Message-ID: <3585A9D1.67CA@wmcstations.com> Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 23:10:28 +0000 From: Lyle Bontrager Reply-To: lbontger@wmcstations.com X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Macintosh; I; PPC) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: fishies@onelist.com Subject: The Way V: Monday and Tuesday Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Title: The Way V: Monday and Tuesday Author: RocketMan >lbontger@wmcstations.com< see part one for other Monday ===== "And now I will show you the most excellent way." --1 Corinthians 12:31 "You give it all, but I want more." --U2, "With or Without You" ===== He woke and sat up groggily, rubbing his eyes. Scully was on the other side of the bed with her arms tucked neatly against her body and her head tilted toward him. He resisted the impulse to give her a kiss and strode to the bathroom to shower. ~~~~~ He came in the room just as she was stepping out of the shower, a towel tucked loosely around her body and her hair wet and dripping. He held out the bag of McDonalds wordlessly, gaping at her. She frowned and scooped up the clothes she'd left on the bed and stalked back into the bathroom. He sat down heavily in the chair and closed his eyes with a tiny groan. ~~~~~ She had brushed her hair into a pony tail, pulled on jeans and a navy blue, cotton knit, short-sleeved shirt for their stakeout. She looked young. Like he remembered from their very first years together. Only this time, she packed the car knowing precisely what would happen and how to be. She had none of the anxious, nervous energy of their early years, none of the need to impress him anymore. He was impressed already. She came back inside just as he was finishing cleaning his gun and her mouth quirked in a smile, remembering herself. "I brought iced tea, Mulder." He smiled at her and shook his head. "It doesn't work now." She gave him a raised eyebrow and snapped. "Aw, shucks." He glanced at their room one more time before rising to take her hand. She squeezed his and looked at him with curiousity. He tried to smile for her but it fell. "Whatever we find in there, Scully, I need you to know that I'm right here. I'm right here." She nodded. "I know that Mulder. You've never let me down." ~~~~~ Tuesday ~~~~~ "Must be a Saturn," she murmured, the binoculars trained on the one of many cars that pulled into Sunnyside's lot in the last hour. At eight o'clock in the morning, people were bringing their kids in to day care with hassled looks that made him never want to have a desk job, or whiny brats. "I heard an interesting theory about that company." "Hunh? Oh, there goes a Nissan." "I heard that they're government owned, built in an effort to keep down the foregin competitors and win back this nation's car economy." "Saturn? You really believe that?" "Maybe." A sunflower seed crunched in his teeth and he sucked the middle from it, licking his lips of salt. She shook her head, still gazing at the cars pulling in and out. "I think that's paranoid." "So? Doesn't mean it's not true." He pulled up from his slouched position in the front seat and looked out at the woods concealing their car. The rental he had picked was black, painted with the cheap paint that did not shine in the light. He looked out at the day care center. He was pretty certian it was a front. "Have you seen those boys yet? Any kids that might resemble the boys we saw that night?" "Not yet. I never did get a good look at all of them. But the one that was left out by himself as the others were taken in, I did get a good long look at him." "Yeah, he curled up in the dirt and fell asleep." "No. He wasn't asleep." "He wasn't? What was he doing then? Staring off into space?" She glanced at him quickly. "Yes." He sighed and cracked another sunflower seed in his mouth. She sighed and handed the binoculars over to him, making him fumble them as she passed them off. He looked out the window, then back down to her, where she was searching in the glove compartment. Triumphantly, she pulled out some gum and handed it to him. "Here." "Is this a hint, Scully? My breath offending you?" "No. But your seeds are getting on my nerves. I'm giving you something else for your mouth to do." "I could think of some other things for my mouth you could give me." She raised an eyebrow and simply stared at him until he turned back to watching the arrivals, cowled. ~~~~~ "Okay," he said softly, as crickets clambered for attention in the dark night. "We've got Moe rounding the building on the east side, and Curly rounding the west side. I still don't see the third stooge anywhere." She nodded and resumed watching the trees sway darkly overhead, their branches casting even more shadows on them. He was getting antsy next to her, fiddling with everything. "Do you want to go in now, Mulder?" she asked. He sighed."Yes, it seems like it'd be a great opportunity, with Larry not here." "But?" "But it feels wrong. It feels very wrong." "What do you mean?" He started the engine suddenly, making her jerk up and slam her seat belt on as he took the brake off. "I mean, I want us out of here now. I think they're trying to make us fall for their bait." ~~~~~ He was lying on her bed, watching television with one eye and her with the other as he chomped his seeds again. She wondered idly if it was an invitation. "Why'd you leave like that, Mulder?" He moved on the bed and she came to sit on the edge, scooting up against the headboard. "I don't know. It was like things got too quiet. It felt like all of the sudden we weren't safe anymore." She let her hand fall to his forehead and trace his hairline with gentle strokes. "You were right though. It was a perfect opportunity." He nibbled on the corner of a seed. "Maybe too perfect." She ran her fingers through his hair and brushed it back, watching it flop back to his forehead. "I don't know, Scully. I'm not sure if we should go back tomorrow." "I wish we could get in, somehow." "What if we said we were new in town and we're looking for a place to keep our kid? Do some of that Nancy Drew stuff that always seems to work." "Yeah, but Nancy Drew always gets caught too. And shortly thereafter, is somehow knocked unconscious and taken off to be killed." "Well, we won't get caught. She makes it in the end, doesn't she?" "Mulder..." "Come on, Scully. I'm not feeling good about going back to the stakeout. Besides, we know how it works on the outside. We need to get in." She watched his eyes plead with her and she finally nodded. "All right. Tomorrow we'll go in." He nodded and tucked his head against her thigh, putting an arm around her and turning his face to see the television. She slumped back and ran her fingers through his hair. It looked like they'd be falling asleep in the same bed, again. ~~~~~ end of Monday and Tuesday adios RM