TITLE:      Temporary Insanity 
AUTHOR:     David Stoddard-Hunt
CATEGORY:   S, A
KEYWORDS:   M/S, S1, challenge fic 
EPISODES:   Deep Throat, Pilot
RATING:     NC-17 (though, strangely, no deep-
            Throating *or* piloting herein)
SUMMARY:    The only benefits on a temp job are those
            you create.
DISCLAIMER: Didn't create, don't own or profit from
            'em.
FEEDBACK:   dmstoddardhunt@yahoo.com
WEBSITES:   http://www.iwtbxf.com/paige 
NOTES:      This is the last entry to wheeze over 
            the finish line in Fandomonium's 
            Season 1 smut challenge. (Smut in S1.2? 
            Now that's a challenge!) Thanks to my 
            own personal smut biscuit, without
            whom this would never have been 
            completed.

5:30 P.M.
M Street, Georgetown 
Washington, D.C.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. A mother's mantra,
meant solely for the betterment of the children. It was 
her mother's mantra, more to the point, and it fit
Scully like old, hand-me-down jeans, broken in and
comfortable, yet not quite her own. She'd heard it so
often throughout her life that, now, when Maggie's voice 
echoed through her thoughts, the advice seemed more 
comforting than sound. It gave her a sense of daring 
and devil-may-care, that much was true. It also left her 
skin prickling with dread.

She'd concocted an outrageous plan - that was the
"venture." And the gain? Could prove quite satisfying,
thank you very much. The mere fact that she was
considering such a thing made her proud. Something
outrageous? Darned proud! Yet without action, a plan,
any plan - outrageous or otherwise - is nothing but
empty words. And Scully knew that she had yet to carry
hers through.

Give her some credit; she'd already set the first few
steps in motion. She was here, wasn't she? Parked just
down the street from the bar where they'd met to discuss 
the Buddahas case. That was something. Wasn't it?

Sure, a sour voice within replied, that was something, 
all right. So, why had she left the engine running? Oh, 
yes, indeedy. Truly something, boy, you bet.

Scully sighed. Well, poo! If she was to marshal the brass 
to pull this off, her practical side would have to take 
a hike.

The hardest part, the most outrageous, the most frightening 
by far, was yet to come. "Run! Run, while you still have 
the chance!" That sour, little voice was getting agitated. 
Still, Scully couldn't help but feel that, if she didn't at 
least give this thing a shot, she'd end up regretting it. 
So. Squelch the doubts, damn the torpedoes, now or never, 
nothing ventured, yadda, yadda. 

Right. Easy for you to say, Mom.

Slouched behind the wheel of a boxy little hatchback - her 
med school wheels - lying in wait for her quarry, Scully 
studied every permutation of the plan, assessing each 
possible outcome, good, bad or indifferent. If he failed to 
show, for instance, she'd see him at the office tomorrow and 
for whatever number of days left in her assignment after that, 
and not a word would be spoken about this evening, she was 
sure. That wasn't too bad a result.

And what if he did show, and things worked out exactly as 
she'd planned? Not too bad, either. Oh, on a professional 
level, she imagined, things at the office might be rather 
strained. But, in quite another, more personal sense, she 
hoped things might become broken in and comfortable, if still 
not quite hers. She could live with that, Scully thought. 
Sure, she could live with that.

But. What if he showed, and things went badly? Or, worse! 
What if things went all too well and her plan took on a 
life of its own, outstripping her limited objective and 
rocketing them into a great, emotional unknown? No!

That would not happen. It couldn't be allowed to happen. 
Scully would not permit it. She was her father's daughter 
- sure in her iron will and self-discipline - and strong 
enough to control the direction of her own heart.  

As for Mulder? Well, as single minded as she already knew 
him to be, Scully surmised, the whims of his heart wouldn't 
even be a variable.

Not that any of this mattered. Her plan came with a "one 
time only" disclaimer, voiding all terms and conditions that 
would normally encumber an "office romance." This was a one-off. 
Maybe two-off, or even three, if he was good and she were lucky.

Scully checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror and leaned 
part-way out the window to survey the approaches to the bar. 
No Mulder. Darn it! She'd been waiting for almost forty-five 
minutes already, and was beginning to regret arriving early. 
But, that was necessary, she reminded herself, if she wanted to 
be able to appear, oh so casually, just after he did. She hadn't 
counted on the stress, though, of waiting for someone who might 
not show.

She made a production of checking her lipstick once more in 
the driver's side mirror before ducking back in, only later 
wondering whom it was she thought might be watching and whether 
they'd been fooled by her little pantomime. 

No, she decided, she'd been right to do things this way. 
Preparation was the key. She glanced back at her new suit 
jacket, still hanging in its bag from Hecht's. Jacket or 
blouse tonight, she hadn't decided. Probably wouldn't, until 
she'd seen how Mulder was dressed. No jeans, though, no matter 
what. Slacks. Scully was willing to take a stab at being 
someone she wasn't, but only to a point. No jeans.
 
******************************

Clothes had been a stressor since the moment she'd stepped 
over the rim of her old, claw-foot tub, careful to stand 
square in the middle of the bathmat, surveying the room while 
she patted dry with a plush warm towel. All around, wherever 
she looked, were tokens of the woman she'd been until now. 
Every last one seemed, well, look, there just wasn't another 
word for it - alien.

Draped over the back of the commode, a pink and white 
chenille robe, pilling in places but cozy, dutifully replaced 
every couple of years by its exact duplicate. Hanging from a 
metal hook on the back of the door, her outfit for the day - 
a taupe, wool suit, sturdy, form obscuring, and unimpeachably 
professional. Even the image in the mirror, the peaches and 
cream skin Missy had always envied, the body, slightly chubby 
for its frame - you'll grow into it, her mother had promised, 
though Scully never had - but gutsy enough to have passed the 
rigors of the Academy when many of her male colleagues had not. 
None of this, somehow, not even the reflection in the mirror, 
felt like her any longer. At least, not today.

Don't be absurd, she'd whispered into the steam. The very 
idea! That, somehow, one month into a temporary assignment 
to the basement, she would discard twenty-nine years of 
living a certain way, according to solid, unshakeable 
principles, and become a "new" woman overnight. Crazy? You 
bet. Certifiable. And, yet?

Today, she felt distinctly out of place among her familiar 
surroundings. The boxy, wool suit? Suddenly, it wasn't to her 
taste, whatever that was now. The chenille robe? She was seized 
with the impulse to throw the old thing out, which wasn't truly 
as rash as it might seem, since she was due for a new one at 
Christmas. Idly, Scully wondered which brother her mother would 
attribute the gift to this year. 

Throwing out perfectly serviceable clothes? What in Heaven's 
Name did she think she was doing? An ingrained taboo against 
precipitous action set off warning bells: she was throwing 
caution to the wind. "No way for a sailor to behave, Starbuck."
Oh, boy, Dad, was that ever true. Scully knew that for a fact. 
Then, why? Why was she behaving this way?

Temporary insanity, it must be, in the most literal sense. 
The temporary nature of this assignment was causing her to 
think and act in ways she normally wouldn't. But maybe, she'd 
thought, wiping the steamed mirror and staring into her 
reflection, just maybe, that wasn't such a bad thing, after all. 
For one thing, the only real benefits to a temp job were the 
ones you created through initiative, the ones you reached out 
and took. Yes! That's all this was. Just augmenting her 
benefits package.

The plan, such as it was, had come together in bits and 
pieces during the day. Rather than emerging as a 
well-constructed whole, the scheme had been borne of a 
series of happy accidents to which, in retrospect, she would 
look back and say gladly of each one, yes, I meant to do that. 
She would never admit, for example, that her bold stroke had 
sprung from a random choice of underwear that morning, though, 
in truth, it had. Her nicest, laciest set. Simply putting 
them on had made her feel extraordinary, as if the day itself 
was somehow unusual, a holiday or an occasion of note. 
Unfortunately, there was a downside to this little euphoria. 
From the moment she'd set foot outside the bath, it had made 
every one of her usual set of choices to follow seem dowdy.

*********************************

5:55 P.M.
M Street, Georgetown
Washington, D.C. 

Temporary insanity.

Damn it! She was a rational being, trained to a systematic, 
regimented approach to life. Why was she giving in to this 
feeling, willingly to this, this impulse? The question had 
dogged her on the way to work, and nipped at her heels 
throughout the day. What was it that was goading her into 
such uncharacteristic behavior? Was it truly that she was 
just a temp on a meaningless job, or was it something more? 
Someone more?

Mulder. No way. Couldn't be. She'd never met anyone more 
infuriating in all her life, self-absorbed and self-involved. 
Not even Tommy Colton back at the Academy, and that was saying 
something. More importantly, for whatever length of time the 
Bureau higher-ups allotted, he was her partner. For crying out 
loud, her partner! And yet, here she was, considering his 
seduction. Her mother surely had a mantra for this situation, 
too. Whatever that was, Scully knew it would be anything but 
broken in or comfortable.

Her partner? It was bad enough between co-workers in a 
civilian job, as several of her girlfriends could readily 
attest. Wrenching between teacher and student, as she could, 
but would never attest. But, between partners who might have 
to stand together in the line of fire? That was an order of 
magnitude of difference. What could possibly balance out the 
weight of that insanity? 

He'd triggered a protective response in her quite early on, 
in the motel in Bellefleur, a feeling that had not only 
persisted, but had strengthened even further after he'd been 
taken into custody in Idaho, at the air force base that wasn't 
on the map, any map. But, that was just empathy, wasn't it? 
It was putting into practice that which she'd been taught 
every Sunday of her life, showing charity and compassion for 
another human being. Mulder, too, was trying to make the world 
a better place, albeit in his own unique way. And, say what you 
will about his devotion to the X-files, Mulder was an invaluable 
asset to the Bureau when his talents were put to proper use. He 
was a dedicated agent, he was her partner, and partners looked 
out for each other. That should have been the end of the story. 
However, for better of for worse, there was more. She sighed. 
There was always more.

Okay, she was willing to admit - he wasn't bad looking. Oh, 
man, that was a laugh. She might as well just say it! Mulder 
was eye-candy. He was everything the whispers in the third 
floor ladies' lounge claimed. And, while that wasn't a rule-out 
for her by any means, Scully needed more than just mouth-watering 
good looks to goad her into putting the moves on a guy. 

Mouth-watering. Hmm. What would he taste like, a stray thought 
wondered? Scully shifted in her seat, tugging fussily at her 
slacks, and tried to re-focus on the scientific investigation 
at hand, without success. She smiled and glanced down M Street 
one more time.

**********************************

Earlier that day
An office just below street level
935 Pennsylvania Avenue
The Last Bastion of Taxation Without Representation

At Noon, she got up and left. Mulder seemed genuinely 
surprised by her unannounced departure, but delved no 
further into her motives than to ask whether she was 
feeling all right. For this, on several levels, she was 
grateful. Had he asked point-blank why she was leaving, 
Scully wouldn't have known how to respond. For some reason, 
though they'd practically just met, she felt incapable of 
lying to him, and knew deep down that trait was reciprocal. 
The truth, however, was equally inexplicable. Truth was, her 
taupe suit had suddenly grown too frumpy to bear.

Freed from concern by her assurances of good health, Mulder 
raised a token protest, citing a pressing matter they'd just 
received, something about a girl who'd fallen asleep under a 
haunted live oak in a Savannah cemetery, only to awaken with 
"an acorn growing in her garden." And, for a moment, 
something, whether it was Mulder's earnest expression or the 
sheer goofiness of the case, stopped her in her tracks. In 
the end, she just smiled benignly, gathered her papers and 
rose to go, saying over her shoulder that it was funny, but 
each new case they received sounded like a headline in the 
Weekly World News.

As she waited for the elevator, reviewing her remark for 
content, it didn't seem quite so funny after all. 
Embarrassed by her own tactlessness, she went back and, 
without waiting for him to look up, asked whether he'd like 
to meet after work that evening. If her offer surprised him, 
he didn't show it. It had surprised the heck out of Scully, 
that was for sure. Upon later review, she pronounced herself 
pleased with the delicacy of her phrasing: the steadfastly 
neutral 'catching a bite to eat,' rather than going 'out to 
dinner,' which seemed too formal and too close to a date, and 
far better than going 'out for drinks,' which was too louche -
a bald excuse to lose sight of one's own morals for a time - 
and way too close to the truth.

Maybe, she'd amended, they could go back to that place in 
Georgetown, the one with his men's room informant. For the 
longest time, he just stared, neither in approval or reproof. 
Just stared. It made her so uncomfortable that she was on the 
verge of rescinding the whole kit and caboodle. His reply, 
when it finally came, was a single word. Okay. With that, 
the die was cast.

This time when she left, it was Mulder who fired the parting 
shot. The bar they'd had lunch in, he cautioned, was, how to 
put this, different at night. "Different?" Yes. Funkier.

************************************

6:05 P.M. 
M Street, Georgetown
Washington, D.C.

Funky must have a different meaning in Georgetown than 
elsewhere, she mused. The facade of the place seemed quite 
typical, brick with black shutters, faux gas lamps and a 
discreet striped awning over the door, neat, elegant and 
staid. Perhaps the crowd beginning to gather out front gave 
a clue to his meaning. Men, casually - one might be tempted 
to say 'gaudily' - dressed, milling about, each warily 
eyeing the others, like a pride full of alpha lions sizing 
each other up for the kill. 

There was something familiar about this. What was it? Oh, 
Lord, no. She wasn't going to be fending off offers of drinks 
and telephone numbers all night, at the same time she was 
trying to dial Mulder's number, was she? No. No, wait. That 
wasn't it. 

In hindsight, it was the lack of an Indian Chief that had 
thrown her off. When she finally figured it out, she started 
laughing helplessly. Several people stopped to stare; one even 
stopped to offer assistance.

"The Village People!" she said, pointing. The Good Samaritan 
evidently didn't share her sense of humor, and walked off 
toward the bar, shaking his head. After a momentary twinge of 
embarrassment, Scully was washed over with relief. Oh, it 
was *that* kind of bar. That's what he meant by "funky," 
Mulder, when he said this place was "funkier" at night. 
Oh. Relief was only temporary, however. Her mood 
seemed to be shifting from moment to moment.

Oh! Oh, no. Mulder. Somehow, he'd known about this bar's 
nighttime clientele. That didn't mean that he? No! Couldn't 
be, could he? He certainly knew how to dress, if that was 
any indication. If he *was,* then she was going to be waiting 
an awfully long time for her date to show. He wasn't, she 
reasoned. Couldn't be, because she would know. Heck, she'd known 
about Charles before he'd known, himself. So, she concluded, if 
Mulder were, you know, she would know. She was almost certain.

Tired, suddenly, of the company she was keeping alone in her 
little car, Scully got out, determined to brave the bar crowd 
and herd Mulder off somewhere else. She cast a glance at the 
muscular bodies parading in front of the door, seeing them 
for the first time not as potential nuisances, but as rivals.

She looked down and straightened her clothes. After a glance 
at her competition, she undid another button on her blouse. 
That oughta do the trick. She felt flushed and chilled at 
once, pulled her new jacket out of the back and threw 
it over her shoulders. She could always take it off, give 
him an eyeful later. If she was his cup of tea, that is.

At the front door, a disco-era gauntlet tossed comments in 
front of her like so many stun grenades. She wasn't in Kansas 
anymore, Toto. She might be here looking for Mr. Right, honey, 
but so was Mr. Right. 

Finally, just before the doorway, a feminine, southern drawl, 
whose tones clung to Scully like honey, The voice emanated, 
incongruously, from a 6' 2", 250 lb. frame, whose blue-black 
beard stubble was barely hidden by foundation makeup. "Girl! 
I wish I had your skin."  I'll bet, Scully thought, but just 
smiled as she pushed her way past, through and into the smoke.

She found Mulder, huddled at the far end of the bar, not 
looking left, right or straight ahead, but staring intently 
down into the glass in front of him. She was overjoyed at his 
obvious discomfort. He smiled and shook his head at her 
proffered apologies. Not necessary. Would you like to go 
someplace else? Yes, please.

*************************************

9:30 P.M.
An F.B.I. safe house
Washington, D.C. NW

It wasn't bad, for a safe house. She hadn't seen all that 
much of it yet, but she liked the light - a soft blue-white 
- and the quiet neighborhood. Comfortable. Yes, she could be 
comfortable here, very. Well, except for the doorknob 
pressing into the small of her back, she'd have to do 
something about that, eventually. The softness of his lips 
on her neck was certainly helping with that. Oh, God, 
helping quite a lot.

Good thing Mulder had known about this place, even if his 
breaking and entering skills had been required to get them 
inside. Actually, until now, only his breaking skills had 
been involved. She hoped his entering technique would be on 
prominent display at any moment.

His hands were surprisingly gentle, for as big as she 
remembered them. He seemed to be having trouble with the 
buttons on her new jacket, though he might just be taking 
extra care because she'd told him it was new. She'd have to 
speak to him about that. There was a time for gentle and a 
time for, oh, she wished he'd hurry it up with the 
preliminaries, already. She shouldn't have mentioned the 
darned thing in the first place. But, what else could she 
have done? He'd taken special notice of it, after all.

Yes, it was new, and thanks, Scully had told him, she liked 
it, too. Was Donna Karan one of her favorites? Hmm? Yes, 
well. She was now, at any rate. 

She'd bristled when he said black was her color. He'd 
meant well, she supposed, but had inadvertently echoed 
the snot-nosed sentiments of the sales girl at Hecht's. 

The Karan was quite a step up from her usual, wasn't it? 
The 6, yes, it was a bit of a stretch for her figure. 
Perhaps they should look at something a size up? Still, 
not to worry; black was quite slimming. 

Attitude, from a sales clerk at Hecht's? For crying out 
loud, it wasn't like she was shopping at Neiman's or 
Bendel's, or even Ann Taylor! She'd told him the whole 
sordid tale, shaking her head throughout, over a procession 
of beers. All he meant, he'd told her at last, was that she 
looked good in black. Really good, he'd whispered.

He'd fumbled too long with her top button, and she'd rushed 
in to do the next one for him, her jacket falling open 
obediently to either side. She felt the warmth of his palm 
through her blouse, and the pressure of his fingertips burrowing 
under the hem of her slacks. Under the hem of her... oh. His 
fingers stopped just short, bunching the hem of the shirttail, 
pulling it free of her pants. This time, however, when she tried 
to assist him with the button at the top of her slacks, she 
proved as much of a hindrance as help. 

Following the tale of the snotty salesgirl, he'd matched her 
story for story, each one light and airy, charming but hardly 
intimate. All the while, she'd matched him beer for beer, 
barely leavened with bar food that grew cold the more the 
alcohol loosened their tongues. 

Mulder launched into a discursive narrative of how he'd come 
to lose his virginity to a girl named Mary, holding Scully 
rapt in the details, but turning the story on its head in the 
end, plucking a stemmed red globe from a cupful on the bar for 
emphasis in delivering the punch line. And that, he'd told 
Scully with a special relish, is how I took Mary Chino's 
cherry. It was entirely too corny, and utterly delightful.

His fingers were much nimbler with the small, pearl buttons 
of her blouse, undoing the bottom-most with a deft flick and 
proceeding slowly upward, the back of his hand burning a trail 
against her skin along the way. She tried to hurry him on, to 
help rip the buttons from their placket, but he wouldn't be 
rushed. He twined his fingers with hers, pressing her hand to 
the wall beside. Scully felt the cool air sharp against the 
heat of her exposed skin.

As the buttons fell away, he seemed to find new places to 
kiss - her throat, her chin, just beneath her ear, each one 
immediately becoming her favorite place to be kissed.  A sharp 
nip at the base of her throat, surpassed momentarily by a 
gentle tug on her earlobe, trumped the instant after by 
searing kisses rising up the soft skin of her nape. When 
the last button of her blouse came undone, his hand came to 
rest gently between her breasts, atop the clasp of her bra.

She'd tried to match his story with something equally witty, 
but could only remember a joke one of her brothers had told 
at Thanksgiving last, some shaggy dog story about the marriage 
of a Russian and an Eskimo. She and the brother's significant 
other had been the only ones to laugh, so, naturally, she had 
trouble remembering the tale now. It didn't matter. Mulder had 
either heard it before or had figured out the punch line in 
advance, but she was beyond caring. She allowed him to shepherd 
her through to the desired conclusion. "Nakhimova-Middlefeather?" 
Nah, he was pretty big. Or something to that effect, she 
couldn't remember. He'd laughed anyway, she'd never forget 
that, staring with fascination directly into her eyes.

She ached for him to master the clasp. C'mon, get moving, 
unhinge! Instead, he reached up and slipped the strap gently 
over her shoulder and down her arm. A lace cup fell away from 
her body. Strangely, Scully felt anything but exposed. She 
willed his kisses downward, her body arcing at the first touch 
of his lips on her breast.

She'd enjoyed their conversation far too much for the sake of 
the plan's success. If her buzz had begun to wear off, then 
surely his had, also. But, she hadn't enjoyed anything quite so 
much in a long, long time; that was the surprising thing. And, 
she'd gotten the feeling that the same was true for him. 

Perhaps inevitably, the conversation had turned serious for a 
time. The blame for the change of mood was hers - she'd 
recounted Paul Mossinger's warning, that the extraordinary, 
extra-legal actions of the men at the base in Idaho were equal 
to that which they were protecting, how that warning had made 
her intensely fearful for his safety, and fiercely determined 
to see him returned unharmed. She scolded Mulder for the risk 
he'd taken, not in penetrating the base perimeter, but in 
doing it alone. He'd held her gaze for a long time, then had 
made a joke about such escort duty being far outside her job 
description as his nanny. Spy, she'd corrected him with a 
smile, receiving one of his in return.

Oh, sweet, just looking down at his mouth caressing her 
nipple, Sweet Jesus, made the thrill rocket through her 
in all directions. When his fingers unclasped from hers, she 
nearly cried out in protest, but realized quickly that other 
delights were at hand. At the thought, a fullness swelled up, 
growing, God, blossoming out as he cupped her, ebbing when he 
moved his hand away, rising again with the touch of his 
fingertips inching down her belly, slipping down, between, 
inside, oh, inside, JesusMaryandJoseph, save her.

She sought him out, tentative only for a moment, then 
feverish, finding him thick, straining beneath the rough 
denim of his jeans. Yearning for her, the thought coursed 
like a thunderbolt through her thoughts. For her, yearning! 
Mulder, for her. A clutch of her hand around him, and Mulder 
rocked back as if shot, his expression a mix of disbelief 
and sorrow.

At first, Scully thought she'd hurt him, squeezed too hard or 
in the wrong way. But then he put such simple notions to rest, 
asking the question she'd least expected of him, and for which 
she was least prepared. Why? Why was she doing this? Not, she 
realized, for whom or at whose direction was she doing this. He 
wanted something more basic from her, more personal.

Scully had no prepared "truth" to give up, as she'd been taught 
to do at Quantico, in order to throw an interrogator off the 
scent. Nor did she have the will to create a "legend," to be 
peeled away layer on layer until the questioner was convinced 
he'd uncovered every last secret. Not for this inquisitor, not 
for Mulder.  She threw her head back against the door, fraught 
with recrimination. Tears seeped from beneath her tight-shut 
eyelids, from embarrassment as much as pain, and her story,
her real story, came pouring forth.

She couldn't give them what they'd asked. Nor, moreover, did 
she want to. Mossinger, Blevins, that other, quiet one - the 
Smoker - they all believed that the ends justified their 
actions, and that, in this purpose, they were unassailable, 
outside the law.  Men like those wouldn't hesitate to silence 
someone who happened to get in their way. Scully had seen 
this for her own eyes. They wouldn't hesitate to eliminate 
someone like that, someone like Mulder. She would not be 
party to such things. 

Sooner or later, they were going to notice that she wasn't 
giving them the rope they needed to hang him. And then they'd 
shuffle her away, from whatever it was they were trying to keep 
hidden, from the X-Files, from Mulder. She couldn't give them 
what they wanted, therefore it was just a matter of time before 
they took her off the assignment, away from him.

It took a few seconds to blink away the tears before she could 
see clearly again. Her truth, her innermost fear unburdened, 
she looked up, in trepidation at its reception. She needn't have
worried. His hand touched her cheek and warmed her soul. His 
words seared her heart.

Yes, she said in reply, yes, as much as she wanted this - 
looking down at her own disheveled state, she began to laugh -  
the search for the truth was more important to her, the 
partnership, their partnership was more important. Insanity? 
Hardly. She'd never seen anything so clearly in her life.

And, yes, she agreed, for this, there would always be 
time later.

-end-