Date sent: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 10:39:43 -0700 From: the Happy Bithead Title: Cold Floors Authors: Benjamin Wang (inf8ltd@ix.netcom.com) Corine "Spooky of London" (spooky@tip.nl) Ratings: PG (mild language) Class: Vignette, Bit o' Humor, Bit o' ScullyAngst Spoilers: None (nothing too obvious) Keywords: Cattle. Surfing. Summary: Two agents. One lousy motel room. And not enough sheets. Disclaimer: Not ours. CC's and Fox's, used without permission and without expectation of financial gain. Notes: Ben: I swore I would never write fan fics. Sigh. Oh well. This probably isn't the last one ;) Corine: I would like to dedicate the story to the memory of Bert - out of sight, but not out of mind. Archive: Wherever, whatever, fine with us. Feedback: Would be nice. Feed the feedback demons! /**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**/ Joe's Turf Motel Ontario, California January 10 1:12am "No, you don't seem to understand, *sir*. We have TWO rooms reserved --" "I'm sorry ma'am, but you don't. Our computer shows only one room reserved for a Fox Mulder. There's no mention of any Dana Scully." Scully inhaled, preparing to go ballistic on the helpless clerk. Mulder bit off a yawn and smoothly interrupted. "Listen, forget about reservations. Do you have another room?" The aging clerk shook his balding head slowly. "Local high school had its winter formal dance last night. A number of kids rented rooms here." He coughed delicately. "Well, you know how kids will be. Most all the local hotels are booked solid. There's nothing much around here but cows, and the kids go crazy whenever there's some kind of dance or party. They'd probably all be out raising all kinds of hell if it wasn't for all this rain." Scully sighed. "'Scuse us a moment," Mulder directed at the clerk, and pulled Scully aside. "Listen, Scully, we can go find another hotel. It shouldn't be too late..." "Well according to the clerk, everything's booked." The clerk interrupted. "Well, the room _is_ a double, if that's any consolation to you." Mulder glanced at Scully in inquiry. Scully shot back an arched eyebrow, then let her shoulders slump. "I'm exhausted Mulder. I don't want to have to go slogging through that downpour outside to find a pair of rooms that probably aren't there." "We'll take it." /**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**/ The door to the room creaked open and Scully started to go ballistic again. There was, predictably, only one bed in the room. Before she could run down the hall to the clerk and do cruel and unusual things to his person, Mulder pushed Scully into the room and closed the door. "I think this is the best we're going to get, Scully." Scully sighed, and dropped her bags. "You're sleeping on the floor, Mulder. It's your fault we're out here anyway." "I thought you'd appreciate a chance to escape to sunny California and get away from that ice storm that's got DC locked in a death grip, so I jumped at this cattle mutilation case." "It's winter out here too, Mulder, and it gets just as cold in the middle of the night. Especially out here in the middle of nowhere. Next time at least pick a case that's a bit closer to the beach." "But there aren't any cows near the beach. Property value's way too high to waste on walking beef. Besides, cows can't surf." Scully sighed. Again. /**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**/ Room 24 Ontario, California January 10 2:35am Mulder shivered. The two agents had cannibalized the bed for sheets; a brief fight had broken out over the thick comforter -- "I need it more Scully; Men have intrinsically lower body temperatures. That's why all sushi chefs are men." "And you're claiming to be a man, Mulder?" Scully shot back. -- Scully was now wrapped as tightly as a caterpillar in its cocoon, but still a little chilly. Mulder, on the floor, had rolled the thin bedsheets around his lanky body three times, and he was freezing. "Scullyyyy." "What is it, Mulder," came the muffled voice from above. "I'm turning into a popsicle here." Silence. "Scullllyyyyyy." "What?" "Are you cold?" "A little." Silence. "Sculllllyyyyyyyy." "What, Mulder." "I had an idea." "Hmm?" "You'd be a lot warmer if you had the bedsheets too." "Don't be silly Mulder. Then you'd have nothing and I'd have to listen to you complain even more." "I was thinking you'd be so grateful to me for sharing the bedsheets with you that you'd generously offer to share your comforter with me." "Good night Mulder." "But Scully --" "Good NIGHT, Mulder." /**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**/ 3:08am Scully was hovering on the far edge of falling asleep when a low groan dragged her back awake. On the floor below her, Mulder tossed and turned on the cold floor. *My god, are those his teeth chattering?* she thought. "Mulder?" "Uuuuuh?" "You cold?" More chattering. Scully sighed. It seemed to be her lot in life. "Mulder, come up here before you freeze to death." "I'll try, Scully, but I think my ass has frozen to the floor." More shuffling as he untangled himself from the thin sheets, and a blearily blinking Mulder surfaced beside the bed. Dana moved to the far side of the bed, and shoved the comforter aside. The cold air of the room hit her like a wall of ice. Instant shivering. *Cripes, it _is_ cold,* she thought. Mulder flared the bedsheets out over the bed and crawled under the comforter. "Night, Scully." "Night, Mulder." Mulder turned his back to Scully and within moments his breathing had turned slow and regular. Scully couldn't keep her eyes closed. The blast of cold air had knocked her awake, raising thousands of tiny goose bumps on her sensitive skin. She started shivering uncontrollably. *Damnit Mulder, this is your fault.* Scully lay there, trying to control the shudders that ran through her body, becoming more and more aware of the sleeping body lying beside her, of the warm body that lay a few inches away from hers. *Mulder's body must have raised its internal temperature, trying to keep warm,* she thought. *Homeostasis. Wonderful thing, the human body. Wonder why mine is screwed up now.* Scully closed her eyes, trying desperately to get to sleep. After a while she realized she was staring at the ceiling, her eyes open. With a sigh, she rolled over onto her side so she was facing Mulder. He, soundly asleep, snuggled deeper into the comforter, drawing it tighter about his chin. He looked almost adorable. Resting her chin on the palm of her hand, she studied his face, wax-pale in the neon haze that filtered in through the rain and curtained windows. Unwittingly, Scully's mind went back through time, to occasions when she had seen Mulder's face in similar condition -- pale, lifeless, on the verge of death. Or hot and flushed, ruddy from the drugs leaked into his apartment house's water pipes, his expressive eyes wild with anger, suspicion, fear, and all the emotions that feed the things that go bump in the night. Scully shivered, and fought the urge to draw closer to Mulder, to cuddle up to the tantalizing warmth his body radiated. *Like a moth to a flame,* thought Scully. *Does the little moth realize how deadly the flame is to it? Maybe it does, but it just doesn't care.* Scully rubbed her tired eyes, wincing slightly at the touch of her cold hands. She opened her eyes again to see Mulder's sleepy eyes intent on hers. "Scully? What's the matter?" "What? Nothing, Mulder." She shivered. "Cold?" he asked, his sleep-graveled voice running gently along her spine, causing her body to almost spasm with a particularly strong shudder. "No. Yes. No." "Scully?" "I'm _fine_, Mulder." "Of course you're fine, Scully. Now what's wrong?" Scully blinked at Mulder. "We've been partners for so many years, Scully. You think I don't know when you're lying to me?" Silence. "Well Scully, you can either tell me and then we can both get to sleep, or you can keep both of us up all night." "Both of us?" Scully asked, puzzled. "You haven't been able to get to sleep. It's not just the cold, so obviously something's bothering you. And _I'm_ not going to be able to sleep knowing something's wrong." "Why should it keep you up?" Mulder shrugged. "Because I care." She almost laughed, thinking he was being ironic, but looked and saw the sincerity in his eyes. "Seriously, Scully. Do you honestly think I'm naturally insomniac? I know how difficult your career with the X-files has been for you. How hard it is for you to understand some of the things we've seen from a purely scientific understanding. That bothers me. It keeps me awake at night." "Funny. I usually don't have any trouble sleeping," Scully retorted with a smile. Mulder rolled his eyes at her and grinned back, the expression transforming his face, freeing it from the haunted look that usually held his features prisoner. The sudden metamorphosis took Scully by surprise. "I was ..." Scully fumbled, uncertainty overwhelming her. "You were ..." Mulder prompted, sliding closer to Scully, invading her personal space, a wall of warmth washing over her, its sweet caress against her skin causing goose bumps to rise on her skin again, this time for a different reason. "I was just thinking." His eyes glinted at her. "Sounds like trouble." "No ... just seeing you asleep. You know this is the first time I've seen you in bed when you weren't dying? Why are you always running off and nearly getting yourself killed?" "Probably for the same reason you keep getting abducted by crazed psychotics and unacknowledged government agencies." "What?" Now it was Scully's turn to be confused. "It's simple Scully," he said, lying back, staring at the ceiling. "God hates us. Personally." Scully almost laughed. "Seriously Mulder. I've lost count of how many times I've nearly seen you dead, how many times I've walked in just in time to save your ass, how many times you've been in and out of biological quarantines, how many times --" Her voice trailed off. "A little bit of me dies every time I walk into a hospital room in some godforsaken part of the world and think you're dead. My heart just stops, and I always think, 'he wouldn't be here if I was there to cover his back.' Always." She was shivering violently now, struggling with her body to let the words, held back too long, out. And out they came, like a river overrunning its banks, like a flood breaking over its dams. "And you know the first emotion that I feel after that? Guilt. I'm your partner, Damnit, and I'm supposed to keep you from falling into those kinds of situations." "You know, it's funny, Scully," Mulder interrupted. "They say I'm the master of guilt in this partnership." "Damnit Mulder, _I_ can feel guilty too. Just because you feel a certain way does not mean I don't also feel that way. Just because you thirst for the truth doesn't mean I don't want it every bit as badly as you do. I --" Scully broke off her words, overcome by a fit of shivers. Mulder rolled onto his side and opened his arms to her. The warmth radiating off his body was no match for that shining in his eyes. He drew her near, draping his arm companionably about her waist -- almost a hug, but not quite -- their bodies just treading along that precarious line. His physical warmth suffused her body, the heat melting the shivering ice away. "Feeling better?" he asked, his voice vibrating deep within his chest, seeming to make the scant space between their bodies resonate with an almost physical force that shook away the last vestiges of ice lingering on the tips of Scully's ears. Scully nuzzled deeper into his body's warmth, closing the remaining distance between the two, immersing herself in his heat, as she had his drives, dreams, and passions. Mulder tensed at first -- although he was always the one invading her space, he never totally closed the distance between the them; it was always understood that that last step had to be Scully's choice. And so Scully had chosen. Burrowing into Mulder, Scully sighed like a contented kitten. "Much better." "G'Night Dana," Mulder breathed, his breath brushing her forehead like a kiss. /**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**//**/