Subject: NF> More Changes (1/1) The X-Files and characters contained there in belong to Chris Carter, Fox, 1013 and probably others. I intend no copyright infringement on their creation and no profit is being made. This is strictly fun. This story is a continuation of "Frightening Changes." It is best if you read that one first. I want to thank Ghill and Ten for beta reading and Ten for "bugging" me to write it. Once I got started I kind of enjoyed it. My thanks to Nancy as well. I am going to rate this a definite R for sexual situations and some bad language. This is definitely an MSR so non- shippers better bail fast. It takes place immediately after "Patient X" and "The Red and the Black" and contains spoilers for it and for Tooms. I finished it on July 5, 1998. I don't care who archives it where as long as my name stays on it. I will post it to Gossamer myself however. Summary: Mulder and Scully end up at a lovely hotel by a lake with their relationship in shambles...temporarily. "More Changes" by Macspooky@erols.com Mulder's Narrative Waking up at the crack of dawn in an uncomfortable motel room bed did not particularly surprise me. I was used to it. What did astonish me was that there was someone in the bed with me, someone female, and I had absolutely no memory of being with a woman the night before. My mouth felt fuzzy, but not nearly as fuzzy as my brain. I normally woke up after a night of sex relaxed and clear headed, but my body didn't have that comfortable fulfilled feeling any more than my brain was functioning with increased clarity. In fact, I felt rather like I had a hangover. My head hurt. Then the events of the night before came back, sort of. At least some of them did. I mean I gradually remembered going on a wild goose chase with my partner and ending up being picked up by MPs along the road side...again. I think perhaps I was supposed to have seen an alien but I couldn't remember and I didn't really believe in them anymore anyway. I did recall Scully taking over driving when I nearly crashed the car, but I didn't remember a damned thing about a woman. Well, there was Marita of course, but she wasn't the one I was waking up with this time. Marita was missing and I had the distinct impression that there weren't going to be any more hot nights with the cool looking blond. Slowly I turned over. Scully....I was in bed with Scully. It came back to me then that she had shocked the hell out of me the night before by climbing into the motel room's only bed with me, fully dressed, using the big "F" word and falling promptly to sleep. I just laid there and looked at her as the light levels in the room increased with the rising sun. She was lovely in sleep. Hell, Dana was beautiful all the time, but when she slept she was even more so. Maybe that was because asleep she wore no makeup and her always perfect hair was mussed. Her face relaxed from its inscrutability and she looked so young again, just like she had the first time I saw her before life as my partner had taken its toll. In the dim light I realized that the blouse she had fallen asleep in had opened revealing a pale yellow lacy bra and an awful lot of breast including a nipple that looked very inviting to me at that moment. Scully had lovely skin, clear and pale with a smattering of freckles. There was nothing wrong with her breasts either, at least not as far as I could tell. I felt myself having stirrings I knew we would both be better off without. I allowed myself to fantasize for a moment what it might be like to wake her with a kiss, and do all sorts of interesting things with that nipple. I valued my life however...well sort of anyway....and I opted for trying to cover her discreetly before getting out of bed and taking a cold shower. When I moved the blanket over her however, she grabbed my hand in her sleep and it landed right over the breast I was trying to avoid. She turned on her side and moaned my name softly in her sleep as she pulled me along with her. Oh jeez. If I weren't a gentleman...sometimes anyway...I probably would have climbed on top of her then and there but I pulled away and tried to make my escape. She woke with a start however, before I could get very far. "Mulder," she said sitting up. "Um..." I replied quickly. "Um...sorry I woke you. I just....um...have to use the facilities." Yeah, that explained it alright, the fact that I had such a hard on I could hardly walk. She saw it too. Her eyes landed right in the appropriate spot with no delays along the way. She may have been a lady but she knew her anatomy.....thoroughly. "Oh," she said and I swear she sounded disappointed as I made my escape. I hoped that the water in the shower was really really cold. *********************************** Scully's Thoughts I was having the nicest darn dream and I didn't want to wake up. In the dream I was in bed with Mulder. I suppose a part of me in my sleep state remembered that I was actually in bed with Mulder. I had fallen asleep next to him in a cheap motel room bed the night before after fleeing more MPs and another wild alien chase with my partner. In the dream, however, he was not sleeping next to me. He was admiring me and his hand started to do all kinds of nice things to my breast. In my dream, he was working his way up to the ultimate act, with me, not Marita and I could even forget that I had heard him call her name in the middle of the night. I hadn't had sex in so long I'd almost forgotten what it was like, but even in my sleep I could feel the heat rising in my body at Mulder's touch. Then suddenly I felt a hand jerk away from me as though I was painful to touch. Startled I sat up and the bastard was apologizing for waking me and telling me he had to go to the bathroom. Yeah, well maybe, although I suspected by the look of his anatomy that it wasn't only his bladder that was full. It pissed me off that he didn't really want to touch me, that he probably hadn't been touching me at all. Then suddenly I was alone in bed again and he was gone. The shower started to run. As I lay there I remembered Marita and started to get even more angry. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn't. My aching needy body wouldn't let me. "Save some cold water for me, creep," I shouted into the bathroom, but I knew damn well enough he didn't hear me. ********************************** Mulder Once Again I learned very early on that Scully isn't much good before her morning caffeine fix. In fact, she can be exceedingly cranky. By the time we had finished our first case together I had taken the hint not to talk to her until she had her first cup of coffee. That way I didn't get snapped at. I will say that she did make every effort to remain silent until she had drank her coffee as a rule. The morning we woke up in that sleazy motel room though she was definitely in rare form and not particularly in the mood for silence before java. I came out of the shower refreshed...still horny as hell but refreshed. I woke up a lot faster than she did...a lot, and I don't need coffee to get my adrenaline flowing. I'm a lousy sleeper and hyper anyway. "I'll get us some coffee," I volunteered sweetly in spite of the fact that my head still hurt a little, "while you take your shower." Normally she would have just nodded. "Are you implying that I smell or something?" she snapped. "Okay, sure, fine, whatever. I hope you saved me some soap." I told myself to let it go. She was just being cranky like she usually is in the morning. The way she was glaring at me annoyed me though. "You got a problem, Scully?" I asked, not able to resist. Okay, Mulder, be a fool. Be a martyr. What the hell. "I don't think so, Mulder," she said. "I'd say you had a problem when you woke up. Too bad Marita wasn't around to solve it." "Marita? What the hell does Marita have to do with anything?" I asked. "Go to hell," she advised me none too pleasantly and banged her way into the bathroom. I decided I better go and get that coffee quickly. I said a prayer that it would be strong. It was definitely not coffee that she wanted. She told me so in no uncertain terms when I got back. She told me what I could do with the coffee, or rather where I could put it and believe me it wasn't a place where the sun shed its happy light. "Hokay," I acknowledged, mentally counting to ten, "so you didn't want coffee. Just what the hell is it that you do want?" I inquired. "I go chasing all over kingdom come with you, Mulder, which is something I haven't done in a hell of a long time, coming I mean." "As I recall that is in your job description. Chasing after me that is," I replied sarcastically. Definitely the wrong thing to say. "Well, maybe but I still do it for you," she screeched. "And what do I get from you in return?" "I thought you liked your job," I ventured logically. Another mistake. I was not supposed to be the logical half of this partnership. "Nothing but aggravation." "Okay, so we both know I am aggravating," I replied conceding the one truth which was here and not out there. "Well I'm sick of it. Okay. I'm sick of chasing around after you and saving your ass and taking care of you......" Well, I had about reached my limit. I was a man after all. I can't stand it when women screech at me and one of the things I had always loved about Scully was that she had never been a screecher. Suddenly she had turned into a shrew, worse even than she had been in Chaney and she had been pretty crabby there. I didn't want this to turn into a habit so I figured I'd better be the macho man and put her in her place. "What the hell is your problem this morning, Scully?" I shouted. "Are you on the rag or something?" It was then that the coffee came flying in my direction. Fortunately, she aims better with a gun than a styrofoam cup. Well, it was my own damned fault I suppose. "You sorry son of a bitch," she screamed sounding an awful lot like her older brother Bill. "You know that I'm not on the rag. I'm never on the rag. I can't be on the rag. You can f**K any of those women....your Dr. Bambi, or your Detective White, or that big busted clerk in accounting or Marita...yeah...Marita, three weeks out of every goddam month, but if any man wants to f**k me he can do it all damn month and never have to worry about me being on the rag. And whatever it was that started with the abduction, the cancer therapy sure finished the job. You'd think that would make me popular instead of celibate for all these years wouldn't you? Four weeks a month and no risk of getting hit up for child support." She turned away from me. I'm such a brilliant psychologist that I informed her in no uncertain terms and loudly enough for the world to hear that it was none of her goddam business who I f**ked and when. "Or how loudly," she replied but there was something different in her voice. She wasn't screaming anymore. I was still being brilliant. There was a point to be missed here and I sure was misfiring. I was shooting right off the freaking range. "Okay, I like women who scream," I snapped. "Yeah....you aren't exactly quiet yourself and all those women could give you children. You and Marita would have beautiful children together." And then it hit me all at once and my knees nearly buckled. She knew. She'd heard that time we had been working a case and Marita had suddenly appeared at my motel room with information. It had been late. By rights Scully should have been asleep. By rights she should not have been able to hear through the wall but she apparently had. God, I'd used Marita before, led her on, made her think I might be interested, but I never planned on going through with it. That night she had come on so strongly though and I had been laying there for hours tortured by desire for my partner. It had just gotten out of hand and I was not proud of it. That had been months ago. Dana'd never said anything before. Of course, she wouldn't, but it had bothered her. She'd been dying of cancer then and still following me, and while she slept alone and afraid of dying I'd been busy with my informant in the next room. She couldn't know that I had been thinking about her the whole time. I had been desperate that night, desperate for release just as I had been when Scully was gone and I had slept with Kristen. Maybe Billy Boy was right. No, there is no maybe about it. I am a sorry son of a bitch. And, yeah, Marita was a normal woman as far as I knew. Scully apparently felt she herself no longer was, and Oxford educated Spooky Mulder known for his intelligence and insight in dealing with the criminal mind had told his sterile partner she sounded like she was on the rag. "Scully," I said softly after a pause that was way too long. "Go away, Mulder. Go away and leave me alone," she said turning around and looking at me. Her face had that inscrutable look once again. She was in control. "I've never been so embarrassed in my life. I wasn't even this embarrassed over picking up Ed Jerse. You are absolutely right. Who you sleep with is none of my business. I do sound like I'm on the rag. The trouble is Mulder, I only wish I were. Then again I've always wished I were tall and blond too. Ain't gonna happen no matter what I do." With that she picked up her things and walked out the door climbing into the passenger's side of the rental car silently waiting for me to follow. *********************************** Scully's Thoughts I don't know what came over me that morning. I guess it was just everything catching up. I'd been so scared lately. I'd felt so alone. Once again I followed Mulder and once again I'd spent a horrible time not knowing what had happened to him and then trying to talk the Military Police into letting us go when he had finally been picked up beside that truck on the road. Once again I had cared for him and tried to protect him. When I woke up from my wonderful dream, I remembered him calling Marita's name in the middle of the night, and I permitted myself to grow angry and jealous. I just lost control. Even Ice Queens start to melt sometimes I guess. He was right. I did sound like I was on the rag. The trouble is that that remark hurt so badly I wanted to die. I know he wasn't even thinking when he said it. I had annoyed him. He had tried to be considerate and had brought me coffee and I had turned into a raving bitch. I was never really pleasant before my first caffeine fix and we both knew it. It fell into the category of one of those things that we just accepted about one another. He didn't talk to me that early and I remained silent until apres cafe, but I was a real A-1 bitch that morning. Mulder was probably in many ways the most unsexist man I knew, but he was still a guy, and I had pushed his envelope and he blew his top and let me have it with both barrels. Those barrels had been lethal too. I felt like I was dying inside. It took me a moment to regain my composure. What else could I do? I couldn't exactly admit to him that I was acting the way I had because I was so damned horny after no sex for five years that I could scream and I'd wanted and loved him for so long that sometimes I felt like I couldn't think straight. I know I was being a real jerk. I did the only thing I could think of. I apologized after a fashion, or perhaps I just tried to explain myself and failed. With no dignity left, I got my things and went to the car. Mulder's Turn I checked us out of the motel. I should have said something to her when I got in the car but I disliked myself so intensely at that moment I couldn't think of a damned thing to say. I really tried not to be sexist especially around Scully, and my remark had been totally uncalled for, particularly around her. I was so angry with myself that I got us lost. She was so upset she didn't notice. It had started to snow suddenly and rather hard, and I was starting to realize that I was low on gas when I saw the hotel. It was a beautiful old Victorian building with an immaculate lawn. My intention was to pull in and ask for directions to the nearest gas station, but she got out of the car with me and we went into the lobby. "Mulder," she said quietly, "I'm hungry. I'll buy you breakfast." I knew it was her attempt at a peace offering, an offering I should be making. God, it was still early enough for breakfast. I wanted to say no because I knew that meant that she wanted to talk and I was really scared of that. Still, if I wanted a partner, I suspected we had better begin communicating a hell of a lot better than we had previously or it was all going to come crashing down around me. My stomach chose that moment to growl rather loudly and I couldn't even make the excuse that I was not hungry. The dining room was nearly empty and the waiter sat us at a table in a corner. Perhaps he thought we were lovers or newlyweds. Didn't I just wish. The table was small, designed for intimacy. The large clear glass window overlooked a lake. The establishment was elegant, like her. It suited her somehow. The waiter brought coffee and orange juice. She ordered toast. I probably should have minded my own business, but I belayed that and ordered her a real breakfast, something I knew she would like. To my surprise after a single dirty look, she didn't argue. I suspected she wouldn't eat it anyway, but I felt I had to try. Besides, it came with toast for her to play with. We said each others names at the same time. "No," I said. "Me first. I'm sorry, Scully. What I said to you was unconscionable under the best of circumstances. It was mean and it was sexist. Under our circumstances, it was unforgivable." "It isn't our circumstances, Mulder. It's my circumstances," she said quietly. "I have to learn to deal with it and I shouldn't have taken it out on you. You were absolutely right. It is none of my business who you sleep with. I am sorry I acted like a martyr and a shrew." "Accepted," he replied, "but it is our circumstances Scully. I bear responsibility for what happened to you." "No you don't. I am a grownup. I made my decision about what I wanted to do years ago. It didn't include sterility, but that's the breaks I guess. It isn't your fault, Mulder." She lapsed into silence for such a long time I began to worry. She barely nodded when the waiter placed breakfast before us. "Will you do something for me, Mulder?" she asked softly as though she had come to a decision. "Anything? What?" "When we are together...on cases...you know...please don't...have women." She blushed. "I know it isn't my business, Mulder, but it bothers me, you know. I know it shouldn't but I......" I reached across the table and took her hand. "You what Scully?" I asked her not being sure I wanted to hear. "I love you, you know. The way a woman loves a man. I didn't mean to. It just kind of happened. Unrequited love can hurt." I blinked. She had just said that she loved me. My beautiful Dana had just bared her heart to me making herself totally vulnerable and after I had treated her like dirt. I swallowed unable to talk. "I kind of used to think that maybe one day there could be something between us. I used to think that we would find your sister one day, and then you would be happy and maybe we could....I could give you children. I even tried to tell you one night in the car, but you made it clear that you didn't want to let me get any closer. It was a stupid fantasy wasn't it?" she smiled but there was bitterness in her voice. "Tooms," I heard myself whisper. God, I couldn't talk. "No," I managed to choke finally. "No it wasn't...isn't stupid. It's beautiful. You are beautiful, and that night, that night....." I couldn't go on. "So is it a promise? No women in your motel room?" My voice failed me. I couldn't answer her. A look of pain crossed her face. Dana removed her hand from mine. She nodded with resignation. Just as I knew she would, she picked up the toast and nibbled. It was her way, one of those little habits I just knew about her. When she was upset she picked at her food. Lately she'd been losing an awful lot of weight again, just about everything she'd gained since recovering from her cancer. "I wanted to kill Ed Jerse," I said finally getting my voice back. "I wanted to kill him because he hurt you. I wanted to put my hands around his neck and throttle him because I thought he'd touched you." I had the feeling that I was blowing this badly. Now wasn't the time to whine about Ed Jerse. She put the toast down and looked at me. "Damn it, Scully, you aren't a cheap f**k, okay?" I said angrily and a little too loudly. "You aren't a whore. You're the kind of woman a man respects and is faithful to, the kind of woman a man like me loves forever. I could never screw you in a cheap motel room like I did Marita. That meant nothing to me. It was a physical release. If she hadn't thrown herself at me that night I never would have done it. I wanted it to be you. You mean everything to me. I love you too much though, and when we make love I want it to be the right time and in the right place. The smile she gave me lit up my dismal life. Finally I had said and done something right. I sat there in astonishment as she proceeded to devour her breakfast. I actually even ate mine. I didn't know if we'd really solved anything, but she seemed happy and that was a good thing. ********************************** Scully's Thoughts When Mulder told me that he loved me, the world lifted off my shoulders. I wasn't happy about those other women, but somehow suddenly they didn't seem as important. It was me he really loved and that mattered. It was enough for the moment and I discovered I was hungry. As it turned out, it was enough for a very small moment. For once fate was kind to me, to us. We finished breakfast and were about to return to the car when the power in the hotel went out. Looking out the window, we realized that the snow storm had turned into a blizzard. The roads would be very bad. "I don't think we ought to try to drive in this," he said. His words were music to my ears. "I'll get us rooms. You get the bags," I said trying to hide a predatory and very female grin. ******************************** Mulder's Narrative She thought she'd hidden that predatory grin from me, but she hadn't. If I was going to make it through this blizzard keeping our partnership intact, I knew I was going to have to exercise a great deal of self control. Wasn't it just my luck that there was only one room left in the hotel, and that it was beautiful and romantic, and that in spite of the power being out the working fireplace left the room warm and cozy. We settled in by the fire. At first she tried to read some files, but after a few minutes she picked up a magazine, one of those home and garden things I think. I tried to work but the candlelight even with the fireplace was inadequate and I couldn't concentrate either. That four poster bed was looking mighty lovely, almost as lovely as the woman I wanted to have in it. I had told her that when I made love to her it would have to be the right place and the right time. Was it possible that fate had decreed that this was it? She must have felt me looking at her because she glanced up at me and smiled, and before I knew it I was in front of her taking the magazine from her hand and removing her reading glasses. She was light in my arms as I carried her to that four poster and set her down. I started to remove her clothes. She laughed suddenly and it was like music to my ears. "What?" I asked her but she merely continued to look up. I finally glanced in that direction and realized that there was a mirror on the ceiling of that antique bed. It had probably come from a whorehouse somewhere. "It's karma, Scully," I whispered sliding a pair of teal blue silk panties down her thighs. "Somehow I had to get you in a whore's bed even if the motel ain't cheap." "Does that make me high priced?" she replied. Sometimes laughter is the best way to start things off. It kept the time it took me to get naked from becoming an eternity. I was right about Dana. She was no cheap f**k. She was warm and wonderful and sweet, a little shy in the beginning, but that faded quickly because we knew each other so well and because she trusted me. I knew she had had at least one lover before, Jack Willis, and before I knew it I was having the same thoughts as Lord Peter Wimsey in "Busman's Honeymoon" on his wedding night with Harriet Vane, a marriage five years in the making, that her lover had been a clumsy boor and a fool. My thoughts weren't on Dorothy Sayers novels for very long though. In fact, I wished briefly that, like Lord Peter and Harriet, we were married, but then Dana reached out and touched me and it was suddenly as though I had never been touched by a woman before. As we watched ourselves love each other, I knew I had chosen the right time and place to begin what I hoped would continue for the rest of our lives. Scully's Turn It was a beautiful room, deep wood floors, a double oak canopy bed with lots of white chintz. There was no power of course, but someone had lit a fire and the room was warm and cozy. Fate had once again been kind. The small hotel was fully booked but they had had a single cancellation. Mulder and I would have to share a lone room and bath. Yes. There truly was a God, although what I hoped we would be doing was something that the Church I had grown up in would definitely frown upon. Mulder didn't care about decor or antiques. He did care about me though. He made that abundantly clear about an hour later in that beautiful antique bed. I was sitting by the fire when he suddenly picked me up and carried me to it and slowly began removing my clothes. I suddenly understood something that I hadn't really before in the dining room. It was a thing my father had tried to explain to me once too about the difference between real love and sex and I thought he was being old fashioned. Jack Willis had f**ked me and it had never really felt right to me no matter what I had tried to tell myself. He had never respected me as a person because I had allowed it to happen so quickly between us that there was no real feeling except the physical. It had been good, or I had told myself at the time that it was, but not truly fulfilling in the deepest sense of the word. It had left me vaguely unhappy and nervous, perhaps even guilty. I didn't go into all of this with Mulder of course. He had no religious scruples and I doubt he would have understood the concept of Catholic guilt. It was interesting though that he instinctively felt the same way my father had. By this time, I had opened my eyes and discovered that there was an old, somewhat marred mirror in the ceiling of the antique bed. My partner and I were too busy laughing to talk except for a brief comment he made about old fashioned whorehouses and an expensive motel. I think I asked him if that made me a high priced whore. I was thrilled about it though. I would get to watch him love me. If that makes me a slut or something, well so be it. I'd been grumbling to him earlier about following him to kingdom come. Well this time I really did, come that is. Fox Mulder loved me beneath that mirror and it was wonderful in every way. He didn't have to promise me that there would be no more women in the motel rooms. I knew there wouldn't...well no, that wasn't entirely true. There would be one....me. We had left each other so deeply satisfied, the encounter had been so earth shattering that I knew it was forever. As I drifted off to sleep in his arms, my naked body pressed against his, I wondered how I ever could have doubted his love. I fantasized for a moment that one day he would find his sister and be happy and that perhaps we could adopt some children and do all those things that normal people take for granted. I doubted it would happen, but it was a nice thought, and it didn't really matter anyway. In truth, he was happy now. I was happy. We had each other. That was all that was important. The End - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -