*****

Chicago

"Window or aisle?"

"Window or aisle, please?" Voice slightly raised, forced politeness barely concealing the underlying irritation.

"Scully? You want the window or the aisle?" Mulder flashed his most winning smile at the obviously annoyed counter person, and glanced over his shoulder at the thousand or so equally impatient individuals waiting to board the last flight out of O'Hare before an impending storm.

Dana Scully's eyes were fixed on a figure moving swiftly through the crowded terminal towards the waiting taxi lane. The tall lithe figure was familiar, or so Scully thought.

*It's just your imagination. There's no reason in the world that she should be here* Scully continued to stare, straining to watch the blond head moving quickly among the scurrying travelers. *Your instincts have never let you down. Trust them now*

Scully shook her head, trying to ignore the almost overpowering urge to break into a run.

"Scully?" Mulder queried again, studying her with mounting concern.

Scully shrugged in way of an answer as she simultaneously picked up her ticket from the American Airlines countertop. "I'm going to hold on to this, and take another flight tomorrow."

The airline agent stared at her in open-mouthed astonishment, and Mulder agreed aloud. "Are you crazy? Tomorrow is Christmas eve. This place is going to be a mad house, and with the storm coming, there's no guarantee that you'll get out of here for days."

Dana regarded him coolly, with a determined expression that said she was not to be swayed. "I've decided to do a little last-minute shopping. The case is wrapped up and there isn't even that much paperwork. Besides, you owe me a report or two. I don't have anything scheduled until after the holidays. If I don't make it back tomorrow, then I'll be back as soon as I can."

Before Mulder could protest further, she had turned and disappeared into the teeming crowd. With the slight sinking feeling he always experienced when she left, he reluctantly finished the arrangements for his own flight out.

*****

As Scully crossed the expansive hotel lobby to the elevators, she congratulated herself on remembering most of her lessons in fieldwork that she had been certain were unnecessary those many years ago at Quantico. She had known then that she would be a pathologist, and had not expected to need any skills outside the laboratory. Her career had taken her far from the sterile world of the autopsy suite, but she was still secretly pleased that she had been able to track her quarry across the busy city. She had no idea what kind of reception she was about to receive. She had been moving purely on instinct, and some primitive urge to know the truth.

"It's me," Scully responded to the cautious "Who is it?" from the other side of the hotel room door.

After a moment it opened and Brett motioned her inside. The first thing Scully noticed was how exhausted Brett appeared. The second thing was the Glock held in Brett's left hand.

Brett closed the door and arched a critical eyebrow in Scully's direction. "Should I ask how you found me?"

Scully watched as Brett smoothly returned the Glock to a shoulder holster under her right arm with a practiced motion. Just as casually, Scully responded, "I followed you from the airport." They might have been discussing the weather.

Brett winced, and shook her head slightly. "Wonderful. And the hotel room? It's not listed in my name."

Scully gave a nonchalant shrug. "I told the desk clerk that we had shared a taxi, and that you left your wallet on the seat. He obligingly told me your room number."

Brett sighed, and brushed a hand wearily across her face. "Well, so much for security." She double-bolted the door, and picked up the bedside phone. "I was about to order dinner. Can I get you something?"

"Am I staying?" Scully asked quietly.

Brett replaced the receiver, and stared at her across the room. "That's up to you."

Scully tossed her briefcase and raincoat on a nearby chair. She leaned one hip against the door jam, and crossed her arms over her chest. "No, actually, I think this time it's up to you. What the hell is going on?"

"The fact that you are here is problem enough," Brett said quietly. "If I answer your questions, any questions, it's going to make things worse."

"For whom?" Scully demanded impatiently. She had enough sense of the situation to realize that knowledge could be dangerous, and that in this case, she could be exposing herself to potential harm.

"For both of us," Brett responded.

Scully studied Brett steadily for a long moment. There were circles under her eyes, and faint lines of fatigue etched in her face. Her eyes, however, were the same ice blue, and they regarded her calmly. Scully knew she had a choice -- she could press, and Brett would answer, and everything between them would change. Or, she could accept the silence, and they could go on as they had been -- meeting fleetingly in the dark, when fate or happenstance threw them together for a few hours, exchanging in the end little more than disappointment.

"How much do you trust me?" Brett whispered. "The stakes are getting higher every time we meet."

Scully had nothing to rely on except the moments they had shared, moments defined at first by the physical, finally meaning so much more. They had said so much to one another in the quiet hours before dawn, when the silence had thundered with unspoken words. There had been a thousand revelations in the touch of a hand, and a million confessions in the stroke of a tongue. They knew each other by the needs they had exposed, and by the desires they had fulfilled. As she stood looking at Brett, those many moments coalesced into a truth she did not need to hear. She crossed the room, and into Brett's arms, closing the distance between them with a kiss.

"I thought you wanted to talk," Brett said breathlessly when Scully lifted her lips at last.

"I do," Scully murmured, pushing the taller woman toward the bed as she tugged the leather harness off Brett's slim shoulders. She let it drop somewhere behind them, and pulled Brett's shirt from her pants. Her hands found skin, warm and soft, and she moaned against Brett's ear. "In a minute."

Brett gasped as a tongue swirled over the sensitive ridges. "In a minute it will be too late," she managed hoarsely as her fingers found the zipper at the back of Scully's skirt. "I won't be able to form sentences."

Scully opened the fly on Brett's trousers, her mouth steadily working down the angle of Brett's jaw, biting just hard enough to make Brett groan. "You under-estimate my powers of interrogation," she whispered, slipping a hand into Brett's briefs.

Brett stumbled backward another step, Scully following close against her. She pushed Scully's skirt down with both hands and somehow Scully managed to step free of it without breaking stride. "Oh, no," Brett replied, "I am properly impressed by your prowess."

Scully kicked out of her shoes, her fingers pressing lower into the heat between Brett's legs. "Good," she sighed, pressing her crotch against Brett's thigh. "Because I like it when you're talkative."

"Uh huh," Brett mumbled as Scully's mouth covered hers again and they tumbled backward onto the bed.

For a moment there was only the sound of their low panting as they stripped themselves and each other in a tangle of sheets and strewn clothing. Scully rolled onto Brett, her hand returning high between Brett's thighs, finding her open and ready. She pressed inward, wanting to be connected, wanting to know Brett was real.

"Ah jesus," Brett cried, her hips heaving upward to meet Scully's thrusts. "Good -- so good--"

Scully wrapped her legs around Brett's thigh, sliding her own hard, wet need against smooth warm skin in a rhythm matching the cadence of her arm moving in and out. She lowered her mouth to Brett's nipple and sucked hard, working the sensitive peak with her tongue, biting, trying not to hurt her but wanting to devour her. Brett's hands were in her hair, pressing Scully's face against her, silently urging her to take more.

Suddenly Scully pulled her face away and slid off the side of the bed to her knees, pulling Brett's hips to the edge of the mattress. Brett's lifted her legs, settling them over Scully's shoulders, clutching the fabric under her in both hands.

"Hurry," she grated, her head thrashing from side to side. "Please, hurry."

Scully smiled, insinuating her palms under Brett's hips, grasping her firm buttocks, squeezing, taking a moment to revel in the smell and sound of her. Hurrying was the last thing on her mind. She started slowly, and didn't increase her pace even when Brett begged for relief. She stroked and sucked and savored every warm fold, loosing herself in the sensations that eclipsed every other.

"Ohgodohgodohgod--" Brett chanted softly, rocking against Scully's face.

Scully drew one hand free and reached down to touch herself. She was achingly hard; throbbing to the same beat that pulsed under her tongue. She rubbed lightly, pressing her clit from side to side, moaning softly against Brett's flesh. As Brett swelled between her lips, she worked herself closer, letting it build to the point of sweet torture. Within seconds Brett was sobbing out her pleasure, bucking spasmodically, flooding Scully with her essence. Scully no longer moved consciously, her body soaring unbidden to release. She knew nothing, other than the wonder of this woman. No awareness, other than this timeless moment stretching toward infinity.

Brett finally caught her breath and pulled Scully up beside her on the bed. "Now, that was an interview I wouldn't mind giving again."

"Mmm," Scully murmured. "I could arrange it. If I knew where you were going to be from time to time."

Brett was silent, her hand stroking the damp curls that clung to Scully's cheek. "I can't."

Scully pressed closer. "Sometimes I'm afraid you're a ghost."

Brett laughed bitterly. "That's exactly what I am."

*****

Washington, DC

"What do you know about 'ghost squads', Mulder?"

Mulder looked up from the monitor where he had been perusing the latest news from the MUFON site. Apparently a squadron of alien vessels was expected in Hot Springs for the Millennium celebration. "From the Hoover days?"

"Uh huh. Rumor or fact?"

Mulder regarded her quizzically, but decided from the look in her eyes not to voice his curiosity. "Well, the rumors say they were squads of special agents, hand-picked by Hoover himself, trained in a secret location, to police the FBI from the inside."

Scully nodded, wishing there was another answer. "Police it?"

"Carry out sanctions against agents who had gone over to the other side, or who had just plain lost it -- any one who was a threat to the organization."

She swallowed, but did not relent. She was way past that. "Sanctions -- to terminate with prejudice?"

Mulder leaned back in his chair, balancing a pencil over one finger. "They were supposed to be assassins, an elite corps of enforcers that only a very few knew about, answering only to the inner circle."

"Was there ever any proof?" Scully asked, knowing the answer couldn't change the truth.

"Not that I know of. Besides, that was forty years ago. Those things don't go on today."

Scully smiled thinly. "No, of course they don't."

End

********

Home

X Files

Radclyffe