TITLE: Strange Night of Stone 1/1 AUTHOR: MustangSally CLASSIFICATION: MSR Flick Fic - Hicks in sticks nix flick fic. CONTENT WARNING: NC17 for sex, alcohol, and cruelty to dead rock gods. Elements of satire. Did I miss anything? SUMMARY: The Fan-Fiction Writer's Union (NJ Local #527) required 'Flick Fic' vignette. SPOILER WARNING: Fight the something or Another . . . DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Gossamer. (Wherever you are) All others by permission. THE DISCLAIMER: More apologies to The Doors. With Scully as my witness, I did not know that there was going to be a cover version of the Door's "Crystal Ship" on the movie pop song soundtrack until I bought the damn thing. Great minds, what else can I say? Dedication: This goes out to my Yakuza contact - thanks for holding your gun to the salesguy's head so I could get the Doors CD, even though they were closing the store - and remember - if you wear enough nail polish NO ONE WILL notice the missing finger. "This is the strangest life I've ever known" - Jim Morrison **************************************************************** ***************************** Strange Days Strange days have found us Strange days have tracked us down They're going to destroy Our casual joys We shall go on playing Or find a new town Yeah! This was not an improvement. If I was going to be trapped in a bar listening to depressing music, goddamnit, I was picking the tunes next time. I wanted to hear Elvis Costello screaming about the unfairness of life with the kicking, pounding beat slamming through my bones and muscles as the speakers' fabric covering danced under the assault, not Jim Morrison moaning in a drugged haze. Even Led Zeppelin would have been more welcome. I sighed and kicked my feet on the side of the bench, since my feet didn't touch the floor as usual. On the other side of the booth, Mulder was nursing a Scotch and looking like he had toothache. Why he looked like he had a toothache was just wrong, after all, he wasn't one who had spent almost three days in a frozen Margarita and had freezer burn on his face. The raw parts of my face were still sore and holding the glass of vodka tonic soothed it somewhat. It was ironic but physiologically correct that applying cold to cold damage would make it feel better. Of course the Vitamin E I was slathering on was helping somewhat, but I was still going to look like hamburger for another week at least. Outside, Alexandria was sweating in the muggy embrace of another summer evening but we, being creatures of the dark, had gone to ground in Kelly's again and didn't intend on coming out again until we were incapable of walking in a straight line. There were two weeks of enforced leave looming ahead like a tractor-trailer on a one-lane country road. Two weeks while the basement was repaired and repainted and I healed. Shit there was damage inside me that no amount of leave was going to heal and no amount of redecorating was going to be able to conceal. "Did you know that Jim Morrison's entire stage performance was based around Antonin Artaud's theory of confrontational performance? By interacting with the audience in an aggressive manner he was able to create an intimate relationship with every person in an enormous concert hall? He also believed that he was a shaman taking the audience on a spiritual journey." "For truth?" "Enlightenment." "Mulder, you just can't get through a single day without some finely honed insanity that you pontificate as though it is inconvertible fact, can you?" "I'm sensing a little hostility here, Scully." "I have been nearly blown up, nearly hacked to chunks by helicopter rotors, shot at, chased, bee-stung, infected with an alien virus, immersed in green goo, been intubated and then had said tubing yanked out of my esophagus by non-qualified personnel. I've also been dragged across half of Antarctica, and almost quit my ever so satisfying job. My reactions at this time might be interpreted as being somewhat hostile." I saw the flame of pain just before he put it out with Scotch. "So what you said about not letting them win - about continuing. Was that also hostility?" "No." I waved down the waitress and ordered another round. He let me pay, naturally After he killed an additional pair of shots, he decided he would speak again with a voice only slightly clouded with alcohol and flattened in an effort not to convey anything other than the sounds that make the words. Poor Mulder, he was a book since his face and voice were as expressive as a sheet of paper, you had to search for the meaning in the words themselves and had no more help from him than you would black ink. "Right after Samantha was taken, I spent the entire summer lying on my back in my bedroom listening to the Doors. I think I can sing every song they ever recorded." "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars." I confessed. "The summer between Junior and senior year of high school, my friends and I used to drive around for hours, l listening to that album. Just driving and listening. Listening and driving. Then we'd go to Dunkin' Donuts and drink coffee and eat crullers and try to figure out what it meant." "There are secret messages that only teenagers can hear in that kind of music." "Conspiracy?" "Hormones." I flattened the lime slice in the bottom of my glass with my cocktail straw. Maybe I should break down and just start ordering the vodka tonics with half a lime on the side. I love lime. Lemons are bourgeois, limes have a certain acidic panache that cannot be cheapened into limeade on hot summer afternoons. I had a lime scented glycerin soap, facial toner, revitalizing spray, and body lotion that I loved more than life itself. They all smelled so good that I would actually salivate in Pavlovian response to the memory of the stinging bitterness on my tongue. Naturally, Bath and Body Works discontinued that line of lime products. "What are we going to do now?" "Look at paint chips. I think we ought to try for something better than institutional beige when they re-paint the office." "Resurrect like a phoenix from the ashes?" "Phoenixes. Phoenixii? What’s the plural form of Phoenix? There’s only ever one, you know, the egg is hatched in the fires of the parent phoenix’s self-immolation. Are there male and female Phoenixes, Phoenixii? Or are we talking about a self- regenerating species? Cloned Phoenixes? Phoenixii?" "You’re babbling." "I’m drunk. Common side effect." He laughed softly into the gold-filled shot glass; "I should do this more often. Maybe Dad had the right idea. When life gets too much, take a liquid vacation." I looked down at the cocktail straws lined up like little red soldiers on the cocktail napkin. One straw per drink, four straws on the napkin which meant there were four vodka tonics in my stomach. Looked like I was going to be taking a cab home. But first things first. Four vodka tonics have certain biological consequences. "Excuse me," I muttered and stood up. Damn heels, damn tight skirt, and damn Capitol Hill types watching my ass when I walked carefully to the women's room. Skirt up, panties down and there are few things as pleasurable in life as emptying a painfully full bladder in full privacy. God only knew how many times in the past five years I had to wander off by myself in any number of rustic settings to find a place to pee. Funny how no one tells you that one of the best skills an FBI field agent can develop is the ability to recognize poison oak, poison ivy, and poison sumac without the benefit of decent light. Kelly’s was luxurious by comparison to some of the truck stop bathrooms I had done time in. But on the road, a clean bathroom is too much to ask for. Finally, I wrestled my skirt back into place and tugged at my stocking tops. If you ever wondered why the per capita sale of stockings in Victoria's Secrets was significantly higher in the Nation's Capital, wearing pantyhose in DC in the summer is an engraved invitation for yeast infections. I washed my hands and looked at my reflection in the flyblown mirror. The alcohol had gone straight to my face and I looked like I had been romping around without sinblock - sunblock. And my eyes. Good God, my eyes. All sparkle and dilated pupil like the classic signs of arousal. Oh man. Not again. I picked my way back to the booth where Mulder was waiting with a laptop case in each hand. "The after work crowd is coming in." I consulted my watch and couldn't make much sense of it. "Right." I relieved him of my laptop case and followed him out into the sullen summer sunset. The sky was the color of an opal with the heart and heat of the sun drowning behind the buildings. A breeze like a hot breath of exhaust rose up from the melting asphalt of the street. I could hear music coming out of the open window of a bar across the street and could smell french fries cooking somewhere but the thought of food was losing ground with my stomach full of ice and bubbles. Mulder's hand found the small of my back; right where the serpent twined and my legs shook into the stacked heels of my shoes. Come on Dana, you remember what happened last time. Last time was a one-time only deal, right? I have a nice bridge that I want to sell you. Four blocks to his apartment and my heart got a little louder with each step. My heart got a little louder and the sensation of my hot thighs rubbing together above my stocking tops was just about all I could bear. The front of Hegel Place was like the entrance to Dante's Inferno. Abandon all . . . inhibitions ye who enter here? The last time I had wandered in here after a round or three at Kelly’s I’d ended up on the sofa with Mulder, then I’d wound up in bed with him and I still had no idea where my panties were that I had worn in that night. And then, oh yes let’s not forget the last time I’d wandered in here sober, looking (possibly) for sober sex, and left on a gurney with the bee sting to end all bee stings and nearly wound up as a Scully- sicle. I’ve always hated bees. "Is this a good idea?" I asked. Yeah we could look unblinking into explosions, into decomposed corpses, mutated former humans, and lie to any authority figure even invented and here I was balking at the idea of another drunken tumble on the sofa from hell. Did I want to do this? Yeah, so? "Management allegedly had an exterminator in while we were away." He turned the key in the lock and flashed me a sideways look of mischief. "Whatsamatta, Scully, you don’ trus’ me no mo?" he teased in a low-rent accent. That answer to say that a woman should only have sex with a man that she trusts. This was more than that simple trust. This was meta-trust. This was meta-trust on four double vodka tonics. Any questions? "What the hell. . ." Strange eyes fill strange rooms Voices will signal their tired end The hostess is grinning Her guests sleep from sinning Hear me talk of sin And you know this is it Yeah! Naturally she gave me an argument, which cheered me to no end. If Scully gives me an argument I know that the normal rules of logic are operating in an accepted fashion. All is right with the world. Empires can crumble and fall into disrepair but the minute she thins her lips into non-existence I know that I haven't completely left the realm of reality. Argument or not, it was an un-arguable fact that my apartment was not only hot but also airless. I slapped my laptop down on the table and switched on the air conditioner while I loosened my tie. It is an unarguable fact, agreed to by the precise Dr. Scully, that a necktie lowers a man's IQ by about fifty points. Without excusing myself, I hightailed it for the bathroom and took long and satisfying piss, since the men's room at Kelly's was still closed. How the hell you can have a bar that has only one bathroom is beyond me, and a torture besides. While I was in the bathroom, I sniffed my armpits to see if I smelled like onions and ripe cheese. No matter what kind of deodorant I use, Southern weather seems to be out to get me. Well, I was a little gamey, but I'd been worse in recent memory. There wasn't much I could do without raising her finely tuned suspicions that I had designs on something other than her mind. Frankly, even through all the apocalyptic crap that we'd been through lately, one of the few things I had been fixated on that wasn't directly related to survival had been the fact that a few nights before we had been exiled to Dallas, we'd well . . . been Biblical. The book of Revelations even. It had taken me two weeks to banish the memories into the same closet with the fantasies and the result was banging on the door and demanding to be let out again as it was getting crowded and noisy. I could have called her a cab. When I went back into the living room, Scully was braced against the window in front of the air conditioner, hogging up all the cool air with a look of tipsy bliss on her face. You would have thought she'd had enough of the cold in Antarctica, but I had it in my mind that the ice and snow had just heightened her need for the cold to keep the walk-in refrigerator that she used for a heart at its maximum functioning temperature. "You want anything?" I asked. Coffee, tea, me? "Water?" she asked as she shucked her jacket and treated me to the sight of her curved upper body with a clinging white shirt clinging for maximum effect. "Right." There were a few bottles of water in the refrigerator and not much else. I grabbed one with a hand slowed by Scotch and heat and uncapped it as I went back into the living room. She was still snuggled up to the window unit with her hands holding her hair up off the back of her neck. Between the long, tight skirt and the clinging white shirt, she looked like she had been spray- painted into her clothes that morning, skimmed over with paint like Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair. I handed her the bottle and she tipped it to her lips, stretching her neck out like bird drinking water, and I could watch every supple undulation of the muscles in her throat while she drank. My own mouth started water and it wasn't with sympathy. I could see the two white marks whiter than the rest of the whiteness of her where the microchip had been removed and replaced. The marks were calling me like a brown paper grocery bag to a cat. I had to - and my fingers were so dark against her skin that I thought I would leave beige smears on the paper of her neck. She sighed and took the bottle away from her lips, leaving a faint kiss of tan lipstick on the clear plastic cock of the bottleneck. Damn, the air conditioner was not making any headway in the heat of the room, but it was making her nipples harder than nail heads underneath the white shirt. "Alcohol is very dehydrating," she said as though I hadn't been touching her at all. "Right." I agreed and took the bottle away from her fingers. The bottle tasted like her lipstick and that was about all it took for the little guy in my pants take sides with the lust crew in my mental closet and start screaming to be let out. The sides of the bottle were cold and sweaty already in my hand and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to place the round side of the cold bottle against the hot skin on the back of her neck and watch the cold water bead up against her skin. Her breath hissed for a moment and I could see the tiny hairs on the backs of her arms stand up and take notice. If she really didn't like it or want me to continue, Scully was capable of punching me in the snoot to make me stop. I ran the bottle over her neck, and the silky hairs underneath the trim edge of her bob were dampened with the water and stuck to her nape in graceful swirls. I ran the bottle over the shoulder of her clingy blouse and saw the slightly pinker white of her skin show through the white fabric. I ran the bottle over the lines of her biceps, watching the wet swipe evaporate in the cold air of the air conditioner and hearing her sigh with the pleasure of the cold air and the cold water. Feeling bolder now, I slid the bottle underneath her shirt, down the line of her spine, over the tight brace of her bra strap and down to there the circle of the serpent sat above the waistband of her skirt. She didn't move at all and her breathing was as fast and as shallow as a rabbit's. Down over the heart-shaped curve of her ass, the water beading up on the unforgiving fabric, down to where the skirt split and her legs showed coyly through. Over the hard curves of her calves, balanced precariously in her dangerous shoes. The bottom of the bottle skirted her foot above the shoe and then headed upwards again, under the black fall of fabric. Now she was grasping the window fame with both hands again and her head had fallen forward like a flower in a dry vase. Her pantyhose hissed against the plastic of the bottle and suddenly went silent at mid thigh. My ears tightened focus, wait a minute . . . was the ever-so proper Agent Scully wearing something other than sensible L'eggs underneath the skirt? Inquiring fingers had to know. Inquiring fingers felt the familiar thin band at the top of stockings and the silky ribbon of the garter hiking them up. Had she planned this or had Scully always had a propensity for erotic undergarments that I had not been aware of? Then again, Scully’s a bigger mystery to me than anything that had gone up in smoke with the rest of the office. I explored farther up and encountered lace, under which she was hotter than the streets outside. By this time, the pressure behind my fly was getting to the point of pain, and it seemed to me that we were of a similar mind-set that evening and there was no harm, in pressing whatever drunken advantage that I had. Okay, I am a man and we really have three things on our minds, and right then I wasn't thinking much about food or sports. Okay, well, the lace was history, and it was black, sliding down over the paleness of her legs like oil - that damn black oil, and I would have been shocked by the fact that she stepped out of the tiny thing that passed for panties if I hadn’t been too horny to care. Hey, who’s going to quibble about gifts from God - or Dionysus as the case would be. But she flicked the panties away with one foot and looked over her shoulder at me with her neon blue orbs in a way that turned my spine into barbed wire. She arched her back, pressing her ass against my chest in a pretty blatant invitation. Since I was pretty much in the mood and in the moment, I dropped trou with Presidential skill and slid her skirt back over her ass, hearing her hiss when the visually-impaired worm of my cock nudged her and sought entrance. I was going to behave and be at least partially restrained, but she shoved back at me and was inside her faster than you could say ‘ISDN’. (or IIDS - ‘I In Dana Scully’) And I yelped since it was like entering a parallel universe where I had no skin. Damn her blue eyes, she chuckled like she’d pulled some kind of sly joke on me, and started to undulate back and forth against me like waves in a really hot, wet, tight . . . uh. . . hot tub or something. I grabbed at the bunched up fabric at her waist and hung on the best that I could. Her fingers were whitening around the window frame and I was wondering if anyone in the street below had the slightest clue what was going on in good ol’ Apartment 42. Strange days have found us And through their strange hours We linger alone Bodies confused Memories misused As we run from the day To a strange night of stone The yammering about the Phoenix had gotten me thinking that things were the same, but quite different now. Once you’ve actually gone and had sex with a man there’s no real going back, you either keep having sex or know that he’s wondering why you aren’t screwing him anymore. Even though I’d spent more than a little free mental time fantasizing about doing the nasty with Mulder, I’d always shied away from considering it in anything other than a hypothetical manner on the grounds that it would be used against us somehow. But the events of the past few weeks convinced me that there was enough to use against us anyway, what was one more thing? Five years of intimate non-sexual contact had pretty much made us unsuitable for other human company. Who else would have either of us? And besides, it wasn’t as though he was that bad in the sack, actually, with a little less booze, he would have been astounding. But there was time for that later. Regardless, braced against the window with his cock buried in me as far as it would go, I was not about to rationalize any more than was absolutely necessary. Between the cold of the air blowing against the front of my body and the heat he was generating inside and on my back, I was caught between two planes of existence and had degenerated into a creature of sensation only. His hands looped around my ribcage and he squeezed my freezing cold breasts in his hot hands and I couldn’t help but cry out like one of the cheap bimbos in one of his sleazy movies. He groaned back at me and nuzzled the cold side of my face with his hot, wet mouth and it was all I could do to remain upright. My legs were shaking like a shanty in an aftershock and I could feel the neural spring winding up to an apocalyptic climax. I bent my head painfully to the side, and managed to catch his mouth with mine. He whimpered like a frightened puppy and started pumping helplessly into me, which was the final tightening that I needed and the tungsten spring inside me let loose and reality shattered into glittering fragments of ice and fire around me. That was enough for Mulder as well and he gasped out my name (my last name mind you) and slammed helplessly into me in the chokehold of his own orgasm. The floor leapt up to meet both of us and we went down in a tangle of arms and legs and crumpled clothes. Sticky and sweating I crawled up the length of his stripped from the waist body, and up to where I could kiss the dark spot on his jaw the way I had wanted to for years. "Gotcha," I teased. "Did not," he groaned in a defeated tone. "Did too." "You’re sadistic," he said and flopped back onto the floor. "Bed, Mulder. You don’t need a stiff back on top of a hangover." "Nag, nag, nag," he complained. Nevertheless, he did go and as he went, shuffling with his pants down around his ankles, his bare ass was even better than it was in trousers. Yes, things would be different from now on - I now had something to look forward to other than intriguing autopsies. "Scully!" he called from the bedroom. "Nag, nag, nag," I returned and went after him. END