Part 1 of 2

It had been a long, boring day for Special Agent Fox
Mulder. Instead of working on an X-File, preferably
half a continent away, he and his partner had been
stuck at F.B.I. headquarters all day. They had done
paperwork, explained their latest case to Skinner and
attended an extremely dull departmental meeting.

Now, finally, it was 5 p.m. Time to blow this joint.
He looked up with a smile. Time to change his mode of
thinking from "Scully, my partner" to "Dana, my wife".

"You ready to leave?" he asked.

"Yeah. Where we headed?"

"Out to the track, if that's okay. We really need to
run. It'll get the cobwebs out of our heads."

"Okay. I've got a sweatsuit in my locker out there."

The agents jogged for almost an hour, matching their
paces easily to each other. They didn't talk much;
they didn't need to. Finally, Scully said, "One more
lap and then we head home?"

"Sounds good, but I'm really going to go all out this
time," Mulder said. "Wanna race me?"

"No thanks. I'd just end up eating your dust. You make like Carl Lewis and I'll just jog my last lap," she said. Scully watched as Mulder took off, running full bore down the stretch. She also noticed the admiring glances of the other two female agents at the track. He's mine, she thought with a frisson of
possessiveness. She'd noticed before that the other
women in the bureau seemed to almost pity her for
being paired with "Spooky" Mulder when he was wearing
a suit and tie, but that their attitude always
underwent a radical adjustment the first time they
caught sight of him in something more casual. The
loose sweat pants he was wearing didn't highlight his, um, assets, as well as jeans or shorts would have, but the sweat-soaked T-shirt that was clinging to him like a second skin was certainly revealing.

Just as Scully was making her way around the last
stretch of track, to where she could see a slighlty
winded Mulder waiting for her, another agent came up
beside her. Jackson? Johnson? Something like that.
"Hey, Scully?" he said.

"Yeah?"

"You want to ditch your spooky partner and come have
dinner with me when you finish your workout?"

"No!" she answered vehemently. It wasn't widely known
that she and Mulder were married, she reminded
herself, and Skinner had insisted upon discretion as a condition of their continuted professional
partnership, so she'd better tone down her refusal a
little. "I mean, uh, no thanks. Mulder and I are going to grab a bite to eat and then we have, er, work to do."

"Suit yourself," the agent said with a shrug.

As Scully jogged up to her husband, Mulder asked,
"What did he want?"

"Me to have dinner with him."

"Can I kill him?"

"Funny, Mulder. Like you didn't get propositioned by
those two female agents who were over here talking to
you a few minutes ago?"

"Well, not by both of them."

"Let's go home."

He nodded and they walked to the car. As he backed out of the parking lot, Mulder asked, "Doctor, may I swing by and pick us up some fast food for dinner? Or do I get the nutrition lecture?"

"Could we compromise on SubWay? That's fast, but still reasonably nutritious."

He agreed and they arrived home with their supper in a bag.

"So what's up for the rest of the evening?"

"There's a documentary on the Discovery Channel I want to watch after we eat. It's about the pyramids of the ancient Aztecs."

"Okay. And after that?"

"Oh, I'm sure we'll think of something."

The documentary was less than half over, but Mulder
was beginning to think he'd better find a blank tape
to stick in the VCR. Because if Scully shifted her
hips agains him one more time, he wasn't going to be
able to pay attention to the program. Oh hell, who was he kidding? If she didn't quit rubbing her luscious little ass against his groin, E.T. himself could wander in and ask to use the phone and Mulder would tell him to get lost!

He supposed it was his own fault. He'd been the one to take off his shirt, after all. And lie down on the
couch and pull her down beside him. AND scrunch up her shirt so that he could feel her bare back against his equally bare chest because, damn it, he liked as much skin-to-skin contact between them as possible.

However, he had then naively assumed that Scully would lay still and watch the program. But she kept shifing around. At first, maybe, it had been an honest attempt to find a comfortable position. However, once it became, uh, OBVIOUS what kind of reaction he was having to her little lap dance, she started doing it on purpose.

Mulder ran his hand up her stomach to her chest and
made an interesting discovery.

"What happened to your bra, Dana?" he murmured into
her ear.

"Mmm! Same thing that happened to your shirt, I guess, Fox. Oh!" she gasped as his hand found her breast, lightly tweaking the nipple. Mulder smiled against her ear at both the vocal and physical reaction his touch produced. He loved her breasts. True, they weren't large, but they were amazingly sensitive. She always responded instantly to the lightest of caresses or the merest flicker of his tongue.

Positioning his other arm more securely under her, he
let his fingers wander back down her stomach to the
top of her leggings. He tickled her gently, which made her squirm against him even more, which made him even harder. By now, the pyramids on TV could have been blasting off directly into space and he wouldn't have noticed.

Finally, when Scully had begun to whimper with need -
always a good sign, as faras he was concerned - he
used the remote to switch off the TV. He then slid his fingers further inside her leggings, past the
waistband of her panties.

Tangling his fingers in the auburn curls at the
juncture of her thighs, he whispered, "You're wet,
sweetheart."

"Yeah, and you're hard," she replied. "You wanna do
something about it?"

He slowly slid one long finger inside her, making her
voice change from a whimper to a full-blown moan. She
danced against him some more, now hooking her leg over the top of his to allow him better access.

"I want you to come for me like this," he whispered in her ear, pulling her closer with the arm around her shoulder and letting a second finger join the first in exploring her core.

"Um, I'm glad that's what you want, because, oh!"
Scully gave up on coherenece and moaned as he slipped
a third finger inside her.

"Fox, I want. . ."

"What, baby?"

"To be able to see your face. For you to kiss me. If
I'm going to - ooh! - I want you to watch."

"Okay." He shifted carefully on the couch, making sure his fingers didn't stop pressig against her core and her bottom didn't stop rubbing against his arousal, but turning their upper bodies slightly so he could lean in over her shoulder and capture her mouth with his in a slow, deep, wet kiss.

Finally lifting his head a fraction of an inch so
their mouths pulled slightly apart from each other, he smiled down into her bright blue eyes. "Sweetheart, I love how it feels when you wiggle that cute little ass of yours against me!"

"Lover, you're the one making me wiggle! Fox, I'm
about to. . ." she stopped talking then and moaned,
pumping herself had against his hand, which caused her bottom to press even hard against his straining
arousal. Smiling into his eyes, she moaned against his mouth. Then, unexpectedly, she bit down on his lower lip.

Scully gave a final sigh and shuddered slightly. Then
she focused her attention on his face and sucked in
her breath sharply. "Fox, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to
bite you so hard! Oh, lover, you're bleeding!" she let her tongue dart out to lick away the drops of blood that were dripping from his mouth.

"It's okay," he murmured gently. "Kind of sexy,
actually, that I made you lose control to the point
where you'd do something like that."

"Is this making it feel better?" she whispered.

"Mmmhmm."

"Are you in pain?"

"Not there. But something a little lower down is
starting to get damned uncomfortable!"

"Now that's funny! To me it feels good."

He growled and flipped her so they were lying
face-to-face, his body pressing hers down onto the
couch. Moving slightly away from her, he yanked off
her leggings and panties, then quickly divested
himself of his sweat pants and brief boxers. Moving
back in, he lowered himself between her parted thighs
and pushed gently inside her.

Scully smiled up at her husband and gripped his upper
arms with her small, strong hands.

Mulder smiled back. "You are so gorgeous! I love you
so much!"

"I love you, too."

Mulder began to move in her with long, smooth strokes. He was already so aroused from their foreplay and her orgasm - not to mention having spent all day flirting with her at the office - that he knew he wouldn't last long. Supporting his weight with his knees and one hand grasping the back of the couch, he reached his other hand underneath her body to grab her ass and push himself more deeply into her. The feel of her bottom against his hand - bare now, instead of insulated by several layers of clothing as it had been a few minutes earlier - combined with the more intense feeling of his arousal embedded deep inside her, resulted in a powerful climax.
 
When Mulder finally came back down to earth, he
realized Scully was kissing him all over his face and
cooing. "I didn't mean to bite you," she murmured.

"Mmm. I don't mind if you bite me, as long as you kiss it to make it feel better afterwards."

"I've got an idea," she said softly, looking almost
shy as she glanced up at him from beneath her lashes.

"Ooh! An idea from the highly intelligent,
ever-rational Dr. Scully is always worth hearing."

"Um, it's not that kind of idea."

"Even better. An idea from the highly sexy,
always-loving Dana is twice as much worth hearing.

She smiled up at him. She loved his teasing so much.
Before meeting him, she'd almost given up hope of
findign a man who really wanted all of her. Mind and
heart. Body and soul. "Well, I was thinking, since
we're all sweaty from jogging and. . .other
activities. . ."

"Yeah?"

"Let's go take a bubble bath."

"Both of us together?"

"Mmmhmm."

"You go get the bath started. I'll just grab our
clothes and toss them in the hamper."


In another part of town, Holly Patterson tucked her
purse under her arm and started walking toward the
door of F.B.I. headquarters. She'd had a long day,
working well past her usual quitting time, but
Assistant Director Skinner had requested she finish up with the files she was working on tonight, so she'd be available to help Mulder and Scully first thing tomorrow morning. Apparently a new X-File had just come across the AD's desk and he felt the agents would need her research to make sense of it.

"Hold on, Holly!" Walter Skinner's deep voice said.
"It's late. I'll walk you to your car."

"Thank you, sir," Holly said. Ever since being mugged
a couple of years ago, she'd been a bit skittish about walking alone after dark. It was was too bad, she thought as they crossed the parking lot, that with all the young, good-looking agents around the bureau, she had to be walked to her car by a guy old enough to be her father! She supposed Skinner was actually good-looking, in a middle-aged kind of way; she knew several of the researchers and secretaries over the age of 35 often engaged in debates about his on-again, off-again marriage and slipped into the hallway to take a better look if he was walking down the corridor without a jacket covering his broad shoulders. She also admitted to herself that the only young agents who had ever seemed interested in her were ones she wouldn't go out with if they were the last men on earth. Years ago, Krycek had actually come onto her! More recently, that toad Spender had spent several weeks trying to get her to have dinner with him. She siged. Dana was lucky to have Mulder.

A sound suddenly put Skinner's sense on full alert. It had been almost a decade since he'd been a field
agent, but he still recognized a gun being cocked when he heard it. Diving toward Holly, he knocked the
startled young woman to the ground just as a bullet
whizzed over their heads.

Holly screamed and Skinner quickly covered her mouth
with his hand. "Shh! Stay still and be quiet."
Grabbing his service revolver from his holster, he
hollered out, "I'm a federal agent! Come out with your hands up." There was no answer, neither in a verbal form nor - thankfully - with more bullets.

After a few minutes, Skinner courched back down beside Holly. "Are you okay?"

"Yes sir. I think so."

"Where's your car?"

"It's the next one over. We're almost to it."

"Okay. Give me your keys. I don't know what's going on here, but until I can figure it out, we need to get you someplace where you'll be safe. Come on."


Mulder and Scully were seated at opposite ends of the
old clawfoot tub in their bathroom. Mulder's legs were too long for him to stretch out completely, but
Scully's tiny body was submerged in the bubbles. She'd caught her hair up in a careless ponytail that made her resemble Pebbles Flintstone and her dimuntive feet were resting on her husband's broad shoulders.

Mulder ran a soapy hand down her leg from mid-thigh to her toes. He was beginning to get hard again and
wondered if she'd object to an encore once they got
out of the tub. Or maybe while they were still in it!

Scully gave him a dreamy smile. Maybe he'd wait 'til
morning; she looked sleepy.

Suddenly, their relaxing afterglow was interupted by a loud banging on the door.

"Who could that be?" Mulder asked his wife, who was
now wide awake.

"I've got no idea. Before we were married, it was
almost always you."

"Think it's your Mom?"

"She usually calls first."

"Could just be a Girl Scoul selling cookies or
something."

"After nine o'clock at night?"

"I'll go check. You stay here," Mulder said, climbing
out of the bathtub. Scully took a good look. She
supposed he ought to have looked faintly funny,
dripping bubbles like that, but the sight of his long, lean, tanned legs, topped by that gorgeous rear of his, was anything but humorous.

Mulder towled off quickly and pulled on his sweat
pants as he walked back through their bedroom. He also grabbed his gun and held it alongside his thigh.
Scully waited until he was ought of sight, then hopped out of the tub herself. She didn't know if he'd told her to wait because he thought it might be dangerous, or because he was hoping the interuption would be brief enough for him to rejoin her while the water was still warm. But if there was trouble, he'd need backup. And the way their luck ran, the water would be icy before he had a chance to return. She quickly pulled on fresh panties and a clean T-shirt, then grabbed her jeans.

Mulder checked the peephole and sighed. Skinner. At
least this wouldn't be quite as embarrasing as the
last time he showed up late at night. He swung open
the door and said, through clenched teeth, "With all
due respect, sir, your timing bites!"

Skinner allowed himself a small smile at that. Back
during the early 80s, when he was a newly-married
thirtysomething field agent himself, he'd had his
share of romantic evening quashed by a boss or
colleague. It wasn't fun, but it was part and parcel
of being an F.B.I. agent.

"Who is it?" Scully asked, coming up behind her
husband, her own weapon in hand.

"It's Skinner," Mulder answered, then caught sight of
the small form behind their broad-shouldered boss,
"and Holly."

"Well, for Heaven's sake, let them in!"

Mulder stood back from the door and gestured for the
two out in the hall to enter. He wished he'd taken the time to put on a shirt as well as his pants.

"Sir?" Scully asked. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm not quite sure," Skinner replied, as Mulder
closed the door behind them. "Holly was working late,
finishing up some files for me, and I offered to walk
her to her car afterwards. Somebody shot at us in the
parking lot."

Scully, realizing that Holly might well be on the
verge of going into shock from such an event, snapped
quickly into her doctor mode. "Fox, go put on a pot of coffee. Holly, sit down here on the couch. Goodness, your hands are like ice. I'm going to get you a blanket."

Returning from their bedroom, she tucked the blanket
around the younger woman, who sat dazed on the couch.

"Agent Scully," Skinner began.

"Let it wait just a minute, please. We need to make
sure Holly's okay first."

Mulder slipped back into the bedroom to put on a shirt while Scully put the coffee stuff on a tray and
carried it into the living room. She handed Holly a
cup with three heaping teaspoons of sugar in it.
"Here. Drink this. It'll help," Scully said.

"Why don't you have a cup yourself?" she added, with a nod to the assistant director.

Once all four of them had a cup, Scully turned her
attention back to Holly. "Holly, are you all right?
You haven't said a word since you got here."

"I think I'll be okay. Who lives here?'

"We do," replied Mulder.

"Oh. I didn't realize you two, um, lived together,"
Holly said. She threw a puzzled glance at Skinner.
That Scully and Mulder had an intimate relationship
hardly shocked her. What surprised her was that the
assistant director apparently knew about it and hadn't busted them for such a blatant breach of bureau protocol.

Mulder smiled gently at Holly. "It's legit," he said,
holding up his and Scully's left hand, so their
wedding rings glinted in the soft lamp light.

"You're married?" Holly gasped. "I always thought that 'Spooky and Mrs. Spooky' stuff was just a joke!"

Scully laughed softly. "It is. I was tagged 'Mrs.
Spooky' practically the first week we worked together. We've only actually been married a few months. We don't wear our rings to work because, technically speaking, married couples aren't supposed to work in the same division. Because of the, er, unique nature of the cases we investigate, A.D. Skinner granted us an exemption to that policy. If we're asked, directly, about our relationship, we don't lie; but we haven't exactly submitted an announcement to the bureau newsletter, either."

Skinner broke in. "I brought you here, Holly, because
I know you feel comfortable with Agent Scully and
Agent Mulder. All three of us would appreciate your
discretion as far as the exact nature of their
personal relationship is concerned."

"Oh, I won't tell anybody," Holly agreed. "I mean, I
think it's nice that you're letting them still work
together. I wouldn't want to cause any problems for
them. Or you, sir."

"So, do you have any theories as to who was shooting
at you or why, sir?" Mulder asked, turning his
attention to Skinner.

"I don't think I was the target, agents."

"You think they were shooting at Holly?" Scully asked.

"That was my impression, yes," Skinner answered.

"But why would somebody shoot at me?" Holly asked.
"I'm just a researcher!"

"It's possible you found something in the course of
your research that could effect the outcome of an
investigation," Mulder said. "Have you come across
anyting unusualy lately?"

"Not really. . .wait! There was something unusual.
Where's my purse?"

Skinner handed it to Holly, who rummaged around
inside. "Here," she said, pulling out a computer disk. "This was in my inter-office mailbox this morning. I was going to plug it in before I left work, see what it was all about, but I never got around to it."

"Let me have that," Mulder said. "We'll see if we can
run it here." He crossed to the home computer in the
corner of the living room and inserted the disk.
Skinner, Scully and Holly moved across the carpet to
come stand behind him.

"No luck," Mulder said. "It seems to be encrypted."

"We can worry about the disk later," Skinner said. "It may just be a coincidence. What I want to do now is for you to come back to bureau headquarters with me, Agent Mulder. We need to look for physical clues
before they're obliterated."

"What about me?" Scully asked.

"Stay here with Holly. If I'm correct and she was the
intended target of tonight's attack, she needs
protection. I don't think we were followed - I'm still pretty good at evasive driving - but someone might make the connection and figure out that this is the logical place for me to have taken her."

"I've got an idea," Mulder said.

"What?"

"Well, I think you and Holly should stay here tonight. But if I'm not back by morning, and you haven't heard from either Skinner or me, take her and the disk of to the Lone Gunmen's office. See if they can run the disk for you. Whether they can or not, leave her with them. We know she'll be safe there," Mulder said.

"WHERE are you planning on taking me?" Holly asked,
sounding faintly alarmed.

Scully smiled softly. "They're friends of ours.
They're a little bit flakey, but Mulder's right. We
can trust them."

"Agent Mulder, could we get going?" Skinner asked
testily.

As the two men stood at the door, about to open it and walk out, Scully remembered something. "Mulder, your ring! If you two end up going to over to the lab or conferring with other agents. . ."

"Oh. Yeah." He really hated this. Reluctantly tugging
the ring off his finger, he placed it in his wife's
outstretched hand. Then he took advantage of her
proximity to enfold her fingers with his and drop a
quick, hard kiss on her mouth. "You two be careful.
Bye."

"You two be careful, too. Bye."

Skinner rolled his eyes. Holly smiled, both at the
display of affection between the two agents and their
boss's reaction to it.

"Would you like to get some rest, Holly?" Scully
asked. "The couch is pretty comfortable and you're
welcome to borrow one of my nightgowns."

"I'd really rather stay up and talk awhile, if that's
okay with you," Holly replied. "Getting shot at may be an everyday occurrance for you and Mulder, but it's sort of out of the ordinary for me and I don't think I could sleep if I went to bed right now."

"Sure. That would be nice. I don't get much in the way of girl talk."

"I guess not, considering the sort of work you do. I
suppose especially now, with you and Mulder kind of
trying to keep your marriage quiet, it must be
difficult to make friends."

"To be honest," Scully said slowly, "I've never really had just a whole lot of girlfriends. I was a Navy brat, so the family moved around a lot. My sister was only a year older than I; we were always best friends. Ever since she died a couple of years ago. . .I mean, I've got Mulder, of course. He's been my best friend for a lot longer than he's been my husband. My mother and I are very close, too. But as far as women near my own age. . ." her voice trailed off almost wistfully.

"So when did you two get married if you don't me
asking?"

Scully smiled. "I don't mind. It'll be kind of fun to
talk about it, actually. We got marred when we were
out in Las Vegas on a case. About six months ago."

"That time you captured Krycek and solved the double
kidnapping and all that?"

"Yep. We managed to do all that and get married, too."

"How long before your marriage were you two, um,
involved? I could never quite tell if you were or
weren't."

"If you mean when did we start having sex together,
the answer to that, believe it or not is: on our
wedding night."

"Wow! Really? I mean, nowadays that's sort of
unusual."

"Yeah, well, it was like we just held out and held
out, denying our attraction to each other and when we
finally admitted it. . . well, if we hadn't been in
Las Vegas, maybe it wouldn't have worked out that way, but there we were, with wedding chapels on every other corner and. . .well, it was like there was no reason NOT to get married first. We already knew each other so well, we'd been partners everyway except sexually - professionally, mentally, emotionally - for so long, we knew it was going to be forever."

"That's so romantic! I've always envied your
relationship. I don't mean I'd want Mulder for
myself," Holly added quickly, lest Scully get the
wrong idea. "He seems kind of, um, high maintenance.
But just somebody who'd feel about me the way he's
always so obviously felt about you."

"Has it always been so obvious? He used to confuse the hell out of me sometimes, before we were married. I mean, one week if was like I was absolutely the most important person in his life. Whenever I was hurt or sick, he was always right there. But then I'd get better and he'd back away, start flirting with any attractive woman we came across on one of our cases, things like that."

"Have you ever asked him why? I mean, now that you're
married?"

"Yeah. He says he was trying to be noble. Didn't want
us getting involved on a sexual level because he was
afraid it would mean I'd be hurt. Also, he said he was never quite sure of MY feelings and didn't want to risk ruining our partnership by making a move that
might not be reciprocated. He said he used to do the
flirting thing with other women - and he swears it
never went further than that - just because it gave
him hope that I cared for him in more than a platonic
way."

"That's sweet. I'm glad you two are together. You
deserve each other."

"A lot of people seem to think that," Scully said with an ironic smile on her face.

"Well, I didn't mean it in a bad way," Holly assured
her, then yawned. "I guess I am kind of tired. Where's that nightgown you mentioned?"
 

Scully awoke early the next morning. She hadn't slept
well; she never did, anymore, when Mulder wasn't by
her side. She showered, dressed and went into make
coffee. The aroma of the brew woke Holly and the two
women shared a companionable breakfast.

"I haven't heard from Mulder. so I'm going to try to
call him on his cell phone." A moment later, Scully
added, "No luck. Either he's out of range or it's been turned off for some reason."

"Hold on," Holly said. "I've got Skinner's number in
my purse. It helps during those times when he's out of the office and people are breathing down my neck
demanding I put them in contact with him."

But the older man's cell phone proved unreachable as
well.

"So, what do we do now?" Holly asked.

"I take you over to meet the three most paranoid
individuals you're ever going to encounter," Scully
said with a smile.


A bit later, Scully knocked on the door to the Lone
Gumen's office/home complex. "Who is it?" came a
muffled response.

"It's me, guys," Scully answered, "and I've brought
company."

Frohike opened the door and muttered "Wow!" when he
caught sight of Holly. Byers and Langley crowded
behind him, eager to be in on whatever was going on.

"Guys, this is Holly Patterson. She's a researcher who works down at headquarters; helps Mulder and me on our cases sometimes. We have reason to believe she may be in danger. She received a disk in her interoffice mailbox yesterday that may be a key to what's going on. Holly, this is Frohike," Scully indicated the dimunitive man who had opened the door; "this is Byers," she placed her hand briefly on the shoulder of a dapper, bearded man; "and this is Langley," she gestured in the direction of a long-haired man wearing a T-shirt.

"Hello," said Holly shyly, looking a bit dazed.

Langley smiled at her and reached out a hand. "Let's
see the disk, Holly. Sooner we can find out what's on
it, sooner you can come out of hiding."

"Not that we mind having you here," Frohike added
quickly, then murmured in an aside to Scully, "she is
so hot!"