Rhyme and Reason 
*Author:  Jemirah (Denise)
*Archive:  You want it, you got it, just please let me know!
*Rating:  Let's say PG for language, just to be safe.
*Category:  Vignette, MSR/UST
*Summary:  An argument, Mulder and Scully style.
*Feedback:  Please!!!  jemirah@charter.net
*Disclaimer:  Surprise!  They belong to CC and Fox.  Yeah, I hate surprises too.
*Author's Note:  In a fit of boredom, I revised this and liked it a lot
better than the original, so I thought I'd repost it.  If you have the old
one archived on your site, please replace it with this new copy.
*Dedication:  To all the people whom I owe emails.

***********************
Rhyme and Reason
***********************

Mulder popped the CD into the player, not really caring how Scully might
feel about metal and parental advisories.  The angry cacophony of noise
soothed him somehow.  She raised an eyebrow and tightened her hands on the
steering wheel, but didn't say anything.  She knew, understood, he realized.

Trust her for that.

It made him a little bit angry that she could know him well enough to know
that he needed the racket of too much music and screaming voices, but that
she wouldn't ask him why. She never did, no matter how he longed for it,
begged her in his mind, prayed to a God he didn't believe in.  He always sat
alone with these thoughts, these pains bursting him at the seams, and she
sat silent, minding her own business.  No, she didn't even do that much
because he was her business; he had turned his soul over to her for
safekeeping long ago.

So they drove wordlessly along the almost-empty new four-lane (two in either
direction) highway that had apparently been a radical improvement in this
semi-rural area recently.  He looked out the window at the rain, the grass
that was darker than usual, and the trees with their smatterings of tiny
leaves, buds of flowers.

The music spilled out of the speakers and enveloped them in an angry gray
fog; he could see it, taste it, smell it. It was making him sick at his
stomach.  It reminded him of something, something bad, but he couldn't pin
the precise thought down, and it made him want to cry.

They were passing a lumber yard.  Though he didn't consider himself a
tree-hugging conservationist by any means, the sight of slain trees strewn
about like so many carcasses never failed to sadden him.  And it didn't help
much on this particularly dreary day that this one was surrounded by live
trees, still bare in their winter poverty. It made him think of mourners
circling around a grave to hear the priest's words and see the first handful
of dirt hit the top of the casket.

With a deep sigh he forced himself to look away from the dead and the dying,
back to the interior of the car.  He had drawn Scully's attention with that
sigh, he had felt it. He could now see her glancing away from the road every
few seconds to look at him.  It relieved him, eased his suffering in some
small way that she was worrying about him.  He knew that meant she cared
about him.  He also knew that trying to hide something from her was like
trying to hide something from himself--it couldn't be done.

The CD had finished, and he decided to replace it with Dave Matthews Band.
It was an old CD, but it was their best one, Mulder thought.  The switch
earned him another raised eyebrow from Scully, but she still said nothing.

The rain was falling faster and harder now, darkening and dampening the
lighter, poppy sound.  Despite the airy atmosphere of it though, he felt
like it was heavier than it seemed on the surface, especially with the mood
he was in. 'Rhyme and Reason' was downright suicidal, he thought.

When that song came on a few minutes into the CD, he relaxed his head back
on the car seat.  There was something cleansing about releasing the raw
anger and depression he felt through the music; it felt good.

Suddenly the only sound he could hear was the tires slicing through the
water on the road.  He looked over at her in surprise, meeting her gaze by
accident.  He was shocked to see tears running down her face.

"Wha--,"  he choked on the first words he'd spoken in hours.

"Nothing, I just couldn't take it anymore.  I'm fine."  She swiped angrily
at the tears on her face and looked back at the road.

He was totally puzzled; he didn't know what to do, say, think, anything.  He
wasn't like her though, he was going to ask.

"What's wrong, Scully?  Talk to me, please...."

She seemed to find this very annoying.  "Mulder, just give me the same
respect I give you; don't pressure me to talk about something I obviously
don't want to discuss."

"What are you talking about?"  He was feeling too many feelings at once;
they were all starting to swirl and mix together in his head.

"Just let it go, forget about it."  He was damned if he was going to let it
drop that easily though.  He reached over and turned the CD player back on,
hitting the forward button till he came to Rhyme and Reason again. The
unhappy music floated out and lay heavily between them.

"What are you doing, Mulder?"  Her head was switching from the road to his
face rapidly.

"Letting it go."

"You damn, selfish...," she mumbled toward the floor as she leant over and
ejected the CD.  Without giving him a chance to comment, she rolled her
window down and threw the CD out.

Before he could turn back to the front from having watched one of his
favorite CDs bounce out onto the road and roll into the wet grass at the
side, she was demanding that he hand her her bag from the back seat.

Furious, he couldn't think of a suitable way to say no without losing his
cool. As he handed it to her with shaking hands, she pulled the car onto the
side of the road.

He watched as she first got a Kleenex from a small travel pack and wiped her
eyes and nose, then as she dug through the bag.  As she unabashedly rifled
through underclothes and other things he wished he hadn't seen, he let his
gaze slip past her to the scene out her window.  He tried to regain his
composure as he stared at a pasture filled with grazing cattle, all turned
the same direction.  He made himself ponder over the whys and wherefores of
this conundrum to keep his mind off of the ire lurking not far below the
depression he was feeling.

She finally zipped the bag up and practically threw it back at him to put
back in the back seat.  As he tossed it back none too gently, the car was
filled with classical music, piano.  He sent what he hoped was a questioning
glance her way as she put the car into gear.

"It's my turn to hog the CD player," and another arch of that infernal
eyebrow were all the response he got.

"I can't believe you just did that," the anger fairly oozed out now.  She
barely glanced his way, and he could see the anger seeping out of her too.

He knew he needed to shut up before the situation deteriorated any further.

"Shut up, Mulder," she growled at him as the car gained speed.  Apparently
she didn't care about deteriorating situations.

"Now that's mature."  He couldn't help himself; he was a smart-ass, after
all.

"You asshole!  Just shut up before I get my gun out!"  He suddenly had the
craziest thought, of the way a frying pan smelled when left on a hot stove
for too long with nothing in it. He knew that if he could get close enough
to Scully, she'd smell just like that.

"How long has it been since you took the bureau's psychological tests?  I
think you may be unstable, unhinged, a danger to yourself and others...," he
said, instead of the things he should be saying, like that he didn't want
her to respect his privacy.

"You are the most insufferable, selfish, stupid bastard I've ever met!
Don't say another word or I swear to God...."

"You'll what?  You'll hit me?  Or maybe kick me?  I'm not scared of you,
Scully. And you're either gonna go back and find my CD or you're gonna buy
me a new one."  He had to look at the horizon at that point, he was
beginning to feel a little bit carsick. Before he could get his eyes focused
on the hills in the distance, there was a gun shoved up against his nose.

"What are you doing, Scully?"  He asked in a calm tone that belied his heart
rate, which had just jumped up a couple of digits.  Not because of the gun,
or even the motion sickness he'd been feeling though; it was because he had
finally gotten a glimpse of what was going on in her mind.
He had found one of his holy grails--a look into Scully's psyche.  As much
as he'd educated himself, as much as he'd put that education into practice
profiling criminals and the like, he'd never been able to tell what his best
friend was thinking. Until now, until her actions had somehow tuned him in
to the right frequency and she'd come in, loud and clear.

"I'm shutting you up, Mulder," she replied in an even voice that rivaled
his.  She thought he was suicidal.  Now her earlier comment about him not
wanting to talk made sense. She thought he was freakin' suicidal!  She
really was worried about him!

Something he supposed could only be wonder washed over him in waves, as he
sat there with his partner and best friend's gun shoved up against his nose.

He felt like a little kid trying a new candy for the first time.  It was the
same ingredients as used in many other candies, but it was in a different
combination now, and it was going to take some getting used to.

"So do it already."  He knew he was pushing her, but he felt like he really
needed to for some reason, call it gut reaction, instinct, lack of anything
better to do.  It didn't matter.

"Shut up, Mulder, or your gigantic nose isn't going to be a problem for you
anymore."  The cold metal rammed up against said nose was beginning to get
warm from the contact with his skin.  He thanked the God he told himself he
didn't believe in for the seemingly unrelated things his mind connected
sometimes, and also for the red-haired, red-faced furious woman who
presently had her gun in his face.  He thought about the way she would
caress his face sometimes when she thought he was asleep.  The way she let
him tell her his crazy theories even though odds were a million to one in
favor of the fact that she was going to think he was nuts and shoot those
theories full of holes.

"You don't really expect me to think you'll do it, do you Scully?"  His gut
was telling him to keep going, to let her know he could read her mind,
though it seemed to his brain to be the stupid thing to do.  "That's what
you're worried about after all, isn't it?  That I'm gonna do it myself?
Don't you know me any better than that?"

Maybe that was pushing it too far, he thought, as she chambered a round in
the gun.  He didn't flinch, he couldn't. He was too busy staring into her
eyes.  He was in his element now, he tried to remind himself.  He'd finally
gotten inside her head.  It had taken nearly eight years and a gun, but he'd
figured her out.

She was now slowing the car, preparing to pull onto the shoulder once more.
He watched her glance back and forth between him and the road as she brought
the car to a stop. The classical piano seemed to thunder out of the speakers
without the noise of the road to hinder its progress.  She was now looking
at him constantly, the look on her face a mixture of defeat, fear and anger.

Her breathing was erratic and fast, while his own was necessarily calm and
steady.
He may have found what made her tick, but that didn't keep her from
surprising him when she spoke.  "Damn you to hell."
Her face became redder as she went to work emptying her gun of all its
ammunition, her gaze never leaving his.  Next she rolled her window down and
threw the gun out, where it hit the pavement with a distant metallic
'clack'.  He let his eyes move from hers for a split second to look at the
window the gun had just exited through, now the entrance for pelting rain.

When he looked back, there were tears threatening to spill out of her eyes.

He sat still, transfixed for a few minutes before he started crying as well.

As the music reached a turbulent crescendo, she lurched towards him.  For
one crazy moment he thought she was going to kiss him, but she grabbed his
jacket and pulled it away from his body, revealing his own gun.  She grabbed
it and removed the ammunition, then flung it out the window to hit against
hers with another, more interesting 'clack'.
He thought she was done but, ever thorough, she moved to his right leg,
lifting it up to the car seat, where she pushed his pants back to reveal his
second gun.  She made quick work of it, finally settling into her seat with
her back to him as it flew out the window to join the others.

"And you whine about me losing guns."  She was probably wishing she had shot
him now, but he couldn't take the tension anymore.  A small chuckle escaped
her as she looked down at her hands in her lap.

He had a terrible urge to just throw his arms around her, which he did
before he had too much of a chance to talk himself out of it.  Holding her
against his chest so tightly that he was afraid he was hurting her, he tried
to translate all his cluttered emotions into this action.  He willed his
arms to make her feel the words he couldn't voice around the lump in his
throat, and he felt the anger leave her body almost instantly.  His thoughts
seemed to unwrinkle and straighten themselves out before him, smoother than
the new pavement they were parked on.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, so quietly he barely heard her.

"You're sorry?  What on earth could you possibly have to apologize for?" he
asked, honestly incredulous.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe shoving a loaded gun in your face for starters."

She was crying again; her tears were splashing warmly onto his hand where it
was clutching her.

"Oh, that.  I thought you were gonna apologize for calling my nose
gigantic."  She laughed through her tears.  "Don't worry about it, I
deserved it," he hoped his voice sounded as casual as the words he spoke.

She spun out of his grasp to face him, both of them kneeling in their seats.
"Don't you say that, don't you dare!"

"Why?  I did, I've been a total asshole all day--even more so than usual."

"That's still no excuse for the way I overreacted.  Shut up and let me
finish my apology so you can get started on yours." A friendly smile shone
through her tears, so he nodded slightly and took her back into his arms
when she leaned toward him slightly.

He let out a sigh as he held her, easing them down into the seats.  He
hadn't thought about how wrong it was to mess with her mind, hadn't known it
would hurt her.  He hadn't known it would hurt him, too, for that matter.

He leaned back out of their embrace and looked her in the eyes as he wiped
at some of the tears on her cheeks.  This caused her to give him one of the
closed-mouth smiles that always felt like a million paper cuts to his heart.

He could see too many of them with his mind's eye; in the hospital after
Penny Northern died, after the 'closure' of the John Lee Roche case.  He
wanted that smile to go away, to be replaced by a *real* smile that started
at her heart and worked its way out through her lips.  He stared the sad
smile away, and set to work on what his heart desired.

As he pressed his lips against hers for just the second time ever, he felt
the beginnings of what he sought, down deep in both of them.  Colors he'd
only seen in his dreams tossed and whorled around behind his closed eyes,
cascading throughout his consciousness, sensing her, tasting her, calling to
her. She answered, kissing him back.

Of its own accord, the kiss lasted longer than he would have intended if
he'd thought about it before acting upon the urge. When he opened his eyes
after it was over, hers were still closed, and her cheeks were glowing in a
way he rarely got a chance to see.  He stroked her face, and her eyes slowly
opened to meet his.

"We'd better get moving, Mulder," she whispered, as she disentangled herself
from his arms.  As she turned in her seat to open the door and retrieve
their guns, he was nearly felled by an almost painful wave of love for her.
It made him think of getting an ice cream-headache--unbelievable pain
concentrated into a tiny area, but made worthwhile by the heavenly, creamy
taste of the ice cream.

They were both quiet as they got situated in their respective seats, but he
felt it was an agreeable silence, comfortable and pressureless.  They'd
always had the ability to not need speech for long periods of time, which
some partners, friends, and even couples weren't lucky enough to have.  As
he took the guns, cold and wet from their time on the road and dropped them
into a back floorboard, he knew he was a terribly lucky man.

Before she put the car into drive, she took the classical CD out of the
player and, with a look full of guilt and humor, handed it to him to do with
as he pleased.  He thought about tossing it out the window to keep his Dave
Matthews Band company, but only for as long as it took her to get the car
moving.  By then he'd realized that they had shared their first real kiss to
the music on the CD, and he was just sappy and sentimental enough to want it
for that reason. So, as she watched interestedly, he stuck it in his own bag
in the back seat.

She finally smiled the real smile he'd craved, and the gray day was gone,
replaced by twilight.  The trees weren't bare anymore; in fact they seemed
lit from within, their tiny, new leaves glowing in the half-light.  The
world was alive with spring, not dead with winter, and he was in love.

*****
Blatant reminder:  jemirah@charter.net
*****
Website:  http://webpages.charter.net/jemirah/
*****