TITLE:  I Never (1/1)

AUTHOR:  ArtemisX5

EMAIL ADDRESS:  artemisx5@hotmail.com 

CATEGORY:  S

RATING: PG.  Read it to the kiddies at bedtime.  But 
only if you want them to ask a lot of questions. 

SUMMARY:  While on fertilizer duty, Moose and 
Squirrel share some drinks, some confessions and very 
nearly sweat to death (not what you think).  

TIMESPAN/SPOILER WARNING. Post FTF, maybe early 
season 6.

KEYWORDS: Scully POV, UST

DISCLAIMER:  Yes, it's true.  I am Chris Carter and I 
have nothing better to do with my time than write fan 
fiction to post on the Internet.  Please.

AUTHOR'S NOTES:  Pointless story alert!  I had no 
control over this one.  The muse, Mulder and Scully 
got together and staged a coup.  I had totally 
different intentions for this one.  More notes at the 
end.

FEEDBACK:  Better than margaritas, and twice as 
intoxicating.  Love it with salt on the rim.

*****************************************************

She was going to start taking hostages.  The urge had 
been coming up more and more often since they started 
their time in purgatory.  Background checks.  
Fertilizer.  This was not why she had joined the FBI.

It was unbe-fucking-lievably hot in Missouri in July.  
The rental car's air conditioning had been anemic at 
best and she had somehow chosen panties that crawled 
so far up her ass she was going to need an 
environmental impact statement before she could dig 
them back out.  Of all the days to wear a black pants 
suit...

As the hotel clerk from hell labored over the 
keyboard of his ancient PC, she let her elbows slide 
over the counter until her face was pressed to its 
surface.

"Scully," Mulder whispered.  "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Mulder," she mumbled against the formica.

"Room 213 and 215," the clerk finally pronouced, 
brandishing the keys at Mulder.  Scully raised her 
head, eyeing the clerk with disdain.  He shrank back 
into his wheeled chair with wide eyes.

"Come on, Cujo," Mulder said under his breath, 
offering her a key.
She offered him a raised eyebrow and took the key 
with more force than strictly necessary. 

"How'd we end up in a real hotel, Mulder?  Does 
everyone in Domestic Terrorism stay in real hotels?"  
God, even an innocent question came out sounding 
crabby in this weather.

"They must save up the dives just for us, Scully."  
He grinned at her as the elevator doors closed.

She sighed.  It was even hotter in this elevator.  
Leaning against the wall with eyes closed she 
imagined that she was in Barbados wearing a bikini.  
It didn't work.  "I think this might be the elevator 
to hell, Mulder."

"Then shouldn't we be going down?"

She couldn't hide a small smirk of appreciation.  
"Not in Missouri."

That earned a full-on laugh.

************************************************

"Define 'Waste of Time', Scully," Mulder challenged 
as they circled the dusty farmhouse of one Amos 
Delancy.

"Mulder," she warned in a dull tone.  It was just too 
damn hot for his whining.  If there had been a 
convenient person nearby, she would have taken him 
hostage and negotiated with Mulder for less of his 
crabbing.

"I'm sweating in places I didn't know I had," he 
groused.

"So am I, Mulder," she sighed.  The shade of the barn 
only helped with the squinting.  If anything, it was 
hotter inside.

Mulder's breathing was getting on her nerves.  He 
sounded like an asthmatic chicken.

"Are you allergic to hay?" she asked, looking at his 
red eyes.

"Scully, I'm from Martha's Vineyard.  Do you think 
I've ever been around hay?"

Sometimes his snob roots emerged when he got cranky.

She sighed.  "No rolls in the hay for the WASPs, 
Mulder?"

"Ouch.  Scully, you wound me."

"My underwear is too far up my ass for puppy dog 
eyes, Mulder.  Let's find the damn fertilizer and get 
the hell out of here."

Sometimes her navy brat roots emerged when she got 
cranky.

She didn't know it, but Mulder found her intermittent 
displays of navy brattiness arousing in a way that 
Hustler could not provide.

She could feel him staring at her backside as she 
moved through the dusty barn.  She had brought it on 
herself.  It was vaguely pleasing.  If she was a 
different person and this was a different 
circumstance and it wasn't so all-fucking hot, she 
might remove those offending panties and slingshot 
them at his head.  Since it wasn't a different 
circumstance, and she was only herself, she just 
smiled at the mental image.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"My career," she snarled.

"God, how do cows stand this?" he muttered, flapping 
the edges of his suit coat for ventilation.

"There aren't any cows here, Mulder."

"They probably all evaporated."

"Sounds like an X-File."  The heat was actually 
starting to make her dizzy.

"Did you ever roll in the hay, Scully?"

His changes of subject were much less tolerable when 
she was struggling to stay conscious.

"Mulder."

"I bet you did."

"Whatever you think," she sighed.

"It's no fun when you don't play, Scully."  He rolled 
his eyes at her.

The heat was melting his brain.  He never admitted 
that they were playing.  She was supposed to play his 
unwitting straight man without knowledge.  Domestic 
terrorism was not agreeing with him.  She watched him 
lift the lid on a wooden bin in the corner of the 
barn.  His face wrinkled and he let the lid slam 
shut.

"Found it."

She picked her way across the filthy floor and stood 
beside him.  He lifted the lid again and the smell of 
steaming hot fertilizer wafted up to her nose.  The 
bin was nearly empty.

"Well either Mr. Delancy has used this fertilizer for 
its intended purpose, or he's already made a giant 
bomb and moved it off the property."  Mulder let the 
lid drop.

"Let's assume it's the former, and get out of here."

His eyes twinkled at her but he kept silent as they 
emerged into the slanted sunshine.

A trickle of sweat slithered down Scully's spine as 
they circled the farmhouse again.  She rolled her 
shoulders, trying to get comfortable and watched in 
envy as Mulder slid his suit jacket off.  He loosened 
the neck of his tie and she had to resist the impulse 
to cinch is back up again and choke him to death in 
Missouri.  It wasn't fair that he could still be 
professional in a dress shirt while she was being 
cooked by Donna Karan.

When he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled his sleeves 
up, she growled under her breath and slipped her own 
jacket off.  Fuck the FBI!  And God bless America, 
that felt good!  The white tank top she had donned 
this morning was the only wise wardrobe decision she 
had made.  

Her weapon bounced heavily against her ribs as they 
marched over the uneven ground, but it was a worthy 
trade off.

"Scully, I'm not sure you meet with approved 
standards of professional appearance right now," 
Mulder observed with surprising dispassion.

"Mulder, I'm not sure I care.  The case is closed and 
you didn't tell me we were traveling to the earth's 
core today or I would have dressed more carefully 
this morning."

He laughed out loud and for once she gave in and 
joined him.

*****************************************************

"Scully, are you decent?"  His voice came through the 
connecting door.

"Yeah."

She watched him enter through half-closed eyes.  He 
was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt.  All very 
action movie star.  He had to peer around the 
darkened room for a moment before he spied her lying 
on the bed.

"Are you feeling all right?"  His voice was filled 
with poorly disguised concern.

"I'm fine."

His expression grew more serious.  Oops.  Wrong 
words.

"I'm really fine, Mulder."  She struggled to a 
sitting position.  "I just get tired when it's hot."

He sat beside her and pushed her hair away from one 
cheek.  A critical once over and he must have deemed 
her healthy because he dropped his hand from her 
face.

"Are you hungry?"

"Unless you have a Sno-Cone in your pocket, no."  She 
pressed her bare toes against his thigh and he 
smiled.

"Think the bar has margaritas?" he offered, 
stretching out on his back.

MMM. Margaritas.  Now there was a word with promise.  
"Let's find out."

He opened one eye and stared at her.  "Seriously?"

"Mulder, it's hot and I'm thirsty.  Let's go."

"Never look a gift horse in the mouth..." he mumbled, 
curling to a sitting position.

Scully swung her legs off the bed and slipped on her 
open-toed slides.  She looked around briefly for 
something to put on over her tank top before deciding 
*Fuck it*

It was too hot for him to rest his hot palm against 
her back but she didn't stop him as they walked into 
the hotel bar.  She'd found his presence there more 
comforting than ever after nearly turning to a human 
Popsicle a few weeks earlier.

A blast of cold air poured over their heads from the 
air conditioner above the door and they paused by 
silent agreement.  Scully breathed deeply through her 
mouth and stretched her arms over her head.  Mulder 
dropped his head forward and let the A/C dry the 
sweat on his neck.

"You folks want a table?" a waitress interrupted 
their reverie.

"Sure," Mulder agreed.

"What can I get you?" she asked when they were 
seated.

"Do you have margaritas?"

"Original, strawberry, or peach?" she answered and 
Scully felt a surprising thrill of relief.

"Strawberry.  Blended."

"Original, on the rocks," Mulder added.  The blonde 
waitress and her elaborate collection of crow's feet 
left them to sweat unattended.

"Mulder, how can you stand to wear jeans?"

"Hot is a state of mind, Scully."

"I miss Antarctica," she sighed.  His expression 
darkened.  "What?" she asked.

"Your frostbite just went away last week, Scully."

"It was a joke, Mulder.  I was exaggerating."  She 
could feel her sweaty thighs starting to stick to the 
vinyl barstool through her cotton skirt.

"Well, it wasn't funny," he admonished with haughty 
disdain.

"Talk about the pot calling the kettle black," she 
teased.

The waitress interrupted them with glasses already 
slick with condensation.  She set a basket of 
tortilla chips between them with a small bowl of 
salsa.  "Happy hour," she explained.  "That'll be 
$4.50."

"Each?" Mulder asked.

"Total."

"Happy hour?" he asked.

"You got it."

"Then you might as well bring two more."

"Mulder," Scully warned.

"Scully, it's just good economics."

"Since when do you care about good economics?"

"All right.  It's cheap drinks and I can't pass up a 
bargain."

"You're trying to get me drunk."

"That's good economics, too."

"So do you want two more or not?" the waitress 
interrupted their sparring match.

"Yes," Mulder replied with his best aren't-I-adorable 
smile.

"Fine.  But you're paying for them," Scully agreed.

"Sold."

*****************************************************

It was a slippery slope toward the pleasant numbness 
of intoxication.  She stopped sweating first.  Later 
she stopped feeling her feet.  At least body parts 
she couldn't feel weren't hot, she reasoned.  Mulder 
kept her hands full of icy bliss and her mind 
distracted from his actions, but eventually her 
stomach got full and she realized how much she'd had 
to drink.  She had to put her foot down.

"Mulder, if I drink anymore you'll be holding back my 
hair while I vomit."

"Are you coming on to me, Scully?"

Oh Christ.  She raised her eyebrow at him.

"I don't think I've been this drunk since college," 
she observed, squinting hard at her watch.  The 
numbers would not become solid lines and the hands 
seemed to have escaped from behind their glass 
enclosure.

"You drank in college, Scully?" Mulder seemed 
inordinately pleased with this information.

"Who didn't, Mulder?"

"I'm shocked.  I think my entire value system has 
been turned on its head.  I may have to re-evaluate 
my existence and become a Buddhist monk."

"Oh, come on.  What do you think I did in college?"

"Studied."  He answered immediately.  "Maybe called 
the police on your noisy neighbors.  Made your 
boyfriend leave at the stroke of midnight on date 
night."

"I did not!" she flicked a chip at him.  "You think 
I'm some kind of nun or something.  God!"

"Are you telling me you were a bad girl, Scully?"

"No.  I don't know."  She paused, munching another 
chip.  Some vague memory of her neural anatomy class 
floated through her brain whispering about 
inhibitions and the order in which alcohol affected 
the brain.  She couldn't remember the names of the 
lobes just then.  "I was average I guess."

"Well, that's obviously not true."

"Why not?"

"You have never, will never and could never be 
average, Scully."

She didn't know what to say.  He looked so serious 
that she felt like crying.  As she stared into his 
eyes, they suddenly liquefied and his normal playful 
sparkle returned.  She blinked, wondering if the 
other expression had been there at all.

"Did you have a fake ID?" he asked suddenly.

"Hunh? Why?"

"I just can't picture you as the lawbreaking type."

"Do you really think I'm the kind of person who would 
call the police on my neighbors?" she demanded.

"Not really.  You'd just go over there with your 
weapon and take matters into your own hands," he 
grinned.

"You're the vigilante in this pair, Mulder.  Not me."

"So you *would* call the cops on your neighbors?"

She sighed.  He could be like a yappy terrier dog 
with a favorite toy sometimes.  "Maybe I'll have that 
next drink after all."

His grin widened.  "So what were you like in 
college?"

The taste of tequila on the back of her tongue was 
all too pungent a reminder of what she had been like.  
At least for that summer.  Memories of running across 
campus to go swimming in the fountain and hanging out 
the window of Maureen's car howling at the men's crew 
team as they ran laps jumbled in her head with the 
taste of salt and lemons and the cheap, sweet wine 
they used to buy by the case.  She felt more like 
that Dana than she had in years.  That Dana never 
minded going to bed alone.  And she never, ever 
worried that she have sex again before she died.

"I spent a summer on campus to take an MCAT prep 
course," she found herself telling the story.  "I 
sublet a room from an ad in the paper and my 
roommates were wild girls.  They called themselves 
Tequila Mo and Laura-lee.  They were fun.  And 
impossible to refuse.  We drank almost everyday.  And 
if you drank too much the night before and woke up 
with a hangover, Laura would fix you a Bloody Mary in 
the morning and sing her 'Hair of the Dog' song until 
you were ready to start all over again."

Mulder looked absolutely rapt.

"We used to do shots of tequila until we could hardly 
walk and then go out dancing.  We never spent a dime 
at a bar.  I don't know how I passed the MCATs."

"Did you have a nickname, Scully?"

"No.  Well, they called me Day.  I guess, that's a 
nickname."

"How much tequila does it take to make it so you can 
hardly walk?"

"Mulder, I was twenty-one.  I can't even remember how 
much it took."

"You amaze me, Scully."

Her mind was spinning enough on its own without his 
mercurial emotions.  "Why?"

"I think I know you.  I think I've got you all 
figured out.  And then you throw me a curve ball and 
I have to rewrite my Scully paradigm."

The initial wave of alcohol was settling to a dull 
ripple in her blood and it had settled in an 
insidious part of her brain that suggested another 
drink would not be a bad idea.  Mulder was too full 
of verbal caresses for her to be sober this evening.

"You're drunk, Mulder."

"So are you."

A pregnant pause stretched between them and Scully 
realized that the icy drinks had finally reversed her 
near heat-stroke.  She shivered slightly.

"Don't tell me you're cold now."

"No.  I'm fine."  She looked at the lines around his 
eyes.  "What were you like when you were younger?"

"The same."

Somehow, she could believe that, but she knew there 
had to be more.

"What were you like at Oxford?"

"Lonely.  Vulnerable."

An image of Phoebe swam to her consciousness and she 
imagined herself dropping a grand piano on that 
banshee.

"Drinking's not as exciting in England because 
everyone's been doing it all their lives.  And the 
beer's warm."

Scully smiled.

"There were some other Americans though, and at first 
we all stuck together, drinking our beer cold and 
playing high school drinking games."

"I Never Never?" Scully heard her own voice but had 
not intended to say anything.

"Asshole, Lower/Higher, I Never Never.  I don't know.  
All of them."

The waitress brought them another round of margaritas 
that Scully did not remember ordering.  She must have 
looked confused, because the waitress explained that 
the party across the room had ordered too many so 
they were on the house.  "Sorry, it's blended this 
time," she told Mulder.

"Good think I don't have any hair to hold back," 
Mulder winked at Scully.

"I've never been drunk with you before," Scully 
observed.

"I've never been drunk in Missouri."

"Do you think it's something about this state that 
makes you drink?"

"Sounds like an X-file, Scully."

"I never wanted to be on domestic terrorism," she 
joked.  Mulder's glass remained on the table.

"I never wanted to leave the X Files." He nodded.

Scully took a small sip and watched pain flicker 
through his eyes.  "It was the flukeman, Mulder.  I 
hated him so much."

Mulder laughed out loud and she had to smile.  "I 
never sweated this much in my life."

Scully laughed this time, but left her glass alone.

"I never thought you'd stay," he said quietly.  She 
took a long drink and a long notice of the faint 
smile on his face.

"I never slept with Ed Jerse," she confessed.  His 
eyes fluttered closed and he heaved a sigh.

"I never wanted to hurt you."  Their glasses sweated 
in stillness.

This game was far more serious than any she'd played 
with Tequila Mo and Laura-lee.  She found her hands 
shaking as she toyed with the stem of her glass.  
*You should stop this.  You've had too much to drink 
for this game.*  But she wanted to see how far he'd 
go.  She wanted to show him extreme possibilities in 
herself.

"I never thought you'd try to kiss me."

He stared at her for a moment and she imagined that 
his brain had locked up on its gears.  She had thrown 
him another curve ball, and felt an absurd 
satisfaction from it.  He never dropped his gaze as 
he reached for his glass and took a long, slow drink.  
Her heart eased into her throat as she watched him 
set the glass down and lick a bit of salt from his 
lip.

"I never thought you'd bring it up," he whispered.

It was her turn to drink while she stared into his 
eyes.

Somebody fed the jukebox some coins and Dusty 
Springfield began to coo, 'In the cool of the evening 
when everything is feeling kind of groovy.'

A different kind of heat was prickling up Scully's 
spine as the silence grew tangible between them.

"Wanna go?" he asked.

She could only nod.  Mulder left some bills on the 
table for a tip and slid to his feet.  When she 
joined him the room seemed to tilt and she gripped 
the tabletop.

"You okay?"

"Fine," she breathed, suddenly desperate to be out of 
the bar.

Back in the hall the heat was high again, but at 
least it was less intimate under the fluorescents.  
His hand smoothed over her spine as they waited for 
the elevator.

The metal doors offered a swimming mirror image of 
them as they rode in silence to the second floor.  
She was struck by how much smaller than him she was 
in flats.  His pinky found the small gap between 
shirt and skirt and she prayed for the doors to open.

*Too much.  Too drunk.  Can't think straight.*

He paused with her outside her door.  "Hungry now, 
Scully?"

She had to get some control back.  "Find a Sno-Cone 
in there yet, Mulder?" she retorted, stroking her 
palm briefly over his hip.

When he didn't answer she turned her attention to 
getting the key in the lock.  The task was much more 
challenging with four margaritas partying in her 
brain.

She jumped when she felt his fingers lift the hair 
off the back of her neck.

"What are you doing?" she asked, turning to meet his 
eyes.

"Looking for bees," he answered in a low voice.

Her stomach turned into a fist.  *Oh god.*

Her addled brain would only allow her to close her 
eyes as he leaned closer.  Their lips met and she 
wished that hers had not gone numb a drink-and-a-half 
ago.

He pulled back and whispered, "I never intended to 
let that go unfinished."

"Neither did I," she whispered back, eyes still shut.

"Okay then."  The backs of his fingers left a hot 
trail that turned to goosebumps down her arm.  "If 
you're hungry later, you know where I'll be.  We can 
order pizza or something."

"Okay."  She nodded dumbly.  "I'll knock."

"You don't have to," he shrugged.

"Okay."

He smiled at her before disappearing into his own 
room.

"I never wanted a Sno-Cone so bad in my life," she 
mumbled to herself.  

Where is a good hostage when you need one?

*****************************************************

fin.


NOTES:  If you do not already worship Dusty 
Springfield, I suggest you start.  Kudos to anyone 
who can name that tune.  It's very apropos.  And I 
didn't even mean it to be.  It was playing on my 
stereo when I wrote this (must be fate).

This story is not my usual style, so I'm curious what 
anyone thought of it.  Begging you for feedback.

Go ahead, make my day.

Anyone who doesn't know the rules to I Never, Never 
doesn't know what they're missing.  Hopefully you 
caught on from the story.