variety misogynist?"

Scully considered that one for a moment. "I think both of those are valid.
But I don't think that's the whole story."

Max frowned. "Then what?"

Scully looked at Max for a count of three. *How much can I tell her? How
much does she want to know?* "You remember Beauchamp mention what Mulder
and I work on..."

Max looked off, trying to remember it all. "Something about some kind of
'fiefdom' Mulder had, and how you were part of it..."

Scully nodded. "The project itself is called the X Files. It's named for an
archive in a corner of the basement at the Hoover Building. They go back to
J. Edgar Hoover's heyday. Mulder discovered them, and with help from a U.S.
senator, got them turned into active files. The X Files' contents -- their
existence, in fact -- is considered to be everything from a tabloid
embarassment waiting to happen, to the equivalent of proof monsters do live
under the bed. Our investigations were terminated for a short time, and
only resumed because A.D. Skinner was willing to buck pressure from above.
Mostly from people like Beauchamp." *And from people who make Beauchamp
look like Pee Wee Herman...*

Max fiddled with a lock of hair. "What kind of subject matter would make
the Upper Class freak out like that?"

"Paranormal activity."

Max blinked three times. "Paranormal..." She nodded at Scully, gesturing
for her to expand on this.

Scully was looking down at the table. "Things... and people... that can't
be explained. People and events that may be driven by outside forces."

"That's a wonderfully amorphous answer. How about some specifics?"

Scully hesitated for a moment. *I'd give her just the mild stuff,*  she
thought to herself, *but what's mild to Mulder and me would send most
people running for the hills.* So she took a deep breath and told Max the
bare bones of the cases that came to mind first:

Lauren Kyte, and the supernatural force that protected her from anyone that
might harm her, including Mulder & Scully; the artificial-intelligence
project that seemed willing (and able) to kill in order to survive; the
three New Hampshire school-board members who were going to sacrifice Mulder
& Scully to Satan, until one of the three killed his partners with a
shotgun and then blew his own head off; Norbert 'Pusher' Modell, the
"little man" who became big when a brain tumor activated psychokinetic
abilities that enabled him to cause one policeman to have a heart attack,
another to set himself on fire, and nearly make Mulder kill Scully; Clyde
Bruckman, the mild-mannered insurance salesman who could "see" how people
would die, and whose unwanted ability helped Mulder & Scully stop a
Minnesota serial killer; and the investigation of an Arkansas
chicken-processing plant that uncovered a cult of cannibals that were a
second away from separating Scully's head from her shoulders.

Max' eyes grew progressively wider as each story passed by, and she
shivered as Scully described being strapped onto the chopping block,
convinced she was dead, until Mulder came out of the darkness and took out
the cult's "witch doctor". Max blew out a big puff of breath at that last
fact. "If I ever meet this Mulder guy, I'm going to give him a great big
kiss and congratulate him on his timing."

"I know I appreciated it," Scully said, in a resounding understatement.

Max went to the sink and started rinsing out her glass. "Maybe I'm just a
Local Yokel, but all these cases -- even the Amityville-type ones -- sound
like more intense versions of the stuff Violent Crimes handles. How come
the Upper Class has their panties in such a bunch over this?"

*No way around it, I guess. And she was afraid of scaring _me_ away!* "All
these cases do come under the purview of the X Files. But they weren't the
reason Mulder was interested in them, or why he's fought so hard to keep
them open. Or why people would like them to go away." She took another deep
breath. "It was other evidence, other cases, in the X Files that drove...
drives Mulder on... in the face of incredible odds."

Max turned around, leaning against the sink. "Evidence of what?"

Scully considered the table again before she looked up at Max.
"Extraterrestrials."

Blink. Blink. Blink. Max was very, very quiet. "Aliens?"

Scully nodded. "Yes."

Max looked around the kitchen, as if she was searching for someone who
could confirm she'd heard correctly. Finally she said, "We're talking
actual spacemen? UFOs? Little green men from Mars?"

Scully looked out the kitchen window. All you could see was the airshaft
between buildings. "Mulder insists they're grey. And as for their point of
origin..."

Max held up both hands. "Stop." She walked away from the sink and across
the kitchen, hands still in the air. First she said, "Woof!" Then after
further reflection she said, "I thought I'd heard... That is... I mean,
aliens exist on 'Next Generation!' In the tabloids! In bad sci-fi movies
that blow up the world..." She shook her head like a dog trying to get dry,
then turned back to Scully. "You're not bullshitting me, are you?"

Scully made a shrugging gesture with her left hand. "I really wish I was, Max."

Max blinked some more, looked around some more. "And Mulder's seen them?"

"He says he has. More than once."

Max laughed once -- the laugh of someone who just saw something really,
really scary. She resumed her seat, the wet wineglass still in her hand.
She tried twice to speak before she was able to ask, "Have you?"

Scully looked off at things that were not in the room. "I've seen...
something."

"Come on, Scully! Don't do this to me..."

"Damnit, Max," Scully snapped, "if I could give you a concrete answer, I
would! I've been searching for one for a lot longer than I'd like! I've
lost a lot of sleep! A lot of time! And I lost my sister in the process!
And all I know is that the truth may set you free, but it's damned hard to
find, and practically impossible to bring to light!"

Silence descended, along with embarassment -- Scully embarassed she'd
snapped, Max embarassed she pushed Scully hard enough to send her over the
edge. There was a white trim-line phone mounted on the wall next to the
kitchen door. Its ring echoed through the silence. Max looked at it, then
gave a sheepish look to Scully. "Saved by the bell," she said softly. She
got up and picked up the phone. "It's me..."

Scully sat still while Max talked, her gaze back on the table. *What have I
seen? Crop circles. White light. Little running shadows in a dark
mineshaft. An empty traincar. A microchip someone planted in my neck, and
in the necks of other women. A digital tape with text written in Navajo
that we barely got translated before it disappeared. Nightmares that catch
up to me whenever they want and make me wake up sweating. Nothing concrete.
Nothing to hold onto. But it holds onto me like it holds onto Mulder. I
didn't believe when I walked into the office. I believed that, in the cold
light of day, everything can be explained.*

*But some things just don't _want_ to be explained.*

The sound of a phone being hung up snapped Scully out of her reverie. Max
still had her hand on the phone. "What," asked Scully.

Max cocked her head. "That was Loot. I'm in the Murder Police again."

Scully smiled. "That's great."

"Yeah, well..."

"What?"

Max turned back, arms crossed. "It seems Paddock and DuPree wanted to keep
the investigation going another week. They seem to have bought into
Beauchamp's theory that there's 'something going on,' and all they need is
a little more time to find out what it is. However, the Commissioner pulled
the plug. I guess the Mayor has a lot more pull than Beauchamp, as far as
the Commish is concerned." Max sighed. "So I'm not going back on because
I'm cleared. I'm going back because of politics."

"Max, that's crap! And you know it!" Max looked up, surprised. She hadn't
heard Scully say anything stronger than 'Damn', even in bed. "You and I
both know Paddock and DuPree didn't have anything. They could spend the
rest of the _year_, and they still wouldn't have anything! You did your
job, and you did it right. And no conspiracy they could come up with could
ever change that!"

Max nodded, after a moment, then smiled. "'Divorced Lady Cops That Kill!'
Tomorrow on Oprah!" That broke them both up. "I didn't sound _too_ sorry
for myself, did I?"

"Just enough to piss me off."

"I guess so," Max laughed. She held out her arms. "Well, c'mon, girl! Come
here and congratulate me!"

Grinning ear to ear, Scully got up and came round the table, hugging Max
hard. Max ran her fingers through Scully's hair. "I'm sorry," Max said
softly.

"What are you apologizing for," Scully said. "I'm the one who screamed. I'm
sorry I had to dump all that on you."

"Yeah, but sometimes I forget I'm not in the Box. I push too hard
sometimes. That's fine for perps. It's not fine for you."

Scully gave Max a squeeze. "That's what I get for messing up your perspective."

"You got that right." They pulled back and looked into each others' eyes.
Scully was feeling the vertigo, feeling it hard. Max leaned in and they
kissed. *Like velvet,* Scully thought distractedly as their tongues met
again.

It was Scully who finally broke the kiss, their foreheads resting on each
other again. "Well," Scully said. "I'd say a celebration was in order."

"Damn right," Max rasped. "Dirty Harriet is back in the saddle!"

They both had a short giggle fit before Scully said, "Alright. Your turn to
play guest of honor. What is _your_ pleasure? What would _you_ like to do?"

Max sighed hard. "Well, for one thing, I want to eat and drink somewhere
other than here! I need Thai food, and Thai Iced Tea, and I need it _now_!"

"Done," Scully said crisply. "And after that?"

"After that..." Max looked up at the ceiling, obviously mulling something over.

"What?"

Max looked at Scully out of the corner of her eye. "Welllllllllllll... Has
it occured to you you're paying downtown hotel prices for a room you've
spent about fifteen minutes in?"

<<<HOTEL>>>

The chill wind whipping down Boylston Street made Scully turn up the collar
of her trenchcoat as she and Max made their way towards the grey monolith
that was the Boston Back Bay Hilton. The Thai restaurant in Harvard Square
had a half-hour wait at the very least, so Max loaded Scully on the T and
took her down to Station 13, a former police station near the Institute of
Contemporary Art, and only a block away from Scully's hotel. The service
was decent, the menu mildly imaginative, the prices fairly steep. Because
of the last factor, they went Dutch. Scully got the sense people went there
to be seen, if the array of fashionable patrons was any indication.

Scully wasn't overly impressed with the chicken caeser salad she ordered,
but she was too busy drinking in Max to care all that much. Max' wardrobe
had been exclusively Early Graduate Student from the time Scully had met
her. The beige jacket, the black sleeveless dress with the floral print,
and the brushed-suede pumps she wore now was a decided departure from that,
as was the brown leather purse she slung from her right shoulder.

"I clean up real good, don't I," she had asked innocently as she came out
of the bedroom and modeled the outfit.

All Scully could say was, "You look fabulous."

And she did. They both did. Max' outfit dovetailed perfectly with Scully's
hunter-green suit. They looked like two attractive, professional
businesswomen on a girl's night out, perhaps two conventioneers from the
Hynes Convention Center across from the Sheraton. Quite a few
conventioneers dotted the lobby as Scully and Max made their way to the
elevators. They gave the overly-friendly, dressed-for-success men and women
a wide berth. The Hynes' marqee identifieded the latest gathering as the
"International Convention of Dreambuilders" -- a code name for an Amway pep
rally. After being buttonholed for half an hour in a coffee shop in
Pennsylvania, Mulder had told Scully he believed Amway salesmen were
conclusive proof aliens were living among us. Scully and Max took special
care not to make eye contact with anyone in the elevator.

Scully's room was on the 9th floor, with a decent view of the Back Bay. It
was fairly spacious for a single, with a 19" color television next to the
dresser/mirror combination and a circular faux-mahogany table next to the
window. The bed was a double, immaculately made. There was a mint on one of
the pillows.

"I wouldn't touch that mint," Max advised Scully. "It's probably been there
a couple of days."

"Since Saturday, at least," Scully said. "I ate the one that was there when
I got here Friday morning."

Max chuckled, casting her eyes round the room. "Love what you've done with
the place. You really let it all hang out on vacation, don't you?"

"Laugh if you will," Scully said, sitting down in a green-checked swivel
chair and taking off her shoes. "Compared to some of the fleabags Mulder
and I have had to settle for on the road, this room is downright palatial.
Besides, my travel agent got me a terrific rate."

Max nodded, walking into the bathroom. "I guess that's one thing us locals
have on you guys. We don't have to travel to find something ugly to step
in..." She paused for a few seconds, then walked out of the bathroom. She
was holding Scully's portable tape player, a small smile on her face. "Like
to sing in the shower?"

"Something like that," Scully said, feeling herself turn red.

Max didn't answer, but kept smiling as she walked back into the room and
put the tape player on top of the television. She found the outlet after a
little hunting, plugged in the player, then went over to her purse and
plucked out a cassette tape.

"You're prepared," Scully said. She hadn't seen Max pick up the tape.

"A lot of hotels have those new stereo clock radios with cassette decks
built in." She threw a look at the bedside table. "This one doesn't, I see.
Just as well. I like your unit better." She slapped the tape into the
player and pressed "Rewind".

"You've done this before, then," Scully said quietly.

"I've been in a lot of hotels the last couple of years," Max said equably.
"Great place for criminal activity. Lots of cash, lots of credit cards,
lots of booty. Sometimes it ends badly and Homicide get called." The tape
re-cued with a loud click. Max pressed the "Play" button and took a deep
breath. "But I've never done _this_ before."

Scully raised an eyebrow as something like jackhammers set to a drumbeat
came out of the small-but-powerful speakers, followed by guitar and
electric piano, slow and slinking and sexy as hell. It wasn't Scully's
music at all; she wasn't much of a rocker, and often looked askance at
Mulder whenever he cranked up the car radio for one of his favorites. But
there was a sensuality to the music, and it fed the feelings Scully had
been experiencing all evening -- not just Scully's deepening attraction for
Max, but also Scully's high state of nervousness. She'd had nothing
stronger than iced tea at dinner. Both times they'd made love, Scully had
had at least a little to drink. If something was going to happen tonight
(*What you mean "If", paleface?* she'd thought wryly when she made this
decision), Scully wanted to be stone cold sober.

Max walked slowly over to Scully, hips swaying slightly, her steps matching
the beat. She held out her hands to Scully. Scully took them and stood up.
Max was still wearing her pumps, so they were eye-to-eye. The change in
perspective made Scully slightly dizzy, for they'd only been eye-to-eye in
bed. They wrapped their arms around each other and kissed, Scully's arms
around Max' neck, Max' arms around Scully's waist. They swayed together,
bodies pressed tight, as their bodies and their tongues slow-danced.

Scully's eyes were shut, her mind clearly picturing the two of them alone
on a very large dance floor, flashes of light from a mirror ball cascading
over them. When Max broke the kiss, they were standing in the middle of the
floor between the table and the bed. Max stroked Scully's cheek with the
fingernails of her right hand. The look in her eyes was truly intense. "Do
you trust me?"

"Yes," Scully said immediately. She didn't even give it a second thought.
Max looked in her eyes, obviously considering her next course of action.
Finally she broke the embrace, walked over to her purse and rummaged in it
for a few moments. When she turned around again, Scully saw what Max had in
her hand and held her breath.

The three pastel scarves were made of a material that shone in what light
there was. *Probably made of silk,* a part of Scully's mind informed her.
They were all quite long, and any one would have made a great accessory for
a dark-colored dress or blouse. *They're accesories, all right...*

She looked up at Max, fighting to stay composed. Max' expression was
unreadable, but her eyes burned with fire. "'No' is a perfectly acceptable
answer," Max said quietly. "And this is not a one-time offer. Unless you
want it to be."

Scully bit her lip, her gaze back on the scarves. Another "Never". She had
fantasized about being tied up, but none of her past lovers had ever
suggested it, and she had never felt comfortable enough to offer it as an
alternative. *I never trusted anyone enough to let them...* Her gaze
flicked back up to Max, who seemed to be holding her breath, too. Scully's
mouth was phenomenally dry.

"Tell me what to do."

Max exhaled slowly. She walked up to Scully, took one of Scully's hands and
kissed it, holding it to her cheek for a moment. She wrapped her arms
around Scully's neck, and kissed her softly on the lips. "The last thing I
want to do is hurt you," Max said, her rasp more pronounced than usual. "If
at any time I do, or if this gets too much for you, tell me and I'll stop.
Okay?" All Scully could do was nod. Her pulse rate was in triple figures,
and breathing was an act of will. "Just stand still," Max told her. "Hands
at your sides."

As Max walked slowly behind her, Scully tried to concentrate on the music.
Even though the lyrics were frighteningly appropriate to her life, it was
difficult to focus as Max tied a scarf snugly over her eyes. The blindfold
(*Definitely silk,* that same part of her brain said...) felt cool against
her skin:

"Got a hundred stories and tabloid lies/Got witnesses to what the
government denies/So I'm headed down to Roswell to wait and see..."

Scully could barely make out Max' breathing as she walked slowly around
Scully. The deep pile carpeting muffled her footsteps. *I'm in her hands,*
Scully thought. She could feel her other senses trying to compensate for
the lack of visual input, but she still felt quite helpless. The control
freak in her was screaming bloody murder; the rest of her was eagerly
waiting for whatever came next.

Hands "appeared", easing Scully's jacket off her shoulders. She wore a
short-sleeve white blouse under the jacket, along with her Sig Sauer. The
Sig went next, falling to the floor with a "thunk". There was a pause, and
then the hands pulled the blouse out from her waistband and lifted it over
Scully's head.

"Max..."

"Shhhhh..."

Scully was shaking. She tried to control it, and failed when fingers
slipped inside her waistband and pulled down her slacks. Scully stepped out
of them without a word. Another pause. Scully thought she heard folding. It
made her smile, until a new round of shaking started when the hands
unclasped her bra. She'd changed into one with a rear clasp, so the hands
never touched Scully's breasts. Her nipples were beginning to ache, and her
skin felt like fire ants were walking all over her as the hands slowly
eased her panties off her ass and down her legs.

*Are the curtains open?* Scully frantically tried to remember as she "felt"
Max walk around her again. She finally decided it didn't matter. Not in the
balance of the other thoughts she tried to sort out. She wanted to cover
herself. She wanted Max to see all of her. She wanted to run. She wanted to
stay. She wanted this to stop. She never wanted this to end.

Max' voice appeared in her ear, making her jump. "Stay still," she whispered.

Scully nodded, licking her lips, which were just as dry as her mouth. She
felt Max move away, seemingly disappearing into the music that filled the
room.Scully usually had a very good sense of time. She tried to remember
what time the clock on the dresser had said before this started. She
couldn't remember. She tried to recall how long the first song (Now
replaced by a faster, acoustic-guitar-driven tune) had been. She couldn't
remember. All she knew was the here and now, naked and blindfolded,
completely open to whatever happened next. She felt a droplet of juice
start down her right leg.

Scully was just about to call out Max' name when the arms appeared from
behind her, slipping under her armpits and pulling her close. "Oh Lord,"
Scully blurted loudly as Max' tongue slid into her ear. Max was still
wearing the pumps, because her mouth was on the same level as Scully's as
Scully turned her head back and sucked Max' tongue into her mouth. But the
pumps were all Max wore. Scully wanted to turn all the way around, but Max
held her close with a strength a casual observer would not think Max had.
Scully pressed her ass back into Max' crotch, her hands reaching back to
touch as much of Max as she could.

Max broke the kiss and started licking and kissing her way across Scully's
left shoulder. "I love your skin," Max said. Her voice was a rasp, almost
entirely unlike the voice Scully knew. "So soft." Kiss. "So nice." Lick.
"So sweet." Max' hands kneaded Scully's breasts as she laid a trail of
kisses down Scully's shoulderblade, across her spine and up to Scully's
other ear. "I've been thinking about you all day," Max whispered in her
ear. "I wanted to touch myself a thousand times, I wanted you so bad..."

A long low moan was coming from Scully's throat as waves of pleasure rolled
over her. Somehow she formed it into words. "...want you..." She wrenched
her head around, mouth wide open, needing a kiss in the worst way. Max
shoved her tongue into Scully's mouth. Their frenching was frantic.

Max kept one hand on Scully's right breast while the other one slipped down
Scully's flat stomach. There was no hesitation this time as Max' fingers
went between Scully's legs and started frigging Scully's clit. Scully
groaned into Max' mouth. Max ripped her mouth away from Scully's and slid
her tongue inside Scully's ear. "I want you to cum," Max hissed. "Right
here. Right now. Right where you're standing."

*Jesus Jesus Jesus* Scully's mind kept repeating. She bent at the waist and
pushed her ass back into Max' crotch, as if she was being fucked standing
up. And when Max slid two fingers inside her, she was. She wanted to touch
Max too, but Max held her so close that all she could do was grab Max'
asscheeks. Max hunched her back and ran her tongue up Scully's spine as she
slipped another finger inside Scully, the heel of her hand rubbing Scully's
clit. The sensations and the thought of what was happening was all too
much. Scully came hard and long, her moan escalating to a wail as she went
over the top. She wanted to fall to the carpet, but Max held her more or
less erect, one hand running over her nipples while the other kept plunging
inside her, slower and slower now.

As her orgasm wound down, Scully whispered, "Please... I can't stand
anymore..."

Scully could hear the imp in Max' voice. "You can't _stand_ anymore... or
you can't stand any _more_?"

Scully tried to laugh, but it came out like a wheeze. "You know what I mean..."

"Three steps forward and turn around. The bed's right in front of you."

*The bed. Oh, yes.* Scully staggered forward three steps and leaned down,
her hands out to stop her as she fell onto the bed. As she landed, Max
guided her legs around so Scully found herself on her back, presumably at
the head of the bed, arms splayed out. She had lost all sense of direction,
all sense of time. She felt Max sit next to her, could feel Max' gaze on
her body as Scully got her breath back. Max did not take off the blindfold.
Scully made no move to do so.

Max sounded a little more like herself. "Are you ready for more?"

Scully did the laugh/wheeze again. "There's more?"

"Mm hmm."

*More of this? For me? Sure, back up the truck...* All Scully did was nod.
Max moved off the bed. There was a pause, and then Scully felt something
slip around her left wrist. Another scarf. Max tied it -- not too tightly,
but tight enough make Scully know it was there. She felt Max step over her
to the other side of the bed. Another scarf was tied to her right wrist.
Snug, but not too snug. Max tugged at the scarf, pulling Scully arm a
little straighter. She felt some more tugging, and then it stopped. More
shifting of Max, more tugging of the first scarf.

"How's that," Max finally asked.

Instinctively, Scully pulled down. Her arms had some range of movement, but
not much. The headboard made a quiet groan of protest. Scully had to run
her tongue over the roof of her mouth three times before she could speak.
All she could say was, "Good."

"Don't pull too hard, honey. This isn't the love scene from 'Ghost'..."

"You're not kidding..." Scully breathed. She'd never understood why
everyone thought Patrick Swayze was so attractive. She understood it even
less now. She had a flash of Demi Moore before she shoved the thought away.
It seemed like cheating.

Max laid down on top of her and started kissing her face. Her nipples
pressed onto Scully's, hardness on hardness. Scully tried to kiss Max
several times, but Max's mouth seemd to move away at the last millisecond.
Max started moving down Scully, hands and mouth worshipping the body that
had kept her mind elsewhere for most of the day. She stuffed a nipple
greedily into her mouth and sucked. Max loved Scully's breasts. Their size,
their shape, their taste. The feel of Scully's nipple against her lips as
she pulled it away... Max had brought herself off twice that morning
thinking about Scully's nipples -- once in bed, once in the shower -- and
the psychiatrist's receptionist had to repeat Max' name twice to jerk her
out of her reverie, her thoughts focused on very little else but this new
and exciting creature named Dana Katherine Scully.

Scully's mind had few thoughts running through this, other than *Yes* and
*Good* and *Jesus*. She tried not to pull too hard at her bonds, but the
feelings running through her made her jerk and thrash, and that made her
pull her arms down, wanting to hold Max and stroke Max, but the scarves
were not going to come loose, and the frustration of being tied up mixed
with the excitement of being helpless while her lover's hands and mouth
were everywhere. And then they were where she wanted them to be, as Max's
tongue lapped over Scully's aching clit... and then moved off again as Max'
mouth slid down Scully's right leg, following the trail of juice Scully had
left while waiting for the festival to begin.

Scully expected Max to come back up, but she didn't. She kept going down,
down down, until she kissed the sole of Scully's foot, and then she was
gone. Scully groaned loudly. "Please don't tease..."

"Shhhh. The best is yet to come."

*The best? What _else_ can she do to me?* Scully's mind boggled for a
second, then she sighed as Max' mouth started up her left leg, licking and
kissing, kissing and sucking, coming closer and closer to Scully's dripping
pussy. Scully only just heard the soft low buzzing sound. She nearly jumped
a mile when Max rubbed the long thin plastic instrument across Scully's
nether lips and placed it gently on her clit.

"Surprise," Max crooned, her smile very audible, her left hand deep inside
herself.

Scully was completely non-verbal. If she was embarassed about sharing her
bondage fantasies with her past lovers, she was mortified about the idea of
buying a vibrator, let alone trying to figure out where to get one. Her
first roommate at U of M had had one; she'd never demonstrated it and
Scully had never tried it, preferring the "human touch". But now, as her
second orgasm slammed into her, all she could think was, *Look what you've
been missing!*

Max was not done, though, not by a long shot. The sight of Scully writhing
on the bed, wrists straining and headboard groaning, sent Max off like a
rocket. Somehow she was able to drag herself up the bed and straddle
Scully, her head level with Scully's crotch. As Max started working on her
clit again, Scully leaned forward as far as she could and kissed the first
thing she came in contact with. A cheek. Working by smell and taste, she
moved her mouth down and to the right, finding Max' slit after a few
seconds of searching. Scully stuck out her tongue and moved her mouth in a
downward motion, parting Max' lips with a thrust of her tongue. She could
feel Max inhale.

"Ahh, God yes," Max urged. "Fuck me, Scully! Please..." She put her head
down on Scully for a moment, savoring the feel of the tongue inside her.
Then she said, "...and I'll fuck _you_." And slid the vibrator inside her.

If Scully was wild before, she was off the evolutionary scale now. She
licked and kissed Max' pussy like it was the most important thing in the
world to her. She ran her tongue up and down Max' crack, drinking in every
juice she could find as Max fucked the vibrator in and out, a little faster
every time. Lost in her passion, Scully went too far and her tongue touched
something else. She had sworn she would never do it. Not with anyone. No
exceptions. But all past promises were forgotten as Scully shoved her
tongue into Max' asshole. Max squealed with surprise and delight. She
dropped her mouth to Scully's clit and sucked hard, fucking her pussy hard
now. Scully's mouth went back and forth, taking in the tastes, desperately
wishing she could see this, completely enraptured with what they were
doing. Max' orgasm was violent, her body thrashing on top of Scully's. *God
I wish I could hold her,* Scully thought as she went over the edge for the
third time.

They laid that way for a long time, out of breath, drenched in sweat, the
vibrator turned off but still inside Scully. Finally Max pulled it out
slowly, eliciting another moan from Scully. She felt Max shift again,
groaning herself. As she lay down on top of Scully again, she pulled off
the blindfold and laid it down next to them. She had to stretch, but she
also slipped the knots on the scarves, setting Scully's arms free. Scully
threw her arms around Max, ignoring the pain from her muscles as they
kissed long and deep.

Scully broke the kiss about a year later. Her lungs were still
recuperating. "Where... did you learn... to do that?"

Max chuckled into Scully's shoulder. "I didn't."

Scully stared up at the ceiling, disbelieving. "You mean you were making
this up as you went along?"

Max shook her head. She kissed Scully's cheek and looked at the headboard,
trying to remember how it went. "About four months ago, the Bear and I were
on a stakeout. We were outside this house in Dedham, waiting for a guy
who'd whacked a Store 24 clerk during a robbery that morning. Anyway, we'd
been there all night, and Bear and I are down to a routine. When it gets
late, he sleeps an hour, I sleep an hour..."

"Mulder and I do the same thing."

Max nodded. "So anyway, it's my turn to nod off." She paused for a few
seconds. "I dreamed I was in a room with... someone. Don't know who. It
wasn't anyone I knew." Max tried to picture the face. No dice. *Did she
have red hair? Yes. No. Maybe. Shit, Maxie, don't transpose! It'll turn
into one of Scully's cases!*  "Anyway, with a couple of variations, this
was what happened."

Scully stared up at her. "What variations?"

"Well, the music was different. Bear had Kiss 108 on the radio, so it was
dance tunes." She smiled ruefully. "And I hadn't finished when Bear woke me
up."

Scully winced in sympathy. "Don't you hate it when that happens?"

"I sure did then." *It was also the first time I dreamed about having sex
with anyone but DeeDee. That's need-to-know, though...* "We caught the guy,
though. He'll be in Walpole well into the next century."

"Was the dream why you got the vibrator?"

"Oh, he's an old friend. It's a cliche, but he's the only man I ever get
along with all the time." She looked down at Scully. "So, Doctor, what do
you think my dream means?"

Scully put on a serious face and said, "I would say it means you have an
overactive imagination and a libido that cries out for non-stop attention.
That will be two hundred dollars."

Max laughed. "Damn, you're a genius." They kissed again, Scully holding her
close. The soreness in her arms was easing. Max broke away and kissed
Scully's nose. "How you doing?"

Scully shook her head. "No comment. I'm enjoying myself too much." *Because
if I stop and think...* Max seemed to accept that. "I do have a few
questions, though."

"Shoot."

"What's the Boston Police Department's position on illicit sex in hotels?"

"Oh, they're in favor of it. It brings in convention dollars, as you no
doubt noticed. And it keeps our congressional delegation off the streets."

That broke Scully up. She was looking at Max' shoulder. It looked like it
needed a kiss, so she gave it one. "When do you have to leave for work
tomorrow?"

Max sighed. "Early. Got to do what you did and get some proper clothes for
the task at hand." She growled softly. "Back to reality. What else would
you like to know?"

The blindfold was lying next to Scully's right side. She looked down at it
for a moment, then picked it up and trailed it along Max' spine, making it
quake. The look in Scully's eyes could only be described as mischievous.
"Does your friend have fresh batteries?"

*	*	*

The Hilton's restaurant had a breakfast buffet every morning. Breakfast was
usually a light affair for Scully, but that morning she ate ravenously,
hiding from the Dreambuilders behind the Boston Globe. She disliked both
Washington papers -- the Post was way too liberal, the Times far too
conservative -- but she found she really liked the Globe Sunday edition,
and the weekday seemed to be just as good. It definitely had the best
comics section.

Half an hour after breakfast, she walked up to the front desk and handed
her key to the young black woman in a blue suit; she had a slight Jamaican
accent and the nametag on her breast pocket said "Tamika". Scully was
casually dressed under her trenchcoat, carrying her hanging bag, her gym
bag, and her laptop.

Tamika consulted her computer. "I show you as staying for four more days,
Ms. Scully. Is there something wrong with the room?"

Scully smiled politely. "Not at all. I've just had a change in plans."

Tamika looked concerned. "Nothing serious, I hope?"

Scully paused only a half-second. "Nothing drastic." *As for serious...*
"Will there be a problem with the bill?"

Tamika shook her head firmly, typing quickly and efficiently. "Guests
change their plans all the time. Or have them changed. It's a fact of life.
We're quite flexible here." The dot-matrix printer next to her workstation
stated spitting out accordion paper. Tamika leaned forward, her voice a
little softer. "I hope I'm not taking too much of a liberty, but... Good
work the other day."

Scully smile stayed the same. "Thank you." *So much for not being famous.*
She signed the bill and put the copy in the inside pocket of her raincoat.

Tamika was quite solicitous. "Can I have the concierge call you a taxi?"

Scully shook her head as she arranged her bags again. "It's a nice day.
I'll walk. Thanks very much."

"My pleasure," Tamika said pleasantly. "Come again."

*One thing at a time,*  Scully didn't say, smiling to herself.

It was a nice day. The rain and the clouds had cleared out, and the sun was
shining brightly as Scully came out the front door and started up towards
Boylston Street and the "T" stop, Max' spare key in her pants pocket,
jingling against her change and rubbing against her thigh.

END OF PART 3


TITLE:			"The Road Not Taken 2: Snapshots"
AUTHOR:					deejay
CATEGORY:
T, R/A (Adventure, Romance/Angst)
RATING:
NC-17, for adult language, some violence, and sexual situations of the
same-sex variety. If you have a problem with any or all of that, GO
SOMEWHERE ELSE! If you are under 18, you probably shouldn't be reading this
(or anything else with this rating, for that matter) so I repeat... GO
SOMEWHERE ELSE!
KEYWORDS:
Slash story, Scully/other
SPOILERS:
References to "Shadows", "Ghost In The Machine", "Ascension", "Beyond The
Sea", "The Paperclip", "Die Hand Die Verletzt", "Pusher", "Clyde Bruckman's
Final Repose", "Apocrypha", "Terma", "Nisei" and "731" (Maybe I should have
just listed the episodes I _didn't_ mention...<g>)
TIMELINE:
Pre-diagnosis Season 4. Takes place in mid-October 1996.
SUMMARY:
Scully's confusion deepens as her relationship with Max develops, and a
life-threatening situation forces her to confront her feelings.
ARCHIVE:
Submitted to Gossamer USA and AEA. All others, please ask me first (unless
I submit it to you), and please use my penname if you get permission.
'SHIPPERS: If you didn't like the first story, you'll like this one even less.
FEEDBACK:
Questions, comments, flames and fanmail to drjohn@wizvax.net

"The X Files", Fox Mulder, Dana Scully (and any Scully relations or
ex-boyfriends that happen to appear) and Walter Skinner belong to Chris
Carter, 1013 Productions, and FoxTV! I'm not trying to take them away -- at
least, not permanently -- or make any money off of them... unless CC reads
this, likes this, and wants to give me a job! (Email address at the end of
the story, Chris! Don't delay, write today!<g>) All other characters,
dialogue, and the story idea itself belong to Night Tripper Productions and
the author (viz. the person what's typin' at you now!), and will be
defended with guns, bombs, wolverines, and anything else I can get my hands
on! Any resemblance to real-life people, living or dead, is purely
co-incidental.

The song excerpts in this story are also used without permission (Don't
bother suing, guys; all you'll get is a '91 Volkswagen Fox, a Performa Plus
with a possessed hard drive, and a MasterCard that resembles a thin
charcoal briquette! Besides, I see this as my way of promoting music I
think is absolutely wonderful):

"Riverdance", by Bill Whelan (1995 Celtic Heartbeat Ltd.) is the title
track from the show of the same name. If your local PBSer shows it during
their quarterly Pledge Death March, check it out, throw as much money at
the station as you can, then go get the CD! "Maybe Angels", by Sheryl Crow
and Bill Bottrell (1996 Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp./Old Crow Music)
is the first track of Sheryl's second CD, cleverly entitled _Sheryl Crow_.
Play it loud, but tie down the furniture first, or you're liable to be
redecorated with extreme prejudice! (Also, if you check the lyrics
excerpted here you'll find Sheryl is almost certainly an X-Phile!) Finally,
I had to throw in one more from _Fumbling Towards Ecstacy_  -- "Hold On",
by Sara MacLachlan (1993 Tyde Music). Can't get enough of the Divine Sara!

This story originally appeared -- in slightly different form -- as
"Snapshots" (not to be confused with "Snap_shot_") on Bobbi's Auto Erotic
Asphyxiation Page. If you want to turn up the heat on your fanfic, check
this out:

http://nycmetro.com/Bobbi/index.htm

---------------------------------------------

"THE ROAD NOT TAKEN 2: SNAPSHOTS" (4/7)
by deejay

<<<RESTAURANT>>>

As far as the Boston Police Department was concerned, only Merrill Reese
knew Max' sexual orientation, and although he didn't understand it, the
Bear backed his partner's right to keep her private life private. No-one
else knew, though many suspected, or simply preferred to think of her that
way. Most of it was the age-old prejudice against a woman "doing a man's
job." Some of it was simply sour grapes; not long after her divorce,
several of Max' "brother officers" had asked her out. She had politely
refused all comers, explaining that she no longer wanted to blend work and
social life. (On the surface, this was true. She was also dealing with the
pain of losing Richard, as well as the need to swim in self-pity; Richard
had said she was incapable of passion, and she had believed it. Later,
there was DeeDee. And passion. But the surface reason never changed.) A few
of her erstwhile suitors had not taken "No" for an answer very well. One
sergeant in Vice had begun a whisper campaign about Max not being a "team
player" just before her transfer to Homicide. The sergeant found himself
transferred to Evidence Control at about the same time, which deepened his
(and his friends') resentment toward Max.

Scully understood what Max had gone through. From her first day at the
Academy to her last case, she had dealt with the same static. There were
days she was convinced that Mulder and Skinner were the only men in law
enforcement who hadn't asked her out, or who weren't convinced she was some
castrating feminist who was doing this because holding a gun was the only
way she'd ever have a dick of her own. There were the nicknames, or at
least the ones she knew about: "The Ice Queen", and the ever-popular "Mrs.
Spooky". And whether they asked her out or not, Scully always felt some
sense of resentment from local police and FBI whenever she appeared -- with
or without Mulder -- at a crime scene or in a police station. It was as if
her prescence was the equivalent of breaking into the Little Rascals'
treehouse during a meeting of the He-Man Women Hater's Club. Like Max, she
had become inured to it, but it was still an annoyance, because it was one
more obstacle to climb over, and that wasted time that could be focused on
whatever job was at hand.

Scully glanced at her watch as she stepped off the trolleycar and crossed
over the small side street that separated the T line from the line of
storefronts. A few minutes late, but early by Mulder standards. She made a
quick dash across Harvard Avenue, only just avoiding a brown-and-white cab
that didn't seem to believe in red lights. A quick glance at the parked
cars showed no sign of Max' dirty blue Beretta. Scully was mildly
displeased. She wanted to be with Max when she met The Coven. She'd only
just gotten comfortable with staying in Max' apartment, and she'd been
there three days, so facing Max' best friends alone seemed almost daunting.
Ostensibly, that night's dinner -- which, Max insisted, had been in the
works a week before Scully came to Boston -- was put together so everyone
could see pictures of the final edition of a wedding dress, but The Coven
tried to get together at least twice a month, work and personal lives
permitting. Although Max had assured Scully she was not being showcased
("It's not like I'm taking you to my mom's for Thanksgiving dinner," she
laughed when Scully broached the concept.), that was exactly what this felt
like.

The restaurant was a lot of things, but impressive wasn't one of them. The
drop ceiling was fairly high up, but the decor tended towards tall picture
windows, fake wood paneling, incongruous wagon-wheel chandeliers, and
mirrors with beer logos on them. Candles in hurricane lamps glowed on the
tables, and something sounding suspiciously like Kenny G floated out of
small speakers as Scully walked into the restaurant. (Michael Bolton's
voice joined in a moment later, proving once again that two wrongs don't
make a right.) Most of the tables were already filled, while several
parties sat in clumps around the makeshift waiting area and tried to make
small talk. A wizened oriental woman stood at a rickety podium in front of
a faded privacy screen. She smiled automatically upon seeing Scully.

"Taybuh fo' one?" Her voice had a chirping quality, like a small bird
greeting the arrival of morning, and she barely topped out at five feet.

Scully smiled politely. "Actually, I'm waiting for someone."

The woman looked concerned. "They not heah, you going to wait a whiluh.
Thihtee, fohtee..."

A young biracial woman walked up to them. She was at least four inches
taller than Scully, she wore a brown double-breasted leather jacket over a
black Rusted Root t-shirt, and her eyes and long straight black hair
suggested oriental blood. She spoke a few words of Chinese to the woman,
and then said, "Excuse me. Are you Dana?"

*Here we go.* "That's right."

The woman held out a hand, smiling brightly. "I'm K.C.," she said,
pronouncing the letters. "Great to meet you."

She spoke a few more words to the old woman, who lit up like a beacon.
"Goood, goood! Preez, preez," she chattered, gesturing for Scully to enter
as if she were the honored guest everyone had been waiting for. Scully
thanked her and followed K.C. into the dining area.

"You've been here before, I take it."

K.C. giggled, a teenage noise that sounded strange coming from a woman of
K.C.'s stature. "About a million times since 1983. Her mom used to do what
she's doing now."

*Her _mom_?* Scully wondered to herself, throwing a glance back at the
erstwhile maitre'd. *That woman must be eighty in the shade...* Two women
stood up at the table K.C. was leading her to. One was about Max' height
and twice her width, with a waterfall of black hair, while the other woman
was model-thin and a little shorter than Scully, with a surgically-altered
nose and a dirty-blond shag cut that framed her face perfectly. Shag was a
walking advertisement for Jones New York, while Waterfall wore the best
Lane Bryant had to offer. Most of K.C.'s clothes suggested she shopped at
the same thrift stores Max frequented, but the jacket definitely made up
for it; Scully guessed it cost almost as much as the expensive Nikon camera
that had a place of its own on the table. It had a zoom lens that could get
close-ups from across Commonwealth Avenue and the sidestreets that flanked
it.

"So this is her," Shag asked as they arrived at the table.

"No, Neesie," K.C. deadpanned. "She said she'd buy us all dinner if we
helped her jump the queue."

"Wiseass," Waterfall said affectionately. She held out a hand to Scully.
"Hi, I'm Rose."

Shag leaned in, offering her hand as well. "Denise. Just call me Neesie."

Scully shook hands all around, then draped her raincoat over a chair and
sat down as quickly as she could. Her knees were shaking. "I've heard a lot
about all of you."

"Maybe we can be friends anyway," Rose cracked.

The Coven giggled as one, and eased Scully's tension somewhat. She had
heard quite a bit about these women. They each had a picture in Max'
"rogue's gallery", with a shot of the four of them holding a special place
of honor in the center of the wall. The picture had been taken on the lawn
near the Hatch Shell, on the 4th of July before their senior year at Boston
University. They had all become roommates the previous year. From the way
Max told it, they'd come a long way since then.

Kimberley Chen Morgan was on a full-ride basketball scholarship when her
knee blew out in the middle of Sophomore year. She was recuperating and
depressed when she met Rebecca Maxfield and Rose Venizio, who had been
roommates since they were Freshcritters. K.C. always carried a small camera
and took pictures whenever she could; while growing up in Philadelphia, her
super-religious parents (Her mother was Chinese, a fugitive from Mao's
Cultural Revolution; her father was an ex-Air Force pilot and a devout
Mormon.) had kept her as close to home as they could, so she tried to
capture all her outside experiences on film. At the urging of Max and Rose,
K.C. bought herself a "real camera" -- an Olympus OM-1 she saw in a
pawnshop in Chinatown -- and started taking photography courses. The
following fall she was at the BU Lady Terriers' home opener, only she shot
photos for the school newspaper instead of baskets for the Terriers. She
lost her full ride, but got two smaller scholarships that just made up the
difference, as well as an internship with the Boston Herald-American. K.C.
didn't come home that summer, breaking off a three-year
engaged-to-be-engaged relationship with a seminary student her parents
loved. She traded her Business major for an Arts degree, and, upon
graduation, accepted a job as staff photographer for the Patriot-Ledger.
"Outrage" didn't even begin to describe her parents' feelings. They didn't
know K.C. was now a staff photog for the Herald, as well as Photo Editor
for Power Source, a local alternative weekly. They hadn't spoken to her
since she "turned her back on them." By Max' account, it didn't bother K.C.
all that much.

Rose could relate to escaping one's family. She had used "bad poetry and
worse prose" (That's how Max said Rose described it.) to get out from under
a family of nine in Staten Island. His father loved her, as he loved her
two brothers and four sisters, but couldn't understand why Rose stayed in
her room all the time scribbling in that notebook of hers. Her mother
understood, though; June Venizio fondly remembered the journals she kept
before Frank Venizio got her out of her parents' house in Canarsie and down
to the Justice of the Peace in Maryland, after which work and children left
no time for journals. It took a lot of persuading to get Frank to let Rose
go to BU, even with a scholarship, but he finally caved in after June
stopped talking to him altogether for the better part of a week. Rose'
prose didn't get much better, and her poetry might have gotten worse. But
she did have a skill for a turn-of-phrase, a real talent for graphic arts,
and two years in the dorm with Max brought out a friendly, gregarious Rose
that was a surprise to everyone, including Rose. After taking the business
courses K.C. dropped, Rose developed an internship into a low-level
position with Tanner-Reid, then Boston's fourth-largest ad agency. Now she
had her own agency and a workforce of fifteen, and Flying V Productions was
breathing down her former employers' neck. This pleased her no end, as her
ex-husband (and father of her two children) was a partner in Tanner-Reid.

A husband was what brought Denise "Neesie" Gottlieb from Oyster Bay, Long
Island, to Boston University. She didn't have one, but she was damn sure
looking for one, and her parents cheered her on. Boston had medical
schools. Boston had law schools. And BU was a pretty good place to get
yourself an "MRS degree", even though hearing that stupid poem over and
over ("Roses are reddish/Violets are blue-ish/Girls at BU/Are Long Island
Jewish.") got old pretty fast. She didn't find a husband, though not for
lack of suitors. She did find out she had just as much of an aptitude for
politics as her father, a successful dentist who was a delegate at the 1980
Republican National Convention. It was the Reagan Years, and while Ronald
Reagan himself may not have made a lot of sense, a lot of the things he
stood for did, at least to Neesie. It wasn't family loyalty. She thought
the party line was just fine... with two exceptions. Sailing on Long Island
Sound had made her a firm believer in protecting the environment, and
polluting that environment simply did not make sense to Neesie's practical
mind -- it cost money, and wasted resources that could be used for
society's benefit. She was also solidly pro-choice -- even more so after
her three friends sheparded her through screaming picketers and into the
Brookline office of Planned Parenthood, two weeks after she found out one
of her suitors had disappeared like early-morning dew when he found out she
was pregnant. Her politics gave her trouble from both sides: She was called
"traitor" and "a closet dyke" by the President of BU Young Republicans
after she marched with Republicans For Choice at a rally in Washington
D.C., and the head of a local consumer group wouldn't hire her as an
organizer because of her "pre-historic political outlook". So instead of
marrying a lawyer, she became one. Her firm wasn't very prestigious, but
they needed an associate with interest in Environmental Law, so she was
employed the Monday after she passed the bar exam, four months after
graduating from Harvard Law. The partner she was hired to assist retired
five years later, and Neesie had nailed three major industrial polluters to
the wall since then.

Although the women treated Scully like a celebrity, Neesie was the de facto
star of the night. It was her wedding dress everyone was here to check out.
Much to her family's delight, she had met Chris Duncan, a high school
English teacher from Framingham, during her time as a volunteer for
Governor William Weld's 1994 re-election campaign. Neesie and Chris had
been seeing each other for two years, had lived together for the last eight
months, and were going to be married the Saturday after the election,
whether Weld beat John Kerry or not. They were volunteering for Weld again,
and both firmly believed he would be the next Senator from the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts.

"You're not a Massachusetts resident, are you, Dana?" Neesie asked seriously.

K.C. rolled her eyes. "Give me strength..."

Scully shook her head. "I live in Annapolis, just outside of Washington D.C.."

Nessie thought for a second. "That makes your Senator Barbara Mikulski,
doesn't it?" Scully nodded. Neesie asked, "What do you think of her?"

Scully shrugged. "I give her credit for passion. I don't agree with a lot
of what she says, outside of supporting a woman's right to choose..."

"Hear, hear," Rose said, raising a bottle of Tsing-Tao in salute.

"Doesn't matter whether I agree with her completely, anyway," Scully
continued. "The Maryland GOP hasn't come up with a viable alternative to
her. I'm a lifelong Republican, but I haven't voted the straight ticket in
years."

Neesie nodded encouragingly. "That's why I love Bill Weld. He gets a lot of
voters from both sides. I don't suppose I could get you to move?"

"Only two weeks til the election, Neesie," K.C. put in. "She wouldn't be
eligible to vote."

"Hey, anything's possible," Rose said teasingly. "A little election fraud
never hurt anyone..."

"Never stopped the Kennedys," Neesie shot back, her smile undiminished.

Max' voice by her side made Scully jump a little. None of them had seen her
come in. "Neesie," Max said sternly, "if you're gonna shower us with
political dialectic all night, I'm gonna have to hit you with a
tranquilizer dart."

"Yes, mom," Neesie said, sounding like a barely-penitent 5-year-old who'd
been told not to run in the hall. Everyone at the table got up and there
were kisses and hand squeezes all around. Max kissed Scully last -- a
public kiss, just a peck on the cheek, which Scully returned in the same
fashion. She squeezed Max' right elbow as Max squeezed her left. They held
the squeeze for a count of three. It was as close to a "real" hug as they
could get in public, and that annoyed Scully. She wasn't big on public
displays of affection, but not having that option at all was beginning to
grate. It didn't help her confusion.

Max plopped down in the seat to the left of Scully just as a young Asian
boy came up with another bottle of Tsing-Tao and a frosted mug. "Ahh," Max
said happily. "Mother's milk."

The boy couldn't have been older than 15, which had to break some law
somewhere. "You order now?"

Max looked round the table. "The usual?"

Neesie nodded at Scully. "What's Dana's position on chinese food?"

"I'm definitely in favor of it," she said, thinking of all the take-out
boxes and cheap chopsticks she and Mulder went through in the space of a
year.

"Specifics," Neesie said pompously, pounding lightly on the table. "We need
specifics..."

"Give the lady a break," K.C. chided her. "She hasn't seen a menu."

Rose looked apologetic. "Sorry about that, Dana. We've been coming here so
long, they don't even give them to us anymore."

Scully waved the mea culpa  away. "Well, I could use a Tsing-Tao and..."
Scully turned to Max. "What's good here?"

Max smiled slightly. "The shrimp in lobster sauce isn't bad..."

Neesie made a face, while K.C. stuck a finger in her mouth and made a
retching sound. "You only order it because you're the only one who likes
it, so you don't have to share," Rose laughed.

Scully raised an eyebrow at Rose, along with a low-level Mulder Smirk. "I
_like_ shrimp with lobster sauce."

Rose put a hand to her mouth. "'Ooops,' she said." She was smiling behind
her hand.

Neesie shook her head. "Better be prepared," she told Scully. "Max may
fight you for it."

Max put a hand to her chest. "I... am a peace-loving, reasonable person."

"Since when," K.C. deadpanned.

Max stuck her tongue out at K.C. while the rest of the table laughed. They
rattled off a series of dishes to the waiter, with an equal mix of Szechuan
and non-flammable dishes. Rose asked her twice if a certain thing was all
right, but none of the dishes were objectionable to Scully. As the boy
finished writing and headed off to the kitchen, Max poured her beer
expertly into the glass, so that the bottle was empty and the beer just
touched the top of the stein. She raised the glass. "Old friends..." She
nodded to Scully. "...and new."

"Hell yeah," said K.C.. The rest of The Coven chimed in as they clinked
glasses. Scully clinked too, hoping she wasn't blushing too much.

Max put her glass down and clapped her hands. "Now then," she said
imperiously. "Let's review the evidence." Neesie couldn't smile brighter as
she pulled out an envelope stuffed with pictures. Max looked at the
envelope and gave K.C. a dubious look. "Polaroids?"

K.C. shrugged. "Couldn't get into the darkroom. Her mom took those. I'll
have the real stuff for you by Monday. Oh, by the way..." She reached down
to a grey canvas WGBH totebag and pulled out a large manila envelope.
"Here's that print you wanted."

Max practically snatched the envelope out of K.C.'s hand. "Thank you much."

Rose gestured impatiently at the Polaroids. "Hand 'em over. I can't wait
for perfection."

They oohed and ahhed over the pictures as the waiter brought out a huge
bowl of Hot'n'Sour soup, five bowls, and a second pot of tea. The soup was
self-serve, passed to each woman on the light brown wooden turntable that
would hold all the food. Scully had been to a few weddings and had seen
good dresses, bad dresses, and horrible dresses. Neesie's had to be the
most beautiful wedding dress she'd ever seen. It came from a designer who
worked out of a tiny shop in the North End, and it was classic: white silk,
off the shoulder, billowing skirt, shoes to match. In the picture, Neesie
held a bouquet of white roses and wore a "crown" of baby's breath.

"Outstanding," Max declared. "Absolutely outstanding."

"Honey, you're going to look wonderful," Rose said, almost choking.

"Merci, madame," Neesie said, almost glowing now.

"Did you have the bridesmaids' dresses done at the same place," Scully asked.

Neesie shook her head, taking a sip of the soup. "Rose and K.C. found their
stuff in Filene's bridal department. Green dresses, mid-length, with
matching shoes."

"Of course, K.C.'s 'mid-length' and my 'mid-length' are a little
different," Rose said off-handedly. That got a laugh, which Rose joined in
easily. She was quite comfortable with the way she was.

Just as the last dollop of soup was served from the bowl, the waiter
re-appeared with a tray. It was loaded down with plates, and they all
smelled divine. He gave everyone a pair of enameled chopsticks -- no
pull-off wooden ones for their best customers. The only Western cutlery was
the spoons they used to serve the dishes. There were no forks or knives in
sight, and the boy didn't offer any. Scully simply picked up her chopsticks
with one hand, grabbed a piece of broccoli off her plate, and popped it in
her mouth. K.C. nodded approvingly. "Okay," Rose cracked. "You can stay."

Scully waved the chopsticks in acknowledgement, then looked back at Max.
"What are you going to be doing at the wedding?"

Max winced. "Sitting at the back and crying, like as not. I can't get too
involved."

"Oh, right," Neesie scoffed. "You've put your two cents in on everything,
from the size and flavor of the wedding cake to what font we should use on
the announcements. My mother hasn't had as much input as you have!"

"Okay, I misspoke. I can't get too involved _in the ceremony itself_. " Max
stuck her tongue out at her. Neesie returned the gesture, accompanied by a
wink, which Max returned.

"Why not," Scully wanted to know.

Max sipped her beer. "You know the deal. I could be in the middle of a case
that day, whether I asked for the day off or not. I _have_ asked for the
day off, but I don't want to hang these guys up if I'm onto something."

"I told you," Neesie said, only half-seriously. "Bring the perp along.
There'll be enough food, and you can handcuff him to one of the columns in
the hall."

"Sure," K.C. added. "I need a date, anyway."

Max frowned. "What about Anton? Can't he come?"

"Only if you need some impromptu target practice," K.C. growled. "I forgot
the address of Neesie's dress shop and went back home to get it. Found him
in the shower with some popsie from Promotions."

Max' eyes bugged out. "Oh, shit!"

"No shit," K.C. said, her voice conversational and her eyes filled with
fury. "Good thing I only shoot pictures, or you'd have had new business in
Somerville today. They're both lucky they got out with their clothes."

Scully put a hand to her mouth. "What did you do?"

"Stuffed anything he'd left in the apartment into a Hefty bag and dropped
it off the balcony." She laughed once, without humor. "Should have emptied
the catbox in there, too. Would have saved me the trouble of carrying it
down to the dumpster. Last time I go out with a radio announcer!"

Max looked pained. "Shit, K.C., I'm sorry."

K.C. shook her head. "Hey, at least we hadn't gotten to the living-together
stage. This way we don't have to split up furniture or argue about settling
the lease. 'Sides, we'd been going out for six months, so he was well
within the average."

Neesie squeezed her hand. "You'll find someone, kiddo."

K.C. pushed her food around her plate. "_Finding_ someone's easy, Neesie.
Finding someone who's _worth a shit_... now, that's hard!" The table went
silent for a moment, and then K.C. tossed her chopsticks on her plate.
"This is getting too damn maudlin." She hoisted her bottle high and said,
in a declarative tone of voice, "Fuck Anton."

Scully and the rest of The Coven raised their bottles. "Fuck Anton!" Their
echoing toast turned a few heads, but the staff and management kept right
on with what they were doing. They were used to it after all these years.

The rest of the meal was pretty uneventful. They asked Scully the usual
questions about what it was like being a woman in the FBI, and Scully gave
the usual answers. She heard a few tales about the apartment the four women
shared, not more than three blocks from the restaurant. ("Total condo now,"
Rose told her. "Shiny tile floors, buzzer system, double-pane glass, brass
kickplate on the front door. You'd never know what a _pit_ it used to be!")
During most of them, all four women were trying to tell the story, and at
least two of them disagreed on the details. A lot of sentences were started
by one person and ended by one or two others. It was old friends, getting
together, still crazy after all these years. Scully just sat back, listened
a lot, had two beers, and ate a little of everything. As Rose predicted,
Scully and Max had the shrimp in lobster sauce all to themselves. Scully
didn't complain; when Mulder and Scully ordered out on one of those long
and winding nights in the basement, they only ordered dishes they both
liked, and Mulder couldn't stand shrimp in lobster sauce. *No accounting
for taste,* Scully thought, then and now.

As the meal wound down, Max and Rose excused themselves and wound their way
back to the Ladies Room. Scully saw in the mirror they were whispering to
each other as they went. Scully guessed the conversation was about her. She
didn't have time to dwell on that, because K.C. took the opportunity to
say, "So, Dana. What do you think of Boston?"

Scully shot one more glance at Max' retreating form in the mirror before
she said, "Seems like a nice place to live."

"That's what got us out-of-towners to stick around..."

"Well, 'nice' _has_ given way to 'nice and expensive'," Neesie put in. "Our
old apartment goes for five large figures as a condo. That's, like, five
hundred percent above what we used to pay back in the Dark Ages. My
mortgage payment on a three-bedroom Cape in Needham is less than rent on a
one-bedroom alleyway on Beacon Hill."

K.C. sighed. "Tell me about it. My rent's gone up almost two hundred
dollars in three years. And I'm not in the Back Bay. I'm in a two-bedroom
in Somerville."

Scully finished her beer and considered having another. "I think it's
expensive, no matter where you live. I'm lucky my landlord hasn't raised
the rent as much as he could, or succumbed to condo-creep like everyone
else in Annapolis. The District's even worse."

Neesie and K.C. nodded, one sliding a glance toward the other. Finally K.C.
said lightly, "So has our Madwomen Of Boston act freaked you too badly?"

Scully smiled, enjoying the buzz in her head. She rarely drank beer, and
Tsing-Tao was stronger than she was used to. "Not at all. I'm glad I could
meet some of Max' friends."

"We're glad we could meet _you_," Neesie said.

"We're glad Max met you," K.C. added, taking a quick sip of water.

*Oh, boy...* "I'm glad I met her, too."

Silence sat on the scene again before Neesie said, "She hasn't had one of
the greatest of years. She was a wreck after Bear got shot. Her father died
last May. Heart attack..."

"I know," Scully nodded. Scully and Max had spent the rest of Sunday in
bed, kissing and talking while Max' stereo played CD after CD. One of the
things they talked about was their fathers, and what their loss meant to
each of them. There'd been tears from both of them.

"Plus her work's been picking up a lot more than usual lately..." Neesie
continued. She shot another glance at K.C. before she said, "And then..."

Neesie was having trouble saying it, so Scully said it for her. "Did you
know DeeDee?"

Neesie let a little breath out. "We knew her," K.C. said. "Sometimes she'd
come out with us."

"Sometimes," Neesie muttered.

Scully turned her bottle around with one hand, examining the label very
closely. "What was she like?" *And why do I care so much?*

K.C. was thinking about the question when Neesie said, "I didn't like her."

K.C. gave her a look. "Neesie..."

"Well, I didn't. I don't think any of us really took to her. I mean, Max
adored her, and vice versa, and God knows she was better for her than
Richard, but..." She searched for the words. "It was like DeeDee was on the
debate team, and you were the opponent. Like she never really left the
courtroom when she was done for the day."

K.C. nodded in acquiescence. "She didn't really take to us, either, truth
to tell." She smiled. "Admittedly, we take a little getting used to when
we're together." Scully just smiled, made a neutral gesture with her head,
and didn't say anything. "I guess what I didn't like about the two of them
was that they fought," K.C. concluded.

"They didn't fight in front of us," Neesie offered.

"Oh, they fought like my parents would fight in public. You know, real
quiet, gritted teeth, those little looks that say, 'We'll talk about this
_later_!' We saw a few of those. And we know they had a couple of
knock-down-drag-outs before DeeDee left for Baltimore."

Neesie nodded. "This is true..." Then she shook her head quickly. "Shit, if
we dish any more dirt, we're going to need a skip-loader to clean this
place up."

"You're right." K.C. looked over at Scully, who simply wanted to run now.
"All we're trying to say is... we love Max a lot. And... we're glad she's
met someone nice."

"Even if she isn't registered to vote in Massachusetts," Neesie said quickly.

That lightened the tone somewhat, though not enough for Scully. She was
touched, but was not relieved. "Thank you," she said softly. *Now that I've
met her,* she wanted to say, *could you please tell me what I do _now_?*

END OF PART 4