By MustangSally
MustangSally66@juno.com
 

CLASSIFICATION: MSR/H
CONTENT WARNING: NC-17 for language, sex, and gratuitous eyeliner
SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully investigate a missing child in the seedy glitz
and glamour of Atlantic City.  They confront Mafiosi, big hair, and
flocked wallpaper in Vegas by the Sea.  Oh yeah, there's some sex too.
SPOILER WARNING: Just crimes against good taste.
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: ATX.  Whatever
The Disclaimer: I dinn't do nothin', you got nothin' on me, got it
copper?
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 1997
Comments actively sought by MustangSally at: MustangSally66@juno.com
 

~~~

An Everlasting Kiss
By MustangSally
 

    In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream
     At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines
     Sprung from cages out on highway 9,
     Chrome wheeled, fuel injected and steppin' out over the line
     Baby this town rips the bones from your back
     It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap
     We gotta get out while we're young
     `Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

It was simple.

Mulder had to die.

She's made up her mind and there was no talking her out of it.  The only
snag was that she needed to dispose of the body.

"They took little Vinny.  My baby's gone."

Scully watched the woman dab at her eyes with a neatly folded tissue and
not disturb on molecule of the heavy black eyeliner surrounding her dry
eyes.

Get bent, Scully thought.

"I went into the baby's room and the crib was empty.  Vinny was gone."
Mrs. Juliano sniffed and flicked ash from her tiny Capri cigarette into
the cut glass ashtray.

Blinking, Scully choked back a yawn.

She couldn't believe that Mulder was buying this particular brand of
horseshit.  Really.  This was too much, even for him.  But no, there he
sat at the other side of the shiny kitchen table with his long fingers
curled around the mug with "Kiss Me, I'm Italian" written on it, his
entire body a Hallmark image of sympathy for the big-haired bimbo in the
rhinestone-studded tunic on the other side of the table.

Why doesn't he ever look at me like that?

Forty-eight hours.

Forty-eight hours since the Dreamland Motel north of Fargo and they were
sitting in the kitchen of a woman who believed that her baby had been
kidnapped by aliens.  Kidnapped by aliens right smack in the middle of
Atlantic City.  Belief aside, Scully didn't see how it was even remotely
possible; she and Mulder had spent twenty minutes looking for a parking
spot.  How the hell was a UFO going to land?

Unless the aliens had walked up from the beach.

Maybe the aliens had come to see Barry Manilow at the Grand Casino and
just decided to kidnap the baby on a whim.  She was not in the mood for
this, even less than usual.  Her lower back ached from hours of plane and
car seats.  There was a pulled muscle under her shoulder blade that was a
constant nagging pain, not unlike Mulder.

The real missing child was drinking coffee at the other side of the
table.

She wanted to slap him in the worst way possible.

"So there was a light and then what?" he prodded.

"There was a light coming through the bedroom window.  I was alone since
Tony was dealing at the blackjack tables at Trump that night.  Have you
been to the Trump?  Very nice, very classy.  So I was layin' in bed and I
seen this light, and I knew it wasn't no normal light.  It was like light
blue or somethin'.  Anyway I like could not move.  So when the light goes
out, I think that I gotta check the baby, cause he fusses when he wakes
up.  I went into the baby's room and the crib was empty.  I started
screamin' and Mrs. Bonfiglio who lives downstairs came up and she called
the cops."

"Mrs. Juliano, could the light have been from one of the Casinos?"
Scully asked in a dusty tone.

"No, honey, the lights from the Grand are yellow-like and this was blue.
I mean like aqua blue, like in a pool."

Honey?

Scully was too tired to be offended.  Three hours of restless sleep in
her own bed terminated by yet another one of Mulder's enthusiastic
late-night phone calls, that was when she began plotting his death.  They
needed to talk about what had happened in that horrible little hotel
room, and Scully had the sinking suspicion that he had dragged her out to
the garden spot of the Garden State to avoid the issue altogether.
Running away to Siberia again was the only way he was going to delay the
inevitable confrontation, and that was only because of the wait to get
through Customs.  She had to get him alone, explain that having sex with
him had been a hideous mistake and could they just go on as though
nothing had happened, that she didn't want to jeopardize their working
relationship by tangling it up in male/female issues.  That it was really
terribly unprofessional to be making the beast with two backs in every
available hotel room when they should have been going over case files and
getting work done, and could he please stop looking at her like that as
it tended to disturb her concentration.

And while he was at it, could he kiss her again so she was sure this was
a really bad thing?

Shit.

The clock on the wall said eight and Scully's internal clock told her
that it was two in the morning.  At the rate they were going, she was
going to fall asleep face-down on this woman's table and make more of an
ass out of herself than she had in North Dakota.

"Mulder, why don't we come back and talk to Mrs. Juliano in the morning
after we look at the police reports." she suggested in a calm tone.

Mulder looked at her as though she had suggested he wear his underwear on
his head.  Reality knocked on the door of his conscious mind and was
grudgingly admitted.

"My partner's right.  We'll review the case file and come back in the
morning." he said and got up from the table.

Mrs. Juliano followed them to the apartment door.

"Where are youse stayin'?" she asked.

"We have reservations at the Taj Mahal.  Just call the desk and they'll
get us."

"You got to check out the buffet at Caesar's, it's the best in town.  Ask
for Bonnie at the bar near the roulette tables, tell her you know me and
she'll take good care of you."

The sea air slapped Scully in the face like a snowball as she and Mulder
made their way to the rental car.  It revived her enough to vent a little
of her anger on her partner.

"Oh bravo, Mulder, this is a classic.  How the hell do you think the
aliens got her baby?  Did they park at Bally's and have their parking
stub validated?  Or did they take the train from New York?  Or a senior
citizen bus tour?"

"I don't think the aliens took her baby."  Mulder said as he unlocked the
passenger side door for Scully.

"Really."  Scully said and turned the heater up as he was starting the
car.

"I think the dingoes got her baby," he said in a horrible Meryl Streep
impersonation.

She gave up and laughed.

"Okay, so who took her baby?"

"I think her baby is still in the city somewhere and we'll be hearing
about a ransom soon."

"A ransom?  You're crazy.  That woman doesn't have any money, you saw the
size of the apartment, and she works as a cocktail waitress.  What kind
of money is she going to have?"

"Not her money, Vinny's.  He's got a file at the organized crime division
as thick as the Manhattan White Pages."

"So let them handle it." she grumbled as he turned into the parking
garage of the Taj Mahal.

"And miss the chance to see Barry Manilow?" he asked.

"I'd rather see Barry White," she admitted.

"I'd rather see Chuck Berry." he continued on the riff as they parked and
took their bags out of the trunk.

Mulder was in another one of his moods, strung out on coffee and
neurotransmitters, he was more dangerous than a ten year old with a pack
of matches in a firecracker factory.  He made her teeth hurt when he was
like this, and her ass as well.

"What do you say we get check in, get cleaned up, go have a drink, and
hit the tables."

"First, I am more beat than a rug, and second I do not gamble," she held
up her finger to silence him, "and the office pool on Luanne's baby does
not count.  That was a sure thing."

"How was that a sure thing."

She smiled.

"I know her OB/GYN from Med school and I called to find out when the
C-section would be."

"Cheaters never prosper." he warned, and then began digging in his
pocket, "but if you're in the gambling mood, I'll toss you.  Heads you
win, we go and get some rest like good little Fibbies.  Tails, you come
with me and we paint the town red white and blue."

The quarter shone in the dim light of the parking garage.

"Okay." she agreed.

"Last chance," he gave her a wicked smile and tossed the quarter up in
the air.

Spinning, dancing, twirling, the coin descended, Scully held her breath.

(Segment Ends)
 
 
 

2/4
     Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
     I want to guard your dreams and visions
     Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims
     and strap your hands across my engines
     Together we could break this trap
     We'll run till we drop, baby we'll never go back
     Will you walk with me out on the wire
     `Cause baby I'm just a scared and lonely rider
     But I gotta find out how it feels
     I want to know if love is wild, girl I want to
     know if love is real
 

"Luck be a lady tonight
Luck be a lady tonight
Luck if you've been a lady to begin with
Luck be a lady tonight

Luck let a gentleman see
Just how nice a dame you can be
I know the way you've treated other guys you've been with
Luck be a lady with me."  Mulder sang in a fairly creditable voice.

"Sore losers I can stand, but not a gloating winner."

"When was the last time you had fun, Scully?" he asked and rang the bell
at the check-in desk with a flourish worthy of Fred Astaire.

"During the Regan Administration," she said in a dry voice and watched
the beautiful young man put down the telephone and look up at Mulder with
a rapt expression.

"How can I help you?"

"Reservations for Mulder and Scully, FBI."

The young man's perfect features paled.

"Just a moment." he said and scampered into a rear door.

After taking a quick look around the lobby of the casino and the glass
wall separating it from the bright lights and madness of the gambling
floor, Scully turned back to her partner and found the familiar hazel
stare turned speculatively upon her.

"Have you noticed that all the people who work here are extraordinarily
attractive?" she asked.

"You think they're growing them in vats in the basement?" he asked, the
speculative stare turning a glittering gold with amusement.

"I was thinking more along the line of prejudiced hiring practices."

"Always looking for a problem," he said and watched the door open behind
the desk "and there goes your theory shot to hell."

The short man packed into the double-breasted suit looked like nothing
quite as much as a highland gorilla wearing wingtips.  The man had dark
eyes, a low widows-peak from which a mass of shiny black hair was swept
back under a thick layer of hairspray.  His pinky ring glittered like a
searchlight.

"Pleased to meet youse Agents Mulder and Scully.  I am John Marscapone,
manager of the hospitality section of this enterprise, and I would like
to welcome you to The Circus Maximus," he said in tones as formally
stilted as Shakespearean English, "How can I be of service to youse?"

"Reservations?  We had reservations," Scully prodded, her feet hurt and
she was not in the mood to be fawned over by primates.

"Certainly, if you would follow me, please, Tonio, get their bags."

Following Marscapone across the lobby to the gleaming brass doors of the
elevator, Scully looked over at Mulder, who returned his most bland
expression as the lovely Tonio staggered under the weight of their
combined bags.

"The Circus Maximus is the newest Casino on the Boardwalk," Marscapone
said as they stepped into the elevator, "and was built on the site of the
old Seabreeze Hotel.  I would be pleased to give you a guided tour when
your schedules allow."

"Where do you keep the lions?"  Mulder asked as the doors closed behind
them.

Obviously, Marscapone hadn't stayed awake through Western Civ and he gave
Mulder a blank look.

"We don't have any animal acts, but we have been trying to negotiate a
contract with Gunther Gabel Williams to bring his animal act next year.
I suggest that you do visit the Claudius Theater and see the musical
review playing right now.  It is most amusing and entertaining."

"I'm sure it is," Scully murmured and choked back a laugh.

The doors opened on a heavy silence made heavier by insipid music flowing
like syrup from concealed speakers.  The atomic red carpet stretched for
miles in either direction.

"This way please," Marscapone led them partially down the hall and opened
a sleek mahogany door.

"You are in the Justinian Suite," he said and ushered them inside,
"should you need anything, please call me at this number on my card.
Present this token at any cashier on the gaming floor and you will
receive the complimentary chips which come with the room."

Tonio carefully lumped their luggage on the suitcase racks and fled out
the door, forgoing the traditional bellhop dance for the tip.  Scully
stepped into the room and her pumps sank an inch into the royal purple
carpet.  Mulder looked unusually thunderstruck as he accepted the card
and the token from Marscapone.

"I sincerely hope that you enjoy your stay in this establishment and have
a successful conclusion to whatever case you are investigating,"
Marscapone intoned as he backed out the door, "The Circus Maximus is
always pleased to cooperate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

The door shut on greased hinges behind him.

"Mul-der," she said and looked around the suite, "I think there's been a
mistake."

"No shit, Sherlock," he tossed the heavy gold key ring on the purple
velvet sofa.

"My God, Mulder, it's purple."

It was purple.  Very purple.  Purple with gold trim, rich dark woods,
shining glass, and it even smelled expensive.  Scully opened the door to
the bedroom, noted the bed large enough to sleep a family of six husky
Norwegians under a glimmering gold-trimmed silk bedspread.  Further
investigation revealed a black marble bathroom with gold fixtures and a
tub large enough to swim in.  The tub called to Scully's most basic
feminine need to soak in bubbles and fragrant water for extended periods
of time.  She touched the side of the tub with longing as Mulder poked
his head in the door.

"Where's the lifeguard?" he asked.

"With the lions.  This is wrong.  We can't stay here.  Imagine what our
expense report is going to look like, Skinner will have a cow.  An entire
herd of cows."

Lounging against the doorframe, Mulder stuck his hands in his pockets and
looked thoughtful.

"I think we're being bribed.  They must think that we're investigating
them and we're being bribed."

"Great." she sighed and sat on the side of the tub.

"Well I think it will be all right since we aren't actually investigating
them.  Although I bet they have a few lions in the basement eating the
lifeguards, or whoever else displeased the management."

"We should go to another hotel."

"Forget it, it's late, you're tired and I think we deserve this after the
Slumberland Motel outside Fargo.  Let's forget the casino tonight and go
tomorrow.  It will still be there."

The tub called to Scully again.  She put her fingers on the spotless gold
faucet and stroked it.  Really, she did deserve the tub at least.

She took a deep breath.

"Mulder, about the Slumberland Motel--" she began.

He put on the face that he usually reserved for decomposing corpses and
waited for her to continue.

"I don't know, I mean, I think that might have been a *bad* thing.  It
was a good thing but bad at the same time, just thoughtless and bad and
very, uh, confusing."

"Confusing."

"Well yes, confusing in terms of priorities and professionalism, and
conduct."

Crossing his arms over his chest, he slumped a little more defiantly
against the doorframe.  She took another deep breath and looked at the
drain in the tub, wondered if it emptied out to sea and wondered if she
could just wash herself down it and into the cold reaches of the
Atlantic.

"And your point is?" he prodded in a scalpel tone usually used in
interrogations.

"We shouldn't do that again, it will affect our working relationship."

"Has it?  So far?" he asked.

"No but--"

"And lingering resentment would be better?"

"No but--"

He stepped further into the bathroom and crouched down across from her so
they were face to face, and she could hear his knees crack in the silence
of the bathroom.  As usual, she felt herself being sucked into the
strange and dark place that lived behind the misty autumn eyes.  Her
pulse started in her ears and her mouth went quite dry.  This was her
point, how was she going to be able to sit across from him at meetings
when he looked at her like that and made her melt like a chocolate bar on
a hot car seat.  He would have to be like something she really liked but
couldn't have, like gazpacho.  She liked gazpacho but it always gave her
indigestion afterwards, something about the green peppers.  Then again,
Mulder gave her indigestion on an almost daily basis.  So she might as
well have the soup, right?

She could always buy Tums in the three-gallon size.

"You're wavering." he accused.

"I am not."

"You have the little angel Scully on your right shoulder saying: be a
good girl, follow the rules, color within the lines.  And the little
devil Scully is saying: Go for it!"

"You overestimate your attractiveness." she whispered as his face moved
closer and closer to hers, she was sucked into his dark charm and swept
out to sea.

"You underestimate yours." he whispered in a voice like fur brushing
along the back of her hand.

"Room Service!"

Guilty as teenagers, they sprung apart and scrambled for the main room
where a earnest and attractive young woman was setting covered plates at
the table in front of the balcony window.  The cold night lights shone in
the cloud-quilted sky above the black water.

"We didn't order room service," she protested.

"Compliments of the management," the woman said and deftly popped the
champagne cork.

"Well once the genie is out of that bottle, there's no putting it back,"
Mulder said and accepted the tulip glass from the woman in the server's
uniform.

"Exactly," Scully found herself agreeing.

The champagne was good, and once the woman had taken her cart and gone,
Scully dropped her coat on the sofa, took off her shoes and began picking
up the covers on the plates.  Caviar, pate, intricately cut raw
vegetables, an assortment of cheese, an assortment of crackers and
strawberries were laid out like something from Martha Stewart's show.
Mulder shucked his coat and tie and unbuttoned his sleeves.

"An FBI agent's life is not a happy one."

"This is so bad," she said and smeared caviar on a cracker.

"Sometimes it feels good to be bad." he agreed and held a strawberry to
her.

The strawberry glistened red and wet as a heat in an open chest cavity,
and even as she opened her lips to receive the treat, she couldn't help
but think of Snow White and the Apple, Eve and the Apple, and Helen of
Troy and the Apple.  What was it about accepting fruit that got women in
trouble?

The strawberry was delicious, and the gold bubbles in the champagne were
the same shade of gold that flickered in his eyes.

Snow White, Eve, and Helen of Troy didn't have guns.

What the hell . . .

His mouth was salty with caviar and sweet with the champagne.

(Segment Ends)
 
 

3/4
     Beyond the Palace hemi-powered drones scream down the boulevard
     The girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors
     And the boys try to look so hard
     The amusement park rises bold and stark
     Kids are huddled on the beach in a mist
     I wanna die with you Wendy on the streets tonight
     In an everlasting kiss

"I thought this was a bad idea, 'confusing in terms of priorities and
professionalism, and conduct.'" he mocked when their lips finally parted
after what felt like a week and a half.

"Didn't anyone teach you that it's rude to parrot what someone said?" she
asked.

"Mrs. Robinson are you trying to seduce me?"

Looking down into the neck of the champagne bottle, and the green glass
world therein, Mulder sighed.

"It's dead, Scully," he said with a mournful expression.

Leaning back in her chair, full of good champagne and savory morsels, she
practiced being at peace with the universe.  It was a novel sensation.
The champagne had hit her bloodstream with the power of an F-16 fighter
and she was feeling both peaceful and mellow in the extreme.  Mulder's
hair had flopped over his forehead and into his eyes, giving him a
decidedly urchin-like look.

"We deserve this," he said.

"Damn straight," she agreed.

"Five years of shitty department-sanctioned hotels, towels made of steel
wool, boiled coffee, and roaches - lots of roaches.  We deserve something
good for a change."

"Damn straight." she repeated.

Mulder picked up the champagne bottle and looked through the green glass
bottom at his partner.

"Agent Scully, are you intoxicated?"

"Damn straight," she said and burst into undignified giggles.

Belatedly, she clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle the immature
sound, but Mulder took her wrist and gently pried her hand away.

"Don't hide from me," he asked in a plaintive voice.

Sticky lips.  Sweet.  Sticky, salty lips hard on hers, hot fingers
tracing the curves of her face, eyelashes brushing her skin.  Inside,
some wary part of her rolled over and relaxed, begging to have its belly
rubbed.

Just as quickly, his mouth left hers and he pulled her to her feet.

"Come on," he murmured into her earlobe and her calf muscles shook.

Tottering hand and hand like Hansel and Gretel in the Big Purple Wood,
they followed the breadcrumb trail into the awesome purple bedroom of the
Gingerbread House.

"This is intimidating as hell," Mulder muttered and kicked off his shoes.

In the dark bedroom, with the light of the other casinos along the beach
flaring through the cold dark night reflected in the bedroom window,
Mulder stood like a flamingo on first one leg and then the other to pull
off his socks.  Argyle socks.  College-professor socks.  It was all a
sham, Scully realized with an effervescent light in her champagne-soaked
brain.  He was a fraud, the FBI Agent act, was all false, he belonged in
a lecture hall, looking over his glasses at the swooning undergraduates,
trying to figure out which one of them he was going to sleep with that
semester.  His feet still lived at Oxford, even if he did have a leather
jacket and a gun.  She found herself staring at he long bones of his pale
feet, the finger-like toes, and the redness across the arch where the
shoes rubbed.

He followed her glance and they both stood looking at his feet.

"What?" he asked.

"You have good feet," she sighed.

"They work, never thought much about 'em," he admitted  "You have *cute*
little feet."

"Like no way," she disagreed and pulled her knee-highs off and pulled the
hems of her trousers up, "I have totally gross feet."

They looked at her feet, soft and white on the carpet.

"Fat little Irish peasant feet, Scully feet.  My grandmother had the same
feet," she wiggled her toes in the purple carpet  "My brother Bill broke
all the toes on my left foot when he shut the garage door on them when I
was ten.  He was trying to make me cry."

"Poor Scully." he said as she inched forward and caressed his instep with
her big toe, and she heard the breath stop in his throat.

His fingers measured her skull through the heavy weight of her hair,
while his lips drank the champagne from her lips, the breath from her
lungs, her carbonated drunken soul.

White shirtfront crunching like typing paper against her breasts.  On her
toes, even as he bent over, head tilted to capture her mouth; she
crunched the paper shirt under her hands over the tight hardness of his
shoulders and arms.  Unfasten, unclip unzipper, and undo fumbling fast
and sloppy with each other's clothes.  Buttons froze in holes; zippers
refused to loose their grasp.  Giggling.  Giggling like mad children with
the sheer stupidity and insanity.  Finally, his and hers sensible dark
trousers and white shirts lay dead on the floor and the flickering night
lights of the boardwalk licked across their bodies in the darkness.  God
he was thin, whippet-thin, and leggy as well.  They matched as well as
whippet and terrier.  Yet such things were possible, as many a
misbegotten puppy could prove.  She wanted to bundle his white thinness
in her arms and warm him until the nervous knobs and bumps of his
skeleton smoothed into liquid.

"You are so beautiful," he said in someone else's voice.

When she said that, she was.

"You talk too much, "she pointed out and pulled his head down to hers by
the soft hair on the back of his skull.

Such soft hair covering such a hard, stubborn, head.

Hard teeth, greedy lips, sharpened tongues, locked and unlocked, his
fingers leaving a ignited gasoline trail on her skin, reached down to
catch the globes of her ass and jerk her towards him.  The hard length of
his erection pressed into her stomach, hot as a curling iron.  Running
her hands down the taut surface of his chest stretched over bone and
muscle like canvas on a frame, she caught his hips and pulled him closer.
 

Groaning into her mouth, he squeezed her ass harder, insistent thumbs
brushing the base of her spine.  Hooking a foot behind his ankle she
executed a textbook perfect takedown and he tumbled onto the bed with a
yelp of surprise like a scarecrow cut loose from its crucifix.

Sleeking her hand up the length of his ropy legs, she crawled up the
mattress between his legs until he was spread open like a frightened
virgin.

"Paybacks," she told him, "are a bitch."

"Whatever I did, I'm sorry," he blurted in a shaky adolescent voice.

Dipping her head, she let her hair down over her face and took him in her
mouth, inhaling his dark and wild smell and taste like wine.  He was as
long and poetic as his feet, as the rest of him and she had to encircle
the base of him with her hand, feeling the pulse racing against her
fingers.  Even though, she herself was so wet that her thighs were
sticking together, she was determined to bring him as close to cardiac
arrest as possible.  She dragged her tongue down the length of him and he
choked back a surprised yip as her teeth grazed the sensitive head.

Slowly, as though she wasn't aware of the fact that he was laboring for
breath like a cheap foreign car packed with professional wrestlers
climbing a mountain, she swirled her tongue around him as she began
sliding up and down in a primal rhythm.  His hand was in her hair.  Not
pressing or directing her efforts, but as though he was reassuring
himself of her presence.

On either side of her shoulder, his legs shook.

"You better stop or--" he warned in a hoarse, broken voice.

"Or what?  I thought you had better control than that," she teased and
lifted her head to look into the dazed blackness of his eyes.

"Don't believe everything you read."

Up on her knees now, she moved up his body, her hand still holding the
base of his cock.

"Shut up, Mulder."

She really enjoyed the look of astonished gratitude that splashed over
his face when she finally lowered herself onto him.  Forty eighty hours
since the Slumberland Motel and her muscles still reeled in shock with
the reality of him in her.  It was true that going without sex long
enough reduced you to a near-virginal state, and it took a little getting
used to the intimate invasion again.  She felt her inner muscles conform
to him.

"I'm having an epiphany." he groaned and his head fell back into the
purple pool of the bedspread.

The purple really looked good with his hair, she realized.

Leaning forward, she kissed him on the mouth again, still tasting caviar,
as his shaking hands made their way along her breasts and began to knead
her flesh as she began to slide up and down along the shaft of his cock,
now buried deep inside her.

So simple.

What had all the fuss been about?  Why all the commercials for diet soda
based around the promise of this one action, the fitting of tab a in slot
b in the most fundamental way possible?  Reproduction made pleasurable
because the Homo sapiens female has no set estrus cycle, so the act
itself had to be an instigation to reproduce.  Smart little hairless apes
fucking all over the unpopulated world with happy abandon until some ape
who wasn't getting any decided to make up some damn stupid rules and ruin
it for everyone.

Rules.

Fuck the rules.

The room was quiet save for their harsh, rhythmic breathing and the wet
noises of flesh on flesh.  Magnetic waves of pleasure radiated out from
where he entered her, and she was riding a slow and endless wave of
pre-climax sensation that left goosebumps on her arms and sweat dripping
from her hairline.  He was pressing up into her, matching her grind as
though they had been doing this for years.  She panted against his lips,
wringing every possible iota of pleasure from their bodies.

"You're killing me, he groaned, half in lust, half in genuine fear.

"That's-the-idea."

Inside her he started to twitch, close to coming.  She reached down
between their bodies and clamped her hand down at the base of his cock.
His entire body jerked as though he had been electrocuted and a sound
like that of a lost kitten came out of his throat.  His eyes looked like
fried eggs.  While his body was stiff with shock, she held his imprisoned
and hard cock in her hand, she moved up and down on him as though he were
little more than a full-size pleasure toy, her clitoris was bumping into
her own knuckles and making her moan at the sensation.  Her body was
crystalline, full of light, flickering, each nerve ending flashing and
blinking like a Christmas decoration, bubbling light crystal and light
and foaming out into prisms of light and a never-ending chord like the
end of Sergeant Pepper and her brain shrank in the light---

And hard shaking fingers pried her strangling hand away even as the
helpless shout was dying in her throat.  The world flipped which was okay
since she had forgotten everything she ever knew about physics and she
was looking up at Mulder rather than down.

"You psycho little bitch," he said in a voice of raw admiration.

All she could do was smile as he began to thrust into her with desperate
abandon.

"Come on, come on," he grunted under his breath in rhythm with his
plunging into her body.

And she did, helplessly and involuntarily as a sneeze.  Shattered and
broke with her nails in his ribcage and his hard ass as he came with a
frighteningly hard surge into her, his mouth full of her skin and
incoherent world-like noises.

God, did the man *never* shut up?

Collapsing atop her like a concussion stunned fish, he breathed hotly
into her ear.  Sweat drained from his hair into her face.  Wrapping her
arms and legs around the slender white length of his knobby body she
anchored him and kept him from being swept away.  The wine-dark sea of
sleep covered them both and carried them out into the cold reaches of the
Atlantic under a new moon.
 
 

 
4/4
    The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
     Everybody's out on the run tonight but there's no place left to hide
     Together Wendy we'll live with the sadness
     I'll love you with all the madness in my soul
     Someday girl I don't know when we're gonna get to that place
     Where we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun
     But till then tramps like us baby we were born to run

Phone.

Goddamned motherfucking phone.

Scully groaned and pulled the sheets up over her head while Mulder
reached over her and fumbled.

"Mulder.  What?"

He sounded so hoarse and so tired that Scully would have thought that he
had spent the night screaming for encores at a Who concert rather than in
marathon sex sessions.  She wasn't sure that she was going to be able to
sit comfortably for the next few days and had a nagging worry of cystitis
in the back of her mind.

"Really?  No, that's good.  Pleased to hear it.  Not a wasted trip at all
. . . Just don't let it happen again.  Right. . . Whatever.  You too."

The phone clunked back into the cradle and Mulder groaned as he flopped
back into the bed.

"I don't fucking believe it."

"Whazzup?" she said in a sleep-clogged throat and wrapped her body along
the long length of his, stiff as a cigar store Indian's in the big purple
bed.

"They found baby Vinnie."

"No way."

"Way.  Apparently, the in-laws came over, woke the ever-intelligent Mrs.
Juliano up, and asked her if baby Vinnie could stay with them while the
painters painted her apartment.  She went back to sleep and forgot the
whole thing until the painters showed up this morning."

"The in-laws got your baby," she said in the best Meryl Streep
impersonation she could manage under the circumstances.

His fingers traced symbols on her shoulder.

"Well let's just be grateful that she's a cocktail waitress and not a
brain surgeon," he said.

"What time is it?" she asked stretching languorously under his touch.

"Just after eight.  You want to get breakfast or something?"

"That would involve moving." she pointed out.

"Yeah, too bad."

The slippery bed sheets smelled like fermented sex, pungent and earthy in
the vast expanse of artificial purple silk.  With her eyes shut and she
couldn't see the color life was pretty good.  She had a nagging headache
from the champagne and most of her major muscle groups ached pleasantly.
Mulder's boniness was surprisingly comfortable.

"So what do you want to do?" he asked.

"Other than the obvious?" she asked.

He chuckled into her ear.

"There is something to be said for the obvious.'" he said and his hand
moved down her body to where she was warmer than the morning sun.
 
 
 

Exactly three minutes before checkout, the two Federal Agents, brisk,
professional ad groomed to a high gloss turned in their keys in the lobby
of the Circus Maximus.  The desk clerk this time was a beautiful young
African-American woman with a smile brighter than any of the lights on
the casino floor.

"Did you have a good stay at the hotel?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you," Mulder said with a melting sincerity that made Scully
kick his ankle out of the woman's sight.

"Can you wait a moment?  Mr. Marscapone wants to see you," she gestured
at a grouping of chairs in the lobby.

In the red velvet chair, Scully had to rest most of her weight on the
backs of her legs; it was not going to be fun driving back to Washington
like this.  Mulder looked slightly worried.

"So now Marscapone is going to find out that we aren't from Organized
Crime and we're gonna' be sleepin' with the fishes."

"Don't worry, Mulder, I'll protect you." she said as Marscapone rolled
over to the chairs.

Scully was glad to stand and shake hands.

"I hope youse had a pleasant stay here at the Circus Maximus.  I am
aggrieved to be seeing you go so soon," he made a shrugging gesture with
his beefy hands "but it is a good thing that baby Vinnie was not really
kidnapped at all."

"You knew we were here to look for baby Vinnie?"  Mulder demanded.

"Angie is a good kid, but not too bright, she married my loser little
brother Tony.  Tony should have been kidnapped by aliens, they might have
found his brain with one of them anal probes," Marscapone's Rottweiler
face creased into a smile, "but that baby Vinnie, he's gonna' be a smart
boy."

"Sure."  Scully said in a purple silk daze.

Mulder shut his surprised mouth and dug in his pocket for something.

"Here," he said and held out the gambling token, "I didn't use it."

"Not a gambling man?"  Marscapone asked.

"Yeah, well my luck suddenly got good and I didn't want to push it."

"Keep the token, come back another time.  There's always a place for you
at the Circus."

"I've been saying that for years," Scully muttered under her breath and
they walked through the passageway to the underground parking lot.

"Hey Scully, did you ever want to run away and join the circus when you
were a kid?"  Mulder asked.

"No, just the French Foreign Legion."

As they reached the dull gray rental car, Mulder tossed her the car keys
and she caught the ring in her left hand.

"I get to drive?  Wow Mulder, I should have slept with you sooner" she
drawled and tossed her bag in the trunk.

"I just want your hands where I can see them," he said and shut the trunk
with a resounding thump, "where did you learn that little trick anyway?"

"That's for me to know and you to never find out," she said and started
the engine.

The dirty shell of Atlantic City scraped the sky overhead and finally
dissolved into scrubby pine trees lining the Garden State Parkway.
Mulder leaned against the window and watched the trees go by.

"You know, you place is closer than mine."

She never lifted her eyes from the road.

"So it is."

"Hey Scully, the speed limit is only fifty-five in New Jersey."

"Bite me, Mulder."

"Oh don't worry, I will."

**************************************************************************************
*****************************
Born To Run
Bruce Springsteen
Author's self-indulgent notes:
In my monomaniacal cosmology, "Born to Run" is always performed by
Frankie Goes to Hollywood.  It's on the "Relax" CD should you want to
check out that old eighties hair gel chestnut.

But as we say in Joisey "Bruuuuuuuuuuuuce!"

Check out MustangSally's Garage
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Updated 10/10/97 *New Stories*
**October is Marsupial Madness Month**
O! Kangaroo of My Karma!