A Shared Obsession: Chapter Three

by Satina

Chapter 3

Mulder's hands shook as he shoved the key roughly into Scully's lock.  He tried to breathe down the sick feeling in his gut, afraid that his own nightmarish suspicions would somehow manifest themselves as reality even if nothing had been wrong before.

He had only been somewhat anxious when Scully hadn't shown up for work on time that morning.  Yes she was habitually punctual, but both of them had been known to get called into meetings and such at the last minute, making them late for work or appointments.  He had shrugged it off and gone upstairs to confer with the lab techs over some evidence he had dropped off with them the previous day. He didn't really think about Scully again until he returned to the office two hours later and found it empty.  No Scully, no evidence that she had come and gone.  No coat hung neatly on the hook, no smell of her perfume that always lingered for hours after she left.  He could feel his heart in his throat as he reached for the phone.  Ring… ring… ring… come on Scully. Pick up. Damn.  The machine.  He dialed her cell number and got her voicemail.  That was when his breathing started to become a chore and he snatched his jacket off the back of his chair and hurried to his car.

As he drove, white knuckles gripping the wheel, he started to realize that due to the previous day's discovery, he really should have become alarmed at her absence sooner.  He ground his teeth against the brick of guilt that formed in his gut, pushing it down and mortaring it in solid with the wall of China he was building in his psyche.

They had just come into possession of a mysterious packet of information which he had left in her possession.  They were cryptic medical files that he could make no sense of, which had been left wrapped in his morning newspaper by someone who obviously felt they were worth some extra attention.

This being Scully's field of expertise, she had scooped up the file and spent the better part of a day sifting through its contents.  Mulder had bugged her with questions about its meaning, but she had only pushed those sexy little glasses up her nose and said she couldn't really discern anything conclusive at this point and needed more time to analyze it before drawing any conclusions.  It had made Mulder crazy, but he had tried to give her the space she'd needed, hoping for a debriefing soon.  She had taken it home with her  yesterday evening and Mulder had not heard from her since, except for a short phone call during which he got the same distracted brush off from his obviously fascinated and data-immersed partner.

And now she was not at work.  And not answering her home phone.  And not answering her cell.

"Scully?"  Mulder had knocked at her door and called her name a few times already, but upon entering her foyer, he called out again with a childish wishful optimism that if he acted like she was home that she would be.

Only the tinny sound of a radio greeted him.

Odd.  Scully had a very nice stereo and her tastes ran to classical CD's, not staticky rock and roll.  The hairs on the back of his neck stood up at the wrongness of it all.  He unfastened the snap over his weapon and brushed his suitcoat back behind the holster, making it readily accessible.  Eyes darting around in the bright light of late morning, he made his way through the living room.  As he had suspected, the stereo was not on.

The sound was getting louder and he determined that it was coming from her bedroom.  His heart sped up and he felt his shoulders tense in anticipation of any number of horrible scenes he might encounter.  Visions of a certain hair and nail fetishist made the sweat pop out on his forehead and he crept into the hallway, wary and tense.

His gasp was audible as he encountered her body splayed facedown across the bed, naked except for a towel wrapped loosely around her body.  It was her clock radio that was blaring out the grating oldies tunes.

"Scully!"  He rushed to the bed, instantly putting his fingers to her carotid artery, thrilled to feel the pulse thrumming under his fingertips there.  God, she's not dead.  She's not dead.  Thank God.

"Scully… Scully it's me, Mulder… Scully can you hear me?"

He kneeled on the floor at the side of the bed, his face about a foot away from hers, scanning it for signs of consciousness.  His fingers reached out to touch her pale cheeks as he attempted to rouse her.  He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding when he saw her eyelids flutter and heard her raspy groan.

"Mmmm?"  Scully's eye opened a slit and a frown creased her brow.

Mulder bent closer, bringing himself within a few inches of her face.  "Hey Scully.  Are you all right?  Are you hurt?" His fingers were still resting lightly on her cheek.

Scully licked her dry, cracked lips and blinked slowly.  "Mulder.  What… what are you doing here?"

"I was worried about you."  Mulder assessed the room for signs of a struggle and caught sight of Scully's crushed cellphone by her dresser.  He rose from her side to get a better look at it.  When he turned around holding the broken remains in his hand, he nearly dropped them at the sight that greeted him.

Scully had pulled herself up into a kneeling position on the bed and was rubbing her eyes with the finger and thumb of one hand, the other cradled in her lap.  Right on top of the towel that had slid down to her waist.

Mulder's mouth gaped open as he stared at her perfectly rounded, high, full breasts with their beckoning peachy-pink nipples.  They jiggled just slightly as they were jostled by the motion of her arm rubbing her eyes.  He felt an almost painful jolt of sensation go straight to his cock and felt his whole body twitch.  He stood there, his hand stupidly extending the smashed piece of communicative equipment toward her, his body drawing loud, open-mouthed breaths.  Then he shook his head and spun around to face the dresser.  The mirrored dresser. An intense throb caught his breath and he pivoted again, this time coming to rest facing the doorway of her bedroom and finally free of the sight of those luscious little curves displayed so boldly on the bed behind him.

"Um sorry… Uh… I didn't know…"  Mulder swallowed painfully and listened for the sound of Scully's shocked indignation.  It didn't come.  She must really be out of it.  Worry battled with lust for prominence in his swirling brain and hyper-adrenalized body.

Scully lowered her hand from her pounding head and dragged it down a still partially numb face and over her throat, letting fingers brush over her bare breasts on their way back down to her lap.  She dropped her head forward on her chest, stretching the aching tendons at the back of her neck, and realized she was naked from the waist up.  And Mulder had just seen her.  Without raising her head, she looked up under her lashes at him and saw he had his back to her now, shifting nervously from one foot to the other, fiddling with the remains of her cellular phone.  Her eyebrows rose, which intensified the pain in her eyes and head just marginally, and she reached down for the towel and pulled it back up over her breasts loosely. She stared at the ramrod tense back of her partner for another minute before speaking.  She decided to just pretend that hadn't happened.  God knows they had experience with that, and it wasn't as if he hadn't seen her naked before.  He had never brought up either the kiss in the hall or finding her naked encased in a frozen aliensicle box, and she was sure he would never make mention of this little slip of the towel.  The man so damned predictably repressive.

"Mulder… what time is it?"

Mulder sighed with relief, hearing something of his Scully returning to the maddeningly naked, dazed woman on the bed behind him.

"It's after eleven now, Scully."  Unable to resist, he turned his head just a bit to the side to see if she was decent, and seeing that her towel was in place, turned around to face her.  He had meant to sound like the professional investigator he was, but ended up sounding a bit like Maggie Scully herself.  "What happened here?"  Taking in the way she was babying her arm, as well as her obvious headache, he asked for the third time, more emphatically, "Are you okay?"

Scully looked around the room and considered his question through the haze of her oppressive hangover.  The lines of an oldies song insanely started rasping through her tortured brain.

Woke up this morning, my head was so bad It was the worst hangover that I'd ever had It wasn't the wine I'd had me too much of It was the (beat) double shot of my baby's love

She shut her eyes for a moment, willing the accusing words to fade out.  No damn luck.  "Yeah, Mulder.  I'm fine." Saying nothing more, she watched with trepidation as a look of incredulity and anxiety gathered like a storm in her partner's eyes.  She knew he hated it when she told him she was fine, but that was her way of saying, ' Just leave me alone, Mulder. If I need your help I'll ask for it.'  He waited a moment for an explanation but she could not think of anything else she was ready to say yet.

"Scully… it's after eleven and instead of being at the office, you're passed out naked on your bed next to a smashed cellphone.  And it looks like you may have an injured arm, and it's obvious you're dealing with some kind of head pain."  Mulder tried to keep his voice gentle.  Maybe she didn't yet realize what trauma she had experienced.  He didn't want to shock or frighten her, but this damn fine shit was really not cutting it.  He pursed his lips with impatience as he waited for Scully to fill in the gaps that were putting his mind into overdrive.

Scully swallowed audibly, painfully.  She wasn't ready yet to stand trial under the intense scrutiny of that gaze.  She needed some time to clear her mind and think.

"I have to pee," she said, awkwardly holding up the towel with the one arm that didn't feel as if it had been run over by a government issue vehicle, clutching the other tight against her side.  She unfolded cramped legs and extended them over the side of the bed.

Mulder's frown increased as he witnessed her obvious physical distress, then his eyebrows shot up as the towel split open at the bottom for a moment during Scully's clumsy effort to extricate herself from the bed.  Despite his attempts not to look at that region of her body, Mulder caught the unmistakable sight of dark rust colored hair peeking out from between alabaster thighs.  Whatever questions or concerns he had been about to voice were choked off as his throat closed and he blinked rapidly, his eyes darting everywhere but toward her, trying not to let her see that he had seen.

Oblivious to the peep show she had just provided her partner, Dana Scully slowly made her way to her bathroom, half-heartedly clutching her towel around her aching body, each step sending jolts through shaky thighs and creating streaks of pain between her legs.

Scully's sigh as she leaned against the bathroom door, closing it behind her, was only as loud as that of her partner at finally having her naked, traumatized body out of his sight.

Fuck.  Now what?  Scully leaned against the door and breathed, fighting back a wave of nausea as she tried to decide what to do next.

Throwing up seemed like a good option.  She let the towel drop to the floor as she staggered toward the toilet and fell to her knees, suddenly retching violently and loudly.  One thing about it, she had never been able to throw up quietly.  Not that she gave a shit at this particular time as she loudly heaved up the microwave popcorn she had eaten while poring over the damnable file last night, as well as a few scant ounces of fluid and what felt like her lungs.

Feeling a bit better aside from the new ache in her diaphragm and ribs, she sat back on her heels and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.  Fucking bourbon.  Why the hell hadn't she drank her customary 24 oz. of water afterward?  Oh yeah.  She'd just been… raped?  Not exactly.  Fucked?  Well yeah, but… okay let's just say assaulted… by Krycek and then had spent the rest of the wee hours of the morning sulking about her otherwise sex-free life in a huge tub of dwindling suds.  Replenishing her cells' H2O balance had not exactly been topmost on her mind.

Her doctor's intellect knew that the combination of the 18 oz. Or so of high octane alcoholic beverage, along with an extended period of time in the bath and several hours of sleep had left her body completely dehydrated.  Fortunately she also knew from both training and experience that if she could just restore some of her body's water balance that at least some of the pain which was assailing her from what felt like every goddamn direction would subside.

She saw the glass she had managed, remarkably, to set upright at the side of the tub following her little bender, and she reached out and snagged it with her uninjured hand.  Struggling to her feet, fighting the cramping in her thighs and cursing the twinges of pain in her groin area, she turned on the tap and let it run till the water was nice and cold.  She drained the glass four times before deciding that her tender stomach was distended about as far as she wanted to chance.  Just having the fluid in her body made her feel a bit more alert and the cotton seemed to clear a bit from her mind.  Running her tongue around her mouth she peered into the mirror.

The topknot ponytail she had carefully created before crawling into bed the night before was hanging, just barely still constrained by its band, on the side of her head.  She pulled the elastic from the mass of tangled hair, wincing.  Jesus, even her follicles hurt.  Her skin was a yellowish tinge, which really didn't go well with red hair, and her lips were cracked and swollen.  Yeah, she was looking like a real sex kitten now.

Her mouth tasted like acid and bile, and her teeth felt like they had been sprayed with fake christmas snow.  She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and felt the tender ache of bruising, and winced a bit as her investigations turned up a small laceration on the inside.  She probed the rest of her tender mouth with her tongue and decided it would probably be a really good idea to get re-acquainted with her tube of Crest.

She carefully brushed her teeth and rinsed twice with mouthwash, finding it difficult to expell the flavor of bile and bourbon. She finally could stand the taste in her own mouth after the second harsh stinging mouthful of Scope.  She also felt sweaty, grimy and dirty, but knew that she had spent more than an hour in the tub and was in fact very clean, except for maybe her hair.  Assessing it under the light of her bathroom mirror, she decided it was a bit wild but passable and that it was not worth the pain and trouble of dealing with her injured arm to try to wash it.  She ran a brush through it and sprayed the craziest strands into place in a semblance of control around her face.  She was beginning to feel more like herself already.

Dana wasn't sure how she felt about that, really.  She wanted to get rid of the pain and nausea, of course, but there was a certain feeling of recklessness and abondon lingering from the night before that she wasn't quite ready to let go of yet.  It was stupid, but waking up with a hangover and a body sore from violent sex made her just a bit nostalgic for the good old days.  Maybe it was the remains of the bourbon still drifting through her body, but she was feeling uncommonly loose and unconcerned with her usual straight-laced, buttoned down propriety and rigid self-control.

She washed her face and smoothed moisturizer over her parched pores, feeling even more life infuse her skin as it sucked up the sweet-smelling, ridiculously overpriced face cream.  She smoothed foundation over the yellow and marveled at how much better she looked with a little help from Elizabeth Arden. Finishing up with eye makeup and a careful but thorough application of deep crimson lipstick, she regarded her newly renovated reflection.

Not bad, really.  Kinda sexy.  Her eyes seemed lazier than usual… more open and dark and with a bit of a glint she found herself rather happy about.  And there was really no way to hide it.  Her swollen lips and slightly poufy hair made her look like exactly what she felt like.  A woman who had been properly laid.

Properly?  Having a double-crossing, murderous triple-agent throw you up against the wall without your consent and fuck you was proper?  Scully frowned and swallowed back a bit of returning bile, not feeling totally comfortable with what had happened, but not feeling like "rape" came close to describing what had gone down with any real honesty.

Okay, time for the truth.  Peering intensely at her reflection, she contemplated the absurdity of her perfectly made-up face perched above her bruised and aching nude body.  She tilted her head to the side and considered the facts.

It was true that Krycek had forced himself on her against her will.  It was true that he had been serious enough about restraining her prior to his sexual attack that he had quite definitely sprained and possibly even broken one of her arms.  Well, actually, it was her attempts at escape that had actually resulted in the injury.  He had not pulled her arms up so high that they had been injured. She had aggravated things considerably in her attempts to get free of his grip. Okay, so it was true that she had done her best to get away prior to his assault on her, even at risk of, and resulting in, injury to her body.

So far so good.  Scully could still feel like the innocent victim from the time Krycek grabbed her and smashed her phone, to the point where he pinned her up against the wall.

That was, of course, where things got a little ambiguous.  You see, it was also true that Scully had had ample opportunity to do Krycek some pretty serious physical harm, with both her teeth and her nails, as he had commenced driving her insane with lust.  However, instead of drawing blood with fang and claw, she had nibbled and sucked and scratched up his deliciously firm, heaving sides with a wanton but relatively pain-free intent.  She had to admit to herself that had she truly fought him, she could have ended his sexual conquest of her body and he probably would have just taken the file and left.

It was time to admit it, at least to herself if never to anyone else.  Once he had gotten his hands into the waistband of her pajama bottoms, she had wanted nothing more than to feel him driving into her, making her forget all about Scully for the first time in a long time, and causing daring Dana to scream out with pleasure and abandon.

In fact, since she was laying it all on the line here, she may as well admit also that she had been pissed about the whole thing only when he had left her still trembling body against the wall to get the file and leave.  Of course, she did remember that smoky voice telling her that it was incredible.  That she was incredible.  She flushed a little at the memory.  But when he had turned his attention from her body to her bedside table to get that damn file, she had instantly felt overcome with shame and shock and indignance, and it had quickly coalesced into a cold fury.  She had snapped at him to leave, instead of curling up with him on the couch in front of a video and ordering pizza, which was her usual favorite activity following good, hot sex.

She chuffed out a single chuckle inspite of herself.  Yeah, sure.  Alex fucking Krycek snuggled up with Dana Katherine Scully… scratch that… AGENT Dana Scully… on her couch, munching Hawaiian pizza and basking in the flickering images of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover at 2AM in the morning on a warm spring night in Georgetown.

On the fucking twelfth of never that would happen, yeah.  She stuck out her tongue.  Pulling back from the mirror and seeing her naked reflection once again, she remembered that she had brought no clothes with her into the bathroom.

She started at the tentative knock on the bathroom door.

"Uh… Scully?  Is everything okay in there?"  Mulder's voice was near by, concerned and hesitant.  She imagined him leaning in close against the door and felt a wash of heat at the thought that her naked body was only a few feet away from him.  Nobody in here 'cept us sexually frustrated FBI Ice Queens, Foxy.

"I'm fine, Mulder," she said through the door, turning to face it.  She thought about wrapping herself back up in the towel and exiting the bathroom to get dressed, then decided on another course of action instead.  "I do need you to get something for me, though."

Mulder was immensely relieved to hear Scully's voice almost completely back to normal, and he tried very hard to stop picturing her naked on the other side of the door.  "What do you need?"  He knew what he needed, but that wasn't really the issue here, was it?  He shifted from foot to foot, his erection tenting out the front of his pants annoyingly.  Sometimes it sucked being a guy.  It really did.

"Could you grab me some clothes, Mulder?  Jeans and a T-shirt is fine.  You know where they are, right?"

"Uh yeah, I think so."  Mulder swallowed hard, realizing that the door he was leaning into was soon going to open so that he could hand clothing to a nude Scully.  He made his way over to her dresser and started to open the top drawer, then pulled his hand back as though it were a burning stovetop.

"Scully… should I be careful not to disturb anything?  I mean… do we need to dust for prints or anything?"  She still hadn't filled him in on what had gone on in her room and he didn't want to mess up any evidence.

"No, Mulder.  We don't need prints.  I know who it was.  Just get me the clothes and I'll tell you what happened."

Mulder frowned, completely frustrated and overwhelmed with curiosity and concern as well as a healthy (or not, depending on how you looked at it) helping of rampant lust.  He reached tense fingers toward the handle on her top drawer.  He stopped and called out a second question, feeling himself blush for the third time that day.

"Uh… Scully?"

"What is it Mulder?"

Damn.  He really didn't want to ask this question, but he really didn't want to just nonchalantly hand Scully a pair of her panties through the door either.  The alternative was giving her jeans and no underwear, and even if she could handle that, he knew he would not be able to concentrate for at least a week if he saw her come out of the bathroom knowing she had no underwear on under her jeans.  He swallowed hard.

"Do you have… uh… underclothes in there?"

Silence.  He could almost hear Scully's eyebrow go up behind the door.

"No, Mulder, I do not.  I don't need a bra, but my panties are in the top right hand drawer of the dresser.  Thanks."

Scully was enjoying the small thrill it gave her to say the word "panties" in front of Mulder and for him to know that she was not going to be wearing a bra.  This was even more fun that parading around in front of him in nothing but a towel.  She couldn't wait till she had the pleasure of removing her little silky undies from his outstretched fingers through a modest crack in the door.  Maybe Mulder wasn't naturally attracted to her, but she was feeling dangerously reckless today and decided to stack the deck just a bit.  She'd had a startling glimpse of the old Dana and she was feeling none-too-ready to shove her back down in the dark closet in favor of being so-proper Scully instead.  She kinda liked the spunky little gal, if you will pardon the tasteless pun.

Mulder's fingers were twitching just a bit as he reached into a small sea of shiny pastels and used a delicate pincer-grip to bring out a pair of little pink panties.  He imagined pressing them to his generously-sized olfactory organ in bliss, but in an exercise of incredible self-control instead folded them into a pair of jeans, and pulled a blue T- shirt out of the dresser a few drawers down.  Folding everything tightly so that the underwear was completely obscured, he made his way back to the bathroom door and knocked.

He chewed his bottom lip as he watched the door open a crack and Scully's slender little arm reached out.  He placed the small pile of clothes on her hand and stepped back, watching them withdraw into the bathroom.  He sighed another huge sigh of relief, having gotten through the perils of Scully-panties with little more than a now-painful erection and sweaty palms to show for it. He tried to think about earless brain-sucking fast-food employees and readjusted himself subtly with his hands.

A few minutes later, Scully emerged from the bathroom, still walking carefully and cradling one arm, but, Mulder noticed, looking a sight more colorful and together.

He did not fail to notice the swaying of her braless breasts under her snug little blue T-shirt, and he was oddly disturbed by her messy hair, though he couldn't quite say why.  He groaned inwardly, silently, cursing himself for being a weak and hormonal male shithead.  How could he possibly be distracted by his lust like this when Scully had obviously suffered some sort of an attack on her person the previous night?  He tried hard to concentrate on his anxiety and nervous stomach instead of the persisting stiffy that he was trying desperately to hide just a few inches lower.  Thank GOD for loose suit pants.  They really do hide a multitude of sins if you know just how to arrange your hips.

Scully looked her partner over quickly from head to toe and did not miss the evidence of her little tease game's effects on his body.  She restrained the smug smile that threatened to play across her features and tried to keep her mind on the fact that she was going to have to tell Mulder what happened here, at least to a certain extent.  First thing she knew she had to do was get him out of her bedroom.  She was having a very hard time sitting on daring Dana in here and she needed the cool rationality of Agent Scully.

She made her way past him wordlessly, heading for the living room.  She heard him follow behind her and could practically feel his eyes on her back (or was that her ass?), the curiosity and questions thick in the air.

Settling herself gingerly into the corner of her sofa, she watched him perch his tense, lanky (and still quite obviously aroused) body on the edge of one of her chairs.  She took a deep breath and spoke.

"The file's gone, Mulder.  He took it."

The look in Mulder's eyes changed from curiosity to anger and the concern in his expression ratcheted up a notch.  "Who?  Scully, who took it?  What do you remember?"

Scully licked her battered bottom lip.  She did not want Mulder to go off and strangle Krycek, but she knew enough about herself to know that, even if she really needed to, she totally sucked at lying and would be found out immediately, especially by a man as insightful as her partner, if she tried to fabricate a story involving some strange intruder.  Maybe if she told some of the story, her own knowledge that it was partly true would help her not to belie her falsehoods.  She inhaled, and his name was the exhalation.

"Krycek."

Mulder jumped up out of his chair.  "That ratfuck bastard! Scully… he did this to you?  I'll fucking kill him!"  Mulder was advancing on her now, as if he wanted to take out part of his rage at Krycek on her, and she found herself shrinking back against the back of the couch, preparing her pretty lie.

"Mulder, please… I'm fine.  He surprised me after a bath and we struggled, and I think he drugged me and took the file."  She stared down at her twisting hands, willing him to believe with all of her heart.

"Drugged you?  With what?  Did he hurt you?"  Scully knew she never wanted to be the target of the focused rage that was brewing in those intense hazel eyes.

"We… we struggled briefly and I hurt my arm.  He grabbed me, I felt a prick, then there was just darkness."  Oh great choice of words, there, Dana.  Her eyes burned with the effort of holding back insane laughter at her inadvertent Freudian slip.  She watched the muscles in Mulder's jaw clench and unclench as he considered this bit of news.

"We need to get you checked out, Scully.  I'll take you over to D.C. General."  His voice was deep with just-restrained intensity.  "If you don't mind, I'll call your mother to give you a ride home."

Scully didn't have to ask where Mulder was going.  She just nodded mutely.  "I'll call her."  Great.  Now Mulder was going to go out and get himself maimed or killed chasing down her assailant.  "Mulder…just remember… he could have killed me, but he didn't.  Don't do anything stupid."

"I'll be fine."  Mulder had gone into caveman mode, it was obvious to Scully, and anything she said to him now would be met with only grunts and one-syllable patronization.  She quietly rose from the couch, trying not to favor her sore arm in any obvious way, and gathered up her coat and purse.

Mulder said nothing as he fell into step behind her, leading her out to his car and helping her get seated.  He nearly choked, narrowing his eyes with a barely suppressed rage when he caught site of the obvious bite-marks on the side of her neck.  Fucking ratbastard prick.  Scully probably didn't even realize yet that Krycek had taken advantage of her after he drugged her.  He imagined Kyrcek's windpipe collapsing under his thumbs and felt the heat of his own breath burning its way out of his nostrils.  He didn't want to be the one to bring the sexual assault to her attention.  She would find out soon enough, during the exam at the hospital.  And anyway, Mulder was in no condition to be soft and soothing as he helped her deal with her trauma.  He had his own job to do.  The nails cut the flesh of his palms as his hands tightened into fists.  Rounding the car, he struggled to remain in control long enough to get Scully to hospital so that he throw away his FBI career and murder Krycek.

End Chapter Three
Continued in Chapter Four.

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