CALLING AGAIN
By Rye (RyeXF@juno.com)
Date: Thu, 21 May 98 05:54:46 CDT 


Rating:  NC-17
Category:  V, A
Summary:  The complexities of betrayal and connection are 
contemplated by Mulder at the close of the Eddie van Blundht case.
Spoilers:  US4 - Small Potatoes
Disclaimer: These folks don't belong to me, and I've only
roughed them up a bit.


Thank you, CGS, patron saint of this writer.


Feedback would be deeply appreciated.
RyeXF@juno.com


For wink, who asked




What is the sound of betrayal? What does it smell like? What does
it taste like?


He knew now.  


Betrayal is the sound of music on a stereo and the muted clink of 
glasses behind a closed door.  It smells of a carefully laid fire 
in a hearth.  It tastes like...like wine on lips.  It tastes like
the imagined flavor of wine on someone else's lips.


But is betrayal really betrayal if there was never an established 
right in the first place?



He stalked into his apartment - relief warring with anger and hurt 
and a dozen other emotions that he simply refused to acknowledge 
or name.  Relief, though, was uppermost.  He was finally away from
her, away from =him= ...that, that aping, shape shifting Thing.  
For the first time he didn't want to believe.


Slamming his door behind him, he was brought up short by the 
realization that =he'd= been there.  =He'd= been in this room, 
touched god knows what, worn his clothes, slept in his bed?  
Perhaps his couch, at least was still his own. 


Mulder suddenly felt unclean, for so many different reasons.


Standing under the shower, feeling the water beat against his skin,
cascading in rivulets down his back, he couldn't stop his mind from 
playing that horrible scene over and over.  All his most treasured 
fantasies and his worst nightmares had been in front of him. 
All at once.


Scully....the fireplace...the wine....the music....leaning in 
for a kiss....


And it had been him...and not him.


He was surprised at the surge of lust that hit him.  His groin 
abruptly hot and tight.  Blood rushing to his cock - engorged 
and red.


He was there again, and it was him, feeling Scully's heat, smelling
her clean, slightly spicy scent, about to taste her. A taste he 
already knew, from his dreams - waking and sleeping.  He would feel 
her skin, drown in her warmth, sooth the ache of five years of 
longing in her endless depths.  She would be hot and wet, and he 
would feel her moving beneath him, around him.


His hand drifted lower - clasped himself, began to slide.  She would
be beneath him, her hair fanned out as she tossed her head and met 
his eyes.  In those eyes, in that body, he would find...betrayal.  
He could again see nothing but her, and that....that....


His other hand turned the water to icy cold. It matched the thin 
cold wire flickering in his brain.  How could she?  How could he?


Clean from his shower, but shaking from something other than the 
cold, he dried himself off and climbed into a t-shirt and scruffy 
sweatpants and padded back to the living room.


He drifted about the room, trying to discern what Eddie had touched,
moved, fondled.  Idly straightening things, he automatically settled
into his usual coming home routine, finally landing on the couch.  
He stared at the blank television in the corner, seeing something 
else entirely.


It was late.  It had already been evening when he'd burst into 
Scully's apartment to find her in his...no, Eddie's arms.  In 
fairness, she hadn't been in his =arms=...but metaphorically it 
was the same thing.  Processing that son-of-a-bitch at the police 
station had taken awhile. Trying to come up with a decent 
explanation to Scully about why he'd kicked in her door instead 
of knocking had taken even longer.


They'd finally parted company - cool and distant - at 11 o'clock 
and then he'd driven home.  It was after midnight, but he was still 
too wired to sleep.


Fuck.
He couldn't stop thinking about what he'd seen.  He refused to 
think about what it might mean.  That it could have any meaning 
beyond the fact that she'd betrayed him.  But there was something 
else, wasn't there? He had to consider the possibility that maybe 
there was more than one type of betrayal.


He knew, deep in the twisted morass where his heart met his brain, 
that she'd betrayed him.  Every fiber of his being screamed at him
that what he'd seen was wrong, disloyal, heart-breaking.  But why? 
He tried to examine it all slightly more rationally, and could only
come up against the fact that he was right, and she...she knew it 
somehow.  The look in her eyes at the moment that she'd realized 
what had happened - what had almost happened - had been guilt.
Pure and simple.


When had she become his?  She wasn't his. Yet somewhere along the
line they had both come to recognize this simple fact. They belonged.
There was a primitive claim of ownership that they held over one 
another, and she had violated all the rules.  Hadn't she?


But there had been something else.  Something else that flashed 
through the stunned arctic wasteland of her eyes.  Not simply the 
guilt of what she had almost done, or the dawning horror of who 
had really been on her couch. There had been something that had 
looked very much like loss.


Which brought him back to what had happened.  And for a moment he 
allowed himself to consider the nagging feeling that he'd been trying
to ignore all evening.  Why did he feel like maybe he'd betrayed her?
Betrayed something indefinable, yet vital.


He stared up at the ceiling.  


It didn't matter if his eyes were opened or closed.  All he could 
see was her, so relaxed.  So open, so open to him, but not him.


Fuck.


He thought he'd already encountered all the bizarre possibilities 
in his time in the X-Files.  He thought he'd already faced his 
worst nightmare.  He'd been wrong.  So wrong.


And why of all the things he'd seen and lived through did the 
vision of Scully on the couch, nearly kissing... he refused to even
think the name...arouse him so readily?  Christ - if betrayal was
a turn-on, he'd have fucked that cigarette smoking bastard 4 years
ago.  But there it was, the familiar tightening.


His hand drifted below his mid-section to gently cup his 
partially-erect cock.


He knew what he was going to do, even as his rational mind 
protested.  Even as his conscious mind screamed at him to put
down the phone, he was dialing the number.


The number he'd memorized so long ago.


Her voice was husky. "Hello?"


"It's me."


"I know.  I thought you might call."


Involuntarily his hand stroked down, applying a little more
pressure.  


"How...how...could it happen?" He wasn't even sure if he was 
asking her, or asking himself.  But it was the question that 
haunted him, no matter the answer.


A brief pause.  But she never faltered long, it was something he'd 
learned about her early on. It was just one of the reasons that 
he called as often as he did. "It just did.  These things sometimes
happen."


He could see ice blue eyes, slightly narrowed, a challenge deep 
under the surface.  His cock jumped a little under his hand.
He allowed the anger and pain in his chest to loosen, for the fire
to flow into his veins, into his voice.


"I couldn't believe my eyes.  What were you thinking?  How could 
you let...?"


An almost imperceptible sigh drifted over the wire, and his cock 
prodded insistently at his hand as he saw that mouth parted slightly.
He saw the tip of a tongue whose softness he'd imagined a thousand 
times sweep nervously over those lips. He ached to follow its path.
To taste the sweetness that he knew he would find there, to 
experience the silky, hot smooth and rough of her mouth. He slid his
hand under the waistband of his sweats, and clasped himself firmly.
This was the simple answer.  The only answer on so many nights, but 
was it itself a form of betrayal?  To use her in this way?  To deny
the possibility of a real connection?  How much had she already 
figured out? 


"I didn't think..."


Anger and loss burned through him, laying waste to the last vestiges
of control and civility.  He interrupted harshly, his voice rasping
into the stillness of his apartment. "I don't think I want to know
what you were thinking."


But that was a lie.  He needed to know, needed to know it all, every
thought, every feeling, every sensation.  This conversation would 
not give him the answers he required, but still he had to play it
out.  Had to see it through.


Her indrawn gasp was audible, swift.  "You don't need to take that 
tone..."


"Yes, yes I do.  I know what I saw."  His hand slid slowly from his
root to the head of his penis.  Lingering for a moment to spread the
moisture his fingers encountered. To apply a twisting pressure that 
radiated sparks back along his length.


"It's my life. I'm not sure I owe you any explanations."


A flash of red hair, tossed in anger and contempt. Impossibly, he
grew harder.  He gently eased his sweats low on his hips, exposing 
his fully-erect cock. The cool air in the apartment was 
tantalizingly sweet against his inflamed skin. Breath sweeping,
the silk of hair drawn along skin....


"You owe me everything."  His hand began a slow, steady stroking.
Root to tip and back.  Root to tip. Seeing another smaller hand, 
with smooth nails, and white skin.  White skin that would shine 
in erotic opposition to his redness. Light against dark, it is 
only in contrast that we see.


"You owe me just as much, but I make no such demands of you." 
God, that tone.  It was so familiar, and yet so wrong.  But the 
words were right.  The words were the truth that he could no 
long ignore or deny.


"But tonight was different.  It was me.  It was almost me."
<<Why wasn't it me?>>


The silence was tentative - stretched.  There was nothing but 
the quiet slap of skin on skin, a sound he was almost confident 
wouldn't travel over the phone lines.  


"No.  It wasn't =you=.  It was..." her voice trailed off.  He had to 
stop her before she made that crucial mistake.


His voice was harsh, almost breathless. "It was him.  How could you
believe that it was me?  How could you almost...you were going 
to..." his moved faster now, roughly, almost jerking his engorged
member.  Sweet pain and pleasure washing over him as he headed 
further and further out. Did she know that she traveled with him 
on these nights? Did she ever make her own journeys?


Her voice was quiet, almost a whisper. "I'm sorry.  I didn't 
mean...I didn't know."


His hand tightened almost painfully around his cock.  He knew he
should be ashamed of these late night conversations, of his 
thoughts, his needs, his desires.  But nothing could stop the
blur of his hand, nothing stop him from ending it as he had 
ended it so many times before.  


"Would you do it again if you knew it was me?" His breath almost
gone now, but still enough for the undertone of pleading to escape.


"Yes."


As always when it came to this point in these conversations, he
closed his eyes, seeing nothing but the flame of her hair, her 
body lightly sheened with sweat, her perfect ivory skin aglow.  
He felt nothing but the sweet, moist, pressure of her mouth, 
encasing him, her tongue bathing him, moving along his cock, 
gentle pressure, soft scrape of teeth.  Her mouth sucking, 
pulling.  There, there, now. Oh, now.


"Scully!"


His semen spewed hot and sticky across his abdomen and t-shirt.
Panting, hand still clutching his slowly softening cock, he 
returned to himself, to the cold room, his empty apartment.


There was nothing but silence from the other end of the phone.  
His harsh breath rasped in and out of his exhausted lungs.


Finally he moaned a little, and her voice came quietly over the 
line.  "Will you tell me someday what that was all about?"


"Sure, Chantal.  Sure.  As soon as I figure it out."


"Thanks for calling again, Marty.  We'll talk soon."


END


Feedback deeply appreciated at:  RyeXF@juno.com