Title: Gaining Altitude (5/5)
Author: Tesla
Address: gah1093@hiwaay.net
Rating: NC-17 (sexual situations, adult language & lawyers)
Category: Mulder/Other
Spoilers: Assume that this alternate universe careens off track after "Field
Trip". Of course, in a real alternate universe, the Yankees would not have
won the Series. Or the pennant.
Archive: Sure, I would be in a tizzy of pleasure and tell everyone I knew.
Feedback: See above.
Disclaimer: If Ten Thirteen is even reading this, HI!  I know a copyright
lawyer who said he' ll defend us!

Summary: Continuation of "Flying Under the Radar"-I think that should be
read first. Or  not. It's a free country.

 ".In the end, both profilers made similar mistakes," Mulder said dryly,
capping the pen he had been using as a pointer. "We both got too involved.
Fortunately, I, as the second profiler, did not feel the need to re-create
the crime scenes as vividly as did the._former_ department head. " He looked
owlishly over his reading glasses at the classroom of candidates.  "Possibly
the most extreme case of a civil servant creating work for himself that we'
ve discovered." It was the lamest of jokes; but the horrors of viewing the
crime scene photographs of John Mostow's  (and Bill Patterson's) victims
made these rookies positively shout in laughter, and then applaud.

Just outside the double doors, Scully was dumbfounded.   She couldn't
believe that Mulder was even deigning to lecture at Quantico, in the first
place; yet there he was, charcoal gray Armani, cobalt blue shirt, cobalt
blue tie, spiky hair and Hugo Boss reading glasses, standing with his
beloved slide projector, talking as casually as he talked to her in their
basement; leaning on the podium, and not a  single mention of the
para-normal escaping his lips. Oh, no. He saved all that for his partner.
At least, he didn't mention that his own partner had thought Mulder had
killed Greg Nemhauser. Even if she had only thought it for a minute there.

She had better get back to Pathology, before Mulder and his no doubt
increased ego came out and caught her staring. She hurried away, one hand to
her throat. Why did she feel so unsettled?


"How did it go?" Janet asked Mulder that evening. He had walked in,
dry-cleaning in one hand, gym bag and lap-top slung over his shoulder, and
gripping a six-pack of Coronas, and a bag of hamburgers. He didn't believe
in two trips up the stairs, he always said.

He smiled incandescently. "It went really well-they laughed at all my cheesy
jokes. Of course, I was showing them really gross pictures. " He dropped
everything but the Coronas on her couch. "How was your day, June?" he said,
in his best Ward Cleaver smirk. He put the beer in the refrigerator.

"Same old same old-another kid calling in a bomb threat. More live-action
videos of crack sales." She rescued the greasy sack of hamburgers from the
couch, and Mulder picked up his suits and took them to her bedroom. He
re-emerged, pulling his tie off and slinging it around the doorknob. He
stopped, held the door, and kicked his loafers into the bedroom. Janet was
aware that he was waiting for her reaction; she studiously ignored him, even
when he draped his suit coat over the back of one of her kitchen chairs. She
figured that his family must have been the control-freak types, and from the
little he said, so was his partner Scully; so she let Mulder toss his things
around. Not that she cared, anyway; but it seemed like he was constantly
testing the waters.

"Your damn team is playing," she told him, and he immediately sat down and
pointed the remote at the set. That remote seemed to fly into his hand like
Luke Skywalker's light saber, no matter where he was in the apartment.

"Like your Braves aren't on all the time," he said, "Where are the
hamburgers?"
He stood up and walked into the kitchen, and seemed to focus on her
activities for the first time. "Oh.  Were you going to cook?" She was
scooping salad fixings into a Tupperware bowl.

"Not now," she said. "It'll keep. We'll eat it tomorrow."

He opened the refrigerator and pulled two sweating Coronas out of the
cardboard six-pack. "Then come on and watch the game," he said, putting his
arm around her shoulders. "Unless you have to work on anything?"

Tired, Janet fell asleep on the couch, her head on a pillow on Mulder's lap.
She woke up, feeling him stroke her hair. She rolled her head back to look
up at him.
"Yanks are winning," he said smugly, pinching her nose. She sat up, and
walked stiffly to the kitchen for a glass of water.

While she was running the water, Mulder came up behind her and wrapped his
arms around her waist. She leaned back into his chest, turning her face into
his neck. He rubbed his cheek against her. "Let's go to bed, " he suggested,
as if that was a new idea. Maybe it was, she thought.  Seems like he hasn't
had anyone to go to bed with for a long time.

Mulder took a shower while she shut off all the lights and washed her face.
She was already in bed when he came in the room, turning out the bathroom
light.  His skin felt cool, like someone who had just been swimming. She ran
her hands over his shoulders and back. He yawned suddenly. "I'm more tired
than I thought," he said, putting his face into her shoulder.  "Long day."

"Let's go to sleep," she said, and felt him relax.  And they both slept.


 She had driven to Mulder's apartment after not reaching him, again. She
hated this.  She didn't know why she was doing it. It was hours after he had
left Quantico. Yet there was his car, in its usual spot. She pulled into
another space, and used her binoculars. No lights, not even the blue of the
television, from his windows. She checked out all the other windows, then,
randomly, began looking across the street. All the windows were blank, dark,
or shaded.
There. On the third floor, a blonde woman was doing something-washing
dishes? Idly, Scully focussed her lenses on the blue-white rectangle of
light.

Mulder came into view, in the tiny window, shirtless. She saw him put his
bare forearm around the woman, just across her breasts. Then the light went
out.
Scully drove home and took a Tylenol 3, and crashed. She felt feverish and
sick, and dreamed of Mulder all night. Mulder with that woman. Mulder having
sex. Mulder. Mulder leaving the X-Files. Mulder leaving her.

When she woke up, she felt nauseated. Thank God it was Saturday, and she
didn't have to go to work.  She felt dizzy. What was going on with her? Why
did she go and spy on Mulder? Why did she care? Didn't all of her family and
friends tell her to get away from him, away from him and the X-Files? Hadn't
she kept lecturing at Quantico just to keep her contacts up? Hadn't they
won?

Why did she feel that she had lost?







--
"Some days it doesn't pay to chew through the restraints."---Anonymous