by jordan
After the four hour drive he had done the day before, Mulder was miserable on the long drive down to Victoria. He had a vague nagging sense that something was missing whenever Scully wasn't around. The times when she was in the hospital were some of the most agonized periods of his life because he was so used to functioning with her. Or against her. Often he didn't realize his position until she challenged him and he had to clarify it. Like now, for example. If she was with him, he would be on fire to prove his theory. But she wasn't, and he didn't even have a theory, really. He just knew it had something to do with redemption.
He didn't believe for a minute that Issie's wasn't a pawn shop. It just wasn't the kind of pawn shop Brother John was used to.
("Then what kind of a pawn shop do you think it is?" Scully would have asked.) But since she didn't actually ask the question, he didn't actually know how to answer it.
At school, his most brilliant work had always been done on his feet, quick responses like rabbits pulled from a hat. The Amazing Fox Mulder. When he'd first started working with Scully he was afraid she'd be a plodder, unable to make the ingenious cognitive leaps he was capable of. Now he knew she just had a different way of thinking, and even if it was linear, she was able to shorten the distance between two lines with intuitive leaps of her own.
Well...sometimes little bunny hops. Take that monkey-weasel thing. He grinned to himself, picturing her at the computer, digging through the Internet until she came up with THAT, then waiting until just the right moment to spring it on him.
God, what a woman.
He stopped for gas just outside Victoria, in view of the city limits sign. As he was stretching, rubbing the small of his back and leaning forward to pull the muscles back into alignment, he saw a huge eighteen wheeler that said INDIGO on the side across the road.
It was just noon, and the truck stop he'd pulled into had a diner that was filling up fast. Various trucks were lumbering in and out of the gas lanes, air brakes screeching, gears shifting down, the hiss of air compression harsh and sibilant.
Through a jumble of trucks going both ways, he saw why the eighteen wheeler was stopping. A girl was walking backwards ahead of it, her thumb up. For a moment Mulder thought she was doing what he had done as a boy; whenever he had been walking along the side of the road and had seen a big truck coming from the other direction, he had raised his fist in the air and brought it down as if pulling a cord, and nine times out of ten the driver would give a blast or two on the air horn.
But this girl was hitchhiking, and she'd just gotten a ride. He only caught a glimpse of her in the distance, more of an impression than anything else. Jeans, a tee shirt, a backpack. Road kill, he thought wearily. A tidbit for the wolves to devour along the way. For one second there was a blind impulse to tear after her, to shout for her to stop, come back, because the next time anyone saw her they'd be pulling her body out of some lonely dumpster. If not from this ride, then from the next, or the next. It was a crap shoot, and just like at the casino, the player always lost in the end. But his FBI training took over; just observe the situation, note and remember details. Later, if necessary, he would be able to tell the police he'd seen this particular girl picked up by a big truck that said INDIGO on the side.
His gas pump cut off. He went inside to pay for it, and decided to get something to eat, charmed by the rural atmosphere, the smell of greasy burgers and the easy camaraderie of the truckers, the slinky hipped waitress who brought him a sugared iced tea when he sat at the counter. He had left his suit jacket in the car and rolled his up his sleeves, but he was still out of place in this world of jeans and flannel.
Scully would have sent her tea back and asked for coffee. She'd have searched the menu and then given up and asked for a tuna sandwich. The men at the counter would be looking too casually down and backwards, attracted like moths to that bright red hair of hers, checking out the compact package of dynamite and giving him speculative looks.
(Think you can handle that little fireball, son?)
He'd have met their eyes steadily. (Not on my best day.)
Mulder found himself reading the menu for both of them. Pretend!Scully would give him the Cholesterol Look when he ordered the chicken fried steak, lapping over the platter like the bellies of most of these drivers lapped over their belts. Pour on the cream gravy, too, just to piss her off.
A few hours ago she had answered the door, always grouchy when she first got up, but redolent of sleep and dreams, and warm from her bed, and then he had told her was going alone and her eyes had changed, been hurt, actually. He'd tried to be extra cheerful and get her mad at him, but calling him a rat had been half-hearted on her part.
(I am a rat, though. And I wish she was here now. I wish she was bitching at me and giving me those looks.)
The waitress was looking at him expectantly. He said, "Got any tuna salad?"
*******************
After lunch he noticed the INDIGO truck was still across the road, idling. The driver got out, a big man with massive shoulders, in a baseball hat and Grateful Dead tee shirt. He crossed the road, came into the diner, and headed for the men's room. Mulder tucked a tip under his plate and strolled in after him.
As Mulder squared off in front of a urinal, he watched the trucker from the corner of his eye. The big man was sorting through change, trying to find enough for the condom machine. Mulder looked away, the no-eye-contact rule so entrenched in him he couldn't make himself watch. He heard the man grunt a curse and slap a meaty hand against the machine, apparently to urge it along in its delivery.
Outside, the sun was harsh, and Mulder held his hand up over his eyes to scan the area. The girl was still in the passenger seat of the giant truck.
Mulder heard something that might have been a car running along on a flat tire. Really it was more of a vibration than a sound. Thump thump thump thump. Maybe it was the mega bass from some kid's car stereo. There was something deeply disturbing about it, something dreadful, like a bad dream he didn't want to remember. A wave of anxiety made him pull his keys from his pocket and move to his car to get away from it, from this place.
As he unlocked his door he looked over the roof and saw the girl in the INDIGO truck quite clearly. Her head was turned away from him. He felt certain the noise was coming from the cab of the truck. As she turned her head slowly, he realized with a heartskip that it was her, the girl in the picture. Turning her face slowly, slowly towards him. Her light blonde hair. Her forehead. The shape of her nose as it would be in profile. The slightly receeding chin. The thin upper lip, full lower lip.
Thump thump thump thump.
Mulder fumbled with the keys, dropped them, picked them up. The girl had turned her head to look directly at him. She was Hispanic, her hair dyed a reddish blonde, big lips smeared with a bright red lipstick. Not even close to Tayna MacClean. Not in a million mile ballpark of her.
The trucker hustled out of the diner and did a little dog trot across the highway without looking either way for traffic. The trot and the thin Grateful Dead tee shirt made a convincing argument for running bras for men. Mulder got in the rental car and fired it up, leaving a little rubber as he accelerated out of the parking lot.
Behind him, the bass thud faded into silence.
*******************
Victoria, Texas, 1:15 pm Tuesday
"Tanya MacCLean?"
The girl in the holding tank was blonde, about sixteen years old, but she was not the hitchhiker. Her face was coarser, the features bunched together in a wide expanse of spade-shaped face. She squinted up at Mulder with light grey eyes and his heart sank, for a variety of reasons. First, because he had just driven for hours on a futile chase. His instincts had screamed at him that this was where he would find the girl who could lead him to Liz Smith. The lost soul who had introduced herself by standing in the middle of a busy freeway at night. Second, because she was only sixteen years old and in jail already, or in pre-jail, and she looked fairly unconcerned about the situation.
This girl had pawned a piece of the Lanier Collection she had stolen from a street fence in Houston, and had tried to pawn it at the Lone Star Pawn Shop on Gregor street, where the proprietor had immediately called the police. They had picked the girl up before she even reached the edge of town. Headed south, she said, for Tijuana.
"Tijuana isn't south of Texas," Mulder told her. "It's south of California."
"For real?" She gave him a sullen look, the kind of look she was used to giving the world that had so abysmally failed her. She was just crossing through time zones in her short life, from the point at which her moral and cultural stunting was the fault of her caregivers, to the point at which it became her own responsibility, her own "recognizance."
"But it's in Mexico, right?" she asked.
The woman who was guarding them, a tall, uniformed officer, rolled her eyes and walked to the steel door, out of earshot for the low voice Mulder used as he took the photo from his pocket. It was beginning to look a little creased and tattered, and he smoothed it with his thumb, stroked it out flat for her.
"Have you seen this girl?"
The blonde peered at the picture, unsurprised. "Yeah, that's Tanya, all right," she said. "The old man wouldn't let her go."
"What?"
The girl huddled back inside herself, pulling away from him to the back of her bunk. "Listen, Mister," she whispered, "You help me out of this mess, and I'll tell you where to find her." She shot a nervous look at the guard and lowered her voice even further. "Where to find ALL of them."
Mulder's eyes flicked to the guard. She was waiting for someone from the Juvenile Division to pick her up. When that happened, he would lose the girl forever.
He said, "What old man?"
"You know. The Buyer. That's who you're looking for, right?"
He made an uncertain gesture, unable to decide whether or not she was lying to get something from him.
She said, "Tanya got away. That's why I figured I could cop the name. She was, like, one of the first ones, but she fooled him. She--"
The guard strolled back within hearing range, and the girl's mouth snapped shut dramatically, like a fish gasping for water.
Mulder said, "What's your real name?"
The girl held her hand out and turned it, wrist up. On the inside of her forearm was a crude tattoo, a child's crude drawing of a sunflower.
"Flower," the girl said. "That's what they call me, on account of the flower, see?"
Mulder stared at the tattoo. Six years ago this was a ten year old, with scraped knees and maybe missing teeth, holding her arm out with that look a little girl gets when she gives someone a flower. She looked like that now.
His voice was husky with emotion. "I see," he said. "It's very pretty."
What was tender mercy in Scully was broken glass in Mulder; when someone shook it around, it cut him, and he bled.
He looked at the guard and said, "Mam'n, this girl may be wanted as a material witness in a homicide. I need to talk to whoever's in charge of her arraignment."
"Well, there probably won't be any formal arraignment," she said. "Since she's a juvie, we'll just get a judge to sign the papers and send her up to county."
"I may need to take her back to Houston with me to further a federal investigation."
The guard shrugged, whatever. "You'll need to talk to the Chief about that."
"Fine. Can you take me to him?"
"Sure."
He gave the girl one last look, and she smiled back at him, hope making her look almost pretty.
"Do you need anything?" he asked.
She brightened a little. "I could sure go for a coke. And maybe a pizza, too." She gave a little laugh, apropos of nothing.
Mulder said, "I'll see what I can do."
He followed the guard down the hall, determined not to let go of his single lead.
***************************
Houston, Texas, 24 hours later (than when Mulder found Flower in jail)
They had slept well past noon.
When Skinner woke, his stretching woke her, and she blinked up at him with sleepy affection. He wanted to watch her dress, but she snatched up her robe and flew to the bathroom in one tantalizing flash of skin vanishing into terrycloth. She had nothing to hide, but as far as he was concerned, what woman did? They were all beautiful. They just seemed to have some secret standard known only to themselves, apparently unachievable, and variance from it was punished in some terrible way only they knew.
He looked at the clock on the bedside stand and sat up, reaching for his jeans. It just now occurred to him that he was going to have to go back to his room in nothing but the jeans and briefs he'd been wearing last night. And it was daylight, and there were people who would see him leaving Scully's room.
It mattered, but only in a distant, theoretical way. For the first time since he had really looked at Scully, some years ago, he felt sexually satisfied, comfortable with her. He was hungry for breakfast, starving, and starting to wonder about what Young had told him, and he was trying to remember the number of the aide he needed to call in Virginia to get a plane back home.
Then Scully came out of the bathroom. She was wearing some sort of sweater that buttoned up the front, dark green, and blue jeans. She'd taken a quick shower there were still wet tendrils of hair clinging to her forehead and cheeks. Her face, without any makeup at all, was freckled and sweet and enormously kissable. Skinner's concentration slipped, and while he didn't think he could manage another session in bed, he knew he had to touch her.
"Come here," he said.
Scully hesitated, looking at him uncertainly. Boss or lover? His tone could have been either. She went to him anyway. He had put on what little clothes he had with him, and he moved to the edge of the bed, the shift in his weight making the headboard thump against the wall. He glanced at it almost with nostalgia now, remembering the workout they'd given it only a few hours go.
He spread his legs and pulled Scully between them so that their positions were almost exactly reversed from the night before. They were eye level, and he took her hands in his. "I believe it's customary for lovers to kiss after the act," he told her.
Her face was sober, but her eyes softened, and she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. Somehow that kiss, because it was so willingly granted, was just as meaningful as the long sweet kiss they had shared earlier. Not that IT wasn't willing, but there was something equally pleasing about this one.
"You look tired," he said. "But happy."
It was true. She was as relaxed as he'd ever seen her.
She freed one hand and put it on his face in that shy, hesitant way of hers, and he wondered if he could ever get her to touch him with the kind of hunger he felt when he touched her. Probably not, except in bed, and they couldn't stay there forever. But it made that caress even more meaningful. She stroked his cheek, moved her hand down his neck and let it rest lightly on his shoulder. He sensed a world of affection in her, of loving. But he could not force it out of her with sex, or coax it out with tenderness. It was probably inevitable for him to accept that her love was simply meant for someone else.
He pulled her close to him again and touched his forehead against hers. "Listen, Scully," he said, "I said some things last night I shouldn't have said. I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable."
She drew back a little to look at him. He couldn't bear the impact of those morning blue eyes. He looked at her mouth instead, not quite as dangerous, but unsafe in its own way. "We need to talk," he said, "But maybe it's too early."
"What things didn't you mean?"
He slipped an arm around her and stroked her back with his big hand between her waist and shoulders. "I do love you," he said. "You can't not know that."
She was silent, looking at his chest. After a moment, she nodded.
"I just realize that proposing to you might have sounded like I was trying to put some pressure on you. I know it wouldn't work out."
She looked up at him, relief on her face. "It really wouldn't."
"But I still have this world of feeling for you. I don't see that it has to affect our working relationship."
"How can it not?"
"Because I've always had those feelings for you. Always. Nothing has changed as far as I'm concerned."
She sighed. He felt the warm exhalation against his face, scented with spearmint toothpaste, and he wished he could bottle the sensation. "But things have changed,' she said.
"For you, yes." He pushed her away a little so he could look directly into her eyes. "Scully, the only thing I couldn't stand, and wouldn't stand for, is to not see you again. If you think we should stay away from each other sexually, then I can respect that decision. But I don't want you to transfer. I don't want to lose you."
She looked at him thoughtfully. "And Mulder?"
"I already stay away from him sexually."
She smiled a little. "You know what I mean."
"No, I don't."
"I don't want him to ever know about this."
"He never has to know."
"He's a very intelligent man. He can put two and two together."
"Then let's not give him those numbers."
"Okay." She took a deep breath and let it out, nodding. "Okay."
"Now I need you to do me a big favor," he said.
"What?"
"I need you to get me a shirt and some shoes from my room so I don't have to sneak out of here like a sixteen year old with his pants in his hands."
Scully laughed softly. It was such a rare sound that Skinner treasured it, trying to listen to it the way he listened to fine music, for intense pleasure at the moment, and to hoard the memory for later. Ah, Scully.
She ran her fingertips over his chest hairs gently. He felt a wave of gooseflesh behind her touch, and his groin stirred protestingly in an heroic, if hopeless, effort. "I'm sorry I won't see you like this again," she said. In a rush of honesty, not looking at him, she said, "I liked it. I liked every minute of it."
He put his arms around her and pulled her hard against him, and she closed her arms around his neck and held him tightly for a few minutes. It was not a tearful moment. He was not losing her. He felt only a quiet joy that he and she would be in the same world in all the foreseeable future.
And he could live with that.
