Yadda yadda in Part One

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1:05 PM Washington, D.C.

They'd been driving around the square for about 15 minutes when Scully, stomach growling, put her foot down. "Mulder, we are going to stop somewhere and eat, and we're going to do it right now."

Mulder turned to her slightly, working a sunflower seed in his jaw. "What are you in the mood for?"

She rolled her eyes wearily. "Something...on a plate, with a fork next to it. I'm starving."

"Wanna go to that ribs place?"

"Oh, the ribs place that's an hour away?" She clenched her teeth together. "Sure. Let's."

Smiling to himself, he turned halfway to her again. "I don't think you respect the work that goes into the process, Scully. Number one, the place has to appeal to me. Number two, I want to take you somewhere for lunch that won't *completely* repulse your --" he smirked. "-- tender sensibilities."

"This never concerned you before."

"Who says?" he asked defensively. "I know some of the places weren't immediately to your liking, but there is a certain criteria I follow --"

"No mostly-naked women dancing on the tables?" She interrupted.

He pointed an affirmative finger at her. "You got it."

Grinning inspite of herself, she replied, "It's the little things that matter, I guess."

Mulder swung a right and told her, cryptically, "You know, some partners don't eat together. They go about their lives outside of the office as if each has never met the other. They don't have keys to each other's apartments, and if they needed to reach each other at home, they'd have to let their fingers do the walking."

"Don't tease me, Mulder."

"It's true." Mulder said blandly, and pointed at a porch-front restaurant, painted brick red. "What about this place?"

Scully turned and sighed, reading the large white letters that were each bigger than the diner's front entrance. SNAPPY'S. She turned to Mulder and asked, "What is it about these greasy spoon, bugs-floating-in-the-toilets kind of places that you like?"

Mulder, taking this as a "yes", turned into the small parking lot and shrugged. "They're honest. They're cheap. They're not trying to put you on." He parked the car. "Besides, you can get eggs, sausage, and hashbrowns with a side order of white gravy anytime - day or night."

Raising one eyebrow, Scully said, "We could put you on a gravy IV and you'd never wake up."

Mulder got out of the car, slinging his keys, and peered back in before she even had her hand on the handle. "Gravy and porn...you have a very dismal view of me."

"And aliens," she added. "Gravy, porn and aliens."

"Just no alien porn or alien gravy-wrestling," he added in mock-solemnity.

Scully was mere seconds away from a laugh. "I'm sure that by the time you had the porn there, the gravy and aliens wouldn't matter."

Mulder smiled. "Man cannot live by head alone."

Some words chose that moment to tangle up in her throat and choke her. Chuckling triumphantly to himself, Mulder guided her into the diner with his hand on her back.

Mulder excused himself, but not before requesting, straight-faced, that she order him a dish called Biscuits & Bliss. But looking at the sheer amount of people who had chosen the place for their lunch hang-out, Scully doubted that Mulder would be gone long enough for the waitress to have made her way to them. She opened her portfolio and began flipping through the day's mail. The most obvious package was a thick manila envelope, addressed to Mulder. Felt like a case file, she thought. Even though the Bureau had decided - after a few important case files had been lost forever - to rule out sending files through the mail, Mulder still got two or three of them that way each week. No one wanted to take the elevator down to the basement. No one cared if an X- File got lost. Maybe that was why they did it. Scully unwrapped the string from the tab and pulled out a sheaf of papers. It appeared to be a text of some kind. It was a file, that was for sure.

And as she read it, she grew increasingly horrified at its contents.

"You were wrong, Scully," said Mulder, taking his seat again. "I didn't see bug one in that toilet....is something the matter?"

Her eyes were wide, her face was red, her jaw was slack and she threw a protective arm over the document even though he wasn't trying to see it, but she still said, trying to regain whatever iota of composure she might've had, "I'm fine."

"You sure?" Mulder asked, eying the papers under her arm.

"Yeah, you just startled me." She put the papers back into the envelope and dropped it down next to her portfolio.

For the remainder of the meal, Scully picked at her Ham Slam Sandwich and didn't say a word, no matter how effectively Mulder attempted to provoke her. The envelope containing the papers seemed to burn the skin of her ankle through her pantyhose. She'd have to tell him too. This was just as much a violation of his life as it was of hers.

(And if I can't get to sleep tonight, he's going to be unable to sleep *with* me.)

Mentally, she clapped her hand over her mouth, not knowing the words would sound like that. In reality, she wouldn't be able to stay much quieter for long.

It was going to be a long drive to Roanoke, Oklahoma.

*

Washington, D.C. 1:40 AM

Dickerson groaned and rolled over. He was pretty sure that he had a broken rib or two.

Krycek kicked him again.

(Ok, make that three.)

Dickerson spit up a mouth full of blood and mucus very close to Krycek's stylish leather shoes. Alex took a quick step back and gathered up some of his own spit, which hit Dickerson in the side of the face.

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" Krycek asked for what had to be the seventh time.

Dickerson was willing to be knocked out cold if it meant not having to hear that question yet again and being kicked when it turned out that he couldn't answer it.

Krycek began pacing. "You weren't even supposed to be in on this Project, you or your stupid little cadet partner. He put you in on it so you'd feel like you were part of something, so you'd care about it enough to --" Krycek fought for the words for a moment and yelled, "Take care of it! To not leave it on your damn desk and get it mixed up with something else! Do you have any idea what you've done? Put it right into the hands of the people who *can't* see it, and now there's no way to get them back! Do you have any idea how Agent Mulder's going to regard me after he sees this...this data!" He scooped Dickerson up by the lapels. "I'm going to kill you! I'm going to stomp you in the face until you're dead!"

"Krycek!" yelled the CSM. "Let go of him. It's going to be fine. Come in."

Dropping Dickerson as if he were a piece of carry-on luggage, Krycek stomped up to the CSM, "You found them? You got the data back?"

"No," said the CSM with a shake of his head. "But nothing's going to happen to us, Alex. No one put their name of the data...am I right?"

Krycek had a sneaking suspicion that his name was indeed somewhere on his work, but shrugged dismissively. "Who would be stupid enough to put their name somewhere on a top-secret government document?" He swallowed.

The CSM pulled Alex in with the rest of the group, who were tired from beating Dickerson. Somehow, they all seemed a bit more calm, a bit more together. Sean Pendrell was in tears, and had merely slapped Dickerson in anger, but Krycek didn't count him. He gave Pendrell's life a few more days, at best. By coming into the Project a non-member of the Consortium, he stood to only give some good data and die.

"Ah tha eatnee et?" asked the Elder.

"What did you say to me?" the CSM demanded angrily.

"Ah tha eatnee et?!" The Elder practically screamed.

"Will you get the gravel out of your mouth just this once, you Godfather- lookin' --" the CSM began.

"Have...they...eaten...yet?" the Elder enunciated carefully.

"Well whaddaya know?" the CSM exclaimed. "The tapes we got your for Christmas *are* working."

"Fuh you," burbled the Elder.

Marita translated helpfully. "He said 'Fuc --"

"I don't need a clarification on that one, Miss Covarrubias," barked the CSM. "Go make me a drink."

She snorted. "I beg your pardon?"

"Oh," said the CSM. "I'd forgotten that I promoted you."

Putting on her petulant face, Marita sat back, arms crossed. "The data I contributed is just as potentially embarassing as the next person's. They're going to know who's behind this. Names or no names."

"Mine...mine, too," added Krycek.

"What could possibly connect you to your work, Alex?" The CSM leaned forward.

Squirming in his seat, Krycek said something barely audible under his breath.

"What?" said the CSM. "You did *not* just say what I thought you said..."

"I'm ... part of it. I'm...I mention myself," Krycek looked up sheepishly, then frantically. "And you can't let him get a hold of it. We're...against each other for crying out loud. We're..."

"What's in it, Alex?" Marita asked softly.

"I'm not going to tell you! What's in yours, huh?" Alex turned to the CSM. "This is all your fault. You're a sick-ass bastard! Why did you need all this data? I think you're only in this for yourself."

"Where have you been for the last three, four years, Alex?" growled the CSM. "That's the only reason I've ever been in it!"

"My...God!" gasped the Well-Manicured Man. "I've soiled myself."

"Don't change the subject, Dad!" The CSM turned his glare back to Alex Krycek. "If you so much as described yourself in your data, we're all screwed to hell. Did you? Did you describe yourself, Alex?"

Alex traced the pattern of the wood of the table with his fingers, swallowing. When he looked up, his dark eyes were wide and frightened. "Yes. You read these things. You didn't notice that's what we were doing? Or did you just pretend to read ours? Putting all your work into your own? You don't care about our data...you never did."

"How many of you put yourself in the data?" The CSM met 10 separate silences.

And then, one by one, the 10 hands were raised.

"Then..." said the CSM, eyes uncharacteristically sparkling. "Don't you want to know what they think?"

Not one of the 10 hands went down.

CSM sat back. He was right.

*

2:25 PM Lariat Rent-a-Car Washington, D.C.

"What do you want, Scully? Something you can stretch your legs out in or something that makes you feel like you've been poached and canned?" Mulder turned to his partner, whose eyes were out of focus in the other direction.

He waved his hand in front of her face. "Scully..."

Too attentive too suddenly, she eyed the row of available cars. "Aren't we only supposed to drive Intrigues now?"

"That's what you're looking at," he told her, hands in his pockets. "You sure you're doing alright?"

"I told you I was fine." She said calmly. "And I will talk to you in the car once I have all of my thoughts together on this."

As she turned to walk away, he had her arm, his hold more supportive than forceful. He sought her gaze out until he had it. "What? Tell me."

"In the car, Mulder." She replied firmly. "And not a moment sooner."

It was almost silly, the response she had to the interoffice mail. At first, the words had simply met her disbelief. This was sent to us in error, she thought. Someone is going to be happy that this didn't fall into less-discreet hands. Her amusement and faint shock turned to horror though when she saw their names. Her's and Mulder's. She'd kept reading past that point, unable to stop, and ashamed when she'd finally had to pull herself away. If Mulder had been in the bathroom longer, she would've read more and more.

It marked her as a prude, to feel that red rise to her cheeks. To feel the temperature in the room rise and rise and rise...

And then the feeling of complete and total violation...

It's why Mulder had to know, too. Without knowing it, she had followed him inside Lariat and was standing in line with him. They were changed into their driving clothes now, she in her button-down, soft slacks and loafers, he in his gray t-shirt, faded jeans and hi-top sneakers. She had to struggle to not stare at his back when his arms moved.

"The blue car's going to be your very best bet. Two of those have been reserved for later rental over the phone. One of them is going to be taken back to the shop in about five minutes," said the clerk behind the counter. "That fifth one is going to the couple over there."

"We really wanted something a little more roomy," Mulder insisted, measuring the blue compact car with his eye.

"There are many roomy models here at --"

"It has to be an Intrigue," Mulder said.

"Why?"

"I don't know." He was losing patience. "Some contract they have with the FBI. If we charge it to the Bureau, then it has to be an Intrigue."

The clerk shrugged. "That's what we have, Agent Mulder. I could call and see if maybe there's a cancellation on one of those res..."

"We don't have time," Mulder said, resigned. "Scully, is it going to bother you?"

"Sure. Fine." Scully wasn't even sure what she'd just been asked.

Mulder returned the clerk's perpetual shrug. "The blue, airless tomb it is."

The clerk handed him the keys, seemingly relieved.

"What was all that about?" Scully asked, rushing to keep pace with him once they were outside.

"I think we would've had a roomier car had we been decked out in flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts." He rattled the keys at her. "Wanna drive?"

Scully shook her head. "Can't. Not right now."

She didn't have to look at him to know she was being scrutinized with concern. Holding her portfolio tight to her stomach, Scully slid into the passenger seat. Mulder had their luggage. She hadn't even realized. Where was her head at? He threw the bags into the back seat, what little there was of one. Her luggage was actual luggage, ordered out of the Sears catalog before her last trip to California. His was two duffel bags and a back pack.

"I know what you're thinking, Scully," he said suddenly.

"Do you?" she asked, quiet.

He put his bottom lip out, and his mouth opened into a laugh. "You're thinking I travel like a serial killer." He flopped down in the driver's seat. "You know, Emmanuel Black, who murdered 13 women along the East Coast in 1989? He suggested those bags to me. He said, you could keep it zipped with a human head in it, maybe even a torso, for days. Just days. And it would never stink. Damned if he wasn't right."

Scully threaded her eyebrows together, wishing they'd gotten the roomier model after all.

"Put a sandwich in there once. Forgot about it." Mulder started the car, grinning boyishly. "By the time I discovered the sandwich, it wasn't even recognizeably a sandwich, but I hadn't smelled it once. Of course, once you unzipped the bag, all guarantees were off."

Scully's mouth curled up against the gravity of her features, and for just a moment, she saw a Mulder who had tormented his little sister with excessive glee and aplomb. But now the car was running, and that Mulder was replaced with the one she knew, and he was telling her to talk.

"In the mail today," she began. "I opened up that larger envelope. The one you joked this morning...you said your special double issue of Hustler must have been misrouted."

Mulder feigned dismay. "You mean it isn't my Hustler double issue?"

She opened the envelope for the second time that day, stalling to unwind the string from the tab, stalling to breathe against the rolled-up window. "It's...not as far...from being your Hustler magazine...as you might like."

Eyes widening, Mulder said warily, "Before you begin, I want you to know that I consumed large amounts of alcohol in college, and had bouts of missing time that I in no way associated then or now with the existence of extraterrestrial life." He turned his eyes back to the road. "So, what is it?"

"What are *they*?" Scully said wearily. "It's...as far as I can tell..." It was like no more words could come out of her mouth.

Mulder took his eyes off the road to glance over. "It's just words on a page, Scully. What is it?"

She couldn't just tell him, could she? No. As technical, clinical and detached as the scientist in her could be, she couldn't just start reeling off what was contained in those pages. So she would do it. She would begin to read. She picked up the first page, the page that had somehow turned her stomach with nervousness and dazzled her senses guiltily. In a soft, quavering voice, she began to read the words, trying to pretend they were coming out of someone else's mouth (and they were, really) and that she didn't know the people described.

"I watch them," she began. "I watch them through windows when they falsely secure themselves in the notion that no one sees what they do. I watch them from the time they arrive at work, clothes clean and neatly pressed. They have themselves together there. Their talk to one another is puritanical, devoid of an honesty that each has been denying themselves for the last five years. They hide their personalities behind convinctions and skepticism. But I know what happens when they leave for home. I know that the pressed clothes are pulled away, and the jargon is shed for conversation that is not words, but the gutteral sounds they share --"

She was going to hyperventilate.

"Go on," said Mulder, hands taut on the wheel.

Go on, said the voices in her head, the same voices that had told her to let her eye keep following the print, to keep reading.

"I can't," she said, almost crying. "I can't keep on."

"Read," he insisted. His voice shook her as the next paragraph had shaken her.

She took a deep breath, feeling as if she were reading too fast and too slow all at once. "To see her, you would not immediately rec -- recognize the urge in Dana Scully to --"

Mulder hit the brakes. The car squealed off onto the grassy shoulder, idling there. "What?"

"My name," she said hollowly. "It's my name."

He took the papers from her, continuing where she left off. "...the urge in Dana Scully to spread her legs and f--" Mulder's voice faded out. His urge was to keep his tongue from licking the taste of the words off his lip. Only in dark moments alone, in front of the glow of the television with his hands otherwise occupied had Fox Mulder ever strung something similar to those words together. But never when she stood before him had he more than a vague urge to wrap his arms around her or to touch her lips with his own, and even those emotions were, for him, tantamount to deserving an apology.

"I'm going to read," he said. "Until you tell me to stop."

"Out loud?"

"I..." He didn't know. "How many of these are there?"

She paged through them, certain words jumping out at her, her name always meeting her eye, his name always hopelessly apparent. "There are eleven."

"They're about us?"

She nodded. "They're all about us...about us..."

"Having sex?"

She nodded.

"With..." he rolled his hand in a tight circle, as if this was the universal symbol for all things that couldn't be spoken aloud. "With each other? Stories about you and I...together."

She nodded again. "Except for a couple of them... You and I don't have ... don't do it in this one."

Relieved, he took it from her. Maybe he could read this one aloud, and they'd work their ways up to the others.

And in the darkness, they sat in the car, her listening to Mulder reading aloud, wanting him in some way to feel the first shock and pain that she'd felt...

So she wouldn't tell him.

Mulder began, "I hate him. I hate him with more rage and antipathy than I can put into actual words." He looked up as Scully, as if there was any chance that she wasn't listening. "But I have to have him. I have to be with him. When I seek him out, it's a catharsis. He needs my --" He knew the word. She knew he knew the word. "--Sodomy. He needs to feel my black leather on his skin. He needs to know that, even inspite of this hatred, I can fill him. When he hits me, I let him. I want him to hurt me. I need to hurt him. But he needs me to bend him double and pound away at him with my every ounce of life. He wants it. He screams my name, and I know that this is all he ever wished for -- "

He gave Scully a hard, wise look.

"He screams the name Alex...as if he were calling out for God's mercy," Mulder read, and lifted his eyes from the paper slowly, horrified. "But you said --"

Scully, feeling they were equal now in discomfort and violation, smiled grimly. "I said that was one where you and I didn't have sex."

His hangdog expression begged for her to tell him that this was some nightmare, some bit of fever he was having.

Staring outside her car window, she replied, "I didn't say it was one where you and Krycek didn't have sex."

*Consortium Headquarters 3:16 PM

The eleven members of the Project were gathered, equal parts dread and anticipation, around the wide oak conference table. Except for Dickerson, who was crumpled and wheezing in the Well-Manicured Man's Barcolounger.

Serving as the table's centerpiece was a small, black audio surveillance monitor. Frozen in varying degrees of wonder, the members listened as the words spoken in a small blue Intrigue parked off a West Virginia highway filled the room.

The Well Manicured Man touched Marita softly on the arm. "Tell me...do you also hear the funny little box talking?"

Marita patted his shoulder and smiled sweetly. "Of course not."

"Right," blinked the WMM. "Must be time for my nap."

"I can't believe she read my story first!" Boasted the CSM.

"Because it was stapled to the top?" gasped Dickerson from the chair, knotted in the fetal position.

The CSM stared over the back of the Barcolounger menacingly. "Shut up...before I break your other clavicle."

The monitor was ringing with their voices.

SCULLY: I can't keep reading... MULDER: Read.

CSM high-fived the Red-Headed Man. "Yeah! Mulder likes it, too! They're gonna do it! They're gonna get it on. Woohoo!"

"Shh!" hissed Pendrell. "He's picking out a different story!"

MULDER: I hate him. I hate him with more rage and antipathy than I can put into actual words. But I have to have him. I have to be with him. When I seek him out --

"I need to use the bathroom," said Krycek, blanching at the sound of his own words, being read by both his nemesis and the object of his lust.

"Sit down, Alex," ordered the CSM.

"But, uh..." Krycek pretended to dance from foot to foot. " I really, really gotta pee..."

Meanwhile, Mulder droned on, in shock.

"Is this your story?" Marita asked.

"No!" said Krycek, hands out innocently. "Oh, no...no, not this. Uh-uh."

MULDER: He screamed the name Alex...as if he were begging for the mercy of God...

The CSM lapsed into hysterical laughter. "Now everyone knows you're gay!" He slapped his knee joyously. "America, lock up your armed forces! Krycek's gay!"

The Well-Manicured Man raised his head, scrutinizing Krycek. "He doesn't *look* happy."

"I'm not gay!" Krycek yelled, fingers wound in his short, dark hair. "I...I like women...I just...it's...Mulder is very...uh..." He choked back his stuttering and banged his fist on the table. "I don't have to explain myself to you!"

"Sure you don't," CSM said mockingly. "Fag boy!"

"I thought you seemed awfully limber," said the Red-Headed Man critically.

"I've --" Krycek was outraged. "I've never slept with a man! I'm just writing a story! The story doesn't necessarily reflect my sexual affilations!"

The room collapsed into a wave of "yeah rights" and "shut yo mouths." Krycek, urge to urinate gone, found that the seats on either side of him were conspicuously empty. He sighed miserably.

*

3:52 PM Right off the I-19 West Virginia

Under the circumstances, Scully thought Mulder looked much more closer to hyperventilation than she had. It was a mean thing to do, to just just let him start reading, without warning him. He hadn't quite forgiven her for it. All she wanted was for him to know on which level this had bothered her.

"We'll each read through one," Scully offered, feeling guilty. "And we don't have to read out loud..."

"Well, right," Mulder said softly, in a voice too controlled to be tender. "There are words you just can't be expected to say where I can hear them."

Scully took the bait. "Like what?"

Mulder lifted one shoulder nonchalantly. "I know that you have certain...moral limitations." His voice was too calm, too close to her earlobe, where the warmth and what she had read before were doing a deadly one-two on her senses. He pulled back. "Oh, I can understand it. I wouldn't *expect* you to be able to look me in the eye and say--"

He paused, making sure her eyes were nowhere but on his face.

"Fuck," said Mulder, succinctly and thoroughly, with a soft insistence underneath that made her lip quiver before she could bite it still.

"Fu --" she began. "I can say the word, Mulder --"

"Then say it."

"--It's just a matter of not using it--"

"I'm not asking you to use it." Mulder leaned his face close to hers. In the cramped space of the car, there was nowhere to run. "I'm asking you to say it."

"You're just mad because you were embarrassed."

"The sooner we get past these words," Mulder whispered. "The better we can investigate who's behind this."

"Fine," said Scully resolutely. "I'll read from this one, and you read from --" She filed through them randomly. "This one."

"Alright," he said coldly. "Start reading."

Scully steadied the papers in front of her. "It was a long time coming. He deserved it. A man whose life had been so threatened that he would be simple to kill. I could always make it look like something else. All I'd have to do is put a crumpled pack of Morley's at his feet. I was surprised I hadn't considered killing the selfish, egotistical bastard before..."

* Consortium Headquarters

"Hey cool," said the CSM, nodding. "It's good work, Pendrell."

Pendrell, giving his best "aw shucks" grin said, "It was really more of a catharsis, sir."

"Mine, too," Krycek piped in.

"Yours was more of an enema," smirked the CSM, puffing on a cigarette. "I'm glad I didn't ever read it."

Krycek made a small squeak of rage. "Why the hell not?"

"You want the long list?" Stubbing out his cigarette, the CSM began to tick the points off on his fingers. "For one thing, you e-mailed it to me all at once. 192k? How many different way can you pack fudge with your little G- string-man? Excuse me, but it got a little repetitive! I quit reading after page 3! It was like Harley Davidson theater presents 'Deliverance', except it's only the 'squeal like a pig' scene over and over again! I won't even go into how your formatting made it nearly impossible to read. And here's an idea, Alex -- spellchecking. You should give it a try. You're writing this, this...smut, and couldn't even be bothered to check up the spelling of 'fellatio'?"

"No offense everyone," Pendrell stammered politely. "But I really need to know what Dana thought."

Exchanging glares, the two backed off, and Scully's voice filled the room.

SCULLY: ...of course, the authorities probably wondered why a sophisticated hit looked so much like an alley massacre. I probably should have stopped at slitting his throat, but once I touched the knife to Mulder's skin, it was hard to stop. "Scully," he gasped pleadingly, but all I could think of was how often he'd ditched me, how often I'd been reprimanded because of him, how he never cared how I was feeling as he came in smarting off and left the same way. I loved him and needed him, and he'd never even noticed. So a simple throat slit with an Exacto knife became a general practice session of my downward slashing motion. It was my first autopsy on a live cadaver, for Mulder had been dead to me for the past year. As soon as his pulse had stopped, I went to work on his obnoxious smile --"

MULDER: Well, I think we got the gist of *that* one...

SCULLY: I'm not done. <pause>

MULDER: Well, read it out loud.

SCULLY: You might not want to hear it. I'm cutting off your nose to spite your face. <pause>

MULDER: Scully...<pause>...Scully?

SCULLY: What?

MULDER: Do you...think my mouth is obnoxious?

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