Subj: Poconos (2/7) by Jess
Date: 8/10/99 6:41:51 PM Central Daylight Time
From: jessica@amazon.com (Jessica Mabe)
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TITLE: Poconos (2/7)
AUTHOR: Jess
EMAIL ADDRESS: jessica@amazon.com
RATING: NC-17
Summary in Part One.
Email me, I spread them like peanut butter on apples and eat them all
up.
Scully would never have admitted it to him, but she was having a really,
really good time. With Mulder, she was usually filled with some
over-riding concern for his well-being because he was about to be eaten
by a giant fungus or mad wolfman or beautiful detective. Today, however,
they were strolling down the main street of Clement, Pennsylvania
without a single crazed maniac in sight. The sun was shining, her shorts
were on, and Mulder, God love him, was wearing those silly raybans that
made him look exactly like one of his "grays". She couldn't stop
grinning.
They were stopping at The Country Bumpkin Buffet and Lounge for, as
Mulder put it in the cabin, "some of that good ol' country pee-can pie."
Sitting opposite him, watching his nervous energy, listening to him
chatter about the "air ferns" in little planters on the table, Scully
was overwhelmed by affection for him. It didn't particularly matter to
her at that moment if he never got around to actually kissing her. It
didn't matter if he still loved Diana or Pheobe or Detective White or
anyone else she didn't know about. It didn't even matter if he one day
abandoned her for some elusive version of the Truth with a capital T. As
long as she could have a few memories of Mulder happy and chatty,
unconcerned with aliens and black cancer and his sister, she would be
eternally grateful to fate.
"What's up, Scully? You look dreamy."
She smiled and started to open up, but stopped as a young woman wearing
a black polyester dress approached them.
"Y'all the FBI agents?"
They both stared at her as if she were a Reticulan.
Scully recovered first.
"Yes," she said. "How on earth did you know that?"
"Oh," the girl said with a dismissive wave of her hand, "everybody knows
everything about everyone here."
Scully nodded. She was sure they did. If the girl had read her mind like
little Gibson, she wouldn't have been terribly surprised.
"I'm Special Agent Dana Scully and this is my partner, Fox Mulder. How
can we help you?"
The girl looked at Mulder and then motioned with her head. He opened his
mouth, shut it again and scooted over so she could sit next to him.
"Y'all here investigating the deaths, huh?"
Scully looked at Mulder meaningfully. Crazy locals were his specialty.
He was watching this one with a peculiar mixture of interest and
disdain.
"What makes you say that…?"
"Sally."
"…Sally."
She nodded. "Oh, I figure there ain't nothin' else goin' on 'round here.
I told my daddy, they ain't here to sit in some giant champagne glass."
Scully swallowed convulsively. I must not laugh, she thought. I'm an FBI
agent. I must not laugh.
Mulder nodded thoughtfully. He never laughed at times like this.
"So, Sally. Do you have anything you'd like to tell us or were you just
curious?"
She smiled and leaned over the table.
"I know why people are dyin'."
Mulder nodded, encouraging.
"Everyone's so bored," the girl pronounced, triumphant.
Scully sighed and raised the "I told you so" eyebrow at Mulder.
"Really? Who's bored?" Mulder said just as the waitress brought over
their pie.
"Sally," the waitress scolded. "Leave the FBI in peace to eat their pie,
will ya? They'll be here for a whole week. I'm sure you can talk to them
later. Scoot."
The girl pouted, but slid out of the seat to return to her family.
"Thanks," Mulder said.
"Oh that's nothin'," the waitress, whose nametag read "Sherri" with a
little heart dotting the i, replied. "If y'all want to get any real
information, you can talk to me. Doesn't nothin' happen in this town
that don't come through The Country Bumpkin."
That was it. Scully excused herself just in time to make it to the
bathroom and burst with laughter. She knew Mulder would be angry, but it
didn't matter. There was only so much of the absurd one small woman
could take.
If he didn't get her into her bikini by the end of the day, Mulder
mused, he would no longer be able to call himself a man.
Scully was unpacking carefully, hanging her clothes up in the cabin's
only closet. He, of course, had only a couple t-shirts and some jeans
packed. That and four different porno mags and one particularly choice
video, just in case. He was watching for the bikini like a man waiting
for evidence of the Rapture.
"Mulder," she said. "I wish you wouldn't sit there and stare at me. It's
completely unnerving."
"I'm not staring," he told her, looking longingly at her neatly folded
blue silk pajamas. No, I'm gazing, Scully.
"If you're bored, you could check out the path to the lake. I was
thinking we could go hang out on the dock, eat leftover pie and watch
the sunset."
Something in his throat constricted. It sounded so… nice.
"Yes, Ma'am."
He hadn't felt so relaxed and comfortable around her in a very long
time. It was as if everything they had held between them was no more
substantial than a membrane. One gentle push would send him tumbling
through.
The path to the lake was clear and broad, lined like a leafy tube. He
felt he might be passing into another world. I must not, he thought
sternly, screw this up by being an ass.
The rich brown earth of the path gave way to narrow wooden boards of a
small boat dock. Around him the lake spread out as if someone had opened
up the earth and let the sky through. He had never seen water so
perfectly blue. Standing on the very edge of the dock, toes practically
tipping over, Fox Mulder gave one long throaty yell of triumph.
A rustling sound startled him; something passing through the leaves.
Turning quickly, he half expected to see a prehistoric beast, instead of
a skinny man holding a fishing pole.
"Well," the man said. "You must be Mr. Muldoon of the FBI."
Mulder sighed. Why did everyone in this town have a sudden need for the
Bureau?
"Agent Mulder," he said, stepping politely forward. "And you are?"
"Pissed the hell off, that's what I am."
Mulder couldn't begin to imagine a response to that.
"Look," the skinny man said. "I know you folks mean well. But we're
happy here, all right? Things are lookin' up for us in a way they
haven't been in a damn long time. We don't need the damned FBI poking
their noses into things they don't understand."
Mulder smiled.
"Sir, I guarantee you that Agent Scully and I will keep our noses where
they belong."
The skinny man looked Mulder up and down for a moment and seemed to find
him lacking in some respect.
"You don't dress like a g-man."
"I'm undercover."
The skinny man snorted.
"Like hell you are. You're takin' a vacation on the taxpayer's money, is
what you're doing."
Mulder stared, unable to find an appropriate response that wasn't
completely insulting. He wished Scully were there for this one.
"Well, I don't care what you two get up to, as long as you get the hell
out at the end of your week and don't come back."
"I certainly will keep that option in mind."
"You do that," the skinny man said, expelling copious amounts of phlegm
at Mulder's feet.
"Look," Mulder said, getting truly annoyed for the first time that day.
"If you folks aren't up to anything, there won't be anything to find.
Now if you don't mind, I'm about to spend a lovely summer evening eating
pie bought with the taxpayers' money on the taxpayers' dock at the
taxpayers' lake in the taxpayers' national park, all right? And if I
happen to get lucky tonight, I'll try and find a way to stick that to
the taxpayers, too."
The skinny man snorted. "Typical."
"How's the lake?" Scully asked as Mulder pushed open the front door. She
was stretched out on the couch, her feet dangling over the arm. A cool
breeze snaked in through the screen door and tickled her toes
pleasantly. Mulder, on the other hand, looked flustered. Already, she
thought.
"Crowded," Mulder said.
"Really?" she asked. "Should we go somewhere else?"
He sighed. "No. I just ran into another friendly local." He flopped down
next to her on the couch. "Comfy, Scully?"
"Mulder, don't you think it's odd that we're already the center of
attention here?"
"Very," he said and pulled her over so that her head rested on his lap.
She allowed it, ignoring the violation of protocol. Hell, she thought,
just being in the same room with him was breaking every fraternization
rule in the book. He stroked her hair absently.
"I mean," she told him, "if they're not doing anything suspicious, why
are they going so far out of their way to talk to us?"
"Exactly."
He looked down at her and placed one hand gently on her stomach, barely
touching her through the cloth of her shirt as if he were afraid she
would bolt.
For a long moment they lay still, then she gently pushed his hand away
and sat up, re-erecting the barrier.
"You know what, Mulder? The Bureau owes us. How many times have we
driven for hours just to find out that the case was nothing, or worse
than nothing – something really unpleasant and dangerous, with no
meaning whatsoever? I just want one week. One week with nothing trying
to slit my throat or cook me or insert itself under my skin or…"
He was laughing.
"I'm serious."
He smiled at her, but it wasn't just mirth. Something else hovered
there. She felt like blushing.
"Get your pie, Mulder, and a fork. The sun should be setting soon."
Mulder watched as Scully stepped gingerly into the cool water of the
lake. Those little feet, he marveled. How could such a powerful woman
have such tiny feet? It was as much a mystery to him as the fact that
sensible, steady Scully had a tattoo. Or that she owned blue rubber
thong sandals with big plastic daisies on them. Or, if he was really to
ponder mysteries, that she was here at all.
The sun sent shimmering flashes along the underside of Scully's chin and
the bright edges of her hair. She brushed it back behind her ear and
bent down to retrieve a rock from the water. When she stood back up, she
seemed to emerge into a halo of light. He was reminded of something,
watching her.
"She walked through the corn leading down to the river,
Her hair shown like gold in the hot morning sun.
She took all the love that a poor boy could give her,
And left me to die like a fox on the run…"
Scully looked up and smiled, puzzled.
"Mulder, was that you singing?"
"It was."
"You have a lovely voice. Sing it again."
He obliged and she gazed at him as if he had suddenly revealed to her
that he was also a billionaire.
"Keep going," she said.
He smiled. "Not unless you'll join me in a rousing chorus of 'Jeremiah
Was a Bullfrog."
"No way in hell. What were you singing?"
"Just something my mother used to sing to me as a lullaby."
She climbed up onto the dock and sat down next to him, hanging her feet
over the edge. He could trail his toes in the water; she kicked in empty
space, girlish.
"Mulder, I maintain your mother was highly disturbed. That doesn't sound
like a child's song at all."
"It wasn't. She never cared, as long as it had the word 'fox' in it. She
once sang me to sleep with
several choruses of 'Foxy Lady.'"
"So who is she, Mulder, this woman who left you die?"
He grinned at her.
"I don't know. Just some beautiful red-head."
"I thought you said 'her hair shown like gold'."
"I does, if you're red-green colorblind."
She laughed and leaned back, closing her eyes in the warm light.
"I've never left you to die," she said. "In fact, I believe I've saved
your ass on more than one occasion."
"Even when I didn't entirely deserve it," he said and she looked quickly
at him, puzzled by the change in tone.
She opened her mouth to say something, but the sound of footsteps
stopped her.
"Excuse me, Agent Scully? Agent Mulder?"
Scully looked over at him and he was sure he was reading her mind. Run,
it said.
"Yes?" he said slowly, turning to see who had spoken.
A middle-aged woman stood shyly on the path behind them, wringing her
hands together as if she didn't entirely like her errand.
"I.. um… my name is Anne Hastings. I'm the Neighborhood Watch
chairperson. I thought you two might like to know there's been another
death."
Mulder sighed. This was getting scary.
"Who died?" he said, not bothering to be the polite agent in his
cut-offs and bare feet.
She smiled and twisted the edge of her shirt in her hands.
"Mr. McGillicudy from across the lake. He climbed up on his roof last
week to watch for meteors and had a heart attack. They didn't find him
till this morning."
Scully winced, half-smiling.
"That doesn't exactly sound like you need the FBI," she said.
"Well, you are here to investigate the deaths, right?"
She sighed. "We haven't discussed our agenda here with anyone locally."
The woman nodded and smiled. "Right. The funeral's tomorrow at eleven.
You might want to be there, if you really want to know what this is all
about."
The woman nodded goodbye and slipped nervously back down the path.
Scully watched her go and then turned to him.
"Why on earth does everyone assume we care? We haven't asked a single
question. We haven't interviewed anyone. And why was she so nervous?
Mulder, if I didn't know better, I'd say these folks were up to some
serious no good."
Mulder kicked a little lake water onto Scully's legs. She squeaked.
"You know what, Scully? Tonight, I just don't give a shit. Tomorrow,
we'll go to the funeral, we'll interview the mourners, we'll build a
profile and take down the villainous masterminds behind… whatever the
hell they're behind, but tonight I intend to finish my pie and then go
back to our cabin, watch a movie, maybe snuggle up with you on the couch
and then fire up the champagne bubble bath."
She raised one eyebrow.
"You're being awfully presumptuous. I haven't said anything about
snuggling or bubble baths. In fact, Special Agent Mulder, I do believe
that if AD Skinner were to get even the slightest whiff of either of
those activities, your ass would be grass indeed."
He made an effort to look really disappointed.
"Ah come on, Scully. I even brought a special video for the occasion.
What do you think Skinner would think of that?"
She turned bright pink.
"Agent Scully, are you blushing? Or did you forget your sunscreen?"
"One of those videos you don't own, Mulder?"
"Yep."
"What would you actually do if I said yes?"
He thought about it for a moment and then looked up to find her smiling
at him.
"Agent Mulder, are you blushing?"
"Never."
She laughed and lay back along the dock, resting her head on her arm.
"Mulder, did you really drag a porn video all the way out here?"
"Of course not, Scully. I'm not that desperate."
Now he really was blushing. Thank God for the setting sun.
end Part 2 of 7
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Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1999 15:58:10 -0700
From: Jessica Mabe
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