From: Raine Subject: Undertow 1/? Date: 1997/06/10 Message-ID: <339E46A0.DA5D234E@isomedia.com> X-Deja-AN: 247711265 X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Newsgroups: alt.tv.x-files.creative *Okay, this is my very first attempt to post to this newsgroup, so if I commit any errors of form, please forgive the clueless.* Feedback, please :-). Undertow by Raine r...@isomedia.com Rating: NC-17 Content warning: Not a happy story, cancer, etc, enough said. Spoilers: Post Leonard Betts, Demons Classification: M&S UST, sort of (?)romance, maybe more so if I write a sequel. Disclaimer warning: Well, I didn't just think up the characters of Mulder and Scully. They belong to Chris Carter, Fox, or 1013, or some wacky legal combination of the three. Although I personally think Scully might have a real problem with that concept, haha. So, don't sue me seems to be the main idea here. Not that I have any money anyway. ************************************************************************************ Moaning. Mulder drifted through a maze of rooms. Bodiless faces floated in and drifted out of his vision, a Samantha that wasn't really, Deep Throat, Cancerman...laughing, mocking his efforts to find the source of the moaning. It had steadily grown louder and more urgent. He knew he needed to find the source, it was vital, he didn't know why, but frantically he floundered onward, the only lighted point in the maze the one he was on, a spotlight, and every point looked like every other point. Finally, he thrashed so violently that he woke up, still trying to run. The sheet covering him was drenched with sweat and twisted impossibly around his legs and waist. He looked around, seeing only the bland tan wallcovering of the Cocoa Beach hotel room he had fallen asleep in. Funny how menacing the picture of the kitten and puppy looked after a really bad one, he mused. Practically rabid, to his eye. He shook his head, breaking the reverie. The moaning was still there. Not a dream. Coming from Scully's room. ****************************************************** Impossibly quick, he lunged toward her with an economy and ease of effort as she ran faster than she would have believed possible, only to fall further behind. He would tear her to ribbons, just like all the other women, she *knew* it, just as she knew how he would enjoy doing it, was thinking about it even now, just as he *knew* what she was thinking. He drank off fear, it made him stronger, but she couldn't stop it, couldn't stop being afraid... his lips split with huge yellow teeth in a wide smile as he persued her. She was alone, she drew her gun, and he fell on her as she pointed and pulled the trigger...too slowly...he raised one hand and ohgodohgod smiled, waving "bye bye"... shiny...knife...she screamed. The next she knew she was woke, swinging blindly, and one of her flailing arms connected with a smack and a cry. Had to, had to get away..Mulder...she had just hit Mulder in the face. He had one arm around her and one was on his cheek. "Well, Scully, I've had lots of reactions from women in bed, but this has to be the most unique." His eyes were concerned, belying his wry tone. She stared at him bewildered. "Are you OK, Scully?" She shook her head. "I...I'm fine, Mulder. I just was dreaming..." "Of Walter Bennett?" No need to say his name, they had spent the last three weeks tracking down that monster. It was another of his techniques to keep the horror at bay. If you can name it, you can know it, if you can know it, the horror is less. But not for Scully. Not tonight, and she thought suddenly, perhaps not ever. Not that ever was that long anymore, she thought suddenly. She forced down the sudden rush of bile that crept up from her gut. He looked at her, his head cocked, studying her. She felt uncomfortable, like a bug under glass, and was reminded suddenly that he was trained to look at emotion that way. Suddenly, as if he could read her unease, he smiled. "Wanna go for a swim, Scully?" ************************************************************************ Mulder half- floated, half- treaded water. He leaned his head back as the undertow preceding the waves alternately sucked and pushed his chest above the surface of the water. The moon was a hair away from full. It seemed impossibly close to the water on the horizon. If only they could get closer, maybe ... He kicked his legs idly and watched. When had he started thinking of even the most obscure things in terms of "we"? It seemed as though she had always been there. He thought back to before she had been buried underground, as he thought of their basement office, with him. Easy enough to see the face of the partners he had gone through, lined up in his mind one by one. Impossible to reconcile emotionally, a time she hadn't been there at his side. he thought, mocking himself silently. He shook himself of the voice and just watched her. Scully breathed in a heady mixture of mist and warm tropical air. It was, she thought, a delivery method for emotional healing. She almost laughed. If only she could stick it in an inhaler like asthma medicine, she'd be a rich woman. She pictured herself, wealthy beyond her wildest dreams, working in the J Edgar Hoover basement... Why did she see herself there? Well, she reasoned, I know I would work, I would go insane otherwise. And where else but the x- files division, where she had dedicated her career? She turned her head and looked at him, bobbing. He was staring at the moon with a look intense concentration. She laughed out loud, a throaty laugh that caused Mulder to turn and gape at her. The story of Mulder's life, she thought. Always looking at the moon on the horizon. She felt enormous affection for him, his hair plastered down onto his head, eyes wide, bobbing up and down in the ocean. Had she ever known anyone as well as this man? Scully reflected that everything she had been through with him had only served to highlight his essential nobility. She could never tell him that...but there it was. He would take it entirely the wrong way if she put it in those terms. She shook her head. Emotional cobwebs. Too many to sort out right now. Had her father felt this way, under the moon, floating on the ocean, his duty for the night over, thinking of his family? She relaxed and just let herself be embraced by the water, watching the stars and moon. Mulder watched Scully stare at the sky and drifted closer. The soft light flowed on her face and the water running up and down the sides of her body in soft rythm. They were far enough out that the waves were soft. Soft. Her short T-shirt had formed to her breasts, the only part of her really out of the the water besides her shorts-clad hips. Shorts up, slightly out of water, back in the water. In the water, out of the water. In, and out...he felt himself growing hypnotized. He looked at something else. *Anything* else... her feet. Her toes stuck out of the water. Small feet, he reflected. Tiny, short toes on tiny feet. How could anyone's feet be so small? How did she walk? He stared at the silvery feet in fascination. Unable to stop himself, he dived. Scully stretched in the water on her back. Almost time to get back, she reflected, before she fell asleep. Scully turned her head. Where was Mulder? Gone, nowhere to be seen. A huge splash right next to her. She sucked in wind, momentarily scared senseless. Luckily her nose and mouth were above water. Every bedtime story her father had ever told her of giant ocean creatures suddenly came back to her, paralyzing, before she saw it was Mulder. "Damn it., Mulder, you scared me." She hated the abrasive tone of her voice but couldn't stop herself. "Sorry, Scully" He really did look sorry, she noticed. Shamefaced even. She looked at him for a moment and relented. "It's allright. You just gave me a start, that's all." He mock grimaced. "Jeez, Scully, I didn't think I looked that bad. Is it the hair?" She grinned in spite of herself, playing along. "No." She looked down. " Mulder, I didn't know you were a foot man." He was clutching her feet in his hands. His hands swallowed them almost entirely. "Um...well, just wanted to make sure you were ok... You know, Scully, you have, um, very small feet." What was that? Embarrassment? She used his grip on her feet as leverage to bring herself closer, bending her knees. He was still holding her feet in a tight grip before he finally let go, treading in one spot as she came at him. She meant to just swim up to him, but the momentum brought her body into contact with his. Her chest collided with his, and in an effort to move herself backward, she succeeded in pulling herself closer, her arms around his chest She let out a small sound of frustration as he looked down at her. A strange half- smile on his face, Mulder adjusted her effortlessly, moving her legs up and around his waist, holding her steady with one hand on the small of her back. She leaned back into the oncoming waves, her legs wrapped around his waist. The current rocked them back and forth slowly. Closer to shore, farther away...she fell into a light trance, a combination of the man she seemed to be using as a chair and the gentle pull of the vast ocean at her back. She tried to resist the pull of the situation she was in, and senced it was a lost cause. ..."Mulder..." she began, shoring up her inner defenses. Her fingers, with a mind of their own, spread out on his bare chest. Cool from the water, smooth...again, she began to drift. Again, she struggled against it. She couldn't let herself be sucked in. "Mulder." "Hmm, what is it Scully?" He curled his arm around her back, bringing her even closer to his face. The small smile on his face slipped away as she slid down his body, and he stared at her, his expression unreadable. She let out a small sigh. He felt solid, *real*. For one of the first times in her thirty-odd years, Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, M. D. decided that she would rather not think about it, and let the current pull her partway under. Mulder stared down at the woman floating in front of him. Her hair was slicked back by water against her skull. There was one small piece on her cheek...he brushed it away carefully with his index finger, letting his finger move to drift down her cheekbone to her full lower lip. He stared at his finger, fascinated. He glanced up into her wide eyes momentarily before looking back down, this time at her short t- shirt, which had also plastered itself to her form, revealing full firm breasts. *Very* firm. *All* of them. He couldn't stop himself from staring at the two small pebbles in her shirt. It was all he could do not to wrap his hands around them simply to see if they could *possibly* be that hard. Scully was wondering exactly this situation had led to her partner staring at her chest with fascination, like a child staring at a new toy. And she had almost succeeded when he leaned forward. He whispered , "Hey, Scully, are you cold?" His lips were right next to her ear, his breath exhaled softy onto her neck. She shuddered. The breath went all the way down her spinal column deep into the middle of her legs. "Maybe I am" she managed. Her voice sounded almost strangled. She pushed herself away and began to swim for shore. Her limbs felt weak. Her leg muscles trembled as she kicked them out behind her. When she finally reached shore, she called out, "I'm going back, Mulder. I'll see you later." His voice barely reached her from the water. "Yeah, Scully, later..." She walked back up the beach, her legs shaking, Goosebumps standing from her skin in the night air, her clothes running rivulets of moisture onto the sand. She reached the hotel minutes later, and let herself into the room, peeling off her wet clothes seconds after she shut the door. Scully dropped the shorts and t-shirt into the bathroom sink and stepped into the shower with a sigh. The water was almost too hot to stand, and it produced cherry-tomato size blothes on her skin. It felt wonderful. She soaped herself down slowly, closing her eyes and thinking involuntarily of large hands with slender fingers on her back. Moving up her arms, neck, down her chest, grazing her nipples...she heard a sound come from her throat as if from a distance, a low moan. Her hands paused momentarily on their downward path, and resumed. Fingers pressed into her lower belly, slid in between her thighs...that sound again, louder. Fingers now in between her legs, soaping, soaping until she could have been the cleanest woman alive... and she wanted, wanted so badly to feel alive, to forget. Suddenly, she couldn't make herself forget anymore. She wasn't alive, not totally. She was dying, and no matter what she said, no matter what she did, what treatments she endured, it was still there, a stranger, a devil in her body sucking up healthy cells, and producing foul, malignant caricatures. In fact, the simple act of pleasure helped supply it with nutrients... She started to cry under the suddenly scalding water. Sobs wracked her body, her knees folded, and she curled up into a ball, a heaving mass of flesh in the steam-filled bathroom. Mulder stood, frozen outside the open bathroom door. Conflicting emotions flew through him. Arousal, dismay, fear foremost. He wanted to go to her, wrap his arms around her. It was an almost irrisistable pull...but he couldn't. He moved quickly out of her room before he could change his mind, and pulled the door closed softly behind him. his inner voice hissed at him. As he went into his room, he told himself he had done the right thing. Dana Scully would never want him to see her that way, he might as well shoot her in the head. He went to his room and flong himself on the bed. , he argued with himself. He sat on his bed, shaking. He wanted to go back to Scully's room so badly. He knew, however, that the level of weakness she allowed herself was dramatically different than that she allowed him. Through the shared wall between their rooms, he heard the water shut off, and sounds emerge. Rustling sounds...a hair drier. He sighed in relief, and picked up his cell phone. Well, that's it, please send any comments, suggestions, death threats (haha...) to the following: r...@isomedia.com