Author:  Jemirah
Archive:  You want it, you got it, just please let me know!
Spoilers:  Memento Mori, Paper Hearts, Millennium
Rating:  Uh, let's say PG, for language, just to be safe.
Category:  Uh, argument fic?  It's not song fic, I promise!
Summary:  Mulder's depressed (yes, again), and Scully's
mad (yes, again).
Feedback:  jemirah@hotmail.com
Disclaimer:  Surprise!  They belong to CC and Fox...
Author's Note:  It was a really yucky day when I started this.
Also, I know how everyone thinks it's really corny to use
song titles, but I couldn't help it, it just fit so well...  (Thanks
for suggesting it Kate!)
Special Thanks:  Let's see, in no particular order:  Melissa,
Kell, Renee (make her read this, Kell!), Andrea, Kate,
Heather, April, TJ, Mary, and Angel (write me if you read
this, Angel, I accidentally erased that new e-mail addy you
sent me!).
Dedication:  To Laynie, for archiving my stories, and for not
getting mad at me when I forgot to add the address to my
last couple of stories.  I'm not used to being treated so nice!
That wonderful (if I do say so myself ;~D) site is here:
http://www.angelfire.com/ms2/XFGoddess/j.html; go visit!
One More Thing:  I'm sorry, mine is a Mulder-centric
universe...


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Rhyme and Reason
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Mulder popped the CD into the player, not really caring
about how Scully might feel about Filter.  The angry
cacophony of noise soothed him somehow.  She raised an
eyebrow and tightened her hands on the steering wheel,
but didn't say anything.  She knew, understood, he realized.
Trust her for that.

It made him a little bit angry that she could know him well
enough to know that he needed the racket of too much
music and screaming voices, but that she wouldn't ask him
why.  She never did, no matter how he longed for it, begged
her in his mind, prayed to a God he didn't believe in.  He
always sat alone with these thoughts, these pains bursting
him at the seams, and she sat silent, minding her own
business.  No, she didn't even do that much because he was
her business; he had turned his soul over to her for
safekeeping long ago.

So they drove wordlessly along the new four-lane (two in
either direction) highway that had apparently been a radical
improvement in this semi-rural area recently.  He looked
out the window, at the rain, and the grass that was darker
than usual, and the trees with their smatterings of tiny
leaves, buds of flowers.

The music spilled out of the speakers and enveloped them
in an angry gray fog, he could see it, taste it, smell it.  It was
making him sick at his stomach.  The smell reminded him of
something, something bad, but he couldn't pin the precise
thought down, and it made him want to cry.

They were now passing a lumber yard.  Though he didn't
consider himself a tree-hugging conservationist by any
means, the sight of slain trees strewn about like so many
carcasses never failed to sadden him.  And it didn't help
much on this particularly dreary day that this one was
surrounded by live trees, still bare in their winter poverty.
It made him think of mourners circling around a grave to
hear the priest's words and see the first handful of dirt hit
the top of the casket.

With a deep sigh he forced himself to look away from the
dead and the dying, back to the interior of the car.  He had
drawn Scully's attention with that sigh, he had felt it.  He
could now see her glancing away from the road every few
seconds to look at him.  It relieved him, eased his suffering
in some small way that she was worrying about him.  He
knew that that meant she cared about him.  He also knew
that trying to hide something from her was like trying to
hide something from himself--it couldn't be done.

Filter had finished, and now he decided on Dave Matthews
Band.  It was an old CD, but it was their best one.  It earned
him another raised eyebrow from Scully, but she still said
nothing.  The rain was falling faster and harder now,
evening out the lighter sound of the new music.  Despite
the airy feeling of it though, he felt like this band's music
was darker than most people realized.  Rhyme and Reason
was downright suicidal, in his opinion.

When that song came on a few minutes later, he relaxed his
head back on the car seat.  There was something cleansing
about letting the raw anger and hurt out through the song,
it felt good.

Suddenly the only sound he could hear was the tires slicing
through the water on the road.  He looked over at her in
surprise, meeting her gaze by accident.  He was shocked to
see tears running down her face.

"Wha--,"  he spoke for the first time in hours.

"Nothing, I just couldn't take it anymore.  I'm fine."  She
wiped at the tears on her face and looked back at the road.

He was totally puzzled, he didn't know what to do, say,
think, anything.  He wasn't like her though, he was going to
ask.

"What's wrong, Scully?  Talk to me, please..."

She seemed to find this very annoying.  "Mulder, just give
me the same respect I give you, don't pressure me to talk
about something that I obviously don't want to discuss."

"What are you talking about?"  He was feeling too many
feelings at once, they were all starting to swirl and mix
together in his head.

"Just let it go, just forget about it."  He was damned if he
was going to let it drop that easily though.  He reached over
and turned the CD player back on, hitting the forward
button till he came to Rhyme and Reason again.  The
unhappy music floated out and lay heavily between them.

"What are you doing, Mulder?"  Her head was switching from
the road to his face rapidly.

"Letting it go."

"You damn, selfish...," she mumbled toward the floor as she
leant over and ejected the CD.  Without giving him a chance
to comment, she had rolled her window down and thrown
the CD out.

Before he could turn back to the front from having watched
one of his favorite CDs bounce on the road and roll into the
grass at the side, she was demanding that he hand her her
bag from the back seat.  Furious, he couldn't think of a
suitable way to say no without losing his cool.  As he
handed it to her with shaking hands, she pulled the car onto
the side of the road.

He watched as she first got a Kleenex from a small travel
pack and wiped her eyes and nose, then as she dug through
the bag.  As she unabashedly rifled through underclothes
and other things he wished he hadn't seen, he let his gaze
slip past her to the scene out her window, a pasture filled
with grazing cattle, all turned the same direction.  He made
himself ponder over the whys and wherefores of this
conundrum to keep his mind off of the ire lurking not far
below the depression he was feeling.

She finally zipped the bag up and practically threw it back at
him to put back in the back seat.  As he tossed it back none
too gently, the car was filled with classical music, piano.  He
sent what he hoped was a questioning glance her way as
she put the car into gear.

"It's my turn to hog the CD player," and another arch of that
infernal eyebrow were all the response he got.

"I can't believe you just did that...," the anger fairly oozed
out now.  She barely glanced his way, he could see the
anger seeping out of her too.  He knew he needed to shut
up before the situation deteriorated any further.

"Shut up, Mulder," she growled at him.  Apparently she
didn't care about deterioration or situations.

"Now that's mature...," he couldn't help himself, he was a
smart-ass, after all.

"You asshole!  Just shut up before I get my gun out!"  He
suddenly had the craziest thought, of the way a frying pan
smelled when left on a hot stove for too long with nothing
in it.  He knew that if he could get close enough to Scully,
she'd smell just like that.

"How long has it been since you took the bureau's
psychological tests?  I think you may be unstable, unhinged,
a danger to yourself and others..."

"You are the most insufferable, selfish, stupid bastard I've
ever met!  Don't say another word or I swear to God..."

"You'll what?  You'll hit me with your little fists?  Or maybe
kick me with your little feet?  I'm not scared of you, Scully.
And you're either gonna go back and find my CD or you're
gonna buy me a new one."  He had to look at the horizon at
that point, he was beginning to feel a little bit carsick.
Before he could get his eyes focused on the hills in the
distance, there was a gun shoved up against his nose.

"What are you doing, Scully?"  He asked in a calm tone that
belied his heart rate, which had just jumped up a couple of
digits.  Not because of the gun, or even the motion sickness
he'd been feeling though; it was because he had finally
gotten a glimpse of what was going on in her mind.  He had
found one of his holy grails, a look into Scully's psyche.  As
much as he'd educated himself, as much as he'd put that
education into practice profiling criminals and the like, he'd
never been able to tell what his best friend was thinking.
Until now, until her actions had somehow tuned him in to
the right frequency and she'd come in, loud and clear.

"I'm shutting you up, Mulder," she replied in an even voice
that rivaled his.  She thought he was suicidal.  Now her
earlier comment about him not wanting to talk made sense.
She thought he was freakin' suicidal!  She really was
worried about him!

Something he supposed could only be wonder washed over
him in waves, as he sat there with his partner and best
friend's gun shoved up against his nose.  He felt like a little
kid trying a new candy for the first time.  It was the same
ingredients as used in many other candies, but it was in a
different combination now, and it was going to take some
getting used to.

"So do it already."  He knew he was pushing her, but he felt
like he really needed to for some reason, call it gut
reaction, instinct, lack of anything better to do...  It didn't
matter.

"Shut up, Mulder, or your gigantic nose isn't going to be a
problem for you anymore."  The cold metal rammed up
against said nose was beginning to get warm from the
contact with his skin.  He thanked the God he told himself
he didn't believe in for the seemingly unrelated things his
mind connected sometimes, and also for the red-haired,
red-faced furious woman who presently had her gun in his
face.  He thought about the way she would caress his face
sometimes when she thought he was asleep.  The way she
let him tell his crazy theories even though odds were a
million to one in favor of the fact that she was going to
think he was nuts and shoot those theories full of holes.

"You don't really expect me to think you'll do it, do you
Scully?"  Gut instinct?  He was going to rely on gut instinct?
Maybe that was pushing it too far, he thought, as she
chambered a round in the gun.  He didn't flinch, he couldn't.
He was too busy staring into her eyes.  He was in his
element now, he tried to remind himself.  He'd finally
gotten inside her head.  It had taken nearly eight years and
a gun, but he'd figured her out.

She was now slowing the car, preparing to pull onto the
shoulder once more.  He watched her glance back and forth
between him and the road as she brought the car to a stop.
The piano music seemed to thunder out of the speakers
without the noise of the road to hinder its progress.  She
was now looking at him constantly, the look on her face a
mixture of defeat, fear and anger.  Her breathing was
erratic and fast, while his own was necessarily calm and
steady.

He may have found what made her tick, but that didn't keep
her from surprising him when she spoke.  "Is this what you
want?"

"Yes."  It was his turn to surprise her, or at least try.

"Damn you to hell."  Her face became redder as she went to
work emptying her gun of all its ammunition, her gaze
never leaving his.  Next she rolled her window down and
threw the gun out, where it hit the pavement with a strange
metallic 'clack'.  He let his eyes move from hers for a split
second to look at the window the gun had just exited
through, now the entrance for pelting rain.  When he looked
back, there were tears threatening to spill out of her eyes.
He sat still, transfixed for a few minutes before he realized
he was crying as well.

As the music reached a turbulent crescendo, she lurched
forward, towards him.  For one crazy moment he thought
she was going to kiss him, but she grabbed his jacket and
pulled it away from his body, revealing his own gun.  Which
she grabbed and began to relieve of its ammunition, then
flinging it out the window to hit against hers with another,
more interesting 'clack'.

He thought she was done, but, ever thorough, she moved to
his right leg, lifting it up to the car seat, where she pushed
his pants back to reveal his second gun.  She made quick
work of it, finally settling into her seat with her back to him
as it flew out the window to join the others.

"And you whine about me losing guns...," she was probably
wishing for one of those guns to shoot him with right about
now, but he couldn't take the tension anymore.  She let out
a small little laugh.

He had a terrible urge to just throw his arms around her, so
he did before he had too much of a chance to talk himself
out of it.  Holding her, her back against his chest, so tightly
that he was afraid he was hurting her, he tried to translate
all his cluttered emotions into this action.  He willed his
arms to make her feel the words he couldn't voice around
the lump in his throat, and he felt the anger leave her body
almost instantly.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, so quietly he barely heard her.

"You're sorry?  What on earth could you possibly have to
apologize for?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe pointing a loaded gun in your face
for starters."  She was crying again, her tears were
splashing warmly onto his hand where it was clutching her.

"Oh, that.  Don't worry about it, I deserved it," he hoped his
voice sounded as casual as the words he spoke.

She spun out of his grasp suddenly to face him, both of
them kneeling in their seats.

"Don't you say that, don't you dare!"

"Why?  I did, I've been a total asshole all day--even more
so than usual."

"That's still no excuse for the way I overreacted, now shut
up and let me apologize so you can get started on yours."
The little smile on her face shone through her tears, so he
nodded slightly and took her back into his arms when she
leaned toward him slightly.

He let out a sigh as he held her, easing himself, and
consequently her too, down into the seats.  He hadn't
thought about how wrong it was to mess with her mind like
this, hadn't known it would hurt her.  Hadn't known it would
hurt him for that matter.  He leaned back, out of their
embrace, and looked her in the eyes, and wiped at some of
the tears on her cheeks.  This caused her to give him one of
the closed-mouth smiles that always felt like a million
paper cuts to his heart.  He could see too many of them
with his mind's eye; in the hospital after Penny Northern
died, after the 'closure' of the John Lee Roche case.  He
wanted that smile to go away, he wanted her to smile a
*real* smile, a smile that started at her heart and worked its
way out through her lips.  He stared the sad smile away, and
set to work on what his heart desired.

As he pressed his lips against hers for just the second time
ever, he felt the beginnings of what he sought, down deep
in both of them.  Colors he'd only seen in his dreams tossed
and fought around his mind, cascading in and through his
consciousness, sensing her, tasting her, calling to her.  She
answered, kissing him back, causing more of the lights and
colors to flit through his mind.

Of its own accord, the kiss lasted longer than he would have
intended if he'd thought about it before acting upon the
urge.  When he opened his eyes after it was over, hers were
still closed, and her cheeks exhibited the sweet, glowing
red spots he loved but so rarely got to see.  He stroked her
face, and her eyes slowly opened to meet his.

"We'd better get moving, Mulder," she whispered, as she
disentangled herself from his arms.  As she turned in her
seat to open the door and retrieve their guns, he was nearly
felled by an almost painful wave of love for her.  It made
him think of getting an ice cream-headache; unbelievable
pain concentrated into a tiny area.  Discomfort made
worthwhile by the heavenly, creamy taste of the ice cream
melting, leaving behind frozen strawberries to be hastily
chewed and swallowed before the cold got to the sensitive
teeth.

They were both quiet as they got situated in their
respective seats, but he felt it was an agreeable silence,
comfortable, pressureless.  They had always had the ability
to not speak for long periods of time, which some partners,
friends, couples were not even lucky enough to have.  As he
took the guns, cold and wet from their time on the road and
dropped them into a back floorboard, he knew he was a
terribly lucky man.

Before she put the car into drive, she took the classical CD
out of the player and, with a look full of guilt and humor,
handed it to him, to do with as he pleased.  He thought
about tossing it out the window to keep his Dave Matthews
Band company, but only for as long as it took her to get the
car moving.  By then he had realized that they had kissed
their first real kiss to the music on the CD, and he was just
sappy and sentimental enough to want it for that reason.
So, as she watched interestedly, he located the case it had
been in and replaced it there.

She smiled that real smile, finally, and the gray day was
gone, replaced by twilight.  The trees weren't bare
anymore, in fact they seemed lit from within, their tiny, new
leaves glowing in the half-light.  The sound of the water on
the road between the car's tires was forgotten, replaced by
his mind singing the classical pieces from her CD.

They didn't feel the urge to speak again for several miles,
and only then when their hands found each other on the
seat between them, when Mulder felt he had to kid her
about something before he went through withdrawal.  " By
the way, I'm not letting you off the hook about that CD."

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Blatant reminder:  jemirah@hotmail.com
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