From: anonymousaurus@yahoo.com.au   
      
   Title: Alchemy   
   Author: tree   
   E-mail address: nullipara@gmail.com   
   Distribution: direct to gossamer; anywhere else would be joyous,   
   please let me know so i can visit   
   Spoiler: Pilot, Deep Throat, Squeeze   
   Rating: PG-13   
   Category: VA   
   Keywords: M/S UST, Mulder Angst, Post-ep for Squeeze   
   Summary: Alchemy (noun) figurative: a process by which paradoxical   
   results are achieved or incompatible elements combined with no   
   obvious rational explanation.   
      
      
   ***   
      
   The quality of silence late at night is different from other silences   
   he's known.  It is crisper, larger; all hush and echo.  Sound travels   
   more readily, satellite images are clearer.  He imagines telepathy   
   might also be easier at night, possibly psychokinesis.  Anything   
   requiring clarity, really, and distance.  But the stillness has an   
   underwater feeling, too, the press of liquid and held breath.   
      
   Mulder moves away from the window, past the soft light of the fish   
   tank.  The room is lit by its blue glow and the streetlights outside.   
   Arms folded across his chest, the bump of his heart is an odd   
   experience, half heard, half felt.  He thinks the sound of his blood   
   moving would be like the ocean.  If only his body was a shell he could   
   press his ear against - the vibrations a little bit hollow, somehow   
   inside out.   
      
   "I'm not a part of any agenda.  You've got to trust me."  Her voice   
   echoes in his head sometimes like that.  Maybe memory is a sort of   
   telepathy.  Maybe he's just crazy.  She said that to him once, but she   
   was laughing at the time.  He liked it.   
      
   He likes her.  And he doesn't want to.   
      
   Dana Scully is a conundrum.  She refuses to remain within any of the   
   definitions he's applied to her.   She keeps connoting.  Hell, she's   
   rewriting them.  His dictionary can't keep up.   
      
   The television is switched off but he's staring at it.   In the   
   refracted light from outside he can see his legs reflected   
   indistinctly.  For a moment he watches himself move in that other   
   surface as though under a thin skein of water.  He wants to be that   
   other self, the one made of light on the screen.  To be full of   
   purpose and focussed again.   
      
   And he is.  Pushing a hand through his hair, he is.   
      
   It's just the way she argues with him privately but defends him   
   publicly.  That asshole Tom Colton who obviously wanted more from her   
   than just help with a case.  He'll probably be an AD in a few years   
   but she'll still be worth two of him.  More.   
      
   He's pacing now, measured treads.  The floor is cool under his bare   
   feet.  Of their own accord, his legs set up a rhythm from the door to   
   the desk, from the desk to the door.   
      
   The way she saved him in Idaho.  When was the last time anybody saved   
   him from anything?  He had been too muddled from the drugs in his   
   system to take it in at the time, but looking back he is awed by her   
   loyalty, her audacity.  For him.  He cannot reconcile it.   
      
   And their first case. How she came to him in fear and trusted him to   
   tell her the truth.  Her own honesty is frightening.  He does not   
   think about the way she looked in her underwear.   
      
   But now he's saved her too, so they're even.   
      
   Still, the sight of her tonight, hair mussed, shirt unbuttoned,   
   panting with exertion; he can't get it out of his head.  He hadn't   
   known how erotic courage could be.  He hadn't thought about her being   
   beautiful.   
      
   That stops him short, mid-step.  He sits, instead.  The air feels as   
   though it's lapping at his skin.   
      
   Earlier, after Tooms had been taken into custody, he'd tried to   
   apologise for breaking down her door.  She had eyed him for a moment   
   in that way she has, that way he's fast coming to enjoy, and then   
   smiled.   
      
   "Mulder, you have my permission to break down my door any time I'm   
   being attacked by a liver-eating mutant."  She'd paused for a moment   
   and then added, "Or any sort of mutant, for that matter."   
      
   "So you allow for the possibility of future mutants, Scully?" Why does   
   he like teasing her so much?   
      
   It was hours ago now and he's still sitting on his sofa thinking about   
   her.  She will have the chain on the door and her firearm on the   
   bedside table.  She had refused his suggestions to stay with someone   
   for the night, simply asking him wearily, "And how would I explain   
   this, Mulder?"  He'd even offered to stay with her instead.  In   
   response she'd all but pushed him out the door.   
      
   "The chain is fine.  I'm armed, it'll do for one night." Her tone was   
   firm.  He hadn't really wanted to stay anyway.   
      
   He switches on the television, but leaves it muted.  The flickering   
   light casts deeper blue shadows on the walls, he could almost be   
   swimming.  Perhaps this is what it's like to be a fish.   
      
   Rubbing absently at his belly, he takes a deep breath and exhales,   
   repeats himself.  At odd moments his hand remembers the warm softness   
   of her back above her cotton underwear.  If he closes his eyes, his   
   memory supplies the stunning vision of Scully in her bathroom: eyes   
   wide, breathing arrhythmic, skin flushed.   
      
   At the time he'd been terrified, but now his hand and his memory   
   conspire against him.  This is how she'd look, something in him   
   whispers, coaxing.  Supplying sensory information to fill the gaps.   
   Above him, underneath him, soft and warm and strong.  Her laughter,   
   then, his name in her voice, all the meaning she can already fill into   
   those two syllables.   
      
   His name coming out of her mouth with her pale skin flushed pink and   
   her shirt unbuttoned and the soft swell of her hips in his hands.   
      
   Christ, what is he doing?  He lurches up from the sofa to the kitchen   
   and gulps down some water, willing away his erection.   
      
   "No."  His voice is rough and startlingly in the quiet.  It staggers   
   drunkenly into the air, breaking things.   
      
   He rolls the cool glass against his forehead.  Takes a few more deep   
   breaths, concentrating on the twin actions of inhale, exhale.  No.   
      
   He remembers why he does not trust her.  Should not.  Will not.   
   Suddenly he's angry.  At her guilelessness, her logic, her graceless   
   suits.  He's angry that he notices her mouth, and the way his office   
   feels different when she's in it.  The way he feels different.  Most   
   of all he's angry at the way she listens to him.  How dare she listen   
   to him?  How dare she not just dismiss him like so many others have   
   for so long?  How dare she make him feel this real?   
      
   Rubbing his temples, Mulder wanders back into his living room, his   
   feet confident in the near-dark.   
      
   It's late and he's tired and he is self-aware enough to know that it's   
   not Scully he's angry with.  The knowledge doesn't make him feel any   
   better.   
      
   If he believes in the theory that there are five stages of grief, then   
   he is assuredly at stage two.  He has moved past shock and denial with   
   remarkable speed.  The idea of bargaining seems a long way off.  So   
   he's trapped in anger.  Oh, Samantha.   
      
   The physiological indicators of fear, anger and desire are remarkably   
   similar.  It's no wonder he's riding these strange emotional waves.   
      
   Tonight he'd been frightened.  The images of what he'd find at   
   Scully's apartment if he wasn't in time choked him through the long   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)